New Mutants #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #14
“Welcome to the Wild Hunt”
by Vita Ayala & Rob Reis
COVER / PAGE 1: Scout, Karma, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Warpath, Magik and Warlock, apparently just finishing off a session in the “Wild Hunt”. The Wild Hunt was shown in the map of Krakoa in House of X #1, but this is the first we’ve heard of it since then; evidently it’s some sort of woodland sparring area.
PAGES 2-4. The origin of Amahl Farouk.
Amahl Farouk first appeared in X-Men vol 1 #117, in an extended flashback to a young Professor X’s first encounter with an evil mutant. For years, that was all there was to know about him, but in the late 1980s he was retooled as the Shadow King, an all-purpose embodiment of psychic malevolence. The suggestion that the Shadow King is a possessing entity, and that Farouk used to exist independently of him, has come up before but has never really been explored.
This is the first time we’ve seen anything about Farouk’s personal history, and it turns out that he’s 500 years old or so. It’s not clear whether his long lifespan is part of his own mutant powers, or whether it’s something provided to him by the Shadow King.
Farouk was shown among the psychics living on Krakoa in Empyre: X-Men, but that was so offhand as to suggest that it might be an error. In this issue he does indeed seem to be living on Krakoa, but there’s some ambiguity about how many people know about that.
“Egypt Eyalet” (or the “Eyalet of Egypt”) was the name of Egypt when it was a division of the Ottoman Empire. That narrow the timeframe slightly beyond “the sixteenth century”, by placing the flashback somewhere after 1517.
Reis’s art on this scene – and indeed many scenes in this issue – seems to be consciously referencing the style of Bill Sienkiewicz’s highly influential run on the original New Mutants series.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits. Like most other X-books, New Mutants has shifted to this new design coming out of “X of Swords”.
PAGE 6. Data page – an exchange of letters. Dani Moonstar, Wolfsbane, Warpath, Karma and Magik flag up that “the residents of the Akademos habitat” – the teenagers, in other words – are flailing around rather directionlessly. Back in issue #3, a data page claimed that the Akademos was “an education center and training facility, where the young mutants exchange ideas and learn from one another, forgoing formal classroom studies and student/teacher relationships. All are students. All are teachers.”
The New Mutants’ letter is saying that this experimental-education approach is failing badly. Professor X responds by telling them that they’ve volunteered to put something more structured in place. This looks distinctly like an attempt to impose some direction on a series that was rather lacking it.
Note that only Magik signs by her codename (despite a general encouragement on Krakoa to use mutant names). I’m not particularly wild about the lettering here, which is very obviously not hand-signed. Does that really look like Warpath’s signature to you? Dani and Xavier’s signatures are in the same font, too…
PAGE 7. Xi’an talks to Dani about her nightmares.
Xi’an has been having nightmares ever since being trapped in Cosmar’s nightmare sphere in issues #9-11. As seen in those issues, Cosmar’s power is – or at least includes – warping the surrounding reality to reflect her nightmares while she’s asleep.
“Otherworld”, and “what happened there”, refers to the “X of Swords” crossover. Xi’an wasn’t particularly involved in that storyline, but she was among the characters who showed up along with Cyclops for the climax.
PAGES 8-9. Xi’an shows Dani her nightmare.
Dani’s power always used to be defined as the ability to make an image of somebody else’s desires, fears or so on; I assume what’s happening here is meant to be along those lines.
Xi’an’s dream relives the final battle from X of Swords: Destruction #1. The young man she sees in the dream isn’t immediately recognisable, but it could presumably be a young Amahl Farouk. Her connection with him comes from the original New Mutants run, where she was possessed by Farouk / the Shadow King for a while, and became grotesquely obese as a result.
PAGES 9-11. The other New Mutants arrive.
Warlock has generally been posing as Cypher’s techno-organic arm until now. With “X of Swords” that seems to have been dropped, and we’ve still really had no explanation of why he and Cypher were doing it in the first place. Cypher is absent with his new bride Bei, who he was forcibly married to during “X of Swords” – despite the circumstances, the two of them seem to be getting on very well indeed, at least if Warlock’s account is anything to go by.
