{"id":9823,"date":"2024-02-07T22:05:42","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T22:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9823"},"modified":"2024-02-07T22:05:42","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T22:05:42","slug":"x-men-31-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9823","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #31 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN vol 6 #31<\/strong>
\n“The Passenger”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gerry Duggan<\/strong>
\nArtist: Phil Noto<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> The X-Men fight Nimrod.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2. <\/strong>Synch and Talon talk.<\/em><\/p>\n

Talon was killed last issue while fighting the High Evolutionary, and Synch is acting as a host for her mind. As the issue goes on to spell out, Synch can only do this by using her powers to copy the absent Jean Grey – and, apparently, he has to keep doing it. As we’ve established in earlier issues, Synch ages when he uses his powers to copy absent mutants. We’re told later on that he was getting round this problem by copying Talon’s healing factor, but now that she’s dead, he can’t do that any more – so the effort of keeping her alive in his mind is going to kill him unless she can be decanted to somewhere else rather quickly. All of this was actually set up quite well in earlier issues of the series, making it all the stranger that Talon’s death was covered in such a rushed way.<\/p>\n

“We’re about to launch an invasion of Earth…”<\/strong> In Fall of the House of X<\/em>.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3. <\/strong>Nightcrawler and Shadowkat tend to Synch.<\/em><\/p>\n

When we left him last issue, Synch was in reasonably good shape, aside from having Talon in his head. Presumably it’s the stress of continually mimicking Jean’s powers that are the main issue here. Shadowkat seems to suggest that he copied Talon’s powers in his sleep, and got infected when he popped her claws, though if that’s the idea the art doesn’t really sell it – not only is there no blood, but his gloves are completely undamaged.<\/p>\n

PAGES 4-5. <\/strong>Spider-Man and Ms Marvel supervise the High Evolutionary’s bio-bomb.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the device that Synch retrieved from the Evolutionary last issue, to distribute the cure that will prevent Orchis from using the “back door” they inserted into Krakoan medicines and controlling innocent patients. The fact that flying this one device around is capable of rewriting the bodies of tens of millions feels awfully simplistic, but we’ve got to tie off this loose end somehow.<\/p>\n

You’d also have thought there were more secure places from which they could control this thing, rather than the rooftop of the Oscorp building – aren’t they friends with the Avengers? – but then there wouldn’t be a story, I guess.<\/p>\n

Spider-Man and Norman Osborn developed this cure off panel, as revealed last issue. Ms Marvel was hanging around as a supporting character in Amazing Spider-Man<\/em> prior to being reassigned to the X-books – she was an intern as Oscorp – hence her being the one to stay with Spider-Man here.<\/p>\n

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

PAGE 7. <\/strong>Synch and Talon continue to talk.<\/em><\/p>\n

Obviously, the park is now on fire, and the panel borders are deteriorating.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.<\/strong> Shadowkat tries to wake Synch.<\/em><\/p>\n

The basic angle here is that Synch has to heroically accept Talon’s death in order to lend his weight to the fight against Nimrod.<\/p>\n

“We need a … cradle.”<\/strong> The cradles were the stores of back-up memories used by Cerebro. Synch’s suggesting that he could download Talon into one of those.<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-13. <\/strong>The X-Men fight Nimrod.<\/em><\/p>\n

“While you slept in your paradise, we scripted your end, mutant.”<\/strong> Nimrod is alluding to Professor X’s speech in House of X<\/em> #1: “Humans of the planet Earth. While you slept, the world changed.”<\/p>\n

“Your ability to disrupt technology worked on the lesser Nimrod, Kitty.”<\/strong> In Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #209, with the Nimrod from “Days of Futures Past”. We never did really establish what the significance was of Powers of X<\/em> referring to some Nimrods from other timelines as “Nimrod the lesser” and other as “Nimrod the greater”.<\/p>\n

PAGES 14-17. <\/strong>Wilson Fisk and Typhoid Mary are reunited.<\/em><\/p>\n

Over in Realm of X<\/em>, Typhoid was among the mutants temporarily exiled to Vanaheim, where she was at the very least flirting vigorously with a local by the name of Vonos. She attributes that here to one of her other personalities. Fisk’s main motivation for helping the X-Men in Fall of X<\/em> has been his desire to get Typhoid back. An obvious end point of this plot thread would have been for him to turn on the mutants after finding out about Typhoid and Vonos, but apparently we’re not going there<\/p>\n

PAGES 18-19. <\/strong>Talon persuades Synch to let her go.<\/em><\/p>\n

PAGES 20-21. <\/strong>Synch joins the fight against Nimrod.<\/em><\/p>\n

Apparently this keeps him occupied long enough for the Evolutionary’s machine to finish its job, though there’s nothing visual to convey that, so Spider-Man has to just say it. (How does he know? The machine’s on the rooftop and he’s on the street. If he already knew before<\/em> reaching the street then Synch showed up too late to make a difference to the machine doing its job, so…)<\/p>\n

“For a moment Synch became a god…”<\/strong> He’s copying Storm’s powers. He seems<\/em> to be copying Magik when he teleports everyone else away, though that’s not normally how her stepping discs are depicted.<\/p>\n

PAGE 22. <\/strong>The X-Men regroup.<\/em><\/p>\n

Polaris<\/strong> was seen recruiting the Brood to help, over in Fall of the House of X<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

PAGE 23. <\/strong>Trailers. The Krakoan reads MAGIK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN vol 6 #31 “The Passenger” Writer: Gerry Duggan Artist: Phil Noto Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1. The X-Men fight Nimrod. PAGE 2. Synch and Talon talk. Talon was […]<\/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-9823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9823","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=9823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9825,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9823\/revisions\/9825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}