X-Men #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #9
“The Rule of Three”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: C F Villa
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Orchis members sitting behind a bloodstained desk, after a bunch of shootings. That’s Killian Devo and Alia Gregor setting at the desk, with Dr Stasis, Nimrod and Omega Sentinel behind them, alongside a bunch of Orchis footsoldiers. The desk has obvious parallels to the Quiet Council desks, and this whole issue picks up the theme from Jonathan Hickman’s stories about clear parallels between the Krakoans and Orchis. I’m not sure who the guy lying on the floor is – it might be Feilong, but that doesn’t really make sense, and if it’s him his costume is miscoloured. On the other hand, Alia doesn’t actually appear in the story. Also lying on the floor in the foregrounds are a mixture of bullets and Orchis’s signature petals.
PAGE 2. Krakoa, Phobos and Arakko.
Establishing shots as all three ruling councils begin their meeting – the Quiet Council on Krakoa, Orchis on Phobos (which Feilong colonised in issue #7) and the Great Ring on Arakko. To hammer home the parallels, all three seem to be starting their discussion with the same sentence. Professor X speaks first on Krakoa. Oddly, the first speaker on Phobos is Feilong, who doesn’t appear again in this issue. The first speaker on Arakko is Isca.
These meetings can’t literally be simultaneous, because Storm is at two of them. The art avoids showing her in the Krakoa scenes, but the data page later in the issue confirms that she’s there.
PAGE 3. Professor X addresses the Quiet Council.
Professor X is arguing for Krakoa to declare war on Orchis. Colossus is now present as a member of the Quiet Council, so we’ve passed Inferno. (The two seats now held by Colossus and Destiny were empty in previous Quiet Council scenes in this book.)
“Both hard and soft power.” We’ve seen several times Orchis’s organisational chart which shows these two strands to their operation.
“Who cares what the humans think?” I’m not convinced by this interpretation of Shaw. The whole point of bringing Shaw into the Quiet Council in the first place was that he would deal with the marketing of Krakoan drugs to the human world. He’s a mutant nationalist of sorts, but I don’t think he’s indifferent to humans on a purely pragmatic level.
Emma seems to be more concerned about the reaction of other mutants, which is… not something I really follow. The X-Men have been fighting Orchis for a while now. What does a “secret war” on Orchis actually mean in practice that they haven’t been doing already? What’s the practical distinction between X-Force doing it (with the possibility of it coming out) and the Quiet Council doing it?
PAGE 4. Stasis addresses Orchis.
Actually shown on this page are Killian Devo, Dr Stasis, Nimrod, and Abigail Brand. Brand effectively told us near the end of S.W.O.R.D. #11 that she was serving as her own mole within Orchis, but this is the first time we’ve seen her with them, and seen that she’s apparently working at a high level. Abigail is a mutant, but apparently Orchis don’t particularly care about that.
“Modelling was counting on the mutant resurrection causing panic by now.” Stasis spent several issues trying to get Ben Urich to run a story on mutant resurrection, only for Urich’s memory to get wiped by Synch.
M.O.D.O.K.‘s experiments were the subject of last issue’s story.
“A machine designed only for killing.” M.O.D.O.K. stands for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing, but there’s also an obvious parallel here with Nimrod and Omega Sentinel.
PAGES 5-6. Orchis break M.O.D.O.K. out of jail.
Evidently M.O.D.O.K. was indeed arrested after the last issue, despite Cyclops telling him to go off and atone for his sins.
PAGE 7. Data page. We’ve seen versions of this Orchis infrastructure chart before, though I think this is the first time we’ve had all of the departments named and the managers of petals 1 and 3 listed. Brand has replaced Henry Peter Gyrich (whom she murdered in S.W.O.R.D. #11) as leader of petal 2. Stasis was named as human resources director in issue #2, though.
The redactions in the opening text are odd, since when we saw this in S.W.O.R.D. #3, the words now blacked out were shown clearly. The first sentence ends “by Homo superior is statistically inevitable.” The redacted words in the second sentence are “sustained resistance”.
PAGE 8. Recap and credits. The title refers to the writing principle that a trio tends to be the most satisfying number (partly because it’s the smallest number that can establish a pattern).
PAGES 9-12. The Great Ring meet.
