{"id":9619,"date":"2023-11-22T23:00:24","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T23:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9619"},"modified":"2023-11-22T23:00:24","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T23:00:24","slug":"immortal-x-men-17-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9619","title":{"rendered":"Immortal X-Men #17 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/91EXoIV2e4L._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9620 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/91EXoIV2e4L._AC_UY436_QL65_-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/91EXoIV2e4L._AC_UY436_QL65_-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/91EXoIV2e4L._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg 284w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/><\/a><strong>IMMORTAL X-MEN #17<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>&#8220;The White Hot Danger Room&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Writer: Kieron Gillen<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Artist: Juan Jos\u00e9 Ryp<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Colour artist: David Curiel<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Letterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Design: Tom Muller &amp; Jay Bowen<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Editor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Jean Grey in contemporary costume, surrounded by images of her from various points in her life. From left to right, that&#8217;s:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A Jean we can&#8217;t see enough of to place.<\/li>\n<li>Late 1980s\u00a0<em>X-Factor<\/em> Marvel Girl<\/li>\n<li>Late 1960s\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> Marvel Girl<\/li>\n<li>Phoenix \/ Black Queen from the Dark Phoenix Saga.<\/li>\n<li>Early 1990s\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> Jean Grey<\/li>\n<li>Early Silver Age Marvel Girl<\/li>\n<li>Phoenix in\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #101, rising from the water with Cyclops in front of her.<\/li>\n<li><em>X-Men Red\u00a0<\/em>Jean Grey<\/li>\n<li>Morrison\/Quitely\u00a0<em>New X-Men<\/em> Jean Grey<\/li>\n<li>Another Jean too small to identify.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>2.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page. Another of Exodus&#8217;s idiosyncratic bible translations. In the past, we&#8217;ve seen his versions of the Book of Exodus. This is described as his version of the Book of Apocalypse; specifically, it&#8217;s a loose version of Revelation 2:11-12. The Authorised King James Version reads:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.<\/p>\n<p>To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. I know where you live &#8211; where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city &#8211; where Satan lives.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jean Grey is the Holy Spirit.<\/li>\n<li>The &#8220;churches&#8221; have become &#8220;the people&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>The &#8220;second death&#8221; or &#8220;final death&#8221;, in the original, is the final death of the damned on Judgment Day (as I understand it). Here, the allusion is to Krakoan resurrection.<\/li>\n<li>Krakoa is Pergamum (or Pergamon), which was a city in Turkey. Chapter 2 of Revelation mentions it as part of a list of seven major churches of the time. Broadly speaking, the writer is not very impressed by Pergamon compared to the others, and seems to see it as having fallen prey to heresy. What the original writer meant by an &#8220;angel&#8221; is a matter of dispute.<\/li>\n<li>The &#8220;sharp, two-edged sword&#8221; is usually a reference to the Word of God.<\/li>\n<li>Apocalypse is Satan.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The days of Antipas&#8221; have become a reference to the Days of Future Past storyline. Antipas was a martyr and saint who (so the story goes) was the bishop of Pergamon and was put to death by one of the Roman emperors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>PAGES 3-4.\u00a0<\/strong><em>Professor X and Mr Sinister.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Professor X clarifies for us that he has figured out that Mr Sinister is only controlling him while he&#8217;s asleep. Sinister&#8217;s demeanour is much more calm and earnest than usual &#8211; either because he&#8217;s trying very hard to persuade Professor X, or because he&#8217;s genuinely chastened by learning about the Dominion in &#8220;Sins of Sinister&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 5.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits. The tag line &#8220;No future in Krakoa&#8217;s dreaming&#8221; references &#8220;God Save the Queen&#8221; by the Sex Pistols.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 6-11. <\/strong><em>Exodus and Hope fight Apocalypse.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Kind of, because we know this is a symbol rather than the real Apocalypse.