NYX #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NYX vol 2 #4
Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly
Artist: Enid Balám
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Colour artist: Raúl Angulo
Editor: Annalise Bissa
THE CORE CAST:
David Alleyne is the spotlight character in this issue. As strongly indicated in earlier issues, he’s responsible for the various mutant-themed street art that we’ve seen in the background throughout the series. He wears a costume when making his art, and shows up in the same costume to fight the Krakoan during the story.
At first, he refuses to help Kamala against the Krakoan, even though Kamala only wants him to come along and try to talk sense into Julian as an old friend (which would be a stretch, but she doesn’t know that). David claims that his “position requires a very careful balance” and that he can’t be seen in that sort of role. Kamala interprets this as David being unwilling to compromise his own comfort, and decides that Sophie’s sell-out accusations in issue #1 were correct. However, when Ms Marvel is clearly losing to Julian, and nobody else shows up to help, David does indeed intervene, and both of them wind up being arrested. David assumes that this will cost him his job with the university, but for the moment it’s just an assumption.
The narration in this issue consists largely of David’s “lecture notes” (which read more like brainstorming sessions). Very broadly speaking, his key points seem to be:
- Mutant culture is rooted in the superhero/supervillain paradigm, and by extension in violence.
- Mutant culture has been stuck in a binary choice of Professor X’s integration and Magneto’s domination, both of which have failed. Krakoa offered a third choice of separatism, which also failed (at least for people who didn’t want to emigrate to the White Hot Room).
- Mutants have been unable to live among other people and, in trying to do so, are left with only their inner lives as the remnants of mutant community.
- Another path needs to be found for mutants which breaks out of these binaries.
- Humans (or at least human authorities) are reasonably to be assumed to be hostile, if not outright genocidal.
While fighting the Krakoan, he claims that mutant culture belongs to all the remaining mutants, and identifies it with the X-Men rather than with Krakoa. Broadly speaking, what David seems to want is a peaceful mutant subculture that can exist within human society, but he has no idea of how to actually achieve it.
The computer screen in his office is running a video entitled “Remember the X: 10 hours of Krakoan landscape”, which apparently plays in full.
Ms Marvel has figured out, with Sophie’s “help”, that the Krakoan is actually Julian Keller. But Kamala isn’t an idiot and realises that Sophie is setting her up – Sophie’s efforts are apparently a bit clumsy. Her reaction is to fight the Krakoan anyway (since he’s apparently going to commit a terrorist attack) and try to persuade Sophie to switch sides at the same time. She considers herself to be New York’s mutant super hero, and correctly concludes that the Krakoan’s obvious signalling of his next attack is intended to lure her out. At any rate, this is the reason she gives to David; she might actually have come to the conclusion based on Sophie’s behaviour, but she doesn’t share her suspicions about Sophie with David.
Sophie does actually vacillate about changing sides, but her four sisters convince her to stick with the plan. She seems increasingly unconvinced about her side by the end of the issue.
Anole and Wolverine (Laura) have brief cameos watching the fight unfold.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Dante, David’s boyfriend, may not know about his art; he’s asleep when David comes back at night by sneaking in the window.
Sandra Stashwick is the Dean of ESU; presumably she’s the woman we see shaking hands with David in flashback on page 1 and saying “We’re so honoured to have someone like you lead this Department”. Judging from David’s phone call with her on page 8, she’s slightly panicky about mutants and supports some sort of city proposal for “mutant housing”. She seems to think that David will have some insight into “the mutant rumour mill”.
The Morlocks appear with Anole in a single panel, reacting to the fight (which they’re watching on an iPad). Caliban and Loolo are recognisable, along with a bunch of generics.
Kamala’s parents Yusuf Khan and Muneeba Khan, and her brother Aamir Khan, appear in a single panel, waching the fight on TV along with the stridently anti-mutant cousin Bilal. Kamala’s mother is much more concerned about Ms Marvel.
VILLAINS:
The Krakoan attacks Times Square in what’s intended to be a trap for Ms Marvel. The idea seems to be to lure her into a public fight with the Krakoan, though it’s not entirely clear what this is actually meant to achieve – Prodigy’s intervention was not part of the original plan, so we don’t exactly know how things were meant to pan out. Surely there was more to the plan than just “start a fight to make mutants look bad in public”, because that’s just baseline stuff in the Marvel Universe. (And the writers know that, because David points it out on page 1.) David sees the purpose of the stunt as being to force him back into the binary role that he’s been trying to find a way out of, but that doesn’t answer the question of how it contributes to their long term goals.
