X-Men Red #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #14
“To War We March”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Yildiray Cinar
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Storm and her allies pose for action, with the giant statues of Apocalypse and Genesis from the Valley of the Fallen in the background. The stone texture is there, but the slight colouring and the positioning makes them look more like figures of the characters themselves.
PAGE 2. Tribute to John Romita.
PAGE 3. Genesis wakes Arakko.
The narrator. The start of page 19 has the narration continuing directly from the extract from The New History of Arakko on the previous page. So apparently all of the narration is from that source, and it’s the voice of Xilo.
“Genesis reaches out with her mind, with her mutant weapon…” Genesis’s powers have never been very clearly defined. But in Hickman’s X-Men #13 (2020), she’s shown using her powers to conjure up plants that ensnare enemy monsters, so presumably the idea is not that Genesis has telepathic powers, but rather that she has plant control abilities. There may be a suggestion here that her powers brought Okkara – the island that later split into Arrako and Krakoa – to life in the first place. Note that Xilo calls her “the mother of Arakko”.
Arakko has been dormant since the attack by Uranos during A.X.E.: Judgment Day.
The Great Ring. Those still present are Genesis (holding the Annihilation Staff and the Purity sword), Lactuca, Ora Serrata, Sobunar and Lycaon. Lactuca is not on Genesis’s side, and we’ll see later on that Sobunar’s support is at best half-hearted.
PAGE 4. Recap and credits. We get the “Fall of X” branding here, though as a series set on Mars, this is semi-detached from the rest of the line.
PAGE 5. Montage: characters react.
Lactuca intervened directly last issue to get Storm’s side to safety, but apparently has no particular interest in the war beyond that, since it has no significance on the cosmic scale. The implication seems to be that if Genesis had simply been able to wipe out Storm and her senior followers in one go, and seize control of the planet without a civil war, something would have happened which would have been of cosmic significance.
Craig Marshall was last seen dating Storm in issue #11. The two kids with him are Loolo and Kobb, the kids that he rescued in issue #6. Up until now, Marshall has been accepted as an honorary Arakki.
The Fisher King detects that something is wrong with the oceans, presumably because something is wrong with their creator Sobunar. This sounds bad – whatever Genesis is up to may be destabilising the very terraforming of Mars.
The Morrowlands is the artistic district of Krakoa, first seen in issue #2. Rho is new, but he’s a version of the “artist prophet” trope. Obviously, that’s Annihilation that he’s painted.
“There were rumours of a shift in power on Earth.” The Orchis attack on the Hellfire Gala, of which more later.
PAGES 6-10. The Brotherhood of Arakko take stock.
They’re in Sunspot’s office in his Red Lagoon bar.
Kobak was indeed challenged by Genesis last issue, and accepted the challenge. He considers that by removing him from the fight against his will, Lodus Logo has both destroyed his honour and let to him committing a crime against Arakki values. The “fitting punishment” that he expects from Ora Serrata (as the Great Ring’s lawyer) is for Ora to use her powers to erase him from existence. However, slavish adherence to Arakki cultural tropes is precisely what this group are meant to be against, and Kobak dials back soon enough – perhaps prompted by realising that Lodus takes this so seriously that he breaks character and stops talking in verse for a change.
Lodus Logos not only steps out of his verse form to address Kobak, but briefly talks in a normal font too. Kobak describes his verse as a “haiku” – with a 6-4-5 syllable structure, it’s not a traditional haiku, but it’s closer to that than anything else.
Sunspot basically recaps the plot of X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 for us. He tells us that he wasn’t at the Gala itself but was “just keeping an eye on it” and “planning a late entrance.” He makes sure to mention something about “very secret” “business on Earth”, just to indicate that this isn’t simply a device to explain why he knows about the Gala plot yet didn’t leave with Emma. Roberto is particularly upset about the death of his closest friend Cannonball, with the two becoming practically a double act under Hickman.
Sunspot is a bit vague about what he knew about events on Arakko. He mentions hearing about “political upheaval on Mars”, and people were indeed mentioning such rumours in the Hellfire Gala one-shot. But he also seems to already know that Genesis showed up and caused truble at a meeting.
Storm is correct both to think that Orchis encouraged Genesis’s return (as seen in issue #12) and that Genesis is not actively collaborating with them.
Xilo stresses that Genesis’ public support is dependent on having Sobunar by her side. That seems significant, doesn’t it?
The war is presumably the mainstream universe’s equivalent of the “Genesis War” that Jon Ironfire and Storm mentioned in Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants.