Somewhat out of the blue, the Great Ring are debating whether they should return to the wartorn dimension of Amenth. Presumably the idea is that the warrior culture of Arakko leads many to feel that relocating to Mars is a bit of a cop out. It also generates some sort of parallel with the Krakoans wanting to go after Orchis, and Orchis discussing how to go after the Krakoans. Ironically, the Arakki – who actually like fighting – are thinking of just quitting the whole thing.
We’re told that half of the Great Ring vote for this, but we’re not told which half. Only Tarn actually gets some dialogue, and he doesn’t actually tell us how he voted. Presumably everyone is present, but the members we actually see on panel in this sequence:
- Storm and Isca, obviously.
- Tarn (the only other one to get dialogue) was a significant villain in Hellions and has also turned up in S.W.O.R.D.
- The guy sitting next to Tarn in page 9 panel 5 is Lodus Logos, the representative of art.
- The women with a spike on her forehead sitting next to Storm in page 11 panel 1 is Idyll, the seer.
- The big caterpillar thing in page 12 panel 5 is Xilo.
Isca abstains – and adds “of course”. Isca’s weirdly defined power is that she can never be beaten, but because there are limits to what she can achieve, beyond a certain point her powers simply force her to side with the winners. The suggestion seems to be that she generally declines to vote (on the basis, presumably, that it would be irrelevant unless she was casting a deciding vote). By taking neither side, she is not defeated – and Storm’s casting vote, on a committee of nine, makes sense.
Storm’s casting vote was previously established in S.W.O.R.D. #8.
Redroot was the translator for Arakko, basically the counterpart of Cypher for Krakoa. She was drafted into fighting in the tournament from the “X of Swords” crossover and wound up being imprisoned by Jim Jaspers after she broke something, as seen in X-Force #14 – this is what the two-panel flashback is showing.
PAGES 13-20. Rogue, Gambit and Destiny in space.
This breaks entirely with the parallels between the three committees and feels a bit shoehorned into the issue.
Oblitus. A black market space station introduced in Nova back in 2014.
Knowhere. Another space station, and Cosmo’s former home. As Gambit says, it fell into a black hole in Guardians of the Galaxy vol 5 #6. I think the suggestion that everyone evacuated to Oblitus is new.
Cosmo is a Nova / Guardians of the Galaxy character. He’s a Russian space dog who wound up getting psionic powers from cosmic rays. I think Albert is new, but I’m not sure.
Gameworld is a planet of sociopathic gamblers who were throwing existential threats at Earth in issues #1-2.
Destiny died in Uncanny X-Men #255, and Gambit didn’t debut until Uncanny X-Men #266, so this is the first time they’ve met. Destiny clearly doesn’t approve of him and wants to drag Rogue back into the family fold of herself and Mystique. Destiny is referred to here as Rogue’s mother; traditionally Rogue only really talked about Mystique in those terms. Mind you, that was back in the 80s, when Marvel were much, much more cagey about the nature of Mystique and Destiny’s relationship. Really, Destiny feels quite out of character here.
“Mr and Mrs X” was the name of a short-lived Rogue and Gambit series.
PAGE 21. Data page. The result of the Quiet Council vote. The vote fails, and we’re told quite clearly why: Shaw, Exodus and Magneto are aggressive and in favour of it. The conventional heroes (plus the borderline White Queen) vote against it; Colossus is also still under the influence of Chronicler, but given how Kurt and Ororo vote, it’s pretty clear that he would have voted against it anyway. Sinister’s reasons for abstaining are obscure. Mystique and Destiny apparently like the idea in theory but Destiny advises that it just won’t work. And Professor X, not unlike Isca, abstains rather than vote for a losing motion.
PAGES 22-24. Storm and Sunfire.
Sunfire has apparently been killing Arakki who came to challenge him. (Their challenge to Feilong was in issue #7.) Everyone seems a bit relaxed about that given that the Arakki don’t appear to do resurrection, as far as we’ve seen.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: WOLVERINE.
I like sassy Destiny. The way she misdirects Gambit so he’d get hit in the fight must be a callback to how she… I can’t remember, either misdirected or simply didn’t warn Spiral about an attack, because she couldn’t stand her. I think that was somewhere shortly before Fall of the Mutants?
Well, I say ‘must be a callback’ – it’s similar enough that it could be a callback.