Dani is apparently in the habit of helping the other New Mutants to deal with their mental health problems, but has never had this discussion with Magik. Perhaps Magik’s just not approachable enough for that sort of conversation; she has a pretty well defined act that she doesn’t drop easily, even though she’s being relatively normal in conversation with Rahne.
Warpath effectively rejoins the cast here. We’ve seen him around on Krakoa before, but he hasn’t been doing much.
PAGES 12-14. The Ferals and the Elementals spar.
The characters fighting here are:
- Anole, the lizard boy introduced in New Mutants vol 2. He was a prominent character for a long while, but seems to have drifted nito the background of late.
- Fauna, a kid who was seen arriving on Krakoa in House of X #1. We also saw him in Cable #1, where he had to get rescued.
- Nature Girl, most prominently used in the last run of Generation X, and still wearing her school uniform.
- Scout, the younger clone sister of Laura Kinney (X-23 / Wolverine).
- Petra, the rock-controlling mutant from X-Men: Deadly Genesis. Per that series, she was part of a makeshift team of X-Men who were sent to rescue the real team from Krakoa in Giant-Size X-Men #1, and got themselves killed before any of the rest of the X-Men even found out about her. We’ve seen her in X-Men hanging around with her teammate Vulcan.
- Sprite, a long-time background character who debuted in Avengers vs X-Men #12 as one of the wave of new mutants whose powers emerged in that issue. She was a student at the X-Men’s school in Wolverine & The X-Men, but she’s never done anything very significant.
- Dust, a character first introduced in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men and later added to the school roster.
- The staggeringly obscure Rain Boy, a student from the Peter Milligan / Salvador Larroca run, whose only previous appearances were in X-Men vol 2 #171-174, fifteen years ago. He’s meant to be living water in a containment suit, but perhaps he’s got better control of his powers since then.
PAGES 15-19. The New Mutants demonstrate synergy to their students.
The idea that mutant powers working in tandem can achieve even more impressive feats has been an increasing theme in X-Men and S.W.O.R.D. In addition to the two squads we already saw, the crowd here includes Cosmar (with the distorted face), Armor (with her usual armoured force field) and Icarus (with the wings).
Scout raises a question about the resurrection policy on clones, which picks up directly on events in other books. Scout is a clone of Laura, and she clearly thinks that the resurrection protocols don’t apply to her. She has every reason to think that. As she points out, not only have the mutants chosen not to bring back Evan Sabah-Nur (a clone of Apocalypse), in Hellions #4 the Quiet Council decided not to resurrect Madelyne Pryor (a clone of Jean Grey). In that issue, Cyclops specifically cited the fact that Madelyne was a clone; the resurrection protocols don’t want multiple versions of the same character running around.
The New Mutants don’t know that that was the reason for leaving Madelyne un-resurrected, and they clearly disagree with the decision. Magik reasons it away – at least for public consumption – by blaming it on Madelyne’s crimes, but Scout is obviously right to say that Madelyne is no worse than some of the people who are in positions of authority on Krakoa. Scout is clearly unpersuaded, and rightly so.
PAGES 20-23. Four of the students go to visit Farouk.
The floating brain in a jar is No-Girl, a character introduced in the Grant Morrison run. She’s a psychic, and her condition is nothing to do with her mutant power – her brain was removed from her body by the organ-harvesting U-Men. You’d have thought she might be up for a bit of resurrection, but evidently not.
The kids seem to be under the influence of Farouk, given that they become very bouncy and lose their trepidation when they’re near him. No-Girl is a psychic, but she’s nowhere close to Farouk’s league.
PAGE 24. Data page. Dani writes to James, encouraging him to start a diary. Dani and James had some degree of romantic tension back in the original New Mutants series, which never really went anywhere.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: RAGER.
This made me so happy…
Perfect characterisation. Amazing art. A spotlight on Shan. Jimmy being hot. Warlock never being funnier…
And characters saying all the things that the fans have been saying about Maddie (who accidentally sold her soul in a dream after sacrificing her life with the entire team as an act of heroism).
So good.
This was a really good issue with an actual direction fir this title.
I sort of wish that the Shadow King was being given a more momentous story rather than being kept in the New Mutants book.
