Resurrection of Magneto #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO #1
“The Lightning Path”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO is a four-issue miniseries, which effectively replaces X-Men Red. It’s not exactly a renamed X-Men Red arc – as we’ll see, it’s a rather different book – but it does feature Storm and it continues the plot thread of Magneto’s death.
COVER / PAGE 1. Storm, with Magneto in the background.
PAGE 2. Storm’s dream about Magneto.
Storm confirms on page 19 that this is what she sees in her dream, and tells us fairly directly what she singles out as important: “He was standing on a strange shore, readying himself to enter a ruined city – his face turned away but in torment. It was more than a dream. It was a distress call.” She also notes the five helmets at his feet. We see a version of this same page with Storm on page 29.
The city, river and bridge are the same in both images, as are the positions of the helmets (which are replaced in Storm’s version by five versions of her headdress). Magneto has three identical versions of his traditional helmet, together with the less common black and white versions. As in Storm’s picture, the three helmets on the left appear to have pools of blood next to them, although in Magneto’s case, one of the pools is green. All of Storm’s are red.
The general layout is from the Five of Cups tarot card, which has five, well, cups in place of the helmets – three spilled, with the contents leaking out. One of them does indeed have green liquid. The city, river and bridge in the background all look rather more normal.
Storm doesn’t mention Magneto’s line of dialogue – “I was wrong”. We’ll doubtless find out in due course what he’s referring to.
PAGES 3-4. Storm wakes from her dream.
Storm is now sleeping with Craig Marshall, the NASA scientist from X-Men Red. He and Storm had their first date in X-Men Red #11. The two kids are Loolo and Kobb, who Craig adopted after they were orphaned during A.X.E.: Judgment Day.
“The big push against Orchis.” The plot of Fall of the House of X.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits. The lengthy recap covers much of the relevant plot of X-Men Red.
PAGES 6-7. Storm visits Kadesh Base.
This is the headquarters of Adam Brashear, the Blue Marvel, down at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Storm is apparently teleported in there by Lactuca the Knower, whose image appears on the screens on page 6 panel 2. Lactuca doesn’t normally get involved in things unless it’s a big deal, so they evidently attach some importance to Storm’s mission.
Taaia is Galactus’s mother, from his home universe. She debuted in Al Ewing and Javier Rodriguez’s 2021 Defenders series, where she came to the present day. She always behaves in this rather bombastic way, complete with having all-caps lettering in a book where nobody else does. Although she refers to this as “Defenders HQ”, there is no permanent Defenders team – however, she and Blue Marvel are expecting to be magically summoned back to go on a Defenders mission at some point.
“‘Look for the Fifth Business.’ … [T]he ‘Dominion’ we were warned about – Eternity’s mysterious enemy who exists outside time and space.” This refers to Ewing and Rodriguez’s Defenders: Beyond series from 2022, in which both Blue Marvel and Taiaa appeared. This extremely meta series involves the Defenders being sent by Eternity to visit the highest plane of existence that they can reach, where “you will see the face of my enemy.” In the final issue, that highest plane turns out to be the House of Ideas, occupied by a figure apparently representing the collective persona of the Marvel Universe’s literal creators. (“I see through many eyes. I build with many hands.”) Finally, the Defenders are rewarded with a cryptic image of “the Enigma to come”, represented as a crown symbol. With hindsight, this is evidently the Dominion Enigma from Immortal X-Men and Rise of the Powers of X, who exists outside conventional space and time.
“I lent her a dimensional exploration vessel once.” What do you mean, you don’t remember his two page cameo to lend the X-Men a ship so that they could travel to the Negative Zone in X-Men Gold #17?
“Iron Man convinced me we’d stand a better chance if we struck together.” Iron Man is co-ordinating the attack on Orchis over in Invincible Iron Man and Fall of the House of X.
“We must fight together.” The flashback on page 7 panel 4 is to Magneto’s death in X-Men Red #7, but Blue Marvel and Storm’s dialogue also forms part of Magneto’s speech: “There are [worse dreams]. I’ve come to understand that. To understand that nothing less will save us. We must stand together. We must fight together – all of society’s so-called undesirables, human or mutant – or our enemies will destroy us simply for daring to exist. Because they never stopped, Ororo. They have never stopped.”
Though he’s mainly used these days as a cosmic scientist type, Blue Marvel’s original premise, from the 2008 mini Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel, was that he had been a masked superhero in the 60s, forced into retirement due to the controversy when people found out that he was black.
