Dark X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DARK X-MEN vol 2 #3
“Darker with the Day”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artist: Jonas Scharf
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The Dark X-Men fight the Bamf Dragon.
PAGE 2. Flashback: Emplate arrives on Krakoa.
This is mostly recap of things we’ve already been told, although the actual panels are new.
- Panel 1 shows Emplate shortly after arriving on Krakoa, alongside Selene and Gorgon; Exodus is present, though it’s maybe an overstatement to say that he’s welcoming Emplate rather than tolerating him. Emplate’s actual arrival on Krakoa can be seen in the background in House of X #5.
- Panel 2 shows Apocalypse and Cypher introducing Emplate and Selene to their role of monitoring Krakoa to make sure that its feeding on mutant energy remains in safe limits. This hasn’t actually been seen before, but it was mentioned in X-Men #3 (2019).
- Panel 3 shows Emplate watching his three sisters from a distance; they’re not actively rejecting him, though it’s a pretty safe bet that they would. But the main emphasis of this panel is simply that he’s irrelevant to them.
- Panel 4 shows Azazel showing up to call in whatever debt it is that Emplate owes him – this arrangement has been clear in the previous two issues, but it’s not clear yet what the debt actually is.
PAGES 3-4. The Dark X-Men defend the Morlocks from the Dark Angel.
Dark Angel was captured by Orchis in issue #1 and apparently given this mask by the alternate Goblin Queen last issue.
Considering that he’s a villain, Emplate does put up a proper right against Angel. Mind you, he is under attack himself, and it’s also a rare opportunity for him to feed legitimately on a mutant. Azazel simply refuses to get involved, and while you could make a case that he’s a schemer villain who couldn’t do much against Angel in a direct fight, he seems to be enjoying leaving it all to Emplate.
The Morlocks seen in this scene are Callisto (with the knives), Beautiful Dreamer (in the hat) and Shatter (with the pattern on the side of his face), both of whom were in the previous issue, plus Sack (emerging from the hatch). Sack was a member of Marrow’s Gene Nation terrorist group in the mid-90s. This seems to be his first appearance since being killed by a Nimrod during the “Second Coming” crossover in 2010 (specifically, New Mutants #14). Obviously he was resurrected on Krakoa.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGE 6. Madelyne’s group arrive at Flourish’s home.
Flourish (Marisol Guerra) is the girl who was seen surrounded by mushrooms last issue, though she wasn’t named. She’s a character from the short-lived Storm ongoing in 2014-15. Zero did indeed overrun her town with cyborg zombies (along with many other locations), in Storm #11.
PAGE 7. Havok, Zero and Albert dream (kind of).
Havok‘s dreams show him in his Goblin Prince costume, fighting Sentinels who look a lot like his big brother Cyclops. It’s basically a collection of neuroses.
Zero‘s dreams seem to show him happy and at peace in a world of his own creations.
Albert, being an android, doesn’t dream at all but simply lapses into stasis without Zero to control him.
PAGE 8. Madelyne Pryor dreams.
As the narrator says, while these are Madelyne’s major nightmares, it’s familiar territory for her – unlike Havok, she seems to have come to terms with them sufficiently to brush them off.
Madelyne is wearing the pilot costume that she often wore in her early appearances, and which tends to get used these days to symbolise pre-corruption, civilian Maddie. Panel 2 shows her creator Mr Sinister with her abducted child Nate. Panel 3 shows a dead Jean Grey / Phoenix. Finally, we have what appears to be Death, holding a scythe and Havok’s headdress. The point may be that Madelyne’s efforts last issue to keep Havok alive are merely delaying the inevitable.
PAGE 9. Feint enters the citadel alone.
Since Feint carries actual equipment with her, she had the foresight to bring a respirator, and so she gets to be the last X-Man standing, despite her rookie status. As soon as she leaves, the Bamf Dragon teleports in – the transformed Nightcrawler who accompanies the alt-Goblin Queen who’s working with Orchis.
PAGE 10. Data page. A basically straight account of Flourish’s pre-Krakoa back story, coupled with an explanation of why she didn’t find a home on Krakoa despite what might seem incredibly useful powers for the environment. There seems to be a parallel here with the opening page, showing Emplate failing to fit in.
