X-Men: Before the Fall – Mutant First Strike #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – MUTANT FIRST STRIKE #1
“Mutant First Strike”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Valentina Pinti
Colourist: Frank William
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: The Krakoan rescue squad search underground.
This is the second of four Before the Fall one-shots, all written by regular X-book writers. The first one was effectively the final issue of Legion of X. This one is… not obviously connected to anything much, but maybe it’ll play into something down the line.
PAGES 2-3. Milford, New Hampshire gets hit by something mysterious.
It’s a real town, population circa 16,000. It used to be famous for its granite quarries, although they’re almost all closed now.
PAGE 4. Hostile news coverage of the Milford incident.
Basically, this is a false flag attack by Orchis and the media is blaming the mutants. It’s a story where the Krakoans show up and act heroically, they impress the locals, and it has no impact on the wider media narrative. In fairness, it appears that Judas Traveller has planted faked evidence of mutant DNA being present at the attack, so there is at least some legitimate reason for people to think it’s a mutant attacker (though no particular reason to associate them with Krakoa). The point, presumably, is to illustrate the effectiveness of Orchis’s control of the narrative (which isn’t even presented as being contested within the media) and perhaps to get Judas Traveller established as an Orchis character, since thus far he’s been seen in that role only in somewhat peripheral books.
Weren’t the Krakoans supposed to have a plan for this, though? Magneto had a whole speech about it in X-Men #4 (2020) – the one where they visit Davos: “We will buy your banks. We will buy your schools. We will buy your media. We will buy your politicians… Then when we have all this influence, we will use it…” Did they just… not get around to it?
“When their teen terrorist Nature Girl attacked our cities?” In the “X-Men Green” storyline over in X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic.
“When their unhinged Thunderbird ransacked an innocent police station?” Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird #1. An odd thing to mention, but Edwyn Martynec and Judas Traveller were both in that issue.
PAGE 5. The Quiet Council despatch Bishop to deal with the crisis.
The two empty seats belong to Mr Sinister and Nightcrawler, so we’re after “Sins of Sinister” (and the previous Before the Fall) one-shot, and before this week’s Immortal X-Men. Professor X is acting as leader despite not having a vote any more, but strictly speaking he doesn’t actually give any orders here – he just says that he can’t see anyone disagreeing, and indeed nobody does.
PAGES 6-7. The Marauders arrive.
Yes, I know, that’s not the Marauders. But Bishop specifically calls it “more than a Marauders activation”, and these red and white rescue costumes previously appeared in Orlando’s X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #44, where a similarly random selection of X-characters likewise identified themselves for the day as the Marauders.
The team shown here are Bishop and Tempo from Marauders, Cyclops, Jean Grey and Iceman from X-Men, Storm from X-Men Red, Angel and Penance from X-Corp, and Triage, a healer from the Bendis Uncanny X-Men run who’s barely been used since. A bunch more characters, of varying degrees of obscurity, will show up during the story.
PAGE 8. Recap and credits. The recap just explains the basic premise of Orchis.
PAGE 9. Judas Traveller receives a report.
Traveller expects the X-Men to solve this problem; that’s not really the point. It still provides ammunition for the story he wants to tell.
Traveller makes a point of reminding us that he’s a mutant, which begs the question of why he was allowed to join Orchis, and indeed why he wanted to do so in the first place. In terms of his own motivations, the closest we’ve had is a speech at the end of Marauders #6, where he basically alleges that mutant hubris is bringing Earth to the brink of disaster. However, he seems there to be describing the narrative that he wants to convey, not necessarily his own genuine views.
PAGE 10. Tempo, Cerebra and Theia inspect the planted evidence.
Cerebra and Theia are Marauders supporting characters, and Cerebra’s powers allow her to sense mutant DNA.
PAGES 11-12. The Watchdogs attack.
The Watchdogs are old Captain America villains – basically grassroots proto-MAGA types who were secretly bankrolled by the Red Skull. Their main claim to fame is killing the USAgent’s parents. Orlando used them once before, in Marauders vol 2 #7.
PAGE 13. Tempo, M and Theia reconstruct the “mutant”‘s appearance.
We’re basically told that this guy was a lab-created mutant with only rudimentary thought, though enough to justify treating him as a victim.
The Unbreathing are the enemies of Theia’s Threshold community in the distant past where she originates from, which is the main storyline of Orlando’s Marauders run; the details really don’t matter for present purposes.
