X-Men #22 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #22
“Bring on the Bad Guys”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Pin-up of Orchis. Specifically, from left to right, that’s Feilong, Omega Sentinel, Nimrod, Dr Stasis, the Wolverine-skeleton Sentinel seen later in the issue, M.O.D.O.K., and two of the ape scientists who’ve occasionally been seen among Orchis ranks.
PAGES 2-4. Omega Sentinel meets with Opal Vetiver.
Omega Sentinel. It’s been a while since Karima actually did anything – she was prominent as an Orchis adviser in the Hickman run but she’s done essentially nothing in the time since he left.
Opal Vetiver is one of the four members of Hordeculture, the mad botanists who are all old women. She’s making a rare appearance here away from her teammates. The information that she’s been taking Krakoan drugs is new, but not particularly hypocritical since Hordeculture aren’t an anti-mutant organisation as such. Despite the term “drug of the mind” here, the proper term from House of X #1 is meant to be “Human Drug M”, described “a drug that cures diseases of the mind (in humans).”
Oddly, Omega Sentinel acknowledges that Opal’s interest in her is transactional rather than ideological, but Opal doesn’t actually ask for anything in particular in exchange for Hordeculture’s “research into mutant gateways”. Since their first appearance, Hordeculture have been able to access Krakoa’s gateway network despite not being mutants; evidently, that’s what Orchis want to get control of.
The Trojan horse. We’ll find out later that there is a “Trojan horse” in the Krakoan drugs, planted (somehow) by Orchis themselves. The story glosses over the question of how they could have contaminated so much of the supply chain; either they’ve got someone on the inside, or they’ve done a lot of work further down the chain. (EDIT: The comments suggest this is what Stasis was up to on page 57 of last year’s X-Men: Hellfire Club, where he does indeed seem to be in an automated Krakoan facility delivering a “payload”, while Emma’s voice over talks about Krakoan flowers.)
The idea that there was something dodgy about the Krakoan drugs always seemed to be something that was being hinted at, possibly as part of Moira’s schemes, though it was never very clearly resolved in Hickman’s time. I always got the distinct impression that it had been quietly dropped because it felt too much like a Covid-vaccine conspiracy angle, and we’re now maybe far enough past that for it to seem viable again.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits. The recap of last issue’s Brood story has little or nothing to do with this issue’s plot. It plays up the argument between Scott and Jean last issue, and it might be significant that Jean doesn’t appear in this issue. Then again, neither do Iceman, Synch and Talon.
“Bring on the Bad Guys” was originally the title of a collection of villain origin stories that Marvel put out in the 70s.
PAGE 6. Data page. This is a structure chart we’ve seen many times before, though I think this is the first time that we’ve seen it without any redaction on the names. However, the names are all well established by this point. The first three paragraphs of the introduction have appeared before, but I’m fairly sure that the fourth is new, explaining that once Orchis have dealt with the mutants, they’ll move on to all other superhumans.
PAGES 7-10. Dr Stasis, M.O.D.O.K. and Nimrod test their Trojan horse.
Self-explanatory. The guy in red is just an Orchis scientist, wearing a red version of the A.I.M. uniform.
PAGES 11-12. Orchis’ pop-up clinic in Chicago.
Orchis have started offering an X-gene “cure” for free, apparently. It’s left unclear in this scene quite how genuine this is, but removing the mutant powers of actual volunteers would serve their goals well enough, more through publicity than anything else. The narrator tells us that this is happening “every day across the country”, too – and one of the Orchis doctors claims to be a former mutant.
Let’s assume that the X-Men have been patiently waiting for an incident that justified them barging in.
PAGES 13-21. The X-Men fight Orchis.
“I used to think like you, Doc.” Duggan is probably thinking of the fact that Forge produced the Neutraliser that removed Storm’s powers for a time in the 1980s. But he didn’t do that in order for it to be used against mutants – it was a reverse-engineered copy of Rom’s signature weapon, and it was meant to be a weapon against the Dire Wraiths.