PAGES 11-12. Gambit defeats the Dark Angel.
Apparently, by killing him. At this point, I’d be pretty confident that we’re going to get some sort of resurrection available (at least for a window) at the end of “Fall of X”, since Warren’s a core character. Gambit seems surprisingly willing to jump straight to this approach instead of just trying to wound the guy, but maybe he just figures that with so few mutants left, he can’t risk the whole team getting wiped out. Even so, nobody seems terribly bothered about it on the next page. It’s an odd scene. I suppose, given the death mask, it’s conceivable that this is some sort of duplicate and that it’s not really Warren under there, but Gambit doesn’t know that.
Despite his choice to sit smugly on the sidelines, Azazel doesn’t put up much resistance to a direct order for Gambit – though it probably doesn’t hurt that Gambit didn’t ask Azazel to actually fight Angel directly.
PAGE 13. Gambit talks to Callisto.
Callisto politely declines the offer to go and hang out with demons, which seems reasonable enough, and Maggott apparently thinks this sounds like a better deal.
PAGE 14. Data page – just the lyrics of a song for a dead Morlock. Again, it seems odd that the deaths of these background characters get more emphasis than Warren.
PAGES 15-16. Feint talks to Flourish.
Flourish basically indicates that she has created her own haven for the remaining mutants in Mexico – i.e., those who were too far from a gate to be marched through one. Since she could “come and go whenever I wanted”, presumably she did have a gate on hand, so it’s not entirely clear why she was able to resist Professor X. Let’s chalk it up to some weird anomaly involving her powers and move on.
Feint gives her a strength-in-numbers pitch in which she indicates that she really does accept Madelyne’s wonky group as the X-Men, or at least the current version of the X-Men.
PAGES 17-20. The Dark X-Men drive off the Bamf Dragon.
Madelyne correctly identifies this as a corrupted alt-Kurt Wagner, presumably by telepathy.
Havok’s body does indeed seem to be collapsing here, at least when placed under the strain of using his powers at full blast.
PAGES 21-22. Feint defeats the Bamf Dragon.
Feint is giving Flourish’s group the regular X-Men pitch, either convincing herself that this is still the proper X-Men, or at least turning a blind eye to the problems on the view that it’s the best option for the mutants here. She’s evidently picked up some proper fighting skills with her shape changing powers since we last saw her, probably through her training with Bishop.
PAGE 23. Flourish rejects the Dark X-Men.
Flourish blames the attack on the Dark X-Men, which is probably true in a narrow sense, but doesn’t alter the fact that Orchis know where she is now. Madelyne accepts that decision, claiming that she won’t force anyone to follow her – but immediately invokes the “To me, my X-Men” line to position herself as the X-Men’s leader, and dismisses Flourish and her group as undeserving of help. Presumably she doesn’t like having her purported role as a hero rejected, even by someone like Flourish who rejected the real X-Men too.
PAGE 24. Orchis make their next plan.
Agents Krol and Vallens are not particularly impressed by the outcome of this skirmish – even though the “asset destroyed” they mention is apparently Angel.
The alt-Goblin Queen’s next target is Chasm (Ben Reilly), the clone of Peter Parker who’s been a prisoner in the Limbo Embassy since “Dark Web”. We saw him briefly in issue #1.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads GOBLIN QUEENS.
I still think that Emplate’s debt to Azazel might have something to do with the number of powerful mutants the St. Croix family produced in this generation–specifically Monet’s A++ power suite and/or the weirdness involving the Penance/Hollow form.
Yeah, I know we’ve seen other families that produce lots of high power mutants, the Summers and Guthries being the most notable, but Monet’s really such an outlier for her broad range of top-notch powers/abilities/traits.
I liked this issue, Schraf & Martin continue to provide impressively creepy visuals and Foxe keeps the characters interesting. I wanted more focus on the Emplate & Azazel story, but I suppose that’s coming. The cast is pretty big, and I wish the creative team had more than 5 issues.
