X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #1
“Fire-Baptised Species”
Writer: Jed Mackay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inker: JP Mayer
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
We’ve been in the post-Krakoa era for a month now, but in the form of a sort of season break. Unless you count the Free Comic Book Day one-shot, which was more of a teaser, this is effectively where the “From the Ashes” era begins.
THE X-MEN
Or one group of them, anyway – there’ll be another group over in Uncanny X-Men. But in this book, we’re interested in Cyclops’ group. The field team is Cyclops, Juggernaut, Kid Omega, Magik, Psylocke and Temper, with the Beast, Magneto, Xorn and Glob Herman back at base. Because of the time jump from the previous issue, we don’t yet know how this particular line-up came together.
The group are openly operating as the X-Men, from a former Sentinel factory in Merle, Alaska, on which they’ve daubed an enormous X logo – it looks like we’re calling this place the Factory. They moved in in the epilogue to X-Men vol 6 #35. The Factory was smashed up by the Avengers in Avengers #12, a tie-in to Fall of the House of X. The X-Men have invited local police chief Paula Robbins to see the facility, in what seems to be a broadly genuine attempt to set up relations with the local community – although as we’ll see, they also seem to have chosen the location to send a message.
The field team’s aircraft is referred to as the Marauder – it’s the vehicle formerly used by Christian Frost in Marauders, which Kate Pryde renamed the New Marauder in Marauders Annual #1. We last saw it in Marauders vol 2 #12.
Cyclops is, on the face of it, back to being the hyper-efficient team leader version of the character. Jean Grey is not here, because she’s off in space in her own book; more interestingly, she doesn’t even get mentioned. Nor is our attention drawn to the fact that Cyclops is Alaskan, and the only character in the book with a specific connection to this location. Cyclops doesn’t talk much about his inner life without Jean around to prompt it.
He claims to want to normalise relations with Merle, yet at the same time he’s keen to leave the defunct Sentinel looming over the town to remind the humans of where they stand. He’s trying to ride two horses here, or at least has been left with a very cynical view of what he needs to do in order to deal with the humans.
Kid Omega died in Wolverine #50 (the last part of “Sabretooth War”), but evidently he was part of the mass resurrection in Rise of the Powers of X. Broadly in keeping with his depiction in X-Force, he’s whining a lot but generally trying to be a team player. This does not extend to actually listening to briefings, although he claims (probably facetiously) to have a poor memory due to past drug use. He seems to be warning Idie against “playing the good little soldier”, and reminds her how often the X-Men have failed her – which begs the question of what he’s doing here. When challenged, he doesn’t have an explanation for allowing her to be thrown in the Pit in Sabretooth (which implies that he knew). He’s deliberately annoying Magneto, a character he used to idolise as a schoolboy.
Kid Omega was of course a teammate of the X-Force war criminal Beast, but we don’t see him interacting with the clone version here, or find out what he thinks of working with the guy.
Psylocke. In last week’s X-Men: Blood Hunt – Psylocke #1, she was firmly coupled up with Greycrow. There’s no sign of him here, and no explanation of his absence. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s being ignored – after all, Jean Grey isn’t mentioned either.
The Juggernaut has a shiny new costume with a big X design on the helmet. He’s very happy to be here, and to be part of an X-Men team that accepts him. He gets to punch things and be helpful! He’s diligently paying attention to briefings. Magik describes him as a “teacher’s pet”, and she might have a point.
Magik, similarly, seems to be here to take out her anger in combat, and we don’t get much more on her in this issue.
Temper is Idie Okonkwo, formerly Oya. Since she spent most of her time on Krakoa in the Pit, and then abandoned the island along with the other Exiles, she has no particularly fond memories of the place. She claims to be here in order to keep the X-Men straight (and Cyclops says that’s why he invited her).
The Beast describes himself as the “base director”. This is the clone of the Beast from the final arc of Benjamin Percy’s X-Force, who was given the memories of New Defenders-era Beast. As such, he remains bouncy, cheerful and unfailingly constructive in his dealing with the local authorities. He talks about being an Avenger as if it were still a major part of his back story. He doesn’t directly explain his rather complicated back story in this issue – new editor Tom Brevoort has made fairly clear in his weekly newsletters that he prefers not to clutter jumping on points with long explanations that aren’t directly relevant to the plot – but our attention is drawn to the fact that this Beast has no memories of Krakoa, and has no emotional attachment to it. Note that almost everyone on the team is new to this Beast – he’s only met three of his teammates before, and two of them were villains when he last saw them. He seems willing to accept that they’ve both reformed, though he finds Magneto’s aggressive approach to diplomacy exasperating.
