Uncanny Avengers #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY AVENGERS vol 4 #1
“Truth & Justice”
Writer (main story): Gerry Duggan
Writer (G.O.D.S. page): Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Javier Garrón
Colour artist: Morry Hollowell
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Tom Brevoort
UNCANNY AVENGERS. I don’t normally do Avengers books – and this is edited by the Avengers office – but it’s a five-issue Fall of X tie-in complete with the X-books design and written by Gerry Duggan. Despite the title, it’s really a second X-Men book with Captain America guest starring.
This is the fourth run of Uncanny Avengers. The other three involved mash-up Avengers and X-Men team (the “Avengers Unity Squad”) designed to promote human-mutant relations. Duggan wrote volume 3 for 23 issues, and Captain America, Deadpool and Rogue were all featured prominently in that run.
COVER / PAGE 1. Pin-up of the team.
PAGES 2-3. Tribute to John Romita.
PAGES 4-6. Flashback: Dr Stasis and M.O.D.O.K. revive a mystery man.
This scene seems to be a parody of Captain America emerging from stasis and being told about how much things have changed, except this guy is being informed that it’s a dystopian future that needs to be reversed. The obvious implication is that the man being revived here is the new Captain Krakoa who debuted in Free Comic Book Day 2023: Avengers / X-Men. and who appears later in this issue.
“Orchis, … filling the void in law and order since S.H.I.E.L.D.’s demise.” This is how Orchis have been presenting themselves more generally outside the X-books (particularly in Invincible Iron Man). Presumably their role in helping defeat Judgment Day helped them to present themselves as some sort of quasi-superhero force. It’s not as if self-appointed world-savers don’t have a track record of being tolerated by Marvel Universe governments, after all.
PAGE 7. Recap and credits.
PAGES 8-11. Ben Urich recaps the plot for the benefit of Avengers readers.
Ben Urich features prominently in Duggan’s X-Men run as the sympathetic journalist to whom Cyclops ultimately gives the story about mutant resurrection.
“Mutant Massacre.” Captain Krakoa attacked Washington as a false flag attack in Free Comic Book Day 2023: Avengers / X-Men (which a footnote bizarrely chooses to call FCBD: Uncanny Avengers – the Marvel Unlimited search engine is enough of a chore when you have the right name, guys, so do try to get this stuff correct). The use of “Mutant Massacre” is an ironic nod to Orchis apparent wiping out of most mutants and a callback to the Morlock massacre of the 1980s.
I don’t know what the story about “E.S.U. Professor Gill” is referencing.
“The mutants banded together and formed a nation. The announcement was heard around the world.” Professor X telepathically announced the foundation of Krakoa in House of X.
Krakoan drugs. The drugs were tainted by Orchis infiltration, as revealed in X-Men in the run-up to X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.
Captain Krakoa was originally Cyclops, using a cover identity as of X-Men #6 because he had died publicly in combat, and Krakoan resurrection was still supposed to be a secret.
“Most of the mutants walked through their magic plant gates and haven’t been seen since.” Again, X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023. The round-up of other mutants has been covered in X-Men.
“There’s a civil war raging up there…” This is the current storyline in X-Men Red.
PAGES 12-17. Psylocke and Penance attack an Orchis Filtration Center.
All of a sudden there are an awful lot of mutants who weren’t on Krakoa, to make this plot work. Seriously, there are enough random mutants for a facility of this size in Kansas City?
Orchis’s mutant inhibitor injections have previously been seen in X-Men and Immortal X-Men. It seems to be genuine, but would you trust the guys who poisoned the Krakoan drugs?
Psylocke. For the benefit of any Avengers fans who may be joining us, this is not Betsy Braddock, who was swapped back to her original body a few years ago. This is Kwannon, the true owner of the body that Betsy spent the 1990s and 2000s in – hence the caption about her being a Hand assassin. Despite what the narration says, she was more of an all-round low-level telepath than specifically a psychic knife user; that’s more of a trick that she picked up from Betsy.
“The new Sentinels packing Iron Man’s technology.” The Stark Sentinels, seen extensively in X-Men and Invincible Iron Man. Orchis member Feilong got access to that technology by being the latest villain to take over Stark’s business.
