X-Men #20 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #20
“Lord of the Brood, part 2”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Stefano Caselli
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fight the Brood. This continues the image from X-Men #19 and Captain Marvel #46, with Jean apparently partially transformed into a Brood. At least, I assume that’s it’s meant to be – honestly, it just looks like she’s wearing a mask. For what it’s worth, the cover of Captain Marvel #47 (which is out next week) continues the image and does something similar with Captain Marvel.
PAGE 2. Data page. Opening quote from Cyclops, claiming that (i) the X-Men aren’t just reactive like traditional superheroes, and (ii) ergo, they ought to have wiped out the Brood long ago. One wonders how he feels about Broo.
PAGES 3-5. Jean and Magik visit Broo.
Broo‘s time at the Jean Grey School is covered in Wolverine and the X-Men, where he was a regular. He’s still wearing his school uniform – to be fair, a few of the student characters from that book who don’t have other costumes to fall back on have also been drawn in their school uniforms on Krakoa, such as Nature Girl.
He became monarch of the Brood in X-Men #9 by eating a King Egg, which (somehow) is meant to give him complete control of the Brood. That said, the last time we saw him was New Mutants #21, when he specifically disavowed a group of Brood who attacked Warpath’s students: “This was not by doing. Those warriors were rebelling.” When asked how long this had been going on, he replied: “Oh, not long, and it was only… well, the group you killed. And one other, but loyal Warriors dispatched them quickly.” Warpath was supposed to be reporting this to the Council, but I rather suspect we’re all supposed to have forgotten about this whole thread (or that the writers and editors have), since Broo is absolutely adamant that he has total control.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
PAGE 7-12. The X-Men escape the Brood.
This is the world where the X-Men arrived last issue in order to respond to a distress signal from Corsair. It was identified last issue as an “outer rim world”. The narrator here tells us that it has no name and that the inhabitants (evidently not natives) are “marooned” there and call it “Refugee Rock”. Supposedly no Nova Corpsman has ever visited, but since Corsair can make it out there, presumably that’s more a sign of its backwater obscurity than of its remoteness. We don’t know yet exactly why Corsair is there, though he said last issue that ht was being used as bait.
When we left off, the X-Men were sheltering under an ice dome – this is apparently them fighting their way to a spaceship and getting to safety. Magik brought them to the planet, but then headed off with Jean to find Broo. It’s not entirely clear which spaceship it is – it’s not expressly identified as the Starjammer.
The narrator stresses the X-Men’s job as being to “save everyone they could”, which is “the definition of what it means to serve on the team.” This is, of course, not the traditional function of the X-Men, which was more about pursuing Xavier’s dream. In the Krakoan era, though, the X-Men have been recast as more of a Krakoan outreach project. Jean repeats this formulation of the team remit on page 19, where we establish that the refugees are (entirely predictably) already infected by the Brood.
Iceman having to reincorporate himself from surrounding moisture has come up before, though it’s not something he finds particularly challenging on Earth. Perhaps this world is much drier.
Synch and Talon reference their hundreds of years of subjective time together, stuck in the Vault during Jonathan Hickman’s run.
PAGES 13-14. Forge and M on Knowhere.
An odd little scene in which we establish that Forge and M’s body swap got sorted out off panel since the previous issue, and Forge then brings Knowhere (with the duo aboard) back to the mainstream universe. The key point is presumably that whatever Forge does seems to cause the Celestial head’s eyes to light up. But it all feels a bit anticlimactic after the exercise of getting there last issue.
PAGES 15-16. Broo’s mindscape.
Panel 1 page 14 shows Broo on the lawn of the Jean Grey school, with Kitty Pryde and Logan as teachers. (Kitty was the Headmistress in the latter part of Wolverine and the X-Men). The kids sitting in the circle, from left to right, are Kid Gladiator, Shark-Girl, Oya, probably Eye-Boy, Broo, probably Evan Sabah Nur, Kid Omega, and the second Sprite.
The rest of page 14 establishes that, since gaining control of the Brood, Broo has been directing their murderous tendencies at deserving types like slavers. I’m not entirely sure this works, since the Brood killed mainly in order to reproduce. But maybe it keeps them sated enough.
Dexter. I imagine you all know what Dexter is, but actually it’s been off the air for a decade now, so maybe not. It was a series about a vigilante serial killer.
PAGES 17-20. Nightmare explains his plan.