Glob Herman is happily devoting his time to hydroponic agriculture, and greets the police chief cheerfully.
Xorn, for those keeping track of such things, is Kuan-Yin Xorn, the one from the original Grant Morrison stories. (As much as anyone is – Morrison’s intention was that Xorn was just a false identity used by Magneto.) During the Krakoan era, Kuan-Yin Xorn generally hung around with his brother Shen Xorn as they shadowed Legion together, but there’s no sign of Shen here.
Xorn is billed as a healer (his ostensible role in Grant Morrison’s stories), and he greets Paula quite politely.
Magneto has a floating hoverchair, which obviously echoes Professor X. No reason is given for it, but doubtless we’ll find out. In line with the recent Magneto miniseries, he claims that his role as villain provided a challenge that forged the X-Men into the heroes they became. He evidently sees a bit of good old fashioned threatening as an essential piece of balance when dealing with humans. He says that “These are my children of the atom”, though it’s not clear whether he means mutants in general or the inhabitants of this base in particular.
All the non-human-looking X-Men are staying at home and the field team is, well, prettier. The Beast assures us that this is just a coincidence and reflects their respective strengths, but it is possible that Cyclops really has gone for a photogenic, superhero-friendly team here. (He’s done something similar before, in the Joss Whedon run.)
GUEST STAR
Wolverine is not a member of this team, but he’s agreed to go on a mission to investigate the new Fourth School faction. He isn’t interested in joining Cyclops’ faction and pursuing grand agendas of mutant politics – he just wants to focus on more personal things. 3K were hoping to buy Wolverine from Fourth School, but we don’t find out whether that’s because he has any special significance to them, or simply because he’s a high profile mutant.
MERLE, ALASKA
Paula Robbins, the police chief, is the only local we actually see in this issue. She’s somewhat uncomfortable around mutants with unusual appearances, but mostly because she isn’t used to them. Generally, she seems to be making a good faith effort to form a working relationship with the newcomers.
The Factory. Merle’s economy was built around the Sentinel factory. People lost their jobs when Orchis automated the place, and now that the X-Men have moved in, it’s clear that the jobs aren’t coming back. Some people aren’t very happy about that. A giant disabled AI-Sentinel still looms over the city (presumably left over from Fall of the House of X, though it’s not something we specifically saw). There’s a definite suggestion that the X-Men are here to send a message, rather than for any practical reason. Paula outright flags that this is a ludicrously inconvenient location for a superhero team, and gets a rather hazy answer about refugees being driven to such places.
We’re not told what right the X-Men have to occupy the Factory, which presumably belonged to somebody. Paula doesn’t seem to question them being there, though. If the Factory was being used to build Sentinels by Feilong, then possibly Stark International had some interest in it, and Iron Man has handed it over.
THE VILLAINS
The Fourth School make their first appearance. They’re a splinter faction who spun out of Orchis after the AI contingent turned on the Orchis humans in Fall of the House of X. This group have adopted a version of the U-Men’s philosophy from the Grant Morrison run. The U-Men were a cult who wanted to harvest mutant body parts in order to give themselves super powers and thereby create a third species. The Fourth School think that AI was the third species, and that a human/mutant/AI hybrid will be the fourth. But otherwise, they’re basically the U-Men.
They wear the red Orchis uniforms, but with makeshift X logos scrawled onto the helmets. They seem to be made up of footsoldiers too dim to properly understand the powers they’re dealing with, and aside from the six mutant members (see below), they’re not much of a threat. The real villains of this arc are…
3K. In the main story, 3K are represented by two shadow figures, one of whom calls the other “mother”. They refer to 3K’s mission as “the Great Work”, and they take credit for having somehow given actual (and not merely stolen) mutant powers to six of the Fourth School’s members, in exchange for Wolverine (who got broken out before the Fourth School could honour their end of the deal). After they put up a mildly passable showing against the X-Men, 3K teleport them away for future use – after all, they did okay even with no warning and no training.
The QR code on page 33 links to a one-page epilogue, in which four shadowy figures sit around a table with a giant X logo. They’re identified as the Zealot, the Doctor, the Means and the Chairman (who seems to be wearing a Cerebro-style helmet). The Doctor is the “mother” from the main story, with the “child” standing behind her. Basically, they have grand plans to remake the world and are arguing about whether they need to act against the X-Men just yet.