PAGE 14. More rescue efforts.
Tag was a member of the early 2000s version of the Hellions (the one that Julian Keller led). He was killed in New X-Men vol 2 #24 and was among the mutants resurrected at the start of the Krakoan era, but hasn’t done much beyond pad out crowd scenes.
PAGE 15. Cyclops and X-Corps fight the Watchdogs.
“Damn muties can steal a planet outta the sky…” Mars, obviously, in Planet-Size X-Men #1.
Bishop adopts Monet’s “open hands” speech on pages 20-21, though she hardly seems to calling for a non-violent approach here, so much as just dialling it back a bit from outright slaughter.
PAGE 16. Thunderbird arrives.
Thunderbird beat up the cops in Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird #1, but the idea that this fairly minor incident made a massive impact on the population of Milford is, bluntly, difficult to credit. At any rate, that issue did indeed involve Edwyn Martynec and his Heritage Initiative acquiring DNA from Native American mutants, and the suggestion is that this is where Orchis got the DNA to make their bioweapon attacker. (A bit of a leap of logic, given the number of X-Force clones littering Orchis’s space station… but I suppose Thunderbird doesn’t know that.)
PAGES 17-20. The Watchdogs are defeated.
Jean is surprised that the Watchdogs genuinely believe that it’s a mutant attack. Since we’ve already established that the media are reporting this, and that Orchis have ensured that there’s evidence to superficially support it, it’s not entirely obvious why she finds this surprising. Perhaps she just assumed that they were bound to be part of the original plan, when they really are just a bunch of passing grassroots lunatics.
PAGES 21-24. A montage of assorted mutants helping with the relief effort.
This being a Steve Orlando story, some of these guys are very obscure. In order of appearances:
- Storm and Triage
- Somnus, from Marauders.
- Thumbelina, from the Mutant Liberation Front, who has done basically nothing but cameos since “X-Cutioner’s Song” back in the early 90s. She was last seen as a random S.W.O.R.D. agent in Last Annihilation: Wiccan & Hulkling #1.
- Wicked from the Genoshan version of Excalibur, who also recently appeared in Marauders; she can conjure up echoes of the dead. Bishop mentions the Phoenix Foundation to her, which is the programme for resurrecting humans that was set up as a charity outreach at the end of A.X.E.: Judgment Day.
- Icarus is Cannonball’s younger brother; he has vocal powers in addition to his obvious wings.
- Escapade, from New Mutants. I’m not quite sure how switching places with trapped people ultimately helps people, given that she has to switch back in the end, but okay.
- Crave, another supporting character from Marauders. He can eat anything.
- Northstar and Aurora, both of X-Factor.
- Sanjar Javeed, now going by “Life”. He was Death in the “Final Horsemen” version of the Horsemen of Apocalypse, from Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force run in 2010. His power was previously identified as an ability to create infections and plagues, but apparently it works the other way too.
- Brutha Nature, a background regular from New Mutants.
- Alchemist, who was also in Orlando’s previous Marauders rescue team. Her only pre-Krakoan appearance was in the Pryde & Wisdom miniseries in 1996.
- Iceman, who is indeed a qualified accountant (he went to a regular university after leaving the X-Men and before joining the Defenders).
- Greycrow, from Hellions.
- Multiple Man
- Eye-Scream, who can turn into any form of ice cream. His only previous appearance was in the questionably-canon Obnoxio the Clown vs the X-Men one-shot from 1983.
PAGES 25-27. Bishop gives a speech to the appreciative townsfolk.
Hindsight is a character from the shortlived 2017-8 Generation X series.
If the aim is to come across as responsible and non-scary, I question the wisdom of mind-controlling all the Watchdogs and leaving them to wander around for hours, rather than just arresting them and handing them over to the authorities.
PAGE 28. Jean, Bishop and Storm.
Santo Marco. Jean is referring to the incident in Marauders #11.
“Nature Girl’s oil-rig hit.” X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #44.
PAGE 29. More hostile news coverage.
Gemma Shin is a character from last year’s Extreme Carnage miniseries, and the current holder of the Agony symbiote, though that doesn’t get mentioned here. She was a member of Wilson Fisk’s version of the Thunderbolts during the “Devil’s Reign” event. She’s associated with the current version of the Friends of Humanity, though that’s more of an anti-alien group than an anti-mutant one. She was the chief communications director for an FoH-aligned politician, Senator Krane (who gets mentioned on the data page later on)..