The Wolverine skeleton could have been harnessed from all manner of places, but we established in Inferno #1 that Orchis had acquired a collection of them following a series of failed X-Force raids on the Orchis Forge base.
PAGE 22. Data page. Forge writes to Emma Frost. The key point seems to be that, following his moral epiphany in issues #15-17, Forge is in a somewhat utopian frame of mind – he’s finally catching up with the Krakoan mindset just in time for “Fall of X” to hit. But he wants to help the whole word, not just Krakoa, and basically he wants to solve scarcity. This sort of thing never goes well, if only because the Marvel Universe needs to retain some recognisable relationship to the real world. Forge wants to announce it at the Hellfire Gala, anyway.
“Your advocating for her [Firestar] was a great call.” Emma pushed for Firestar to join the team in X-Men: Hellfire Gala #1.
“I know your relationship was complicated.” Emma was an abusive mentor of Firestar back in her villain days, as covered in the Firestar miniseries.
“I agreed to build the cradles for Charles…” The cradles are the data storage for Cerebro. Forge agreed to build them in a flashback in Powers of X #5.
“[T]he containment system to keep the Children of the Vault in stasis”. In issues #15-17.
“The Krakoan battle suit”. The costume that Forge created and that Cyclops wore as Captain Krakoa, between issues #6 and #12. It shows up again in the Free Comic Book Day: Avengers / X-Men one-shot, where Orchis will steal it – but we haven’t reached that yet.
PAGE 23. The X-Men at the Treehouse.
“Cyclops and Jean Grey have hit a rough patch.” Following their argument about the Brood last issue.
PAGE 24. Orchis work on their X-Sentinels.
Apparently they’re going to make a Wolverine copy. You… do know the Beast’s got about ten of them, right?
PAGE 25. Trailers.
Paul > The story glosses over the question of how they could have contaminated so much of the supply chain; either they’ve got someone on the inside, or they’ve done a lot of work further down the chain.
Dr Stasis planted some kind of device inside the Krakoan petals processing plant during X-Men: Hellfire Gala 1 (2022). I assume that this device has been inserting the ‘Trojan horse’ into the Krakoan drugs.
The ‘Trojan horse’ itself was first seen in X-Men 8 as Project Amy(gdala). M.O.D.O.K. was working on it independently but once ORCHIS recruited him in X-Men 9, it seems he has expanded his plans.
Note that all of the Orchis members except Judas Traveller and Feilong are referred to as doctor on the data page. I’m not sure how it works in China, so I can’t say anything about Feilong, but Traveller was a psychologist or psychiatrist before his powers manifested. Wouldn’t he be called Doctor too? (Kafka calls him “Dr. Traveller” in Web of Spider-Man 117.)
Re: Orchis contaminating the drugs- we saw Stasis doing something with the drugs in the 2022 Hellfire Gala issue. This must be what he was doing. Also, in Iron Man 4, Feilong claimed that Orchis had already won and it was thanks to the mutants- presumably this is what he meant.
Firestar defeating the Sentinel by melting the non-Adamantium parts is the same trick the Human Torch used to defeat Ultron during Secret Wars.
“You do know the Beast’s got about ten of them, right?”
The dialogue suggests that Orchis wants to create about 10 X-Sentinels, not just one.
I can’t believe Scott and Jean are having problems with their relationship because of their argument last issue. Jean forgave Scott for shooting his optic blasts at her with LETHAL force when Hodge tricked him into thinking she was Phoenix but she can’t get past the argument they had last issue.
Am I the only person that’s annoyed that we’re not really seeing Stasis express any discomfort at working with the machines? Mother Righteous has said twice that Stasis’s goal is to become a Dominion to protect humanity from the machines but we’ve seen no evidence of that in his characterization to date. Presumably this will be addressed in the Sinister Four one-shot but Duggan could at least have him feel a little uneasy around Nimrod, for example.
Not gonna talk about the character find of 2023? WOOFER! The mutant who transforms light into sound!