<\/p>\n<p>We saw a version of this scene in\u00a0<em>Jean Grey<\/em> #4, from Jean&#8217;s perspective. That scene already has the following dialogue:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>APOCALYPSE: Now you know. You are the mutant chalice where the future will be wrought. You must pass &#8211; or else all ends.<\/p>\n<p>HOPE: Okay, Exodus. We&#8217;re in the White Hot Room. What does that mean?<\/p>\n<p>EXODUS: It is a higher realm. Spiritual. I have often thought it akin to Tiphareth, from the Kabbalah. We&#8217;re in a place of primal creativity, of ideas made flesh.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This version adds Exodus&#8217;s line about Jean&#8217;s connection to the Phoenix, and her being &#8220;disassembled&#8221; &#8211; I think he means that being in the White Hot Room has\u00a0<em>caused<\/em> her to be disassembled, whatever exactly that involves.<\/p>\n<p>The scene then continues with Hope recapping that everything has been created from Hope&#8217;s perceptions of Wolverine and Bishop hunting her, and Apocalypse as a Satanic figure; and Exodus fighting Apocalypse to limited success. Then Hope gets the flaming sword, which we saw in\u00a0<em>Jean Grey<\/em> #4, and we know is due to Jean trying to assist.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jean&#8217;s narration.<\/strong> Continuing the format of <em>Immortal X-Men<\/em>, Jean Grey is the Quiet Council member who gets to narrate this issue &#8211; she hasn&#8217;t been on the Council for a while, but she&#8217;s close enough. While\u00a0<em>Jean Grey<\/em> #4 tries to provide some form of resolution to Jean&#8217;s experiences in the White Hot Room, this issue plays her as still being mostly confused and caught up in garbled versions of her memories. Hence, all of her narration comes from old issues. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.comicsxf.com\/2023\/11\/22\/immortal-xmen-17-jean-grey\/\">Luckily for me, ComicsXF has already assembled all the references.<\/a> So I&#8217;ll confine myself to giving the quick references here, and you can head over there if you want a bit more detail :<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Now and forever, I am Phoenix&#8221; is from Jean&#8217;s debut as Phoenix (or vice versa) in\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #101.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I thought I was dead&#8221; through to &#8220;Something&#8217;s wrong&#8221; is from the opening of\u00a0<em>X-Men: Phoenix &#8211; Endsong<\/em> #1. I have to admit I&#8217;d have been searching for hours before it occurred to me to check that one.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;What kind of school is this, sir? I have a right to know!&#8221; is Jean arriving at the school for the first time in <em>X-Men<\/em> #1, and of course predates the retcon about Jean having known Xavier for years.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;My consciousness &#8221; through to &#8220;dormant emotions and memories&#8221; is not Jean, but Phoenix, in the back-up strip in\u00a0<em>Classic X-Men<\/em> #8 (which expands on how Jean becomes Phoenix).<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;You guys make me sick&#8221; through to &#8220;wiped from the face of the Earth&#8221; is from <em>X-Factor<\/em> #1; Jean is unhappy that her fellow founding X-Men have left the team in her absence.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The fires of the Phoenix&#8221; through to &#8220;every deception&#8221; is from\u00a0<em>New X-Men<\/em> #139, when Jean is lashing out at Emma Frost are discovering her affair with Scott.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;No longer am I the woman you knew&#8221; through to the end of the page is\u00a0<em>X-Men\u00a0<\/em>#101 again.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I can&#8217;t screen out everyone&#8217;s thoughts&#8221; to &#8220;attractive&#8221; is Jean reflecting on her corruption by Mastermind as she scans the clientele of a dive bar in <em>Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #130.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Jean gets out one line of actual dialogue before her speech descends into quotations as well:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Jean is the house where I live &#8211; and I am the house where Jean Grey lives. The White Hot Room is where the Phoenix lives.&#8221; The line &#8220;Jean is the house where I live&#8221; is the Phoenix speaking to Professor X through Jean in\u00a0<em>New X-Men\u00a0<\/em>#128; the rest seems to be new, so it changes the emphasis somewhat.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;You&#8217;ll learn more about me, boys, in time!&#8221; and &#8220;I hope I wasn&#8217;t too rough&#8221; are both from the scene in <em>X-Men<\/em> #1 where Jean demonstrates her powers to the boys.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>PAGES 12-17. <\/strong><em>Professor X and Mr Sinister.