Immortal X-Men #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #14
“Sympathy for the Scarlet Witch”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourists: David Curiel & Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Professor X on the beach of Krakoa, confronting the ruins of a half-buried Sentinel. Presumably a Planet of the Apes riff.
PAGE 2. John Romita tribute.
PAGE 3. Professor X stares into space.
The very fact that we’re seeing him without his Cerebro helmet is a symbol of the Krakoan era being over.
“X weeks later. Krakoa, population: 1.” The “X weeks later” tag also appears in X-Men #25 (well, as “X weeks ago”, but same difference). Oddly, this week’s Children of the Vault #1 just opts for “weeks later”. X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 ends with a caption noting the population of Krakoa as 1.
PAGE 4. Professor X recalls Destiny asking him to get Mystique to safety if something happens at the Gala.
This puts a different complexion on the scene at page 57 of Hellfire Gala 2023 where Professor X very aggressively tries to force Mystique to go through the gates, apparently giving her a stroke and prompting her to fall to her death. Destiny has very explicitly asked for this.
Destiny maintains that given the flux in the timeline after “Sins of Sinister” she isn’t sure whether anything will happen at the Gala. However, we’ve seen her in X-Men and Rogue & Gambit apparently making plans for this event by getting Manifold into place. She also suggests that she’s resigned to the fact that nobody would believe her anyway if she tried to give a direct warning, presumably through a combination of distrust and her failed prediction that Shaw was working with Orchis in issue #12.
You have to figure that Destiny knows what would have happened if she’d given the warning, at least in the immediate future, though – does she think that the exile of mutantkind was a good thing in the long run, or at least the least worst option? Her dialogue in Gala seems to suggest so. (At this stage, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if this turns out to be a five-month arc that ends with the re-establishment of a chastened, less complacent Krakoa – and one no longer able to depend on the drugs as a source of income.)
The flashback in panel 4 is to the announcement of the new X-Men team in Hellfire Gala 2023.
PAGES 5-7. Professor X recaps Hellfire Gala 2023.
This is a montage of flashbacks, designed to bring anyone who skipped Gala up to speed while conveying something about Xavier’s state of mind to the rest of us. Specifically:
- Page 5 panel 1 is Nimrod killing the newly announced X-Men in Gala page 21.
- Page 5 panel 3 is all-purpose chaos as Orchis attacks the Gala.
- Page 5 panel 5 and page 6 panel 1 are an abridged version of page 44 of Gala.
- Page 6 panel 3 is Xavier marching the mutants through the nearest gate. The captions repeat his message from pages 47-48 of Gala.
- Page 6 panel 4 is Exodus supporting Xavier and telling everyone not to resist. His dialogue seems to be original, but page 56 pandl 3 of Gala does show Exodus forcibly bundling the Five through the gates to get them to safety.
- Page 6 panel 5 is the scene of Xavier trying to force Mystique through the gate.
- Page 7 panel 2 is Rogue flying Xavier to safety, and Xavier telling her that all the mutants are dead, at the end of Gala. The recap page clarifies that Xavier did not sense the mutants dying, but simply assumes that they must be dead because he can no longer sense them.
PAGE 8. Recap and credits. The title refers to the Scarlet Witch nearly wiping out mutantkind at the end of House of M, with Xavier apparently seeing himself in the same light.
PAGES 9-11. Flashback: Sebastian Shaw learns that his deal with Mother Righteous hasn’t made him rich.
“Though to be honest, I was never really a mutant. I just had a mutant gene.” Shaw has certainly never cared in the slightest about mutant solidarity. If being a mutant means something more than just having the gene, then he doesn’t count.
Tessa was the name that Sage used when she was Sebastian Shaw’s aide. X-Treme X-Men #7 (2001) presents “Tessa” as an identity created by Professor X when sending Sage undercover to infiltrate the Hellfire Club, but you could read it consistently with Shaw saddling her with the name. Another possibility is that Shaw is trying to assert that he can simply replace Sage rather than concede that he couldn’t control her.
It’s not entirely clear what “owning Krakoa” means in legal terms – it was an independent country, after all – but if nobody is recognising it as such any more, then maybe Mother Righteous has managed to arrange things so that Shaw is the recognised owner. Perhaps he’s supposed to have laid claim to it as vacant land.
PAGE 12. Flashback: Shaw complains to Mother Righteous.
