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.
As someone in the humanities somewhere adjacent to what David is supposed to be doing here, everything he was writing felt incredibly undercooked. Very much felt like a lazy version of non-academic trying and failing to replicate the vibe of theory talk.
I hear folks on the not even slightly persuasive theoretical notes, which could have done either with some actual research into the parallels being drawn (ie, separatism, integration/assimilation, the ethics of violence as a means of resistant, para-militarism, etc), or some rhetoric flair and further flourishes…
But I’m not checking comic books about inherited yet randomly activated genes that make you into a humanoid shark for their lack of scientific precision.
More than anything I appreciate that some of these terms are explicitly brought into the conversation, even if David’s solution is largely meaningless – in part because the recognition of the X-Men as a privatized paramilitary force has been done already, with Mike Carey’s dive into Xavier’s history.
(You could also ask what the heck the “X-Men” refers, even in universe: how is it even recognizable throughourout all the schisms and permutations…?)
But I love everything about this comic emotionally, how driven the characters are by the loss of Krakoa and the mess that follows, how the different perspectives are clear cut and compelling…
It’s one of a few post-Morrisson comics that feels like it takes part in that same messy world that somehow includes Beast as an Avenger, District X, the Morlocks as disposable mutants, and too many generations of Sentinels to count.
It feels embedded in the lore in a way a lot of titles don’t right now, and I appreciate that a lot.
I think this and Exceptional are the only titles so far I’m actually (cautiously) excited about.
That being said (in all its messy typos and sleepy logic: sorry!), I do feel I may be a bit stupid: I actually read the “Resist” triangle as a “lesson” David was sharing with the Cuckoos to break Empath’s hold over them (ie, resist *him*), but that maybe doesn’t quite gel with what we see on page…
Quick question. Does this series so far really have anything to do with New York? I’m only following this series through the annotations, but it just seems like this storyline doesn’t have much to do with New York specifically, apart from the fact that the characters just happen to be there.
@Moo: it’s about New York about as much as Utopia was about San Francisco, I guess. There’s some sense of setting (large university/college context, Kamala’s popularity and visibility as Ms Marvel, a certain sense of scale in terms of different things and factions in movement, the new Morlocks community). But I wouldn’t hold that agagainst the title, per se.
“against”, even.
But why do you ask?
What is mutant culture? Can it even form, given the ebb and flow of mutant population numbers and the stops and starts of mass movements? Why can’t mutants break the cycles of violence within their subgroups?
The questions raised in NYX are more interesting than anything happening in the rest of the line right now. David is attempting to rebuild\establish mutant culture through academia and street art. His pacifism makes sense, given what happens when mutants fight mutants and humans counter with Sentinels. As naive as this position can be, his regret when he can’t avoid getting involved in another stupid fight is believable and poignant.
@ Moo: one of the reasons this book is set in NYC is its emphasis on intersecting subcultures. NYC has been the birthplace of a ton of artistic movements. Additionally, it’s been central to the Marvel Universe since its inception, it has colleges and clubs, and it’s a city with street crime. I suppose it could be another big city, but NYC is iconic.
Exceptional has potential, but at two issues I’m still waiting to get hooked. With NYX I was hooked by the end of issue one, to the point, where I’m a little apprehensive reading new issues. Is this where the shine will come off? Will this book disappoint me like so many others?
So far it hasn’t happened. The Julian/David fight wasn’t great, but I don’t come to NYX for fight scenes.
[…] #4. (Annotations here.) This is David’s spotlight issue, and the basic idea is fine: he recognises that mutant […]
@Mike Loughlin
I’m not asking why the book is set in New York. Traditionally, most Marvel books are. But the other Marvel books aren’t called NYFF and NYSpidey, right? Yet this book is called NYX. With that in mind, it seems to me that the NY part of the title should amount to more than just “Because that’s where the characters live.” But from what I’ve been reading in the annotations, the fact that the book is set in New York isn’t especially crucial to the book’s premise, and I’m suggesting that it should be if you’re going to call the thing NYX. Might as well just call it X if the setting is no more significant here than it is in any other Marvel title.
