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

S.W.O.R.D. #1
“Mysterium”
by Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti & Marte Gracia

S.W.O.R.D. S.W.O.R.D. (the Sentient World Observation and Response Department) was introduced in the first arc of Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men in 2004. As originally presented, they were a sister agency of S.H.I.E.L.D. (hence the name), focussed on alien and extraterrestrial security threats. They had a series before in 2010, which only lasted for five issues.

COVER / PAGE 1. The cast, obviously. Interesting to see Magneto given so much prominence here.

PAGE 2. An epigraph from Abigail Brand (of whom more in a bit). Unlike the usual Krakoa-era epigraphs, the graphics are overlaid on an image of sunrise from space. The metal ball is Magneto flying up to S.W.O.R.D.’s space station, as we’ll see in a couple of pages.

PAGE 3. Magneto approaches the Peak.

The Peak, S.W.O.R.D.’s orbital base, also dates from the Whedon/Cassaday Astonishing X-Men run. Now under the control of Krakoa, it’s covered in Krakoan foliage – as we’ll see, the mutants have been integrating Krakoan plant-based technology into the station. But it still remains predominantly technological, something which marks it out as unusual for the Krakoans. Of course, it’s also a good long way from the island.

Krakoa was blasted into space at the end of Giant-Size X-Men #1, so I suppose it’s not a surprise to learn that its plantlife can survive out there.

PAGE 4. Recap page and cast diagram. We’ll get to all these characters in due course, so I’ll come to them in due course. Otherwise of note here:

• The Krakoan text top right reads SWORD ORG CHART.
• Six of the characters are marked with a Sword logo that identifies them as “assigned to _____X”, with the last word mostly redacted. They’re the Six, and we learn more about that later.
• Cable’s security department has a secondary role that’s redacted out.
• Peeper answers to an unspecified “Psionic analyst” who is also redacted out.
• Instead of getting its own small print, S.W.O.R.D. uses X-Men‘s “mutants of the world unite” line.

As for the material in the recap:

• I believe Abigail Brand resigned from command of Alpha Flight in Empyre Aftermath: Avengers, which I haven’t read. (Again, we’ll get to Alpha Flight when it comes up.)
• Krakoa liberated the Peak during the “X of Swords” crossover, specifically Cable #5. It had been overrun by the invading Vescora.

PAGE 5. Magneto arrives on the Peak.

“Hope you survive the experience” refers to the often-referenced cover of Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #171 (“Welcome to the X-Men, Rogue … hope you survive the experience!”).

PAGES 6-7. Cable greets Magneto.

Note that Magneto’s metal shell turns into a little floating sphere that hovers around next to him.

Cable has his own solo series, obviously. He’s played young here – he makes jokes about Magneto’s age – but he comes across as rather more sensible and professional than he does in his own book, where he’s something of a clown. The org chart identifies him as “Security Director”, and he’s accompanied here by his two subdirectors. Neither of them speak, but they are…

Risque. Gloria Munoz debuted in X-Force vol 1 #51 in 1996, and she was a prominent X-Force supporting character for a few years in the late 90s. She was a thief/mercenary type who wound up in a relationship with Warpath. Risque was killed off during the Grant Morrison run in 2001, and aside from a brief appearance as a zombie during the Necrosha arc, this is the first we’ve seen of her since then. Evidently she’s been resurrected on Krakoa. She had joined the X-Corporation shortly before her death, but she’s a slightly odd choice for a position of seniority. More on that in a bit.

Random. Marshall Stone III debuted in X-Factor vol 1 #88 in 1993, and he’s a Peter David / Joe Quesada creation. Again, he was a mercenary. Having started off as something of a breakout character, he hasn’t done much of anything in years, though we’ve seen him on Krakoa before. He’s a shapechanger with a general ability to develop countermeasures to other people’s powers. There used to be an angle that he was using his shapechanging to pretend to be older than he really was, but he’s scaled back his size a bit since then, and presumably we’re now seeing something closer to his true form.

PAGE 8. Abigail Brand greets Magneto.

Abigail Brand was introduced alongside S.W.O.R.D. in their first appearance, initially as something of an antagonist, but winding up as a supporting character in a relationship with the Beast. She’s rather drifted away from the X-Men again in recent years, and she was being used as a supporting character in Captain Marvel until recently, working for the current, alien-defence version of Alpha Flight.

Brand is half-alien, but her human mother was a mutant – something that was rather obscurely established in Avengers vs X-Men: Consequences #4 (2012). Not much has ever been done with that, and it’s not central to her character. There’s some suggestion in this story that it still isn’t particularly important to her – she wants to represent the whole of Earth and treats Krakoa mainly as the current state that’s willing to resource her in doing so.

PAGE 9. Data page: an extract from Abigail Brand’s log.

