X-Force #9 annotations
X-FORCE vol 7 #9
“X-Manhunt, part 6: The Shapley Value”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
X-FORCE
This is the penultimate chapter of the “X-Manhunt” crossover. It’s also the penultimate issue of the series, so X-Force can’t break off in mid-storyline to participate; hence, the crossover A-plot actually consists of Sage (not technically on the team right now) helping out Professor X, while X-Force spend the whole issue continuing the fight that started last issue. Forge, Askani, Captain Britain and Tank get to contribute to this vital exercise.
SUPPORTING CAST
Sage. Her real name is Terisia Karišik, as used at the end of the previous issue, which would imply that she’s Bosnian. (She’s been presented as Balkan in the past, but this is more specific.) She claims that she deleted her telepathy in “my last system update”, along with her alcoholism and “some other traits”. This presumably explains her mental recovery between the flashback and main story in issue #1. Professor X doesn’t seem particularly surprised by this notion, and it may be intended to explain the inconsistent portrayal of her psychic powers over the years.
She brushes off the fighting between the X-Men and X-Factor in the previous chapter, and she doesn’t seem to notice anything wrong with Professor X until Wraith points it out to her. She doesn’t make clear whether she believes him about there being a problem. She does claim, in unusually emotive terms, that Professor X was her first and best friend, and that she would do anything to help him; this ties with her back story where Professor X brings her to America in X-Treme X-Men #44. Perhaps she doesn’t feel any influence because she’s already inclined to help.
She’s initially puzzled that Professor X would use resurrection for a non-mutant, but understands that he wanted to do something for himself. (She seems to have forgotten that resurrection was made available to some non-mutants via the Phoenix Foundation following A.X.E.: Judgment Day #6.) At any rate, nothing that she hears dissuades her from her full-bore support for Professor X, even though she seems to think she’s helping him and Lilandra to escape Earth and “find some peace at last”, rather than helping Xandra.
At some point she used the name “Arabella”, which is what the Mad Thinker AI knows her by. She claims that at some point she defeated the Mad Thinker who told her to “take what you want”, and cashes this in to claim one of his AI-operated Toybox bases. The AI doesn’t accept this claim, and she winds up overwriting it, but she does seem to have genuinely thought that her claim might be accepted. She knows the code to overwrite it, rather than engaging in any particular hacking – possibly this is what she actually took from the real Thinker. As far as I can tell, all of this is new.
GUEST CAST
Professor X. Since his escape, he’s been trying to retrieve the final Cerebro unit and the final Krakoan egg, in order to resurrect Lilandra Neramani, and then head off with her to the stars to help Xandra. Quite how this detour assists Xandra is not entirely clear, but then he may not be thinking entirely straight. As already noted, Sage seems to read this whole thing as being about finding peace for himself, and there’s at least a possibility that the entire Xandra thing is some kind of hallucination. When Sage asks for an explanation, he doesn’t mention Xandra at all, but claims that the Lilandra egg is the one thing he did for himself in a life of sacrifice to his people. (Except for that time when he went to live in outer space with Lilandra for a few years, but I guess that fits his point.)
He assumes that Sage thought he was dead. This doesn’t make much sense, since he didn’t fake his death before going to jail, and he must know that nobody in NYX was surprised to see him. Corina Ellis told Siryn that he was dead in Uncanny X-Men #2, but she didn’t suggest that it was public knowledge.
Wraith senses Xavier influencing his mind; Sage apparently doesn’t.
Lilandra Neramani. Resurrected after her death in War of Kings #4 (2009). She doesn’t get a chance to do much more than look confused and kiss her husband.
What does Lilandra’s resurrection do to the succession to the Shi’ar throne? Is the idea here to relieve Xandra of the responsibilities of running the empire by putting Lilandra back on the throne?
John Wraith. The teleporter that Sage could most easily get in touch with, it seems. Wraith is a character from Larry Hama’s Wolverine run in the 1990s. He was a member of the Team X group (along with Wolverine, Sabretooth and Maverick) and seemingly one of the nicer ones. He went on to become a priest, hence Sage referring to him as “pastor”. He was killed by a demon in Wolverine #1 (2010) – the “Wolverine Goes to Hell” arc – and presumably resurrected during the Krakoan era.