Penance. Monet’s Krakoan status quo is that she can turn into this form but normally chooses to operate in her standard form – which is perfectly good for most purposes and has general Wonder Woman-style superpowers. The fact that she’s actively choosing to use the Penance form as a starting point might be defensive but it seems equally likely to be a reflection of her mood.
“There were children on that island.” One of Psylocke’s main motivations is the loss of her child, as covered in Fallen Angels and Hellions.
PAGES 18-22. Captain America recruits Psylocke and Penance into the Avengers.
Captain America regards Orchis as fascists, but still sees his solution here as involving a public display of unity by putting some of the remaining mutants on a version of the Avengers. The rest of this group does comprise actual former Avengers – Deadpool, Quicksilver and Rogue – though including Deadpool in a team with an urgent public relations goal seems… questionable? Mind you, Deadpool’s had periods of mass popularity in the past within the Marvel Universe. At any rate, Psylocke and Monet decide to tag along, though it’s fairly clear that they regard Captain America as a pathetic centrist.
The team’s secret base as described by Deadpool sounds like the X-Men Mansion, though we saw it in X-Men #25 and it looked deserted.
PAGES 23-24. Captain Krakoa enters Krakoa.
The Thunderbird appeared back in X-Men #1-2 (of the current run) and was named in honour of John Proudstar, only for him to be resurrected a few months later.
The Brotherhood is apparently just Captain Krakoa, Blob and Wildside – presumably the latest incarnation of the group variously known as the Brotherhood, the Brotherhood of Mutants and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. They’ll name themselves later in the issue as the new Mutant Liberation Front (the trailer page confirms that the “new” is not part of the name).
The Blob and Wildside were both Krakoan residents – Blob in particular spent most of the Krakoan era working behind the bar – and heaven only knows how either of them avoided being marched through the gates by Professor X. Both ought to have been near to a gate, and non-resistant to Professor X’s control. Perhaps Orchis deliberately diverted a couple of bozos for use in this role.
Although Blob is a career villain, he’s basically been a genial neutral throughout the Krakoan era – he was happy behind the bar and he doesn’t really want to get back into this. Wildside was a semi-crazed member of the original Mutant Liberation Front from the 1990s and has no real interest in any of this. The narrator tells us that Blob believes he’s working for Cyclops (which implies that Captain Krakoa can fake the voice), while Wildside “didn’t care”. Wildside isn’t normally the serial killer that the narrator presents him as here, but maybe he’s specifically very angry about Orchis right now, for understandable reasons.
Oddly, Captain Krakoa’s entry onto Krakoa seems to go completely unnoticed by Professor X, who has been actively resisting landing attempts by Sebastian Shaw’s men over in Immortal X-Men. But Shaw’s men aren’t Orchis proper; maybe Orchis have better resources for this purpose, or maybe the stolen Captain Krakoa suit provides some protection against psychic attack.
PAGE 25. Captain Krakoa recruits Fenris.
Fenris have been in the Pit since Bishop: War College #5. They’re shown here in their original 1980s costumes, but they weren’t actually wearing those when they were sent into the Pit. That’s probably just a continuity error. But a couple of other things about this scene are more odd. First, Fenris were working with Orchis in Bishop: War College. They have no apparent motivation to suddenly sign up to join with Cyclops. Maybe they get some exposition between pages 24-25 and decide that they need to defend themselves against the anti-mutant forces, but it’s not exactly their normal thing. Second, Mr Sinister is also in the Pit, and Fenris met him just after arriving – where is he?
The art seems to suggest that despite Krakoa being dormant, these guys were still tied up in its vines and being sustained in some way by the island. I think we have to go with that, since otherwise they’d surely have starved to death in the last ten weeks.
Duggan clearly subscribes to the reading of the characters where Andreas is very much the submissive twin.
PAGE 26. The Unity Squad gather in the subway.
Deadpool’s previous redemption arc is from Duggan’s Uncanny Avengers vol 3. If I remember correctly, it all leads to Deadpool throwing in his lot with Hydra during Secret Empire because he trusted Captain America so thoroughly that he believed the Hydra impostor.
PAGES 27-28. The Unity Squad meet the X-Men.