• “Feels like years” – well, that’s Marvel time for you.
• “A tight six-division structure” is basically what we see in the org chart, so presumably this was written at some point in the past.
• The Vescora infection was seen in Cable #5. Urquhart might have been the guy that Marvel Girl met on the Peak in that issue (who threw himself into space).
• “Danvers” is Captain Marvel, and as Abigail says, she would be the obvious successor to run Alpha Flight – if people were being sensible.
• “The Kree/Skrull Emperor’s wedding” is presumably something that happened at the tail end of Empyre, which I haven’t read.
• Peter Corbeau was a scientist character who cropped up quite a bit back in the 70s, and was an ally of the X-Men for a time.
• Eugene Judd is Puck from Alpha Flight.

Henry Peter Gyrich is a long-running obnoxious government official character. He was originally introduced in the late 70s to torment the Avengers by doing outrageous things like objecting to them launching Quinjets without a permit and, er, insisting that the team had to include at least one member who wasn’t white. Well, that was 1979 for you. His main connection with the X-books was through his involvement in Project Wideawake, the US government’s Sentinel programme. He was also involved with the previous version of S.W.O.R.D. during its previous run, when his xenophobic attitude to aliens caused all manner of trouble. He’s hopelessly unqualified to run Alpha Flight, except on paper.

PAGES 10-11. Magneto meets Wiz-Kid.

Wiz-Kid. Takeshi Matsuya was an orphaned mutant technological genius who had a prominent role in the X-Terminators miniseries from around the time of Inferno, and sort of drifted off the radar after that. He’s been floating around in books like Avengers Academy, mostly as a crowd-filler.

The Six. As we’ll see later, the Six another group of mutants working in combination to achieve remarkable feats. A data page in X-Men #11 also had the X-Men discussing possibilities for expanding this approach to other groups. But note that these characters have been selected for their powers, rather than necessarily their personalities or other qualifications – just as the Five include Proteus, a character you wouldn’t normally allow anywhere near a position of responsibility. That might explain some of the odder choices for roles in the new S.W.O.R.D. – though Wiz-Kid is a relatively sensible one. Magneto is tremendously taken with the Six and gets much more excited about Wiz-Kid on learning that he’s involved.

PAGES 12-13. Brand discusses her philosophy with Magneto.

As already noted, Magneto is keen on the nation state and mutants; Brand’s focus is on the planet as a whole. As for the intergalactic threats she mentions:

• The galactic economic crisis may have been mentioned elsewhere too, but it was certainly in the Empyre tie-in issues of Fantastic Four.
• The Snarkwar is a recent storyline from Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy arc.
• The “something roaming through space killing and eating whole planets” is the Venom villain Knull, as part of the build-up for King in Black.

PAGES 14-16. Magneto meets Frenzy.

Frenzy. Joanna Cargill debuted in X-Factor vol 1 #4 as a member of the Alliance of Evil, but wound up spending several years as a member of the Magneto-worshipping Acolytes cult – which she mentions here. She had another prominent run during Mike Carey’s run, where she wound up joining the X-Men. She’s billed on the org chart as an “ambassador extraordinary” – typically, in this context, “extraordinary” would mean that it wasn’t her regular job but a temporary assignment. (It’s the sort of “extraordinary” that you only really encounter these days in the phrase “extraordinary general meeting”.) Then again, this is Marvel, so maybe she’s just an ambassador who’s extraordinary.

Frenzy’s punching-based diplomatic style might seem ill-advised, but the Marvel Universe is full of quasi-feudal violence-based cultures. Speaking of whom…

Paibok. Paibok the Power Skrull is a 90s Fantastic Four villain, serving here in the standard role of “a Skrull, but one you’ve heard of”. As he mentions, the Kree and the Skrull are now allied following the events of Empyre.

The emperor’s mother-in-law is the Scarlet Witch, who the mutants still despise for her role in M-Day, when she nearly wiped out mutants from Earth during a breakdown of sorts. The new Kree-Skrull emperor is Hulkling, formerly of the Young Avengers; his husband Wiccan is the Scarlet Witch’s son.

PAGE 17. Magneto meets Fabian Cortez.

Fabian Cortez debuted in X-Men vol 2 #1 in 1991. He seems to have founded the Acolytes as a device to get himself a bunch of cultists and ingratiate himself with Magneto. He himself was not ultimately a Magneto worshipper, despite putting on the act, and eventually it all went rather badly wrong for him when Magneto and Exodus seized control of the Acolytes from him. Cortez was killed during the Matthew Rosenberg run (who wasn’t?), but he’s had cameos on Krakoa before, so clearly he was resurrected.

For understandable reasons, Cortez is trying to ingratiate himself to Magneto, with no success. Cortez is a member of the Six, but Brand doesn’t say so in terms, and it’s not entirely clear if Magneto knows. Presumably Cortez was selected for this role because his unusual mutant power – to supercharge other people’s mutant powers – was essential for the power-combination they had in mind. There’s no earthly reason why you’d put him in charge of anything otherwise.

