X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: HELLFIRE GALA 2023
“The Hellfire Gala”
Writer: Gerry Duggan (with Jonathan Hickman)
Artists: Adam Kubert, Luciana Vecchio, Matteo Lolli, Russell Dauterman, Javier Pina, R.B. Silva, Joshua Cassara, Kris Anka, Pepe Larraz & Valerio Schiti
Colour artists: Rain Beredo, Ceci De La Cruz, Matthew Wilson, Erick Arciniega & Marte Gracia
Letterers: Virtual Calligraphy
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. A montage of assorted characters in their Gala costumes, with Nimrod and Dr Stasis looming ominously behind them.
PAGE 2. Flashback: Emma and Cyclops discuss whether to tell Ms Marvel that she is a mutant.
This is the “previous conversation” that Emma referenced in X-Men #23, when she broke the news to Scott of Ms Marvel’s death in Amazing Spider-Man #26. It’s not made clear here what prompted Emma to raise the question of telling Ms Marvel that Cerebro detects her as a mutant. But we’ll see in the next scene that Emma sees Kamala as a popular figure who would be good for mutant/human relations.
PAGES 3-6. Ms Marvel is resurrected on Krakoa, and learns that she’s a mutant.
Ms Marvel’s established back story has her as one of the people with latent Inhuman lineage whose powers emerged when the Terrigen Bomb spread a cloud of mutagenic Terrigen Mist around the Earth following 2013’s Infinity. This was the period when Marvel were trying to shoehorn the Inhumans into the role that mutants traditionally served as the Marvel Universe’s all-purpose origin story. A decade down the line, I can’t think of any other characters with that origin story who are still in use, and you can see why Marvel might want to prise Kamala away from it.
“You’re an Inhuman and a mutant. We didn’t even think that was possible.” Much of the Inhumans vs X-Men arc from 2016-2017 turns on the point that the Terrigen Mists were generally fatal to mutants.
“I understand you and the White Queen know each other from some business with the Infinity Stones.” The Infinity Wars miniseries from 2018, where Kamala and Emma were on the “cosmic Avengers” team that Loki recruited to stop Gamora from destroying the universe.
The Champions. Teen superhero team introduced in 2016. Technically I think they’re still active, but their book was cancelled in 2021. The original team included both Ms Marvel and the teenage version of Cyclops who, at the time, was time-travelling from the Silver Age as part of Brian Bendis’s All-New X-Men.
“We’ll call upon your family later, and we’ll rewrite their last few days.” Emma may not realise this, but Fallen Friend: The Death of Ms Marvel has a lot of characters attending prayers at Kamala’s mosque in commemoration of worshippers understood to have died or vanished in Amazing #26 – which, as far as the civilians are concerned, includes both Kamala and Ms Marvel. A whole bunch of superheroes show up for that, though not any of the X-Men. (Wolverine attends, but this is after he quit Krakoa in his own series.)
PAGE 7. Recap and credits.
PAGES 8-9. The Stepford Cuckoos welcome guests to the Hellfire Gala.
The Mykines Lighthouse Keeper. As in the last two years, we’re on the island of Mykines. The unnamed lighthouse keeper has appeared before, and he can be seen flirting with Jumbo Carnation in Duggan’s Marauders vol 1 #17 (on page 12).
I’m not going to attempt to identify every background character in these group shots, because we’d be here all year.
Forge’s proposals to solve housing shortages and food insecurity were previously mentioned in X-Men #22 as his suggestion for regaining the hearts and minds of the humans.
PAGE 10. Cyclops responds to the alarm at the Treehouse.
Cyclops. This leads in to the X-Men story in Free Comic Book Day 2023: Avengers / X-Men, where a mystery Orchis agent breaks into the Treehouse, poisons it, and steals the Captain Krakoa battlesuit. Cyclops is defeated and thrown from the building to his apparent death.
Juggernaut has been on the X-Men before, during the Chuck Austen run. He’s most recently been in the cast of Legion of X. The little bow tie on his armoured costume is adorable.
PAGE 11. Mystique and Destiny argue.
Kate Pryde‘s inability to use the gates was a major plot point in the first Marauders series and has never been explained. We’re being reminded of it now because it plays into the post-credits sequence.
Mystique and Destiny were also arguing in FCBD 2023: Avengers / X-Men. In that story, they’re in the Gala when Destiny stops and announces that “Something’s happening”. She says that “A soldier has returned to the field of battle and matters are more complicated.” She then asks where Rogue is, and is told that “She just flew off at mach three.” Destiny then insists that they have to leave at once, and drags Mystique away, despite Mystique’s protest that they should wait for Rogue to get back. Destiny replies that Rogue will find them when the time is right.
Since Rogue doesn’t “fly off at mach 3” until page 17, this argument is apparently earlier in the evening. Obviously, Destiny knows what’s going to happen (or picks up on it in the course of the evening) and has absolutely no intention of being around for it.
The Rogue & Gambit miniseries ended with Destiny obtaining a mind-controlled Manifold and putting him away for later. Destiny also discusses this plot thread with Rogue in X-Men #24, where she asks Rogue to trust her and insists that “Mutantdom dies with Manifold” (meaning, presumably, that if Manifold dies, then mutantdom dies too – therefore, Manifold must be kept safe at all costs). None of this is directly referenced in this issue, probably because it would make the backdoor for the cliffhanger a bit too obvious.