Nightmare fought Jean Grey in issue #4, as the footnote says. It has to be said that in that issue she was depicted as totally out of his league, but he’s now capable of facing her as an equal because… well, there wouldn’t be a plot otherwise. To be fair, this time he’s also had the opportunity to plan in advance, which makes sense if you subscribe to the view that magic can do basically anything as long as it has time to prepare. (So, for example, Dr Strange can do pretty much anything if you give him a month, but if you attack him from behind he’s limited to basically flying, shooting magic energy blasts at you, and doing a few standard spells. Maybe Nightmare’s similar.)
Curiously, Nightmare says that he found Broo while searching for mutants to influence on Krakoa, but Broo doesn’t actually live there. Let’s take it broadly and assume that he found out about Broo while searching on Krakoa.
Anyway, Nightmare’s plan is to trick the X-Men into taking infected refugees to other worlds so that they’ll be blamed for spreading the Brood. He also seems to envisage Broo leading the Brood in an invasion of Earth.
Quite how the Brood would get access to the Krakoan gates is unclear, since Krakoa is meant to be able to exclude non-mutants.
PAGES 21-23. The Kingpin arrives on Krakoa.
And now for something completely different.
This is probably obvious, but Emma is sparring with Kate Pryde (who isn’t actually named). Emma “tried to recruit [Kate] as a student” in her debut appearance, X-Men vol 1 #129 (1979).
The Kingpin‘s back story with Emma Frost is covered mainly in Duggan’s Devil’s Reign: X-Men series, which establishes that she used to run missions for him back in the day, to pay off a favour that she owed him.
Typhoid Mary married Fisk in Daredevil vol 6 #36 (2021). She’s a Daredevil character with multiple personalities, created by Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr back in Daredevil vol 1 #254 (1988). Basically, she’s a martial artist with low level psychic powers that vary in strength depending on which personality is in control. In Nocenti’s stories, her personalities are all extreme versions of different ways in which women might define themselves by reference to men, none of which are terribly healthy. (They also have different scents, heartbeats and so forth, which confuses Daredevil – but that’s not really an issue outside his book.)
From her appearance here, she’s in Typhoid persona. Typhoid Mary is a mutant, but she’s had little or nothing to do with the X-books over the years. Wolverine has met her in a few Marvel Comics Presents arcs, and he knows her fairly well.
The idea that a mutant’s human spouse can claim residence on Krakoa seems to have been established by the case of Northstar’s husband Kyle Jinadu over in X-Factor, though it seems remarkable that we haven’t seen a few more examples of Krakoa having a minority human population if this rule exists.
PAGE 24. Data page, summarising the Kingpin’s current status quo. Basically, he’s on the run after Devil’s Reign, where his scheme to win re-election as Mayor of New York City by harnessing the mind-control powers of the Purple Man was defeated by Daredevil and allies. The author of this document doesn’t know about the Purple Man’s involvement, or at least doesn’t mention it.
Obviously, the Kingpin hasn’t actually murdered Matt Murdock, as per the list of offences. He did, however, murder Matt’s duplicate Mike Murdock in Devil’s Reign #5, who was posing as Matt at the time. (The weird back story of Mike Murdock is beyond our remit here, but suffice to say he’s a persona that Matt used in the Silver Age, and he was brought to life as a semi-real person during the Charles Soule run.)
PAGE 25. Trailers.
It only took 20 issues but the Kingpin thing is something that’s actually interesting. So I’m sure Duggan will have it solved off panel
This was odd. I was quite convinced that the Broo plot was about the ‘rival King Egg’ plot thread that Hickman left behind so I was quite surprised to see it go in another direction entirely.
That said, I quite like the idea of building up a rivalry between Nightmare and Jean Grey. I’ve always thought there was a lot of crossover between mutant psionics and magic users (since both of their powers involves the astral plane) and it appears that Duggan seems to think so too. Nightmare is a Fear Lord and Jean is an Omega Psionic so they are well matched.
(Sidenote: Nightmare’s daughter Dreamqueen recently showed up as a Scarlet Witch antagonist in her solo book.)
Since Nightmare is back, I have to assume the High Evolutionary can’t be far behind, along with an army of Synch hybrids (he took a drop of his blood in X-Men 3). Synch is a mutant on the cusp of becoming Omega, so he should have some interesting antagonists too.
Regarding Kingpin, the end of Devil’s Reign mentioned that Fisk and Typhoid Mary had both left America to go live in Latveria. Apparently Doctor Doom didn’t care for them because he seems to have kicked them out. (Or maybe Doom is behind them coming to Krakoa?)