I can not WAIT to see him get stuck in an infinite loop with Dazzler. Better than the time she got charged up by Black Bolt…
Imagine a circuit comprised of Dazzler, Woofer, Banshee/Siryn, Northstar and Aurora, Prism, Ruckus… make a sound, amplify it, turn sound into light, turn light into sound… (make light, turn it into sound…) I wonder if they could destroy the world that way.
Paul > The idea that there was something dodgy about the Krakoan drugs always seemed to be something that was being hinted at, possibly as part of Moira’s schemes, though it was never very clearly resolved in Hickman’s time.
Hickman expanded a bit more on the drugs in Inferno: they were developed by Cypher following Beast’s instructions. They were initially grown out of some kind of human or mutant corpses, though we know they were later mass-grown in fields in the Savage Land and on Mars. So this is something for Duggan or Percy to pick up on if they want to.
There was a bit in X-Men 4 where the ambassadors ask why the drugs have to be ingested so often (on a weekly basis). Magneto replies that this is the correct dosage but also suggested that the mutants learnt capitalism from the humans.
I’ve always felt that the Flowers of Krakoa were inspired in part by the spice melange from Dune. The flowers can only be produced by the native mutants (native Fremen) of Krakoa (Arrakis). The flowers gives the user “a longer life span, greater vitality, and heightened awareness” (though not to superhuman levels like with melange). Monopoly over the flowers (melange) propelled Krakoa (Arrakis) into an economic powerhouse on Earth (the Known Universe), while fostering enemies who wanted to take control of the resource.
So as with melange, the Krakoan drugs have to work as advertised or else their use as a geopolitical emollient is diminished. The problem with melange was that it was highly addictive. This was my original theory for the drugs: the high dosage built up addiction in the humans, so in the long-term, they will become reliant on mutants to maintain their advanced health.
It’s funny you bring up the Wolverine clones because there is at least two things in todays X-Force that make me question whether or not Percy is paying attention to the rest of the line
Ewing took this Dune idea even further in his X-books.
Mysterium, like the Flowers of Krakoa, are a resource that only the mutants can mine. Mysterium now forms the backbone of the new galactic economy, boosting Arakko’s place in the galactic political arena.
The once-desert Planet Arakko is basically the desert Planet Arrakis without the sandworms (unless you count Xilo). The battered Arakkii are even better comparisons to the Fremen, having been under brutal colonization by alien forces for millenia. Storm, like Paul, is an outsider who comes to this broken land to heal it. She learns their ways and eventually becomes one of their leaders.
Which is why it would work so well that the drugs were originally going to be Moira’s cure for mutantdom. The mutants own arrogance, thinking they were gaining dominion over the planet, was secretly being used to wipe out the mutant race. Xavier and Magneto were so sure that they had already conquered humanity and were telling the humans they needed to take the drugs on a regular basis. Then, to find out that the drugs being taken by humanity were making it so that no more humans were having mutant offspring.
I don’t think it had anything to do with addiction. Humanity would need to continue taking the drugs to gain the benefits of them. It’s not addiction, it’s just how the drugs operated. Humanity would have always had to depend on Krakoa for access to the drugs. It was always their leverage against the human world. Humans could send Sentinels to wipe out Krakoa, as Genosha, but it would also eliminate their source of the drugs.
The mutants using Capitalism to undermine humanity was the issue of free trade, which was granted to Krakoa in return for providing the drugs. They would be able to out-compete humanity. They live on a post-scarcity, moneyless island with the availability of all the mutants’ power. There was no way for human producers to be able to sell their products for cheaper than Krakoa could provide.
Of course, the X-Corps comic ruined that idea. Krakoa apparently were unable to handle the simplest concepts.
I don’t like when super-hero comics bring in real-world troubles. Forge saying he could end homelessness by making plant houses… not doing so makes the mutants look like horrible people, and villains and/or governments stopping them from doing so makes them look incompetent.
Also: I hate mass slaughter in super-hero comics. I don’t want to read about Orchis killing millions of people in order to discredit Krakoa, and I hope their plan fails. It’s possible for the X-Men to stop Orchis but still look bad in the public eye.
