X-Men #23 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #23
“When Cometh — The Stark Sentinels”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colour artist: Dee Cunniffe
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fight a Stark Sentinel.
PAGES 2-6. Mother Righteous visits Dr Stasis.
“[T]here’s nothing that Dr Stasis enjoys more than eating with clones of his family.” This is a callback to early issues, in particular issue #2, where Stasis is living in a suburban home and killing off each new family as they prove unsatisfactory. Evidently he’s now relocated full time to the Orchis Forge, but that hasn’t stopped him from recreating his throwback suburban household there.
Rebecca Essex was Nathaniel Essex’s wife before he became Mr Sinister. She appears in his origin miniseries, Further Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix (1996). Her basic role is to become increasingly disturbed by his behaviour, die in chidlbirth, and refuse to forgive him, prompting him to turn to Apocalypse.
Mother Righteous is not literally Rebecca Essex, any more than Stasis is the original Nathaniel Essex. She’s one of the four suit-themed clones that the original Nathaniel created, as seen in Immortal X-Men #8. However, she and Stasis both appear to agree that she is not simply a Nathaniel Essex clone but (apparently) a Sinisterized version of Rebecca. Since the original Rebecca was saintly and long suffering, there may be an element of self-loathing at play here.
At the same time, note that Righteous is upset not just about the cloning of “herself”, but also about their son – which seems to be the main message that she’s come to deliver, notwithstanding a passing mention of her interest in Orchis. The original Rebecca was very upset by Nathaniel’s experiments on the body of her late son.
“You thought you were the original Nathaniel Essex?” Stasis made this claim to Cyclops, very forcefully, in issue #12.
PAGE 7. Recap and credits.
PAGE 8. Data page: a quote from Cyclops. Superficially he’s talking about tactics, but the end of this issue may suggest that he’s thinking of turning back to Emma Frost as his relationship with Jean becomes rocky.
PAGES 9-11. The Stark Sentinel makes its debut.
The Stark Sentinels tie us in with events in Duggan’s Iron Man, where Orchis member Feilong took over Stark Unlimited and used its access to Stark’s technology to build these things. They’re basically giant Iron Man suits, and they debuted in Invincible Iron Man #5.
The idea of giant Iron Man Sentinels has been done before – it was central to the plot of the 2014-15 crossover event Axis. Those ones were built by Iron Man under the influence of the Red Skull. We’re probably being invited to politely forget about them.
The firefighter that the Sentinel attacks is apparently a real mutant, but we’re told later on that the main purpose of this exercise is to draw the X-Men into a fight, so the Sentinels may not be programmed to attack mutants on sight. After all, one of their main functions is to get good publicity for Orchis.
PAGES 12-20. The X-Men fight the Stark Sentinel.
Big fight scene, innit?
PAGE 21. Orchis discuss their success.
Randall’s Island is, at the moment, mostly parkland. It may have been selected as the site of Orchis’s private prison in reference to an announcement last year that asylum seekers would be housed there – though that idea seems to have been abandoned after a few weeks.
“I’m already receiving a signal from the machines inside their teleporter.” Presumably the idea is that Magik has been infected with nanites when she got a minor cut on the face in page 18 panel 3. The narration on that page indicates that this was a major part of the plan – though we’re told here that they were hoping to get Jean too.
PAGE 22. Data page – a weird op-ed by Dr Stasis appearing as a paid column in “all major newspapers”. In this version, Orchis present themselves as seeking to fill the void left by SHIELD, which is also how they’ve been depicted in Iron Man.
“We’ve been at a crisis since the moment … Charles Xavier … intruded … into our very minds.” Stasis is referring to Professor X’s admittedly heavy-handed announcement of the existence of Krakoa, as shown in a flashback in House of X #6.
PAGES 23-24. Scott visits Emma.
The Kingpin arrived on Krakoa in issue #20, relying on his marriage to Typhoid Mary. Nothing much has happened since. Emma used to work for him back in the day, as shown in Devil’s Reign: X-Men.
Ms Marvel died in Amazing Spider-Man #26, though she’s got a movie coming up, so she’ll obviously be back soon. Scott was “close to [her]” because when he was a time-travelling teenager, they were both members of the Champions. Emma refers to a “previous conversation” – the fairly obvious reading here would be that Ms Marvel is not an Inhuman as previously claimed, but a mutant who can be resurrected on Krakoa. This would have the happy side effect of finally detaching her from Marvel’s failed attempt to make the Inhumans into the new mutants for reasons of corporate synergy (i.e., they had the movie rights to the Inhumans but not the X-Men), which was in full force at the time of her debut.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
I kind of thought the previous conversation may have been about whether Inhumans would be resurrected thru the Phoenix Foundation, given the previous Inhuman/mutant issues
Note that Mother Righteous called the other Sinisters “brother” in Nightcrawlers 1, Nightcrawlers3 and Before the Fall: Sons of X. That’s odd if she’s a clone of Rebecca. (In Nightcrawlers 3, it was an internal monologue.) Unless Nathaniel and Rebecca were brother and siister. In which case, EWWW.
