{"id":9676,"date":"2023-12-15T21:30:52","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T21:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9676"},"modified":"2023-12-15T21:30:52","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T21:30:52","slug":"dark-x-men-5-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9676","title":{"rendered":"Dark X-Men\u00a0#5 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>DARK X-MEN vol 2 #5<\/strong>
\n“The Mercy Seat”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Steve Foxe<\/strong>
\nArtist: Jonas Scharf<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Frank Martin<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> The two Madelyne Pryors fight.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-5.<\/strong> The Goblin Queen tries to persuade Madelyne Pryor to join forces.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Carmen Cruz wanted nothing more than to be part of the X-Men.”<\/strong> Referring back to her origins in the cast of\u00a0Children of the Atom<\/em>, basically about a group of human fans cosplaying as mutants. Carmen, the one actual mutant in the group, made it to Krakoa with her heroes but has only come to the foreground in the context of this very questionable iteration of the X-Men.<\/p>\n

“You let them neuter your mutant abilities?”<\/strong> We were told in issue #2 that Orchis had used Blightswill to remove the Goblin Queen’s mutant powers, and that she didn’t care, claiming to have long since outgrown them. She claims here that she was also lulling Orchis into a false sense of security.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Goblin Queen’s interpretation of the Madelyne Pryor character is that in every universe she ends up suffering unless she takes the initiative by seizing power. Despite her supposed alliance with Orchis, she’s interested in working with her local counterpart.<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-8.<\/strong> Albert rescues Elsie-Dee.<\/em><\/p>\n

We saw Krol dismantling and rebuilding Elsie-Dee in issue #2, though quite what he actually gains from turning her into a bazooka is less than clear. Naturally, the sight of his long-time partner in distress prompts Albert to take control of the body he shares with Zero, and rescue her, with Zero absorbing her into the single body. Zero seems more amused by this than anything else, but does at least allow Albert to follow through.<\/p>\n

PAGE 9.\u00a0<\/strong>Azazel kills Vallens.<\/em><\/p>\n

Basically, she gained her power by selling her soul to a minor demon who Azazel considers beneath him – apparently correctly. Then again, Vallens does say that the demon promised to keep her safe from harm, and while he doesn’t do so, Azazel\u00a0does<\/em> die in relatively short order afterwards.<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-11.\u00a0<\/strong>The Bamf Dragon kills Azazel.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Bamf Dragon is “uncomfortably familiar-looking” because it’s a transformed version of Nightcrawler’s counterpart from the Goblin Queen’s world.<\/p>\n

Emplate has made clear throughout this series that he’s only here under duress because of an unspecified debt to Azazel; he leaves as soon as Azazel is no longer around to insist otherwise. A little curiously, Emplate says that his debt is\u00a0settled<\/em> – as opposed to just claiming that it no longer applies – but perhaps he considers that his service throughout the story constitutes repayment. It’s a little odd that we never get an explanation of what all this was about, and it comes across as a dropped subplot.<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-18.\u00a0<\/strong>Madelyne wavers but ultimately rejects Goblin Queen’s offer and kills her.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Twice I’ve nearly conquered this godforsaken world.”<\/strong> Presumably Madelyne means “Inferno” and “Dark Web”.<\/p>\n

When the Goblin Queen zaps Havok, and his headdress falls to the ground, page 12 panel 6 shows the vision of Death that Madelyne had on page 8 of issue #3.<\/p>\n

Feint<\/strong> impersonates the pre-corruption Madelyne to encourage her to resist; Madelyne quite reasonably identifies this as “trite and manipulative”, but also accepts the argument that her top priority is to take control of her own destiny, wresting control from everyone who has tried to control her. She sees the Goblin Queen as someone else asserting a destiny that dictates the course of her life.<\/p>\n

PAGE 19.\u00a0<\/strong>Epilogue, page 1.<\/em><\/p>\n

Feint and Gambit apparently leave the Limbo Embassy to hook up with the mainstream X-Men group. This probably takes place during\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #28-29 while the rest of the team are off in Latveria.<\/p>\n

The guy being greeted at the Limbo Embassy by Zero seems to be a generic. Note that Zero has separated from Albert and Elsie-Dee.<\/p>\n

PAGE 20.\u00a0<\/strong>Epilogue, page 2.<\/em><\/p>\n

Panel 1 shows Maggott and Calypso on the Morlocks’ yacht, where Maggott chose to stay in issue #3. Panel 2 shows the death mask that the Goblin Queen used to enslave Archangel, who was seemingly killed in issue #3 and… um, stays that way. Panel 3 shows Emplate feeding on the homeless for life energy, and panel 4 shows the Bamf Dragon apparently settling in as a pet in the Limbo Embassy.<\/p>\n

Panel 5 shows Flourish from issue #3, along with one of the mutants who was taking refuge with her. And panel 6 is Albert and Elsie-Dee, presumably restored to normal by Zero, off doing their own thing together.<\/p>\n

PAGE 21.\u00a0<\/strong>Epilogue, page 3.<\/em><\/p>\n

Madelyne declares that the lesson she’s learned is that trying to be the leader of the X-Men was an error – that’s Jean’s role rather than hers. That could be viewed as consistent with her agenda of taking control of her own destiny, rather than trying to take over somebody else’s role. But note that she goes on to repeat the Goblin Queen’s “born to suffer” routine, and uses the Goblin Queen name – none of which is very encouraging.<\/p>\n

PAGE 22.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers. The Krakoan reads FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. DARK X-MEN vol 2 #5 “The Mercy Seat” Writer: Steve Foxe Artist: Jonas Scharf Colour artist: Frank Martin Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1: The two Madelyne Pryors fight. PAGES […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9676","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=9676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9678,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9676\/revisions\/9678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}