X-Men: Before The Fall – Sons of X #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – SONS OF X #1
“Run It Again”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – SONS OF X. This is one of several X-Men: Before The Fall one-shots. The others are Mutant First Strike and Heralds of Apocalypse in June, and Sinister Four in July.
To all intents and purposes, however, this is Legion of X #14 (with the Nightcrawlers miniseries being issues #11-13).
COVER / PAGE 1. Legion faces down Mother Righteous, while Margali Szardos (carrying the Hopesword) stands over the distorted Nightcrawler, with Nimrod in the background.
PAGE 2. Opening montage.
Panel 1, as we’ll see, is Legion doing some Danger Room-style training to fight Nimrod.
Panel 2 shows a mutant transformed into a monster in New Jersey, continuing the storyline about mutants being magically transformed which was in progress in Legion of X before the “Sins of Sinister” crossover. It’s all the work of Nightcrawler’s sorceress mother Margali Szardos, who in turn has been working with Orchis. The two newspapers in the foreground show art recycled from page 3 of Legion of X #9.
Panel 3 shows Banshee arriving in the Altar. We’ll find out later that his confusion is to do with being separated from Vox Ignis, as a consequence of the rebooting of the timeline.
Panel 4 is the aftermath of Nightcrawler (or some copy of him) murdering British government officials and teleporting away, presumably under Orchis’s control. Legion of X #10 ended with Margali defeating the increasingly deformed Nightcrawler and conjuring a “Hopesword” from him, then leaving him for Orchis to collected. Mother Righteous then showed up to offer some sort of deal to the unconscious Nightcrawler, but we don’t know if he even woke up and responded. At any rate, apparently she allowed Orchis to collect him as per their original deal with Margali.
PAGE 3. Legion loses to Nimrod in the simulation.
“Run it again” is the title of the story, but also refers to the rebooting of the timeline at the end of “Sins of Sinister”.
PAGE 4. More montage.
Panel 1 shows more monstrous mutants being brought to the Savage Land for safekeeping. That’s Chamber and the two Xorn brothers dealing with them.
Panel 3 is another Nightcrawler attack, this time in Syria. As Nightcrawler explains later on, the common thread is that these are countries that are hostile to Krakoa.
Banshee was bonded to the Spirit of Change to become Vox Ignis in Legion of X #6. He’s woken up with no memory of any of that (and a general feeling of emptiness to boot). Mother Righteous will later attribute this to the Spirit having been erased due to the timeline reboot.
PAGES 5-7. Legion and Blindfold train, then talk to Banshee.
“He’s still weak after his father’s visit.” In Legion of X #9, and basically as described here. Professor X attacks Legion with a psychic virus, expecting him to be a threat, but instantly regrets it after realising that Legion has done a good job in the Altar.
“[T]he old man was sharing his brain with Mr Sinister.” This is the basic storyline of “Sins of Sinister”, where Sinister’s original plot was to resurrect several of the Quiet Council in compromised form with his personality inserted. It’s not clear that in the rebooted timeline, Sinister actually got as far as activating his plan. However… this is as good a time as any to stop and ask the awkward question of how the hell Legion of X and Immortal X-Men are meant to fit together.
Here’s the problem:
In Legion of X #7, Nightcrawler already has his Adorable Little Horns, and he’s already made some investigations into them. At the start of the issue he assigns Husk and Chamber to deal with an investigation request from Angel. Then he visits Mr Sinister, who tries to cure him by killing and resurrecting him. It doesn’t work. In the next scene, Nightcrawler’s condition has deteriorated, and he and his allies go to visit Angel. That continues directly into Legion of X #8-10, where Chamber and Husk finally show up at Angel’s office, and the plot has three threads with no scope for a break. In the A plot, Nightcrawler and allies confront Margali Szardos, and his condition continues to worsen, until eventually he becomes a monster and is left for Orchis to capture. In the B plot, various Legionnaires deal with Nimrod’s infiltration of the Narthex on Krakoa. And in the C plot, Professor X visits the Altar, poisons Legion, and helps to fight off a Technarch. After Legion of X #10, Nightcrawler remains a captive of Orchis until being rescued by Legion and Mother Righteous in this issue, and cured of his condition. Professor X is still around.
