{"id":9837,"date":"2024-02-14T22:16:18","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T22:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9837"},"modified":"2024-02-15T10:50:14","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T10:50:14","slug":"fall-of-the-house-of-x-2-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9837","title":{"rendered":"Fall of the House of X #2 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #2
\n“Long Games End”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gerry Duggan<\/strong>
\nArtist: Lucas Werneck<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Bryan Valenza<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Travis Lanham<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Polaris in front of Knowhere.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-6.<\/strong> Polaris and the Brood storm the Bloom.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Feilong has abandoned ship just to go kill one man – Tony Stark, who built some fancy new suit for himself right under his nose…” <\/strong>This is footnoted to Invincible Iron Man<\/em> #15, which won’t be out for another two weeks. As of issue #14, Feilong was increasingly preoccupied with defeating Iron Man, and the AI contingent of Orchis were losing patience with him.<\/p>\n

“Make it so, M.O.D.O.K.!”<\/strong> Dr Stasis is referencing Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/em>, and the bridge layout is indeed rather similar.<\/p>\n

Polaris and Knowhere.<\/strong> Issue #1 ended with Polaris travelling to Knowhere and enlisting Broo’s contingent of the Brood – who have been living there since X-Men<\/em> #21 – to help. Apparently she wanted the whole head. Knowhere is the severed head of a dead Celestial, as M.O.D.O.K. alludes to.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“The fleet of ships from Arakko hid Stark’s Sentinel Buster armour…”<\/strong> Iron Man was working on the fleet of ships from Arakko in Iron Man<\/em> #14. The bit about them hiding his “Sentinel Buster” armour is apparently a spoiler for Iron Man<\/em> #15.<\/p>\n

“To me, my Brood.”<\/strong> Polaris is referencing Professor X’s “To me, my X-Men” catchphrase. Apparently, she’s deliberately setting out to have the Brood kill everyone on board.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7. <\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-12.<\/strong> Colossus, Nightcrawler and Wolverine<\/em> board the<\/em> Bloom.<\/p>\n

Largely straightforward – they’ve infiltrated an Orchis ship that was returning from Earth, with Wolverine as a supposed prisoner. They weren’t expecting the Brood to be here; when Shadowkat went to see Polaris last issue, Polaris had already gone off by herself to recruit the Brood. It’s not entirely clear what the X-Men were planning to do when they got aboard the Bloom, if it’s simply coincidence that the Brood have shown up. Polaris does mention that she was part of the planning sessions, though, so maybe she’s just attacking the station with even more force than the X-Men originally expected. You’d have thought that they’d have let her know about Firestar being a double agent, though, if this was always her role.<\/p>\n

(EDIT: Nonetheless, X-Men <\/em>#33 did end with Synch telling Shadowkat to “get word to Polaris that the hostages are free. She’s got a green light.” The trouble is that Nimrod is free in that issue, while we see later in this issue that Nimrod is still in the amber where he was imprisoned in Fall of the House of X<\/em> #1. However, X-Men<\/em> #33 takes place after the failed attempt to rescue Cyclops in Fall of the House of X <\/em>#1, since Nimrod mentions it as a past event. For this to work, X-Men<\/em> #33 apparently has to take place between pages 22-23 of Fall of the House of X <\/em>#1.)<\/p>\n

Wolverine says he has “a bad feeling about [Firestar]” – presumably, he means he thinks something bad has already happened to her. We’ll see later that she’s not on the station, and Stasis claims to have her.<\/p>\n

“Firestar has been a double agent for us the whole time. Jean implanted memories in Stasis’ head before she died.” <\/strong>X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.<\/em><\/p>\n

PAGE 13. <\/strong>Emma Frost co-ordinates everyone.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Shadowkat is in Paris trying to back Cyclops up.”<\/strong> Cyclops is apparently still in Paris after being convicted at his show trial last issue. Shadowkat was off touring the world to round up allies at the end of issue #1 (being the only X-Man who can still use the Krakoan gates to get around), but she’s doubled back to Paris on her own.<\/p>\n

“Our nation is on the run, literally.”<\/strong> Krakoa (the persona) fled Krakoa (the island) last issue to escape Nimrod’s attack, taking the form of an uprooted humanoid tree.<\/p>\n

PAGE 14. <\/strong>The Juggernaut rescues Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I’m also broadcasting on Iron Man’s emergency frequency.”<\/strong> Presumably, Emma can’t use telepathy to communicate with Juggernaut because his helmet blocks telepathy.<\/p>\n

“I helped myself to one of Cable’s guns.”<\/strong> He did indeed mention that last issue.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-16. <\/strong>Emma and Synch fight a Sentinel, while Gambit and Rogue go their own way.<\/em><\/p>\n