Remember when Orchis were interesting characters? People criticize Hickman for his inability to delineate personality in characters (which is justified), yet he managed to create an anti-mutant organization which had a compelling motivation instead of simply being foaming at the mouth, hateful bigots. They were going to be the ones to pursue post-humanity in this life as they believed it was the only way to preserve humanity, in any form. Omega Sentinel came from a far future where humanity had gone extinct and there was nothing left except mutants.
Now, they’re just two-dimensional evil villains.
So are the mutants still mining mysterium, or did that operation grind to a halt after Brand went full rogue with her plans, and the SWORD station was destroyed, and so on and so forth?
Just wondering, because that whole thing required something like 11 mutants working in coordination (the 5 teleporters and the 6 who formed the other circuit) and I’m pretty sure at least some of them have been released to other functions/teams/stories by now.
So… I know a vast stockpile was mined, but is it a finite supply at this point? And how does that affect the galactic economy, since it’s so hard to create and relatively scarce?
I certainly read it that there was more to the mutant meds. If the plan was offering helpful meds as a bribe for recognition and continued good relationships, Krakoa would have been working to stop the drugs from getting to hostile nations so they’re pressured to make nice. Instead they were smuggling the drugs in themselves. QED, Krakoa wanted as many humans as possible taking the drugs.
My theory was that lifespan drug – the one everyone would want – had the effect of promoting mutant births. It would take at least a dozen years to notice the effect, and by then you have a generation of pumped up mutant births.
Of course, this means that if Moira lied and it was really her antimutant vaccine, it would also take a dozen years until Krakoa noticed.
Probably better to dump the Evil Medicine plot during covid, though.
Forge’s neutralizer was definitely intended for mutants. In Uncanny, one of the Dire Wraiths scrying on him said that it couldn’t affect them, but they would attack because he could evolve it so it could, which he did in Rom.
Melange is basically sand worm poop and anyone can harvest it, not just Fremen. Harkonnen and later Atreides are on Arrakis because of an Imperial charter do to just that, and they do it without Fremen involvement.
Paul, you use the word “cure”, but that word isn’t used in the actual issue. The terminology there is “suppression”, “treatment”. I suspect that, mirroring the Krakoan drugs, the Orchis treatment requires regular applications to keep working.
I, too, want to see a Woofer/Dazzler team-up!
For that matter, consider a better-trained Woofer who could suck *all* the light ought of an area, eeplacing it with a disorienting drone. Maybe he ism’t great at combat himself, but team him with a couple of blind-fighters, and you’d have quite a team.
MasterMahan-That was the direction nature was moving in anyway. The drugs weren’t necessary. That’s the “extinction level event” that led to Orchis becoming operative. Everything was already in place for Orchis’ activation, they were waiting for the point of no return, when the percentage of mutant births reached the level where they realized Homo Sapiens Sapiens was on the decline and mutant ascendancy was inevitable.
It’s what naturally occurred in the original Life Ten timeline. Mutants conquered humans and benevolently ruled over the population, waiting until baseline humans were naturally bred out of the population and only mutants remained.
I think the counterintuitive aspect of Krakoa secretly delivering drugs to hostile nations was to build up a counterpower base in those counties until it was powerful enough to lead a revolution and overthrow the anti-mutant authorities. After all, the people in those nations who would want access to the drugs would be more likely to be pro-Krakoa, while it was the current government which refused to sign on for the trade deal with Krakoa.
I believe there was some hint of that from Wakanda, where there was talk about Krakoa possibly backing anti-government forces in nations which refused to recognize Krakoa’s sovereignty.
Mysterium got very widespread very fast. I bet Doctor Doom figured out how to make it in the first week, and all sorts of aliens have figured out how to create their own versions of mutant circuits.
What I find interesting is that Ewing had Doom hint that to make mysterium, you’re basically strip-mining Heaven, which is not a good idea. The White Hot Room being part of the Above All, the opposite of the Below All where Hulks come from.