He can detect Xavier’s influence on his mind and correctly interprets it as a sign that something’s wrong – he’s not a telepath, so presumably this is just training and experience.
According to Wraith, he owes Sage a favour because she rescued him from a “torture table” where he was being “experimented on” after being left for dead. I don’t think this refers to an established story.
VILLAINS
La Diabla. She insists that she and her group are actually trying to cure the broken world, and call them “the solution” – or maybe “the Solution”, as a group name.
Colossus. He can turn his right hand into some sort of sawblade, if there was any real doubt that this isn’t our Colossus.
Rampage. This is the name used on the recap page to refer to the giant angry monster aligned with them – the transformed Howard Avery, previously known as “the Brute That Walks”. According to Askani, “its mind is just pure rage.”
A Mad Thinker AI. This is one of the Mad Thinker’s AI-controlled Toybox bases from Solo vol 2 #1, written by Geoffrey Thorne with Gerry Duggan. I don’t think they’ve appeared anywhere else.
FOOTNOTES
Title: “The Shapley Value”. The Shapley Value is a concept from game theory. Basically it’s a way of dividing the gains or losses from a collaborative enterprise among the participants according to their contributions. Quite what it has to do with this story isn’t immediately obvious.
Page 1 panel 5: This is the same list of teleporters that appeared right at the end of the previous issue. Lila Cheney, Manifold and Vanisher should all be familiar to X-Men readers, and Kestrel is John Wraith (see above). Solo is mainly a Spider-Man character. Aside from cameos, his last significant appearance was a 2017 miniseries co-written by Geoffrey Thorne.
Page 5 panel 1: Deuteronomy 15:1-2 does indeed say this, at least in some translations (other use “remission”). All translations seem to agree that this only applied within the Jewish community. Broadly, Wraith seems to be implying that Sage ought to be releasing him from any debt that he owes her.
Page 6 panel 1: Colonia Doctores is a real neighbourhood in Mexico City.
Page 7 panel 2: “But, here, in Dreamland’s centre / No spoiler’s hand may enter” is a couplet from Lewis Carroll’s poem “Dreamland”. It switches to a symbol font halfway through.
Page 10 panel 3: “У НАС ЕСТЬ СВОЙ ТАНЕЦ” = “We have our own dance.”
Page 12 panel 1: “The damned Summers brothers, two full X-squads going at each other.” X-Factor #8.
Page 13 panel 3: “You told us resurrection was just for mutants.” For most of Krakoa, yes. However, there was a programme to make resurrection available to a small number of humans as a goodwill gesture following the AXE crossover, though nothing really came of it.
Page 14 panel 4: “Ecclesiastes 3:1” = “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”
Page 15 panel 2: “We don’t need the Five. We don’t need the Phoenix.” In other words, this particular egg is already at a stage where all that remains is for it to hatch and for Professor X to restore Lilandra’s memories. The symbol at the end is the Krakoan letter for X.
Page 16 panel 4: Chandilar is the Shi’ar home planet.
Page 18 panel 5: “Mutantes! Tontos!” = “Mutants! Fools!”
Wasn’t there a plot in an event comic about resurrecting Captain America (or maybe another A list non-mutant)?
I found myself skipping the normal story pages and just reading for the crossover. I do wonder if clearing out the least successful titles from the line will help the reboot or not.
Feels like Xavier and Magneto left the Krakoan era as even more muddled characters. This crossover feels like it’s only made Xavier harder to put a finger on. For 20+ years we’ve been reckoning with him not being the good man we’d previously been told he was but at this point he’s so devotedly a shades of grey character that it’s almost as boring as being a saint was. He just kind of does things, which mostly line up with his motivations but it seems like every Xavier story must involve him making a choice we’re not meant to fully agree with. It feels like if he pet a puppy, we’d need to have a plot point where he was doing it to have someone put their guard down.
I wonder if this is part of a reset ahead of imperial as new readers will know lilandra from the cartoons.