PAGES 17-20. <\/strong>Rogue and Gambit wake Manifold.<\/em><\/p>\n

In last year’s Rogue & Gambit<\/em> miniseries, Destiny had a vision that Manifold would be essential to the survival of mutantkind, and sent Rogue to bring him to Krakoa for safekeeping. Most of the miniseries consists of Rogue and Gambit rescuing Manifold from the Power Broker, who has implanted Manifold and various other characters with mind-control chips. In the epilogue of issue #5, Rogue brings Manifold to Destiny at the Treehouse – still controlling him with the Power Broker’s device – and reluctantly hands him over to Destiny, since she trusts in Destiny’s visions. We see them about to put him in the stasis chamber seen here, but we don’t see any indication that they remove the Power Broker’s chip.<\/p>\n

Rogue says here that she “removed what the villain did to him” before putting him into stasis, which is not what happens in Rogue & Gambit<\/em> #5. She doesn’t even figure out how to remove her own control chip safely until a few pages later. Presumably, after she figures out how to do that, she returns, removes the device, and puts him back into stasis again.<\/p>\n

Gambit tells us that Manifold was not just in stasis, but in a “no-place” outside space and time – much like the one we’re seeing in Rise of the Powers of X<\/em>. Quite why they’re going to the X-Men Mansion to access it is not clear; Children of the Vault<\/em> showed that building under Orchis occupation for propaganda reasons, making it a terrible place to leave an important thing. (The fact that the Orchis soldiers aren’t there any more, on the other hand, does make sense. They were only there for symbolic reasons to begin with, and so it makes sense that they’ve been drawn away to deal with Iron Man’s fleet and such like.)<\/p>\n

Lactuca. <\/strong>On waking, Manifold apparently has a vision of Lactuca, the “universal shaper” from X-Men Red<\/em>. Lactuca previously appeared to Manifold in X-Men Red<\/em> #10, and also referred to him then as “Little brother.” Interestingly, with hindsight, Lactuca also said that she “will always know where you are”, suggesting that she’s been well aware of his location in stasis through this period, and concurs with Destiny’s vision that this was a necessary step to protect him.<\/p>\n

PAGES 21-23. <\/strong>The Bloom is destroyed.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Polaris allowed the escape pods to leave the doomed station… [T]hey were always handing out second chances to their enemies.”<\/strong> We were told on page 5 that Polaris boarded the Bloom with the Brood, rather than just destroying the station, because she wasn’t prepared to risk “losing the bulk of the fascist Orchis agents to the escape pods.” But she did <\/em>say on page 12 that she was willing to let “any other civilians” off having heard from the X-Men.<\/p>\n

“Last time we met, you survived a crashing space station.”<\/strong> I’m honestly not sure what that’s referring to, unless it’s something to do with the invasion that we haven’t seen yet.<\/p>\n

PAGES 23-24. <\/strong>Alia Gregor rescues Cyclops.<\/em><\/p>\n

A bizarrely abrupt sequence. Omega Sentinel is apparently about to just decapitate Cyclops in public. Is this meant to be his sentence? An extrajudicial killing?<\/p>\n

“There’s a very special woman who will simply not let you kill me.” <\/strong>Cyclops presumably means Jean Grey; he dreamed about her saving him from execution at the start of issue #1.<\/p>\n

Alia Gregor<\/strong>‘s face turn was foreshadowed when she met Cyclops last issue. She’s apparently been cut out of large parts of Orchis ever since Nimrod was brought online in X-Men<\/em> #20 (2021) – at which point the AI faction took full control of big chunks of Orchis, one assumes. Oddly, Alia refers to “my husband and I” bringing Nimrod online – her husband died in House of X<\/em>, and the whole point of X-Men<\/em> #20 was that she was trying to resurrect him in a robot body. The X-Men’s botched attempt to stop that resurrection ended up causing his personality to be lost, thereby creating Nimrod.<\/p>\n

At the end of the issue, Nimrod escapes from the amber where Krakoa imprisoned him last issue – which apparently held him for a remarkable period of time.<\/p>\n

Sentinel City<\/strong> was mentioned by Omega Sentinel last issue (“Then we celebrate on Sentinel City”), prompting a suspicious reaction from Alia Gregor.<\/p>\n

PAGE 25. <\/strong>End of issue quote from Gregor.<\/p>\n

PAGE 26. <\/strong>Data page: M.O.D.O.K. quits Orchis, presumably because he can see the writing on the wall.<\/p>\n

PAGE 27. <\/strong>Trailers. The Krakoan reads RISE OF THE POWERS OF X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #2 “Long Games End” Writer: Gerry Duggan Artist: Lucas Werneck Colour artist: Bryan Valenza Letterer: Travis Lanham Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1. Polaris in front of […]<\/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-9837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837","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=9837"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9841,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837\/revisions\/9841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}