X-Men #27 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #27
“Road Trip”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. A singularly unpleasant image of Cyclops as an Orchis prisoner with his eyes sewn shut, as seen in issue #25. This has very little to do with the content of the issue – Cyclops appears in it for one page, in which he’s asleep. The actual story mostly involves the X-Men going to ask the Fantastic Four for help. The solicitation for this issue, though, seems to suggest that this was meant to be a Cyclops story. (“When Cyclops joined this iteration of the X-Men, his pitch was simple – ‘I am the X-Men.’ If so, the enemies of the X-Men seem to have this fight all sewn up.”) That’s the second issue in a row where the cover and solicitation have born very little resemblance to the content.
PAGES 2-6. Shadowkat breaks into the Orchis facility at Randall’s Island.
Last issue, Emma Frost had asked Shadowkat to focus on finding Cyclops (something which Kate seemed to have been paying lip service to up to that point, in favour of her own priorities). They were going to leave together to look for him until Emma got derailed by her wedding subplot. Shadowkat headed off anyway, and apparently she has indeed turned her attention to it this time.
Henry Gyrich would be known to the public as a US government official – I’m not sure whether his involvement with the orbiting version of Alpha Flight is public knowledge – but he was also an Orchis member. He was killed by Abigail Brand in SWORD #11.
“Synch has tasked me with taking a census of mutants.” We saw her doing this in issue #25.
The Juggernaut was seemingly killed in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 along with most of the rest of the newly elected X-Men team, but apparently his “unstoppable” magical gimmick heals him from catastrophic injury. (And even restores his costume, which is somewhat magical as well.) Juggernaut’s power levels have fluctuated in recent years, but Orchis evidently assume that he’s still literally unstoppable, so that the only way to keep him contained is to make sure he chooses not to leave. Here, they’ve apparently told him that his adamantium neck chain is tied to the neck of someone in the next room, so that he could leave, but he’d kill them in the process.
The chain is apparently connected to that coil we see disappearing into the wall. Cyclops did indeed have something similar in issue #25. According to Dr Stasis, it’s “an adamantium neck brace connected to an adamantium filament” which could be used to kill him at any point. It’s not entirely obvious how Juggernaut’s trap prevents him from simply turning round and smashing through the wall towards the person on the other end of the coil, but maybe he’s been told that it would set off a boobytrap or something.
“Resist.” The Red Diamond mind-control resistance mantra used by X-Men in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 to resist Professor X’s attempt to shove them through the Krakoan gates.
PAGE 7. Recap and credits. The word “RESIST” on the left is laid out in diamond style, as in Hellfire Gala.
PAGE 8. The X-Men discuss plans.
“This heavily damaged Cerebro unit that Orchis had in its ‘evidence locker.'” I don’t think we’ve seen any particular explanation of where Orchis got this from. It’s not the one that Professor X was wearing at the Hellfire Gala – he took that back to Krakoa with him at the end of the issue. Shadowkat rather handwavingly suggests it might have come from Legacy House, the black market superhuman paraphernalia merchants from Wolverine, though that would still beg the question of how something so important wound up in anyone’s hands without its absence being noticed. It might have been picked up by Captain Krakoa when he raided the Pit in Uncanny Avengers #1.
The Fantastic Four. In the 2020 miniseries X-Men / Fantastic Four #1, Reed Richards created a device to mask his son Franklin Richards’ mutant gene so that he wouldn’t be able to use the Krakoan gates. (Franklin has since been retconned into not being a mutant after all, but don’t worry about that for now.) At the end of the series, Professor X and Magneto confront Reed and explain that the device not only cloaks the mutant gene, but can shut down mutant abilities altogether. Professor X then erases Reed’s memory of how to make the device, and claims that he has ensured that Reed will never be able to work out the same idea again. (This story largely ignores that last bit, treating it as a straightforward memory erasure.)
The X-Men are hoping to help Reed get his memories back so that he can re-make the device and use it to hide them from Orchis, making it easier for them to operate. Honestly, given how important to the plot this is, it really would have justified a data page.