I guess it’s playing on the history where the Shadow King was a major antagonist of the New Mutants.
I was hoping to see Shadow King being one of the major recurring threats of the Krakoa era.
He possessed an island of mutants, including Moira, at the end of Claremont’s run. It seemed too coincidental to not be played upon at some point with Krakoa.
Oh well. I’m glad to see Farouk being used.
Doug Ramsey was hiding the fact that his arm was Warlock in order to sneak Warlock on to the island.
It should have been explained better, but you can piece it together now.
Doug arrived on the island with Xavier to meet Krakoa.
You see him, in Powers of X, touching Krakoa, seemingly infecting the island. It looks far more disturbing than the scene is actually portraying.
Doug was secretly planting a piece of Warlock on the island, in order to meet up with him later.
Doug must have realized that he wouldn’t have been able to enter the Krakoan gate with Warlock.
So, he went through the gate to Krakoa.
In the pages of X-Men we saw Doug talking to Warlock, with Cyclops seeming surprised by what he saw.
Doug went and found where he left the piece of Warlock on the island.
He was hiding Warlock because Warlock is not a mutant and so is not supposed to be on the island.
Cyclops was shocked because Warlock is supposed to a.)be dead and b.)not be on Krakoa.
Why Doug felt the need to be so secretive about Warlock makes no sense, because everyone was fine with Warlock being on the island.
Hickman apparently wanted the fact that Doug’s arm was Warlock to be a big surprise for readers because everyone thought Warlock was supposed to be dead.
The whole thing was very badly done.
Strictly speaking, in Morrison’s X-Men Martha Johanssen was just called Martha, and No-Girl was either an in-joke among the Special Class or a mutant whose power was that she didn’t exist. I’m not sure exactly when the No-Girl name got attached to Martha, but I assume it was around the same time as it was decided Ernst wasn’t Cassandra Nova and Xorn was Xorn.
I think the Cypher/Warlock plot shows how Hickman is making this up as he goes along.
I think the original plan was that only mutants would be allowed on Krakoa.
Now we know that non-mutants can live on Krakoa if Krakoa approves of the individual.
So, I think in light of this change, they just quietly swept the Warlock secrecy plot under the rug.
It no longer applied if non-mutants could live on Krakoa.
Warlock has always been a mutant–his mutation is that he’s capable of empathy and compassion, unlike the rest of his race. I assume Krakoa is okay with non-human mutants, like Ariel or Broo, so maybe the original worry was that Warlock’s technorganic nature wouldn’t be welcome on the island.
Why haven’t they brought back Evan? Clone of Apocalypse or not, he was a pretty distinct individual in his own right, and not a major hazard like Maddie…
Good note about No-Girl… as a disembodied telepathic brain, she’d be right in line to get a clone of her original body. Unless she’s too used to her new state of being to -want- a body… I remember the last time she had one, in Generation Hope, it didn’t go well. (I wonder if they’ll bring back Kenji from that run at some point.)
Interesting that we’re seeing this exploration of “as long as you’re bringing people back, we can alter them as necessary.” That topic will come up again in this week’s X-Force, re: Omega Red. But has Shan taken the opportunity to get her organic leg back, or is she still rocking the prosthesis?
(Same with Forge: Now that he -can- be rebuilt from the ground up, he could lose the artificial hand and leg… unless they’re too baked into his sense of self and identity.)
How many mutants on the island chose to come back without traumatic memories, or with their powers tweaked and controlled? Lord knows some of the Xavier School kids might take them up on it.
(Hey, if Cerebro only backs up mutants, how accurate are the backups for everyone who was depowered on M-Day? Did it continue to back them up afterwards, based on grandfathering them into the system, or did any get dropped because technically, they weren’t mutants any longer? Is Franklin Richards still in the system now that he’s apparently not a mutant?)
Big question: are there any -trans- mutants who are all like “Hey, as long as we’re doing this, could I get a body more in line with my real self?”
The more I think about this system and how it’s already been explored, the more questions I have about ways in which it can be used.
Wait. Warlock’s mutant power is that he can show empathy?
