X-Men #6 annotations
We’re going to be running off the normal schedule for the next couple of weeks, so expect things to be running a few days late. As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #6
“Bark”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Cyclops is team leader, chairing the X-Men’s meeting. He’s a little more reluctant than Magneto to acknowledge Ben and Jennifer as proper mutants, but does accept them.
Temper spots that one of the protestors outside the Factory – and they’re a small group – has a child who makes the “Midnight Bark” (or “Midnight M”) hand signal at her. Rather than tell Cyclops, she decides to take maters into her own hands and asks Magik to help, presumably seeing her as someone else who likely to agree. Note that she doesn’t go to Kid Omega, her ex, who had already made clear to her that he wasn’t really interested in messing with the protestors. She evidently isn’t put off by the warnings that she might start some sort of incident by taking matters into her own hands.
Magik‘s long distance chess game from issue #4 gets another mention – her opponent in that story apeared to be Colossus. The game is apparently something she’s keeping private, but she doesn’t seem that upset that Temper knows about it. She seems mainly amused by Temper’s response to the girl – she cautions that it could be a PR trap but seems quite happy to leave it up to Temper to decide what to do about it. The risk of starting an outright fight with O*N*E doesn’t really seem to bother her either.
Kid Omega no longer feels motivated to use his powers to screw with the protestors for the sake of it (which is the sort of thing Gerry Duggan-era Emma Frost would do casually). He seems to be growing out of it.
Psylocke and Juggernaut are there for the team meeting.
SUPPORTING CAST:
The Beast is trying his best to serve his role as team scientist – and seems to be doing perfectly well – but gently reminds everyone that his memories date from several years in the past, so he’s actually a bit behind the cutting edge. He’s finding that another source of frustration.
Magneto is quite happy to accept that anyone who has an X-gene is a mutant, no matter how they got it, and is quite insistent that the X-Men take the same line. There is a precedent for this in Krakoa, where Mr Sinister was accepted as a mutant on the basis that he had added a mutant gene to his own body. Magneto also seems to have in mind that 3K’s technique could be used to cure his own power loss, and clearly that might inform his view that Ben and Jennifer are true mutants. (We still don’t know exactly what happened to him.)
Xorn and Glob Herman are both there for the team meeting. Glob seems to be responsible for catering, and is very happy with his work.
Benjamin Liu is awake and apparently stable after last issue’s psychic rescue. He decides to stay at the Factory for now, if only because he ruined his life when he was mentally unstable (prior to issue #2) and has nowhere else to go.
Jennifer Starkey, from issue #4, also decides to stay at the Factory, if only because she fears for her safety if she goes home.
Piper Cobb is the mutant girl who attracts Temper’s attention, and it’s her first appearance. She claims that she attracted a Wild Sentinel to the town, which is apparently the disaster that led to the giant disabled Sentinel looming over the town – we’ve heard about this since issue #1 but still don’t know the details. Piper describes this event as the “Iron Night”.
VILLAINS:
3K don’t appear in this issue, but are discussed at length. The fact that Cassandra Nova was last seen stuck in the distant past in Marauders has not been forgotten – Psylocke specifically flags it as a mystery. Our attention is also drawn to the fact that the six Fourth School mutants were abducted by 3K in issue #1 (which the X-Men don’t know for sure, but correctly guess), while Ben and Jennifer were released into the wider world for some reason. Beast suggests that they might be viewed as failed experiments, or 3K might be monitoring them in some way.
Rose Ellen Cobb is Piper’s mother; she’s a grassroots anti-mutant protestor who genuinely believes the conspiracy theory about a mutant contagion, but she doesn’t seem to be anything worse than that. For my purposes, she qualifies as a villain by showing up outside the X-Men’s house to wave a placard about, but she seems to be basically just gullible and well-intentioned. She does misquote Cyclops, but she seems genuinely to believe what she’s saying (see below).
Fabian Cortez gets a passing mention, when the Beast suggests that his power-manipulation abilities might help Magneto. As Beast says, the two “have history”, but it’s not particularly positive – Cortez basically exploited Magneto’s name and reputation to build a power base as leader of the Acolytes. Still, they did work together on Krakoa.