Shaw made his deal with Mother Righteous in issue #11. What he said to Mother Righteous was: “Krakoa is rich. If it does go down, I want it all. I want to own Krakoa. Can you arrange that?” The room in the Hellfire Club is the same place where Shaw first met her in issue #6.
Righteous is basically making the point that as a magician/trickster figure, deals with her operate on the logic of stories, where you really need to spell out what you want. On a literal reading, though, her claim that the deal is “never quite what you wanted” would apply to her side too. But she knows what she’s doing, is the difference.
PAGES 13-15. Flashback: Shaw is thrown out of the Hellfire Club.
Since this is immediately after the Gala, Wilson Fisk apparently acquired the Hellfire Club a little before everything went south – perhaps with a view to manoeuvring against Shaw. Fisk’s story is presumably an X-Men plotline, but it makes sense for him to be offering the Hellfire Club’s support to the remaining X-Men, particularly when Emma is involved.
Emma is wearing her traditional White Queen costume from her earliest appearances, perhaps suggesting that Fisk has re-established her in that role, albeit behind the scenes.
“You know the new rules.” Shaw is referring to Orchis’ threat to kill humans if any mutants return to Earth; either he takes that literally, or he hopes Emma will. Strictly, Emma isn’t in breach of Orchis’s terms because she hasn’t returned to Earth. Note that Shaw – who wasn’t at the Gala – apparently doesn’t know that Emma wasn’t sent through the gates, and seems to assume that the mutants were sent somewhere vaguely sensible as per Orchis’s claims. So he’s not even in the loop with Orchis. Emma derides him as a failure on his own terms; Shaw is characteristically determined to prove her wrong.
PAGE 16. Data page: Shaw Industries comes up with plans for exploiting Krakoa.
Note that by this point Shaw has figured out that he needs to keep Orchis at bay, although he’s still relying on the Stark Sentinels for protection.
The External Gate was the portal to Otherworld from “X of Swords”; Selene cares about it because of the other Externals who are embedded within it.
“With Doug gone…” This is an interesting line. Cypher was sucked into Krakoa at the end of issue #13, and Shaw was there – he talks here as if he doesn’t know where Cypher is. Perhaps he assumes that Cypher counts as “whoever is left in the Pit”, or is allowing for the fact that Krakoa has previously absorbed people into the Pit only to quietly let them go (specifically, X-Men Green).
“Krakoa needs life force to do what it does.” This is a point. The whole plot of Giant-Size X-Men #1 is that Krakoa is trying to feed off the mutants. In the Krakoan era we were told that this wasn’t a problem because the mutant population was so high that Krakoa could take a small amount of energy from everyone. But now Krakoa only has Professor X and whoever’s in the Pit to feed on. Presumably this is why Krakoa is “currently in semi-hibernation.”
PAGE 17. Shaw is getting nowhere with his plans.
We’ll see later on that the soldier is accurately recounting what the previous landing parties have experienced. Presumably this guy isn’t an Orchis soldier, even though he’s in red, since Shaw has already recognised that he needs to keep Orchis at bay. The landing party we see later on talk as if they’re mercenaries.
PAGE 18. Emma Frost tries to talk to Professor X.
Emma apparently takes Orchis’s threat seriously – in which case, you’d think she’d be a bit concerned about Iceman running around in public over in his own book.
Professor X specifically frames the loss of mutantkind as the death of “our children”, appealing to their shared role as teachers.
PAGES 19-20. Professor X repels Shaw’s landing party.
So he’s not simply immobile; he’s standing guard over a symbol.
PAGES 21-24. Exodus takes the lead with the exiled mutants.
The opening caption describes this as “Nowhere, No-when”, and from the perspective of Exodus, Hope and Destiny, we’re apparently just moments after they went through the gate. Exodus identifies the other refugees as “the whole population of Krakoa”, though Gala showed mutants going through other gates too. However, Exodus also specifically tells us that the 250,000 mutants present do not include the rest of the Five – and this landscape bears no resemblance to the alien landscape where we saw Forge in X-Men #25. So apparently people have been scattered to different locations? In fact, it looks as though none of the other name characters are present beyond the three who get dialogue.
Exodus, finally getting to live up to his name, basically decides he’s going to be Moses.