PAGE 11. Data page: an extract from “The New History of Arakko”, as in previous issues. The chapter title “X weeks into the war” mirrors the “X weeks later” time jumps in other “Fall of X” books… though see the next page.
Isca was last seen heading into self-imposed exile in issue #7.
The Locus Vile were Tarn’s creations and followers, mostly seen in Hellions. Tarn himself died in issue #3. Apparently his leaderless followers are defending his creation and not aligning themselves with either side.
Sobunar is again drawn to our attention: he still controls the sea, not Genesis, and she doesn’t seem willing to risk a confrontation by pushing the point.
“The moon Phobos remained loyal to Earth.” It’s an Orchis outpost.
“…the orbiting Keep loyal to Ororo…” The S.W.O.R.D. station, but following the fall of mutantkind, who’s actually on it?
“The bulk of the Earth mutants Orchis had exiled to Arakko…” Not the ones who went through the gates in Hellfire Gala (who were sent elsewhere), but the stragglers who have been rounded up since. as seen in X-Men #25. Presumably the Orchis plan was to send all the mutants to Mars and hope that they would all get annihilated in the civil war. The mutants have been diverted elsewhere – probably thanks to Destiny – but that makes Storm’s position even worse than it would otherwise have been.
The Valley of the Fallen was first shown in Planet-Size X-Men. It was supposed to be a commemoration to those who died in Amenth and didn’t make it to the new world. It’s dominated by giant statues of Apocalypse and Genesis, who at that point had both decamped to Amenth to rule it following “X of Swords.” Obviously, Genesis has no attachment to the place, and her very presence on Arakko makes a mockery of the whole idea of the statues.
PAGES 12-17. The Battle of the Valley of the Fallen.
“Day 70 of the Genesis War.” Well, that’s specific. Presumably that’s Martian days, but it’s actually about the same (it would be day 72 in Earth time). So apparently “X weeks later” isn’t just coyness for Marvel time – it’s ten weeks.
The Genesis Horde were called the Annihilation Horde back in Amenth, weren’t they?
Orrdon the Omega Rocket makes his only appearance here, and instantly dies. He might be overstating the “omega” bit. He’s a reference both to Nova (“the Human Rocket”) and Cannonball (he claims to be “fully invulnerable while I’m blasting”, in comparison to Sam’s “nigh invulnerable while ah’m blasting” tag line of the 1980s). Apparently his invulnerability doesn’t extend to orifices.
Isca is holding everyone at bay from her mountains, and choosing not to get involved. Isca’s power is “never to lose”, but we’ve seen before that that sometimes just results in her being compelled to join the side that’s going to win anyway – Isca may, therefore, just be expecting Genesis to win, and reluctant to get drawn in to helping her. Isca makes a point of saying that everyone on both sides knows her “rules” – is she trying to define her own game?
Nova, as per usual in this book, defaults to claiming that it’s up to him to hold the line even when he’s got a whole army of allies with him.
Storm, also as per usual for this book, is delayed elsewhere and yet again nearly misses showing up in time for a major event. But this time she does get there in time to block the pass.
PAGE 18. Data page: more of The New History of Arakko.
The fact that Xilo calls the pre-Fall of X period “the Storm Era” implies that we don’t revert to the status quo ante after this storyline. But bear in mind that she already stepped aside from her main seat in favour of Lodus Logos in issue #7; Xilo could simply be referring to that.
“She held the Annihilation Staff in one hand, as her battle standard – her proof of the final victory over the ancient enemy.” We saw last issue that Genesis is firmly under the influence of Annihilation, but since the Arakkii spent millennia fighting the Annihilation army led by Genesis, that’s hardly a selling point. With Annihilation in this more subtle form, Genesis is apparently presenting the staff as a trophy, the equivalent of mounting a defeated opponent’s head on a pike.
“The great powers of humanity – those same powers that had informed her of Arakko’s path.” Orchis. That also explains why she’s able to notice them – she’s referring to Orchis’ activities on Phobos and, perhaps, their regular dumping of mutants at Port Prometheus.
PAGES 19-21. After the battle, everyone discusses what happened to Apocalypse.
Jon Ironfire, who doesn’t know Apocalypse, infers that he’s a traitor to Arakko just like his wife. The others aren’t so sure, recognising that Apocalypse is missing altogether. Mind you, as Ironfire points out, the Horsemen haven’t shown up either, and we know from X-Men: Before the Fall – Heralds of Apocalypse that they’re on Genesis’s side. For whatever reason, she hasn’t yet drawn on her resources from Amenth.