Shadowkat doesn’t go on the mission, giving a vague excuse about not wanting to revisit history. Her “history with the subjects”, mentioned by Talon, refers to her bonding with Franklin Richards back in the original Fantastic Four vs the X-Men mini from 1987, where the FF save her life after the Morlock Massacre.
However… Marauders vol 1 #27, the final issue of Gerry Duggan’s run, ends with Kate Pryde visiting Reed Richards and asking him to help her use the Krakoan gates. He tells her that he wants the erased knowledge back, and she offers him an unspecified deal. That storyline seemed to have been completely dropped, but it may have something to do with Kate’s reluctance to visit the FF here.
PAGE 9. Data page on Rasputin IV. This is basically a straight recap, with some further explanation of why she isn’t an omega psychic. For some reason this data page doesn’t have the “distressed” effect of most Fall of X data pages.
Anything that Rasputin IV knows about Ms Marvel would have been told to her by Mr Sinister – normal society had completely collapsed before she was created in the “Sins of Sinister” timeline. So you’d think she’d be a bit sceptical about it. That said, Sinister deliberately set out to make Rasputin IV a sincere (and manipulable) hero, and it makes sense that he’d be giving her role models from the days of yore. Ms Marvel would make some sense if Sinister viewed her as both heroic and naive – exactly what he was going for.
PAGES 10-13. The X-Men arrive in Arizona and Rasputin IV starts a fight with the FF.
“After the disaster in New York…” In Fantastic Four #4, Reed Richards averts an alien invasion by sending the entire Baxter Building and everyone inside a year forward in time. Everyone inside should simply find they’ve missed a year, but the many separated families are not happy with the FF at all, which is why they’ve left New York and are now hanging out on the Grimm family farm. Franklin and Valeria are also in the Baxter Building, which is why we don’t see them here.
PAGES 14-19. The X-Men talk to Mr Fantastic.
Reed correctly identifies Rasputin IV as a genetic chimera and correctly guesses at Mr Sinister as the original creator (though his second guess of the Beast is reasonable enough).
A couple of points are worth mentioning about this scene. Firstly, despite having been thoroughly drilled on Ms Marvel, Rasputin IV seems to know little or nothing about the Fantastic Four, some of the most high profile heroes in the world. Perhaps Mr Sinister was more interest in X-Men-adjacent characters, or just didn’t much like the thought of a scientific genius as a role model. At any rate, it’s another reason for Rasputin IV to doubt the accuracy of what she knows about history.
Secondly, Reed’s device, which is evidently very good, correctly identifies four of the DNA strands that contribute to Rasputin IV, but it doesn’t pick up Kate. So if the X-Men are looking for something that can make mutant DNA undetectable, maybe she’d be a good place to look?
PAGE 20. Rasputin, Reed and Sue enter Reed’s mind.
The first panel is a flashback to X-Men / Fantastic Four #4.
Otherwise, Rasputin simply confirms that the knowledge has been entirely erased. There’s no sign of any evidence of something to prevent Reed from coming up with the idea again, so perhaps Xavier was bluffing about that.
PAGES 21-22. Ms Marvel jogs Reed’s memory.
Basically, Ms Marvel’s mutant powers are suppressed by her overriding Inhuman side, and Reed’s device was taking advantage of a similar principle. So now he can build something to sort the problem.
PAGE 23. Dr Stasis and Firestar.
Stasis has now taken to having dinner with Firestar after Mother Righteous told him to stop making disposable clones of his family, in X-Men: Before the Fall – Sinister Four. He’s mentioned that he doesn’t like eating alone. Presumably he’s a bit less trigger happy with Firestar.
Juggernaut has tried to escape off panel and been flattened by Nimrod; Stasis is planning to remove his magic gem and turn himself into a new Juggernaut. So Firestar is going to have to get a move on if she wants to save Juggernaut.
PAGE 24. Trailers. The Krakoan says JUGGERNAUT.
Considering how the Fantastic Four died in the Sinister timeline (as seen in SoS #1), that might not be a story he would’ve wanted to tell Rasputin…
I feel like we’re firmly into “everything can stop the Juggernaut” territory at this point. I wonder if Kate ever expected him to actually succeed in escaping.
This was surprisingly good writing of the FF. Is it that Duggan is a better writer than he usually seems to be, or is it Editorial intervening? I wish I knew.
