X-Men #33 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #33
“As the World Burns”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colour artist: Romulo Fajardo Jr
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: The X-Men in action alongside some of Doom’s mutant team.
PAGE 2. Flashback: Sebastian Shaw sends Shinobi Shaw to clear land in Madripoor.
Although the caption says “Not long ago”, it’s fairly clear that this takes place during Fall of the House of X. Shinobi explains later that Shaw has offered refuge to Killian Devo, the idea being to either help him rebuild Orchis or sell him out to the mutants, depending on how matters go.
This is the first time we’ve seen Shinobi Shaw since Gerry Duggan’s run on Marauders. As in that series, he’s not exactly on board with the heir role that Sebastian wants him to play, and is rather more inclined to align with his fellow mutants.
PAGES 3-4. The Reavers attack Madripoor.
Lowtown is presented here as part of a continuous city with Hightown, which I must admit is how I’d always imagined it – but the current Wolverine: Madripoor Knights series depicts them as two separate towns with a stretch of countryside (and the small town of Capristi) in between.
We’ve seen this version of the Reavers attacking Lowtown before, in Marauders #19. The Morlocks laid claim to the Princess Bar (Wolverine’s old stomping ground, or at least somewhere reusing the name) in that same issue.
“You could just get in a boat and leave.” This is exactly what the Morlocks (specifically including Callisto) had done in Dark X-Men #2, but since they’ve obviously returned since that story, this feels like a continuity error rather than a reference.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGE 6. Emma Frost directs traffic.
The Orchis space station was destroyed in Fall of the House of X #2.
Dr Stasis was killed in Fall of the House of X #3.
Captain Krakoa’s acquittal took place in the epilogue of Uncanny Avengers #5, where he declares himself to be the new Flag-Smasher.
PAGES 7-8. Wolverine kills Orchis soldiers in the X-Men’s underground base.
This echoes Wolverine’s attack on Hellfire Club soldiers in X-Men #133.
PAGES 9-10. Shadowkat rescues Callisto.
Straightforward.
PAGES 11-12. Shinobi explains Sebastian’s plan.
We’ve covered this earlier. Killian Devo is described by Shinobi as “the founder of Orchis”, which is true so far as he and Sebastian know; in fact, Inferno revealed that he had been co-opted into the role by the time-travelling Omega Sentinel. Devo has never really done much of importance – even under Hickman – and this issue is clearly intended to get him off the playing field.
PAGES 13-14. The X-Men fight Killian Devo.
Our X-Men team this issue are Synch, Emma Frost, Magik, Ms Marvel, Wolverine and Forge (who returned to Earth in Invincible Iron Man – we never found out where he had been, or why he appeared somewhere different from all the other mutants).
“When the mutate Reed Richards was missing, his intellectual property fell into the hands of Damage Control, and Orchis confiscated it.” This refers back to a data page from House of X #1, which referenced Reed’s inventions winding up in the hands of Damage Control in more general terms. Travel to the Negative Zone is a fairly standard Fantastic Four thing.
Emma tells us that Devo wasn’t just manipulated by Omega Sentinel but completely overwritten with a mind she can’t control. (It’s not really clear how she even knows that Omega Sentinel was responsible, but maybe there’s something about his mind that makes that apparent.)
PAGE 15. Ms Marvel asks Dr Doom to send his mutants to help.
We first saw Doom’s Latverian mutants in issues #28-29, and as indicated in that story, Doom does ultimately send them to intervene, if only because he sees Orchis as trespassing on his turf.
Doom is standing over a map with models of characters involved in the storyline, so evidently he’s following it closely.
PAGES 16-19. Slag, Volta and Nerium arrive to help.
These are the same three who debuted in issue #28 (the rest of their team didn’t appear until #29). Their appearance here, even if only to tie up a side quest, attempts to provide some pay-off to their arc.
PAGES 20-21. Cyclops and Nimrod.
This is a direct continuation of Fall of the House of X #3, and basically an exercise in setting up the same cliffhanger for anyone simply reading this book.
PAGE 22. Trailers. The Krakoan reads SENTINEL CITY.