And hey, for the first time it feels like Duggan is doing something on a larger scale. There are plates spinning and whatnot.
Or it’s all mostly setup for X-Men Red and won’t actually bear on this title at all.
As I understand it, Rogue lived with Mystique and Destiny for a few months, in between getting her powers and going to Xavier for help with her powers. In that time they mostly got her to do crimes. After joining the X-Men she only met Mystique and Destiny for brief punchings.
She has a living father who raised her, and an actual mother who may or may not be dead.
I never got the “mother” thing. It seems even more unearned than Wiccan and Speed being the sons of Scarlet Witch.
It depends on how old Rogue was when she joined the X-Men. She possibly lived with Mystique and Destiny for five years or more.
Her parents lived with her on a commune. Her mother disappeared, and she was raised by her religious fundamentalist aunt. This led to Rogue running away from home.
She’s found by Mystique, and the two then adopt her. While living with Mystique and Destiny, she kisses Cody. This was recounted in the Nocenti back-up story of Classic X-Men. Rogue was considered to be around fourteen when her mutant power emerged. She was at least eighteen by the time she joined the X-Men.
Also, Claremont wanted to reveal that Mystique was Rogue’s birth mother who had disappeared. So, that could be another reason for Mystique being considered Rogue’s mother.
This issue was all over the place, but I also liked sassy Destiny. Was she a bit out of character? Maybe, but she was drinking and dealing with Gambit, so I give her a pass. I’ll take a fun version of a stodgy character over the original version, provided it doesn’t ruin the story.
I don’t get why Orchis didn’t have a plan B regarding exposing mutant resurrection. I’m pretty sure Ben Urich isn’t the only reporter in the marvel Universe.
Sunfire killing Arraki who challenge him is weird and feels wrong. The whole Arraki section of the plot seemed like padding. So did the Modok rescue. Just have him show up and join Orchis! Use those pages to flesh out ongoing stories and underserved characters! I’d rather see how Jean reacts to Synch’s use of her powers or a conversation between Polaris and Wolverine than an unnecessary jailbreak.
No that’s how the Marvel Universe works. Urich is the only reporter, he reports on New York’s two lawyers, Walters and Murdock, who use testimony from the phychiatrist, Samson, and the private invsetigators, Jessica and Jessica.
I like the idea of Mystique being Rogue’s biological mother actually. I didn’t know that was a thing. But it does mean that Mystique has had even more children (past and future) that she abandoned.
I’m not sure why Mystique abandoned Rogue or what Claremont had planned, but I think the implication was that Mystique and Destiny wanted a child, so that was why Mystique got involved with Rogue’s father. There’s also the fact that Destiny told Mystique where to find Rogue when she ran away. So, maybe Claremont had an idea in mind that didn’t involve Mystique abandoning her daughter.
There’s that great PAD story where Mystique spreads Destiny’s ashes, she’s always had a playful side
Should I assume Firestar won the election and they’re preparing to move Sunfire to X-Men Red? That book already has a packed cast, but I don’t see Duggan messing around much with Arakko stuff once Ewing comes back.
Albert appears to be named after Albert II, a rhesus monkey who was the first mammal in space, in 1949.
I know you’re not doing the Devil’s Reign: X-Men miniseries here, but 1) it really is a straight-up X-Men comic (by Gerry Duggan and Phil Noto!), and 2) this week’s issue #2 is a fun Emma Frost-centered story that is, unfortunately, built around a massive continuity gaffe–in a lengthy flashback, Spider-Man shows up in his black costume at a time when he can’t possibly have been wearing it yet…
Not convinced that established backstory justifies Destiny being a surrogate co-mom to Rogue, but her hating Gambit immediately seems right.
This felt like one of the stronger Duggan issues, drawing together threads that were previously unconnected or lightly connected and turning it into A Scheme By Orchis. The Gameworld stuff still seems random so far. And there’s still way too little intra-team interaction. Has Synch talked to anyone besides Laura and Scott? With a roster change in the offing, there’s just so much potential interplay with this roster that just didn’t happen.
