X-Men #32 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #32
“From Emma, With Love”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Magik and Shadowkat fight Orchis.
PAGES 2-3. Orchis go after the Mykines Island Lighthouse Keeper.
“The site of the so-called ‘Mutant Massacre’.” X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, where Orchis forced most of the mutants off Earth, slaughtered the human guests in attendance, and blamed the mutants for it.
The Lighthouse Keeper, who’s never been named, was shown as either flirting with Jumbo Carnation or perhaps being in a relationship with him in that issue, and also in Marauders vol 1 #17. We’re told here that he “used to travel the world” with Jumbo, which really makes no sense if he’s meant to be a lighthouse keeper, but perhaps this is supposed to be shared history from before he came here.
Why have Orchis only just remembered this inconvenient witness sitting here with (as far as they know) no defence? Look, they just haven’t, alright.
Lockheed wasn’t in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, but apparently we’re to take it that he was there off panel, and he’s been recovering from his injuries with the lighthouse keeper ever since. So far as I can tell, Lockheed was last seen before the Gala, in X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #100.
PAGE 4. Emma updates everyone on the plot.
Polaris took down the Orchis space station in Fall of the House of X #2.
Iron Man’s diversion to draw the Stark Sentinels to the Australian outback is covered in Invincible Iron Man #15.
PAGES 5-6. Emma takes down some random Orchis agents.
Emma’s “HELL FIRE” knuckle duster weapons were given to her by Iron Man in Invincible Iron Man #15.
We’ll see later in the issue that this is Hershey, Pennsylvania, near the facility that Magik and Shadowkat are breaking into. Perhaps these random mutants who are just hanging around were among the group who got detoured to Vanaheim in Realm of X and returned with Illyana.
PAGE 7. Recap and credits.
PAGES 8-12. Magik attacks an Orchis facility.
The Reverend Stryker Education Center for Disadvantaged Youth is named along the lines of the Henry Gyrich centre in New York, which has had various slightly different names on panel, all similar to this one. Reverend Stryker is the anti-mutant preacher best known as the villain of X-Men: God Loves Man Kills (or Marvel Graphic Novel #5, if you prefer the official name).
Magik was infected by Orchis nanotech in issue #23, to stop her evacuating the mutants from the Hellfire Gala when Orchis eventually attacked in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023. She’s one of the minority of mutants who got detoured from the White Hot Room and ended up in Vanaheim in Realm of X.
Her plot in Realm of X largely involved her lacking access to her magical powers, due to Saturnyne’s control of magical energy in Vanaheim at the time. I don’t recall any suggestion that the nanites were causing her any progressive difficulties beyond shutting down her powers. She seemed perfectly healthy at the end of the series. But hey, let’s be generous and assume that as creations of science, they don’t work so well in magical realms, and only started progressing again once she got back to Earth.
Apparently since she got back to Earth in Realm of X #4, Magik has been focussing on locating the Orchis installation responsible for her power loss.
PAGES 13-15. Shadowkat rescues Magik.
Shadowkat and Magik were Best Friends in the Claremont era. They shared a room at the Mansion and get the soulmate routine from time to time.
Magik indicates here that she tried to find the X-Men on getting back to Earth, and failed. Apparently it’s pure coincidence that she happens to attack this installation just as Shadowkat is breaking in to the same place (and Emma is hovering around outside).
“Colossus… is a survivor. He’s with Logan.” Magik’s brother Colossus is over in X-Force. Kate’s hesitation is presumably because she’s now learned about his period being controlled by Scrivener, but this isn’t the time to tell Illyana about that. At any rate, she pointedly avoids confirming that Colossus is “okay”.
“A doctor.” Polaris; she picked up a doctorate during the Krakoan era, as established in Trial of Magneto and mentioned periodically in this series.
PAGES 16-20. Polaris destroys the nanites and the X-Men destroy the facility.
“The Orchis dude we stole Mars from.” Feilong. His motivation is that he was about to colonise Mars when the mutants got there first.
“The gate I entered fritzed out.” Not exactly correct; it was redirected to Vanaheim by Curse. But you could say it fritzed out because Curse messed with it.
“I left the Gala because I have depression.” Again, that’s not in the original issue.
PAGE 21. Magik and Shadowkat are reunited with Lockheed.
Self-explanatory, but we’re going for an all-is-right-with-the-world-again moment.
PAGE 22. Cyclops joins the telepathic discussion.
This is apparently picking up from the end of Fall of the House of X #2, where Alia turns on Orchis.
PAGE 23. Trailers. The Krakoan reads AS THE WORLD BURNS (with a typo – THE is written as three separate characters, instead of using the symbol that’s supposed to represent TH).
You’re being uncharacteristically generous to the plot holes, Paul. Cough twice if you’ve been kidnapped.
The Lighthouse Keeper comments that Lockheed is used to living in lighthouses. This is a reference to the lighthouse Exclaibur used to live in.
Couldn’t Kate just deactivate the nannies by phasing through them?
Illyana says she looked everywhere for survivors. But not at the Limbo Embassy, which is publicly known as a haven for mutants. Or the Hellfire Club, which is controlled by the Kingpin. who has a mutant wife and told Ben Urich the truth about what happened at the Gala. Or Warpath and Thunderbird’s reservation. in fact, Dani returned WITH Illyana, and she had no problem making contact with Sunspot, who made contact with Remy and Feint.