Flag Smasher seems to be a casualty of Jordan White being replaced with Breevort. I have a feeling that Duggan intended Flag Smasher to play a large role, either during Duggan’s original version of Fall of House of X or after the Krakoan era ended. But then Breevort took over and Duggan found out his run on X-Men was ending in June. So all he could do was throw in one panel this issue reminding us that the X-Men are aware he exists. Arguably Duggan should have rewritten the last issue of Uncanny Avengers so that Flag Smasher stayed in jail but maybe there wasn’t time.
Shaw also helped Xavier in X-Men Forever 1- another example of his playing both sides.
It’s odd that we learn just now that nothing of the original Devo remains, just like last week, we learned that nothing of the original Karima remains. The point, of course, is so that they can be killed without worrying that innocent victims of Enigma’s scheme will die- the real Karima and the real Deco died long ago. But this should have been made clear long ago- not just before it was time to kill them.
“It’s not really clear how she even knows that Omega Sentinel was responsible, but maybe there’s something about his mind that makes that apparent.)”
I think the idea is that she can pick up some images from Devo’s mind, even though she can’t control it, and thus learned that Karima rewrote his mind, even if “Devo” isn’t consciously aware of it.
A lot of readers felt it made no sense that Illyana couldn’t teleport them away from the Negative Zone trap. Maybe it had something to do with the matter/ antimatter conversion.
Doom comments on how incompetent the X-Men’s efforts against Orchis are. Well, they DID have the bulk of their army attack by leaping a ship in outer space without the ability to fly.
Doom’s X-Men seem to be another casualty of Breevort replacing White. Duggan devoted the two issues before Fall of House of X to them. Apparently he planned for them to either play a major role in the Fall of House of X or in the post-Krakoa era. But then he found out his run was ending in June, so he had to have them do SOMETHING.
As it is, the plot seems contrived to force them to be useful. Kurt, Peter, Lorna and Angelica are nowhere to be seen. There’s no reason they couldn’t have been the ones to kill Devo and free the X-Men. But the plot requires Doom’s X-Men to be useful, so they’re absent and Doom’s X-Men get to save the day. Which is annoying, because there’s nothing specific about the powers or skills of Doom’s X-Men that requires them to be used. If this is the major use of Doom’s X-Men in this crossover, then they’ll have been a waste of space.
In Fall of the House of X 3, Scott and Alia Gregor go to confront Nimrod immediately after Illyana leaves. And this issue continues directly from the end of Fall of the House of X 3. There doesn’t seem time for Illyana to get trapped by Devo and then rescued by Doom’s X-Men.
A lot of readers didn’t like that Nimrod left Scott alive because his death doesn’t matter. That scene would have probably worked better if Moira told Nimrod that Enigma wants Scott alive (because Enigma shares Sinister’s obsession with Scott).
More lame plot-contrivances and coincidences from Duggan, but I didn’t hate this issue. Why? Because Joshua Cassara and Romulo Fajardo, Jr. livened the whole thing up with their excellent visuals. I like Phil Noto’s art, but Cassara is better with action and exaggeration. Romulo, Jr.’s colors fit the tone of the scenes. I hope Cassara’s next project is with a better writer.
I’m not so certain as Michael that the editorial changeover is the reason Krakoa is ending when it is; see https://bleedingcool.com/comics/who-were-the-new-x-men-and-why-did-marvel-change-plans-in-ten-days/ . Brevoort (one E, two Os) came into the picture when there were already some post-Krakoa plans in place. And there’s nothing about the other current X-books that seems like they’re rushing toward a conclusion more quickly than planned.
@Douglas- I’m not saying that the editorial changeover is the reason when KRAKOA is ending when it is. I’m saying that DUGGAN might have been planning on staying at least a few months into the post-Krakoa era, and if he wasn’t, White might have been planning on doing something with Flag Smasher and Doom’s X-Men. As it is, a lot of page space was devoted to setting up Flag Smasher and Doom’s X-Men that could have been devoted to something else.
It was a lot more fun and gratifying watching the Avengers taking on Orchis in this week’s FoX tie-in than the X-Men in their own comics.
“Let’s attack the X-Men’s base!”
“No one’s home!”
“Wait, it’s a trap! The Wolverine(TM)!”
“Who could have expected that one of the X-Men would be in their base?!? “
I’m sorry, but I consider it utter nonsense that an X-Men team consisting of Logan, Emma, Forge, Magik, Kamala and Synch got into such trouble that their first and only recourse was to call Doctor freaking Doom…
…and that Doom promptly teleported three more mutants into the situation to save the day solely out of spite against Reed Richards…
While I -can- think of various scenarios in which this might have played out, the one chosen here just shows the team in a pretty lackluster light.