According to Ms Marvel, the Krakoan’s seemingly random terrorist attacks on trains have been (1) forming an X pattern to lead her to his next attack, (2) taking place at regular intervals, and (3) have all involved the death of people involved in the city government, suggesting that he’s actually committing a series of assassinations under the guise of terrorism. We don’t know who, if anyone, he was supposed to kill during his Times Square attack.
The Stepford Cuckoos – the other four – lean heavily on Sophie to stick with the original plan. This is somehow supposed to lead to mutants taking revenge on humanity and seizing control of Manhattan. They claim that coexistence has failed (apparently meaning separatism) and appear to have concluded that conquest is the only route to mutant survival. Interestingly, they still seem to recognise that allying themselves with Empath is a questionable move. They seem to consider him an unwitting frontman for their plan.
It’s not clear why Phoebe, who’s been a broadly sympathetic character for years, is going along with this, but it may simply be connected with the sisters’ personalities being subsumed into one another the longer they stay together. (Or perhaps Empath is having a greater effect on them than they think.) Certainly, Sophie’s doubts seem to be connected with the fact that she’s separated from the others, though it might also just be that she’s dealing directly with the people she’s expected to manipulate.
Empath, consistent with the way the Cuckoos talk about him, is hanging around in the background acting as if he’s in charge, but not actually contributing a great deal.
OTHER REFERENCES:
Page 4 panel 5: “Moira MacTaggert, the one who tried to kill the rest of us. And in my case, succeeded.” Prodigy was among the mutants killed in the 2023 Hellfire Gala.
Page 4 panel 8: “You’re the one protecting the oppressor now, Professor Alleyne.” This is a flashback to Sophie interrupting David’s lecture in issue #1. The art in this version has Kamala as rather more obviously shocked by Sophie’s comments than she was in the original scene.
Page 6 panel 2: “Which also failed, at least for everyone who didn’t want to leave this dimension.” Krakoa, seemingly with the majority of the mutant population, has been permanently exiled to the White Hot Room since X-Men #35. We seem to be gently downplaying the idea that only a minority of mutants chose to stay, though not outright contradicting it.
Page 9 panel 2: The other characters in the photo, alongside Hellion and Prodigy, are Icarus (with the red wings), and three more indistinct figures. The gold faceless figure in the back right is probably a blurry Elixir, going purely by the skin tone. Since the others appear to be in New Mutants uniforms, going purely by their hair colour, they’re probably meant to be Surge (with the black hair) and Wind Dancer (front right).
Page 9 panel 3: “Julian’s had a hard life. Kept his identity a secret. His parents were hell – and rich enough to take everything from him.” Julian’s back story largely comes from New X-Men: Hellions #1.
Page 11 panel 5: “Hey Sophie, remember when you said all that mean stuff to Professor Alleyne in class…” Issue #1 again.
Page 12 panel 1: For some reason, one of the video screens in Times Square is showing an image of Gwenpool (who is a mutant these days). Also, note that the random bystanders on the left side of the panel have the pink flashes that suggest they’re under telepathic influence. Possibly Sophie is trying to make them clear the area.
Page 12 panel 2: David’s ten-hours-of-Krakoa video seems to be showing some sort of image of a meeting chamber, though the Quiet Council chamber didn’t actually look like this.
Page 13 panel 1: “Welcome to die.” It’s a line of dialogue given to Magneto in the 1992 X-Men arcade game. Don’t ask how that works in the sliding timeline. (Though if you want to be boringly literal, nobody actually says it’s from an X-Men game in this universe.)
Page 15 panel 1: “We shouldve sent Esme. No chance of a misplaced conscience there.” Esme was the Cuckoo who aligned herself with Kid Omega and Magneto back in the Grant Morrison run. Phoebe may be hinting that Esme is dominating the supposedly-equal group again (as she did in that arc, because she was using Kick to boost her powers).
Page 16 panel 4: “You have new gods!” The Krakoan is referencing Magneto’s line to the human ambassadors from House of X #1.
Page 13 panel 3: Prodigy is using the “Red triangle” psychic defence taught to the X-Men, most prominently used in the Hellfire Gala 2023 one-shot.
Page 13 panel 5: “I’m an omega-level mutant”. Julian Keller isn’t an omega-level mutant, whatever he may claim here, but he is a powerful telekinetic.
Page 24 panel 2: “Even Professor Xavier took the fight to the humans!” The Krakoan is taking at face value Professor X’s alliance with Nimrod during Rise of the Powers of X.
Page 26 panel 2: Graymalkin Prison. The former X-Men Mansion, as seen in Uncanny X-Men. I think this is the first time we’ve seen it mentioned as a destination for regular old captured supervillains, but the prison itself is not secret, so presumably this is at the very least how it’s presented to the public.