In Immortal X-Men #9, after nine abortive attempts in cancelled timelines, Mr Sinister succeeds in killing four of the Quiet Council. Nightcrawler is present for this, with his Adorable Little Horns – so it must be before his condition starts deteriorating in Legion of X, right? This continues directly to Sinister creating the save-point Moira clone at the start of Immortal X-Men #10 (which diverts into the SoS timeline after three panels) and in Sins of Sinister: Dominion. Sinister is then arrested by Rasputin IV and handed over to the remainder of the Quiet Council. The four dead members are resurrected off panel (presumably in the same way that was shown in Immortal #10). Rasputin IV then introduces the Quiet Council to Mother Righteous, who tells them about the SoS timeline and explains that the four resurrected members have been compromised. The four compromised members then banish themselves to the Pit, and the issue ends with Mother Righteous being thanked on behalf of Krakoa. In Immortal X-Men #11, the four are released from the Pit and Sinister’s contamination is purged by Forge.
So… if we’re going just by Nightcrawler’s condition, which is far and away the most glaring visible cue, then the arc in Legion of X #7-10 comes after “Sins of Sinister”. That doesn’t fit with Sinister appearing in Legion of X #7, but you can fix that by inserting a break in Legion of X #7 immediately after Nightcrawler is resurrected, and shoving Sins of Sinister in there. That results in Chamber and Husk taking an inordinately long time to get around to answering Angel’s request, but maybe they’re just incredibly useless.
Except… the Legionnaires claim here that Xavier was compromised by Sinister when he visited Legion in Legion of X #9. But the only point in time where Xavier is compromised by Sinister and outside the Pit is during Sins of Sinister: Dominion. You can just about make that work by forcing a gap between pages 42-43, but it means that Legion #9-10 take place at a point when Xavier knows that he’s been compromised and hasn’t decided to go to the Pit yet. That doesn’t read at all naturally. Also, Righteous claims later in the issue that she’s been thanked by the Krakoans, which happens right at the end of Dominion. So we should probably ignore the bit about Xavier being potentially compromised by Sinister – which can easily be explained away as misguided hearsay – and place the whole Legion of X arc (aside from the opening scenes with Sinister) after Xavier returns in Immortal #11. This is painfully awkward, and it flatly contradicts the claimed sequence of events on this issue’s recap page, but it’s the best I can do to make it work.
(EDIT: It still runs into the problem that Banshee appears as Vox Ignis in Legion of X #8-10, which are after the reboot. The apparent answer to this is that the events in those issues play out similarly in both timelines, and LoX #8-10 is the SoS version – Vox’s powers are used to advance the plot in Legion of X, but presumably some other way was found without him. At any rate, the fundamental problem here is that Immortal X-Men seems to think Nightcrawler is with the Quiet Council at the moment of reset, and Legion of X seems to think he’s a monstrous prisoner of Orchis, and plainly those can’t both be true.)
“It’s a bloody timeline alteration. I know whereof I speak.” Legion is probably referring either to his role in creating the “Age of Apocalypse” timeline, or to that time he tried to erase himself from reality in X-Men Legacy vol 2 #24.
“What’s it worth?” Mother Righteous’s standard question in this timeline, apparently. Legion recognises her from Legion of X #1-2, when she tried to make a deal with him.
PAGE 8. Data page, though note that we’ve broken from the normal design form here. It’s an excerpt from a manuscript by an unidentified author entitled “Fall of the House of X”, presumably about the fall of Krakoa. The sequence of events here seems to confirm that Legion of X #7-10 take place after the timeline reboot in “Sins of Sinister”. Note that the author insists on referring to everyone primarily by their real names, despite the tendency in recent years for mutant characters to insist on their “mutant names”.
PAGE 9. Recap and credits.
PAGES 10-13. Legion and co speak to Mother Righteous.
“I bet you can relate, Davey boy.” Mother Righteous is drawing a parallel between Kurt’s awkward relationship with his mother, and Legion’s relationship with his father Professor X. In practice, Margali is a much less prominent presence in Kurt’s stories than Professor X is in Legion’s, but it’s a comparison that probably makes sense for Legion.