PAGE 25. Data page. This is Exodus’s idiosyncratic, mutant-themed interpretation of the Book of Exodus (specifically, Chapter 16, with the Israelites in the desert). We’ve seen excerpts from this translation before in issue #5, but note that he’s apparently writing this one after the events we see here.
PAGE 26. Trailers. The Krakoan reads JUST DESERTS (sic).
I’m enjoying “Fall of X” now. Both books released this week are closer to my expectations for this event. I wish that Orchis would be better defined. What is their agenda? Just being mutant-hating supervillains, I guess. They should be positioned as the guardians of humankind at this point (benevolent overlords for baseline humanity), but that unfortunate “kill any humans” dictate sort of ruins that interpretation. (More to come on this topic with Children of the Vault #1.)
If Krakoa is reformed after this arc, I imagine it will be a much more prosaic base for mutants as superheroes (if the mansion were an island). I expect that the “evil mutants” will be excluded and humans who want to live in the community will be welcomed.
So presumably Destiny’s warning is why Xavier thought it would be safe to send everyone through the gates- he realized Destiny was hinting he should send Mystique through the gates and reasoned that the gates must lead to somewhere survivable, because Destiny wants Mystique to live.
Wby did Orchis ask for Shaw to have his mutant powers removed before joining them? They’ve recruited mutants before- Judas Traveler, Selene, Fenris and Firestar- and they’ve never asked any of them to have their powers removed. (In fairness, they asked Traveler to handle their false flags and his mutant power is illusion, so taking away his powers would make it harder for Traveler to handle his job.But the others)?I realize it’s necessary for Shaw to be Rewarded As A Traitor Deserves but still…
“Since this is immediately after the Gala, Wilson Fisk apparently acquired the Hellfire Club a little before everything went south – perhaps with a view to manoeuvring against Shaw. ”
We saw Emma hand Fisk some papers to sign in Invincible From Man 8. Presumably that’s when he acquired the Club.
What’s weird is that Shaw seems to think Sinister is in the Pit but we’ve seen preview images for next week’s Uncanny Avengers that show the Fenris twins, who were also in the Pit, working for Orchis, I wonder if we’ll get an explanation.
How adept at the Stark Sentinels at scanning mutants? They would have caught Emma as soon as she used her powers on Kamala’s parents if she hadn’t applied an inhibitor ring immediately afterward but Xavier’s been using his powers on Shaw’s and Selene’s goons for WEEKS without the Sentinels detecting him. And Emma was in a major city with millions of people. Xavier is alone on an island, so presumably he’d be easier to detect.
“Emma apparently takes Orchis’s threat seriously – in which case, you’d think she’d be a bit concerned about Iceman running around in public over in his own book.”
Also, in this week’s Children of the Vault, Bishop breaks Old Cable out of Orchis’s custody and he doesn’t seem to be worried about Orchis killing any humans.
How stupid is Rogue? She knows that the mutants were teleported somewhere and she knows that Destiny’s plan involved putting Manifold, a TELEPORTER, in stasis. It doesn’t occur to her that there might be a connection between these two things? She hasn’t told anyone about Manifold?
It’s odd that with a quarter million mutants, most of them had no powers that were useful in surviving in a desert.
It’s also weird that Destiny is truly blind in this desert but she seems to have foreseen that Mystique would be safe if sent to the desert. Maybe the desert isn’t what it seems to be. Or maybe Destiny is lying again.
On one hand, I’m glad that the 250,000 residents of Krakoa are alive.
On the other, this is a situation whereupon the actual stupidity of everyone involved enrages me. Exodus is so caught up in OMG I GET TO BE MUTANT MOSES that no one takes five minutes to do any sort of strategic thinking. Not even Hope, who was raised by Cable to be a fighter and survivalist…
Seriously, you have 250,000 mutants. If even 1 percent of 1 percent have even useful powers, that should be more than enough to help get a handle on the situation. If we were to do a census of -named- mutants present on Krakoa, and subtract those we know to be dead or still on Earth resisting, or otherwise accounted for, that’s still DOZENS with pretty substantial powers.
So what do they do? MARCH INTO THE DESERT because they have FAITH!