Specifically, that’s Shadowkat, Rasputin, Ms Marvel and Emma Frost (as “Hazel Kendal”), plus Tony Stark. A similar meeting is seen in X-Men #25, which is probably meant to be the same one, although Emma’s clothes are coloured differently.
PAGE 29. Quicksilver transports his teammates.
“He and his sister discovered they weren’t really the children. They were not mutants…” This is part of the plot of Uncanny Avengers vol 2. At the time, it was mainly a corporate synergy exercise, designed to detach Wanda and Pietro from the X-Men franchise (where Marvel didn’t control the movie rights) and shift them to the Avengers.
“Then, before he could reconcile with Magneto, the master of magnetism was killed in action on Arakko.” During A.X.E.: Judgment Day.
PAGES 30-34. The Avengers versus the New MLF.
Straightforward.
“Disguising yourself in the uniform of your enemy is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.” Article 39(2) of Additional Protocol I. It’s actually a bit more complicated than that – there’s an absolute bar on using the uniforms of neutral nations, presumably because it might start another war. But using enemy uniforms is only banned in certain circumstances (broadly, connected with combat). Wearing an enemy uniform to sneak behind enemy lines for scouting purposes is espionage, but it’s not a war crime.
PAGE 35. Data page. This is reprinted from X-Men #23.
PAGE 36. G.O.D.S. trailer page, which has nothing to do with anything that concerns us.
PAGE 37. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEW AVENGERS.
So do we think that Captain Krakoa is Hydra Cap or William Burnside? Destiny claimed that he really was a captain of some sort. And in this issue, we see that he’s been gone since before Krakoa was founded, so it can’t be USAgent, who’s interacted with the X-Men since Krakoa was founded. The idea seems to be that Captain Krakoa is a Captain America gone fascist- and either Hydra Cap or William Burnside fit the bill.
Note that Pietro transported the fugitive mutants to Canada. Unfortunately, as we’ll see in Alpha Flight 1 this week, mutants are fugitives in Canada as well. (Duggan was apparently thinking of the Underground Railroad.)
It’s odd that Captain Krakoa didn’t kill Sinister while he was down in the Pit.
You’d think that the Strucker twins would realize Cyclops would never refer to their father as a great man. Maybe Andrea is suspicious.
The Mutant Liberation Front were referred to as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in X-Men 25.
I think it’s a bit contrived how Orchis manages to get ahold of whatever they need to counter the X-Men. Just this week, the X-Men get help from Captain America, Orchis get their own Captain America. The X-Men get help from Madelyne Pryoe. Orchis gets their own Madelyne Pryor.
The many Secret Empire references in this issue, as well as the visual similarity between Captain Krakoa’s ORCHIS resurrection here and Captain America’s Krakoa resurrection in Judgment Day, leads me to believe that the impostor is the evil Captain America from Spencer’s CA run.
Stevil was killed by Selene in Coates’ CA run but now that Mother Righteous has resurrected Selene for ORCHIS, maybe Selene gave them something that could bring Stevil back.
Is there a reason why the X-Men split into groups after escaping the gala? Bishop was working on his own in Children of the Vault. Penance and Kwannon were on their own this issue and Warren, Gambit and Maggot seemed to be operating on their own as well.
I think it’s funny that both Steves (Captain America and Dr. Strange) are facing their war criminal counterparts at the same time.
My dark horse candidate for Cap Krakoa is Jack Monroe, aka Nomad, but I think Burnside & Stevil are more likely. Still thinking it could be Thunderbolt Ross, somehow…
Javier Garron’s artwork carried the comic, much as it did for Jason Aaron’s Avengers. This was an ok comic, but I forgot about it 5 min after I finished reading it.
@Mike Loughlin- unfortunately, the problem is that Jack Monroe was never a Captain, while Ross was active after the founding of Krakoa.
Captain krakoa could also be the red skull in a clone Steve Rogers body, like in Waids run.
It’s probably hydra cap though.
I think everyone is forgetting Major Mapleleaf.
The Secret Empire callbacks definitely point to Captain Krakoa being a resurrected HYDRA Steve. Seems slightly odd that he’d be taking a subordinate role, his whole thing was taking over evil conspiracies, so maybe it’s Burnside, but given this issue, HYDRA Cap seems to be back.