Geez. I always thought he was an outsider and that’s why he was accepted as part of the New Mutants. That more than genetics, accepting of difference was what Xavier’s school would represent.
So, is this known to be a genetic trait of Warlock?
So…I guess the biggest question becomes are albino people allowed on the island?
Are frogs born with five legs accepted?
Are they going to figure out the human ancestor who was the first born with blue eyes and resurrect her/him?
I really want to see a character called Old Blue Eyes on Krakoa now.
Ayala hitting just the right notes, immediately gives the book direction, delivers on past meanderings, and sets up future stories. But Reis is especially a joy, finally an artist properly taking advantage of Warlock.
“I think the original plan was that only mutants would be allowed on Krakoa.”
Well, no. Non-mutants can use the gates, and be allowed on Krakoa, with permission. That’s in House of X #1.
But for that matter, yes they are literally making it up every month. That’s how comics are made. When Hickman pitched his take on the X-office, he had a short medium and long term scale pitch, and no matter what happens the fine details are subject to change, because it’s a collaborative art form (really the artists are doing the heavy lifting here) with tight commercial constraints. We’ve all seen that go very wrong and very right, but it’s part of serial story telling. I’ve been surprised to see so many people treating monthly comics like they’re some big studio film production. Go read a classic novel. Serial storytelling is subject to evolve as it comes out. It’s great that the market can support some creators, your Sagas and your Criminals and what have you, as a kind of after effect of the market for trades, maybe some of the influence of BDs, but Big 2 monthlies are pretty flexible by nature. I don’t think it’s a problem that Hickman hasn’t mapped out every big of the story beat by beat. As Head of X his job seems to be literally setting up the status quo against which others can tell stories exploring the possibilities opened up by HoX/PoX. I’d be curious to know how his eventual final chapter would compare with his original pitch, but it would be a bad thing for the line if the writers and artists producing most of the books had no influence on the direction of the line.
Really encouraging first issue. Loved the art, loved the characterization and Scout’s question really was a good sign that they’re tackling hard questions.
X of Swords was uneven but the books coming out of it have all seemed boosted by it (other than maybe Marauders, which didn’t lose much)
“Wait. Warlock’s mutant power is that he can show empathy?
Geez. I always thought he was an outsider and that’s why he was accepted as part of the New Mutants. That more than genetics, accepting of difference was what Xavier’s school would represent.”
Waaaay back in New Mutants #74, Warlock was definitely confirmed to be a mutant, when he was scanned by Apocalypse’s old Ship (then in possession of X-Factor). From all indications, his mutation -is- the individuality and compassion that set him apart from the rest of the Technarchy.
Joseph-It has more to do with the way this new direction was set up, with Hickman overseeing the entire line.
He obviously does have veto powers.
This is very different than Marvel hiring a writer and artist to write the monthly comic.
Obviously, if Duggan decided to write a story where Moira reveals herself to Krakoa, Hickman would want to stop that story from being told.
It does depend on the writer. Grant Morrison took over New X-Men with a number of story beats in mind and knew how the run would begin and end, within a finite time-frame.
He wasn’t making it all up as he went along.
Saga is an example of serial story-telling, just as much as Uncanny X-Men.
Either can be an example of serial story-telling.
As far as classic novels, many of them were told using serial story-telling also. Great Expectations, for one example, was published using serial story-telling.
Anyway, I do mostly agree with your comments.
Claremont ended up working in the same way. He’d come up with an idea, but along the way, plans would be changed, so Claremont had to adapt his original story.
I guess I was just having flashbacks to the Scott Lobdell days when he’d throw out some mystery with no idea where it was going and hope that he’d come up with a good story out of the idea eventually.
Almost always, it ended up as a huge disappointment.
“ Wait. Warlock’s mutant power is that he can show empathy?
Geez. I always thought he was an outsider and that’s why he was accepted as part of the New Mutants. That more than genetics, accepting of difference was what Xavier’s school would represent.
So, is this known to be a genetic trait of Warlock?”
The Other Michael is right that Warlock was kind of, sort of confirmed as a mutant during Louise Simonson’s run. (To be fair, it wasn’t quite as cut-and-dry as that, with Ship basically saying, “My sensors don’t indicate for sure he ISN’T a mutant, so I guess he can enter.”) It’s rarely been mentioned since, as one of those late-game additions that wasn’t necessarily intended by the character’s creators.