I’m really, really bored of Arrako, though. They basically all have the same personality, they’re wholly unsympathetic, and aside from Tarn, Solem and Isca, they’re all a bunch of losers who can’t win a fight against anyone vaguely competent. They spent millenia in constant war in a hell dimension and yet they get killed by Sunfire, seemingly without any effort since he’s visibly unharmed? They’re like Season 1 Worf from Star Trek The Next Generation: highly aggressive, utterly useless in practice.
Regarding sassy Destiny, I’m not as old has her, but if I suddenly woke up in a young adult body, pain-free, effortlessly strong, lithe, smooth and pretty as young people are, I’d be feeling my oats too.
I thought Destiny was great this issue. Her sass was a bit on the nose, but Hickman wrote her as fairly sassy, vengeful, and petty in Inferno, so I assume that would extend to future characterization. It’s alot of what made Frost popular post-Morrison after all. I do like that Destiny has an exhausted air about her though like “I know what’s going to happen and none of these idiots (aside from Raven) will listen.”
@Allan M: I’m a bit bored of the Arakki too.
They’re just so one-note and even the characters we know more about aren’t very different from the rest. They just have more complex motivations, but the same personality. The Arakki are just the new Neo with almost the same origin. The Children of the Vault aren’t far from being the Neo either. Why do x-men writers keep creating boring offshoot mutant civilizations/races, only to not have them be distinctive or interesting?
Children of the Vault aren’t a mutant offshoot. They were what baseline humans would evolve in to after thousands of years, rather than Homo Superior. They’re post-human.
While they aren’t that distinct as individuals with personalities, they have an interesting backstory. They fit nicely within the context of a science fictional milieu or as a wild idea that a writer would have come up with at WildStorm.
The Neo are just bland, characterless ciphers with a stupid backstory and even stupider names.
The Arakkoans (there is a battle for correct nomenclature) are in the same catergory as the Neo. They should not exist and their existence takes away from the plot rather than enhances it.
Rogue did call Destiny “Mom” at the end of Necrosha, so there’s precedent for that, at least
I agree that the Children of the Vault are distinctive conceptually. However, in practice, they are just another formerly isolated group of hyper-aggressive super-powered people with a supposed unique style/culture who hate and/or want to kill mutants. *Cough* Inhumans. *Cough* Eternals. That’s why I believe they aren’t far from the Neo or the Arakki(?). The COTV aren’t distinct individually, have shown little depth beyond their initial concept, and have thus far been incapable of being unique in their actions/behavior. Carey showed that they do have emotional range (unlike with the Neo or Arakki), but still the same hive behavior/personalities.
Even their hundreds of years in the vault hasn’t really evolved them into anything interesting or unique. They could act/behave in new ways as well as think/plan differently, but nope. Just punching and hiding. They don’t even have the same level of political or nationalistic interest/goals as the X-men currently. On top of all that, they’ve now decided effectively to become mutants to kill them. I’m just waiting for them to be as unique on the page as they are in concept. I want to like them. They have a cool concept with potential and look interesting, but they haven’t done anything as unique and interesting as those things yet.
I’m here for a sassy Destiny who dunks on Gambit and keeps trying to convince Rogue to get back together with that nice, handsome boy for the other dimension.
This is a much physically younger Destiny than before she died so I can see her feeling herself a bit more and having more fun, and this was basically her on her downtime. so I feel like she was in character.
Destiny always plays with people she doesn’t like, but if she thought that Gambit was really bad for her daughter then she would be plotting to split them up, so here she was enjoying annoying him.
This is a much physically younger Destiny than before she died so I can see her feeling herself a bit more and having more fun, and this was basically her on her downtime. so I feel like she was in character.
Destiny always plays with people she doesn’t like, but if she thought that Gambit was really bad for her daughter then she would be plotting to split them up, so here she was enjoying annoying him. “Fine, I’ll accept you sticking around as my daughter loves you, but remember you are being tolerated for her”
@Chris V, Si- In X-Men Unlimited 4, Rogue says she spent “nearly ten” years with Mystique and Destiny.If she spent that long with them, then calling them her moms makes sense. The problem is that different writers seem to have different ideas of how long Rogue spent with them.