Finally a complete Orchis org chart. Most appointees make sense (With Feilong as new CEO of Stark Industries taking Brand’s spot for Infrastructure/ Influence). Except for Moira, who never struck me as interested in Sociology / Modeling. Either she’s there as the foremost expert on Krakoan society or it was the only vacant spot left.
At least she’s now got a clear place in Orchis hierarchy. Up till now, X-writers never seemed to agree on whether she was an unafilliated contractor or a complete replacement for Omega Sentinel as the resident long-standing-X-ally-turned-murderbot.
@Gackthegack- We don’t know what “Sociology/ Modeling” means in practice. Traveller is listed as “Culture/ Narrative” but we’ve seen that actually means creating false flags to turn humanity against the mutants.
@Chris V- I think the problem is that there are just too many members of Orchis now. We’ve got Alia Gregor, Feilong, MODOK, Moira, Killian Devo, Judas Traveller, Dr. Stasis, Omega Sentinel and Nimrod. Nine members is fine for a group of grunts but not a group of masterminds with their own agendas. So we’ve got Traveller having an illusion power that hasn’t used and Stasis allegedly trying to create a Dominion which the readers don’t see.
Chris V: ‘Remember when Orchis were interesting characters?’
No.
The only one that interested me – ‘why is Karima there?’ – was explained as evil possession by alternate self. Who simply hates all humanity. So interesting!
But I’ll give Hickman Alia Gregor and the stuff with her husband/Nimrod, that was good.
Come to think of that, the best part of his X-Men run was Mystique’s grief and rage about the whole Destiny situation. Seems like he has a knack for distressed spouses. Or it’s the only emotion he’s interested in exploring. I don’t know.
@Michael
As I remember, the “Sociology/Modeling” Petal was the one involved in using Legion’s brain to run simulations of mutant society collapse, back at the beginning of Way of X. Only time they were part of the plot I believe. I hope we see more of each Petal from now on.
I do like the idea that Krakoa handed some engineering types a bunch of free indestructible skeletons and they decided to build robots out of them.
Sure, it’s dopey that Krakoa tried just throwing X-Force at Orchis over and over and expected the results to change, but it’s in-character for FailBeast.
“So are the mutants still mining mysterium, or did that operation grind to a halt after Brand went full rogue with her plans, and the SWORD station was destroyed, and so on and so forth?
Just wondering, because that whole thing required something like 11 mutants working in coordination (the 5 teleporters and the 6 who formed the other circuit) and I’m pretty sure at least some of them have been released to other functions/teams/stories by now.”
SWORD is still operational – possibly still in restoration but Cable mentions in Red #10 that Wiz-Kid is the new commander and the rest of the crew was supportive of him.
I’d need to check but afaik no crew member essential to the extraction process left the station – the Rogue & Gambit mini makes it seem like Manifold still has a connection to the Avengers but I take it as a sort of side gig. Cortez left the crew early but Khora can take his place.
The mention of Forge’s Neutralizer in the comments makes me remember a conversation I had with a friend about it recently. I raised the issue that he went and made another gun that went and restored Storm’s powers, so why consider Moira’s powers forever gone? I acknowledge that you want the powers gone to remove the reboot the timeline thing, but, in universe, there’s no reason to consider them gone forever. For the record, we followed this point up with the fact that immediately making Moira an evil Banshee-skin-wearing cyborg was the least interesting way to resolve what happened in Inferno.
Duggan is just bad at higher-level conceptualization. I don’t expect any villainous organization he writes to be anything other than generic, he’s not going to come out with the kind of ideas Hickman, Spurrier or Ewing could. It’s just going to be stealing Wolverine skeletons to make hacky-slashy mini-Sentinels
And yes, while Arrako is probably a reference to Arrakis, the parallels are not identical as the Fremen are not producing melange themselves (in fact they basically have a non-aggression pact where they let House Atreides mine melange by themselves so long as they ignore the Fremen and stay away from their settlements).