“I’ve danced with Death before.” Literally. Storm and the Horseman Death were set up as having some degree of romantic tension (certainly on his part) during “X of Swords.”
Khora seems to be looking at a picture of Wiz Kid on the screen.
Once again, we’re reminded about Sobunar; apparently Genesis has been avoiding naval attacks.
Xilo has merged with Fisher King, in the same way that he merged with Cable in the “Sins of Sinister” timeline. Fisher King, presumably, is better placed to help Xilo restore his knowledge of history, partly lost when he was injured during “Judgment Day.”
PAGE 22. Trailers. The Krakoan reads THE WEBS WE WEAVE.
I get that Sunspot isn’t thinking straight because of the combination of Sam’s death and the strain of resisting Xavier but the whole conversation between him and Storm consists of Roberto coming up with flimsy reasons why their friends are dead and Storm not challenging them.
First, he thinks Scott is dead because the Treehouse is on fire. This one is particularly annoying because as we see in this week’s Uncanny Avengers, Orchis’s plan depended on Blob and Wildside thinking Captian Krakoa was Scott. But Cable and Bishop seemed to think Scott was dead in Children of the Vault and Alex seemed to think Scott was dead in this week’s Dark X-Men until Maddie corrected him. Why did everyone assume Scott was dead and not just captured by Orchis?
Next we have Roberto assuming Captain America was dead for reasons that are beyond human comprehension.
Then we have Roberto assuming Cable was dead because his tech stopped working. Why this should mean Cable was dead as opposed to captured is beyond me.
Then he says that he knows the mutants that went through the gates were teleported away but assumes they’re dead because “we don’t know where the mutants who went through the gates are”. Are villains usually considerate enough to email Roberto the locations of their captives?
Roberto isn’t the kind of person who catastrophizes everything but he assumes the worst this issue for no real reason.
“I think Gambit is dying. He got a paper cut.”
“It’s just a paper cut.”
“No, don’t you see? The paper is probably coated with the Legacy Virus.”
@Michael: given the chaos and horror of the Gala, it stands to reason that Sunspot would get some things wrong/ have received bad intel.
@Paul: “Xilo has merged with Fisher King, in the same way that he merged with Cable in the “Sins of Sinister” timeline.”
Thank you for pointing that out, because the last page confused me. I can’t remember all the Arakki’s powers, and I don’t know why we can’t have powers listed with names on the credits page.
Other than that, I liked the issue, even if I’m surprised how quickly the story seems to be moving.
I did like that the Red Triangle protocol actually took something out of Roberto. It doesn’t match how people at the gala reacted, but it better sells the strength of what Xavier did. I’ll overlook a little inconsistency when I like the result.
I think Roberto was just in a pessimistic mood because Sam, and a bunch of other people he cares about to some degree or another, were brutally murdered. And Orchis taking no prisoners isn’t that bad an assumption, given their whole MO.
I have yet to catch up with Red but I saw some images floating on twitter and let me just say I’m glad they finally got an artist that actually studied how Bob McLeod conceived Sunspot to draw him. The whitewashing has been annoying for ages.
I assumed Khora was talking to Whiz-Kid via a holographic phone or something. Which would also answer the question of ‘who’s on the Keep?’. After all, Cable made Whiz-Kid station commander. Or even head of SWORD after Brand’s schemes were smashed, I’m not 100% sure now.
As for this issue – it goes fast, but if Ewing wants to go through the whole war in the five months or so that Fall of X will last, a quick pace is necessary.
I appreciated the moments of levity – Kobak counting syllables, the bit with Orrdon the Omega Rocket. Again, they helped to keep Fall of X from veering into grimdark territory.
@Michael: as for Roberto assuming Captain America is dead – this is happening right after the Gala and we don’t know when Roberto left Earth. He presumably learned about the Orchis’s assassination attempt on Rogers (from this years FCBD oneshot)… but somehow not about the attempt failing because Rogue helped him seconds later.
Since it’s the ‘plans within plans’ Roberto, a no-prize explanation would be that Sunspot has spies in Orchis (which is not out of the question, since a number of AIM personnel is in Orchis and Roberto was the owner of AIM for a number of years; or months, not sure how that works with the sliding timeline).
A spy could have leaked Orchis’s plans to him – too late for Roberto to intervene. But he would know that Orchis planned to assassinate Captain America and in the moment he could assume they’ve succeeded, since they’ve accomplished almost all their other goals.