Sage’s dialogue implies that this is the first time a mutant’s human spouse has sought citizenship since Kyle. That’s odd for a number of reasons. First, you’d think that spouses would want to live together. Granted, the gates make a commute very quick but most married couples prefer to live in the same house.
Second, you’d think that a criminal would have thought of marrying a mutant in order to gain sanctuary on Krakoa before this. It’s the kind of idea that could have occurred to anyone, not just a criminal mastermind like Fisk. You’d think they’d have some sort of procedures to prevent people from taking advantage.
(They turned Whirlwind over to the human authorities when he was committing crimes that endanger human lives after the amnesty. Of course, the difference is that Whirlind actually committed those crimes. Mary has done nothing that they know of since the amnesty- FISK has. But STILL…)
They haven’t really dealt with the commuting implications of the gates at all. It comes up this week in New Mutants, where the idea of “moving to Krakoa” is presented as a huge threshold to step over, but like, you can just keep your apartment in Queens and go back and forth whenever you want. The gates functionally allow “Krakoa” to include any space where a mutant wants to live, whether that’s in New York or on the moon.
The Fisk thing is potentially interesting, except one of the benefits of running essentially a soviet nation with only three written laws is you don’t have to honor a human supervillain’s citizenship claim.
The whole human spouse thing drives me so nuts I almost wish they’d just carry on ignoring it at this point.
Surely there should be hundreds of humans living there too? Or are we supposed to believe that relationships between humans and mutants in the Marvel Universe are so rare as to have no impact on Krakoa (which I can’t buy at all, but your mileage may vary)?
Or is it that they do exist, but the mutants involved are choosing not to move there or to maintain them by commuting? I’d be pretty hacked off if the fluke of my genetic code meant I could go and live on paradise island but my other half had to stay in miserable old Blightly and worry about heating bills.
I know it’s just not the direction of what are often still good titles for the most part, but I find it maddening.
We sure have strayed far from the time when mutancy was a sort-of-believable, ready-made explanation for superpowers. I don’t really like the idea, let alone the abuse, of these ever-so-vaguely-defined “Omega mutants” that seems to amount to writer favoritivism. The end result is making certain characters duty-bound to be implausibly and often unexplainably powerful for no narrative benefit. Back in 1980 it felt like Phoenix might be too powerful for the X-Men; now we are probably meant to wonder if she wasn’t holding the whole team back. Hickman had all that talk about far away galaxies and Phalanx collectives that seemed out of place for X-Men stories, but apparently that has gone mainstream now; somehow mutants are both a biological accident and destined to become the shapers of whole interestellar empires.
I just don’t see the point of transitioning the X-Men wholesale from the superhero genre into a half-hearted, uncommited blend of high fantasy and space opera unless you run along with the consequences and depart from Earth entirely. Nightmare is supposed to be a major, unique player in the shadow world of mystic histories. Jean Grey has no business facing up to him, let alone unscathed.
Speaking of Nightmare, hasn’t he mentioned other King Eggs in this issue? I took that to mean that Broo may well have competition in the ruler of Brood business without necessarily realizing it. Space is vast. On the other hand, we are definitely operating under Space Opera expectations, so what do I know?
The Brood are not really functional from a plot standpoint. How many slavers and the like can possibly exist for them to regularly feed off from? Their ecology doesn’t make any sense. They are far too predatory in nature to keep avoiding some form of regular culling, probably self-imposed. But, again, we have departed something fierce from 1980s story parameters.
Dexter actually has a sequel series, whose first season run in 2021 and 2022 and apparently will continue in 2023, along with a planned prequel. The core concept boils down to the protagonist accepting that he can’t avoid being the violent psychopath that he is, so he tries very hard to direct his attention towards other, presumably worse killers. The actual role is very unlike Broo’s, but the coping mechanisms are similar.
I’m trying to remember when Mary was determined to be a mutant. Maybe early MCP appearances? If not, probably her time as “Mutant Zero” in Avengers Academy.
I find the Fisk/Mary plot potentially very interesting, all the more so because it seems clear that Fisk himself expects to involve Emma on it.
A good writer (which Duggan may or may not be; the jury is still out to me) would take the opportunity to do some character work with Emma and perhaps compare and contrast with Jean and Scott. Duggan does not strike me as someone capable or interested in pulling it off, but all the same it is the situation that he has just put himself into.