Romeo is Iceman’s Inhuman love interest, most recently seen in the Marvel’s Voices Infinity Comic Iceman arc from last year.
PAGES 12-13. Professor X talks with Ms Marvel.
Xavier broadly agrees with Emma about the desirability of Ms Marvel coming out as a mutant but he’s a lot more sympathetic to her needing time to decide. By the standards of the last few years this is a relatively friendly version of Xavier – he even takes off his helmet for her, and Rasputin IV stresses its significance when she appears – perhaps because Kamala looks up to him as a superhero authority figure, and he’s getting to do his old teacher/mentor routine with someone who trusts him.
Rogue’s Terrigen poisoning is a storyline from Duggan’s Uncanny Avengers run in 2015-16.
PAGE 14. Rasputin IV speaks to Ms Marvel.
“I have come from a future with gifts of the five, but not the Five.” Presumably, Rasputin is referring to the fact that she’s a chimera of five mutants.
PAGE 15. Dmitri and Wyn.
This page is a trailer for Jonathan Hickman’s upcoming G.O.D.S., and it’s credited as being co-written by Hickman. Wyn debuted in the G.O.D.S. story in FCBD: Avengers / X-Men, a vignette where he meets Dr Strange on a rooftop and they exchange some cryptic comments about good and evil. Dmitri is new.
For reasons which aren’t made clear, Wyn asks Magik whether, at the start of the Krakoan era, “one of you stood at the top of the world and told a gathering of humans” that “mankind had new gods now”. He’s referring to Magneto’s address to the human ambassadors in House of X #1. Magik wasn’t there for that scene, but evidently either Magneto or the Stepford Cuckoos have relayed it to her.
PAGES 16-17. The Avengers leave to deal with an emergency.
Kingpin and Typhoid Mary arrived on Krakoa in issue #20 and haven’t really done anything yet; this issue suggests that Kingpin will be playing a bigger part going forward.
The Avengers are leaving to appear in the “Uncanny Avengers” story in FCBD: Avengers / X-Men, in which Captain Krakoa attacks the Capitol – citing the same “new gods now” line mentioned in the previous scene. Per that story, Captain America declined his invitation to the Hellfire Gala his year; Orchis try to assassinate him, and Rogue goes to help.
“The rumours of a civil war on Arakko are beginning to spread.” In current issues of X-Men Red.
Sebastian Shaw is not at the Gala because, presumably, he’s been tipped off about what’s about to happen.
PAGES 18-20. Meet the new X-Men team!
Cyclops and Jean are standing down, because Talon and Synch have plenty of experience – subjectively, they’re centuries old thanks to their time in the Vault. The newly elected team are Synch, Talon, Cannonball, Prodigy, Frenzy, Dazzler, Jubilee and the Juggernaut.
PAGES 21-22. Oh. Never mind.
Nimrod smashes down from space and kills… if not all of them, certainly most of them. We’ll see later that Synch, Talon and Juggernaut definitely survive, but Dazzler, Cannonball, Prodigy, Jubilee and Frenzy are all graphically killed on panel. So right now, there is no X-Men – or if there is, it’s just those three.
PAGES 23-27. Everyone fights Nimrod.
Magik can’t teleport the human guests to safety because her powers are blocked by nanotech. That happened while she was fighting a Stark Sentinel and got a small cut on her face in X-Men #23.
Iceman is seemingly killed – although he’s got a solo book starting next week, which suggests Orchis are jumping the gun in proclaiming him Definitely Dead. Oddly, the two characters shown reacting to his death are Romeo and Kate Pryde, who was dating him immediately before he came out as gay. (Christian Frost, or Jean Grey as his oldest friend present, would have been more obvious choices.)
PAGE 28. The Stark Sentinels attack.
The X-Men’s fight against the single Stark Sentinel was in X-Men #23.
“Jean, can you reach Storm?” Yet again, Storm is somewhere else when the big disaster is happening. In fairness, there’s a civil war on.
PAGES 29-31. Dr Stasis, Karima Shapandar and M.O.D.O.K. arrive.
Stasis infiltrated the pharmaceutical factories in a subplot during last year’s Hellfire Gala, and X-Men #22 revealed that millions of humans would have taken the drugs and be susceptible to M.O.D.O.K.’s device. To be honest, it doesn’t speak brilliantly about Krakoan production standards that nobody noticed this in a whole year.
Hordeculture. Orchis obtained the details of how to hack the Krakoan gates from Hordeculture’s Opal Vetiver in X-Men #22.
PAGES 32-33. Kate Pryde takes out a Stark Sentinel.
Her good old fashioned technology-disruption power still works – and again, we’re reminded about the gates thing.
Kingpin seems genuinely concerned about Mary. Note that Karima dismisses him as a “human” even though she’s in Orchis – Karima is more interested in AI.
PAGES 34-36. The fight brings down the tower.
Either Juggernaut is just a big powerful thing that Nimrod can chuck around, or his magic is supposed to make it particularly easy for him to be thrown through stuff.
PAGES 37-40. Jean Grey is murdered.
This sort of “I am extremely powerful and you can’t stop me doing what I want” speech is something Jean has delivered to a number of villains over the Duggan run – this time she’s explicitly announcing her intention to alter Orchis’s minds – but this time Orchis have seen her coming, and Moira gets rid of her. Moira seems to view this as revenge on Charles as much as anything to do with the wider agenda.