PAGE 30. Monet, Bling! and Alchemist
Alchemist was previously established as being decades older than she appeared, but I think this is the first time it’s been suggested that she’s centuries old.
PAGE 31. Judas Traveller celebrates his success.
PAGE 32. Data page: Judas Traveller emails Gemma Shin. His line “A friend and fellow Judas” also appeared in his email to Martynec in Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird.
The Fact Channel is the channel that J Jonah Jameson worked for in Amazing Spider-Man for a while. According to Judas Traveller, it now belongs to Orchis.
“Your time in the Myrmidon.” In Daredevil vol 7 #5, after Fisk’s Thunderbolts were defeated. The Myrmidon is yet another of the Marvel Universe’s prisons for superhumans, this one being a private prison to boot.
PAGE 33. Data page: Judas Traveller emails Edwyn Martynec. Basically, Martynec’s Heritage Initiative has outlived its usefulness and is being wound up, but Edwyn is offered a position in Orchis.
PAGE 34. Trailers.
This was completely pointless. The other one-shots directly lead into Fall of X- Sons of X featured Legion and Blindfold leaving and Kurt leaving the Council and handing his proxy over to Storm, Heralds of Apocalypse promises to deal with Genesis and Apocalypse, leading into the Genesis War in X-Men Red and Sinister Four promises more background on Stasis and Mother Righteous, two of the main villains of Fall of X.This accomplished nothing.
And has Traveller actually USED his mutant power of illusions since joining Orchis?
That costume looks like they’re all wearing the St. Patrick’s Saltire, so this little town in Hampshire is being invaded by a diverse group of Northern Irish mutants.
>Weren’t the Krakoans supposed to have a plan for this, though? Magneto had a whole speech about it in X-Men #4 (2020) – the one where they visit Davos: “We will buy your banks. We will buy your schools. We will buy your media. We will buy your politicians… Then when we have all this influence, we will use it…” Did they just… not get around to it?
Magneto should have probably taken a leaf out of Ozymandias’s book and not publicly announced his clever plans while there was still time for his enemies to stop them.
Given all the obscure character references it would have been fun if Soft Serve got a mention, lol.
The comic was good but was pretty inessential to the larger story – Orchis are still up to no good. Ok? Can we have some larger impact other than more “they hate and fear us” propaganda?
This is what happens when you live on an island of immortals and sit around having orgies and doing drugs all day.
Xavier:Erik, dude. Did we ever get around to…like…buying up all that human stuff like we promised?
Magneto:I dunno, man. You’re really bringing down my buzz. We’ll get around to it. If not us, someone will. There’s a whole island of us, Charles. Why do I gotta do everything?
Xavier:Yeah. You know what? I think Moira like bought some stuff like that.
Magneto: (giggling) Dude, isn’t Moira supposed to be dead? Where’d she get the money?
Xavier: Oh yeah! Well, maybe not her…it must’ve been Storm or…I dunno…maybe Jubilee?
Magneto: Cool. Pass me another blunt, my man.
That the good guys, the bad guys, and the frenemies all have the ability to create basically unlimited custom-designed superhumans kind of makes all of this feel pointless.
I can think of three possibilities:
1) The buy everything idea was dropped in the post-Hickman scramble to make Krakoa less creepy.
2) Someone said “Hey, are we certain we want to do a story about a minority group controlling the media and the banks?”
3) X-Corp was supposed to do it.
I’m pretty sure that was the point of X-Corp originally. Read Joe Casey’s Wild CATs 3.0, if you haven’t already, to see the idea done correctly. Instead, we got Tini Howard’s version which included X-Corp putting time and effort into a flying island because…flying island + something = profits…? Plus, X-Corp showing that Krakoa’s knowledge of technology and economics was so underdeveloped that the human world realized they had nothing to fear.
“Did they just… not get around to it?”
Well, when have we seen the Quiet Council actually do anything like government since creating the Three Laws? There don’t seem to be any other laws or regulations. Nightcrawler was kinda-sorta trying to flesh out a justice system, but seemed to be flying solo on that project. They created X-Force, but didn’t bother with any oversight. The drug distribution is delegated to Hellfire Trading, another side project. International relations, maybe? Though little of that is on the page.
