NYX #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NYX vol 2 #5
Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly
Penciler: Francesco Mortarino
Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico
Colourist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
THE CORE CAST:
Prodigy becomes a public figure after his fight with the Krakoan last issue, with the Truthseekers gathering outside his apartment, and anti-mutant laws being proposed by the City Council as part of Empath’s plan to foment racial hatred (of which more in a bit).
Sophie seems to have been convinced, at least to start with. But as the vote draws near, she turns on Empath’s group and decides to side with Kamala, David and co after all. She telepathically sends all the protestors home, apologises, and is immediately accepted by Kamala, though Anole and Laura are a lot less forgiving. To be fair, Kamala is mainly trying to get the group to focus on the real problem. Sophie claims that the Cuckoos voted on whether to join Empath’s plan, but doesn’t actually say how she voted. However, her dialogue with the Cuckoos towards the end of the issue strongly implies that the “vote” was unanimous.
Sophie fights off the Cuckoos’ influence and frees the Council members who were affected by Empath’s control. This apparently causes her to burn out her powers, at least temporarily.
Kamala has the solution to all this, which is to get out there and, in just 24 hours, stage a political campaign to appeal to America’s better nature, employing “intersectional solidarity”. This is entirely successful. She also gives an inspirational speech about diversity at the end, which defuses a potential riot immediately. It is just possible that this issue could have been better timed.
Anole and Wolverine both join the campaining.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:
Dante, David’s boyfriend, continues to hang around and look supportive without doing a great deal.
Kamala’s activist friend Nakia Bahadir shows up to help campaign in page 11 panel 2; the dialogue gives her name as “Nadia”, which is probably a typo. Brother Aamir Khan is still confused by cousin Bilal’s bigotry but ultimately comes down on Kamala’s side.
Local helps Wolverine with her campaigning (and despite his alliance with Mojo, he’s clearly not a villain in this issue).
The Morlocks show up to support Anole; Caliban and Mammomax appear, but have no dialogue.
VILLAINS:
Empath‘s plan appears to run like this:
- Have Julian commit terrorist attacks as “the Krakoan”, which are also a cover for the assassination of City Council members (something that apparently almost nobody spots).
- Replace the assassinated council members with pawns under Empath’s control. (How? Doesn’t that require a by-election?)
- Lure Ms Marvel into a public fight in Times Square against the Krakoan.
- Somehow leverage this to create anti-mutant sentiment (despite it being a fairly routine event for Marvel New York).
- Propose a law to ghettoise mutants.
- Pass it using the puppet council members plus the public outrage.
- Once New York’s apparently substantial mutant population is sufficiently outraged, install Empath as their leader (using his powers).
- ???????
- New Krakoa!
Empath seems to be controlling some of the council members who weren’t killed, since we’re told that the vote was going to be unanimous until Sophie breaks his hold on the Council, but the eventual vote is 22-29 against. Quite how any of Kamala’s last-minute campaigning actually affects the outcome is left rather unclear, given that the psychic battle appears to be by far the bigger issue from what we see on the page.
The other four Stepford Cuckoos are still on board with the plan, but Sophie is able to fight off their influence. They seem more annoyed at her breaking with the group than anything else.
The Krakoan appears in the first panel, being taken away by the police after last issue’s fight.
Cousin Bilal seems to be a fully paid up member of the Truthseekers here.
GUEST APPEARANCES:
The She-Hulk makes her traditional cameo appearance as the only lawyer in the Marvel Universe now that Daredevil is being a priest.
Doop, of all people, shows up to protest in favour of mutants. We haven’t seen him since the end of the Kraokan era.
OTHER REFERENCES:
Page 8 panel 5: Despite what Sophie says here, Empath was never a student at Xavier’s School. Sophie could have known him on Krakoa, though.
Page 9 panel 3: “a huddle mass, yearning to breathe free”. Empath is quoting “The New Colossus”, the poem by Emma Lazarus on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
Page 11 panel 4: The pink sign on the left probably reads I (heart) MUTANTS, which is a bit odd considering it’s a muant carrying it. The yellow sign reads MORLOCK PRIDE. The green one is mostly obscure; the word we can see is the second half of “MUTANT”. The pink sign on the right reads MUTANT ARE HUMAN (sic).