During the Abnett/Lanning “Nova” run, Warlock was able to teach empathy and compassion to Tyro, a young Technarch on Kvch. However, I seem to remember he had to insert some of his own code into Tyro when he was a hatchling (and it was still an uphill battle to pull him away from the dark side); so whether it’s an “official” mutation by X-Men standards or not, Warlock has consistently been depicted as unique among his race.
Interesting to note that, per the cast page, they have once again completely dropped the “Mirage” codename for Dani Moonstar (She’s the only one listed by her real name, there and in the captions. Karma also calls her “Moonstar” rather than “Mirage” or even “Dani”)
Chris V> Hickman apparently wanted the fact that Doug’s arm was Warlock to be a big surprise for readers because everyone thought Warlock was supposed to be dead.
Which was blown because they didn’t redact the “Doug’s arm is Warlock” line in the HoX #1 (or was it PoX #1?) Director’s Cut script. (They redacted other stuff, just not that line)
“Strictly speaking, in Morrison’s X-Men Martha Johanssen was just called Martha, and No-Girl was either an in-joke among the Special Class or a mutant whose power was that she didn’t exist. I’m not sure exactly when the No-Girl name got attached to Martha, but I assume it was around the same time as it was decided Ernst wasn’t Cassandra Nova and Xorn was Xorn.”
Quite the opposite; it in Here Comes Tomorrow, when Cassandra Nova is revealed to have been Ernst, where she turns to Martha and says “I love being in your mind, Martha. Everything’s so colorful and exciting in the cartoon world of No-Girl.” No Girl was a girl who didn’t exist, but Ernst was also frequently talking about her as if she did — because this was the relationship Ernst and Martha had.
Scene for reference:
https://ibb.co/n9U2O8
The young man that Xi’an sees in the dream is her twin brother, Tran Coy Manh. Dani has met him before, so there must be some telepathic interference blocking her from remembering him.
@ The Other Michael: Shan still has her prosthetic leg – most visible this issue on page 9 and then in the fight scene. My guess is that she wouldn’t be too bothered if she was resurrected with her organic leg back, but not enough to die intentionally to accomplish that. I’d be willing to bet that X-Factor will eventually deal with the question of committing suicide and resurrecting to undo permanent bodily harm, though. Hellion springs to mind.
Unrelated: the establishment of an real premise for this book opens up new story avenues and I’m glad Ayala did it straight away. It’s early days, but six teachers is obviously not enough for the population of Krakoa. Tapping Generation X as mentors/trainers seems like a natural next step, but will Dani try and rope in the more stable Acolytes, original Hellions and/or MLF members, for example? What if Cosmar feels like she wants guidance from Wildside? Appropriate powers, terrible person.
In the Fallen Angels limited series that is rightly beloved by many here, Chance accidentally suppressed Warlock’s “power”, sending him on an empathy-less rampage.
X-Men mutations aren’t just DNA errors like blue eyes or five-legged frogs, they’re some weird “x-factor” implanted by Celestials or interbreeding with some prehistoric Inhuman wild boy or whatever they’re saying now. We know that some aliens also have this x-factor, so even though the technarchy surely don’t have DNA, they could somehow still have this implanted, nebulous x-factor.
As for clones, haven’t they already resurrected two of the cuckoos? And Greycrow? And, for that matter, Xavier? That ship has kind of sailed.
By the way, I have an uncomfortable feeling about Native American characters using their surnames as superhero names. It’s kind of fetishising their culture, right? On the surface it’s more PC than calling them things like Scalphunter and Warpath, but is it actually any different?
Si-Right. The Celestials created Homo Sapien Sapiens with the latent potential to evolve in to mutants eventually, if the race could survive long enough.
It is known that the Celestials also experimented on certain other alien races, like the Skrulls.
They also had the latent x-gene to evolve the ability to shape-shift.
Eventually, the Skrull mutants became the dominant trait and the non-shape shifting Skrulls were bred out of the race.