…and Doom didn’t even take a moment to gloat over it. Y’know, like… “And now you all shall live with the fact that in the end, you came to Doom, and survive only because Doom willed it so.”
I always get Tom’s name right because I spelled it the wrong way in my first book and he was the one who corrected me on it. A very big rookie bone head play.
@Michael: I doubt editorial has anything to do with Duggan faltering at the finish line, considering how his Marauders run ended. It seems to be a bit of a pattern with him.
I don’t doubt that some plots or even whole series may have been lost due to the editorial transition, but at the same time I find it premature to think of that change as a main reason why plots were lost.
Particularly regarding Gerry Duggan books.
Duggan introduced the Doom X-men to be a cavalry, and now they are a cavalry. Duggan had to get rid of Orchis personnel, so now he’s getting rid of Orchis personnel. Duggan had to get the mutants off of Mars, so he got the mutants off of Mars.
You know how there have been scenes in cartoons in which you can hear the characters thinking? The first two characters are saying one thing, but thinking something contrary or more complicated. Then, there’s a third character who says a simple sentence and his thoughts are that exact sentence. Duggan’s writing is that third character.
This comic is dross. What a sorry end to the era.
Paul, do you think you’ll talk about X-Men’97 when the series ends? I think it’s fantastic fun and shows a lot of love from the creative team. I’d really enjoy getting the views from other House to Astonish regulars!
@Mike Loughlin: Perhaps you’re thinking of Whedon’s Astonishing run.
“I really like beer”
There was an issue of Avengers that had the thought bubbles either contradicting or irrelevant to whatever the people were saying out loud, except Ares who was saying and thinking the same thing. I think it was about killing people. Because he’s simple and direct rather than dumb. But it was probably done elsewhere as well, it’s a neat narrative trick.
And this makes me lament the change in philosophy from Marvel. In the old days, war gods were always evil. The kree were always evil. In short, war was always evil (US soldiers were good of course). In the 00s we had a war god Avenger, and the kree are herioc still. Where did all the hippie writers go?
There’s a pretty marked militarization of the Avengers starting in the early 00s, but I’m not sure if it’s directly a response to 9/11 or a response to 9/11 filtered through a response to things like the Authority and the Ultimates.
I agree with Mike Loughlin. Compare the final two pages here to the final two pages of Fall of the House of X #3. Basically the same remit, but where Werneck’s reveal of Sentinel City feels rushed and insufficient, Cassara really conveys the scale and grandeur.
I haven’t seen it, I hope Sentinel City is a scaled up New York. Sentinels driving huge taxis, drinking enormous coffee cups, walking truck-sized dogs…
Did anyone else think, when Devo clicked the button that went DEET and a misty spray gushed out, that at least the X-Men wouldn’t have to worry about mosquitos?
@K, @Si: Yes, those are examples of what I’m talking about. I’m 90% sure I saw that gag on the Simpsons, but can’t remember the context. On the other hand, “I am Evil Homer, I am Evil Homer” has been running through my brain all morning.
[…] #33. (Annotations here.) Speaking of which. Not that this is an especially bad issue in its own right. It’s obviously […]
Si: Wouldn’t that mean that our trucks would be the size of dogs?
@Si: It seems like U.S. popular culture in general has had a difficult time letting go of the post-9/11 conflation of militarism and heroism. But Marvel has really, really kept leaning into it, as you note.
You get some evil military stuff, but it’s always the black ops types. In fact, I’d venture to say Marvel uniformly portrays intelligence agencies as evil these days. Open warfare gets glorified, though, and the “lone warrior” type is shown as innately noble and gutsy.
Regarding the Kree, though, I’ll note that the original Kree concept by Jack Kirby was more of an “alien astronauts” thing than the militaristic empire they became in later comics.
Kirby’s Kree are officious, condescending, and have a history on earth. But they’re portrayed as pretty uninterested in Earth for the most part, with their creation of the Inhumans suggested as more of an experiment in human genetic potential than anything else.
The Skrulls were initially portrayed as the imperialist alien conquerors, and even they get Princess Anelle as a sympathetic representative in the Kirby and Lee era.