Orchis’ supply of Blightswill was previously established in Bishop: War College. It cancels mutant powers.
PAGES 41-43. Professor X surrenders and freezes all the mutants present.
When he tries this stunt on a worldwide level later, the trained X-Men are mostly able to resist, but presumably it’s a different matter when he’s this close by. Some of them do manage to resist the direct instruction to go through the gate, even at this range.
PAGE 44. Dr Stasis dictates terms.
“Right now, they [the gates] all point off-Earth.” Xavier says later that they’re meant to point to Arakko, but Stasis doesn’t actually say this. We’ll come back to this.
“Nightcrawler just went on an assassination spree.” In Before the Fall – Sons of X (under mind control, obviously).
“A mutant clone caused an inferno in New York again.” The Dark Web crossover – the clone is Madelyne Pryor. This one actually doesn’t have anything to do with Orchis.
“The first time a returned mutant is found on Earth, we will kill a human…” The word “returned” seems to be significant here, since obviously some mutants are still on Earth at the end of the story, and it seems unlikely that Orchis are planning to kill an increasing number of humans every time the mutant Avengers appear in public. With the nature of exponential growth, they’d run out of humans rather quickly.
PAGES 45-46. Dying Jean gives Angelica her new mission.
The thinking here is that since Firestar has always been something of an outsider to the X-Men, she’s the one who can be passed off as a secret informant and therefore infiltrate Orchis, with a bit of judicious manipulation of Stasis’ mind.
PAGE 47. Professor X orders mutantkind through the gates.
“Go, my X-Men” is obviously an inversion of “To me, my X-Men.”
PAGES 48-49. Mother Righteous claims Atlantic Krakoa.
Page 48 panel 1 is part of the departure montage, with Nightcrawler – who quit Krakoa after Before the Fall – Sons of X – managing to resist using the “Red triangle” psi technique. That’s why it was brought up again recently in X-Men Red.
Krakoa’s Atlantic outpost has been mentioned a few times in the Krakoan era but we’ve never really seen much of it. At any rate, Mother Righteous apparently gains power from collecting things which have some sort of iconic quality to them. But, for whatever reason, she’s preserving the Atlantic version of Krakoa. No doubt we’ll find out why in due course.
PAGE 50. Mutants worldwide file through the gates.
The mutants in Madripoor will doubtless include all of the ex-Morlocks who set up home there in Marauders.
Only Kate and Emma are expressly shown resisting at the Gala itself.
If everyone’s walking to the nearest gate, how long must this be taking?
PAGE 51. Data page – more about the red triangle protocol.
The alias “Hazel Kendal” for Emma Frost comes from Duggan’s Invincible Iron Man #6.
PAGES 52-53. Jean continues to brief Firestar.
Of note here is the appearance of Curse, who died in X-Men Green and has apparently managed to get herself resurrected on Krakoa despite being, shall we say, a low priority due to her innate nuisance factor. Curse’s resistance to psychic control is part of her powers, as established in the X-Men Green arc, which is why she’s able to object to Xavier’s directions.
PAGE 54. Jean bids farewell to Cyclops.
Cyclops has survived his fall, which is pretty remarkable, though you have to wonder what sort of treatment he can expect at the local hospitals.
The Treehouse is on fire, and presumably we won’t be seeing it again except as a ruin.
PAGE 55. Jean bids farewell to Wolverine.
Consistent with the modern reading that she loved him too – you could argue that she wants to be in contact with Wolverine in her dying moments, but equally it might just mean that Cyclops was the higher priority in case she didn’t have time to get to both.
It’s not clear where Wolverine is, but he quit Krakoa in this week’s Wolverine and evidently he’s been at a gate somewhere, resisting the command to go through. Jean specifically wakes him up from his trance – possibly so that he can defend himself against the Orchis soldiers who might otherwise have been able to pick him up and chuck him through the gateway. Or maybe she just wants the satisfaction of letting him kill them.
PAGES 56-58. Destiny tells Mystique to listen to Professor X, and Exodus bundles the Five through a gate.
Note that Destiny does go through the gate, which tends to suggest that her powers tell her that whatever lies on the other side is acceptable – at least in the long run. Mystique refuses to co-operate and falls to her apparent death while trying to resist Professor X without the benefit of his training. But… Dr Stasis does point out that her body is taken away by the sea. You’d think he’d know how this works.
M.O.D.O.K. is pleased that the Atlantic Island has disappeared off the satellites, which presumably means Mother Righteous told Orchis she was going to do that – otherwise they’d be puzzled.
PAGES 59-60. Lourdes teleports the remaining mutants away.
Kingpin sides with the mutants against Orchis – he’s married to a mutant, after all, and the relationship appears genuine. He’s duly taken away with the group.
PAGES 61-62. Lourdes dies from the effort.
Lourdes’ death here is an echo of her original death at the (human) Hellfire Gala in Classic X-Men #7.
We never get a clear group shot of exactly who’s in this remaining band, but it seems to include Emma Frost, Kate Pryde, Synch, Talon, Bishop, Psylocke (Kwannon), Rasputin IV, Daken, Aurora, Northstar, Angel, Forge and Ms Marvel, along with a few characters who aren’t easily identifiable in the Hellfire costumes. Firestar remains behind to begin her new cover. Quite how Ms Marvel managed to resist Xavier is not obvious, but maybe Emma helped.
