{"id":9800,"date":"2024-02-01T21:34:54","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T21:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9800"},"modified":"2024-02-01T21:34:54","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T21:34:54","slug":"dead-x-men-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9800","title":{"rendered":"Dead X-Men #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>DEAD X-MEN #1<\/strong>
\n“Earth Intruders”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Steve Foxe<\/strong>
\nArtists: Jonas Scharf, Bernard Chang & Vincenzo Carrat\u00f9<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Frank Martin<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Prodigy, Dazzler, Cannonball and Jubilee emerge from their graves. Not what actually happens in the story, but the whole billing of this series as Dead X-Men<\/em> turns out to be a bit of a red herring so far as the actual plot is concerned. Poor old Frenzy doesn’t make the cover.<\/p>\n

Dead X-Men<\/em> is a four-issue miniseries, but it seems to be actually relevant to the line-wide storylines, which is why it’s getting annotations here.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4. <\/strong>The X-Men make an abortive visit to a demonic timeline.<\/em><\/p>\n

Okay, so.<\/p>\n

The Treehouse<\/strong> is the X-Men’s former New York base. It’s not looking very healthy, but then nor is the rest of the city in this timeline.<\/p>\n

The X-Men<\/strong> for the purposes of this series are Prodigy, Frenzy, Jubilee, Dazzler and Cannonball – in other words, the five who were voted onto the team in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023<\/em> and lasted a grand total of one panel before being killed by Nimrod. The other members of the Gala line-up are Synch, Talon and Juggernaut, all of whom survived and are currently appearing over in X-Men<\/em>. But this is the majority of the rightful X-Men team.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We’re not directly told how they returned, but the data page on page 24 says directly that they were resurrected. We establish on page 6 that they’re based on Atlantic Krakoa, which is still inside the White Hot Room, as seen in Immortal X-Men<\/em>. In Immortal X-Men<\/em> #16, the Five were reunited in the White Hot Room and, apparently with Mother Righteous’s help, did successfully perform a resurrection. The clear implication is that the X-Men – those that were actually dead – were brought back by the Five in the same way, though this leaves open the question of how the Five substituted for Mr Sinister’s DNA library. Since they’re in contact with Professor X, however, maybe he just provided the required samples.<\/p>\n

Temporal location: Moira Engine III.9.<\/strong> The Moira Engine was the set of Moira MacTaggert clones created by Mr Sinister in Immortal X-Men<\/em>, in an attempt to abuse her powers. When Moira dies, she resets the timeline and is reborn with memories of everything that happened to her in the previous world. Sinister used the Moira clones to explore potential timelines (or rather, actual timelines) and then hit the reset button when they went wrong.<\/p>\n

As we establish later on, the X-Men are trying to find a still-human Moira MacTaggert in one of these abortive timelines, so that Prodigy can get close to her and use his powers to absorb all of her knowledge. Using this information, Professor X hopes to identify reliably the point in time when Moira’s powers emerged. The X-Men have been that Professor X “has a plan to talk to Moira in her tenth life before her powers manifested”, and we’ll come back to that.<\/p>\n

At all events: the X-Men are exploring the abortive Sinister timelines in the hope of locating a human Moira and reading her mind. That’s the premise.<\/p>\n

Previous stories have suggested that Moira’s powers simply delete the previous timeline. This is the first story to show one of those timelines as surviving, let alone accessible. However, it might be relevant that the X-Men are travelling there from the White Hot Room, which is outside the conventional timeline altogether.<\/p>\n

Some timelines presumably got aborted just because they went wrong for Sinister’s plans, but this one is a global apocalypse in which Magik has turned into a demon and conquered the world.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-9. <\/strong>The X-Men talk to Rachel Summers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rachel is using her time-related powers to help the X-Men travel to these various timelines.<\/p>\n

No-Place X <\/strong>is the hidden base, also outside time and space, where Professor X and his allies were hiding out in Rise of the Powers of X<\/em> #1. That issue identified his allies as Cypher, Rasputin IV and two redacted others – evidently Rachel is one of those others.<\/p>\n

“The Hellfire Gala already proved I’m not as immortal as I used to think I was.”<\/strong> Dazzler is referencing a long-dropped plot from New Excalibur<\/em> about her supposed immortality, which never got resolved.<\/p>\n

“Xavier has a plan to talk to Moira in her tenth life before her powers manifested.”<\/strong> That’s not what he told Rasputin IV in Rise of the Powers of X <\/em>#1. He told her that his plan was to kill Moira before her powers manifested. We see on page 24 that he gives the same explanation of his plans to Rachel.<\/p>\n

It’s possible, of course, that he really does plan to speak to Moira, and that he’s lying to Rasputin to keep her<\/em> on side. It also seems that this story takes place before Rise of the Powers of X<\/em> #1 (see below re page 24), so something may happen to change his mind.<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-12.<\/strong> The X-Men visit the Moira Engine II.4 timeline and meet the local X-Men.<\/em><\/p>\n

The local X-Men are:<\/p>\n