Also, Sinister met Mother Righteous in Immoral X-Men 2 and he didn’t seem to recognize her as Rebecca.( Admittedly, his response “You’re… WHO are you?” could be interpreted in different ways.)
It’s possible that Mother Righteous is a hybrid of Nathaniel and Rebecca, like Wagnerine was a hybrid of Kurt and Laura.
It does seem like Scott and Emma are saying that either Kamala was a mutant or there’s some other way to revive her. The question is, though, why didn’t they tell Kamala this?
Is there any clear reason for Forge to hold Tony Stark in such low steem? That surprised me. Forge isn’t speaking from a particularly high ground AFAIK.
We all should talk about Tony Stark in such a way after the events of Civil War.
No. It’s true Forge was once in a compromising position with the US government. I’m not sure he ever truly redeemed himself anymore than Stark.
As far as this issue, I wonder if events in the FF comic will figure into Orchis making a claim they are filling the role of SHIELD, or if this is another example of Marvel not caring about continuity.
Dense and riveting issues from both IXM and Duggan’s X-Men this week. I like all the effort the X-Office is putting in to build Mother Righteous into a credible threat, and while quality of the books overall can be patchy, they’ve really benefited from how tightly everything has been flowing from one book to another.
And this feels like Duggan’s first great issue of X-Men in a year or so, simply because important things of consequence actually happened. Genuinely looking forward to seeing how the Kingpin/Kamala plots play out (and holding out for Uncanny Ms Marvel or Astonishing Ms Marvel once they bring her back).
My interpretation of Forge’s attitude was that he’s jealous of Stark, combined with Stark’s personality being off-putting.
Was it just me, or did Nimrod feel really off in both this and Iron Man? More Iron Man since he only gave one line here, but his tone between the two seemed almost giddy to me.
@Moonstar Dynasty: agree, this was one of Duggan’s best issues, far better than the Brood nonsense. It doesn’t hurt to have Josh Cassara’s art. Orchis felt like a credible threat, one that was a step ahead of the mutants. Calling out Professor X invading everyone’s mind (benignly or not) made sense, as did setting up the Stark Sentinels as benevolent. Fingers crossed that Fall of X is at least as good as this issue.
Jon-Nimrod was quite flamboyant under Hickman from Moira’s Life Six.
Sorry. I meant Life Nine.
ChrisV: Oh yeah, point. It’s been a while there.
Paul > Evidently he’s now relocated full time to the Orchis Forge, but that hasn’t stopped him from recreating his throwback suburban household there.
Not that it makes any difference, but Dr Stasis is actually set up in The Bloom, the ORCHIS outpost that orbits the Earth. I believe it first showed up in Duggan’s X-Men 18. The ORCHIS Forge is the headquarters that orbits the Sun.
It’s interesting that ORCHIS now has bases on or in orbit of all the celestial bodies in the inner Solar System.
Sol – ORCHIS Forge
Mercury – Sentinel City, ORCHIS Bunker
Venus – Watchtowers
Earth – The Bloom, ORCHIS Nodes
Arakko – Phobos Base
Meanwhile, the mutants have the nation of Krakoa on Earth, the entirety of Planet Arakko as well as Knowhere in the orbit of Jupiter.
Mother Righteous being Rebecca Essex looks to me like a change of plans. It surely would have come up during Sins of Sinister otherwise, right? Presumably someone at Marvel questioned whether this was a good time for a trans villainess. Understandable, frankly.
@Michael: I don’t think it’s that complicated. Before he died, the original Nathaniel Essex released four clones into the world so that each one would pursue a different method towards Dominion (posthumans, mutants, aliens and magic). This plan may or may not have been prompted / set in motion by the Essex Dominion that already exists over this timeline. Three of them (Diamonds, Clubs, Spades) were clones of Nathaniel Essex and one of them (Hearts) was a clone of Rebecca Essex.
It makes sense for MR to refer to the other Essexes as ‘brothers’, since they are sibling-clones of a sort. The original Nathaniel Essex and the original Rebecca Essex are both long dead at this point.
Mr Sinister couldn’t identify MR in Immoral X-Men 2 and Dr Stasis couldn’t identify MR in Nightcrawlers 1 when they met for the first time in the Sins of Sinister timeline though there were initial flashes of recognition in both cases. It’s possible the difference here is that Stasis was thinking of Essex’s family at the moment that MR showed up, so he could make the connection.