I might accept this as Illyana not thinking straight because of the nanites but she was able to track down the guy who created the nanites even though he could have been at any Orchis base on- or off- planet. The story requires Illyana to be unable to take the obvious steps to find the X-Men but turn into Sherlock Holmes when it comes to tracking down the inventor of the nanites.
“Kate’s hesitation is presumably because she’s now learned about his period being controlled by Scrivener, but this isn’t the time to tell Illyana about that”
Also, Peter had to kill their brother Mikhail to save X-Force.
That should be “deactivate the nanites”.
They really went with the hard way with Polaris extracting the nanites from Illyana.
I was expecting Kitty to disrupt them with her phasing.
You’d think that after this many issues of Duggan’s Fall of X (either in X-Men or FotHoX) I’d get used to all the killing the X-Men do, and yet.
And yet.
This went beyond ridiculous and is now orbiting around absurd. It’s like a reverse Rosenberg run. There we all assumed we’re headed for a reset button because named characters were being dropped left and right. Here they’re fine, it’s just their characters being assassinated all over the place.
Well. The ones who got through or didn’t attend the Gala are fine. The others, not so much. Unless they were the Dead X-Men. I forgot what my point was.
@Michael you are right; in fact, just to add to your point about how Magik could have looked in the Hellfire Club since their current leader has a mutant wife… didn’t Magik literally just return from an adventure in Vanaheim with said mutant wife? Lol.
Also, with X-Men #35 being Uncanny X-Men #700, I think we need an official math check.
It adds up. The Rosenberg Uncanny run ended with a legacy numbering of 644. The Hickman 2019 X-Men run was 21 issues. This X-Men series will be 35. If you accept that these two X-Men series, as the “flagship” X-books, count as the Uncanny X-Men equivalent titles that equals 700.
@Michael: Kate phasing out the nanites would have been *so much better!* Good call!
As for the rest… Duggan really likes unearned fan-service moments and doesn’t like connecting dots. Thanks, Paul, for explaining Emma’s stupid brass knuckle thingies. The comic didn’t bother to do so. Remember Kate’s “Kill Shaw” knuckles? That was cool, right? Well, now Emma’s got cool knuckles! You all like that, right? Blech.
You know, it’s a nice enough places, but as far as evil organizations locating bases goes, I can’t think of many places that would be worse than Hershey.
Tell that to Willy Wonka.
@Chris V- I think the issue is that Marvel counted the War of the Realms mini as part of the Legacy Numbering but not the Dark Web mini. Personally, I think neither mini should have counted.
Some incredible visual storytelling here. How about pages 5-6, where Emma inspires three background mutants to attack an Orchis goon who wasn’t actually there before? She inspires them so hard, a fourth, goblin-looking mutant even pops into existence as well. Maybe they came though the weird skinny door in the panel before.
This is all rather sloppy.
I have drifted towards skipping the rest of the Duggan issues of Fall of X. At the same time, I’m actually looking forward to next month’s Avengers as something I haven’t seen before in an X-crossover!
It’s funny that MacKay has to sell all this as a precision operation where the Avengers have to wait for just the right moment to strike, whereas under Duggan… everyone seems to do random things and then declare it all part of the plan.
No-Prize time!
1)As per Occam’s Razor , the simplest explanation is Magik lied , plain and simple , to cover up her slacking off due to sickness , she doesnt want to look weak and/or lazy to her friends & teammates because of her own personal pride . She IS BOTH RuZZian born-and-raised AND a bona fide (ex?!)Hell-Lord(Lady?!) demon queen after all .
2) If Kate phases through the nanites , and they then fritz , they may violently SELF-DESTRUCT , and no way is she going to risk the life of their host , especially not that of her BFF
Well, she’s not technically Russian-raised. She was, what, five when Belasco took her? Six? She’s Limbo-raised.
If anything, she should speak with a 13th century Italian accent.
@Kryziek Ceran:
“If anything, she should speak with a 13th century Italian accent.”
I don’t know what that sounds like, but now I’m going to read her dialogue in Mario’s voice. “It’s’a me, Mahhjik!”
Growing up in Belasco’s Limbo, Magik’s lucky she didn’t end up with the speech habits of Cerebus the Aardvark.
More seriously, I suppose the canon explanation would be that Magik’s time with the X-Men alternates gave her a more standard accent.
But the idea of her sounding like Charles Martinet is appealing. Now I want writers to make her recite spells in terza rima.
Didn’t all the X-Men who didn’t speak English learn it telepathically from Xavier, or did I make that up? Presumably that would mean they have the same accent that he does??
If that’s true, it means that they all sound like Patrick Stewart.
I’m not sure, but in Uncanny X-Men #153 he did use telepathy to teach the X-Men Russian so they could communicate with Illyana.
[…] #32. (Annotations here.) This isn’t working, is it? The main plot is over in Fall of the House of X – fair […]
S> Didn’t all the X-Men who didn’t speak English learn it telepathically from Xavier, or did I make that up? Presumably that would mean they have the same accent that he does??
That was in Giant-Size X-Men #1, yes. But that only applies to, what, Nightcrawler & Colossus? Maybe Storm (who presumably hadn’t spoken English since she was a young child at that point).
If that’s true, it means that they all sound like Patrick Stewart.
Every member of the X-Men now has a broad Yorkshire accent. Accepted.
“Polaris; she picked up a doctorate during the Krakoan era”
Like Alex, she had been ABD (all but dissertation) for decades. Williams had her finally finish.