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

Oh, and this week’s last set of annotations – X-Factor #4 – should be up on Saturday.

X-FORCE vol 7 #5
“One Second Later”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramanga
Editor: Mark Basso

X-FORCE:

Surge heroically sacrifices herself to stop Nuklo, and we see a body.

Sage is very unhappy that Forge hasn’t come up with a way to avoid this, but both Forge and Surge seem to accept that this isn’t within his control. The basic idea seems to be that Forge’s power comes up with a solution to the problem that he’s identified, but he doesn’t consciously understand why that solution will work (unless, presumably, he can work it out using regular human intelligence). So, although he knew that Surge’s involvement would solve the problem, he didn’t know that she’d die in the process. That in turn means that he couldn’t use his powers to avoid that outcome, because he didn’t know that it was a relevant question to be asking himself. Sage is not prepared to accept this line of reasoning, and quits.

Captain Britain, Askani and Tank are also here, but don’t do a great deal.

GUEST STARS:

The Avengers are still around. It’s a little unclear whether this team is actually the Avengers team from the New Warriors #11-13 storyline “Forever Yesterday” or a completely different team from another world of mainly-black heroes, and it probably doesn’t matter:

• Tempest, a Storm counterpart. She was identified as Storm in the original New Warriors storyline, but evidently we’re trying to be less confusing. Apparently her world’s Forge abandoned her and their child several months ago, and she isn’t very happy about it. She apparently dies fighting Nuklo.
• Horus, the Egyptian god, who was also in the original storyline.
• Captain Assyria, the Captain America equivalent.
• Iron Knight debuted last issue and gets named here. He appears to be a War Machine analogue – Tempest calls him “Sir Rhodes” on page 21, and it would fit with the grey colour of his armour. He apparently dies fighting Nuklo.
• Fenris also debuted last issue and gets named here. He’s wearing what looks like a white version of the Black Panther’s costume, but given his name and his references to Norse mythology, he appears to be serving as this team’s token white member. (In the original story, Nova took this role.)

In “Forever Yesterday”, these Avengers were loyalists to the Sphinx and on the aggressive side, but they do seem to be broadly “violent heroes” rather than “villains”, at least within their own worldview.

Rachel says that Earth-9105 “met a version of my mother”, but I’m not aware of any story where that’s happened – it seems to be new information. They address Rachel as the “Bright Lady”, her name as an Askani leader.

The X-Men show up in a one-panel cameo, fighting the monster that turns up on their doorstep. Cyclops’ whole field team, plus Beast, apear. (Temper is top left, mostly obscured by the caption.)

ANTAGONISTS:

Nuklo showed up on the Avengers’ world too, causing similar problems. He continues appearing and disappearing for no apparent reason. According to Forge, Nuklo is somehow trying to link three dimensional nexus points, which will lead to monster portals being permanently open around the world. Why? No one knows, but it’s maybe worth remembering here that issue #1 had someone monitoring the team right at the end, and apparently manipulating them.

Assorted monsters show up across the world, all fairly generic.

REFERENCES:

Page 5 panel 1: “One picosecond after she dies, I’m thinking. Of course, I am. I’m always thinking.” Versions of this narration from Sage appear at the start of issues #1, #2 and #4. Presumably “she” is Surge.

Page 7 panel 3: “And they have something else in common.” Presumably the fact that they’re all black – though the skin of Fenris or Iron Knight isn’t visible.

Page 14 panel 1: Tufani is apparently Horus’ nickname for Tempest – it’s Swahili for “stormy”.

Page 15 panel 4: Sage is apparently running through the list of known stable portals in the Marvel Universe, but I have no idea what the “Russian gate” or the “Chinese whirlpool” are.

Page 16 panel 1: Somehow or other, Sage concludes that of the various known portals, Nuklo is going after the one that Loki created in the X-Men / Alpha Flight miniseries in 1985. The plot of that series didn’t turn on a portal so much as a “Fire Fountain” which channelled magic from Alfheim to create a localised paradise. Alpha Flight #50 and X-Force & Cable ’97 both show related portals to Asgard and Svartalfheim on the site.

Pages 18-19: Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke did indeed say this in his 1871 essay “On Strategy”. The usual modern paraphrase is “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” And Mike Tyson did say something very similar to the quote here while promoting a fight in 1987, although the wording has evolved over time – what he actually said was “Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time.”