Brand’s comments seem to confirm that they’d get rid of him if the opportunity presented itself. In the next scene, she rather implies that Cortez has nothing to actually do on the station except when he’s called upon to boost the Six’s power. Cortez’s job title is given as “Executive Producer” on the org chart, which is weird.

Cortez apparently wants to talk to Magneto about “the Council’s edicts regarding humans”. It’s not clear what he means here, unless it’s the law against killing them.

PAGES 18-20. Magneto meets the teleporters and Peepers.

Five members of the six are standing on their coloured hexagons. The empty yellow one belongs to Fabian Cortez, who is just entering the room. Standing next to the green hexagon is Armor, the deputy ambassador, who we haven’t seen yet in this issue. She appears all the time so I’ll assume you know who she is.

On the orange hexagon is Manifold, the lead teleporter. Eden Fesi is a Jonathan Hickman character from Secret Warriors and Avengers, who’s also been used more recently in Black Panther. He’s a mutant, but the X-Men haven’t had much to do with him until now. He and his fellow teleporters are listed on the org chart as “logistics”, and Manifold himself is described as a “quintician” (which is not a word, according to the OED).

The other teleporters hanging around with him are:

• The Vanisher (“Telly Porter”, if you believe that), a villain who debuted in X-Men vol 1 #2 and had a reluctant stint in a version of X-Force.
• Lila Cheney, the intergalactic-scale teleporter from the original New Mutants, who was Cannonball’s girlfriend. She’s also a rock star.
• Blink, presumably the mainstream Marvel Universe one.
• Amelia Voght, the teleporter from the Acolytes, who was a fairly prominent character in the 90s but hasn’t done anything beyond cameos in yeaars.
• Gateway, the X-Men’s teleporter from the Australian period, who’s been serving this role already in issues of X-Men.

On the purple hexagon is Peeper, billed as a visual analyst. Unusually, this character does have a history with Magneto, but not from the X-books – he was a member of a version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants that appeared in Captain America Annual #4 (in 1977). They went on to call themselves the Mutant Force, and later the Resistants. Peeper’s appearances in the X-books have mainly been in Frank Tieri’s Wolverine run. Basically, he’s a harmless and somewhat meek minor villain whose superhuman vision and other eye-related powers are much more suited to this than they ever were to combat.

Magneto and Peeper have barely interacted in years. Magneto is making a show of it here to annoy Cortez.

PAGES 21-22. Data pages on the Six. It starts off by describing routine teamwork like the Fastball Special, moves on to the Five and their resurrection role (which must be very familiar by now), and presenting the Six as the next aspect of that. Apparently, their function is to combine their powers to reach across the universe and multiverse to locate and retrieve things for S.W.O.R.D./Krakoa.

The Krakoan symbols are just the first letter of the members’ roles, as listed on the next page.

All of the participants have backups with similar powers.

• Any old standby teleporter will do; Nightcrawler and Magik are suggested.
• Wiz-Kid’s backup is naturally Forge, who has similar powers but is mainly busy on Krakoa.
• Cortez does have a back-up but his name is redacted out. They must be seriously dodgy if Cortez is being chosen in preference.
• Armor’s back-up is Skids, a member of the New Mutants in the late 80s, who had force field powers vaguely like Armor’s.
• Manifold is apparently irreplacable. Apparently it’s his navigation rather than his teleportation as such that’s the big deal.
• Peeper’s replacement is “Doc”. I can only assume that’s the otherwise-unnamed mutant coroner who appeared in Uncanny X-Men #450, who did indeed have super-vision.
• Risque’s backup is Shen Xorn, the one with a black hole for a brain – presumably because it can generate the same condensing effect as Risque’s powers. Seems a bit loose but they’ll make do.

The narrative here indicates that the Six navigate to some location or other, identify the redacted-out thing they’re looking for, and are apparently able to condense it from Kirby-homaging “kirbon particles” and retrieve it.

PAGES 23-25. The Six play out what we’ve just seen described.

• Mysterium tremendum: This is a term coined by the philosopher Rudolf Otto in his book The Idea of the Holy (1917). Broadly speaking, he used it to refer to something awe-inspiring and numinous.
• White-hot room of secret fire. The White-Hot Room is a sort of afterlife for Phoenixes, as seen in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. If the Six are messing about with something associated with the White-hot room, then that’s probably a very bad idea.
• Excelso Prae Omnibus Aliis. High above all others.

PAGE 26. Credits (miles into the book, which is always a nice trick). For some reason S.W.O.R.D. uses the pre-“X of Swords” layout that all the other books have dropped.

PAGES 27-30. The Six retrieve their pyramid.

The Peak is now in geostationary orbit 22,000 miles above Krakoa. Um, isn’t a giant hovering sword over the island a little ominous…?

I don’t think we’re meant to recognise the thing that the Six have retrieved – though cosmic objects in simple geometric shapes perhaps echo the good old Cosmic Cube.

PAGE 31. Closing quote from Doctor Doom, which speaks for itself.

PAGE 32. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: BLACK.