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Mr Sinister has been in the Pit (which he calls &#8220;the Hole&#8221;) since <em>Sins of Sinister: Dominion<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Forge&#8217;s cure<\/strong> was used to purge Sinister&#8217;s influence from the other Quiet Council members in issue #11, but Forge acknowledged that he wasn&#8217;t completely sure it was right.<\/p>\n<p><b>The Black Womb Project<\/b> was a secret genetic research project at Alamagordo, in which Professor X&#8217;s father was involved. (To some extent, it was a sliding timeline retcon: Alamagordo was a nuclear testing facility, which was obviously what Stan Lee had in mind when he first mentioned it in the 1960s.) Sinister was also involved in the Black Womb Project, and used it to try and take over Professor X back in\u00a0<em>X-Men Legacy<\/em> #211-214.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;The homunculi&#8221;\u00a0<\/strong>are Orbis Stellaris, Dr Stasis and Mother Righteous (though Sinister doesn&#8217;t seem to know that Righteous is the fourth one). Professor X understands them to be &#8220;hardly the real thing you are&#8221;, which is apparently how Sinister views them, but we know that all four of them are copies of the original Nathaniel Essex. Presumably this is a genuinely held wrong belief on Sinister&#8217;s part, rather than a fault in Xavier&#8217;s mind-reading.<\/p>\n<p>Sinister implies that all four of them are compelled by their creator to pursue an ascent to Dominion status.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 18-19. <\/strong><em>Mother Righteous attacks Destiny.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Mother Righteous knows that they&#8217;re in the White Hot Room, but seems to view Jean&#8217;s arrival as an unwanted problem that requires action to be taken against Destiny.<\/p>\n<p>She mentions to Destiny that her powers aren&#8217;t working because the concept of the future doesn&#8217;t apply in the White Hot Room. What Destiny seems to be realising is that the basic problem with defeating the Sinister Dominion was that it existed outside time and space; in the White Hot Room it no longer has that advantage over them and can, potentially, be averted. Destiny also seems to think that becoming a Dominion is something that Righteous would actually want to avoid, if she was fully informed.<\/p>\n<p>Kafka sees Righteous stab Destiny, and Righteous decides that since she&#8217;s been exposed, she needs to cash in all the magical hold she acquired over Krakoa when the Quiet Council thanked her for her intervention in <em>Sins of Sinister: Dominion<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The narrative caption at the start of the scene &#8211; &#8220;Our paths will cross no more. My destiny lies in the stars.&#8221; &#8211; is Dark Phoenix bidding farewell to the X-Men in\u00a0<em>Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #135.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 20-21. <\/strong><em>Mother Righteous turns Krakoa against the mutants.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The captions on page 22 are from <em>Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #136, where Dark Phoenix demonstrates her power to her parents by turning a pot plant into crystal.<\/p>\n<p>The captions on page 23 are from Dark Phoenix confronting Jason Wyngarde in\u00a0<em>Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #134.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 22. <\/strong><em>Professor X and Mr SInister leave for Muir Island.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 23. <\/strong><em>Mother Righteous takes Jean Grey into the desert.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Or rather, lets the addled Jean lead the way. The captions are again from\u00a0<em>X-Men: Phoenix &#8211; Endsong<\/em> #1, where a fragment of the Phoenix was hunting for a host.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 24. <\/strong>Data page: another of Exodus&#8217;s takes on the Book of Revelation.<\/p>\n<p>This is Revelation 2:19-20, from the part directed to the angel of the church in Thyatira. Mother Righteous has been subbed in for Jezebel. Tactfully, Exodus says that Righteous has led the mutants to commit &#8220;abomination&#8221; &#8211; the King James Version opts for &#8220;fornication&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Also, Exodus says that Righteous has led the mutants to &#8220;provide one to be sacrificed to a grand idol.&#8221; The Bible verse actually accuses Jezebel of leading the people to eat food had been sacrificed to idols.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 25.<\/strong> The Krakoan reads HAPPILY EVER AFTER.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. IMMORTAL X-MEN #17 &#8220;The White Hot Danger Room&#8221; Writer: Kieron Gillen Artist: Juan Jos\u00e9 Ryp Colour artist: David Curiel Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller &amp; Jay Bowen Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1. Jean Grey in contemporary costume, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9621,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9619\/revisions\/9621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}