PAGES 8-9. Blue Marvel opens a portal for Storm.
“Against the last wishes of a dying man.” Magneto made very clear in X-Men Red #7 that he wanted to stick by his earlier decision not to be resurrected. Storm pointed out that even with his Cerebro backups having been destroyed for political reasons, he could still choose to return via the Waiting Room. He replied that “With no backup, it’s my decision. You wouldn’t break your word either.”
“For a moment I’m reminded of Forge.” Like her ex Forge, Blue Marvel is disturbingly willing to do anything for the sake of pushing the boundaries of science – though he has a much more consistent moral compass than Forge does.
The Waiting Room was created in X-Men: Trial of Magneto, as Scarlet Witch’s way of atoning for M-Day. Basically, it was a route by which mutants who had died before the earliest Cerebro back-ups could still choose to return and join the resurrection queues. The mechanics were always terribly hazy.
Kaorak is the new island that Apocalypse created using magic in X-Men Red #17. Apparently he’s used the same magic to create a special one-off gateway that, with Blue Marvel’s aid, can get Storm into the Waiting Room.
PAGE 10. Storm arrives in the Waiting Room.
The one character who greets her is Tarn, but more of him – and why there’s nobody else there – in a bit.
In the distance are what seem to be seven symbols on cloud podiums, with what might be the Infinity Gems floating overhead. Leaving the gems aside, this is based on the Rider-Waite version of the Seven of Cups, usually associated with wishful thinking. It shows seven cups arranged on clouds, with different things in each one:
- A human head, apparently represented by the Living Tribunal. Incidentally, the head and the Tower have swapped places compared with the original card, which probably means something or other.
- A shrouded, glowing figurine, doubling here as Death.
- A snake, apparently conflated here with the Wheel of Fortune – the Wheel has also shown up over in Immortal Thor being carried around by Toranos, and since that’s also an Al Ewing book, it seems worth noting.
- A tower, depicted to match the Tower arcana card. The card shows the Tower after it’s just been struck by lightning, and it’s on fire. The crown on top is a standard feature of the card, though here it’s doubling as Enigma’s symbol.
- A treasure horde, apparently represented by the big green jewel.
- A laurel wreath, conflated with the big gold skull.
- A dragon, seemingly represented by Dr Strange’s emblem within a crystal ball.
Tarn tells us on page 12 that “These signs and symbols form exits as well as entrances”, so apparently they’re the routes for entry to other afterlives. This is all connected with the Kabbalah idea of paths through the tree of life.
PAGES 11-17. Storm fights Tarn.
Tarn was killed by Magneto in X-Men Red #3. Arakki characters generally disdain resurrection, and Tarn mockingly quotes the “not afraid of a life that ends” mantra which they often use. With characteristic disregard for Arakko’s values, Tarn is the last guy still waiting in the Waiting Room for resurrection, after everyone else apparently gave up and went back to their afterlife.
Note that Tarn repeatedly refers to this area as the Well Beyond the Worlds, not the Waiting Room.
“Genomic mage” was indeed how Tarn used to bill himself in life. Basically, he’s an omega mutant who can rewrite other people’s DNA. This doesn’t seem to work very well for him in the afterlife. As Storm mentions, she beat him before in SWORD #8 when he failed to anticipate that removing her powers and disfiguring her wouldn’t prevent her from just stabbing him.
PAGES 18-19. Storm and Ashake.
Ashake is an ancient Egyptian sorceress who looks exactly like Storm and is apparently her ancestor; she debuted in New Mutants #32. Storm mentions meeting her in Gambit #2-3, though it might have been helpful to specify that they meant the Claremont/Kotian continuity implant mini from 2022 – there have been six Gambit #2-3s.
“Five is the number of magic, but it has other associations.” In Defenders: Beyond, some play was made of the fact that the tarot cards had selected five Defenders despite there being only four tarot suits, the fifth one getting a non-existent card. Enigma, of course, is the fifth Sinister existing above the other four. Ashake invokes Gevurah, the fifth sphere of the Kabblah’s tree of life (which also featured heavily in Defenders: Beyond). As she says, it’s associated with judgment.
PAGE 20. Storm remembers encounters with Magneto.
Panel 1 is Magneto reacting with horror after hurting the teenage Kitty Pryde in Uncanny X-Men #150. It’s the start of his rehabilitation arc and easily the best known flashback here.