Not: “Okay, let’s set up a temporary camp. Fliers, recon in all directions. Exodus, do a mental census to find out who has applicable abilities like terraforming, weather control, transmutation, healing, food generation, clairvoyance, stuff like that. Those with offensive or defensive capabilities, set up a perimeter defense… See if anyone with relevant training is among us: Xavier’s Academy, Hellions, MLF, Nasty Boys, it doesn’t matter…”
The point is, Exodus isn’t Moses and the Krakoans, by sheer virtue of being mutants, possess untold resources and abilities which no one even accounted for. Even if you take into account shock and trauma (see: Destiny) and general surprise, we’re talking about the population of a medium-sized city with superpowers. Even eliminating the vast majority of Named Characters…
Yeah, this part of the plot is genuinely irksome because it hinges on a quarter of a million people coming from all walks of life across the globe in 2023, just walking into a desert on the say so of one religious wangdoodle instead of taking an hour to assess the situation, chart their available resources, and make a strategy.
Sigh.
I was fine with that because the one thing you must have in the desert is water. If there are no mutants who can produce water, the best thing to do is start walking. Maybe over the next dune there will be a city.
How many mutants have we seen with the ability to produce water or food? Not a great deal.
This is where that guy who made ice cream or whatever from the recent New Mutants series could help. XD
They have at least five people capable of flying as seen on the last page… that’s enough to send in different directions as scouts to see if any particular direction has food, water, shelter, civilization… instead of blindly picking a direction as Exodus does.
Honestly, the logistics for that many people will be a total nightmare.
Yeah. Exodus sending out scouts in the other directions, definitely. It is believable that they need to start moving and not just stand there hoping someone could produce water though.
This could be a good opportunity to introduce new characters organically, but that is probably not in the cards.
Sure, unless someone selected this group specifically to avoid survival-oriented powers there ought to be at least a few that could help… but in a sense that is a long shot. A huge group means huge needs as well. Someone like Iceman could probably make quite the difference, but odds are that anyone with power levels that may be relevant to hundreds of thousands of people will make themselves heard anyway.
Then again, Exodus is a powerful telepath, Destiny can normally see the short term future, and Hope can help both sense, activate, mimic and nurture other mutant’s powers, so this group of named characters is well suited to seeking useful powers among this population. For all I know Exodus is right now in rapport with Hope and Destiny to do just that while they walk. In any case, I have to agree that they can’t affort to postpone the search for water, food and shelter if they don’t want a disaster on their hands in the next few hours.
I can’t help but wonder how Xavier is surviving. There are probably plenty of empty, livable residences in Krakoa right now, come to think of it. Some of those will have significant larders. It will be a while before he has any true needs that can’t be fulfilled on the island.
Doug, however, can’t be too happy about this state of affairs. Assuming that he is even conscious, that is. Hopefully we will revisit him and Krakoa’s mind soon enough. If Krakoa truly wants to protect Doug, odds are that it will soon realize that just being out of sight is not much of a solution.
I assume we will be seeing more of Kingpin in Dugan’s books instead of here in Immortal. But it would be nice to see some conflict between him and Shaw. I also hope that we see more of Emma and Charles mind talk. The two of them haven’t really interacted all that much, considering that they are two of the strongest telepaths in existence and have social circles with so much intersection.
It would also be nice to see Charles revisit his displays of hubris towards Reed Richards, but I guess I can’t expect so much. Still, if Charles ever had a need for support from non-Mutants, this is the time.
One thing I’ve really enjoyed about the Krakoa era, and continuing in the Fall of X, is that it demonstrates which of the villains, if given a second chance (and/or their wish for a mutant nation), would redeem themselves. At the moment we’re seeing:
Mutants with a face-turn:
*Exodus (he’s never been better characterized before, and I’ve loved his willingness to be part of the team without losing his religious craziness. Was notably a hero in Age of Apocalypse)
* Greycrow/Scalphunter (this started in Manifest Destiny before the Utopia era, but his characterization in Hellions has been great)
* Apocalypse (the baddest of big bads… this would be better if he hadn’t been a hero in the immediately preceding Age of X-Man)
* Gorgon (in Hickman’s X-Men)
* Tempo (though she was always the least-worst MLFer)
* Destiny (was never all that villainous, but seems mostly on-board with Krakoa, except when it involves letting her wife die)
* The Blob (same note as Apocolypse)
* Omega Red
* Proteus
* Daken
TBD:
* Mystique
* Maddie Pryor
* Fabian Cortez (had a rough time in SWORD, but redeemed somewhat in Legion of X)
Still Just the Worst:
* Mr. Sinister
* Sebastian Shaw
* Selene
* Sabertooth (though he had a previous face-turn post-Axis)
My hope is that the next phase continues to showcase heroes and villains working together – it’s given some great characterization to traditionally villainous characters (Wildside in New Mutants).