What is unfortunately most remarkable about this plot is how unusual it turned out to be. It is rare enough for superheroes to be married at all. Marvel mutants are rarely even involved with non-mutants these days, let alone married with them.
Come to think of it, human supporting characters are not all that plentiful anymore.
Re: Human spouses and Krakoan citizenship:
@Another Sam: I absolutely believe there could quite literally be only 2 or 3 humans living on Krakoa.
In a line of X-Books where 0.08% of the Quiet Council–the governing body of a mutant nation of supposedly from 200k upwards to millions of mutants on Earth 616–has exactly 1 person of color, and where less than 22% people of color are represented on the combined lineups of all Earth-based, mainline X-teams, this lack of diversity and statistical representation tracks and is completely consistent with what we’ve been shown. (Also consider that we needed Karma, Jubilee, and SHOGO to even break 20%–characters of Asian descent who have done nothing since being relegated to the margins.)
The only things that makes sense is that 1) the mutant population is not racially or ethnically diverse whatsoever; 2) they are primarily from the United States; and 3) biracial or otherwise international couples are exceedingly rare.
Re: Kingpin:
@Jenny: I loled
To be fair, this volume of X-Men has a much greater sense of momentum since we’re now getting reasonable movement on long-gestating plots (e.g., Brood/King Egg, the Vault, new upper limits to Synch’s powers) and making incursions in genuinely fascinating new directions (e.g., Kingpin, reemergence of Nightmare). We’re mercifully quite far away from Duggan’s monster-of-the-month take. And I’m still quite fond of the majority of his Marauders run and Dark Reign tie-ins, so I’ll continue to give Duggan the ever so slight benefit of the doubt.
re: Omegas:
@Luis Dantas: Classic power creep issue. I mean, the current 616 Avengers lineup has a Phoenix, a Captain Marvel, and a Thor now.
The other issue regarding humans on Krakoa is this- what about mutant children under 18 with human parents?
There was also that Typhoid Mary crossover that ran through the x-men, spider man, and iron fist annuals a few years back.
@Jenny: the prospect of the Kingpin & Typhoid Mary moving to Krakoa is a hell of a hook, but my thoughts about what Duggan will do with it mirrored yours exactly. If Ewing or Gillen brought them in, I’d be super excited, but I have very little faith in Duggan.
@Luis Dantas: I wonder if there are multiple unnamed characters w/ human spouses somewhere on Krakoa. I was under the impression that Kyle was the only human (not counting Juggernaut). Even if that was the case at first, they could say that Kyle was the only human at first because the QC decided they should start Krakoa without humans in case it wasn’t safe. They lifted the human ban once they worked out some security issues. It’s not a great justification, but maybe better than nothing.
“The only things that makes sense is that 1) the mutant population is not racially or ethnically diverse whatsoever; 2) they are primarily from the United States; and 3) biracial or otherwise international couples are exceedingly rare.”
What does any of that have to do with how many spouses there might be on Krakoa?
@wwk5d: I don’t want to speak for others, but my take from Moonstar Dynasty’s comment was: white mutants are overly-represented in Krakoa, therefore any group that is not white mutants-including humans of any race- might be underrepresented on the island.
@Michael: it’s the Marvel Universe, I’m sure the young mutants are all orphans. I think Iceman and the Guthries are the only mutants whose parents are still alive.
Yeah but still, not seeing the correlation between race and how many human spouses might be on the island. At the end of the day it seems to only be a plot point when a writer wants to bring it up, as we saw with Northstar and his spouse and now with the Kingpin and Typhoid Mary.
As for the young mutants…I think we saw previous examples (like with Franklin Richards) where if they wanted to relocate to Krakoa, they had to leave their human parents behind.
“but he’s now capable of facing her as an equal because… well, there wouldn’t be a plot otherwise. To be fair, this time he’s also had the opportunity to plan in advance, which makes sense if you subscribe to the view that magic can do basically anything as long as it has time to prepare.”
Sounds like the author just having things happen the way he needs to for the sake of the plot, kind of like how we saw the Brood embryo developing in Corsair happen last issue…even though we haven’t seen that happen in the past.
@Mike Loughlin ‘I think Iceman and the Guthries are the only mutants whose parents are still alive.’
Well, the Guthries rather famously have only their mother. And now so does Iceman – Drake Senior passed away in a digital exclusive on Marvel Unlimited.