Panel 2 is from New Mutants #51. Storm and Magneto have just saved a town from a hurricane, and are discussing what the humans would make of it if they knew that mutants had saved them. The main point of the scene is Magneto asking for advice on whether he should accept the offer to join the Hellfire Club.
Panel 3 – and I would never have got this in a million years, but somebody recognised it on Reddit – is from Avengers vs X-Men: Consequences #4. Magneto has helped Storm to find Colossus, who’s in hiding after recovering from being one of the Phoenix Five. He’s telling her that he still trusts her even though they’re now on opposite sides again. “For a while, the hero and the villain walked arm in arm, for a purpose grander than ourselves. And now that is over… Our roles are nothing more than how the times choose to cast us.”
Panel 4 is Magneto telling Storm that his late daughter Anya wasn’t a mutant and so can’t be resurrected through the Waiting Room, in X-Men Red #3.
PAGES 21-23. Ashake directs Storm to the Tower.
The mutants in the Waiting Room, we’re told, have all taken the route of Death/Phoenix – but as Ashake points out, this can’t be irreversible. After all, they made it into the Waiting Room in the first place.
Magneto has opted for the Tower, which apparently represents sudden revelation and disruptive change.
“When his daughter Anya died by fire?” Backup in Classic X-Men #12.
“When Charles made him a teacher and he could not protect his students?” When he was appointed as the mentor of the New Mutants, leading up to the death of Cypher and the kids ultimately rejecting him.
PAGES 24-28. Storm encounters a Phalanx Dominion.
This thing is another Dominion, and basically indicates that the other Dominions are alarmed about Enigma too, and have been struggling to contain him.
Page 24 is laid out to resemble the Eight of Coins.
The circular panel on page 25 shows a group of Beyonders from Defenders: Beyond #2, also known as the Omega Council. They were very concerned about an “Enigma” too, and basically indicated that the partial reboot of the Marvel Universe in Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars was an attempt to contain it. The Dominion here refers to a “multiversal reboot attempted”, which is presumably that.
On page 26, the Dominion’s image of Magneto is posed in the position of the Hanged Man tarot card.
PAGE 29. Storm arrives in the sphere of judgment.
As already noted, this is a mirror of page 2. There’s a lot more lightning here, too.
PAGE 30. Magneto crawls through a river, with his eyes bleeding.
This is the same river of lava we saw ion the previous page, with the city visible behind him – it’s not a tunnel.
The walls are covered with a list of names, which looks a lot like some sort of war memorial. The obvious explanation would be that they’re people who were killed by Magneto over the years.
PAGE 31. Trailers. The Krakoan reads THE KEY.
The Dominions speech patterns are almost certainly inspired by the speech patterns of Barbelith from Grant Morrisons’s The Invisibles
I’m pretty sure the Dominion’s speech patterns are based on how Hickman wrote the Celestials in his Fantastic Four run. That same habit of saying a word and then “-/synonym/synonym”. Though I’ve never read The Invisibles, so maybe both are based on that.
Ah, well, it’s almost certainly so since Hickman is a self admitted fan of Morrison work
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by thinking tarot cards are a lot more interesting than they in fact are.
The green liquid leaking out of the cup from the Five of Cups is widely interpreted to be absinthe.
It took me a minute to parse this out, but The Well Beyond the Worlds sounds like Ewing used a mash up of the titles of two of William Morris’ fantasy novels; The Well at the End of the World’s End and The Woods Beyond the World. I kept thinking it was a reference to a Morris novel, but I got hung up on it being a combination of the two titles.
Could the line “When Charles made him a teacher and he could not protect his students?” also refer to the Beyonder killing and briefly wiping the New Mutants from existence (in New Mutants vol. 1 #37) before resurrecting them, which — if I remember correctly — left the entire team with PTSD?
“I was wrong.”
I assumed he was referring to asking not to be resurrected, but maybe there’s something else going on.
Note that Adam Brashear says that there is some connection between Enigma and Orchis. This could mean the connections that we know about (e.g.Stasis) or it could mean that the Trickster Dominion that sent Karima back is Enigma.
The reason why Lactuca and Ashake think it’s so important to bring Magneto back from the dead is probably because he’s needed to stop Enigma.
It was hinted that Tarn had a way to return from the dead in X-Men Red 15.
Note that the Dominions describe the realm where they dwell as Outside. Manifold said in issue 10 that the aliens that helped Stellaris heal Vulcan were from “Outside”.Does this mean that the aliens were servants of Enigma? I can’t think of any other explanation that makes sense.