Given the explicit East India Company comparison I had always kind of assumed the drugs would be revealed to be highly addictive. Mutant opium. The smuggling into noncompliant countries as a means of subtle warfare, that sort of thing. Colonialism with a mutant face. A moral corrosion of the X-men, insidious and terrible, something for them to confront later.
But then it turned out that the point of it was that the East India Company was Good, Actually, and I realized the writers were on a totally different wavelength from me.
From a practical standpoint, I just don’t expect Marvel to okay making Krakoa a community of addiction traders.
That hardly invalidates the parallel with the East India Company, which traded a lot besides opium. They may have played a significant role in the Opium Wars and the way towards them, but arguably they never needed Opium to become the significant company that they were.
I assumed mysterium was a parody of cryptocurrency rather than a Dune reference.
Can anyone name a single interesting thing about Dr. Stasis that makes him more than “Sinister but with a club”?
Why would it be a parody of cryptocurrency? Mysterium is inherently useful.
[…] vol 6 #22. (Annotations here.) This is evidently meant to be the Orchis spotlight issue – only half of the X-Men appear, and […]
Here’s my problem with the ‘Moira lied’ theory: we’ve never been given any indication that she was involved with the creation or distribution of the human drugs. We first saw the human drug flowers in House of X 1, where Beast was monitoring a batch of them in the Savage Land. Hickman later expanded on Beast’s creation of the drugs in Inferno, in which Hank generated them by expanding on the possibilities presented by Cypher’s discovery of the habitat/gateway flowers. While Beast is basically a supervillain these days, he’s still strictly pro-mutant.
Drug production is done by Multiple Man and drug distribution is done by the Hellfire Trading Company. What was there for Moira to lie about?
It’s entirely possible that Moira came up with the idea of the drugs back when Xavier, Magneto and her were brainstorming their mutant nation. Krakoa needed to export something in order to have an influence on the global financial market as well as the geopolitical arena. But we don’t have any evidence for her involvement beyond that.
Chris V > Humanity would need to continue taking the drugs to gain the benefits of them. It’s not addiction, it’s just how the drugs operated.
Addiction to the drugs (the need to continuously consume large volumes to continue their miracle effects) could amplify the things you mention here though. But I’m not wedded to this theory.
MasterMahan > It would take at least a dozen years to notice the effect, and by then you have a generation of pumped up mutant births.
I can buy the idea that the drugs promote the birth of mutant children. It sounds like something Hank could conceivably do. Another plausible but less likely theory is that the drugs promote the ‘Human Extinction Gene’ that Hank used to talk about in New X-Men. Alia Gregor predicted 20 years left for humanity as the dominant species, but the drugs could have been shortening that.
MasterMahan > QED, Krakoa wanted as many humans as possible taking the drugs.
My read on this was that it was a financial optimization thing – Emma legally sells the drugs to the treaty nations at the agreed upon price and Shaw illegally sells the drugs inside non-treaty nations at much higher prices. In House of X 6, Xavier said a younger, more optimistic him would have given humans the drugs for free but an older, more cynical Xavier was going to humans pay for them.
I think ultimately to the mutant ‘heroes’, the drugs were about making human lives better so there was more incentive for them to cooperate with the mutants and accept Krakoa as a part of their world. To the mutant ‘villains’, the drugs were about making human lives better so there was less incentive for them to explore machine hybridization into posthumans. Something to keep humans docile while mutant influence expanded.
Chris V > I believe there was some hint of that from Wakanda, where there was talk about Krakoa possibly backing anti-government forces in nations which refused to recognize Krakoa’s sovereignty.
I don’t recall anything about Krakoa backing anti-government forces, other than the stuff fascist Beast was doing in Terra Verde because he was afraid of their competitive biotechnology.
The Wakanda thread was a remnant of an abandoned storyline. As revealed in a podcast, Hickman originally intended for Storm to be pregnant with her and T’Challa’s child. This child would be born and raised inside The World, before emerging as a Krakoan heir to the Wakandan throne. This child would have brought Wakanda and Krakoa together. (Hickman used a similar idea with Xavier’s daughter Xandra and the Shi’ar throne.) The Black Panther office vetoed this idea, probably because they were dissolving the Wakandan monarchy and had their own ideas for T’Challa’s love life and children.