Ms Marvel was revealed to be a mutant in her tv-show, so making her a mutant in the comics would sync her up with the MCU, like they’ve done with Nick Fury jr. Could be that is the whole point of her death in ASM, which seemed kind of odd and perfunctory for a popular character. But if they reverse it right away, perhaps in the memorial issue next month, that wouldn’t matter much.
Except that as per current Marvel Multiverse Cloning Physics as of 2023 A.D. , which were first revealed to Marvel-616 Ben Reilly by Marvel-616 Death Herself (that cloning a dead person for the first time actually reincarnated their original soul-spirit in a new body) and later supported by further revelations about the survivors of the Clone Conspiracy storyline in Spider-Man (that all of them possess their original souls-spirits) , which is the whole basis for Five Resurrection in the Krakoa Era , then Mother Righteous IS Rebecca Essex since at the time of her (MR) cloning , RE was already dead with no other clones, but since Nathaniel Essex was stil alive when he cloned himself , none of the three pretenders (Mr.Sinister, Dr.Stasis, Orbis Stellaris) can ever be the original NE
If Mother Righteous is/is a clone of Mrs Sinister, where did she get her powers? Mr Sinister got his from Apocalypse, and his clones presumably copied those altered genes.
Oh, and why would Sinister make a super powered version of his wife anyway? The whole point of his origin story is he wanted to not feel any human remorse, love, or guilt, particularly toward her.
If he cloned Rebecca, I wonder if there’s an Adam Sinister hidden somewhere, too.
I see it really two ways: Either Righteous is a clone of Nathaniel that has adopted the mannerisms, mentality and identity of Rebecca, or Righteous is a hybrid clone of Rebecca and Sinister. She’s clearly not “human” — her skin is red and her hair is white, so she must have some of the same tweaks Apocalypse gave him.
On that note, Stellaris doesn’t seem to have those Apocalypse tweaks — he’s portrayed as an old man.
Worth noting that Feilong and the Stark Sentinels not only appear in this week’s Iron Man #7, they’re also in this week’s Red Goblin #5!
Based on what I remember reading, the other Essexes have been cloning themselves to retain their youth and vitality. Stellaris wasn’t interested in cloning and used life-extension technologies to prolong his life/health, but which did not stop the outward signs of aging (as cloning would accomplish). So, I guess that is how Sinister and Stasis would appear had they not been cloning themselves.
Since Paul doesn’t do annotations for peripheral books, I’ll flag for anyone curious that the end of Bishop: War College #5 heavily telegraphs that one of the cast members there will be joining the new X-Men roster.
@Chris V- no, we never got the explanation that Stasis and Mother Righteous have been using cloning to stay young. In fact, Mother Righteous appears young and she apparently doesn’t use cloning at all.
Meta-Reason: Disney-Marvel doesn’t want to have the top villainess of its top comic franchise be a transwoman due to obvious rage from both the global rightwing (“Trans agenda”!) ANd leftwing (“Transphobia/panic / anti-transhate”)
In-universe reason / No-Prize spindoctoring: I guess the OG Nathaniel Essex cloned Rebecca because he must have retained a secret subconscious sentimental nostalgia for his wife and child , as clearly shown by his willfully-non-mutant clone Dr Stasis , especially considering that it was revealed that before he died , the OG NE was reverting back to his original human form during the day ala Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde (in fact, it’s even suggested in the story itself that this situation inspired Marvel 616’s version of Robert Louis Stevenson to write that classic novel , as well as the possibility that 616-OG NE was in fact the true identity of Marvel 616’s Jack the Ripper WTF) or 1960’s OG Grey Hulk
And it’s just my opinion but I don’t believe that OG NE spliced RE/MR with his Apocalypse-mutated genes and her skin is red because of whatever magickal transformations she’s experienced in her ReLife post resurrection via cloning by OG NE.
MR should really meet up with Miss Sinister aka “Claudine Renko” , who depending on the writer , is considered to either be Diamond Sinister’s genderbent clone-daughter/sister (“remove the y from the xy and double the x”) or some random woman he sliced with his Apocalypse-mutated genes (which begs the question “why even bother?” Was she his concubine/groupie/protege/surrogate daughter/biological daughter? And the X-men ‘95 Annual revealed way back in 1995 that Diamond Sinister actually still had enough of a sex drive to still have a human girlfriend Faye Livingstone , who was a latent mutant , who he later imprisoned as an unwilling experiment [supposedly her descendants would become alpha/omega-level mutants] but who he later released when she was already an elderly woman ‘out of guilt/love’ believe-it-or-not just before she died of old age)
MasterMahan> Presumably someone at Marvel questioned whether this was a good time for a trans villainess. Understandable, frankly.
