Free Comic Book Day 2024: Blood Hunt / X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition.
FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2024: BLOOD HUNT / X-MEN #1
“The Fire Still Burns”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Edgar Delgado
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Welcome to the post-Krakoan era. This issue has a 10-page X-Men story, which is the first output of the new editorial office, and a prologue to Gail Simone and David Marquez’s Uncanny X-Men run. The other half of the issue is a prologue to the Blood Hunt crossover, but that’s beyond our remit here.
I haven’t decided yet how we’re going to do this post-Krakoa. The original idea of doing annotations was tied to the fact that the line was heavily interlinked, and it looks like the post-Krakoa line will be dialling that back. And not all books necessarily lend themselves to the annotation approach anyway – I probably wouldn’t be doing it with Wolverine if we hadn’t already come this far. Right now, I’m planning to do something along the lines of the annotations posts for the three core X-Men titles, and at least the first issues of the other ongoings, and then decide what seems to make sense.
Aside from that, the scene-breakdown format isn’t always the best way of talking about story points, so I’m thinking of tweaking that. Let’s test a different approach…
THE STATE OF MUTANTKIND
Not a regular section, since I don’t expect it to change that often, but it’s obviously on point here.
We’re post-Krakoa, and for obvious reasons, the story doesn’t want to be too explicit about what happened the end of Fall of the House of X. Mutants no longer have a homeland. The former X-Men Mansion is occupied by an unnamed, apparently official group who seem to be running a mutant prison – more of them below. They’re clearly the villains but they don’t seem as aggressive as Orchis.
Mutants are common enough for Jubilee to find Uva, a mutant with obvious zebra stripes, working in a random diner. Mutants have an “M” hand signal to identify one another, and Uva already knows about it (so she can’t be that isolated from other mutants – if the signal was public knowledge, it would be useless). Jubilee apparently thinks that it would be realistic for Uva to live openly as a mutant. On the other hand, Jubilee seems concerned that Uva should know that she isn’t alone, and that “there are more of us than people know”. Her narration suggests that this isn’t “Fall of X”, but that there’s a lot of social pressure to keep a low profile.
THE X-MEN
Jubilee has dropped by the X-Men Mansion on her motorbike to see what’s going on, and goes on to have an altercation with some local thugs. She isn’t a member of the X-Men at the moment, and isn’t even clear whether the team currently exists. But at the end of the story, she calls Wolverine and accepts an offer previously made by Rogue (presumably to join the Uncanny X-Men team). She also says “Mission’s ongoing, turns out”, which may suggest that she was sent to the Mansion to scout it.
She’s still getting over the loss of Krakoa. She’s bitter about how quickly the Mansion has been co-opted (and the level of governmental motivation which that implies). She wants to connect with Uva and isn’t particularly impressed at Uva preferring to stay with her family. She sees Uva as a victim of a mother who won’t stand up for her, which is a valid reading of the situation, but not the only possible one – it doesn’t seem to occur to Jubilee that Uva’s mother is willing to have a very obvious mutant working in her diner in public view, and might just be trying to deflect the attention of a bunch of obvious thugs. It’s not as if the “skin condition” explanation seems to fool anyone for a second. At the very least, Jubilee seems to jump to the conclusion that the mother’s motivation is shame rather than protection. Perhaps Jubilee’s not in a particularly sympathetic mood towards ordinary humans right now.
In time honoured X-Men style, Jubilee will only put up with being discreet for so long before she snaps and beats up the thugs who are hassling Uva. She seems to have upped her powers a bit, and destroys their car with a burning X symbol.
THE VILLAINS
An unnamed organisation has co-opted the X-Men Mansion and built a wall around it. We’re not told why they’ve chosen to seize the building, which has been lying derelict for most of the Krakoan era. There are a lot of armed guards, but they have no visible insignia. All signs of Krakoan foliage are gone. Oddly, the Mansion interior seems to be in classic X-Men mode: the Blackbird is in the hangar, and Professor X’s study has its traditional appearance. To be fair, the room was still fully furnished when we saw it in Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler, albeit overgrown. Anyway, the newcomers are stripping it all out.
Dr Corina Ellis is in charge. She’s a new character, and despite her title and white coat, she seems to be running a prison more than a medical or scientific institution. She calls the mutants “inmates”, seems generally disdainful towards them (and mutants in general), and generally does moustache-twirling stuff.
Her mutant aide, Phillip, is another new character. He’s weak and emaciated, and walks with crutches; this could be through mistreatment, but it seems like a genuine illness. Corina used to call him “Scurvy” and he used to be an “inmate”, but since the facility has only just opened, either he must have been an “inmate” somewhere else, or he got shifted to this role almost immediately. His powers aren’t spelled out, but he “couldn’t read” Jubilee when she was outside the building, and says “it was like she wasn’t there at all”. His powers have some unspecified role in dealing with the inmates.