Gambit killing Archangel was a surprise. I like that Remy used his powers so brutally- he’s still a voice of reason, but the darkness inherent in the comic is reflected in his actions. I wonder if he still has a pre-Gala mindset, thinking (perhaps subconsciously) that the 5 are still out there and can bring Warren back.
@Paul- Feint didn’t bring a respirator with her, she used her shape-shifting powers to create one.
I don’t think the figure in the robe is Death. The figure seems to be carrying Maddie’s scythe, not Death’s scythe. And the figure says “WE are inevitable.” Not I. Admittedly, it’s possible Death is using the royal we but there’s another explanation. Note that in the first dream, Maddie was in her Goblin Queen outfit but in snow, symbolizing Alaska. In the second dream, it was snow and Maddie was in her pilot’s outfit. The imagery in the dreams represent the woman Maddie was before S’ym. My guess is that the robed woman in Maddie herself and she has to embrace the part of her that she was before S’ym in order to save Alex.
I don’t think that there’s going to be resurrection available generally at the Fall of X. I do think, however, that it’s possible Warren is going to be resurrected along with the other five X-Men who were killed at the Gala in Dead X-Men. Another possibility is that since we know one of the Original 5 will travel from the past to the present and remain stuck in the present in Amazing X-Men, Warren’s past self is the one that gets stuck in the present and replaces the dead Warren.
Torunn has said in interviews that she had to fight for Marrow because another book wanted Marrow. And Foxe has said that Maggott was a replacement for another character he wanted that was unavailable. I think that Maggott was a replacement for Marrow. Maggott’s role makes more sense assigned to Marrow. Maggott spent last issue complaining that they left Warren behind. Sarah had a crush one Warren but Maggott hardly knew Warren. And Maggott leaving this issue to be with Callisto would make more sense for Marrow, because Callisto was Marrow’s mother-figure.
This is still very enjoyable. Kind of a sequel to Zeb Wells’s Hellions, at least as far as the Havok/Maddie stuff goes. But also the general vibe.
And the art is, at times, spectacular. The exploding Angel in particular. But also – this is the first time an artist has succeeded (…or maybe the first time someone even tried) to make the Bamf Dragon actually kind of scary. It’s such a goofy design at a first glance, but there is something there. The head is basically the Alien. You know, from ‘Alien’.
Anyway. Gambit has used his powers that destructively before, but not often. I’m reminded of the time he exploded Daken’s arm in the Dark Wolverine/X-23 crossover. Of course, Daken has a healing factor, so it’s fine.
…come to think of that, Archangel has had a strong healing factor for years now (in the Austen run, of course, but it also came up repeatedly in X-Force and Uncanny X-Force IIRC), and I wonder who’s forgetting about that – the writer or the characters in the story?
@Krzysiek= Weirdly, Warren’s healing factor was mentioned in issue 1. I wonder if something’s up with that.
I feel like there should be a mandate that every character created by Chris Bachalo be redesigned once Bachalo stops drawing them.
No disrespect to Bachalo, he is amazing, but nobody can make a Bachalo character look like Bachalo makes a Bachalo character look. Emplate under any other artist is just not the same.
[…] X-MEN #3. Annotations here. The Dark X-Men try to recruit Flourish, and don’t get anywhere with that at all. And Angel […]
No-Prize:
1) Warren is special to Japeth , because W and Betsy (in Kwannon’s body) were the very first XMen who Japeth met way back in Uncanny XMen 348 (1997) and because Japeth has solidarity with his fellow mutant with a Super-Saiyan-style transformation (except with blue skin instead of blue hair*)
2) Warren’s own personal healing factor was neutralized by Albert whose claws were probably coated with BlightSwill , and Gambit has Omega-level potential so if he seriously wants to kill someone else , they get killed !
* as of the latest series , the 2010’s Dragon Ball Super
@Michael: That makes sense, especially given that Marrow and Gambit have a pre-existing friendship too where he saw himself as protecting her (though it was in major part built on his guilt over the Morlock Massacre and subsequently wounding her in battle). Considering the less-than-great characterization she’s being to put to in Realm of X, I wish Foxe had won out–much as I’ve got a lot of affection for Maggott, the scene you described would’ve been much more emotionally resonant.