Mother Righteous can apparently use her floating globes as scrying devices to locate people – specifically, Nightcrawler, Black Knight, Dr Nemesis and Pixie, all of whom were in earlier parts of this storyline, and were presumably carted off as prisoners by Orchis along with Nightcrawler. Nemesis’s fungal growth was sent out of control by Margali in Legion of X #10.
“All that crap down on Krakoa lately – babel spires and such…” The Legionnaires’ plot thread from Legion of X #8-10.
“Gift from meself.” As seen in Sins of Sinister: Dominion, the books in Mother Righteous’s library are the way in which the information was sent back to her – though presumably it’s symbolic to some degree, as she can’t possibly have read them all.
“I wish I’d learned sooner that a real leader doesn’t push or pull…” This is page 15 panel 1 of Nightcrawlers #2. She didn’t strictly speaking ask him what he regretted, but she asked what he would have done differently. In the original scene, Legion goes on to condemn Mother Righteous for her manipulations, states that she always has an ulterior motive, and declares that “I’m taking what remains of my people and leaving for the higher planes. We’ll explore. We’ll rapture. That’s all that’s left, isn’t it? Heading toward the light.” Mother Righteous’s account of this is basically accurate, but obviously omits the bit about her.
“I already did it in the other future – I know the trick.” I don’t think this was established in Nightcrawlers, but several centuries pass between issues, so sure, why not?
Evidently Legion hasn’t picked up on the fact that Mother Righteous gains power over people when they thank her – which is somewhat odd, since he’s a telepath, but clearly she has some sort of shielding that doesn’t put telepaths on notice.
PAGE 14. Data page. More of the “Fall of the House of X” manuscript; this is basically recap, and confirmation that Orchis have been responsible for Nightcrawler’s attacks.
PAGES 15-22. Legion and Mother Righteous raid Orchis.
Stasis is Dr Stasis, an X-Men villain and another of the Sinister clones. He didn’t fare that well in “Sins of Sinister”.
The Hunter shards may be offshoots of Nimrod.
Evidently, Legion can’t beat Nimrod in a straight fight because of its superior reaction time, but Nimrod doesn’t know how to react to Mother Righteous – either because she’s magical in nature, or because he just doesn’t know enough about her.
Nimrod’s origin story is, as per the footnote, given in X-Men #20 – basically, Alia Gregor tried to create Nimrod as a body for her late husband, but the X-Men’s attempt to stop Nimrod from coming on line resulted in his soul being (mostly) lost.
The panels on page 18 panel 1 are from Legion of X #10 and relate to Warlock being separated from Cypher and absorbed into Nimrod. Apparently, this has backfired, giving Nimrod something of the soul he didn’t previously have.
Nimrod the Lesser. Mother Righteous refers to Nimrod under the title that was used by his counterpart in Moira’s ninth life, apparently indicating that he’s a version of the same character.
“In another future … I have seen you crushed.” Mother Righteous is referring to Orchis’ defeat at the hands of the superheroes in the “Sins of Sinister” timeline, as part of a montage in Sins of Sinister #1.
Margali Szardos turns on Orchis again, as she effectively did in Legion of X #10 – she evidently has her own reasons for making a deal with them, and she’s got what she’s going to get out of him. Margali also turns out to be yet another character who made a deal with Mother Righteous, again failing to appreciate that Righteous has weaponised thanks. Presumably, Nightcrawler would have something to say about Margali being kidnapped by Righteous – but she disappears for such long stretches anyway that he’s unlikely to notice any time soon.
PAGE 23. Mother Righteous kills Dr Nemesis.
With the primary purpose of resurrecting him in a cured state, but still. She’s not doing a great job of concealing her disdain for other characters’ values in this page and the previous one.
PAGES 24-30. Legion retrieves the Hopesword from Mother Righteous.
Apparently, this thing literally represents Nightcrawler’s sense of hope, and he needs to have it on him to retain his sanity. Again, Righteous is surprisingly willing to show her hand to Legion – but maybe she figures she already has Krakoa’s thanks.