OTHER SPECIFICS
Page 3: “X months later.” Echoing the post-Hellfire Gala “X weeks later” time jump. X-Men Red apparently intended that time jump to be ten weeks, but others seemed to have something intentionally vaguer in mind.
Page 5: Santo Marco. This is the South American micronation that Magneto briefly conquered in X-Men vol 1 #4.
Page 5: “Please, Quentin. You’ve died more times than any other mutant. You should be used to this.” Kid Omega’s many, many deaths during the Krakoan era were a plot point in Benjamin Percy’s X-Force, particularly issue #17.
Page 12: “Look I used to do a lot of Kick, okay?” Kick was the drug peddled by John Sublime back in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, and Quentin Quire was indeed a user back in the day.
Page 13: “When I kicked the ____ out of U-Men at the Xavier School…” This seems to be conflating two stories: New X-Men #120, when the U-Men attacked the Xavier School and were repelled, and New X-Men #136, when Kid Omega and his Omega Gang attacked a bunch of U-Men in their base. Kid Omega would have been present in issue #120, albeit off panel, but he certainly doesn’t take a leading role.
Page 15: “You’ll have to come by the diner in town sometime, then. They do a cherry pie that’ll stop you in your tracks.” This sounds a lot like a Twin Peaks reference. We haven’t yet seen how normal or otherwise Merle might be (though Robbins seems pretty normal).
Page 16: “the burning of Mykines.” The attack on the Hellfire Gala in the last X-Men: Hellfire Gala one-shot.
Page 18: “I didn’t see my ex-boyfriend come to my rescue when they threw me into the Pit on Krakoa.” Idie and Quentin were a couple back in Wolverine and the X-Men. Idie was banished to the Pit in the Krakoa-era Sabretooth miniseries.
Page 19: “The X-gene activates at puberty.” This was the traditional normal rule through to the 1990s or so, but it hasn’t really been the main approach this century. To be fair, Quentin’s main point in this scene is that it’s wildly implausible that six genuine new mutants could have suddenly activated their powers in adulthood, which would always have been true.
It seems highly likely that the Chairman is the Krakoan (soon to be seen in Ms. Marvel) and the Doctor is Astra (with Joseph behind her).
The Means looks like Azazel to me, and the Zealot is a bit too generic-looking to identify (but I’ve heard Cassandra Nova suggested)
Choosing such a remote location may be hazily explained, but it also makes a certain amount of sense. With Magik in the team, distances are not a key concern.
Scott is confortable with somewhat removed headquarters (including the original X-Mansion and his time in X-Factor’s Ship) and it is reasonable to expect that he learned of the problems Kate had for choosing the Central Park as a location back in “X-Men: Gold”. He may be aiming for a specific balance of exposure and privacy here, using Merle as a stepping stone in order to build better relations with larger society.
I wasn’t around during the Utopia era, but it feels like a comparable situation, only in a smaller scale. That too makes sense; between Magneto, Juggernaut and Beast, there is certainly opportunity for benefit from building trust with humans. At the same time, the nature of their environment will encourage some meeting-in-the-middle from the nearby humans with the disposition to make the attempt, as we see in this issue. Not a bad plan.
Didn’t like this.
Stegman draws most people looking like children, Cyclops looks like he is twelve! When we first see the crucified Logan I thought it was another Beast (there are loads of those after all and I can’t remember if they are supposed to be dead or not), they look so similar.
The writing isn’t much better, clumsy exposition by having Quentin not knowing what is going on. Magik and Juggernaut bickering like little children about who gets to go first or something.
It’s also a good location if they intend to operate globally and travel by air. They aren’t *close* to much, but they’re about equally medium-long to the entire northern hemisphere.
Wasn’t it sorted out in the comments here that even though Beast 2 had the mind of the character in the 1980s, he was in a cloned body of the modern character? So they looked the same? Wasn’t that the whole point of the end of that arc where we couldn’t be TOTALLY sure it was the modern character that perished? I suppose the gap could lead to an explanation of why this Beast looks like the 1980s version.
In a surprise twist, Xorn takes off his helmet.
It was the Krakoa Beast in disguise all along!
I’m not liking that they didn’t explicitly say how Quentin was brought back.
@Bengt- I think the idea was that Quentin was just being annoying by pretending not to know what was going on- Scott says that it seems to amuse Quentin to make people repeat what he already knows.
The rift between Quentin and Idie seems forced. In the Sabretooth series, it was clear that Idie was sentenced in a secret tribunal and only Xavier, Magneto and Doug knew. Bling and Skin were clearly surprised when they heard what happened and Mole said he couldn’t tell “anyone that mattered” without Xavier realizing that he knew. And in Sabretooth War, there was no sign of a rift between them. But now we have Idie getting mad at Quentin but not Magneto, who actually put her in the pit.