> I was fine with that because the one thing you must have in the desert is water. If there are no mutants who can produce water, the best thing to do is start walking. Maybe over the next dune there will be a city.
The best thing to do is to head straight down. Exodus (who, remember, was Hickman’s Omega Telekinetic, the official strongest mutant TK) could not only make some sort of shelter out of sand and rock – especially with Hope, copying his powers, to back him up – but the most likely place to find water is in the form of groundwater. [Yes, this presumes there is water, but if there’s oxygen – which depletes pretty quickly on a planetary scale in the absence of something manufacturing it, like mass plant life – there’s probably water. Plus, the laws of narrative say they’re probably not all going to die in the desert]
The next best thing, and probably what they should do after step 1 anyway, is find all the potential scouts in the population. Any fliers, definitely, but also any speedsters, astral projectors like Scanner (remember the Cyclops & Acolytes in the desert issue?), etc. And, of course, anyone who can make any positive amount of food/etc.
Just walking out into the desert should be a death sentence, especially for such a massed group. They’re as likely to be walking away from water as towards it, and any surface supply within the desert isn’t going to suffice for a six-figure group.
“The next best thing, and probably what they should do after step 1 anyway, is find all the potential scouts in the population. Any fliers, definitely, but also any speedsters, astral projectors like Scanner (remember the Cyclops & Acolytes in the desert issue?), etc. And, of course, anyone who can make any positive amount of food/etc.”
My point exactly. I’m not saying they need to spend all day in the desert, but an hour spent assessing what they have to work with and making a plan is better than immediately trotting in a random direction. I’m just surprised that Hope didn’t think like Cable or one of her other mentors and go “Okay, what do we have on hand?”
And with Exodus, a world-class telepath with a laundry list of other powers, on hand to do a quick skim for, I dunno, familiar minds in the crowd or something, they should have been able to pick out people who could help. Yes, maybe 99.9 percent of them are “smells like spiders” or “has three eyes” or “has 2 foot long neck” but we’ve seen quite a few halfway decent background characters throughout the Krakoan era.
I was joking to my better half that were this written by the sort of authors who write for Baen books (think military sf, engineers, Libertarians…), the Krakoan exiles would have had a functioning outpost/base camp established in the desert within hours, and be well on their way to solving issues of sustainability, resources, and organization.
Yes, I know that’s not what the story is about, and it’s far more narratively dramatic to see the host of Krakoans follow Exodus into the desert because subtlety is dead, but this is the sort of thing my brain latches onto and won’t let go of.
Really, a big part of the problem here is Hope. If Exodus’ foil is someone who can’t stand up to him, even just in power levels, then this would just be a larger-scale version of his post-Fatal Attractions leadership of the Acolytes – he’s being batspit crazy and making poor decisions out of zealotry, but no-one can actually challenge him because he’s a zealot who’s an order of magnitude more powerful than everyone around, so they’re stuck being marched into oblivion.
But Hope both matches him *by definition* since that’s her power (plus whatever she picks up from the mass group on top of that), but she’s been willing to take him on earlier in this series. And she grew up in a survivalist situation.
I know Gillen likes his Exodus/Hope combo, but the plot mechanics mean she has to be unusually submissive to let him take charge.
If you’re going to bring the law of narrative into it, it easily explains Exodus’ decision. He realizes he is a messianic character playing a role in his creator’s grander scheme. It seems odd to proclaim he’s not Moses when we know that he is being positioned as symbolic of that very role by a fiction writer. I’m sure he realizes he’ll come upon a rock in the desert which he’ll strike to bring forth torrents of water. Most likely, something will occur at this point which prevents Exodus from seeing Krakoa again, further creating the parallel with Moses.
I mentioned that as an aside, not in relation to the characters themselves who DON’T know they’re fiction (well, maybe Gwenpool is in the crowd, but she’s not in the main cast).
Obviously, they’re not all going to die in the desert, Hope probably won’t blindly follow Exodus all arc, etc. The point is the characters are being morons – especially Hope. (Like I said, you can kinda expect a certain degree of moronity from Exodus since there’s precedent.)
The fact that something will inevitably turn up doesn’t absolve them from following a bad plan in the moment.