Righteous claims that when Legion ascended in Nightcrawlers #2, he was consumed by the Dominion. This isn’t something we saw in that issue, and she may simply be lying. Like Mr Sinister in Sins of Sinister: Dominion, she assumes that the Dominion is one of the Sinisters who were vying to achieve the role, but we’ve not actually seen any direct evidence that this is the case. If she is telling the truth, then it may be notable that this Dominion absorbs Legion, when it rejected Sinister.
Blindfold’s visions mention “the wall-crawler”, presumably to do with the upcoming Uncanny Spider-Man series.
Somehow, Legion is able to resist Mother Righteous – he ascribes this to the power of hope, but it’s also presumably a factor that he’s very, very powerful. Anyway, Legion departs Krakoa and Arakko at this point, perhaps to keep off her radar.
PAGE 31. Nightcrawler is resurrected.
Professor X is showing much more concern about Legion following his epiphany in Legion of X #9-10.
Banshee’s traumas have somehow been erased from his back-up tapes, perhaps something to do with Vox Ignis. At any rate, he’s much improved.
PAGES 32-34. Nightcrawler tells Cyclops that he’s leaving Krakoa.
The painting was produced by Weaponless Zsen in Legion of X #5, but this is the first time we’ve seen it. At any rate, Nightcrawler is so disillusioned by everything that he decides to quit the Quiet Council and leave Krakoa.
PAGE 35. Trailers. We’re directed to Uncanny Spider-Man #1 for the next issue, and that isn’t due out until September.
Si Spurrier’s been writing comics for 20 years and the man still hasn’t mastered basic pacing. What a mess.
My take on this–and I agree that it’s pretty complicated!–is that Legion of X 7-10, as published, take place in the pre/during Sins of Sinister timeline. After Kurt’s resurrection scene, the first line of dialogue is “Ah. You’re back”; that break in #7 is where Sinister’s attack on the Council happens, followed by the point where the timeline reset will happen on the first page of Immortal X-Men #10, the rest of that issue, and the meeting of the covertly Sinisterized Council in the “year 0” scene of Sins #1 (and then the rest of that timeline).
In the post-Sins of Sinister timeline, everything is the same up to the first page of Immortal #10. Then we get the final scenes of Dominion #1, all but the final scene of Immortal X-Men #11… and then the events we saw in the final scenes of Legion 7 and all of 8-10 still happen (almost) exactly the same way, except that Banshee isn’t Vox Ignis this time! (And may have been made to forget that he ever was, by David and/or Mother Righteous.)
Note that a couple of pages before the end of Immortal #11, Shaw mentions that the Council is “four votes down”–five, really, counting Sinister–but that suggests that Kurt hasn’t left yet.
I guess the idea at the end is that since everyone gets resurrected no one knows Mother Righteous did evil things but like, it is bizarre to publish this issue a week after the big finale that paints her as this new big threat.
It looks like we’ll have to go with Legion of X 7(!5-20) and 8-10 taking place between pages of Immortal X-Men 11.That still leaves the question of why Xavier didn’t recognize Mother Righteous in Legion of X 9 but we can ignore that. Regarding the Legionnaires claiming that Xavier was Sinisterized- keep in mind that Forge says in Immortal X-Men 11 that he doesn’t know if Xavier will have a relapse. We can just assume that Xavier became Sinisterized again and was cured again off panel. (This unfortunately raises the issue of why Xavier and Storm didn’t think to ask Ruth about the future in Immortal X-Men 11 when they could tell Destiny was lying to them.)
Mother Righteous was mentioned as having cured the mutants of Margali’s spell in Nightcrawlers 1.
Re:Legion thanking Mother Righteous- judging from Ruth’s dialogue later, I think that he knew about her power but decided to take the risk because Ruth saw that Kurt was the key to stopping Orchis and/or the Dominion.
Note that one of the Orchis techs mentions “Supervisor Toomes”. Is that Adrian Toomes, the Vulture, or a relative of his?
Re: Legion being able to escape Mother Righteous- keep in mind that in Nightcrawlers 2-3, she had trouble keeping control of people when she was distracted and the others were attacking Mother Righteous when Legion escaped.