Somebody referred to as “Inmate X” is being held in the basement under extremely high security, and for some reason Dr Ellis feels particularly compelled to gloat about it.
Todd and his gang are just your generic local thugs. They’re anti-mutant but more as part of an all-round bullying package than as a predominant motivation – they try to run Jubilee off the road before they know anything about her at all.
CAMEO APPEARANCES
The only two “inmates” we see on panel are the Blob (on a drip and in a stupor) and Siryn (in a strait jacket with a green mask – it says “CASSIDY” on the jacket, though it’s not obvious).
SPECIFICS
Page 17 panels 1-2: “When I was a child, I spake as a child…” This is 1 Corinthians 13:11. Equating the fall of Krakoa with putting away childish things, however sardonically, feels like it’s poking the Krakoa fans with a stick, but okay.
Page 18 panel 1: “We had a dragon. More than one, actually. I’m not going to think about that.” One is Lockheed. The other is Shogo, Jubilee’s adopted infant son, who stayed in Otherworld after Knights of X #5.
Page 18 panel 3: “Ororo once told me it took eight months to get a permit for the Blackbird hangar and three years to build it.” Presumably that’s Charles Xavier building a hangar way, way back before the X-Men were a thing, rather than something that Storm was personally involved in.
Page 22 panel 6: “The Midnight Bark.” I believe that’s the secret communication network among dogs in 101 Dalmatians, unless there’s some other reference I’m missing.
So, basically we’re getting rid of Orchis to replace them with a less interesting version of Orchis. Orchis was completely bastardized post-Hickman, so I agree that getting rid of them was for the best. Seeing this as the new direction for the X-books makes Duggan and pals ruining Hickman’s nuanced take on anti-mutant villains seems to be all the more regrettable. Although, I doubt the new creative teams have much interest in pursuing discussions about post-humanity following the relaunch. It just seems like more interesting potential has been wasted.
I only picked up the Hellboy Free Comic Book Day issue. It’s all I could be bothered.
Siryn’s nameplate isn’t very easy to read, but it looks like “Cassidy, T.” to me.
There is also the comment that she has not voiced objections to her treatment (she is visibly gagged). So the power set fits.
@Chris V: I think of it as one of “those” situations. Marvel emphasized Orchis quite a lot. Now they have to do something about it. Either they stagnate, or they grow, or they fizzle away.
It should be clear enough that much of the point of “Fall of X” is to have Orchis fizzling away, even if it costs the X-Men much as well.
But Marvel isn’t putting the X-Books in any sort of lasting hyatus, so there are more stories to publish. Something more recognizable and relatable if at all possible, both as a breather from the unusual Krakoa era and because it is commercially desirable to be there when the next movie comes out.
Is that rethreading? To some extent, yes, and inevitably so. But is that less interesting?
Frankly, I doubt it. For the most part I feel that the Krakoa era teased much and gave very little. If nothing else, I expect the Brevoort era to have significantly better characterization.
Siryn’s an interesting choice to put in a straitjacket, given her previous history of institutionalization…
Luis-I’m sure there will be better characterization but that has nothing to do with keeping Orchis or not. It’s far too late to ever do anything interesting with Orchis again by this point anyway, as I said.
The more I see of “From the Ashes” though, I can’t help but feel I am living in 1997 and this is the post-Onslaught Operation: Zero Tolerance direction for the line again.
Oh cool, we’re going from Fall of X mutants being fugitives and in secret, sanctioned prisons and camps to … mutants being in secret camps and prisons. The OZT style status quo doesn’t bother me every once and a while–I think it would probably make for a fine movie, for example–but it’s too similar a note to the one FoX has already belabored.
The sadistic warden with a pet mutant who keeps the prisoners in line seems loosely analagous to the version of Weapon X seen in the the film X2: X-Men United, with Bryan Cox as General Stryker using his son Jason, a wheelchair-bound wreck who went only by his first name, to mind-control captive mutants.
Poor Fred just wanted to run his bar.
I instantly dislike Dr Ellis. Do we really need another scenery-chewing evil supermodel in gogo boots?
I didn’t like that Jubilee was quoting Corinthians. Yes, that’s a famous passage but it doesn’t seem like Jubilee to quote Biblical passages. It would work if Kurt, Beast or Exodus quoted Corinthians but it just doesn’t feel like Jubilee.
Agreed that Jubilee was way too hard on the mother. It seemed like she was apologizing because she was trying to avoid further harassment of her daughter.
Given this is Gail Simone, I’m thinking there’s more beneath the surface than we’re privy to. Or hoping, at least. But not the most promising intro. At least it actually has a beginning, middle and end, though!