This was originally the reason why Storm couldn’t be killed and resurrected when she was infected with the CotV virus. This was changed into a refusal to die on Storm’s part in the published issues. Instead of a child, the mutants left behind a ‘viral entity’ under Fantomex’s supervision. (Though this plot thread seems to have been abandoned as well.)
In the updated data pages of IXM 1, Wakanda is no longer listed under the ‘sovereignty unrecognized’ nations.
Paul > …two of the ape scientists who’ve occasionally been seen among Orchis ranks.
I believe these ape scientists are meant to be that one group of human ORCHIS scientists studying mutant prisoners from Hickman’s X-Men 1. They ‘devolved’ themselves into apes in order to fight the X-Men, but got defeated by Magneto and retreated. I like them because they have a distinct look instead of ‘generic scientist’.
Paul > Oddly, Omega Sentinel acknowledges that Opal’s interest in her is transactional rather than ideological, but Opal doesn’t actually ask for anything in particular in exchange for Hordeculture’s “research into mutant gateways”.
I think the idea is that Omega gives Opal live-saving information about the Krakoan pills in exchange for information on the Krakoan gateways. We’ve seen ORCHIS buying gateway information from Hordeculture before in Inferno, so maybe we are meant to read this conversation as an extension to that.
Michael > We don’t know what “Sociology/ Modeling” means in practice.
Honestly, all of the petals seem to do the same thing.
I recently found out from the Marvel Wiki that Operations, Research, Culture, Human, Infrastructure, Sociology spells out ORCHIS and Narrative, Influence, Modeling, Resources, Offense, Development spells out NIMROD. This is probably what Spurrier (or whoever originally wrote this data page) was going for.
@GN- “Honestly, all of the petals seem to do the same thing.”
Well, Traveller’s seems to be in charge of false flags- I wonder if he’s behind Captain Krakoa. (If Captain Krakoa is Nuke, as some people seem to think, that would make sense- Traveller used to be a psychiatrist, so he would be the best suited to get Nuke under control.)
@Michael – Yeah, that sounds plausible.
Bengt > Melange is basically sand worm poop and anyone can harvest it, not just Fremen.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Harkonnen and the Atreides initially need Fremen expertise (enslaved or otherwise) in order to navigate the Arrakeen terrain and harvest melange? They couldn’t do it by themselves.
Bengt > And yes, while Arrako is probably a reference to Arrakis, the parallels are not identical as the Fremen are not producing melange themselves
Perhaps I should have said that Krakoa (and its extensions) was the only place in which the Flowers of Krakoa / Mysterium could be found (similar to Arrakis and melange). This makes Krakoa indispensable on a global stage. It’s also similar to Wakanda and their own wundersubstanz vibranium.
I meant to say that Hickman was referencing Dune in HOX/POX, not that he was completely ripping it off. Other references and similarities to Dune include Destiny as the Bene Gesserit, Mr Sinister + chimeras as the Bene Theilax, the Krakoa-invisible No-Places as the prescient-invisible No-Chambers. I believe we also have elements from Foundation (the secret Moira Plan to save mutantkind, the Three Laws of Krakoa, the Three Laws of Arakko), elements from Legion of Super-Heroes (Krakoan as Interlac, the Dominions as The Dominators), elements from Morrison’s New X-Men, elements from Claremont’s Days of Future Past, and so on.
To me, figuring out Hickman’s inspirations is useful because it allows me to speculate where Hickman might have been planning to take these elements.
MasterMahan > So are the mutants still mining mysterium, or did that operation grind to a halt after Brand went full rogue with her plans, and the SWORD station was destroyed, and so on and so forth?
I assume they are still mining mysterium, but probably not at the rate that they were pre-Planet Arakko. Like Miyamoris said above, the S.W.O.R.D. stations haven’t been destroyed, both of them were still intact as of X-Men Red 10. Ewing established back-up members for The Six, so there should be reserves if any of the current members are indisposed.