The Kree start being portrayed as warmongering fascists when they launch Mar-Vell’s series, and this concept gets really hammered in by Steve Engelhart in the 1970s, who retroactively makes the whole Kree-Skrull War the Kree’s fault, despite the Skrulls being Marvel’s original imperialistic conquerors.
So the Kree become the brute force, regimented society version of an alien empire, and the Skrulls were solidified as the creepy infiltrator alien empire.
FWIW , the Kree are dominated by their literal Nazi-style Aryan-looking blond-haired-blue-eyed “Pink Kree” race , though the Pink Kree themselves claim they are being oppressed by the OG “Blue Kree” , who are canonically physically weaker and less aggressive than their Pink cousins , but they maybe mentally smarter and more manipulative * so thats why the Kree are better suited to traditional fascism than the Skrulls , who are better suited to traditional subversion , being mostly metamorphs after all …
* there are also apparently BLACK Kree (though so far only one has ever appeared on-panel in a story) who look exactly like what IRL would be called the Negroe race of African descent : whatever happened to them ? Did they get exterminated by either their Blue or Pink cousins or did they all escape to another planet. Maybe they are the ancestors of the alien race to which The Buffalo Soldier (introduced in 2023’s Black Panther) comes from. In my headcanon , Monica Rambeau’s mother is secretly a Black Kree supersoldier-spy , just like Carol Danver’s mother who was secretly a Pink Kree supersoldier-spy , which explains where her lifelong powers came from , instead of her secretly being just another X-gene mutant (albeit legit-Hickman-Omega-level) all along **
** But if MR is indeed an X-gene mutant , then to me its off-putting from a DEI POV that the only POC’s (and 2/3 of the females) who are Earth-616-Hickman-Omega X-gene mutants just so happen to both be ethnically-Black-African-descended mutants: Monica and Ororo, where are their opposite-gender/male counterparts for gender parity? It would be another example of the pre-Krakoa-Era trend complained about by Black male x-fans , especially during the Decimation Era , that all of the Black X-gene X-mutants all end up becoming either disposable cannon-fodder (Synch , Bedlam , Maggott, Tag) or forgettable depowered wall-paper (Prodigy, Radian) , unless theyre mixed-race/biracial (Sunspot , Gentle , Darwin) while the Black female X-gene mutants become the token POC and token female X-women (Storm, Cecilia , Monet , Angel , Bling , Cypher , Oya , Frenzy , SharkGirl )
Oh, the Kree as a racial allegory is absolutely awful. The Pink Kree are discriminated against because they’re the result of interbreeding with alien humanoids, so the oppressed class get to be depicted as white people.
And there’s a bunch of nonsense about how the blue Kree are an “evolutionary dead end” that motivates decades of stories.
The one Kree depicted with features we’d read as “Black” was Mor-Tag, a one-off from a 1970s issue of Inhumans, and no one’s touched that one in decades, either.
The whole pink/blue thing is a big retcon anyway; in Fantastic Four #65, Ronan — the only Kree we see besides the blobby Supreme Intelligence — is depicted as white. It’s the Captain Mar-Vell stuff that brings all of this weird blue-pink material in.
Writers have long since dropped most of the racial allegory angle with the Kree, and thank goodness, as it was always done so, so poorly.
I didn’t know Monica Rambeau had been revised as an X-gene mutant in the comics. Didn’t she get her powers in a super-science accident involving some kind of experimental generator?
Ugh — Got Mon-Tog’s name wrong; never go by memory.
Looking at Inhumans v.1 #10, the story seems to implicitly kill him off by leaving him KOed on an exploding space station. And the colorist makes him blue on the cover.
And, apparently, Al Ewing’s Royals series and the Mike O’Sullivan/Mark Waid’s recent History of the Marvel Universe retcons both the pink and blue Kree as being the result of experimentation by another bunch of aliens called the Progenitors. It depicts the “pale” Kree as brutes.
The latest Monica Rambeau miniseries (Monica Rambeau: Photon written by Eve Ewing) shows, among many other things, Monica as a child with energy powers, which goes against her established origin story.
Also Monica converses with Beyonder about that and they both tiptoe around the word ‘mutant’ but the scene heavily implies that’s what this is about.
Except that mini is about jumping between universes and reality warping around Monica so… I think it could be disputed whether that flashback actually shows ‘our’ Monica.