Ryan Cap was resurrected in AXE the other big Avengers resurrections were Wanda pre AXE if we believe she is not a mutant and Karmala who it turns out is.
John Wraith’s body had been seen in Wolverine: The Best There Is, where it was used by Winsor for his experiments. Perhaps Sage freed him from there? At the time, however, I think he was out in the dimensions with the Exiles (or what was left of them).
Wraith says that Magik is not as fast as him. What does that mean? They can both teleport hundreds of miles instantaneously.
I’m not sure I like the idea that Sage can delete her alcoholism. The implication seems to be that this is due to her “computer mind”- she mentions a system update. But somehow it seems to be offensive to people who suffer from alcoholism in real life to treat as something that can be so easily turned off without consequences. Plus, it raises the question of why she didn’t do this during Percy’s run. And any time Sage develops a character flaw in he future, a writer can just say that she deleted it.
Xavier uses the phrase “make it so” when enabling it to act. This is a reference to Patrick Stewart, who played Xavier in the X-Men films. Stewart also played Picard in Stark Trek, and one of Picard’s most-used phrases was “make it so”.
@Alistair- the consensus on the internet is that Lilandra was resurrected so Hickman could use her in Imperial. Breevort has said that originally the plan was to use the Phoenix series to restart Marvel’s cosmic series but plans changed and they decided to use Imperial for that purpose instead. My guess is that when Hickman came along, he wanted Lilandra back so Breevort set up a crossover that wasn’t originally planned for the purpose of bringing her back.
Note that Sage tells Wraith “This isn’t done yet”. My guess is that the two of them will teleport in next issue to save X-Force.
At this point, I assume that “Imperial” will create some sort of reshuffling of the cards in Marvel space politics, and a living Lilandra sure sounds like she will be part of that.
Good use of Sage. Geoffrey Thorne seems to write in ways that appeal to me. I don’t think there was ever before any version of “X-Force” that I wanted to read more of, unless you count the Team Later Known as X-Tatix by Mike Allred.
No love for the John Francis Moore/Adam Pollina run, Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force…or Peter Milligan (I know. You didn’t mention the author though)?
Those are the stand-out X-Force comics, for mine.
Most incarnations of X-Force are inherently hard sells for me, often because they spotlight Cable or Wolverine too much and do the things that those two typically do. That runs quite against the grain of what I do like in the X-Books.
This and Peter Milligan’s are probably the only two exceptions, and likely to remain so.
You might like the John Francis Moore issues then, if you aren’t familiar with it. Most of it doesn’t feature Cable. It’s about a group of college-age youngsters trying to move on with their lives without Cable.
I mean, I’m not trying to convince someone to read X-Force, other than X-Statix, as there are so many better comics to discover. The Moore and Remender runs were pretty good X-comics though.
Uncanny X-Force by Remender is very much about Wolverine and characters like Wolverine, but it recognizes that they are all severely damaged beings, not anyone to be admired. It critiques the type of violence associated with Wolverine and X-Force.
It’s a quality comic series, although it is one based in violence.
It’s probably my favourite Marvel mutant title published between Morrison and Hickman.
Do people like Lilandra? She doesn’t seem to have a personality. She’s just this vague mother figure that exists to define other characters. I can’t think of any story that made her look like a leader.
I’m actually not surprised that Lilandra’s back, I’m surprised she was allowed to stay dead for so long. (Also, it’s been 16 years? Time flies. I feel old.) But let’s face it, of all the Shi’ar emperor-types, she’s the most memorable. Gladiator is basically a punchy-guy promoted past his point of effectiveness, and Xandra is undeveloped, and Deathbird is… whatever they need her to be for the current status quo. So welcome back, Lilandra. Maybe Xavier can rocket off into space with her again.