Page 12 panel 1. The big tree in the background is the Treehouse, the X-Men’s New York base during the Krakoan era; apparently, the Truthseekers are ambitiously proposing to attack this enormous thing with a chainsaw.
Page 13: Anole’s sign reads EVERYWHERE IS KRAKOA NOW.
Page 14 panel 1: “Stryker was right.” The Reverend Stryker, best known as the villain from the God Loves Man Kills graphic novel.
Paul> Kamala has the solution to all this, which is to get out there and, in just 24 hours, stage a political campaign to appeal to America’s better nature, employing “intersectional solidarity”. This is entirely successful. She also gives an inspirational speech about diversity at the end, which defuses a potential riot immediately. It is just possible that this issue could have been better timed.
What, like 15 years ago? 25?
As much as this month of all months throws just how much of a fantasy that working is into sharp relief, it isn’t as if the… let’s be polite and euphemistically call them “tensions”… have just appeared in the past few months since Lanzing and Kelly started writing this series.
This is not the first poorly timed political comic starring Kamala Khan. Around late 2016, in Kamala’s second volume by G. Willow Wilson, there was a plot involving HYDRA trying to get a young hipster member elected as mayor of Jersey City. Ms. Marvel decides the only way to win is to give wonderful speeches and help her pals with grass roots campaigning. They manage to get the better candidate, a woman running on a THIRD PARTY PLATFORM, elected. Not only was it clearly intended for a Hillary victory, but it features the most improbable thing to ever happen in an American comic book; a third party candidate winning a major election without a heap of money. This is literally impossible. Aliens being real is more likely. I am dead serious. There are better odds of Deadpool emerging from a comic book and running amok in real life than a third party candidate, much less a progressive woman, winning a mayoral election in the U.S.
But, hope springs eternal at the Marvel bullpen, I suppose. But the fact that Marvel writers cannot read the room within their own country may help explain why sales stink. Heck, they can’t even be bothered to do as much research on their own local politics as Paul, who lives across the pond.
For additional annotations, the main NYX trio (Ms. Marvel, Sophie, and Prodigy) have a cameo in this week’s SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MEN #9. Sophie is dressed in her usual White Queen Mini-Me cosplay and Prodigy has no problem being seen in public alongside Ms. Marvel, walking into a Coffee Bean that also features both costumed Spider-Men. They were called in by Miles to see if a new superhuman cast member is a mutant. They confirm she isn’t. Miles’ subplot is he’s rediscovered some unrequited romantic pangs for Kamala which have never been dealt with since died, was reborn, and then stopped hanging out with him or the Champions in exchange for the X-Men. I doubt it’ll go anywhere, but he does try to ask her out for a coffee date. Miles is also dating Starling (the Vulture’s vigilante daughter).
Just thought that last bit might interest someone.
Poor Miles is in a weird love quadrangle now,because he’s linked to Ghost Spider, especially with the movies being so big. I don’t know if they play up the romance angle any more, but they’re definitely “special friends”.
Speaking up and rallying the kids is sort of Ms Marvel’s thing, for better or worse. She also did it all the time in Champions, which was then subverted in the Kamala’s Law storyline (can’t remember the proper name of the event, don’t want to trudge through everything Google will throw up if I search for “Kamala”). I suppose it’s an old person’s idea of what young people do.
This issue had very strong “If we’re cancelled at issue #5, here’s our ending for the series/TPB” vibes.
And like others, it’s a lot harder to accept such an easy conclusion based on extremely recent political events.
I was convinced that the mutant with lobster claws was Mudbug from Wolverine and the X-Men but I looked it up and Mudbug was much more crayfish in appearance, so I suppose this guy’s new?
Si: You’re thinking of Outlawed. Don’t feel bad, I pretty forgot its name as well.
I’m thinking even if many of these people were opposed to the anti-mutant agenda, a fair number of them would run in the other direction simply based on the somewhat smug, sickeningly sweet display by Ms. Marvel. Which, well, the character is named Kamala, so other than not realizing how this comes across, it’s not so completely removed from the moment.