Note that the Dominion said Magneto had information of interest. This is presumably information about Moira and her lives. Although it MIGHT also be information about Doug.
The non-Enigma Dominions get less impressive with each appearance. Hickman described them as basically omnipotent and immortal to anyone but the Phoenix and Galactus. But in Rise of the Powers of X. Doctor Stasis was able to effectively kill one and in this issue Storm is able to hurt one long enough to avoid being eaten because she’s in a realm of symbolism. We’re not that far away from Hawkeye being able to hurt one with an explosive arrow. I get that Enigma is more dangerous than a normal Dominion because he took Jean’s blood, and with it, her connection to the Phoenix. But it makes you wonder why Nathaniel Essex considered the Dominions such a threat.
@Joseph S- It might be a reference to Enigma. Remember, Magneto arrogantly told humans they had new gods, then gave sanctuary to Sinister not because he thought Sinister could become a better person but because he needed Sinister’s technology and the end result was the Moira Engine. Enigma is the end result of Magneto’s hubris. As Enigma put it in Immortal X-Men 18, “You were told you have new gods. I am he.”
On a somewhat meta-level, “I was wrong” is an inversion of the most famous sentence about him: “Magneto was right.”
Somewhat off-topic, but this seems like a good place to talk about the other Al Ewing comic that came out this week. The latest Immortal Thor demonstrates that Ewing has studied his Norse mythology as deeply as his Marvel lore. He’s pulling in *Ullr*, of all people, and leveraging the fact that he’s such a mystery to modern scholars. For those who weren’t aware, the extant texts of Norse mythology we have make one or two off-hand references to Ullr, with almost zero actual information. BUT, linguistic archeologists making studies of Scandinavian place names see “Ullr” being used as an element about as often as *Thor* is. So Ullr was at one point the number one or number two most prominent Norse god. Yet we know basically *nothing* about him. I find it incredibly cool that Ewing is weaving that into Marvel-Asgard.
I think it may be problematic, but if Brevoort’s run is going to be more of a “back to basics” direction, it could be Magneto saying he was wrong to step down from the Quiet Council and, after the relaunch, Magneto will be positioned as the X-Men’s enemy again. Hence, “I was wrong (to change).”, “Magneto WAS right”.
As far as the Trickster Titan, I am still convinced it was the evolved form of the merged Warlock/Krakoa. “Betrayer of its brother and sister machines.” doesn’t fit Enigma, especially considering that the machine-god Dominions are shown in opposition to Enigma in this comic.
I find it interesting that it was Doug who saved Moira, and Moira went on to cause everything which has followed….AXE, the fall of Krakoa, the death of Jean. Doug who is closest to Krakoa. Doug who now exists outside of time and space within Krakoa. What if Doug did have an ulterior motive?
I think the Trickster Titan (Kraklock/Warkoa) is the true manipulator, sending Omega Sentinel back in time to stop Krakoa’s ascension. Doug (the one with ties to Krakoa and Warlock) saving Moira so she can join with Orchis. All leading to the rise of Enigma, a future that all the sides will oppose.
@CitizenBane:
That speech pattern of three consecutive words with roughly similar meanings goes back at least to the character “Century” that was a major feature of the Force Works book (1994). He was apparently a collective being composed from members of an alien race. He made very, very few appearances after 1996 (apparently three, one each in 2011, 2012 and 2019).
The way I see it, Hickman and Marvel editorial did not reach an agreement on how to resolve the situation of Krakoa and how the Dominions would fit into it. My best guess is that Al Ewing was chosen to go ahead with his own ideas about what the Dominions are and what they do while Hickman is doing his own thing in G.O.D.S.
Both are, if not megalomaniac, at least very high-concept perspectives. But they are very different from each other and I figure Ewing leaves a bit more room for the mutants to have agency (although I think I like Hickman’s work considerably more).
Not too crazy about all this woo-woo nonsense, but at least it’s not Arakko
‘Fifth Business’ is defined by Robertson Davies in his novel of the same name as “Those roles which, being neither those of hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were none the less essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement were called the Fifth Business in drama and Opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business.”
(The quote is attributed to someone else, but he invented it.)