PAGE 63. Orchis celebrate.
Looks like we can add Juggernaut to the list of the dead. Again, Moira seems preoccupied with revenge on Professor X.
PAGES 64-65. The remaining X-Men find themselves locked out of the gates.
“So that’s how that looked.” Kate is referencing her own attempt to walk through a Krakoan gate in Marauders vol 1 #1.
PAGE 66. Orchis kill all the humans at the Gala.
Well, of course they do. They’re witnesses.
PAGES 67-72. Rogue rescues Professor X.
“You invited Nathaniel Essex onto the island, and he almost ended all life on Earth.” Sins of Sinister, which the compromised Quiet Council decided to make known to the general public in Immortal X-Men #12.
Professor X claims here that the mutants were supposed to be going to Arakko (which he was never told on panel) and that since he can’t sense any of them, he assumes that they’re all dead. Since Arakko is another planet, this depends on him being able to reach it using the previously-established telepathic relay system. Professor X doesn’t seem to be saying that he actually sensed them die – surely if that had been the case he’d have picked up on it while they were going through the gates. (Mind you, he apparently didn’t notice that he was losing contact with them as they went through the gates either. Maybe he just wasn’t able to pay attention to that sort of thing.)
The very fact that Destiny chose to go through the gates – having previously spent several issues teeing up a cosmic-powered teleporter – rather suggests that everyone will be back in the end, and that the reason Xavier can’t sense them on Arakko is that they went somewhere else. But we’ll see.
Xavier returning to Krakoa on his own (and the “Population: One” caption) seems to echo him going to live on Genosha after it was reduced to rubble by Sentinels. And is the population really one? What about Krakoa itself? What about Mr Sinister and Fenris, down in the Pit?
PAGES 73-76. Trailers, which are particularly keen to stress that Ms Marvel is an X-book now.
Oddly, the list of upcoming books includes Ghost Rider #17 (which is part of a crossover with Wolverine) but not this week’s Invincible Iron Man #8, which picks up Emma Frost’s story as she turns to Iron Man for help with the Stark Sentinels. Iron Man winds up bundling her into his armour in order to get her to safety from a Stark Sentinel, and the issue ends with her being rocketed to safety against her will.
PAGES 77-78. Kate falls through a gate.
Apparently Kate is now the only person who can use the gates. This one takes her to the Krakoan embassy in Jerusalem, which is where Magneto addressed the ambassadors in House of X #1.
“Not just Dazzler, but isn’t Cannonball supposed to be immortal too?”
Honestly, it depends on who’s writing and how much/little fondness they have for early X-Force. He was revealed as an External early on in that book, but around issue 50(?)-ish of the series, Selene killed all the other Externals and claimed Cannonball wasn’t one of them.
The ongoing fan theory is that Sam never was one, and the actual reason he returned to life was that Dani Moonstar intervened behind the scenes to revive him, and that’s what got her kicked out of the Valkyries. (Neatly resolving two dropped plotlines, namely “Is Sam an External?” [no], and “What caused Dani to leave Asgard and return to Earth?” [resurrecting Sam].)
I *believe* the idea that he’s still immortal has been briefly referenced since then, but only very sporadically.
It is curious how two characters, Rogue (in FBCD:Avengers/X-Men, when she saves Steve Rogers) and Synch (when they attack the Stark Sentinels) claim to have synchronized on Polaris powers, but we never see Lorna Dane during the Gala.
It raises my curiosity about what might happen during her serial on X-Men Unlimited.
Have Rogue’s powers changed at some point?
IIRC she only acquires powers by touch and it is on a borrowing model as opposed to a copying one.
There are exceptions, most significantly her permanent acquisition of Carol Danvers’ powers as Ms. Marvel back in the early 1980s (off-panel and before her first appearance), but that would not explain her speaking of syncing with Polaris now.
I’m not sure I can see Forge among the group of escapees ; the other ones I do recognize appear to be Gambit (in shirtless leather), Romeo, and M (mostly seen from behind, but the spiky red dress is fairly distinctive from previous galas).
I wonder if Dazzler is still supposed to have the power of ressurrection. Apparently it happened once back in 2008 and it wasn’t even explained.
Rogue’s powers have changed pretty frequently over the years. Sometimes she can control her powers, sometimes she can’t. In X-Men Legacy her powers worked better if someone consented to it. In Mr. and Mrs. X she developed ranged absorption that seems to have gone away. Currently her flight and strength actually come from Wonder Man.
Meanwhile, Synch’s current status quo is he can “recall” power sets he’s gotten used to using, such as Jean, Polaris, or Talon, without needing to copy it directly. It makes him age, which isn’t a huge problem unless, say, The Five are trapped in another dimension or something.
“Besides the newly elected X-Men, Jean, and Lourdes, who else actually dies on panel? *That* is the key difference–whether intentional or not, the decision to explicitly show casual, graphic maiming of Black bodies in addition to having an Asian woman’s head curb-stomped into oblivion is unbelievably poor optics when the preceding page is, in and of itself, and triumphant celebration of diversity.”