Maybe next year we will have some hints. Tom Brevoort was Editor of the 2020 X-Men vs FF series, and I believe that he will be at the helm of the X-Books next year as well.
Duggan doesn’t seem to have read Rasputin’s Sins of Sinister appearances at all. For starters, the data page describes her as less powerful than Kid Omega but in Sins of Sinister, she was described as an Omega level telepath. Next, he has her use her telekinesis to fly the team to the Fantastic Four. But she doesn’t have telekinesis. She only has Kid Omega’s telepathy. It was a plot point that Sinister deliberately made her unable to fly and that’s why she had to make a deal with Mother Righteous to escape floating in space.
Also, Rasputin is worried that what happened to Kamala in her future might happen in the present-day Marvel Universe. Why? Rasputin came from a world where the X-Men had been remade over in Sinister’s image before the Hellfire Gala. Since that didn’t happen, everything from that point on would be different. Duggan is writing Rasputin like she came from a generic possible future.
I thought that the Juggernaut got his power from his armor now, not the gem.
I’m not liking the idea of Stasis being interested in Juggernaut’s magic gem. The idea was that each Sinister was meant to pursue a different path- Stasis post humanity, Sinister mutants, Stellaris aliens, Mother Righteous magic. Stasis shouldn’t be interested in magic.
I wonder if Stasis suspects Angelica’s duplicity and this is some sort of trap for Angelica. Maybe Moira read Angelica’s letter to her father last issue and remembered that Butter Rum didn’t die of cancer?
“It’ll be hard to get Mr. Fantastic to agree to help.”
Mr. Fantastic: “Sure, I’ll help! It’ll be hard to get the process started…”
Kamala: “blah blah blah Inhuman blah”
Mr. Fantastic: “EUREKA!”
I didn’t hate everything in this issue- nice art, good portrayal of the FF, at least Juggern didn’t conveniently escape- but… the lack or security in Orchis is stupid, and the ease with which the Mr. Fantastic plot was settled was laughable.
Apropos of nothing, I wonder if Rasputin IV from PoX is the Dominion. Would explain Sinister’s recognition and shock?
I’m not sure how she could be considering the last we saw of her, she was being sucked into Xorn’s blackhole mind alongside North, Cardinal, and Omega Sentinel. That’s not the way that Hickman described the creation of a Titan/Dominion.
Sinister didn’t recognize the identity of the Dominion. He didn’t know who beat him to becoming a Dominion, and when asked, the Dominion only told him, “Not you”.
“This was surprisingly good writing of the FF. Is it that Duggan is a better writer than he usually seems to be”
It is most certainly not this.
I haven’t read this issue, but in general a problem I have with Nimrod is you never see exactly what makes them so powerful. How are they countering every superpower so effortlessly? The old sentinels, even the original Nimrod, would often be seen taking damage from Eargirl’s ear beams, before talking about countermeasures and having a crackling aura of force appear, as the machine studied the data and found the right energy frequency to dissipate ear rays. The X-Men could win, but only by doing as much damage as they could before the Sentinel could adapt. This Nimrod is simply immune to everything. And that’s boring. They slap down the Stoppable Juggernaut, who isn’t even a mutant, just because? Why bother cheering on the heroes when they can’t possibly win, not without some macguffin that hasn’t even been plotted yet?
Sentinels can adapt to non-mutant powers too. We have seen that in 1972’s fight against the Avengers (#103-104) and probably several times since.
Granted, the ability to adapt to and counter whatever they met – which was given casually in their second appearance IIRC – has been understandably deemphasized since the 1980s, probably for the very reason that you point out. That second Sentinels appearance by Roy Thomas and Neal Adams was a good story, but following it to the logical consequences has proven difficult indeed.
On the other hand, they have also been upgraded several times since, while also having consistently been defeated in nearly every confrontation they took part in. Worf Effect and all that.
No-Prize: Rasputina developed a surprise secondary mutation due to the X-gene being fluid , and she’s got 5 of them from different bioparents , Essex doesnt know everything, and having both TP AND TK reduces the levels of each , which explains why Charles never bothered to develop his TK for the longest time until he already maxed his TP to its limit
Duggan clearly wants to make us wonder whether Kate is truly a mutant, going back to Marauders #1.
