X-Force #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 7 #7
“The Devil in Heaven”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Jim Towe
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
X-FORCE
In the previous issue, La Diabla attacked Forge in his VR environment, and got driven out. The issue ended with Forge and Tank finding Captain Britain and Askani hovering in the air in a trance, with little symbols in front of their faces, and surrounded by some sort of energy effect.
This issue starts by jumping back a few minutes to show what was happening with Betsy and Rachel during the previous issue. Specifically, on page 1, Forge is muttering the same dialogue that he was delivering in the VR world on page 18 of the previous issue, while Rachel and Betsy are off some sort of communal mental projection as they appeared on page 13 of that issue. The end of issue #6 falls somewhere just before page 14 of this issue.
Captain Britain has created a private mindscape for her and Rachel to rest in between missions; it’s supposed to be the area around the Braddock Lighthouse, and this story follows Krakoan-era Excalibur in placing it in Cornwall. Betsy appears in this landscape wearing her purple costume from when she first joined the X-Men. When she returns to the mindscape at the end of the issue to fight La Diabla, instead of appearing as Captain Britain, she appears as Outback-era Psylocke in the armoured costume. (She also says that the Outback would have been her candidate for a happy place.)
Askani, then. Oh boy.
According to this issue, Rachel was killed by Professor X in Rise of the Powers of X. Rachel is said to have brought about her own resurrection without the help of the Five or the power of the Phoenix – Betsy mentions that Phoenix was taken off Earth by Jean Grey over in the Phoenix book, but that comes later on any view. Besides, that’s the least of this issue’s continuity problems, since the Phoenix was out of commission for other reasons at the time when Rachel was resurrected.
The plot appears to be that Rachel has somehow used her powers to restore herself to life, which (for no terribly clear reason) has left her overloaded with power, something that Betsy is trying to help her manage. In the mindscape, Rachel is visited by versions of herself from other points in her personal timeline, using their psychic time travel powers, who are also there to help smooth things over. This then gets interrupted by La Diabla, which apparently alters history. The five visiting Rachels appear to be:
- Days of Futures Past Rachel (her original timeline) in the green detention camp jumpsuit.
- Rachel as Marvel Girl from circa 2004, not a commonly referenced part of continuity.
- Rachel as Mother Askani. The original Mother Askani was a version of Rachel Summers who got lost in the timestream after Excalibur #75 and went on to found the Askani religion in Cable’s future timeline. That version of the character was later relegated into a divergent Rachel. The one shown here specifically claims to remember these events from her own past and so she’s apparently a different Mother Askani who’s a potential future of “our” Rachel, and winds up in broadly the same end position – all of which is plausible enough.
- Rachel in a black and orange costume, which I think is the Ed Brubaker run.
- Rachel in a red costume with a cap, which is the Prestige costume from X-Men Gold.
According to Mother Askani, her past selves shouldn’t remember this intervention, presumably because of the resulting paradox.
Unfortunately, the plot seems to hinge on a serious misreading of what happened in Rise of the Powers of X. Professor X does indeed kill Rachel at the end of Rise #3. In Rise #4, Rachel is seen emerging from an egg in the White Hot Room, with the Five, Exodus, Destiny and Hope around her. To be fair to Geoffrey Thorne and his editors, Rise #4 doesn’t directly explain how the Five knew that Rachel was dead in the first place, and so it doesn’t explain why they would be attempting to resurrect her. So, reading Rise #4 in isolation, you might reasonably conclude that there was a plot hole which needed to be fixed by claiming that Rachel had bootstrapped her own resurrection.
The problem is that a clear explanation was given, in X-Men Forever #2. In that issue, Professor X forces Mother Righteous to relay a message to the mutants in the White Hot Room, in which he directly tells them to resurrect Rachel. Rachel is then resurrected in exactly the same way that many other mutants were resurrected by the five in Rise of the Powers of X.
Can you square this away? Well, Rachel didn’t know that she was going to be resurrected, so you could cobble together some version of events where she unnecessarily attempted the self-resurrection stunt described here, damages herself in the process, and mistakenly believes this issue’s version of events. But it doesn’t seem at all likely that this was the idea.
Rachel’s power risks going out of control and destroying every mind for miles, but it can be controlled with Betsy’s assistance, and Forge modifies their costumes to help further.
Forge uses a combination of magic and science to overcome La Diabla’s magical shield and let Betsy back into the shared mindscape. He identifies that the shield was built specifically to block Betsy and not him; the implication is that La Diabla is trying to force Forge into a position where he has to draw on his magical knowhow as well as his mutant power.
In this context, Forge reminds us of his established back story: he was meant to be a tribal shaman, and received magical training, but rejected the role. He claims here to have been wandering the USA until he joined up with the Keewazi, a “small tribe in Arizona” with “a knack for technology.” The Keewazi are the fictional tribe to which Fantastic Four supporting character Wyatt Wingfoot belonged, though I’m not sure that they have any particularly established technological angle prior to developing their connection with the FF.