But they also showed the casual, graphic maiming of the white characters as we from that same team as well. Plus Iceman literally melting to death (even though we know he is coming back) plus upper torso Madrox being thrown around (hopefully that was one of his dupes).
“The timelines of this issue and the FCBD special don’t *quite* match up–Rogue “just flew off at mach three” before Cyclops is attacked at the Treehouse. But Rogue flies off to rescue Steve Rogers, who’s responding to the attack in Washington D.C.”
It’s actually in NYC that she rescues him. So she has time to go NYC, then go with Cap and Iron Man to DC, and then go back to the Gala in no time at all…
“M (mostly seen from behind, but the spiky red dress is fairly distinctive from previous galas).”
I was wondering who that was, though given the costume and long red nails showing her Penance persona, I guess it makes sense.
Since we’re discussing Cannonball, I wonder how his now widow will take the news of her husband being killed off? Will she decide to work with the remaining X-characters to avenge his death? And maybe bring along a few other Imperial Guard members sympathetic to the X-men? I’d like to think so, but since he seems to have been brought out as disposable canon fodder, I doubt we will see that.
Other thoughts:
*Where was X-force during all of this? Were any of them seen in the background in any panels? Or should we just assume they were there off-panel the whole time and went through the gates? And if Charles was coercing all the mutant minds, would Deadpool get a pass as he isn’t a mutant?
*What about the other mutants who would have been taught by Xavier to Resist that we didn’t see? Colossus, Mirage, Karma, Magma, Wolfsbane…were they just dragged in by the others? Did they escape on their own?
*Was Colossus not seen on purpose? We know Shaw and Selene weren’t there since they were tipped off, but was Colossus forced to not attend by his brother, who may have got wind of it?
*Speaking of Mikhail, were he and the Chronicler affected by Xavier’s command to leave Earth? Could they have even done so if they didn’t have access to the gates? It makes you wonder what happened to the mutants who may not have been close to one. So I guess we could still see Sabretooth and his group of alternates, plus the Exiles (Oya, Nekra, etc), Nanny and the Orphan-maker…can’t wait to see Sabretooth’s reaction once he arrives at Krakoa and someone beat him to “burning it all down”.
“Meanwhile, Synch’s current status quo is he can “recall” power sets he’s gotten used to using, such as Jean, Polaris, or Talon, without needing to copy it directly. It makes him age”
In theory, couldn’t copying Talon’s healing factor kind of “heal” the aging?
Odd that the bit in Legion of X with Nimrod having hacked the gates never came up. Instead, all the gate tampering is solely attributed to Hordeculture science this issue. I wonder if this was just an accidental bit of redundancy that‘s the sort of thing that happens when you have so many writers collaborating, or if it’ll still come into play in a future story.
The weirdest shit there is that Hordeculture helped them hack/monitor the gates back in Inferno so it wasn’t even something that needed to be revisited!
@wwk5d: Not for nothing, but “even though we know they’re coming back” is one hell of a caveat. In point of fact, the only guaranteed comebacks so far are the white guys (Juggernaut and Iceman) – I haven’t heard any such assurances for Frenzy, Prodigy or Jubilee.
I think there’s a fairly high chance that these guys will in fact get to be the X-Men once this storyline is over – though I can see that at this point they’ve essentially been positioned as expendables, and that looks bad.
Another thing that would be nice to see but probably won’t happen: X-tatix and the X-cellent reacting to Xavier’s command.
One nice thing that apparently is going to happen: some spotlight into true mutant villains acting as villains, and clear temporary alliances of convenience with the likes of Kingpin.
@yIU: I had not thought about that – I did not even remember Nimrod hacking the gates – but it makes sense to me. Hordeculture’s hack probably applies only to humans (or at least biological entities). Nimrod may well need a different sort of hack.
You know what else, this is the first event where the X-Men don’t have to suffer alone?
No more “where were the Avengers” grievances?
That makes it 100% less depressing already!
Frankly, Iron Man #8 is a much better read than I would expect from the creator of Captain Krakoa. I want to read more Duggan solo titles. That issue is better than pretty much anything else by him that I am aware of. And it makes very good use of Emma as well.
It is a bit of a shock that he makes such good characterization there when I found him so lacking at it in the core X-Men book.
“Hiiiii. I’m Ms. Marvel–the first.”
She’s not even Ms. Marvel the third.
Been trying to figure it out, but who was it who got stabbed shortly before Lourdes teleported everyone away? Was it just a random person? I haven’t quite been keeping up with all the component pieces leading up to the gala this time…
Mchan, I was told (haven’t verified) that Duggan said on Cerebro that it was just some random human guest.
@ mchan
The person stabbed looked to me like Sanjar Javeen, former Death in Remender’s Uncanny X-Force, then director of the Pan-Asian School for the Unusually Gifted and recently renamed Life in the special X-Men: Before the Fall – Mutant First Strike.
@Diana In DOFP, we didn’t even see how the Avengers of FF died, just a picture of faces with x’s across them or their tombstones. Franklin Richards dies without doing anything and Wolverine was reduced to a skeleton without scratching a Sentinel.
Other similarities are public opinion turning against mutants after assassination of senators at a hearing, and mutants hunted by Sentinels. There’s even a cover of the third issue of Uncanny Avengers that calls back to Uncanny #141.
Will Orchis try to suppress the mutant’s version of the Hellfire Gala by claiming it’s disinformation?
