As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-FORCE vol 7 #2
“Igubu Lika-Anansi”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

As I said at the beginning of the “From the Ashes” era, I’m not necessarily planning to do annotations for all ongoing titles – we’ll see how the second-tier books are looking after the first few issues.

X-FORCE:

Forge helpfully illustrates the limitations of his powers by confidently building a device that will allow X-Force’s plane to get past Wakanda’s defence systems. Presumably it works, but it has no effect on the magic spell that he actually needs to worry about. In other words, Forge has built a perfect solution to the wrong problem. He spells out later in the issue that he needs to understand what the problem is in order to solve it. (Presumably he could always define “understand the problem” as a second-order problem, but then he’d have to build an entire machine before he could even start solving the main problem, which might take a while.)

Surge says that she’s joining X-Force so that she can do some good and get mutants some good publicity. That immediately prompts Betsy and Rachel to remind her that this X-Force team is supposed to be clandestine, but she does seem a little at odds with the agenda. She also seems to be pleased just to be reunited with some X-Men, even if they’re not necessarily ones that she knows all that well.

Sage is immune to the magic that transforms everyone else, which she attributes to her powers anchoring her too closely to reality. She reiterates a point that she made in the previous issue: at least in her view, her data-based view of the world isn’t simply a way of analysing the world, but reflects reality itself. In contrast, Forge isn’t personally immune to the magic, but is shielded by his Analog device, which is.

Sage seems to think that, as a mutant, she can’t be a “colonizer”, though one might question what difference that makes.

Tank is not in Wakanda’s mutant records, which makes sense if he’s a robot (as the story continues to imply).

Captain Britain and Askani are also in this issue.

VILLAINS:

Nketi is a new character. He’s some sort of Wakandan nationalist who has stolen Anansi’s drum, a magical artefact which he’s using to transform the area around him into a traditionalist, “pure” Wakanda from 8,000 years ago. He intends to spread this effect across the world, and insists that he is the rightful Black Panther.

According to Sage, the drum was supposedly made by Anansi to trap his sister Bast, and is “made of stories”. I can’t find any reference to that particular story, though the notion of everything being made of stories does crop up in some Anansi stories. Very, very far from my area of knowledge, though. Anyway, the drum’s effect is rather fragile and liable to be cancelled out by Forge’s Analog device, due to its deep ties with reality (or something like that).

After the spell is broken, Nketi is sentenced to “imprisonment in the deep well for the rest of your natural life”, which sounds awfully Pit-like for Wakanda.

Nuklo is the giant gold guy striding through Phnom Penh in the final panel, as confirmed in the “Next Issue” page. He’s the son of the Golden Age heroes Whizzer and Miss America, introduced in Giant-Size Avengers #1 (1974). Some stories depict him with a learning disability, to varying degrees. He’s a mutant, but he’s never had any involvement in the X-books, and didn’t appear anywhere during the Krakoan era – his last appearance seems to be a crowd scene in Avengers Standoff: Assault on Pleasant Hill Omega (2014). He isn’t normally a giant, but he’s done weird things in the past when powered up by radioactivity.

OTHER CHARACTERS:

Sele is a Wakandan official who claims to work for “the Spirit Archive”, presumably some sort of body charged with preserving magical artefacts. She apparently has authority to condemn people to life imprisonment on the spot. (It is possible that Nketi has been tried in absentia, depending on how long ago he stole this thing, and that Sele is just implementing a decision that somebody else has already taken. Who knows, maybe he gets to appeal.)

OTHER SPECIFICS:

Page 3: “Igubu Lika-Anansi.” This is “Anansi’s drum” in Xhosa.

Page 4 panel 1: “In the picosecond after she dies, I’m thinking…” This non sequitur calls back to the opening line of Sage’s narration in issue #1: “One picosecond after she dies, I’m thinking. Of course I am – I’m always thinking.” Nothing in either issue gives any indication of who “she” is. The suggestion seems to be that Sage is narrating from the standpoint of events flashing before her (with her superhuman processing speed) after some death that we’ve yet to reach.

Page 5 panel 1: “… my cousins getting killed by that thing.” Surge is referring to the fight last issue.

Page 5 panel 2: Niganda is an established neighbour of Wakanda, dating from Reginald Hudlin’s Black Panther run in 2005.

Page 6 panel 2: “They are, minimally, eight hundred years ahead of the best of the rest of humanity.” That’s a massive exaggeration by any standards. The gap between the Black Panther and Reed Richards is not, by any stretch of the imagination, comparable to the gap between Reed Richards and Roger Bacon.

Page 8 panel 1: “The pseudonium boot soles should stabilize our fall. Why in the hell aren’t they…?” Pseudonium is Forge’s artificial vibranium, and its inclusion in the boots as a way of handling falls was mentioned last issue. Since it’s supposed to absorb the impact, I have no idea why Sage thinks it ought to make any difference while they’re in the air.

Page 10 panel 5: “Abafakazi!” Google translates this as “witnesses”, but “intruders” comes to much the same thing in context. It’s Zulu (as is the untranslated line of dialogue on the next page), although a footnote tells us that it’s “ancient Wakandan”.

Page 11 panel 2: “I’m never not analysing, Forge.” Again, a callback to the opening of Sage’s narration in the previous issue.

Page 12 panels 4-5: “A change spell… Xavier database has two refs that apply. Discreet [sic] events in Manhattan and Alaska…” It’s presumably meant to say “discrete”. The footnotes give us the story references, but there’s no actual significance to either of these stories – Sage is just casting about for X-Men stories that involved people or places being magically transformed. Uncanny X-Men #189-191 is the arc where Kulan Gath transforms Manhattan; X-Men & Alpha Flight #1-2 involved Loki turning people into gods.