On the other hand, aren’t Beast’s parents still alive, mainly thanks to appearing maybe once in 20 years?
@Krzysiek Ceran, I think so. That made me remember the Mark Waid story where Dark Beast can’t bring himself to bump them off as some tiny glimmer of humanity still resides inside him. So I look forward to current Beast tossing them into a shredder to make sure we absolutely, definitely know that he’s a wrong ‘un now.
In the same vein, I anxiously await the return of Bobby’s dad as some kind of techno-organic hatebot in the years to come.
Honestly, since it happened in a digital exclusive, I fully expect him to pop back up in a few years because a new writer and editor won’t know he died…
@Moonstar Dynasty: See, I just assume that Krakoa has a ton of racism and so there’s massive bias towards favoring white mutants for team roles and government. It fits with their obsession with genetic superiority.
In an early issue of Excalibur, Meggan says she’d talk to the Quiet Council to let Brian have permission to live on Krakoa with her.
“‘I think Iceman and the Guthries are the only mutants whose parents are still alive.’”
What about Sunspot’s mother? And Kitty’s mom? And Dani’s parents? Unless they were all killed off in stories I missed…
I was being snarky above, due to the preponderance of orphaned mutants (and super-heroes in general, come to think of it). Even non-orphaned mutants tend to have unusual parental situations (e.g. Nightcrawler, Rogue, Cable) and/or at least one dead parent.
Actually , it’s realistic , since post WW2-Real Life geopolitics are usually dominated by First World White People (who have superhero/supervillain complexes I.e. USA , USSR) especially United States Americans , so why would it be different for Marvel-616c which was originally supposed to be “the world outside your window”.
And I have a theory why it seems that the majority of non-magical metahumans , especially x-gene mutants per se , (and alpha-class and omega-class metahumans/X-gene mutants) are disproportionately either North American (particularly USAmerican) or UK or Western European or USSRian or Japanese (based on the Marvel mutant lists on CBR Z-forums and Marvunapp and ComicVine)
1. It’s canon that while EM radiation creates non-magical mutates and while it DOESN’T create the X-gene (the Celestials did that, apparently using as a basis/model, the stable Deviant genes , as of Marvel’s 2022 Judgement Day), it does trigger the X-gene from latent to active , and enhances it by inducing secondary mutations
2. The places on planet Earth with the most EM radiation (and weapons-grade machinery used by superheroes, supervillains, and the spectrum of moral alignment in-between those two extreme poles) are those with a)nuclear energy power plants , b) military-industrial complex STEM R&D facilities , c) capitalist factories , and indeed these happen to be traditionally located in North America , the UK , Western Europe , what used to be the USSR , and Japan ,
3. Healthy people from richer countries have higher over-all personal stats , while sickly people from poorer countries have lower over-all personal stats , so obviously , z-gene mutant power levels : the Capitalist Bloc > the Communist Bloc (USSR and CCP)
4. Democracies persecute and exterminate its demographic undesirables less , while Dictatorships persecute and exterminate its demographic undesirables less , so obviously , X-gene mutant survival : the USA and its Allies > the Soviets and their allies (again, also China too) ,
For example : there was 1 mutant death camp , singular , for a few years in NA , in 00’s Weapon X series , while it was revealed in the 90’s XMen : Liberators , that there were mutant death camps , plural , in the Soviet Bloc for decades . Even taking into account the Marvel Western MIC’s Weapon Plus Program and all of its countless innumerable subsidiaries (I suppose the Marvel Eastern MIC has its own unreved counterpart , since there is a “SHIELD in the West, SPEAR in the East, and SICKLE in between [Russia])”, anti-mutant genocide still remained much worse in the “East” than the “West”
I have also noticed that as a general rule , for storytelling purposes using traditional tropes , when a Marvel X-gene mutant has a surviving single parent , they’re usually of the opposite gender , the boys/men have their mothers , the girls/women have their fathers , the most noticeable exceptions being the Summers Father & Sons
I hope that Wilson Fisk and Amahl Farouk run into each other and compliment each other on their taste and decide to go in as partners on a Big and Tall store on Krakoa.
Whoops, typo , I meant that Dictatorships persecute and exterminate its Undesirables at a rate which is More , not Less, as shown by IRL Histories, so that’s another reason why there are noticeably much less X-gene mutants (and indeed all other non-X-gene mutant metahumans / superpowered non-humans as well) on Marvel Earths , who are coming from the “Third World” and “Second World” , as compared to the “First World” .