Mysterium shows up in the current GOTG run as the basis of galactic currency. A mysterious batch of (unrefined mysterium?) shows up in Scarlet Witch, which I suspect might be another one of Orlando’s ‘they sent it from the future’ plots.
Si > What I find interesting is that Ewing had Doom hint that to make mysterium, you’re basically strip-mining Heaven, which is not a good idea.
The Mystery, which is where the mutants condense mysterium out of, is stated to be infinite in nature in Defenders Beyond, so I don’t really think it can be ‘strip-mined’. I think what Doom was telling Storm is that mysterium is an inherently dangerous material so the mutants should be careful to not burn their hands (in the fires of creation).
I’m sorry, that second comment from my post above was actually from CitizenBane and the third comment was actually from The Other Michael.
Karl_H > Can anyone name a single interesting thing about Dr. Stasis that makes him more than “Sinister but with a club”?
Well, he’s a divergent Nathaniel Essex clone with a century’s worth of research into directed evolution of humans to posthumans as opposed to the biological evolution of humans to mutants that Mr Sinister studies. He makes animal chimeras instead of the mutant chimeras.
I guess he’s also payoff to the foreshadowing from Powers of X 1 that Essex will join the Man-Machine Alliance at some point. But otherwise, he’s a blank slate. Hopefully Gillen gets into his backstory in the Oblivion Institute.
Michael > Am I the only person that’s annoyed that we’re not really seeing Stasis express any discomfort at working with the machines?
We know Omega Sentinel and Nimrod have their own agenda – turning on the humans once the mutants are taken out. They simply hide it from the rest of ORCHIS. Similarly, it’s possible Dr Stasis keeps his own agenda (of turning on the machines once the mutants are taken out) hidden from the rest of ORCHIS.
Since Essex(es) vs machines is really a Gillen plotline, you might be right that it’ll be addressed in Immortal X-Men and The Sinister Four.
Michael > Note that all of the Orchis members except Judas Traveller and Feilong are referred to as doctor on the data page.
Feilong is his supervillain name (and the name of his company) but his human name is Dr. Kelvin Heng. He’s basically a parody of Elon Musk – Feilong is supposedly a descendant of Tesla and wants to colonize Mars, Musk’s company makes Tesla cars and he wants to colonize Mars. Feilong has taken over Stark Industries like Musk took over Twitter.
I’ve never been convinced of Chinese angle to this character. Duggan’s thought process seems to have been: we hate China, we hate Elon Musk, what if we had a Chinese Elon Musk as a supervillain? Feilong’s worldview doesn’t seem at all compatible with someone who supposedly grew up in China. (Maybe it was his time at M.I.T. that turned him this way?) I have a similar problem with the Nature Girl is written (not the neo-environmentalist stuff, she just doesn’t sound like a Chinese girl to me at all). This is what happens when all of your ideas on how to write Asian people from Asia come from stereotypes or from talking to ‘Asian-Americans’.
@GN- I think that Duggan wanted Feilong to have grown up in an authoritarian state, since Musk grew up in South Africa, but he couldn’t use South Africa, since he wanted Feilong to be under 30. So now, we’ve got a half-Chinese, half- European guy who fights Iron Man- which is something that Iron Man has never had to deal with before. 🙂
On pg 13, Dr. Stasis says “I’m living proof that the X-Gene can be treated”. Now… why would Dr. Stasis, a clone of Nathaniel Essex from 1895, even have an X-Gene? (Assuming that is what he means here.) Mr. Sinister has an X-Gene, sure, but only because he used his genetic mad-science mojo to give himself one. Are we meant to think that Mother R and Orbis S also have X-Genes?
Why would it be a parody of cryptocurrency? Mysterium is inherently useful.
That was the part I assumed was parody. It’s crypto but it works.
@Pseu42- That isn’t Stasis, that’s one of his assistants. There’s no club on the guy’s forehead. Shaw specifically says in Immortal X-Men that Mother Righteous can’t use the gates because she’s not a mutant.