Meanwhile, Sage remains the Swiss Army knife of support characters. That whole “computer brain” is really being used generously with this reference to updates and deleting of undesirable abilities/powers/traits. Makes you wonder what she can install. Like back when she could see genetic codes and jumpstart abilities (which she used on Beast way back in the X-Treme days). Do we even know if that’s still one of her powers, or did she lose it in an update? As nice an idea as this is, I also dislike the variable powers aspect when it doesn’t lead to character consistency. It makes them too convenient. (See also Legion, Jane from the Doom Patrol, whose vast assemblage of powers at least came with heavy drawbacks…)
I think this series, while having interesting ideas, was hindered by various factors, including a slow burn storyline in the “you get 10 issues max” era, the poor communication between titles and writers (having to start writing series without knowing exactly how Fall of X ended), and a crossover popping up JUST as multiple titles are wrapping up.
It’s a pity. If this had really been about Forge and his handpicked teams fixing problems, it could have been good. But um… Diabola? Zzz.
“Crazy Jane” does have a consistent personality. Her character fit well with what Morrison was doing with Doom Patrol.
Sage is just a tabula rasa. She develops random powers that will fix any situation, not because it fits with her own power (ala Crazy Jane or Legion), but simply for the author’s benefit. She should’ve been named Deus Ex Machina.
Legion has usually served more as a plot mover than an actual character (Spurrier’s series was the only time you could get a feel for his having a personality, like Crazy Jane), but even he works better than Sage after Claremont. Percy did try to make her more well-rounded and less random, and I give him credit for that.
Yeah, I should have been more precise. Jane had an internal consistency with regards to powers and personalities which kept her from being too powerful/all-purpose, and it led to some compelling storytelling. (I can’t always speak for her post-Morrison uses, but…) And I liked the Spurrier take on Legion which brought him down to Earth… so to speak.
I couldn’t even tell you what Sage’s real deal is now.
IIRC, the Shi’ar explicitly have a rule that if you die and come back to life, you definitely aren’t still emperor(ess). [A good sort of rule to have in the Marvel universe.] It was a whole thing with Vulcan in the late Krakoa era, with his claim on the throne resting on the fact that, technically, “I NEVER DIED!”
Alexx, That may just be because no-one wants Vulcan. When Mad Emperor Daken was resurrected he was quickly returned to the throne after a short civil war.
Well, we should all have seen that it would be a Shi’ar hatching from an egg. Must come naturally to them.
This crossover continues to not make much sense. Xandra is presented to be in physical danger – I guess she was only taken prisoner, otherwise none of this would make a lick of sense, but she’s surely still in danger – and Xavier runs around to resurrect Lilandra, which still doesn’t help Xandra situation in any way.
I guess Xavier must know that Xandra is safe in the rebel captivity?
Anyway, even if we suppose the plan will make sense in the end, we come back to the egg.
Sure, Xavier used the Resurrection Protocols to bring Lilandra back to life. Makes sense. Why wouldn’t he? He must have done it pretty early on, too, if he still needs to explain that it was an exception from the mutant-only rule, ignored from AXE on.
All that is perfectly reasonable.
Why did he then stash the pre-cooked egg in a storage locker, though, instead of following through immediately?
Was it a ‘Break glass in case of a lonely night’ situation? Did he cook all this up only to be beset by doubt at the end, but couldn’t bring himself to destroy the egg? Will we ever know?
Also, I love that we’re doing ‘the last egg’ story a year after Krakoa’s end already.
Especially since now that this door is open – now that this egg is cracked – we could have eggs all over this place. ‘Well, I told you Lilandra’s was the last egg, because THIS egg, this DREADFUL egg, had to be kept secret!’
‘And that one, too’.
‘Oh, this one? This one’s Moira. No, you’re right, we’d better not’. (‘Unless she pops up in the movie’.)
‘Behold! The PENULTIMATE Krakoan egg!’
‘This is the Egg egg. Egg’s inside. Actually, once I’ve cooked up Lilandra, I thought it prudent to pre-cook all Five eggs. Yes, I could’ve started New Krakoa anytime, but the time wasn’t ready until now, the Big Summer 2029 x-crossover’.
…sorry, I got carried away. So many eggs in the basket. Anyway. This crossover isn’t very bad, but it’s not good. The good thing is the schedule, wrapping it up in a month is definitely preferable to stretching it out for a quarter or more. But this issue actually was pretty okay – both as part of a crossover and as an issue of X-Force. I think I’m actually going to miss this title, which is surprising, because the first arc was a complete misfire. (Also I’m still kind of sad about Surge, I was hoping we’re past using the Academy X kids as cannon fodder).