Actually, the question occurs – they arrived through a Krakoan Gate. Why the hell would there be a Gate in a random alien desert, with no sign of water or life anywhere near, in the first place?
These plans you speak of might be feasible with five people, maybe ten.
It is exceedingly optimistic to imagine that a quarter-million people can be corralled, telepathy or not, into any sort of organized plan more complex than walking, on the spot, without immediately starting to lose people to wandering off, dissent, being left behind, losing count and so on.
Think of it this way: most of them are not literally following Exodus. They’re just following the mutant in front of them.
I hate those Baen books. I’m a fan of New Wave, all the way.
The Gates were somehow connected to Manifold’s power, which has apparently scattered the mutants across the universe.
If I’m expected to accept Orchis’ moustache-twirling plan of pure evil to ensure that mutants don’t replace humanity by threatening to kill all humans, I’m prepared to accept anything.
For some reason, anything over three sentences long is getting “flagged”. I had to break my post into chunks.
@K
If you take that tack, then you have to consider that as soon as you start marching people through loose sand – one of the most exhausting surfaces to walk through, in hot, dry weather with no water – the vast majority of whom apparently have no useful powers (or even “anti-powers”, where their mutant traits are more “medical condition” than “superpowers”)… they’re going to start keeling over rapidly.
Some are going to be infirm from long-term conditions (including but not limited to “anti-powers”), others are just going to be exhausted or dehydrated from *before* they were forced to queue and travel through the gates.
Getting a well-trained, well-fed and well-rested army of 250k to move at any pace would be hard, even if possible (what even *is* the largest group of infantry gathered as one physical group?). Getting that number of random people in mixed physical conditions to do so would be impossible. Even if they somehow all end up de facto hypnotising themselves into following the guy in front, or are mentally pushed to do so by Exodus, they just won’t all be able to do so.
The number of Israelites fleeing Egypt was estimated at 600,000 men, which doesn’t figure in women or children. Granted, the majority of them were not meant to survive to see “the promised land” as punishment from God. After forty years, it would have been most of their descendants. That would still be a lot of children needing to survive harsh conditions. Of course, that’s not necessarily factual either.
So presumably Orchis’ gate hack filtered people and dumped everyone with useless powers in one space and spread out all “hero” characters that isn’t in their own books all over the place (like Forge). Except for some reason they placed Hope, Exodus and Destiny with the “unpowered” group. Right now it’s bit too contrived for my liking.
Yes. I did notice that also. How many gates did the mutants use? I seem to recall we saw a large portion of name characters going through the same Gate at the Gala, yet only three name characters show up with a bunch of background characters. Forge, apparently, somehow ended up teleported alone. I don’t understand how that would work.
A thought for the “why aren’t they using their powers” argument – Destiny can’t seem to use hers, maybe their powers aren’t working either.
As for where they are… maybe it’s the Waiting Room?
As usual, a lot of what happens is solely because the plot demands it.
Mutants get scattered across space (and time?) with most in a desert, but Forge in a jungle, and some just didn’t even go through a portal and just got dumped on Mars or put into a concentration camp or experimented on a secret facility… because Orchis either wanted all mutants gone from Earth or dead or just serving them.
Xavier gets to hang out alone on Krakoa, Iceman is playing hero, there’s mutants on the Uncanny Avengers, and I guess for now the answer to “where’s this character?” is “invisible until narratively convenient…” meaning for all we know, the entire MLF is on Arakoa, while the Nasty Boys got rounded up by Stark Sentinels and turned into chum, while Blob is in the desert and the missing members of the Five are… shrug, partying with the Starjammers?
I know it’s too soon to ask heavy questions as this is clearly meant to last at least five months given the length of the interim miniseries, but still…
This book felt like a periphery tie-in comic to a larger event, in that it just didn’t add anything to the main story.
But I’m unclear on where the main story is supposed to be unfolding.
@The Other Michael: To be fair, “invisible until narratively convenient” isn’t all that different from how it’s been on Krakoa all along, is it? All of mutantkind on one island, we see a small fraction of them as silent background characters, and of *those* only a handful are active protagonists in their respective stories.
I agree with the poster above who noted that using powers or moving around too much would expend energy with no way to replenish it. Walking may not be the best solution, but I can accept it. Also, this story *just started*, so it’s possible we’ll see how the mutants survive in the coming issues.