Tank is also there, uncommunicative as ever.
VILLAINS
La Diabla is intrigued by both Betsy and Rachel, given their magical / cosmic powers, but ultimately regards them as a distraction to her main mission, which is apparently to steer Forge in some direction. She’s able to boot Betsy out of her own mindscape, and to contain Rachel within that mindscape. Presumably that’s because she’s using magic, and a psychic is vulnerable to magical attack on the psychic plane just as Wolverine is vulnerable to magical attack in the physical world. (Betsy has magical powers, but only in the sense that her powers have a magical source – she’s not a magician in her own right.)
La Diabla claims to be indifferent to the destruction which will allegedly ensue if Rachel’s powers are allowed to go out of control, but it does appear that her overall objective here is to force Forge to work some magic – i.e., she wants to be beaten. After all, if there really was an explosion that wiped out every mind in a hundred miles, Forge would be dead, and that clearly isn’t what La Diabla is trying to achieve. On the other hand, she seems surprised at least by the particular way in which she’s beaten.
Colossus attacks for no apparent reason at the end of the issue, though he’s wearing a headband and has a moustache and beard, which suggests that this is either a mind-controlled Colossus or an alternate version. The “real” Colossus was last seen exchanging long distance chess moves with Magik over in X-Men.
REFERENCES:
Page 12 panel 4: “Liga!” No idea. It means “league”, but I don’t see why La Diabla would be saying it here.
Page 13 panel 3: “Queridas mios” “My dears.”
Page 13 panel 3: “Eres una Distraccion.” “You are a distraction.”
Page 13 panel 5: “Mi pequeña bomba.” “My little bomb.”
Page 18 panel 1: “Muy triste.” “Very sad.”
Page 18 panel 3: “Lo que es más importante.” “What is more important.”
I’m fairly sure that’s not really Colossus at the end, because I think that Piotor’s been disguised as Tank all along.
I thought this for a while, but the long distance chess game he’s playing with someone pretty much confirms it, as does the reaction to Betsy and Rachel being okay. Tank’s barely interacted with the way through this series, so it’s odd that he’s treating them as beloved friends.
The Google Translate Spanish is a little rough. “Mios” should be “mias” but “mis queridas” would also work, and “eres,” which is singular, seems like it should be “sois” (plural, assuming she’s speaking Castilian Spanish and not Latin American) in context.
“Liga”, or some variation such as “ligate”, can also be a verb meaning something like “pay attention” or “be aware”. Literaly “turn (yourself) on”
Geoffrey Thorne was asked about Rachel and the Five on the CBR forums and this was his response:
Askani’s Flame:are we able to confirm with you that when Rachel was being resurrected that last time in the White Hot Room, she brought herself back before their process was done, hence the cracks and issues? It’s really a deep cut if so!
Geoffrey Thorne: yep. she put herself back together while they were doing their thing. had she not, the ritual would have failed and Rachel would still be dead.
The problem with this explanation is that it’s not clear why the Five wouldn’t have been able to bring back Rachel if Rachel hadn’t resurrected herself. Xavier told the Five to resurrect several people, including Rachel, and they had no problem resurrecting the others. So why wouldn’t they have been able to resurrect Rachel?
The whole Mother Askani thing has always been confusing. Rachel was sent into the future in Excalibur 75. She becomes the Mother Askani and seemingly dies in the Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix series. However, in Excalibur 74, we see Sinister get a sample of Rachel’s DNA. That was probably supposed to be the backdoor to bring back Rachel if necessary- Sinister clones Rachel and Rachel’s mind enters the clone.
However, when Robert Weinberg was writing Cable, he had a young Rachel appear in the timestream. Weinberg’s idea aparently was that when Apocalypse was trapped in Scott’s body during the Twelve, that prevented Cable’s future from ever happening. (Why?) Therefore. Cable’s future ceased to exist and Rachel was never the Mother Askani. Weinberg had Rachel say that she shouldn’t have memories of her life as the Mother Askani but she had vague ones that came to mind when someone mentioned a specific event or person.
The problem with this is that later writers had people travel to and from Cable’s timeline, so obviously Cable’s timeline didn’t cease to exist. Thorne seems to be trying to simplify matters by claiming that Mother Askani was simply Rachel’s future self, though that doesn’t explain why Rachel would have memories of her.
Note that La Diabla says “WE need him focused. ” Diablo and Adversary both are words for the Devil. And it was Forge’s using a forbidden spell that open a gateway for the Adversary in the first place, so the Adversary might have reason to encourage Forge’s use of magic. Diabla is definitely working for the Adversary.
