NYX #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NYX vol 2 #2
Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colour artist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
THE CORE CAST:
Wolverine (Laura) gets the spotlight in this issue. She’s investigating the disappearance of thirty mostly homeless mutants over a few days (though the one we see at the start of the issue seems quite well dressed). As it turns out, they’re all being enlisted voluntarily by Local, of whom more below.
Laura narrates the issue and spends a lot of it reminiscing about Kiden Nixon, one of the main characters from the original NYX series. We hear so much about Kiden in this issue that it seems likely she’ll be showing up in the end. So far as I can see, Kiden hasn’t appeared since an X-23 one-shot in 2010 – at that point she was living on the streets, but that was 15 years ago, so who knows where she is now.
Laura is living in a dilapidated building in East Harlem, which is presumably why Kiden is on her mind. Back in the original NYX, Laura is a teenage prostitute; she kills a client who draws a knife on her, and meets Kiden shortly after. Her pimp then comes after her, and she kills him. Honestly, she doesn’t do a great deal more than that – the first run is only seven issues long, focusses on Kiden, and spends most of its time just introducing the cast. They move into Bobby Soul’s apartment at the end of the series, and most of Laura’s actual friendship with Kiden presumably takes place off panel after NYX #7 and before Laura shows up in Uncanny X-Men (which, due to insane delays on NYX, had actually happened before NYX finished). So basically, this friendship was always implied more than actually depicted.
Quite why Laura is living like this isn’t explained – she could surely find at least some of the other X-Men to hang out with, and come to think of it, where’s Gabby? It seems reasonable to assume that it’s a deliberate choice, and some sort of response to the fall of Krakoa. As in the previous issue, she’s very emphatic that she wants to be left alone. She plays along with Local in order to infiltrate the group, and seems to be enjoying it more than she wants to let on – but still tries to warn off every other mutant she knows about getting involved in this world.
Laura’s encounter with Mr Friend leads her to decide at the end of the issue that she needs to hang out with the rest of the cast after all. Whether that’s because she needs the emotional support or just because she’s realised that she needs to be part of the community in order to disrupt Friend’s plans is left ambiguous – though she does seem to accept that she was wrong to reject Ms Marvel’s offer of alliance.
Ms Marvel, Anole and Sophie Cuckoo are already hanging out at Mr Friend’s bar – apparently just because it’s a mutant-friendly club rather than because they’ve been recruited. Kamala has another stab at being friendly to Laura, with no better results (until the end).
Prodigy stumbles upon Laura and Local attacking a university building and is naturally confused. She tries to warn him off, but her choice of words – “You don’t need to be in this world anymore” – seems to take him aback. There’s an echo of Sophie in the previous issue telling him that, even though he’s devoting his life to teaching about Krakoa, he’s actually left mutant society and assimilated with the humans.
VILLAINS
Mr Friend and his recruiter Local were both seen in the bonus page of issue #1, though that page really doesn’t reveal anything that you aren’t told again in this issue. It’s a traditional Fagin racket, enlisting mutant kids with nowhere else to go after Krakoa to perform petty crimes, in exchange for being part of a group and having somewhere to belong.
Local is the Artful Dodger. He seems to have some sort of powers to influence or synch with the city around him. Laura’s impression is that he genuinely believes he’s helping out mutants in need, and that he’s proud of what he’s doing. By implication, he presumably doesn’t know the truth about Mr Friend, and won’t be happy when he finds out.
Mr Friend turns out to be a retooled Mojo. Mojo continuity is always a train wreck because keeps getting reset to status quo classic off panel. The last time he saw him, he was doing standard Mojoverse things in Ms Marvel: The New Mutant #2. For some reason he’s come to Earth to build a following here (or, perhaps, having wound up on Earth, this is the plan that he’s come up with). Mojo is presented here as much more sinister, and as much more of a serious threat, than he has been in a while. Laura initially tries to treat him as the comedy villain he usually is, only for him to respond by cutting her mouth open (it heals by the end of the issue).
Instead of Mojo’s usual media gimmick, this story plays up his obsession with audiences and how they somehow give him power. The idea seems to be that, by building a mutant community oriented around himself, he can draw on the power of that following and turn their sense of mutant identity into a belief in him.
OTHER CHARACTERS:
The bouncer outside Friend’s nightclub is Mammomax, perennial background loser.
OTHER SPECIFICS:
Page 8 panel 1: The Midnight M is the hand signal that Laura makes in order to get into the bar – previously mentioned, though not named, in the Free Comic Book Day: Blood Hunt / X-Men one-shot. It’s a way for mutants to surreptitiously identify themselves to other mutants.
Page 8 panel 2: The name of the bar, written in Krakoan, is THE DANGER ROOM.
Page 8 panel 3: Mammomax’s dialogue reads RESPECT THIS SACRED LAND – one of the three laws of Krakoa.