The one issue with the Technarchy though is that with Hickman’s ret-con, we know that the Phalanx created the Technarchy.
I was just making a joke. I mean, having the x-factor to show empathy really doesn’t seem the same as the x-factor gene giving powers to humanity.
Good point about Xavier. There is all this debate about clones in Krakoan society, but everyone seems to have forgotten that Xavier was cloned during the Claremont years. No one freaked out about that.
Also, yes, just about any name would be better than Scalphunter!
There was a DC character with that name, but that was a pejorative name given to him by bigoted white folk at least.
It’s been implied in the past that No-Girl/Martha actually prefers being a brain in a jar, thinks of it as pure.
“It is known that the Celestials also experimented on certain other alien races, like the Skrulls.
They also had the latent x-gene to evolve the ability to shape-shift.
Eventually, the Skrull mutants became the dominant trait and the non-shape shifting Skrulls were bred out of the race.”
And even then, there are still “mutant” Skrulls that have popped up from time to time, like Cadre K. I wonder, for the purposes of Krakoa, whether they’d be allowed onto the island.
“this was the relationship Ernst and Martha had.
Scene for reference:
https://ibb.co/n9U2O8”
Another really good twist of Morrison, discarded by later writers… Ernst being Cassandra. I also like the back and forth of dialogue there. It reminds me of the back and forth between my elderly aunt and mother.
On ‘fixing’ characters with artificial limbs. Seems a shame to me when it gives characters are more interesting design, such as Hellion without the floating TK hands. But I also get HoX allows these stories to be explored. I think the risk is that writers shy away from having characters reflect on the changes, for fear of getting it ‘wrong’.
Also disappointed that the Cypher/Warlock mystery, which was being depicted as vaguely sinister, seems to have been handwaved away. They’ve missed a beat there.
Should say, loved the scene with Scout. Kind of heartbreaking! I fear narratively, she’ll have to be killed off, so this ‘no clone’ resurectio rule becomes front and centre.
Young generation of mutants versus the old, civil war on Krakoa, in order to resurrect their friend? I’d love to read that.
Allan M> Unrelated: the establishment of an real premise for this book opens up new story avenues and I’m glad Ayala did it straight away. It’s early days, but six teachers is obviously not enough for the population of Krakoa. Tapping Generation X as mentors/trainers seems like a natural next step, but will Dani try and rope in the more stable Acolytes, original Hellions and/or MLF members, for example? What if Cosmar feels like she wants guidance from Wildside? Appropriate powers, terrible person.
Also, you’d think the whole Elixir thing would permanently disqualify Rahne from any sort of teaching job.
Si> By the way, I have an uncomfortable feeling about Native American characters using their surnames as superhero names. It’s kind of fetishising their culture, right? On the surface it’s more PC than calling them things like Scalphunter and Warpath, but is it actually any different?
Warpath is still Warpath – the only time anyone calls him “Proudstar” in the issue is Dani in her letter at the end. He’s still “Warpath” in the captions & cast page.
(Also, Dani appears to have dropped a codename completely for now, since the cast page calls her “Dani Moonstar”, not “Moonstar”.)
Chris V> Eventually, the Skrull mutants became the dominant trait and the non-shape shifting Skrulls were bred out of the race.
No, the Skrull DEVIANTS became dominant. Both the vanilla/mutant and Eternal Skrulls were disposed of.
Chris V> Good point about Xavier. There is all this debate about clones in Krakoan society, but everyone seems to have forgotten that Xavier was cloned during the Claremont years. No one freaked out about that.
The point is not about clone bodies, it’s about “one copy”. So Xavier, Greycrow, the “Legacy Marauders”, etc can get Five’d despite being a clone of a clone of a clone… (etc) because there’s only one of them afterward.
The problem comes when they decide Madelyne is nothing more than a copy of Jean, or Gabby is a straight copy of X-23, and so neither qualify for Five’ing since, despite being clones, they are clearly different people. (Old Man Cable is also a dodgy example, if a bit less so – they seem to be refusing to resurrect him as long as Kid Cable is around. Also, they’re creating Xavier “husks” for Proteus – you’d think Changeling/Morph would be smarter, and Betsy at least should know that… – but as long as Xavier’s personality isn’t installed, they regard that as okay.)