This issue doubles up on the hints that she is not, even going so far as to have Reed fail to detect her participation in Rasputina’s genetic composition for no obvious reason.
I can only expect a tremendously goofy explanation for this Kate subplot cause there’s not much coherent rationalizing with the fact Sinister made clear he used five *mutants* to create Rasputin in SoS.
I’m fine with Nimrod being treated in such a manner due to the fact that Nimrod was supposed to be the ultimate threat. Moira was attempting to find a way to stop the creation of a Nimrod because she figured out that the key to the machines always winning would start with the creation of a Nimrod. If Nimrod was easy to defeat, it would ruin Hickman’s narrative. In Moira’s Life Nine we saw Nimrod had conquered the world.
This issue lampshades a ready-made sort-of-reasonable explanation in the dialogue of Kamala and Reed.
We are told outright that careful application of the T-Mists can mask the mutant X-Factor.
Kamala, IIRC, says that her Inhuman side may have inhibited the manifestation of her own X-Factor (new information to me).
Given those datapoints, it is very conceivable that Kate is “mutant-and-something-else-to-boot” for the purposes of this plot; maybe she is a latent Inhuman that happened to have her X-Factor trigger before the Inhumant mutagenics did. Maybe she is a Neo, who both are and are not mutants. Maybe she has been experimented on or changed by someone – say, the Deviants, the Eternals, or Arkea from Marauders Vol. 2.
It may be significant that somehow the components of Rasputina IV are all named by surname, except for Kate.
“When Cyclops joined this iteration of the X-Men, his pitch was simple – ‘I am the X-Men.’ If so, the enemies of the X-Men seem to have this fight all sewn up.”
Honestly, this is a pretty good pun.
Well, back during Claremont’s return to the X-Men, he -did- hint at some connection between Kate and the Neo. I always figured it was wisely dropped and forgotten like so many of his other danglers.
AFAIK the only extra Cerebro cradle that we know of was the one Solem had in his mancave. Since he doesn’t seem to be there and Krakoa is dormant, possible that was raided?
I think the helmet Xavier was wearing in Inferno was busted too.
This was ok. The stuff with the FF could have been a bit shorter. Rasputin might be a bit overpowered at this point, but we’ll see how they use her in the future.
I guess you could get around the thing with Reed having been kept from rediscovering his method by saying that: A> Rasputin IV isn’t an experienced detail telepath no matter her power level so missed that aspect of what Xavier did, B> Reed is arrogant enough to believe he could simply out-think what Xavier did to keep him from working his way back to his method, and C> Reed thus assumed that this completely new idea he came up with about using Terrigen was the same as his first idea.
It fits enough for a No-Prize (B especially), but I don’t actually think it was the intent.
Otherwise yeah, Rasputin doesn’t seem at all like the character as she was written in Sins of Sinister. I kind of liked how she was written in the Gala. It also didn’t fit totally with her SoS appearance, but it was more fun than the aggressive version this time.
I barely remember that Rasputina IV was even in SoS. The whole storyline was a hazy blur to me. Not to my tastes, I suppose.
She is probably overpowered as well, but then again so is half of the X-Books the protagonists.
Which brings me to the matter of whether Reed had any chance of overcoming Xavier’s blocks. I think that it is both believable and refreshing that he could and did. Reed is no ordinary person; it just happens that he is not a mutant either. In his own way, he is as impressive as Xavier, or more – and he should be.
I don’t want to keep seeing a veritable parade of utterly megalomaniac schemes by various parties that simply succeed consistently. It hurts suspensions of disbelief and makes the characters unrelatable. It is more interesting if Xavier (and Jean, Magneto, Storm, Exodus, Sinister, Apocalypse, etc) can indeed fail and overextend themselves. And if Xavier can underestimate anyone, it will be Reed (and Tony Stark).
@Luis Dantas- the problem with Kitty not showing up on Reed’s gizmo, though, is that Kitty has consistently shown up on mutant detectors since she’s introduced. In her origin story, the X-Men found her using Cerebro and Emma first met the X-Men when she went to recruit Kitty, who she found out about by tapping Cerebra. And the X-Men first met Caliban when he sensed Kitty was a mutant and kidnapped her. Why should Reed’s gizmo work differently then the other mutant detectors Kitty has shown up on?