Roberto seems to be spiraling out as a result of Sam’s death primarily. Seeing his best friend killed might even be causing some PTSD flashbacks to his girlfriend’s death way back in his origin story. I’m not saying Ewing intends it that way, but he does keep an eye on character’s backstories.
Hm, thinking it through, another thing about Roberto’s state of mind right then. How bad would it be for the guy who’s been the master planner to watch all of this go down without him able to stop it? Ewing’s Roberto is the guy who would usually be there when Orchis shows up to pull the Reverse card and reveal he had MODOK replaced by MODOK (Mellow Organism Designed Only For Kissing) who’s been making the Krakoan medicines more awesome still. Instead, yeah, from Krzysiek’s there are hints in what he said that he might have been working on Orchis but was two steps behind.
So in addition to grief and psychic concussion, he’s quite likely handling a lot of guilt that he “failed” to get out ahead of this. It matches his current character at least, and I hope we can get some direct confirmation of that later.
Al Ewing should be giving each and every one of you a co-writing credit at this rate, bravo
Everyone is using the term “best friend” to refer to how Roberto feels about Sam. This isn’t wrong, but I’d argue it’s seriously incomplete. Roberto is totally in love with Sam. The subtext of the whole Hickman arc on New Mutants was Roberto grudgingly coming to accept that Sam doesn’t reciprocate that love fully — or at least, not enough to get in the way of his wife and kid(s?).
It’s remained subtext because a) Disney cowardice and b) Why fight the system to establish a love that no-one is expecting to ever become a full romantic relationship? But I feel that subtext has been pretty clear for years now.
What happened with Roberto’s relationship with Deathbird? I do feel a bit like the Shi’ar Superguardians may have something to say about Sam’s murder.
Arakko? Is that still a thing?
Then he says that he knows the mutants that went through the gates were teleported away but assumes they’re dead because “we don’t know where the mutants who went through the gates are”. Are villains usually considerate enough to email Roberto the locations of their captives?
As usual, I’m following the story entirely through these annotations, so I could have this wrong, but I thought Orchis did explain where the mutants that went through the gates were going to go, and it was here? Since they’re not here, something else happened to them, and if you’ve already seen Orchis kill a bunch of people “We say we’re sending them into exile, but actually we’re just killing them” probably seems more likely than “We say we’re sending them into exile but we’re actually capturing them/sending them into exile somewhere differnet”. It’s catastrophising, sure, but not without cause.
@Alexx Kay: This is the same Disney that put out Strange World and Lightyear and has a board member on record as pushing more gay representation in their movies. Roberto in that same arc made a successful play for Deathbird. Sometimes “subtext” is just in the reader’s head, like Frederick Wertham.
@neutrino
Modern Disney/Marvel can absolutely still be reluctant about establishing existing characters as queer. There’s been enough behind-the-scenes info confirming that. People have talked about how Tini Howard had to jump through a lot of hoops in a time-consuming process before finally getting the okay to make Betty and Rachel queer. When writing Guardians of the Galaxy, Ewing could only (heavily) imply that Gamorra, Star-Lord, and Nova were a polycule and couldn’t make it explicit.
In general, they seem to be more controlling about their characters (and not just in regards to sexuality but in general) when they’re ones who are or have been in films.
@ylU: That’s not Disney, that’s editorial trying to prevent people from writing their headcanon into characters that doesn’t match with their creator’s intent or established characterization. In the case of Betsy and Rachel, they should have tried harder. The only movies Berto and Sam were in was the mostly forgotten New Mutants, which ironically retconned Dani and Rahne as lovers.
@neutrino: Sunspot’s going to be in X-Men 97
@neutrino
I said “Disney/Marvel” specifically because it’s not really the point at what point up the chain it’s happening, whether it’s editor in chief or publisher or someone above that or what. But the point is it — blocking characters from being made queer, that is — does still happen. So yes, writers do have to still resort to subtext at times.
Is Sunspot not canonically bisexual? I assumed that was why he was always hanging out with Nova and Kobak in hot tub.
I didn’t think Sunspot being in love with Cannonball was subtext — just seemed like text to me, what with those early New Mutants issues having him call Sam handsome and charming & Sam and Izzy talking about how much they love him. Just like in real life, loving your friend doesn’t mean that you HAVE to make it weird, or that you can’t also have other relationships — wanting to fuck a bird doesn’t make you love your married friend any less.
[…] RED #14. (Annotations here.) We skip forward a few months to join the Arakki civil war in mid flow. And for the most part this […]