There was a lot of good characterization in this issue. Sebastian Shaw scheming and (so far) failing at every level was fun to see, he’s so despicable. I’m glad Charles is still defending Krakoa. He hasn’t looked this heroic in awhile. Exodus finding purpose and drive after landing in the desert with the displaced mutants was interesting. Will we see him slide back into megalomania, or will he prove himself worthy of his fellow mutants’ faith?
What’s Orchis’s endgame? I get the (sinking) feeling that plot will be a focus of Gerry Duggan, and Gillen will continue the stories started in this issue.
Glob is visible in the desert mutant crowd as well.
Exodus, Destiny, and Hope. All three seem to be here for the symbolism of their names as much as anything, and likewise the walk through the desert. This is a story after all.
So Shaw removed his mutant gene but still acts like he has his his power? (He certainly didn’t speak of it in the past tense).
@Josie: I am hardly in a position of authority to say, but my impression is that the current model of storytelling at the X-Offices doesn’t use a main book as such.
Instead, there are several concurrent main plots using different sets of characters. If anything that is more true now than it was before the Hellfire Gala.
There is an entry book – Gerry Duggan’s X-Men. It is a far weaker book than I would expect from someone who apparently has previously written mostly Annihilation event books and Guardians of the Galaxy books, but it does dutifully attempt to fill casual readers on the essentials of current events on the line. IMO Duggan is great on characterization if he has the space to shape the characters to serve his plot. He is not nearly as good in a shared universe with a long history of continuity, which makes the choice to give him the core X-Men book for two years puzzling to me.
X-Men #25 was nearly a solo Kate Pryde book. If it follows the direction that I expect in the next few issues, it may well play to Duggan’s strengths while also giving glimpses of Emma’s plot in Iron Man. She is also in direct contact with the nominal leaders of the current X-Men roster. Therefore, that book may well remain a good way to feel the general pulse of current X-plots.
But Duggan is also writing Uncanny Avengers Vol 4 (clearly _someone_ at Marvel Editorial thinks far higher of his ability to write team books than I do) as well as Iron Man, so I expect those two other books to be at least well integrated with the “core’ X-Men book.
If I had to follow just one X-book right now… I would probably make it Iron Man, ironically enough. The solicits for Uncanny Avengers are quite generic and IMO unappealling. They would have to do better to convince me to follow a Duggan team book. The solicits for the current volume of X-Men are even weaker and more generic, as well as sparser and more rooted in his terrible mischaracterization of Scott.
Meanwhile, his Iron Man is if nothing else linear and featuring good characterization (as well as Emma).
Immortal X-Men has no clear plot now. Dark X-Men I don’t think I want to get near to. X-Force is not my cup of tea almost by definition. X-Men Red seems to be busy with a civil war plot centered on Storm and quite detached from other plots for the time being.
So I guess that leaves us with the solo books (Iron Man, Iceman, Jean Grey, Uncanny “Spider-Man”), as well as some measure of eventual convergence of plots in five months or so. Children of the Vault is well placed, at least. So is Uncanny Avengers, despite my lack of enthusiasm for Duggan team books. X-Men’s solicits tell me that this will be a decompressed showcase book for the next four months or so. Ditto for Immortal X-Men.
All in all, a fine period for choosing our favorite books and forgetting about the others. Maybe that is the plan?
@Mike Loughlin:
Maybe it is just me, but I feel that Exodus has indeed fallen into megalomania. How else can one describe his quick self-appointment as a literal Messiah figure? Of course, he _is_ obscenely powerful, so megalomania may be justified.
@Joseph S.
“Exodus, Destiny, and Hope. All three seem to be here for the symbolism of their names as much as anything, and likewise the walk through the desert. This is a story after all.”
Right, and they’re all likely stuck in some sort of enclosed dimension – either the White Hot Room (as twitter is mostly speculating) or some bubble dimension made by Mother Righteous.
Which is why I find a little weird this comment section is so fixated on certain plot minutiae when:
1) it’s clear there’s some dramatic effect going on, which understandably glosses over finer details for now;
2) it’s entirely in-character for Exodus;
3) there’s not much to infer Hope will just be submissive here, considering she has already kicked Exodus’ ass plenty in this very book.
“A story inside a story” is very much Gillen’s kind of thing; while I understand this is not everyone’s cup of tea, I see nothing that points to objective storytelling failures for now.