Did Cerebro ever pick up Kamala as a mutant? Clearly it’s a retcon that she’s a mutant now. Something odd has been going on with Kitty not being able to use the krakoan portals for years now, maybe they really are bringing back that Neo lost plot point, or she’s reverse Kamala. Doesn’t really add anything to the character though
@Michael
Fair question. I think there are some workarounds available, though. At the very least, it will be fun to try and explain.
From Marvel Team-Up #100 we know that Reed had at the time the ability to scrounge some form of mutant detector based on Cerebro, the implication being that he had no previous or better alternative device at hand. As you point out, apparently the Hellfire Club did not have them either back in 1980. Nor does Alpha Flight to this day, despite a line from Cyclops stating that they must (circa 1979). Nor does Tony Stark. But most Sentinels manage to make that detection just fine somehow.
The best way to explain that would be that Sentinels can detect mutants but not many details about their powers or power levels unless they identify them from a match with their database. There is also some evidence that their radius of detection isn’t particularly wide. Tony Stark could probably emulate that ability in a big enough robot or machine, but he may not have much reason to.
By contrast, early stories have Cerebro having a reach of at least a few hundred miles, with the frequent implication that it could flag mutants that were not necessarily aware of their own powers or were about to fully express those powers.
It was never all that clear when exactly Xavier detected the existence of Storm, Colossus and Nightcrawler, but it is reasonable to expect that he knew of them for a while – he seems to be well acquaintanced with the social circunstances of Ororo, for instance. He presumably kept records of more geographically distant mutants detected during Blackbird fly-bys or by some other methods. An ambitious writer could even retroactively establish that Storm was detected with the contribution of data from Starcore One.
Caliban, too, seems to have a fairly limited range of detection. He is not usually depicted as sensing mutants from miles afar, although there were exceptions. Maybe he has to make some sort of active effort to extend his range of perception.
Orchis apparently doesn’t have good mutant detection technology beyond their Sentinels (including Nimrod and Omega Sentinel).
I get why y’all are trying to No Prize this, but I still feel this is all too convoluted and arbitrary even for X-Men’s convoluted standards. I was fine with just explaining the Kate thing with “well her powers interact weirdly with the Krakoan gates” and leaving at that.
“It was never all that clear when exactly Xavier detected the existence of Storm, Colossus and Nightcrawler, but it is reasonable to expect that he knew of them for a while”
Actually, he did know of them for a while. In a flashback in Uncanny X-men #300, he shows Moira files on them claiming he would like to bring them to the school but there might be some visa issues. And the flashback was set right before the X-men fought Magneto for the first time, so make what you will of that.
“I still feel this is all too convoluted and arbitrary even for X-Men’s convoluted standards. I was fine with just explaining the Kate thing with “well her powers interact weirdly with the Krakoan gates” and leaving at that.”
Agreed.
Blame all of Marvel’s middle-aged cishet male writers who came of age/hit puberty in the 1980’s when Chris Claremont first introduced Kitty Pryde , and thus fell in love/became obsessed with her for the rest of their lives, and thus keep on adding ad absurdem to KP’s own otherwise-“Basic” backstory as all fanatics are wont to keep on doing to their favorite pet characters’
[…] #27. (Annotations here.) Hideous cover aside – and I genuinely do loathe it – this is a definite step up from […]
Oh no, not the middle-aged cishet male writers! Lol.
Well, with this, Uncanny Avengers and the bizarre ‘Nightcrawler cosplaying Spiderman’ comic that I still don’t understand the rationale for, it seems the Marvel Universe has reset the X-Men’s relationship to other superheroes back to the usual baseline, much as though the Krakoa era is finished and they are all going to be going back to the mansion soon.
I feel like I’ve seen multiple cases of a writer coming up with a “mutant power suppressor” as a plot device for a one-off story, nothing much more than an explanation for how the baddies are managing to keep the heroes restrained after capture. (And doesn’t Emma currently have one that Tony made?) So these stories where it’s a big deal are always kind of weird.