The Truthseekers are mentioned as the source of the videos that Rose watches. The video we saw in issue #3 was indeed captioned as a “Truthseeker expose”. We’ve also seen the Truthseekers as a (rather more suspect) grass roots anti-mutant activist group in NYX.
The Wild Sentinel is how Piper describes the giant Sentinel still looming over the town. The Wild Sentinels were the self-building version of the Sentinels who first debuted in New X-Men #114, though they tended to have weird and haphazard shapes, while this one seems conventionally humanoid.
REFERENCES:
Page 5 panel 2: “Sure, I could get in their heads. Dig up the dirty, petty thoughts about each other that everyone has, put those thoughts in their mouths…” Kid Omega may be referring to his disruption of the UN General Assembly in X-Men: Schism #1, right at the end of his career as a villain.
Page 6 panel 2: “We have encountered adult-onset mutants on three occasions. The Orchis Fourth School agents in Santo Marco. Benjamin Liu in San Francisco. And Jennifer Starkey in Detroit.” Issues #1, #2 and #4 respectively.
Page 6 panel 3: “We also have a sample … collected in Santo Marco by Magik.” She cut off one of the Fourth School mutants’ hands on page 27 of issue #1.
Page 7 panel 1: “We now know that there is no ‘mutant contagion’.” The rumour started after issue #2.
Page 10 panel 2: “Welcome to the species, you two. I hope you… You know what? Forget it.” Magik is about to deliver the “Welcome to the X-Men, I hope you survive the experience” line.
Page 10 panel 4: “I remember when you were a budding mutant terrorist…” In the Omega Gang, circa New X-Men #135. Quentin glosses over the fact that he was the group’s leader.
Page 13 panel 1: “Our cold war with O*N*E”. As mentioned in issue #3.
Page 15 panel 1: “That Scott Summers… bold as brass in San Francisco, admitting that they’re infecting us…” Rose is referring to Scott talking to Ben Liu in issue #2, when he said that Ben had developed mutant powers as an adult. In issue #3, Agent Lundqvist said this conversation had been on social media and that it had sparked the “mutant disease” theory. So Rose is misquoting Scott, but it’s not entirely clear whether she’s seen the video herself or merely heard about it second hand.
Page 15 panel 2: “I had a crush on Cyclops, when we were the same age.” Temper is referring to the All-New X-Men / X-Men Blue period, in which the Silver Age X-Men were brought to the present day as teenagers and stayed for an absurdly long time before being sent back home. Temper was part of the cast of All-New X-Men vol 2 along with the Silver Age team.
“Ben and Jennifer”
Sounds familiar.
I don’t understand why characters are confused to see Nova in the present. Do they not realize how time works? They stranded her in the distant past, yes, but it’s not the distant past any longer. If Cassandra Nova is immortal, then she’d find herself in the present day now. That’s how time works.
It would’ve been an incredibly long wait for Nova, but it wouldn’t seem incredibly long for characters who are living in the present because it is currently the present. The only way stranding an individual in the past would work is if that person would die long before the present time.
This mystery is the equivalent of seeing someone a week ago at their house and being shocked that you run into them again. “How can you be here? A week ago, you were at your house, not here.”
Benifer yes, but also Piper and Rose should stand out for anyone who watched Doctor Who. I guess the writer is playing silly games. Still, it didn’t stop Wiccan and Hulkling from becoming solid B-listers.
Well, that’s a big if. Why should anyone assume she is immortal? And if she is and she just waited two billion years, why wait until now instead of making her move in the Silver Age?
I’m pretty sure it was established that Nova was immortal. She has no actual physical form. She is a parasitic entity which exists on the astral plane, she creates her own body with her mind.
Which is the problem with leaving a character in the past. Why didn’t they simply change the past so that mutants would never evolve or something along those lines? It was a very stupid move on Kate’s part.
Re: Quentin deciding not to mess with the protestors’ minds- Maybe he IS finally growing up. Or he could still be depressed about Sabretooth and Phoebe like he was list issue. Then again, maybe he thinks that Phoebe helping the other Cuckoos causally mess with people’s minds is what led to her becoming an Evil Dominatrix.(Again, it would be nice to get some clarification on what Quentin knows about Phoebe.)