Regarding the redactions on the text page, I was reading my print copy of the book and noticed if the light hits just right you can read the redacted text. The redactions are as follows (and the ones Paul already filled in were correct):
Homo superior
Statistically inevitable
Sustained resistance
Tobe Decided
Place Holder
Ten years seems a stretch, but it’s possible that Rogue ran away from home years before puberty and was taken in by Mystique I suppose. Destiny could have foreseen that she’d be a useful mutant when she grew up. Which would make Destiny a total dick for not warning her about kissing Cody. But maybe Destiny really isn’t very nice after all.
I think the main problem with Rogue is that she was never drawn to look like a teenager. And rarely written that way either, even by Claremont. I think Chris V is right, she was about 18 when she joined the X-Men, maybe a bit younger. But it’s easy to mistake her for being much older. I remember when the movie came out everyone was complaining that Anna Paquin (age 18) was too young for the role. To be fair, most “teens” in US movies and TV are in their 20s and 30s, so 18 is basically Hollywood 12. That’s maybe reflected in the comic art too.
@Si- In Uncanny X-Men 182, Rogue says she’s 18. Since she joined in 171, that would mean she was 17 or 18 when she joined.
Hey, don’t forget the other Marvel Universe journalist. The “sassy” one with glasses. Kat something? I mean, I say don’t forget her, but I obviously have.
Rogue as a teen is clearly a retcon. She was written as considerably older in pretty much all appearances before she came knock at the Mansion’s door.
Much like Punisher, she actually became younger along her earliest appearances.
In Avengers Annual #10 she was clearly a full adult, closer to 30 years of age than to 18. She thinks tactically, isn’t easily impressed, and uses mock-flirt talk towards Thor. Nor is there any hint that taking Carol’s powers and memories has confused, bothered or hindered her in any way. One would expect some indication a teenager who recently gained the memories of the life experience of an adult woman with two eventful careers is somewhat disturbed from the experience, but that only came later.
IIRC her third appearance introduces that idea. Her second shows her shaken after kissing Rom and getting a glimpse of his mind.
The third has her casually using a drinking fountain in the Pentagon before chance encountering and then fighting Carol, Storm, Wolverine and Nightcrawler. But she is still quite willing to fight the four of them, so I suppose the shake-up from kissing Rom wasn’t all that settled yet – or more realistically, Claremont had yet to decide that Rogue isn’t as old as she seems to be.
Her appearances in the #20s of Dazzler I will just ignore entirely. It is cleaner that way.
I could have sworn I read somewhere that an early idea was that Destiny was Rogue’s mother, and Mystique used her shape changing powers to be Rogue’s father… if you get what I’m saying.
Now I’m not sure if that really was an early idea, internet fan speculation or something that fell out of my fevered brain.
I’m not sure if it was going to feature Destiny, but at one point Claremont’s plan was for Mystique to be revealed as Nightcrawler’s father, not his mother.
That would be an interesting story to tell in 2022…Mystique was Nightcrawler’s father and Rogue’s mother.
That sounds familiar, and that has to be what I’m half remembering. Thanks!
@Chris V: I realize that in the MU this is not how it works, but by that definition the Children of the Vault are indeed mutants; that is the very definition of mutancy.
I realize that, but it’s not the MU definition, which is the important definition in a Marvel comic. Marvel refer to the Fantastic Four as “mutated humans”, but they’re not mutants. One has to be born with the “X-gene” to be classified as a mutant by Marvel. The Neo were born with the X-gene, the Children of the Vault do not have the X-gene. They were specifically bred so that they would never breed the X-gene in their population.
A weird thing about the ORCHIS text is that it’s now explicitly listing intelligence agencies, starting with the fictional SHIELD and AIM, removing HYDRA and SHIELD’s sister agencies, but also the real CIA and FBI, and then bizarrely, Mossad and an agency I’m not familiar with, the FCB (could be a typo for Russia’s FSB).
Mossad would frankly not be my first choice for membership in a sinister international conspiracy aiming for genocide (I feel that one is spoiled for choice and could include a number of other agencies), but that’s Gerry Duggan for you.
Why would Orchis even need to recruit MODOK? AIM is part of Orchis in some manner. We saw last issue MODOK had AIM troops with him, so he’s still connected to or leading AIM. Isn’t this like finding the owner of the New York Yankees and recruiting him to join Major League Baseball?
I think it was originally started that Orchis is made up of – among others – AIM personnel. So it’s not so much that AIM is a part of Orchis, but rather that some of Orchis personnel previously worked in AIM.