Speaking of Excalibur, I was extremely surprised that of all the Rachels to show up, we didn’t get red spiked costume Rachel from the iconic early run of Excalibur. (Aka the Hound outfit she wore until Excalibur #64… I’d argue that’s her most distinctive and recognizable look.)
Also, she has had a LOT of bad outfits over the years. Yikes.
“Also, she has had a LOT of bad outfits over the years. Yikes.”
Truly, Kitty’s soulmate.
Actually, it’s a little interesting that both Kitty and Rachel have now canonically dated women, but have not (yet) fulfilled their Claremontian destiny to hook up with one another. Actually, have they even appeared together on-panel from Krakoa onward?
It kind of sounds like Thorne is pulling a Niceaza, making the plot far more complicated than it needs to be. The convoluted resurrection of Rachel, the mysterious identity of Tank, unless he’s just a robot. Forge now having “missing years” somewhere in his already full past, where he joined a different Indian community to the one he was already part of. Diablo’s daughter instead of just Diablo.
Ok, Redjack posted another explanation of what he meant on CBR:
”
Redjack
Astonishing Member
Today at 1:22 AM
#102
Charles didn’t tell Rachel his plan; he just killed her.
Using her powers, CHRONOPATHY most prominently, she held her dying psyche together long enough to call to her other selves in the timestream for help. And MANY did (more than we saw in this issue). They held and stitched her dying disembodied mind back together and, using their COMBINED TK, began to rebuild her body in the safest/best place possible, an EMPTY Egg,
At the same time Charles is implementing his plan, ordering the Five to resurrect Rachel, but he is not present to do the psi download. Phoenix is out of the picture as well so, had Rachel NOT done what she did, the best the Egg might have produced would have been a braindead duplicate a mindless clone or a perfect corpse twin of Rachel.
Instead, Rachel rebuilt herself and emerged from the Egg. Everyone present thought the process worked as planned and why would Rachel bother to tell them otherwise? Everything was going crazy around them. Bigger fish to fry.”
(BTW, Redjack is Thorne’s posting name, for those of you who don’t know.)
The problem with Thorne’s explanation is that they didn’t NEED Xavier. Exodus is a telepath, Hope’s mutant power enables her to duplicate the powers of any nearby telepath, so Hope had Exodus’s powers as long as he was nearby.
I’m not a fan of explanations that require the author to add detail on a web forum outside the text of the issue itself.
But I’m interested if someone is willing to lean in and play with Rachel’s history and give her something new in the overall narrative. Rachel has enough publishing history, connections with other characters you could do some interesting things. I’m willing if it keeps her relevant for the next decade!
Fun issue and I don’t mind if ultimately it we get something that uses continuity to further a character. I’m hopeful Thorne goes further in a later expansion. In the actual issue!
Thorne’s explanation helps to understand how Rachel came back with all the memories immediately prior to her death. It was impossible for the Cradle in the White Hot Room to have backed up her mind while she was out of space-time.
@Midnighter- but Sinister also seemed to have his memories from immediately before his death.
I will never accept the lighthouse being in Cornwall.
And that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
Isn’t Rachel supposed to be unique in the multiverse, with no variants?
I can’t remember if that’s ever been contradicted, but wasn’t that the original line, and why Mojo was so interested in her?
I always thought that was the explanation for why Rachel came back in the Cable run — the Cable future ceased to exist, so Rachel couldn’t have landed there and become Mother Askani anymore.
According to Thorne’s comment, these wouldn’t be alternate universe versions of Rachel, they’d be the same Rachel from different points on her timeline.
If you time travelled to the future or past and met yourself, you wouldn’t be meeting alternate versions of you, you’d be meeting the same you from when you were younger or older.
@Rob- the idea that Rachel was unique in the multiverse was contradicted by a storyline in DeFalco’s Fantastic Four. In it, the Thing is scarred by Wolverine when Logan loses his temper. Ben is eventually healed by someone who turns out to be the son of an alternate Franklin Richards and an alternate Rachel Summers.
The way the X-Office eventually reconciled it was by establishing that there are other Rachel Summers in the multiverse but none of them is a “true” counterpart. It’s basically a way to keep both Claremont’s Excalibur stories and DeFalco’s FF stories in continuity. As we discussed when Knights of X 4 came out, it’s not really clear what a “true” counterpart is supposed to mean.
Trying to establish that someone is unique in the multiverse seems like a fool’s proposition given how many What If? style alternate timelines exist. All it takes is, for instance, “What If… Excalibur Had Not Participated in Inferno?” and there you are trying to explain why there’s more than one Rachel after all. Or how the same Rachel is in both timelines. Is she a quantum cat?
It’s like trying to say that Mojo and Darkseid are unique — is the one and only iteration of said character truly participating in every alternate world scenario in which they might appear? Best not to ask too many questions.