Note that in Immortal X-Men 11, it was said that the Cuckoos would be handling the resurrections from now on, not Xavier or Emma or Hope but that doesn’t seem to be the case in this issue.It’s also mentioned in Immortal that the resurrections would be limited but this WAS an emergency.
Re: Mother Righteous not bothering to hide her nature from he others- I think her original plan was to kill everyone and rely on the amnesia that comes with resurrection to prevent them from remembering, like Sinister did with the Hellions.
It’s a little convenient that David and Ruth were able to fix Banshee but couldn’t leave a note saying :”Mother Righteous is the heart Sinister! And Sinister was telling the truth about the Dominion!
Legion is going to come back as late as possible for a deus ex machina save, isn’t he?
I was actually kind of happy, thinking for a minute that Mother Righteous’s plotline was going to blow up immediately. Not that I dislike the plotline, but that would have been an interesting swerve.
Vox Ignis now just feels.. kind of pointless in how everything was put back into the toybox. Also it confuses the timeline even more. No one acts like they know about Vox Ignis but Ruth, and Legion immediately responds as if that’s due to her seeing between realities. The group who guided him to Legion actually met him in LoX #8, so that would seem to mean that the the timeline reset happened before that scene. That fits from @Douglas’s suggestion that the timeline reset happened around Nightcrawler’s failed reset in #7.
Except Legion met Vox during the battle for Arakko, so he should have known what Sean was talking about. He acts like he’s also in the dark about Vox until he sees the timeline manipulations. So either he was being really oblique, or the Spirit of Variance was actually blasted out of the timeline all the way back to sometime before the reset.
I did like the way Spurrier had Mother Righteous phrase why thanking her gives her power. “Knowing you’ll always owe it to me” is a fun high concept for magic.
I felt like Righteous’s summary of what she saw happen to Legion was accurate, and a point into the column of the Dominion actually being a Mutant Dominion. Legion ascended and it welcomed him and everyone who went with him into it. Mother Righteous then interpreted what she saw the worst possible way because: A> She’s a Sinister with all the distrust of others that entails, and B> That would mean that she also has lost.
So the Great Council is down 4 votes as of Immortal X-Men 11, and a 5th vote as of this issue. A 6th including Sinister.
Furthermore, Storm has Kurt’s proxy vote, and Piotr has Storm’s proxy vote which means conceivably, the compromised Piotr has three votes–a full quarter of the Council!
With Xavier, Emma, Hope and Exodus all barred from voting as long as they’re compromised by Sinister, that means that right now, the Council is effectively:
Autumn: Destiny
Spring: Shaw and Kate Pryde
Summer: Storm and/or Piotr (with him having as many as all three votes)
Winter: Mystique
Adjunct: Krakoa and Doug
So… Krakoa’s ruling body is basically Destiny, Mystique, Shaw, Kate, Piotr, and if we’re lucky, Storm shows up. Big yikes. Time it right, and Piotr counts for nearly half the votes, and through him… Mikhail. Kate’s the only sane, uncompromised, non-villain in the lot if Storm’s off-planet.
No wonder we’re entering the Fall of X. The place has no real effective leadership.
@Jon R- if it’s a mutant dominion, and not hostile, then why did Destiny keep telling Sinister they must be on the same side? And why didn’t she correct Sinister’s claim that the Dominion was hostile when the Quiet Council questioned her instead of acting like she had no idea what Sinister was talking about? I can’t think of an explanation for why Destiny wanted Sinister’s help specifically unless she wanted them to work together against the Dominion.
(SPOILERS FOR IMMORTAL X-MEN 11)
@The Other Michael: My take is that Nightcrawler has left Krakoa, but he has transferred his vote to Storm, so I suppose he still holds the first Summer Seat on the QC, albeit as an absent member.
The Quiet Council as of Immortal X-Men 11:
[AUTUMN]
1. PROFESSOR X – 0
2. HOPE – 0
3. DESTINY – 1
[WINTER]
4. (/) – 1
5. EXODUS – 0
6. MYSTIQUE – 1
[SPRING]
7. KATE PRYDE – 1
8. EMMA FROST – 0
9. SEBASTIAN SHAW – 1
[SUMMER]
10. NIGHTCRAWLER – 0 (Absent)
11. COLOSSUS – 1
12. STORM – 2 (Proxy: Colossus)
[ADJUNCT]
13. CYPHER – 0
14. KRAKOA – VETO
So there’s eight votes still in play.