Orchis troops probably escorted several mutants to the nearest Krakoan gateways. At least that’s what I think they were doing when they showed up at Emily Preston’s house before Xavier launched his mind command.
My biggest problem with this issue is that the disaster that happens at the Gala doesn’t rise out of the mutants’ hubris, or the inherent flaws in the Krakoan design. It’s just a giant external hammer smashing everything (and more effectively than seems possible).
The disbanding of the Quiet Council in Immortal is ‘things falling apart from within’, which always seemed to be a way that Krakoa was destined to go. It felt like the beginning of the end, but this story didn’t spin out of it at all.
I don’t know, not bothering to do quality control on the drugs for a year seems hubristic.
I don’t think it was expressed as clearly as it could be, but I would say it is about the hubris of the mutants which led to this downfall.
Krakoa felt they had an advantage over humanity as long as they had their drugs.
Xavier and Magneto made a deal with Sinister, after Moira told them that Sinister could never be trusted. Xavier was sure he had kept Sinister in the dark though, but we saw that Sinister had outsmarted Xavier.
This led to Sinister tampering with the Krakoan drugs. Now, humanity doesn’t trust the drugs, so Krakoa’s leverage with humanity is gone. This opened the door for Orchis to attack Krakoa when public opinion had turned against mutants.
Orchis’ plan is the utmost in evil supervillain stupidity. However, it is currently plausible for Orchis to claim that the Krakoan drugs are unsafe and causing the side-effects in humans, which will lead to increasing humanity hating of mutants.
It could have been done better.
Krakoa not having such a belief in their own superiority when compared with humans. Xavier trusting Moira about Sinister. These are ways that Xavier and mutantkind’s hubris set up this downfall.
I meant to say that Sinister tampered with the resurrection process leading to the “Sins of Sinister” timeline, which caused humanity to have reason for mistrust of Krakoa.
What If… Professor X were half the mastermind he thinks he is?
Stasis: “Now that we’ve poisoned your drugs everyone will hate you, Xavier!”
Moira: “I’m evil, you know.”
Stasis: “Yes, that too. Now Professor, submit to our demands or we kill everyone!”
Professor X: “I.. could do that. Or I could point out that I’ve been in telepathic contact with Mr. Stark.”
Stasis: “Ha, he’s out of the way busy in Washington where we’ve set up a false flag!”
Professor X: “Yes, but as you know, he’s very good with computers. This entire conversation has been streamed from me to him to multiple social platforms.”
Stasis: “…crap.”
Random Diplomat: “I have a signal finally! We’re trending!”
Professor X: “Oh and the Avengers are back now that they know this is a feint and they’ve brought friends.”
(Yeah, that sort of working with others and masterminding is completely out of Xavier’s current personality, and I thought of due to ChrisV’s latest about the arrogance. This is not a plot hole, this is Orchis being correct about Xavier being a chump.)
I think there’s a lot of hubris coming to roost in this issue, actually. The biggest aspect being the extent to which the Krakoans have wildly underestimated Orchis. Moira infiltrated the Hellfire Gala last year, nothing much done about it. M.O.D.O.K got sprung a year ago, no followup. They know Brand’s aligned with them and is on the loose, nothing done. Feilong’s occupying Phobos and is deploying Stark Sentinels, only Emma doing anything. Cyclops knows that Dr. Stasis is some sort of Sinister variant. Meanwhile, the Sins of Sinister timeline makes it clear if the X-Men asked the Avengers for help, they can mop the floor with Orchis. But they don’t.
Storm sees a future where catastrophe ensues because she’s splitting her focus between Earth and Mars, learns absolutely nothing, keeps doing it, and it backfires yet again. Iceman and Jean ego trip during Duggan’s run about how they’re oh-so-special Omega mutants (see: the Nightmare appearances in Jean’s case) and promptly get slaughtered. Magik gets poisoned, her powers fail her in X-Men #24 and she just blows it off, leaving the entire nation exposed at a critical moment.
They’ve been exposed to the world as potentially genocidal, their government has collapsed, their security apparatus (X-Force) is busy fighting their former boss, their sister nation is in ruins and their economy has collapsed, so clearly it’s time for a party with no apparent security.
@Chris V: Another huge blunder is Emma Frost revealing the truth about Moira to the Quiet Council, including Sinister. Giving the knowledge of a unique X-gene that could reset the entire universe to a scientist obsessed with them, who would have had access to it when Moira was his student and incentive to get it after she gave birth was the height of folly. That enabled him to find out about Hope and led to SoS. Speaking of that, how are ordinary people supposed to react to that other than as a “what if” scenario? Did the QC reveal to truth about Moira to the whole world?
@Jon R: Not so much as a mastermind as using common sense. Another alternative would be to broadcast another message to the whole world. As Paul says, it would have taken hours for all mutants to go through the gates. Relying on the protagonist being a chump is what movie critics Siskel and Ebert called an “idiot plot”.
@Allan M: This crosses the line from hubris to the aforementioned stupidity. The biggest example is the initiating event, the theft of the Captain Krakoa suit. Cyclops is attacked by a skilled combatant with at least peak human strength. After knocking him down, he inexplicably turns his back on him and is defeated and thrown from the treehouse. He’s supposed to be a tactical genius.