Hey, she could get around a 1/3 of those people who think exactly like her to join her campaign though, I’m sure, which is something…I suppose.
I think “an old person’s idea of what young people do” was the unofficial subtitle of that entire Champions series.
Well, I come to NYX for the focus on characters I like, not necessarily for superhero fight scenes (so David defeating Hellion last issue didn’t bother me much) or coherent evil mastermind plots.
That being said.
…why kill the councilmembers if you use telepaths to swing the vote your way anyway?
Suer, sure, you could say that handpicked replacements were molded by Empath over months, ensuring their conditioning doesn’t break or something. You could say that. This comic doesn’t. (And also the plot requires Sophie to break the mental hold they’re under anyway, so it’s moot).
It’s not only overtly complicated, it also turns Hellion into an actual supervillain who has killed… well, we don’t know how many people. More than just the councilmembers, probably.
And while Julian was the bad boy of Xavier’s Academy, whose plots revolved around his potential to become a supervillain, he never went that way. So for it to happen basically offpanel is… I’m kinda miffed. I liked Julian. Hope there’s a way back for him.
(The writers can always say he was controlled by Empath after all).
Anyway, back to convoluted. Last issue The Krakoan’s attacks were drawing an X-marks-the-spot pattern to lure Kamala to a fight. But also the councilmembers arranged themselves to be killed along the X-pattern? That’s awfully nice of them.
Anyway. Maybe it’s because I’m reading this book an ocean away from New York, I wasn’t bothered by the naive optimism. Naive optimism is kind of built into cape comics from the start anyway.
But yeah, the timing for this issue is awful.
I’d definitely support a “Empath was behind everything” because he has a very long history of being The Absolute Worst and this isn’t exactly too far removed from the sort of stuff he’s done in the past whenever he’s not directly supervised.
I mean, he’s the sort of guy who ranks right up there with Mandrill and Purple Man for creepy sexual predators who should never be allowed out in public ever again. Seriously, if Emma showed up just to shut down Manuel’s brain, I wouldn’t shed a tear.
I feel like Outlawed got disrupted by all the shipping and production issues that came up during COVID, but I might be confusing it with Empyre. I didn’t buy anything connected to the latter, and all I bought that tied into the former was the Power Pack mini-series Ryan North and Nico Leon did, which did not seem to be approaching the concept in an entirely serious manner (which was fine, i got some laughs out of it.)
I remember that Ms. Marvel comic. I was mostly just annoyed at feeling like the comic was lecturing me, especially living in a place where my vote does not do a damn thing even on the local level, forget state or federal. But I didn’t mind that Ms. Marvel’s efforts worked in-story. That’s not the sort of thing that’ll shatter my suspension of disbelief.
Also, I think it helped G. Willow Wilson had established Ms. Marvel was pretty well-liked and respected by the residents of jersey City at that time, so she might actually be able to sway people at the level of city government enough to have an effect.
I think Lanzing & Kelly were trying to find a way to have the mutants resolve conflict through peaceful means as a way to break away from the violence that David talked about last issue. Unfortunately, they did so by having Ms. Marvel make a big speech. Ugh.
I like this book. It’s been so good up until this issue. But… a big speech defusing a situation and convincing people to not fight? And the police being supportive of the pro-mutant protestors? I was already feeling bad about current events, and I put this comic down feeling worse.
There was a time I thought it was unrealistic how gullible and hateful Marvel civilians were. Dark Reign, for example. The idea that a huge chunk of Americans would support Norman Osborn, a blatantly corrupt businessman with a documented history of violence against women, clear mental health issues, and weird hair? That would be ridiculous!
Welp.
Timing aside, the evil scheme is nonsensical. Sophie was sent undercover in order to lure Ms. Marvel into fighting a supervillain? The thing she already does on her own? Why replace council members when you’re mind controlling them anyway? Did Empath and the Cuckoos mind control law enforcement into not noticing the obvious patterns of dead council members who are also at geographically significant locations?
I’m also annoyed at Ms. Marvel’s Pollyanna-ish insistence that Sophie is her best friend now. She’s optimistic, but that seems out of character. Or maybe everyone is being controlled, why not?