@Moo- it’s also a reference to the fact that the series where Laura debuted was called NYX, and Laura is one of the characters in this series.
@Michael
I’m aware of that. Doesn’t change the fact that these characters could be living in Dallas or Seattle for all the difference it would make to the current storyline.
What a weirdly specific thing to pick up on.
The rationale for the title or any X-Men adjacent series is sketchy at best, with Krakoa extending to the repurposing of “Marauders” and “Hellions”, while we’re all very much used to describing to one of the lines core titles as “Adjectiveless” at this point.
(As opposed to “Uncanny”, “New”, “Extraordinary”, “Astonishing”, “Exceptional”, ou “actually just Mid”).
It’s a book about different characters finding themselves in the same city and trying to make sense of their lives and of their identities as mutants after the complete disappearance of their (newfound, highly problematic) homeland.
The class David is teaching in the very first issue, if I’m not misremembering, is about “the mutant diaspora”, for that matter.
It’s not as direct as the initial iteration of the title, sure – but you can see how these all lign up?
@Moo: you asked: “Does this series so far really have anything to do with New York? I’m only following this series through the annotations, but it just seems like this storyline doesn’t have much to do with New York specifically, apart from the fact that the characters just happen to be there.”
Salloh, Michael, and I provided answers beyond “cuz they live there.” You don’t have to agree with our answers, but the question was answered. Disregarding our responses regarding NYC’s history and status in the MU, iNYC’s cultural/diversity status and history, the idea that someone is teaching about a diaspora in a place to which millions of people emigrated, and NYC being a center of academia does not support any argument you are trying to make. If you want to argue that NYC does not play a role in the series, a) read the book, and b) engage with the points others have made.
A simple “no” would have sufficed. I could’ve done without the “New York 101” lesson or The History of New York’s Significance to the Marvel Universe and its Characters as though I’d: (1 Just stepped off a spaceship, and 2) Never read a Marvel Comic in my life. I live in Canada, not the Negative Zone.
Marvel’s editors seem really stuck in some decades-old trope sensibility that “clones are always evil, mkay?” They keep trying to force the Cuckoos to be, no matter how much it doesn’t jibe with 99% of their portrayals, and poor Ben Reilly over in the Spidey office can’t catch a break for more than 10 minutes over the past 10 years.
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@Moo: “No” isn’t a correct answer to your question. You’ve been given valid answers, but just insist for some reason on pretending otherwise.
@Glenn H. Morrow- Esme reverting to villainy arguably works- she was a villain in Morrison’s run, even though Duggan wrote her more sympathetically.
The problem is Phoebe- none of the Cuckoos other than Phoebe were given much dialogue during Fall of X. But it’s blindingly obvious that when Percy and Lavelle were writing Sabretooth War they had no idea Phoebe was supposed to become a villain in NYX. And NYX came out just two months after Sabreooth War. Such an extreme change in character in such a small time taking place off-panel is just bad writing.
Magneto got rejuvenated only to be turned old and powerless in Ashes. It’s clear that most if not all of the new writers had no idea how the previous guard would finish their stories.
It really gives me great confidence in Brevoort as an editor of the line.
@Kryzsiek- in fairness, Breevort has said we’re going to find out what happened to Magneto tomorrow. And Beast’s dialogue leaves open the possibility that Cortez can cure Magneto.
I agree that the coordination between the previous teams and the incoming teams was poor- which is why Xavier had to be absolved of murder and Maddie and Alex split up in contrived ways in the Infinity Comics and Warren lost his ability to turn into Archangel off panel. Ayodele even said that he had no clue what happened to Arakko when he was writing the first issue of Storm because no one told him how Fall of the House of X ended. But the Magneto thing seems to be deliberate.
@Kryzsiek- on second thought, you were right- judging by spoilers from Bleeding Cool, it’s obvious MacKay had no clue how Resurrection of Magneto ended when he wrote the first few issues of X-Men.