@neutrino- I’m going to defend Xavier’s portrayal- he’s been portrayed as becoming psychologically broken since Sins of Sinister- for example, his encounter with Storm. Orchis knew about this through Selene and Shaw and did their best to exacerbate it- for example. by revealing the Sins of Sinister timeline to the world.You’re right, though, that Scott’s turning his back makes on Captain Krakoa after knocking him down makes no sense, especially since we’ve people get knocked down by Scott’s optic blasts before and keep fighting.
To put a finer point in what I was getting at — almost all these examples of hubris are, to me, indistinguishable from sloppy plotting. Lots of things happened that the characters didn’t pay much attention to, or follow up on, but the line in general (and Duggan’s X-Men in particular) drifted from thing to thing seemingly at random. Modok one issue, Nightmare the next, feels more like writer ADD than any sort of theme or foreshadowing. The only place where ‘negligence’ was ever a theme was Storm.
(The “one year between Galas” notion is also one of those things that you’re not supposed to look at or think about very much, because it makes no damn sense. You might as well say that Spider-Man feels guilty because he only stopped a couple dozen villains in between Christmases.)
I just expected the Fall to rise out of the Krakoan leadership’s personalities and actions, not.. inattention. That’s not dramatically satisfying.
Karl_H says: I just expected the Fall to rise out of the Krakoan leadership’s personalities and actions, not.. inattention. That’s not dramatically satisfying.
Yeah. It feels like we’re no longer getting a story about societies or competing posthumanist agendas leading to one or another singularity.
Instead, Duggan, at least, seems to be writing a genre throwback where the villains’ schemes come to fruition and our heroes face their darkest hour before they regroup, rally, and defeat the villains, rededicating themselves to their “classic” mission.
Whatever the situation of Krakoa or Arakko by the end of all this, we’ll be lucky if this ends without some dialogue about how all this proves that the main X-Men team must be among normal humanity, “fighting for a world that hates and fears them” after all. If we’re really unlucky, it’ll be presented as a necessity after the bad publicity from the events in this story.
@neutrino: Yeah, I don’t mean you have to be a mastermind to think of that, but if he were at all the person he thinks he is then he’d have thought of it. (I had him filtering through Tony since directly sending info to everyone could backfire.)
More generally, I wonder if it actually took hours in-universe to file everyone out. Like, that’s the only way people leaving would actually work, but it really didn’t seem presented that way. I’m curious what Duggan intended to know which way it failed.
“I just expected the Fall to rise out of the Krakoan leadership’s personalities and actions, not.. inattention. That’s not dramatically satisfying.”
Can’t stop thinking about how this is probably what Gillen, Spurrier and Ewing wanted, but especially Gillen, with how they handled their books and SoS. But I guess Marvel really wanted to give the keys of the kingdom to their worst writer so this bullshit is what we get.
@Miyamoris: “Can’t stop thinking about how this is probably what Gillen, Spurrier and Ewing wanted, but especially Gillen, with how they handled their books and SoS. But I guess Marvel really wanted to give the keys of the kingdom to their worst writer so this bullshit is what we get.”
My feeling is that, in Marvel’s/Jordan White’s eyes, Percy got to do a big event with X-Lives/X-Deaths, Gillen got to do one w/ Judgment Day, the Gillen/Ewing/Spurrier trio got a big event w/ SoS, now it’a Duggan’s turn. Also, I recall someone anointing Duggan as “head of X” after Hickman left, so it makes sense that he writes the main story for the next phase.
As many have mentioned, however, Duggan is a writer of limited skills. My hope is that Ewing or Gillen get to lead any future event.
Before you blame the writer, spare a moment to think about the corporates who know massacres make money, and that you could never adapt a story about political hubris into a superhero blockbuster.
@Si: well yeah, Marvel probably picked Duggan for this exact reason. The other writers probably wouldn’t put up with this kind of editorial demand so easily – at least they would hint at some sort of insatisfaction.
I understand this fits in a broader problem with X-Men comics but I struggle to sympathize with Duggan when he has not shown the ability to write any remotely intriguing or exciting concept in *years* of X-Men writing. Early Marauders was his best thing and yet it devolved into bullshit fast.
The guy is clearly satisfied in being the X-Office’s new Scott Lobdell – not too long ago he was telling people they can just drop a book if they don’t like and there’s still plenty of people enjoying it, which usually reads as code for “haters gonna hate lulz”. So I’m struggling to feel charitable towards him.
@Miyamoris: Hell, even Scott Lobdell had his moments. Duggan has just been consistently, thoroughly mediocre from the moment he got put in charge. And where Gillen and Ewing have both stated they’re in the back half of their respective runs, we’ve got no such reassurance that Duggan will be moving on anytime soon
@Miyamoris
“The guy is clearly satisfied in being the X-Office’s new Scott Lobdell – not too long ago he was telling people they can just drop a book if they don’t like and there’s still plenty of people enjoying it, which usually reads as code for “haters gonna hate lulz”. So I’m struggling to feel charitable towards him.”
I think that’s reading a lot into a perfectly innocuous statement.
Agree to disagree, @ylU. I get where you’re coming from but this kind of defensive talking generally doesn’t come out of nowhere. He knows his stuff gets much harsher criticism than the other x-writers.
@Diana yeah, Lobdell helped shape some important X-men material and he did have some engaging takes on Xavier. Duggan is mediocre at best and nearly Chuck Austen-tier at worse.