Not necessarily. It may simply have been decided that the ‘Mother Righteous is a clone of Rebecca Essex’ beat was Duggan’s to reveal, given that Duggan is the writer who has been exploring the connection between Essex and his family in X-Men. The upcoming Sinister Four one-shot from Gillen features Dr. Stasis and Mother Righteous on a date, no doubt building on the reveal from this issue. That is an incredibly fast turn around if this was meant to be a reactionary retcon.
We’ve always gotten hints that there was something that sets MR apart within the four Essex clones. Besides the fact that she presents as a woman while the other three do not, the typical color scheme for the Essex clones is white skin + red/black symbol on the forehead. MR inverts this with red skin + white heart. Unlike the other three who believed they were the original Nathaniel Essex, MR had no such delusions. There is a pattern to the names (Sinister, Stasis, Stellaris) that Righteous does not adhere to. The archaic definition of ‘sinister’ is left-hand, and right-eous seems to be positioned as the opposite of that.
Finally, MR being based on Rebecca Essex doesn’t really stop her from being genderfluid or even transgender.
Si> The whole point of his origin story is he wanted to not feel any human remorse, love, or guilt, particularly toward her.
This is the traditional take on Essex’s backstory. When Gillen revised his backstory in IXM, he revealed that what Apocalypse actually did was to split the emotional parts of Essex into a separate personality. There was ‘Dr. Essex’ – the rational, unemotional scientist, and then there was ‘Mr. Sinister’ – the theatrical, hyper-emotional murderer. Jekyll & Hyde syndrome. This condition got worse over time until he developed acute split personality shortly before his death.
The implication from Gillen’s story is that Nathaniel based the Diamond Essex Clone on his ‘Mr. Sinister’ persona, hence the campiness seen in Hickman and Gillen’s take on Sinister. I’d further postulate that the Club Essex Clone was based on his clinical ‘Dr. Essex’ persona. We’ve never seen Stasis make puns or crack jokes. He’s basically the self-serious, evil scientist character that some readers wanted Sinister to go back to.
Si> If Mother Righteous is/is a clone of Mrs Sinister, where did she get her powers? Mr Sinister got his from Apocalypse, and his clones presumably copied those altered genes.
Presumably from travelling into the Astral Plane and learning the magical arts. It’s not like Nathaniel Essex had any magic of his own, MR would have had to learn magic even if she was a clone of Nathaniel.
I also believe the current take on Essex is downplaying the ‘Apocalypse gave him powers with Celestial technology’ angle. Though Apocalypse’s involvement is acknowledged (IXM 8), Mr. Sinister’s powers come from hybridizing himself with mutant genes (Courier, Thunderbird, etc.), Dr. Stasis’ powers come from hybridizing himself with animal genes, and Mother Righteous’ powers comes from arcane knowledge. Orbis has no powers but uses alien technology to prolong his life. This was probably done to differentiate and delineate the four Essexes.
(Apocalypse’s own involvement with the Celestials has also been downplayed in the current era, in favor of his mutant family, mutant nation and mutant magic. This was revealed to be an intentional choice in a recent Hickman podcast.)
I wondered if MR becoming a Rebecca Essex clone is because Marvel’s Standards and Practices department was uncomfortable with the incest vibes and this was the X-writers’ compromise around that.
I think that just like a few people killed Hitler in the 616 (at least Jim Hammond and Bucky both claimed that), there’s more than one Jack the Ripper explanation. Iirc it was Mister Hyde when the Thunderbolts went time-travelling in the Parker run.
Marvel still has such a S & P department ?! I thought that died with the Comic Code Authority in the 00’s under Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada LOL I guess maybe Disney brought it back when they bought Marvel so it things would never become as controversial as during the Jeph Loeb era of the Ultimate Universe tsk tsk tsk
@Krysiek- Yes, one explanation said it was Mr. Hyde, another said it was a minor villain called Zaniac and another blamed Dormammu.
Forge’s saying that he hates Tony Stark just reminds me of the fact that around 1990, he, Tony, and Forge did their best to insure that all the top inventors of the Marvel universe were almost indistinguishable from each other. XD
Who remembers Zaniac! Other than maybe Steve Orlando or that guy who used to post frequent lists on RAC of super-obscure characters he wanted to see back, in case any writers were reading.
Carnage #13 also features a Stark Sentinel being hijacked by Carnage, making this possibly the shortest run a Sentinel set has had without one going rogue.
Jack the Ripper was also revealed to be a pawn of Fu Manchu in one of the Doug Moench Shang-Chi stories back in the 1980s. Fah Lo Sue killed him.