Burnside would be the most natural fit. Being brought back in order to be fascist is practically his trademark.
More subtly and also more significantly, Burnside has a tendency to be someone else’s proud weapon, while Supreme Hydra sees himself as the main lynchpin of things.
The problem with it being Hydra Cap is that Dr Stasis says he’s been in suspended animation for the whole Krakoan era. Hydra Cap was last seen in Captain America during Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Captain of Nothing” arc, where Krakoa already exists. (Selene is handed over to the Krakoan authorities after being defeated.)
Burnside would work better in continuity terms. So far as I can tell, he was last seen in a SHIELD hospital in the final issue of Ed Brubaker’s Captain America run back in 2012. Whether it really fits his character is another matter – yes, he was the Grand Director, but that was due to brainwashing. Aside from that, the character’s basic angle is “tried to be Captain America in good faith and it drove him mad”.
It was the exposure to a flawed version of the Super-Soldier Serum which caused Burnside to have psychotic symptoms as a side-effect.
Burnside has an extremist view of patriotism which caused him to attack racial minorities during his Englehart-penned appearance. He was working to recruit for the Watchdogs when he first appeared in a Brubaker story.
Burnside could easily be convinced that Krakoa/mutants are a threat to America. If he still suffers the psychotic symptoms from the flawed serum treatment, it’s even easier to see him being persuaded by Orchis to dress as Captain Krakoa to influence more Americans to join their cause.
If it’s between Burnside and Hydra Cap, it’s going to be Hydra Cap because that’s the reveal that has way more pop. That’s the kind of writer Duggan is. There’s no way he’s going to be make the big reveal be someone most X-readers probably don’t even know.
@Paul: That was how I remembered it as well but upon skimming through that run again, I see some wiggle room. Stevil is attacked by Selene in issue 8, part of the “Captain of Nothing” arc. However, Selene herself isn’t defeated and handed over to Krakoa until issue 23, part of the “All Die Young” arc. It’s possible Duggan is going for a take where Krakoa was established between these two issues, especially since issue 8 was published months before HOX/POX.
I also realized we don’t explicitly see Stevil die on panel. Selene drains his life force and he turns into a stuttering bloody zombie but that’s the last we see of him. It’s possible that HYDRA put him into a stasis tank to heal and since some former HYDRA agents are now part of ORCHIS, Dr. Stasis got hold of Stevil.
Duggan is also pushing the ‘ORCHIS is replacing S.H.I.E.L.D. as the law and order organization’ idea. How did S.H.I.E.L.D. fall in the first place? It was shut down after Stevil used it to take over the USA in Secret Empire. ORCHIS is doing something similar in a more subtle way.
I think “Grand Director” William Burnside might also work well as the secret identity of Captain Krakoa. But like ylU, I agree that if you’re going for a big reveal, Captain Hydra works better as the more notorious character.
I reckon it’s Dark Cyclops, a clone from the future. He’s a whole new character, but we think he might just make a big splash.
If people have never read the original 1950s Commie Smasher Cap comics, they are quite the historical artifacts.
We used to lobby our Marvel Diamond rep for them to be collected every time they did a survey asking what retailers wanted to see reprinted.
For some of this to work, a bunch of characters have to be chumps. Like the Blob, who, while not bright, isn’t exactly stupid. Him joining the team thinking he’s working for Cyclops is… sigh.
And the Fenris twins are definitely chumps if they bought “Cyclops’s” recruitment pitch as it was framed on panel.
Then again, I also felt like Steve was a bit off-character in this issue so…
And yeah, there really were a ton of mutants who didn’t get to go through the gates, even though the logistics of marching hundreds of thousands of Krakoans through alone should have taken a while. But we have all these leftover named characters in the main titles, and then enough generics for some to be rounded up and dumped on Mars, others to take the anti-mutant-gene treatment, others to be thrown into concentration camps and experimented on, others to just be randomly murdered by angry crowds or serial killers…
I guess 99% of mutants tossed through the gates still leaves a fair amount?