This thread breaks down how Storm’s path in this series follows the Kabbalah
https://twitter.com/arakkosuperstar/status/1750170645772611995
@Chris V
The Well Beyond the Worlds is from an obscure Marvel Sourcebook called “The Marvel Tarot” which was an in-universe series of occult notes about Marvel Characters. It may have been originally named after the Morris’ novels.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Marvel_Tarot_Vol_1_1
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Well_Beyond_the_Worlds
@Luis Dantas
Isn’t it the Phalanx Dominion speech also based on the speech pattern of Warlock, which makes sense as they’re part of the Phalanax?
The triple wording is certainly not as marked a pattern in Warlock than it is in Century.
Ewing also used Kabbalistic motifs in his Immortal Hulk run, though there it was the qlippoth, the “inverse” points that blokc or contain the divine emanations of the Kabbalah.
And, of course, that series also makes much of a mechanism of resurrection linked to a particular sort of meta-origin for Marvel characters.
A couple of other relevant Ewing comics here:
The “I see through many eyes. I build with many hands” speech first appeared, I think, in Ultimates^2 #100; the House of Ideas turned up in Avengers: No Road Home #9-10.
Venom #18 is also relevant here; the “kings in black,” who work within the material world, are contrasted with the “Ivory Kings,” i.e. the Beyonders/Omega Council, who work outside it. (And the White Hot Room’s “construction site,” which we saw again recently in Immortal X-Men, is a similar visual that also turns up in Defenders Beyond #3.)
There are normally only six Infinity Gems, though there was a seventh one, Ego, in the Ultraverse!
@Paul, thank you for providing annotations for this comic. I read both of Ewing’s Defenders series, and I was still a tad lost.
Everyone else, I appreciate the links and commentary, too!
I liked this comic, it was just a bit more conceptual that I like. I’ll take it over a dumber comic, especially a Duggan X-book, but I like the character interactions better than the symbolism.
Ewing took care of the Waiting Room pretty handily. “They stopped waiting, and left” is a somewhat elegant solution to the unwieldy concept. I’m ok with the Waiting Room being dropped . Of course, this is only issue 1 so it might rear its head again, we’ll see.
“Ah, well, it’s almost certainly so since Hickman is a self admitted fan of Morrison work”
I hope this is sarcasm. Not only is Hickman long gone but comic nerds geeking out over THE INVISIBLES is almost as clichéd as the use of tarot cards in comic books.
I love that Ewing is tying the end of KRAKOA ERA into his own mildly pretentious corner of the Marvel Universe as much as Hickman’s hoity toity tapestry.
Well I will take Ewing’s “mild pretension” AND “hoity toity” Hickman’s “borderline megomania” over pretty much any other current writer (and both are Children of Morrison in some ways for sure imo), especially Duggan, ANY DAY. These are writers who write comics with REREADIBILITY. They may occasionally frustrate, but the dumbed-down dorks like Duggan ultimately just piss me off. I trust a writer like Ewing to put in the work/research to craft a story that works on multiple levels, and both he and Hickman are masters of using the forgotten corners of continuity to create connective tissue & craft modern stories which tie in to the collective History, which imo is what makes (superhero) comics so great.
Al Ewing’s Marvel work needs a big annotations site, presumably by someone who’s more interested in Kabbalah than Paul. What’s Jess Nevins up to these days?
I liked this. It’s not what I expected – basically, I expected X-Men: Re(title)d. But the Fall of X books clearly had the remit to include the wider Marvel universe (as seen with Iron Man, Kamala and the team-up tour Wolverine just did). So while Blue Marvel doesn’t do much here, the whole book is a Defenders-like. Defenders without the Defenders, which I think is actually very Defenders? (I have not read any classic Defenders).
Anyway. I don’t know if Tarot is worth exploring and doing deep dives on, but comic books are uniquely suited for that – it’s images with layers of meaning derived from the context of other images they appear next to, after all. I don’t care about Tarot, but I appreciate that Ewing cares.
And while Luciano Vecchio is no Javier Rodriguez, this is miles ahead of his previous Marvel work. Amazing level up.
All this to say, basically, Al Ewing is my favourite writer working for Marvel at this time, so it’s no suprise that I liked this. But I was surprised by its form.
““Ah, well, it’s almost certainly so since Hickman is a self admitted fan of Morrison work”
I hope this is sarcasm. Not only is Hickman long gone but comic nerds geeking out over THE INVISIBLES is almost as clichéd as the use of tarot cards in comic books.”
Alright jackass, I literally was talking about Hickman’s writing of Celestials, but sure, we’ll go with that.