Another weird thing- Jubilee says the X-Men never let her fly the Blackbird. Why? Is this something that’s been mentioned before?
“Another weird thing- Jubilee says the X-Men never let her fly the Blackbird. Why? Is this something that’s been mentioned before?”
It’s a recurring gag in X-Men ’97 (both in the animated series and in the comics prequel), but I can’t remember if it was a thing also in 616 comics back in the days.
Just offhand, I can’t think of any story in which Jubes flew the Blackbird, but I could be wrong.
This just felt fundamentally more solid than any of the end-of-Krakoa era books. It didn’t thrill me, but simple workmanlike competency feels like such a breath of fresh air for the X-books at this point.
I like that there are clear yet subtle nuances.
Jubilee has good reasons to want to see things change. But she is still asking an obvious mutant with no known powers and her mother with no special resources or protection to put themselves under risk for no clear purpose. I like that Uva is not entirely submissive, too. The hand signs are a nice detail. They show a willingness to see things change, coupled with acknowledgement that their options are limited.
Yeah, but if someone makes that hand signal at me, I’ll do it back because I like heavy metal.
@Si
Sure, you would tell us that.
I can’t remember: is access to the Otherworld now closed off? Can Jubilee not get to Shogo? I remember in the ending of Knights of X they were reunited and then she was X-Terminators without mentioning him at all.
It’s clear that the X-office (and the fans, except me, I guess) wanted to get rid of Shogo. I just don’t understand why it was done in most unnecessarily messy way. Christina Strain understood that Shogo was always raised in a support system, and he could have gone to any number of caretakers to “free up” Jubilee for superheroing adventures. I’m just tired of seeing our characters keep suffering trauma over and over again.
Not blaming this one on the relaunch however as the Shogo in Otherworld beat actually happened in Krakoa. No one asked for it.
Another note on Jubilee: I didn’t like her mentally quoting the Bible either at first, but given her background (second-generation Asian-American in wealthy southern California) I think it works fine. I could see it as like— she’s not particularly religious but the current moment jogs her memory of the passage, and it’s definitely believable that she could have read it a lot as a kid.
I read the “childish things” quote as being about the pre-Krakoa X-Men. Jubilee says they had a homeland for “just a whisper of a while”, implying that she’s mainly referring to the old days.
101 Dalmatians has the “Twilight Bark”, but certainly the Midnight Bark is meant to be a reference to it.
I thought the mutant might going be Caliban as he talked about reading Jubilee and looks quite like him. Maybe this organisation is forcing a human name on him as a way of denying his mutant status as we have never had his real name. I thought it was an intriguing issue setting up a new big bad with out giving a way much. And if it is a bit OZT that gives some symbiosis with the cartoon which may be driven viewers to a new jumping on point and the uncanny team is a very 92/97 team.
[…] COMIC BOOK DAY 2024: BLOOD HUNT / X-MEN #1. (Annotations here.) This was released for Free Comic Book Day last Saturday, but like all Marvel’s FCBD issues, […]
@Alastair- I don’t think the Philip looks like Caliban. Besides. he doesn’t talk like Caliban and he could sense that Jubilee’s powers work differently than the files depicted her as, which isn’t how Caliban’s powers work. Plus, after he says this, Dr. Eliis suggests they interrogate Siryn. That makes no sense if this is Caliban, who has met Jubilee.
Also, when Philip is in the room. Dr. Ellis says of Jubilee “makes fireworks displays, I believe.” That would also be very odd if Philip was Caliban, since Caliban has met Jubilee. Whoever Philip is, he’s someone who’s never met Jubilee.
While he’s not the Caliban we know, I also noticed the similarity.
“I didn’t like that Jubilee was quoting Corinthians.”
It’s in the Apocrypha, but you’d think she’d prefer the Book of Jubilees.
“Doth a baby of the mall not eateth chilli fries?”
– Jubilee 1:3
The FCBD story was ok, nothing special. I’m trying not to judge the entire direction of the line by one short promo story. It’s tough, though, because a serviceable retread of the past status quo is what I’m expecting.
I liked this short intro to things. It understands story structure and we’ve already got 2 changes in Jubilee: her powerset and her more mentor approach to things – now SHE’S the one actively seeking out people who need to be helped instead of acting as the sidekick or needing help herself.
I don’t think Simone could (or wanted to) introduce anything too far outside the box for this brief glimpse into things.
Her strength is usually in interpersonal dynamics and relationships, and based on the reports of this book having the most drama in that regard, I think that’s where things are going to shine (and/or be set on fire).
The Midnight Bark is from the Pet Avengers. I don’t know how Jubilee would know about it, but it’s possible that she heard about it somewhere.
[…] I said in the post about Free Comic Book Day 2024: Blood Hunt / X-Men, I’m thinking of altering the format of these posts in what I expect to be a less […]