@The Other Michael- How dumb the Blob is varies Depending on the Writer. In fairness, Rogue never told Blob that Destiny warned her to beware of “the false captain, his rank truly earned, spreading lies”. Why didn’t she tell Blob that? He might have argued that Destiny meant Captain America but at least it might make Blob doubt Captain Krakoa. Has Rogue shared Destiny’s clue about “his rank truly earned” with anyone?
The Fenris thing was just odd- I got the feeling that Andreas,at least, was suspicious. Or maybe she was just attracted to Captain Krakoa.
Btw , Strange is a Stephen , not a Steven.
No-Prize: the Fenris twins are wearing costumes made of Unstable Molecules
Jdsm24, so would his nickname be Stephe Strange? XD
But that sounds too similar to “Stephanie” (AFAIK, in 2023 A.D. English-language global names ending in “E” are mote often than not usually female-gendered) and Dr Strange is , er, never been one to lean that way , if you know what I mean
Captain America really took Psylocke’s killing spree in stride, didn’t he? The Cap I grew up reading, Mark Gruenwald’s, wouldn’t have countenanced that. Times change, I guess. But regardless, isn’t it absolutely terrible optics for the Unity Squad, which was supposedly formed to send some kind of message to the public?
During Secret Empire, people were shocked when the Black Widow tried to assassinate Hydra Cap IIRC. It looks like Duggan is using this book and X-Men to indulge in gorn. It’s also counterproductive. If Orchis’s PR is so good, they can easily spin this into the murder of guards who were just trying to help mutants get to their chosen destination.
I haven’t read any of the relevant material, and the last time I saw the Strucker twins they were out on a luxury yacht wearing the skimpiest bikinis Marc Silvestri could draw without losing the comics code stamp.
So maybe this is way off base, or maybe it’s totally obvious, but I would think the presence of Struckers would point to a Hydra connection for the mystery character.
@ Nu-D Captain Krakoa is specifically springing the Struckers and talking up their “great family” and how great their father was, so yeah, further pointers that it’s HYDRA Cap.
So I was inspired to go back and do a little refresher on Fenris. Probably because I’ve blocked the 1990’s from my memory, I had forgotten they were players in the aborted Upstarts storyline.
But mostly it came back to me how aimless they were when Claremont created them. It always seemed like one of those ideas he planted just in case he ever came up with a real story for them someday. They dawdled about in the margins for a few years, and then he was driven off the books and never got around to putting them to use.
Nu-D said: But mostly it came back to me how aimless they were when Claremont created them. It always seemed like one of those ideas he planted just in case he ever came up with a real story for them someday. They dawdled about in the margins for a few years, and then he was driven off the books and never got around to putting them to use.
In fairness, Claremont’s setup for them became redundant as soon as HYDRA turned up again somewhere, and all the air went out of it once Baron Strucker was revived in 1990.
Heck, it wasn’t even clear that Claremont had the “Strucker twins who have their own evil organization” thing in mind when he introduced them. They first showed up as a pair of racists targeting the depowered Storm in Africa, and it would’ve been easy to read them as South African.
Claremont had used a generically wicked Afrikaner type in Storm’s backstory, the famous story where she and T’Challa meet as children that became the basis for their later romance.
It really seems like Claremont wanted villains for Uncanny #200 who would a) have a reason to hate Magneto and b) be plausibly able to hold off the X-Men. Did they turn up again in Claremont’s run after that, or were they just drafted in as a plot device?
In fact, the Afrikaner baddie from the Storm/Black Panther story in Marvel Team-Up #100 was named…Andreas de Ruyter.
Again, I wonder if Claremont started with one idea for his Storm plotline in Africa and then needed something for issue #200.
The original plan for Uncanny #200 was derailed when Claremont couldn’t use Alan Moore’s Captain Britain characters, so Fenris may have been refitted as part of a hasty rewrite.
@Omar- they turned up again destroying Forge and Banshee’s plane in issue 260 and then formed an alliance with Matsuo in issue 268.
I don’t think there’s any hint CC intended them to be heading up a criminal organization until they allied with the Hand.
But he just did so little with them after he introduced them that they feel like a dangling plot line more than anything. I remember being intrigued in #260, and looking forward to a slow burn toward a crossover or something. But I think he really didn’t have a plan for them at all.