Anthony> It’s been implied in the past that No-Girl/Martha actually prefers being a brain in a jar, thinks of it as pure.
Didn’t seem that way in Generation Hope…
Evilgus> On ‘fixing’ characters with artificial limbs. Seems a shame to me when it gives characters are more interesting design, such as Hellion without the floating TK hands. But I also get HoX allows these stories to be explored. I think the risk is that writers shy away from having characters reflect on the changes, for fear of getting it ‘wrong’.
They seem to be completely dodging the issue. There’s no reason Chamber (who has had his face fixed before and preferred it that way) or Nanny should be resurrected as anything other than “normal” people. Instead, they’re just bringing them back as they were and trying not to mention it.
Oh, Skrull Deviants? My mistake.
That doesn’t really fit with Steven Engelhart’s Avengers where the Skrulls were a peaceful race wanting to help other species, and they only became warlike to defend their planet from the militaristic Kree.
I guess that’s the problem with decades and decades of continuity implants.
DFE- thank you! I was scrolling through to see if anybody had clarified that No-girl was absolutely Martha.
On that note, I always thought it was sad that because of Chuck Austen misunderstanding the story (and then Joss Whedon doubling down on the mistake), we never got to see Cassandra Nova/Ernst reform and become an X-man. Maybe some writer will find a way for Ernst to have been Cassandra all along.
I think having a tighter cast is a good idea and Doug will probably be back but they didn’t want to spoil whether he survived in XOSwords.
It is interesting that Amara is gone. I wonder if Hickman will be using her in the new “core X-Men team” he hinted Cyclops will be forming in a recent interview. He seems to like her as he has used her in the main book already….
@DFE – Oh, good catch. I must have read that at the time, but I don’t think I really put it together properly.
@Chris V: Skrulls being peace-like before the Kree refused to accept their judgement call does not imply that they were not Deviants at that point. It _does_ bring the question of why “Deviancy” is so different between Skrulls and Humans, I suppose.
@SoM: we have met baseline Skrulls once or twice, first in the 1994 “Blackwulf” series.
I appreciate that both issues coming out this week are in one way or another versions of the classic Claremont “quiet” issue. Instead of big battle we get characters talking through their problems and worries and such. It is, I think, the first large-scale character work that has happened since HoX/PoX began. There is some character work in Marauders, mostly centered around Kate Pryde, but in these issues there’s a chance to just check in on characters and see a little of what they’re thinking.
Which makes me wonder if we ever got a bit where Karma reflected upon losing her leg? Character development for Karma has always been way too spotty.
I take it James didn’t comment on how he feels about his brother and inspiration either being resurrected or his having not been resurrected? Either way, it’d be a major impact on him.
Excellent issue!
I wonder if Evan is up for resurrection protocol now that Apocalypse has left Krakoa?
Pretty good issue, a much needed addition of structure to the book.
Interesting to see another series dealing with the sketchy side of Krakoa.
New Mutants: Uh hey all these kids are running around without supervision becoming angry, depressed, and suicidal.
Xavier: Cool story you guys fix it, I’m busy.
There still doesn’t seem to be much society in Mutantville.
You’d think Warpath would be the first person up for resurrection wouldn’t you?
I can’t recall a particular instance where I read it, but I’ve been presuming there’s some sort of hold of Thunderbird’s resurrection because of his DNA actively being in Sinister (for the purpose of making Sinister a mutant).
I was trying to think if there could be an ethical reason for saying that *not* reverting people in any way (physical or mental) in resurrection is the morally best decision.
The problem is if the resurrection protocols hinge on a mind-body dualism (i.e. that the “self” is what is paramount and the body and mind are completely separate processes) and the more accepted belief in constrast that is Physicalism (i.e. mental processes are physical and therefore part of the body.)
If the latter is true, and the totality of a “person” is the sum of their experiences, which would include their physical state, then the moral responsibility is to return them to their exact physical state in order to resurrect them as who they really “are.”
If the former is true, then the morally responsible thing would be to resurrect each and every person into a perfectly created body regardless of any experience they had — which means everyone should have Monet’s body, I suppose?