It’s kind of weird that Kamala went from “We’ve got to go to an arcade” to “Oh, by the way, killing half a dozen people is not cool” with Sophie in just a few panels.
Last issue, Sophie implied that encouraging Kamala to be self-righteous was part of the plan. It’s not clear how Kamala being self-righteous would have made much difference in this issue, since it’s hard to imagine Kamala NOT trying to stop Julian from committing murder under any circumstances. Maybe Sophie hoped that Kamala would join them willingly? Or maybe it will make more sense when we find out the whole plan?
A lot of readers felt that it made no sense for David to win the fight with Julian the way he did. (Lanzing and Kelly didn’t exactly help themselves by talking about how this book doesn’t present the straight white male perspective.) Julian is a telekinetic- he should have been able to easily defeat Prodigy by levitating him in the air or something. But instead he gets tangled in a grappling hook which he can’t remove telekinetically for some reason and David jumps on him and he can’t telekinetically throw David off. (Plus the way David was using his grappling hook seemed physically impossible.)
This fight was bad. We’re not talking Hulk-beaten-by-a-snake or Namor-defeated-by-leeches bad but it’s close. The annoying thing is that there WERE ways David could have defeated Julian without it looking contrived- he could have used flash bangs to break his concentration or drugged him somehow. But not in a fight like this.
The annoying thing is that 40 years ago, Roger Stern was writing the West Coast Avengers limited series and he wanted to have Mockingbird play a key role in Graviton’s defeat to show she could be an Avenger. But he didn’t want to insult the reader’s intelligence or make Graviton look weak, so he had Bobbi drug Graviton and the drugs weakened Graviton but due to his unique physiology, he remains conscious and he battles the Avengers, including Bobbi, for the rest of the issue. This issue is the kind of thing that would have been mercilessly mocked 40 years ago.
it’s funny. When Justice was on trial for killing his father, the prosecutor argued that Justice didn’t have to use lethal force because an experienced telekinetic superhero should be able to defeat an opponent who can’t fly and doesn’t have ranged attacks just by levitating them away. But in practice, the writers often don’t let that happen. This issue is a good example.
A lot of readers didn’t like the idea that Julian was able to knock the Cuckoos out and give them nosebleeds just by resisting them with the Red Triangle protocol. In fairness, it was mentioned in the Hellfire Gala that the protocol was designed specifically to counter Emma, and the Cuckoos are clones of Emma, so maybe it affects them worse than other telepaths.
I get that the idea is that David was arrested because he’s mutant and black. But Julian, who was wanted for half a dozen murders, was attacking Kamala on national television, so David should have easily been able to prove defense-of-others.
I’m of two minds about the Cuckoos and especially Phoebe turning evil. The problem with Emma Frost is that her backstory involves her abusing Jimmy and Angelica. But writers often still have her act in an abusively, often sexual, matter toward people who “deserve” it. For example, during Fall of the House of X, she made an Orchis goon act like a doggie. Of course, in real life, telling an abuser, it’s okay if you abuse people as long as they deserve it is one of the worst things you can tell people. It would be like if Hank Pym were to go around beating up captured villainesses like the Enchantress, Mystique or Moonstone, and the story portrayed it as a good thing.But Emma is probably too popular to be changed.
Now, we’ve seen the Cuckoos follow in Emma’s footsteps. For example. in Marauders, they react to a drunk calling them muties by making him punch himself in the face and considered making him forget math. And we see in issues 1 and 3 that the Cuckoos are abusing humans they’ve enslaved. So implying that the Cuckoos’ abusive tendencies led them to evil is a way of criticizing Emma’s behavior, and Lanzing and Kelly can get away with it because they’re less popular than Emma.
But Phoebe has been portrayed as Quentin’s loving girlfriend for the past few years. Having her turn evil off panel seems like a big stretch. Yes. she had it the worst of the Cuckoos during Fall of X- she was trapped comatose at the site of the gala for months and then Quentin died. But then Quentin came back and she left him to play super-villain with her sisters and Empath. Phoebe is basically doing the opposite of what any woman whose boyfriend came back to life would do.
Well, that’s great. The X-Men concept has failed for sixty years to accomplish anything and that’s David’s best solution. Unless he’s simply accepted that “mutant culture” is rooted in violence (perhaps in a meta-commentary) and given up on the idea of moving beyond this status quo.
Perhaps he’s just confused, which is fair enough, but his lecture notes already pointed out the failure of this type of “mutant culture”.
We also known that the existence of Krakoa would have eventually lead to mutant dominance (life 10A). It embraced mutant separatism but not isolationism, which Moira attempted in her Life Four, only to find that it didn’t work.
Granted, none of the characters would know this fact.