The Complete Moira, Part 7
For previous chapters, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.
In our penultimate post, we’ll cover Moira’s time in Excalibur under Warren Ellis and Ben Raab.
Excalibur vol 1 #86 by Warren Ellis, Ken Lashley & Tom Wegrzyn (“Back to Life”, February 1995). This is the first issue of the Ellis run proper, although it’s almost immediately interrupted for four months by the Age of Apocalypse crossover. Moira fits quite nicely into Ellis’s style, and instantly starts to become stroppier and grumpier. Ellis also introduces a running joke about her awful coffee. Be advised, though, that Moira doesn’t actually do all that much in the Ellis run, aside from providing colour while the team are at home on Muir Isle. In this issue, Pete Wisdom joins the cast. Nightcrawler works out that Moira has the Legacy Virus, but she insists that they go on their important mission anyway.
X-Men Prime by various creators (“Racing the Night”, July 1995). This is the one-shot that sets up the resuming X-Men titles after the “Age of Apocalypse”. In the bit that’s relevant to Moira, Trish Tilby reveals to the public that the Legacy Virus has spread to the human race, with Moira as the first human victim; Moira and Rory watch on TV. This is meant to lead in to a storyline about who leaked the data, but as we’ll see it all peters out quite quickly. I’m not sure it was ever resolved, but it certainly doesn’t happen in any of Moira’s stories.
(more…)Excalibur #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Excalibur hunt the Warwolves.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. The story is “Verse VII: The Unspeakable and the Uneatable” by Tini Howard, Wilton Santos and Oren Junior. The title refers to the description of fox hunting in Oscar Wilde’s 1893 play A Woman of No Importance: “The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.”
PAGE 4. Excalibur bury the Sword of Might beneath the lighthouse.
Brian asked for the Sword of Might to be kept well away from him at the end of the last issue. The original Excalibur lighthouse also had a sword outside it for a long, long time – Magik’s Soulsword, which appeared outside the lighthouse when she died in Inferno. But this time the plan seems to be to bury the cursed sword as far underground as possible.
(more…)X-Force #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and the page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Domino (without any of her plant grafts) about to be crushed by a toppling domino. It’s symbolic.
PAGES 2-5. Domino and Sage discuss a series of freakishly improbable killings.
This is self-explanatory – someone is killing humans who have been prominent supporters of mutants, and is doing so in ways which rely on such ludicrous coincidences that some sort of super power must be involved. For what it’s worth, we haven’t heard that much in the Hickman era about humans who are pro-mutant, as opposed to humans who are just willing to deal with Krakoa for the drugs. But evidently they’re out there.
(more…)X-Men #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Mystique in action.
PAGE 2. Flashback. Destiny starts to tell Mystique about something she’s foreseen.
Mystique and Destiny. Mystique shouldn’t need any introduction. She’s been a major character in the Hickman run, and she’s a member of the Quiet Council.
Destiny was Mystique’s long-time teammate in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, later re-named Freedom Force. She died in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #255 (1989). Chris Claremont very, very strongly implied that Destiny and Mystique were a couple, but this doesn’t seem to have been spelled out on the page until History of the Marvel Universe #2, which is absolutely unambiguous.
(more…)X-Men / Fantastic Four #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Franklin Richards, with Kate Pryde and Sue Storm behind him (each with a hand on his shoulder), and behind them, Professor X and Storm. The title shown on the cover is X-Men + Fantastic Four, but I’ll go with the solicitations.
PAGE 2. Recap – which in this case means spelling out the status quo of the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Reflecting its semi-X-book status, this issue keeps some of the stylistic quirks of the Hickman-era X-books but eschews the monochrome in favour of a yellow and white colour scheme. It’s worth mentioning that this series isn’t edited by the X-office but by Fantastic Four editor Tom Brevoort. It’s the most significant interaction with the rest of the Marvel Universe that the X-Men have had since House of X.
(more…)Charts – 7 February 2020
Right, let’s see what we have this week…
1 The Weeknd – “Blinding Lights”
This first charted before Christmas, when it entered at 12. It reaches number 1 by the remarkably circuitous route of 12-17-20-41-11-10-8-4-2-1. That’s partly because it started as a promotional single, and it’s now been promoted to a proper single with a video, and a discounted download, and so forth. For a Weeknd single, it’s a very upbeat retro 80s track. He had his first hit single back in 2012 and this is his first number one – his previous best was “Starboy”, which reached number 2 in 2016.
(more…)The Complete Moira, Part 6
For previous chapters, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.
This time round, we’ll cover Moira’s early 90s, where she… well, gets passed around various books for a while, then lands in a title that barely has a regular writer. Despite that, these issues set the course for Moira’s remaining stories.
X-Men vol 2 #1-3 by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee & Scott Williams (“Rubicon”, “Firestorm” and “Fallout”, October to December 1991). The last Chris Claremont story (for now, at least). Magneto’s manipulative new aide Fabian Cortez provokes him into taking up villainy again, and tells him that he has been subjected to genetic engineering. Magneto works out that it must be something Moira did to him during the period when he had been turned into an infant, and he was under her care. So he abducts Moira (and Professor X) to Asteroid M in order to yell at her. Moira confirms that her tests suggested that his body couldn’t handle the energy being processed by his powers, and so she modified his DNA to remove the instability, hoping that the same process could be used to cure Proteus. Magneto is outraged by what he sees as an interference in his free will. The rest of the story sees Magneto force Moira to use the same process to alter the personalities of half the X-Men so that the team can kick off their new series by fighting one another – but it turns out that the process quickly wears off when mutants use their powers. Magneto ends up sending the X-Men and Moira home, and seemingly dies aboard his exploding satellite.
(more…)Marauders #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. And yes, I will be reviewing the first six issues (which make up the first trade) when time allows.
COVER / PAGE 1. Callisto, in her White Bishop outfit, faces off against Bishop and Pyro.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. The story is “From Emma, With Love” by Gerry Duggan, Stefano Caselli and Edgar Delgado. Does it need saying that the reference is to the James Bond story “From Russia, With Love”? Probably not.
PAGE 4. Data page. An unknown person in Washington DC tries to text Kate a warning about Homines Verendi’s plan to sell poisoned Krakoan drugs.
(more…)New Mutants #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and the page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1: Armor, Maxime, Manon, Glob Herman and Boom-Boom sit awkwardly on the steps of Beak’s burning farmhouse.
PAGES 2-3: Recap and credits. This is “Not as Hoped” by Ed Brisson, Flaviano and Carlos Lopez.
PAGES 4-17. Everyone fights the drug dealers. The kids nearly escape, but Túmulo kills Beak’s parents, then kills himself, claiming that his government will blame the mutants.
Yes, 13 pages, but it’s basically an extended action sequence, which mostly speaks for itself. Of note along the way…
(more…)X-Force #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and the page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. The Beast beats up some G-men while reading a book.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. The story is “Intelligence”, by Benjamin Percy, Stephen Segovia and Guru-eFX.
PAGES 4-6. X-Force are on a mission in Terra Verde, guided by Beast and Sage back on Krakoa.
Parts of this issue are narrated by Beast in a monologue about his role in X-Force – basically, he’s very proud of his achievements as a co-ordinator of intelligence and coverer-up of inconvenient news.
(more…)