Did they ever find out that Kick was a colony of sentient bacteria that wanted to destroy mutants?
@DigiCom- agreed that the Doctor is Astra and her child is Joseph. I also think the Zealot is Cassandra Nova. The Chairman is almost certainly not the Krakoan- the Krakoan is apparently Hellion and I can’t see Astra and Cassandra Nova treating Hellion as an equal.
I don’t believe the X-Men know this fact. They only discovered it in the alternate future of “Here Comes Tomorrow”, as far as I know.
I’m not happy about the overall direction, but this was a perfectly serviceable first issue. It surprised how much of Krakoan status quos were mentioned, I thought From the Ashes would be cutting itself off from the immediate past.
As it is it’s more of a continuation of what came before than House of X was.
I’m not big on Stegman, but I did like the panel where Idie, Quentin and Scott are in silhouette with only their primary colors showing.
And generally, I’m warming up to Scott’s new costume.
Shame about those Bachalo booty shorts being back on Magik. Also, does her Soulsword grow throughout the issue?
I’m not buying the Means is Azazel. Astra and Cassandra Nova use science, not magic. Besides, I think Marvel wants to forget Azazel.
My guess is that the Means is Sinister. 3K’s plans involve making the X-Gene manifest in adults. Sinister is the world’s foremost authority on the X-Gene, so he would be the “Means” to implement their plans. Plus, versions of him have been human, mutant and AI, so he would appeal to Fourth School.
A combination of Morrison’s run and the Utopia era would have been my dream run pre HoX-PoX, but after the mess of Fall, even though every element of this book feels bespoke to me in particular, I just can’t get my enthusiasm up. I feel bad — a real challenge for the Brevoort era is going to be combating the burnout from the year of Fall and the messiness of Krakoa’s end.
“does her Soulsword grow throughout the issue?”
It’s just happy to see her.
@Michael:
The helmet looks right:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GQYyv1fWwAATsba?format=jpg&name=900×900
(I was wrong; he actually shows up in NYX)
@DIgiCom- but it could also be a Cerebro helmet, so it could be any telepath under there.
@Michael
Except that Orlando already resurrected Joseph (it was current x-gene Sinister who did it secretly during the Krakoa Era and forgot all about it, leaving Joseph unconscious in one of his abandoned labs until he awoke and went to NYC where he ran into Mag’s kids —- fuck the worst retcon ever
—— Wanda & Pietro and became a PA of Wanda) and then later magically de-aged him into a literal teenager around Molly Haye’s age , as the finale of his 2024 redemption arc , in the first volume of his current Scarlet Witch series
Very mixed feelings about this one.
I think the idea of Cyclops running a team that fights for mutants, but does it in a way that isn’t as “us vs them” strident as the Bendis era, is… fine. I like most of the cast (though I could do without Quinten and Temper). It’s nice seeing that Juggernaught and Magneto haven’t been reverted to villains.
But the art was so rough. What happened to Magik’s new costume that represents some character growth? Why did Cyclops de-age a decade? Why is Beast wearing eyeliner? FWIW, I didn’t care for Delgado or Bacchelo or Ramos either.
This was the team about which I was most interested in the new era, and I still found the book… meh. I guess you need some status quo in order for other eras to stand out, so I’ll stick with it, but I don’t think this was a strong start.
Really dislike the art and this was a lukewarm start to the new era….
I didn’t mind Magik’s black outfit, it was sexy in a real-world kind of way that suited the character. Nothing Emma-Frost-male-gaze about it. Her newer costume had way too much yellow/gold, which wouldn’t be a problem if she didn’t also have yellow hair.
I hope there’s some kind of dynamic between Quire and Herman. They were fellow “rioters” after all.
@JDSM24- Not quite. It turned out the Sinister story was a lie and he was really resurrected by Hexfinder. And he seemingly died at the end of that story.
This could be another Joseph- another clone of Magneto.
Personally I don’t think there’s anything real world about booty shorts in Alaska. Magik could have simply gotten an updated version of her popular black costume. Even Psylocke had a change and it was fairly drastic.
Beast’s look is an homage to George Perez.
This book is definitely taking a page out of the X-Men ’97 playbook by mashing up some greatest hits.