2 votes (Sebastian Shaw & Mystique) are potentially aligned with Mother Righteous.
If Storm is busy on Arakko (increasingly likely given the upcoming Genesis War), Colossus has 3 votes.
Destiny has 1 vote.
Kate Pryde has 1 vote.
The first Winter Seat is open with 1 vote attached to it. It will probably be filled soon. I wonder if we’ll see Selene resurrected to take this seat as a callback to IXM 1. Otherwise, Namor might be broken out of Seagate Prison to take this seat (his presence on the SoS QC might be foreshadowing).
@Michael: Good point. I’ll modify mine.. I do still think with current evidence it’s a Mutant Dominion, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s friendly or good. So yeah, it swallowing up Legion in that timeline might not have been a good thing that Mother Righteous misinterpreted.
Given Hope’s appearance here at the end in Arbor Magna, I have to assume that this issue begins prior to Immortal #11 but ends during of after that issue, otherwise Hope would be in the Pit. But it must take place after Dominion obviously given Righteous’ public presence in this issue as well as her future library, in which case she’d have been thanks by Krakoa at the end of Dominion. I’d like to say that in fact Legion of X 8-10 didn’t happen at all, but the damage to the Narthex, the absence of Forget-Me-Not, and various other little cues suggests otherwise. Although, I’d have to re-read those issues but I suppose there’s nothing preventing those events from happening after Sinister’s defeat in SoS? When is it that Righteous reveals herself to the QC in Dominion? Perhaps there’s also something of a sizeable gap between the murder to the 4 in Immortal, their resurrection, and the scene in which Rasputin appears with Sinister and Righteous introduces herself. Is there anything in Immortal #10 that makes it non-canon/alt timeline? On a quick skim, just the Sinister hunt and putting him in the pit, but the rest could fit, and it would be in that interval that he visited the Altar in Legion of X #10… It does become convoluted doesn’t it?
“Mother Righteous kills Dr Nemesis”
To be fair she spent a millennium with him as her ship so I don’t blame her for having a bit of a short fuse
@Jon R
“So either he was being really oblique, or the Spirit of Variance was actually blasted out of the timeline all the way back to sometime before the reset.”
The latter’s what happened, though it’s easy to miss. Righteous mentions that, because the Spirit was the fuel for the magic virus, it’s been “drained, in essence and memory, from every thread.” Sort of like how Legion erased himself from the timeline in Spurrier’s first go at the character in X-Men Legacy.
What if the empty seats are filled with qualified people. Like Bill Smith, a mutant who never once punched a sentinel, but is an amazing statesman. And Dr Chandra Kaur, who has written three books on ethical governance and has a furry tail. And some logistics genius who’s made of organic play doh and everyone who knows them calls them Blob, which isn’t confusing because none of them have had any dealings with Fred Dukes. I wonder if that would make things work better.
My timeline take:
Lost is simply mistaken about when Xavier was Sinister-ized.
Despite the note at the bottom of the recap, I think the bulk of this issue takes place *after* the bulk of Immortal #11. I don’t think that the general Krakoan public were told about Sins until *after* Forge had “fixed” the Council and, mistaken or not, Lost definitely knows about Sins.
When Xavier appears near the end of this issue, it is not because he’s “still around” (pre-Sins), but after he *returns* from the Pit in Immortal.
Perhaps David’s ability to resist Mother Righteous has something to do with his DID. While he’s far more sane/integrated than has often been the case in the past, are those alters still present? Did only one of his selves thank MR, thus leaving his other selves able to resist?
I note that Gillen is preparing to repeat a narrative trick from his Eternals run — having the plot hinge on electoral manipulation. (For those who didn’t read it, Thanos was actuality *elected* head of the Eternals, technically legitimately. In a riff on Brexit/Trump, many Eternals voted for Thanos as a joke, since he “clearly could never win”.)