Page 8 panel 5: Laura’s reply reads WHATEVER, MAN. She isn’t impressed by this repurposing of Krakoan iconography for a dive bar.
Page 13: “Orchis built this place… The Essex Building…” This building comes from Ms Marvel: The New Mutant. The Orchis logo has been replaced by an “ESU” one after the defeat of Orchis; if it’s still officially called the Essex Building, then presumably nobody associates that name with Dr Stasis.
Page 14 panel 4: “I kill vampires. I drink with pop stars. I run the jungles of the Wild Hunt.” The first two are probably referencing the X-Terminators mini from the Krakoan era, while the Wild Hunt was an area of Krakoa. Basically, all Laura’s answers to “what do you do for fun” are linked to the Krakoan period, if not strictly to Krakoa itself.
Note that Kamala tells Laura that the Krakoan is a telekinetic twenty something white boy with a green glow. That should be enough information for Laura to realize that the Krakoan is Hellion. But has she already figured that out?
Laura uses the alias Scratch. That’s a reference to Wolverine’s Patch identity. I guess Daken’s and Gabby’s identities are Match and Catch. 🙂
The idea of Mojo using belief to enhance his power comes from Longshot 6.
It’s nice to have a dangerous Mojo again. Although I wish they would have included the “anti-life” aspect of Mojo- it’s creepy when things around him die.
Speaking of which, I guess it’s not still the case that if Mojo stays on Earth too long, the planet will die, since he was stranded on Earth after X-Men Blue. It might have been better if Laura and friends had, say, ninety days to get Mojo off Earth before Earth is destroyed.
Somehow the scene at the end with Kamala dancing in a nightclub wearing what looked like a short skirt and fishnets seemed out of character.
Mojo continuity is always a train wreck because he can also appear out of temporal order, I think… like, because he’s uniquely multiversal and cross-temporal sometimes you can get a past or future Mojo. Or a clone. Or whatever.
Laura’s character is oddly flexible–sometimes she’s brooding loner, sometimes quippy party girl, so it’s hard to write off her dancing as anything unusual.
Maybe, after failing to deal with Mojo the stabby way, she’s trying to lull him into a false sense of security by partying? I dunno.
I will never be able to encounter Mammomax without recalling this gem of Paul’s reviewing:
“Kyle and Yost finally seem to be getting their psychopathic tendencies under control. Strictly speaking, they didn’t quite manage to contain themselves for the whole story – they bumped off Mammomax in part 2 in a cheap attempt to crank up the drama. But hey, it’s Mammomax. Who really cares?
Dead elephant notwithstanding…”
http://web.archive.org/web/20081113211447/http://www.thexaxis.com/newxmen/newxmen36.htm
Hey here’s something. What if Gwenpool appears in NYX?
Gwenpool retconned herself into being a mutant, and joined Krakoa, to keep her own character in circulation.
She got this idea from Ms Marvel, who was later retconned into being a mutant, and joined Krakoa, to keep the character in circulation*.
Those guys should definitely have another chat.
* and for synergy with the MCU, but whatever
After the trauma of losing Krakoa, I think it makes sense that Laura would cut herself off from her friends and throw herself into preventing other mutants from being hurt. She doesn’t want to let anyone get that close for fear of losing them violently. Laura joining the other characters at the end is clearly so that she can have a team backing her up, but I think she’s trying to join this new group while telling herself it’s strictly professional. I like how she told Local she likes dancing mostly to give him an answer that didn’t give away her identity or mission, and used dancing as a means to get close to the other main characters (while probably enjoying it despite herself) at the end.
The last appearance I can recall of Kiden was in the Utopia-era X-Force/Cable Crossover, when an aged version of her was being used to maintain a temporal dam. Laura had to kill her, which was probably not great for her.
Overall, I guess I liked this issue more than the previous one, though I could still take it or leave it. I’ve never been that into “Young X-Men” stories, and am mostly here for the Lanzing/Kelly writing, after I really enjoyed their Guardians of the Galaxy run. I’ll probably keep reading, but it was definitely the last thing I read this week after the new X-Men and X-Force.
[…] #2. (Annotations here.) Looks like we’re doing the approach of spotlight issues on each character, which is fine, but […]
That logo with the giant X just looks weird to me
Yes, the oversized X doesn’t work. Also, why does Wolverine have a big M on her costume?
I think the big X would work better if we were looking at the logo straight on. Since it’s angling away from us, the letters are supposed to progressively get smaller to preserve the illusion. Changing that progression 3 letters in just makes them each look randomly sized.
Worse, it’s really easy to read the logo as one word, so you’re already doing visual work to keep the letters separate. For such a simple title, the logo is surprisingly bad.
Laura looks like she’s ready to kill that logo for beating her costume in an ugly contest.
I wonder if Laura will also reflect on Talon dying or if she basically is treating her as completely unrelated to her, and she will never be spoken about again. They are keeping quiet about whether Synch will appear soon though.