Alistair>Alexx, That may just be because no-one wants Vulcan. When Mad Emperor Daken was resurrected he was quickly returned to the throne after a short civil war.
D’Ken never died either. He was stuck in an asylum when he went catatonic after the M’Kraan story until Brubaker brought him back.
@Si-The thing with Lilandra is that it was repeatedly suggested that her judgement was questionable and that she was more like D’Ken and Deathbird than she’d like to admit. In Uncanny 137, she’s willing to destroy the Earth to stop the Phoenix. In Uncanny 167. she questions if she’s just like her sibling. In Uncanny 173. when she sees Maddie, she draws a light saber to kill her, even though Maddie’s holding hands with Scott. who’s wearing his glasses and not his visor. If Scott’s glasses had fallen off, he could have killed everyone around including Xavier. During Operation Galactic Storm. she sends a Nega Bomb to destroy the Kree and even though she decides to recall it, the Supreme Intelligence uses it to lay waste to “a thousand worlds”. In Avengers 351. Hepzibah claims that even under Lilandra, her people were still persecuted. In an X-Men Unlimited issue we see that she’s allowed Deathbird to persecute the Kree under Sh’iar rule. In Maximum Security, she allows herself to be pressured into turning Earth into a prison, which is exactly like what the Supreme intelligence and Ronan want.
Her 1st non X appearance was breaking in to Reed and Sue’s Bedroom to shout at them over Galacatus, Because she thinks she knows better then the smartest on on Earth. Because he is only an Earthling.
To be fair, that was proven to be a fairly accurate assessment in a Classic X-Men back-up strip, written by Anne Nocenti, where one of Earth’s greatest minds, in Professor X, was shown to be intellectually inferior while living with the Shi’ar. Based on that story, Reed would probably be considered average to the Shi’ar, which would lead to Reed becoming a supervillain to rival Dr. Doom due to Reed being too arrogant to deal with not being the smartest man on a planet.
I mean, to be fair, while Reed is ultimately proven right about Galactus, it was still a controversial decision. In FF #50, Reed threatens to kill Galactus (bluffing with the Ultimate Nullifier) to save Earth. Basically saying, “Go kill some less important alien species, but leave my home alone.” Reed is proven to be the ultimate NIMBY. If Galactus’ role in the universe is so important, let him do his job even if it means the death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
“ Wraith says that Magik is not as fast as him. What does that mean? They can both teleport hundreds of miles instantaneously.”
Having not read this comic or cared enough to keep up with minutiae for the last decade or two, my No Prize attempt at this would be that Magik’s powers require her to open a portal, pass through Limbo, and open another portal to wherever she’s trying to go (and time and location of arrival used to be uncertain, back when characters had limitations and nuance). Maybe that’s what Wraith was referring to?
I thought it was actually pretty funny that Crazy Jane had the exact power she needed to save the day over and over. She commented on that near the end of Morrison’s run. “I guess it’s up to me to get things done…again” or something similar.
Agreed that no one’s had a good hook for Jane since Morrison de-powered her and, you know, definitively completed her character arc.
Sage hasn’t made sense in a long time. And why would she “delete telepathy” as part of an update? Surely that power could still come in handy. I will say that it’s understandable that she might not fully understand the resurrection protocols since a) they changed multiple times and b) she was drunk a lot of the time.
@Michael – When Wraith says that Magik isn’t as fast as him, I took it to mean something like “time to initiate each individual teleport jump”. Which seems reasonable enough – she has to create a portal, step through it. AFAICT John Wraith just decides he wants to be somewhere else and it happens.
@Thom H.
Of course telepathy can come in handy. But it makes sense that it can be distracting as well.
I have thought about that for quite some time now; telepaths must be typically under tremendous mental stress to even make sense of what they perceive. It must be akin to having one or more second voices inside one’s head all the time – or at least while not blocking reception of other people’s thoughts. The most skilled the telepath, the most information and nuance they will have access to.