Also, what of the Bamf visible in the rafters of the Green Lagoon(?) at the bottom of page 31, and in the painting on page 33? At least, I assume it’s a Bamf, although the pale coloring in both appearances is atypical.
ylu: That was what I thought on first read, which annoyed me since it’s time shenanigans on time shenanigans. The extra level of removing him completely even before the reset point adds to how much I feel Vox Ignis was pointless. Then there’s also just the fact that things are confusing enough without adding that extra bit of time blasting.
Then I went back to check when Vox Ignis actually appeared to people and realized it *almost* works alongside our guessed timeline. If not for how Legion didn’t seem to know about the spirit, it’d play out more naturally. It’d be so much cleaner if the spirit were just blasted out of the timeline at the reset point and not before.
I’d like to imagine that bamf is Pickles, finally returned to us
Si- perfection.
Legion tweaking Mother Righteous for having a fake-sounding accent is funny in a meta way, but it also highlights how much it feels like she ought to be the villain in a second season of The Nevers.
@Si I don’t know how serious your being, of course this makes sense practically speaking, but Marvel isn’t actually trying to run a nation but sell super hero comics. No one is buying a book about the council that has unknown characters. It’s the kind of thing that might work in Unlimited or a one shot, and if those characters were positioned as crucial functionaries who lack public recognition it could be interesting. But trying to apply a real world logic to the council representation obviously doesn’t work. At best we can say the four seasons theme is an attempt to represent the broad types of character alignments that comprise Krakoa.
Oh I wasn’t being serious at all, except maybe to show how wonky the premise is. Krakoa seems to run quite well in the comics.
@Si –
I’ve long maintained that -surely- there’s got to be some overlap between “mutant” and “possesses relevant society-maintaining skills” so that Krakoa could be a full-fledged land with actual infrastructure instead of a half-assed utopian commune. Hell, it would be a great place for architects, doctors, teachers, civil engineers and a thousand other professions, especially if they’d faced any sort of persecution or bias in the real world because of their mutant natures.
But no, everyone lives in ecofriendly huts, drinks and parties all day, occasionally gets killed and resurrected, and barely anyone’s interested in making this a sustainable society.
I’ve seen college frathouses with a better sense of community building.
It’s surprising when you consider that Xavier ran a school, Emma ran a school and a corporation, Shaw is a businessman, Apocalypse is immortal and has seen entire civilizations rise and fall, Bobby’s a CPA, Warren runs a corporation, Anole has a business degree, Magneto ran his own country, and so forth…
And yet collectively, there was no effort made to ensure that this was a functional, sustainable society beyond “we sell medicines and no one knows what the fuck X-Corps does.”
I think Legion thanked her knowing it gave her power. He lured her into thinking she had an upper hand, but he still seemingly bested her to get the sword. A goal he’d never have accomplished if he hadn’t thanked her. And the sword, we are told, is essential to saving Nightcrawler who is essential to the future.
I like Spurrier’s writing a lot – his X-Men Legacy and to a lesser extent X-Force. I loved The Spire and his Hellblazer and I enjoy his current I Can’t Believe It’s Not Hellblazer series.
Way of X and Legion of X might be his weakest work I’ve read. The ideas are there, but something about the execution just never clicked. The cast was too large. Even though it was basically a Legion & Kurt book, the others were prominent enough to take time from Legion’s and Kurt’s plots, but not prominent enough that anything actually happened to them. Warlock died at some point. He wasn’t even a castmember here, not really.
It’s just a weird book, but not in the way that would make it interesting.
Maybe the deal with Krakoa (the living island that is one-halt of what was once the Thresholder Grove) itself was that everybody else be mostly passive and let Krakoa do virtually all of the work , after all , it feeds on human mutant bioenergy , and as Monsters Inc. taught us , the most powerful bioenergies are produced by positive feelings , hence the 24-7 parties / orgies LOL
@V “Legion is going to come back as late as possible for a deus ex machina save, isn’t he?”
I think it would be a not-so-deep cut if X-Man came back from Age of X-Man and undid all of Krakoa, lol.
@K “Legion is going to come back as late as possible for a deus ex machina save, isn’t he?”
I think it would be a not-so-deep cut if X-Man came back from Age of X-Man and undid all of Krakoa, lol.