—
Anyway I find Exodus’ arc fascinating. You can not scrub the zealotry at the guy with a single desperate pre-QC breakdown dissolving, for sure, but I felt a tinge of the guy struggling with his own sense of faith/hope here – plainly admitting he does not know what’s ahead doesn’t strike me as something he would do before being taken a peg down by Hope and the Krakoa crisis.
He and Exodus might be one of my favorite duos of the Krakoa era, just a great combination overall.
“Nowhere, no when” being the setting and it taking place in a desert is an homage to the desert beyond time and space from Blink and exiles.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Desert_Beyond_Space_and_Time
@John, my main disagreement with your list would be Destiny. I felt Sins of Sinister really drove home how much she can be of a piece of shit. The Homura Akemi of X-Men but arguably worse.
nice catch, @Jim Harbor. Some people are arguing it goes even back to the same desert Madelyne Pryor walked before her Goblin Queen conversion. https://twitter.com/ChampagnePuthy/status/1689656672539873281
One last thing:
“At this stage, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if this turns out to be a five-month arc that ends with the re-establishment of a chastened, less complacent Krakoa – and one no longer able to depend on the drugs as a source of income.”
Anyone remembers the timeline branches Destiny found in Immortal #3? We’re past Judgment Day, rolled back from The Storm System after the timeline reset and there are only three possible branches, with “A New Krakoa” being one of them.
@Jim Harbor & @Miyamoris: I also thought the desert might not be on the material plain. Great suggestions for where the mutants may have ended up. Another (much more remote) possibility is the Asgardian desert Karma was transported to in the ‘80s Asgardian Wars story.
@Josie: I see this event as akin to Age of Apocalypse. We had the “alpha” issue, now we’re reading the mini-series fleshing out the new status quo and the adventures of the better-known characters. Duggan’s comics are probably the spine. I’m sure Fall of X will wrap up in an “omega” issue, a miniseries a la Inferno, or Duggan’s books.
As long as we’re listing miniseries, there’s also Alpha Flight, which I’m personally excited for. I’m sure it’s not going to be consequential in any way — or sell very well — but maybe it will follow up a tiny bit on the latest iteration of X-Factor?
Maybe the “no-when” bit means that they’re not physically experiencing time, and thus have no bodily needs. I don’t actually think that makes any sense, but I can see a writer asserting it nonetheless.
There’s a bit of background I’m finding fascinating. Krakoa going into “semi-hibernation”. I feel like that’s a conscious choice on its part. There’s no one around who could stop Krakoa from eating the people in the pit, or Xavier. But Krakoa seems to have developed a sense of ethics, and is not willing to do so.
The thing that popped into my head with this issue and X-Men #25 was that Mother Righteous had turned all the Krakoan gates into a version of the Siege Perilous.
Preview pages for Immortal X-Men 15 are out:
https://community.cbr.com/showthread.php?168071-Kieron-Gillen-talks-to-CBR-about-his-plans-for-Immortal-X-Men-Preview-Pages!
They show Mother Righteous in the desert with Hope, Destiny and Exodus. So they probably ARE inside Mother Righteous’s lantern. Which explains why Destiny couldn’t see the future, etc.
Completely random thought, sparked by reading that Gillen interview. Everyone hates Mister Sinister, right? Given how badly his plans have gone lately, I bet even Sinister hates himself. … What if him being locked out of the Dominion is future!Sinister trolling a past!Sinister whom he despises? That would be perverse, but not, I think, out of character 🙂
This sounds like the plot for LOST where a majority of the background characters, extras, and leads survive DESPITE starting off the story acting like morons.
And given that it is a 250k army… I am perturbed that the Krakoan complacency is essentially “no one will ever send killer robots etc after all of the hated freaks that are gathered in one spot”
Shouldn’t all these mutants be military conscripts for Mutant Zion? Few of them should be helplessly childishly stupid when dumped into the desert…
Krakoa was a decadent culture where all the citizens’ needs were provided for them by the island. If their homeland was attacked, they relied on the Quiet Council, X-Men, X-Force, and the Great Captains to protect them. The majority of the population has no survival skills.
[…] X-MEN #14. (Annotations here.) Okay, after a slightly shaky start Fall of X seems to be hitting its stride. We’re no […]
Apocalypse is pleased that these weak sauce mutants got killed and wants more of them dead.