It could easily become a curse or even the doorway to literal madness, particularly when there isn’t much conscious control. I am surprised that it does not come often as a plot point.
TLDR: telepathy is handy, but it can also be maddeningly distracting. Much like a smartphone, really.
1) Actually Kestrel was left for dead by Sabretooth after being shot by Maverick , when Creed and Wraith tried to forcibly draft Nord/North to work for Malcolm Colcord’s version of Weapon X during its Frank Tieri’s 2000’s series . Wraith was in his “company man” phase where he apparently agreed to work for Weapon X again in exchange for being physically de-aged.
2) Maybe Sage doesnt fully delete whatever she “deletes” , she just keeps it in the Recycle Bin , with no 30-day automatic deletion (shes a quantum computer , not a smartphone) where it can still be retrieved in order to be restored in emergencies , since supposedly Sage also deleted her telepathy during Chris Claremont’s 2000 Revolution run, but she obviously habit back in later runs such as when she was part of 2 subsequent Exiles teams .
My no-prize explanation is that having telepathy takes up a fair chunk of her CPU, so she disables it when she doesn’t feel it’s worth the investment.
Deleting her alcoholism, though, that’s just stupid.
@JDSM24, MasterMahan- Thorne posted the following explanation on the CBR forums:
In this case, every prior version of SAGE, her OS, if you will, still exists in storage somewhere. Either tucked in her brain or offloaded into her version of a cloud.
She can edit her mind and body and its systems to an extreme degree but she can’t grow herself wings or give herself superpowers. She can’t do it instantly either. Every update takes a different amount of time to create and install. Also, every system update either patches a prior bug in her code or, and this would have been fun, tests out new features she thinks she might need.
So, if she needed something from one of her old OS’s she can certainly either reinstall that version of herself or add it on as a separate “hard drive” allowing the two (or more) versions of Sage to interact in real time in the present.
“ the Shi’ar explicitly have a rule that if you die and come back to life, you definitely aren’t still emperor(ess). [A good sort of rule to have in the Marvel universe.]”
Good rule. Look what happened when The Slayer died and came back to life: two Slayers.
Sage editing out parts of her persona remind me of Mr Sinister editing his own DNA to do things like remove racism (equally dumb, but whatever). It could be an interesting story, seeing a future Sage that is every bit the monster Sinister is, because she’s uninstalled so many core parts of her identity in pursuit of purity.
Brevoort suddenly cancelling Thorne’s X-Force even though it’s both profitable and respectable is the stupidest Marvel publishing decision since Quesada cancelling Byrne’s XMen Hidden Years 22 years ago tsk tsk tsk
This hilariously implies that both this volume of X-Force and Hidden Years were selling well and cancelled out of spite. Sometimes you just have to admit that they the books you liked failed to find an audience big enough to sustain an audience.
And you know how I can tell? Because both books stunk!
@JDSM24, Jordan- Hidden Years was one of Marvel’s lowest selling books. it was the lowest selling X-book except for Bishop. Despite what Byrne claims, it definitely earned its cancellation.
X-Force, OTOH, came in around 50 on the sales charts. There were plenty of Marvel books selling better tha in and there were plenty selling below it. The issue was probably that there are higher standards for an X-book than a non-X-book.
Thorne went into detail about this issue:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/issue-9-shaply-124885328?post_id=124885328
Apparently, this issue was originally supposed to be a Sage-focused issue. Then, he was told that this needed to be part of the X-Manhunt crossover. Then a few days after that, he was told that issue 10 would be the final issue.
The Shapley Value- “t’s a Game Theory concept which describes multiple players co-operating to achieve a shared goal. In this case those players were Professor X, Sage and John Wraith.”
Tessa saving John Wraith- the idea was that after Wolverine 1, when Wraith was seemingly killed, he was actually left for dead, kidnapped, experimented on and rescued by Sage.
Wraith was going to join X-Force before Thorne found out the series was cancelled.
What a waste , Kestrel still can’t catch a break tsk tsk tsk
@Jordan, Yeah? Well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, snob !
@Michael, at this stage of the game, when the USA comic industry is literally in its twilight , can they still afford to have “standards”?!
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