@Omar- the Progenitors are the same group of aliens that served Orbis Stellaris on his World Farm.
@Kryzsiek- the problem started in Warren Ellis’s Nextwave story, where Monica is shown using powers as a child. Al Ewing explained this away in Captain America and the Mighty Avengers, by revealing that the extra dimensional beings behind the Beyond Corporation had the power to alter memories. But Eve Ewing tried to bring this back in the recent Monica Rambeau series. (And weirdly, when the Beyond Corporation appeared in Spider-Man, nobody mentioned their true masters being extra dimensional beings with the power to manipulate memories, even though the plot involved Ben Reilly losing his memories.)
Still, if it is such a recent reference and by one of the three main writers of the next phase of the X-Books to boot, it is likely enough that there will be some consequence in her X-Men book.
@Omar Karindu: The Kree did send Ronan to attack the FF for Fighting a long forgotten Sentry, and later tried to stop mankind expanding into space by destroying the moon landing.
@Luis Dantas That depends on how closely Tom Brevoort wants to keep to the continuity of a character who used to be under his office. It’s possible Eve Ewing didn’t know about Al Ewing’s explanation.
Why didn’t Ms. Marvel have any reaction to the cavalry she summoned killing someone? Instead she high-fives Slag. She left the Avengers because she disapproved of their actions in not cleaning up the aftermath of superhero battles.
@Michael: My understanding is that Nextwave was intended to be out-of-continuity, but other writers apparently liked it so much they kept referencing it, resulting in considerable continuity issues.
@neutrino: Oh, I’m not saying Kirby’s Kree were heroic. But they weren’t written as conquerors so much as a smug “advanced” race that saw humanity as a primitive xenotype.
Ronan is written as wanting to just punish the FF and go home, and even tries to do so invisibly. He also judges humanity to be inferior because they are “sorely beset by greed, hatred, fear, and other viruses of the spirit!”
It’s not able that Ronan’s first appearance also has a subplots leading up to the introduction of Him (the future Adam Warlock). And we know Kirby’s intention for the Him story was different from what saw print.
The scientists were going to be relatively benign, and Him — seeing himself as a god — would have been the villain, judging them harshly, destroying them, and flying off. Stan Lee rescripted it to make the scientists the baddies and Him into another of Lee’s “naive, tormented humanist” types.
So I tend to think Kirby intended the Kree as similarly arrogant, powerful beings, but beings mostly looking at humanity scornfully, seeing them as not being worth ruling or messing with unless they mess with the Kree’s stuff.
It’s really the Captain Marvel series that brings in the idea of the Kree seeing humans as a potential threat — as opposed to some primitives who destroyed some of their property — and introduces things like the Kree-Skrull conflict and the idea that the Kree are more conquest-oriented, as opposed to some beings that had been on ancient Earth, mucked around, and left a long time ago.
The moon landing story in Fantastic Four v.1 #98 came out a couple of years after Mar-Vell had been introduced, so it reflects the version of the Kree established there. It’s also from the period where Jack Kirby was biding his time, waiting to jump ship, and wasn’t offering much in the way of plotting.
@neutrino- Emma had just explained that the real Devo was for all intents and purposes dead and this was basically a robot mind working for Omega Sentinel. So this was just putting an end to Karima’s desecration of Devo. Presumably, Karima WILL tell Devo’s family what happened at some point after Orchis and Enigma are defeated. ( Although, yes, that scene would have worked a lot better if Karima had expressed an intention to do so.)
@neutrino- The weird part is that Monica’s mother was dead in Nextwave and Eve Ewing depicted her as alive in the Photon limited series, so Ewing seems to think that was one of the Beyond Corporation’s tricks but that Monica having powers as a kid was a genuine suppressed memory.
Of course, the real issue with Monica being a mutant is that you have to wonder why she never showed up on a mutant detector.
Sorry. I meant “KAMALA will tell Devo’s family” and “KAMALA had expressed an intention” .
@Michael: She was mostly saying that to explain why she couldn’t control him. It shouldn’t have been enough to dehumanize him in Ms. Marvel’s eyes, especially since he seemed pretty human when he died. Storm was freaked out by how human a Sentinel’s scream sounded when she destroyed it.
I read this stuff for the artwork. If not for sites like this, I would be completely lost plotwise…