I think the difference is that X-Men ’97 plays as if this is the first time these events are happening to the characters. X-Men vol. 7 seems more like a remix of a remix. We’ve heard it before and so have the characters. Aren’t we all a little tired of it, like Wolverine?
That’s why I think this “From The Ashes” era is going to be a ‘cleansing of the palate’ period as stopgap between the Krakoan era and whatever is next as the comics version of the X-Men synchronizes MCU version of the X-Men in the future.
I thought this was a decent first issue, but I do not like Stegman’s loose art. I think it suits a Venom story, in which everything’s a bit goopy, but isn’t the best look for the X-Men.
Brevoort made statements about his intent of having this phase of the X-Men be accessible for the uninitiated. So no time-travellers beyond Rachel, and presumably not too many esoteric references to previous continuity.
For instance, I doubt there will be many long and detailed explanations of why the current X-23 is not the original, and odds are that we will not see Proteus or Legion for a while still.
This is very much a contrast with what we saw at the start of the Krakoa era. I don’t mean this as a criticism for either approach; quite on the contrary, I acknowledge that both have advantages and drawbacks and the line probably benefits from some alternance between the two.
Proteus is gone with Krakoa. It’ll be a very long time before we see Proteus again.
House/Powers was odd in that way, in that it was both a grand narrative of the entire mythos of the history of mutants, while at the same time being like the start of a self-contained novel. Readers familiar with what came before in the X-titles and expecting tight continuity may have felt lost in that characters with long histories almost seemed to be built up anew from the ground level.
I feel like I’ve missed something, because no one else is asking who the sad black-eyed dude is on the cover at Scott’s feet…
@sagatwarrior: Totally agree “From the Ashes” is just a palate cleanser.
@Karl_H: He’s a mutant who the team is going to rescue at some point. Super weird he was on the cover but not in the issue.
When the solicitation for this issue first came out, I assumed that was Caliban.
Eh, Magik’s from Siberia. Alaska would be like a tropical holiday for her. Anyway, Beast is getting around in bike shorts. Fur or not, none of them are exactly dressed for the Arctic.
Illyana is from southern Siberia, so the temperatures would most likely be very similar to Alaska. It depends on the season also. If it is July in the comic (I’m not reading it, so maybe there was snow on the ground for all I know), there would be days where people dress in shorts even in Alaska.
I really don’t care about the costumes, myself. I just wanted to clarify about Illyana’s birthplace.
I read the preview thing that shows the bit when the sheriff visits, their Sentinel factory base is covered in icicles and there’s snow. So I guess the temperature is dipping and rising around zero celsius. But then, Idie Okonkwo lives there, so the presence of ice means nothing.
Please note that I’m mostly posting this stuff to distract myself from chronic pain, I’m not actually very invested either.
Is this the first time Idie has done the ice slide thing? Is she just Iceman plus heat powers now?
[…] #1. (Annotations here.) The thing about “From the Ashes” is that it doesn’t have a unifying theme, unless […]
The QR Code was an odd thing, particularly given that it occupies a whole page as it is.
It is not even “VR Augmented” as happened some years ago.
I have to guess that it is some form of experiment to gauge the willingness of people to pursue digital extras when given the opportunity… or perhaps just to have a grasp on the true number of readers.
I had a really hard time with the QR code, because the page wouldn’t zoom on my phone (and I couldn’t select the image to open in a new tab and zoom it there). I ended up just copying the URL to my desktop so I could actually read it.
In the future, I’d be okay if the post-credits scene was a little less text-dense.
It is easy to know what to try when I am so removed from the situation, but I suppose I would try either using a capture screen app and then trim the image or else attempting to use a mirror, the selfie camera, and the camera app.
Many recent camera apps detect QR Codes. I suppose there is a decent chance that some of them will work with mirrored QR Codes as well.
There was a simpler way to access the image- it was posted on Reddit Tuesday night. 🙂
I guess the issue at least holds the merit of initiating one of the most astonishingly stupid defenses of adult women wearing shorts out and about – and while in fucking combat… – in Alaska.
I think the issue suffers a bit from the art, which feels tonally awkward (somehow both too grimdark and too cartoonishly clean?).
But I appreciated the quieter bits more, and I think the basic ideas are there. Just very unexciting – but not bad, per se.
@Michael, but OG Joseph was expressly shown on panel on page to still be alive and obviously physically younger , on the last page of the last issue of the first volume of Orlando’s run on Scarlet Witch 2023-24 solo series
@JDSM24- I assumed that his soul was in heaven or something.
“There was a simpler way to access the image- it was posted on Reddit Tuesday night.”
And this would be found…how?