It’s weird that Illyana needed Idie to tell her a secret in order to put one person to sleep when Strange routinely puts dozens of people to sleep without seemingly any price. Then again, maybe Illyana was lying and just wanted to know one of Idie’s secrets.
Magneto saying that he and Scott won’t allow Beast to turn evil is kind of funny, considering they failed to prevent Beast Prime from turning evil.
I’ve heard it theorized that Piper isn’t the mutant but her mother is but I doubt that theory.
Personally, I think that the Wild Sentinel was sent by the Sugar Man. Piper could somehow be part of 3K’s experiment that created the adult mutants and we know Sugar Man was looking for more information on that. And the Sugar Man used to work with Dark Beast- so it’s possible that whatever the Wild Sentinel used on Magneto that caused him to lose his powers was a weapon developed by Dark Beast. That would explain why Beast is having so much trouble reversing it.
Breevort said that he didn’t want references to complicated continuity but here we are referring to the mess with Beast and young Cyclops time traveling to the future.
Magik’s magic is mostly learned from Belasco in Limbo. It is hardly surprising that it has a cost. Even Doctor Strange has been shown to pay prices for his magic fairly often – and he was the Sorcerer Supreme, presumably capable of using exceptions of all kinds.
Magneto and Scott are forewarned about Beast. It makes sense that they expect to avoid the previous mistakes.
The Jason Aaron run on Dr. Strange explained that Strange has to pay a price for any magic he performed. I’m pretty sure that has been widely ignored since Aaron.
I can understand it being ignored as it was completely different rules for using magic then had been shown before with the character (where he might end up having to pay back past use of magic or do so on a certain occasion, but not that he paid a price for every time he used magic). Still, there is that example, and I enjoyed the Aaron run, regardless.
One possible explanation for Cassandra Nova living through the intervening time, yet not acting until now: She wants revenge on the people who stranded her. In order for that revenge to be meaningful to her, those people have to *exist*, so she can’t change the timeline prior to her exile. And the period immediately after her exile was complicated by the whole Fall of X business. While that was going on, she was setting up 3K, for reasons as yet unrevealed.
Quentin definitely felt depressed to me when he deigned to mess with the protesters.
I think we’re supposed to read some sort of connection or spark between Hank and Jennifer so it may be interesting to see if a relationship develops.
I wonder how mutants are supposed to know of the Midnight M hand signal and non-mutants are not, like how does word spread. What’s to keep anti-mutant activists from using it for their own nefarious purposes? It just doesn’t seem to be a terribly subtle or well-hidden hand sign and I’d like to know what sort of underground communications exist to pass along the knowledge to only the right people.
It’s nice to see Quentin and Glob reference their shared past, as the only remaining “active” members of the former Omega Gang (since it’s anyone’s guess what’s happened to the rest since, even if Krakoa brought back the ones who died in the short-lived New Warriors reboot…)
Jesus, these covers. Switch The positions of Temper and Magik, center the X-Men logo, and move the Marvel box back to the top left corner, and this would actually look like a proper cover. What very odd design choices.
@The Other Michael- In fact, in NYX, a mutant was killed because he made the Midnight M sign to the wrong person. And in Exceptional X-Men, Melee makes the Midnight M sign to Axo and he thinks she’s making gang signs at him.
@Maxwell’s Hammer: I agree. They’re devoting the most valuable shelf-visible corner to a giant sword. Not great.
And as long as we’re critiquing: if Illyana has to wear that stupid costume in Alaska of all places, can it at least look like it’s not falling off her malnourished body? Her shorts are about 75% belt in that image, after all.
@Thom H: Good thing Temper is shooting out fire to keep her warm.
Or maybe further dramatize the height of the platform they’re on, and bring down the X-Men logo to pop up over a bevy of pointed guns?
It does feel like there’s a lot of empty space that’s more than slightly off balance…
I like the gradual characterization I think, and I reckon this title has the most recognizable concepts at it’s core.
But I’m maybe struggling a bit with the pacing, when everything feels so slow and uneventful throughout the line as a whole.
[…] #6. (Annotations here.) So we’re starting to draw together the threads from the various single issue stories to date […]
I thought Magik got a new gold suit. I suppose it got left at the Krakoan laundromat and she had to use the one she had in the closet?
It must have burned in a Blackbird crash.
Probably along with the rejuvenated, visibly younger Magneto.