It’s hard to imagine them doing it to an event comic, but when superheroes are taken down so suddenly, swiftly, and cleanly, it means that there’s a what if story brewing, and it will soon be reversed by time travel or LMDs or the simulation ending. Maybe X will fall a completely different way.
I’ve read exactly one competent Duggan storyline and a ton of absolute garbage. I liked one subplot in his Guardians about the Gardener creating an army of Groots, and restoring Groot’s ability to speak in full sentences at the end.
But the rest of his Guardians and then Infinity Wars was just meandering nonsense. He has no grasp of story structure at all.
Wait – I really don’t get the Lobdell/Duggan/Austen comparison.
For one, while Lobdell was seemingly incapable of executing a single story without it devolving into nonsense and false starts (wtf, Maggott? wtf?), he had some solid character moments peppered throughout the later end of his run.
Duggan’s most startling limit, for me at least, would be that he is neither conceptually exciting nor especially committed to characterization – resulting in the dull mess that X-Men has been since he began writing it.
Even then, early Marauders had at least some suggestive ideas – and queer pirate Kate was actually a pretty compelling arc. It might have ceased to make sense after a point, but it was still much better than Orlando’s limited run.
Is it that both work according to editorial edicts, and less so according to their own concepts and styles? Is it just about how ubiquitous they are across the line?
Also, please – please! – let’s not start chucking Austen comparisons. If Duggan is a slightly unexciting writer, he still has the merit of not having written the Draco, Mystique as a hysterical wife, Polaris as a parody of Polaris parodying Polaris, or those goddamn communion wafers into existence…
That’s a really harsh comparison to make, and looking at his work on the X-line, I don’t really grasp the parallel.
Austen’s run had some parts that were actually quite alright (Juggernaut’s redemption, Northstar’s inclusion on the team), but honestly, I have to say that even his… let’s call it randomly insane approach to plot twists and characterization was at least memorable.
It’s been 20 years, and that run is still alive in memory. It’s not a good memory for the most part, but it is alive, while tons of comics from just a few years ago are dead. Nobody cares one way or another for most of the Utopia, Regenesis or ‘we live in Limbo now’ eras and books they were comprised of.
Say what you will about Austen, but I will die on the weird hill that his run was better than Brian Wood’s ‘X-Men’ and more fun than probably anything Marc Guggenheim wrote in the x-books.
@Salomé H: That’s perfectly fair. I think the Lobdell comparison really only holds up in the sense that Duggan’s Marauders *did* have some nice character moments – Storm helping Callisto in the Crucible certainly comes to mind.
And there’s that one issue of his X-Men where Gambit and Rogue run into Destiny and she plays the disapproving mother-in-law; it was a lovely humanizing touch for Irene that even Gillen’s overlooked (though in his defense, canonizing and centering Mystique and Destiny was *long* overdue, I can’t blame him for making that more of a priority).
But Austen? Even Duggan doesn’t deserve that. He’s lazy and bland, not misogynistic and incompetent.
@ylU: He’s essentially telling his critics to go elsewhere. Which I’m sure we’d all love to do except that every other book is now taking cues from him
“I think that’s reading a lot into a perfectly innocuous statement.”
Agreed.
“Also, please – please! – let’s not start chucking Austen comparisons. If Duggan is a slightly unexciting writer, he still has the merit of not having written the Draco, Mystique as a hysterical wife, Polaris as a parody of Polaris parodying Polaris, or those goddamn communion wafers into existence…
That’s a really harsh comparison to make, and looking at his work on the X-line, I don’t really grasp the parallel.”
Also agreed.
“while Lobdell was seemingly incapable of executing a single story without it devolving into nonsense and false starts (wtf, Maggott? wtf?), he had some solid character moments peppered throughout the later end of his run.”
On the whole, his best issues usually tended to be the quiet post-crossover issues. I will say though, he did also have a strong run of issues in Uncanny X-men, between #300 and #319.
“It’s been 20 years, and that run is still alive in memory. It’s not a good memory for the most part, but it is alive, while tons of comics from just a few years ago are dead. Nobody cares one way or another for most of the Utopia, Regenesis or ‘we live in Limbo now’ eras and books they were comprised of.
Say what you will about Austen, but I will die on the weird hill that his run was better than Brian Wood’s ‘X-Men’ and more fun than probably anything Marc Guggenheim wrote in the x-books.”
Is it better to be remembered as a pile of hot steaming shit or forgotten due to being bland and boring? A question for the ages.
Honestly? I’ll take insanely bad over blandly bad. Obviously your mileage may very.
But since I already brought him up – Brian Wood’s run was also a steaming pile of shit. Sublime’s a villain-turned-ally now! Rachel is in looove with him! The heroines bicker for like two story arcs whether they’re a team or not!
But on top of that it was somehow bland and boring as well, and apparently nobody remembers it. Or maybe nobody read it in the first place – while it was the adjectiveless X-Men, it was the third (?) relaunch of the title and it was the third or fourth X-Men team book coming out at the time…
“I’ll take insanely bad over blandly bad.”
That works for me if it’s in the “so bad it’s good” category. But Austen’s run was “so bad it needs to be shoved into an airlock and ejected into space” levels of bad.
But as you say, mileage varies and all that.