This would be in-fiction, of course, and certainly is what keeps Nightcrawler up at night. For readers outside the fiction, they want to see the former– as it keeps the record of everything that happened to “build” the character in the first place, for good or ill. For writers, they want to have it both ways, which unfortunately leads to confusion, contradiction, or just looking like they don’t know what they’re doing.
I come late to the party so I’ll just add to the chorus by saying that this was a very promising first issue of what I hope will become a permanent direction for the series.
Even if it was bad – and it very much isn’t – at least this is a direction.
Of course, former New Mutants looking after newer(ish) mutants is just the repeated plot of Weir and DeFilippis ‘New Mutants’, just in a tropical island setting… but I’m not complaining, it’s been a long time since someone paid attention to young mutants.
Prisoner X was my favourite of the Age of X-Man minis so I was quite eager for Vita Ayala to make their HoXPoXDoXRoX debut – only I expected it to be the Children of the Atom book. Funny how that turned out. And honestly, this issue makes me more interested in that book.
I’m not a fan of how big the x-line is at the moment – there’s so many books. And I’m still not sold completely on the Krakoa status quo. But going by the percentage of the x-books I actually really enjoy, the line hasn’t been in better shape in a long while.
I think that was the reason for not resurrecting Thunderbird also.
However, I don’t think Sinister has Thunderbird’s DNA anymore.
Fans questioned why would Sinister choose Thunderbird’s DNA, if he has access to almost every mutant’s DNA?
Maybe he wanted to choose an innocuous mutant power to throw off everyone on Krakoa.
I believe it was either shown or hinted that the current Sinister on Krakoa is not the same version which was supposed to have Thunderbird’s DNA.
Here’s a theory I haven’t heard yet. The Sinister currently on Krakoa has Destiny’s DNA.
Those Sinister Secret columns that were popping up in some of the comics, some of the knowledge Sinister had seems to be things he couldn’t have found out about solely by spying on the island.
Some of them seem to show prognostication.
What better way to play his game with Krakoa than to use DNA of a mutant who seems to be persona-non-grata with the Quiet Council?
@Chris V
Yes, of course those books are technically “serialized,” but I would argue the changes in media and market have changed how we should think about seriality. For me the tension is between seriality and continuity, and as media have evolved the form has too. In the past especially publishers couldn’t be sure that readers would have access to every issue. “Every issue is somebody’s first”also meant that continuity as we know it couldn’t really develop until the Direct Market made collecting easier. The shift to writing for trades had a much bigger impact. You see a parallel development in television. The Simpson’s never really had a sense of continuity, like Archie. Every episode is more or less a reset. Lisa stays in the 2nd grade, Riverdale never leaves high school. Televised soap operas are kind of the exception that proves the rule, as they were designed to keep people watching everyday, creating an absurdly complex continuity (not unlike comics) that becomes part of the appeal while also being a barrier to entry for new audiences. It’s no coincidence that complex shows like the Sopranos or Mad Men or whatever (the so-called golden age of TV) developed at the same time that the as on demand TV and home media (especially DVDs). Once creators can presume that the audience can access and re-access media, watch or read a series in order, it fundamentally changed the nature of the stories being told.
This is the reason why I say a SAGA or a CRIMINAL is not really serialized storytelling, despite being released in installments. Both take advantage of the rhythms of monthly storytelling, no doubt, especially BKV’s famous openers and last page cliffgangers, they aren’t playing by the same rules as Big Two publishers. I mean, it’s been 2.5 years since the last issue of SAGA, right? A Big Two book would be publishing with a different artist or some other means. So the creator-owned books tend to be auteur books, their market is willing to wait for the finished project, and even if we buy floppies, those hardcover collected editions are always already in the plan.
I don’t think you can seriously make the same claim about Hickman’s X-Men or other Big Two work. He’s got an outline, he’s got a direction he’s moving in, but the raison d’etre of his take is creating a sandbox for other writers and artists to come play in.
“Sorry James Proudstar, we can’t bring your dead brother back to life because his DNA is currently in use by the Nazi vivisectionist who sits on our undemocratic council.”
If that was their reasoning he should be helping Mystique burn the place down.