Maybe this complete lack of effectiveness is part of why Magneto retired….
This was boring.
Also if the media narrative is that another nation (Krakoa) dropped a big bomb on an American town I would expect some kind of official reaction to it. USA is not exactly known for being chill about that kind of stuff…
As uneven as Orlando’s work can be,I did enjoy seeing a whole bunch of obscure background mutants get a chance to participate and contribute to the rescue effort. It’s nice seeing them get brought out for a positive reason. Though it’s hard to imagine Thumbelina as a microsurgeon (literally). I wonder if she’s always had medical training (from her pre-terrorist life)or if she got a psychic download for the occasion. Either way, at least it’s something to add to the character.
As for Eye-Scream… that’s a hell of a deep dive.
X-Corp was such a misfire.
“I’m not quite sure how switching places with trapped people ultimately helps people, given that she has to switch back in the end, but okay.”
Eh, the biggest issues with trapped people is finding them and figuring out how best to free them. Having someone who can temporarily swap places with them and then report back to the rescuers is literally the most useful use of her powers I’ve seen yet.
Yeah I assume that they’ve dropped most of Magneto’s Davos speech because it was practically him quoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and they don’t want to touch that now that Hickman is gone.
As someone who briefly lived in Milford, NH and worked there for much longer, this was a very surreal issue.
I think that just possibly maybe I don’t like plotlines about false flag operations involving killing lots of people and pinning the blame on our heroes. They’re often a structural mess involving people being stupid in order to sell the trick. But even without that, they’re kind of tacky and not something you should use unless you actually have something to say about it. Something other than “muahahahaha, the public and heroes have fallen into the villains’ trap”.
A minor quibble is that I don’t feel like it sold any evidence that this was a mutant well. The X-teams were the first on the scene and did all of the analysis — before that it seems to have been simply the press stating as a fact that this was a mutant attack without any evidence. And then the mutants’ evidence also showed that the x-gene was degrading so if no one had analyzed it fast, there’d be no evidence at all that it had anything to do with mutants. So it relies on the team sharing their evidence and people believing the mutant part but not the “lab-grown” part. Which… yeah, could certainly work. But. Meh, just felt sloppy.
Otherwise, the issue was fine. Cool to see some obscure characters. But utterly straightforward with Traveller’s plan, yet treating it vaguely as if it’s a reveal that this is a PR op rather than a direct attack. We’ve seen this story many many more times.
It wasn’t meant to bring associations with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, although some conspiracy minded types would probably jump to that conclusion. Hickman’s point was to bring up considerations about the way that critics accuse China of operating; but more generally, just imperialism in general, with the United States’ neocolonialism being another example. The Hellfire Trading Company was named to bring to mind the British East India Company.
The Krakoans shouldn’t be seen as a minority group anymore after Hickman made Krakoa a nation-State. Especially with Hickman’s intent that Krakoa is a world superpower, although evidence of this was often sorely lacking on the page.
I would love to see the effects of mutants claiming capitalism, then the media, then politics in the whole Marvel line (for story purposes, not because I think it’s morally right or something). Unfortunately, the plot about mutants economically dominating humans would never be reflected in the larger Marvel Universe. Therefore, it can’t go anywhere. Remember when Lex Luther was elected president in the DC universe? And almost nothing came of it? Potential mutant domination reminds me of that plot.
As for this issue… it was ok? I thought X-Men 23 was a better Orchis story.
Thunderbird attacking the police station: X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #45 indicates that that footage was altered for propaganda purposes!
The Krakoans shouldn’t be seen as a minority group anymore after Hickman made Krakoa a nation-State. Especially with Hickman’s intent that Krakoa is a world superpower, although evidence of this was often sorely lacking on the page.
A nation-state, yes but also a self-defined ethnostate populated by a group that was minoritized in other countries.
I think it’s another case of the Hickman setup focusing more on the sci-fi “big ideas” around Krakoa-as-mutant-nation than on the geopolitics.
We’re meant to see Krakoa’s nation-state status and achievements in terms of “mutants as the next step in evolution,” but not in terms of, well, nationality.
Hickman’s idea seems to be that it was an attempt to create a country that is to the nation-state what homo superior is to homo sapiens.
And then, to compete, humanity turns to the machines — or is subsumed by them — and we get the AI singularity competing with the potential mutant singularity, taking things entirely out of the realm of recognizable geopolitics.