Cable #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
CABLE vol 4 #8
“My Dinner with Domino”
by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto
COVER / PAGE 1: Just Cable with Domino’s face in the background – and her black spot framing his head.
PAGE 2. Straightforward quote from Cable. Of course, Stryfe doesn’t just look like Cable; genetically, they’re identical, so the differences between them should be down to their different experiences.
PAGE 3. A meteorite changes course.
We’ll see it again at the end of the issue. Generally, Duggan writes Domino’s luck powers at a ridiculously high level in this story, more akin to the way Longshot has sometimes been written; traditionally Domino’s powers have been played at a subtler level than that. In voice over, Domino kind of shrugs her shoulders and acknowledges that she can’t really explain how her powers work. Explanations offered over the years have involved things like probability manipulation and subconscious telekinesis, none of which would really account for a bad guy just happening to stand in the right position to get flattened by a meteorite… but whatever. You can only really write Domino this way as a guest star; as a regular character, this sort of thing would break the book rather quickly, or at least wear thin. As a one-off, it’s fine.
Marauders #18 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS #18
“Saving Face”
by Gerry Duggan, Stefano Caselli, Matteo Lolli & Edgar Delgado
COVER / PAGE 1: Just an action shot of Iceman and Pyro. I think it might be going for a yin-yang thing, but if so, it’s pretty loose.
PAGE 2. Quote from an anonymous UN ambassador about Madripoor. Could well be Madripoor’s own ambassador, Donald Pierce. In terms of the way Madripoor has been presented in Wolverine stories over the years, the comment isn’t unreasonable.
PAGE 3. Professor X and Magneto arrive for Emma’s ceremony.
“I know you have been helping Emma with her gala…” The Hellfire Gala, first mentioned in issue #7. It’s finally going to happen in upcoming issues of X-Men, where the new team line-up is going to be held. Magneto helped Emma by acquiring the location in Giant-Size X-Men: Magneto #1.
The Incomplete Wolverine: 1982
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979 | 1980 |
1981
1982 is the year when Wolverine comes to the foreground as a lead character. I’m taking Uncanny X-Men as the cut-off points, and so we won’t reach the first Wolverine miniseries until 1983 (which is when it fits into continuity, despite having cover dates from the end of 1982). But he gets his moment in the sun in the main title, and he gets to tour some more of the Marvel Universe in guest appearances.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #153
“Kitty’s Fairy Tale”
by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Josef Rubinstein & Glynis Wein
January 1982
Kitty tells Illyana a bedtime story in which all the characters are obvious stand-ins for the X-Men. Wolverine, in Claremont’s self-parody, is an animalistic “fiend with no name”, who says “I’m mean” and eats cans of beer – all of which pretty much nails the tropes of the mysterious antihero role that he’s now drifted into. But now Logan finds all this just as charming as the rest of the team do – a few years ago, he would have gone ballistic about somebody making fun of him. (Oddly, the plot of Kitty’s story involves Logan and Scott’s rivalry over Jean, which happened before she joined the team.)
Charts – 12 February 2021
It’s 90s Eurodance chorus recycling week.
1. Olivia Rodrigo – “Drivers Licence”
Five weeks, without much difficulty.
5. Digga D & AJ Tracey – “Bringing It Back”
Easily the biggest hit to date for Digga D, who’s never previously got above 18. Of course, he’s working with AJ Tracey here, who had four straight top ten hits last year alone.
S.W.O.R.D. #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
S.W.O.R.D. vol 2 #3
“Everywhere Man”
by Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti, Ray-Anthony Height, Bernard Chang, Nico Leon & Marte Gracia
COVER / PAGE 1. Manifold doing his thing, with the outback on one side and the Alpha Flight station (with Henry Gyrich) on the other. Unlike last issue, this does have a King in Black tie-in banner, though it’s largely obscured.
PAGE 2. Manifold leaves Lila in charge.
Although it’s notionally a King in Black tie-in, this issue is largely a spotlight for Manifold, perhaps in part to introduce him to the X-books’ audience – although he’s a mutant, his previous appearances have mostly been in Secret Warriors, Avengers and Black Panther. And fair warning, I’m not hugely familiar with any of those runs.
X-Force #17 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #17
“Omega, Reconsidered”
by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara & Guru-eFX
COVER / PAGE 1. Kid Omega and Phoebe of the Stepford Cuckoos, blissfully together wile X-Force do X-Force stuff behind. The comic in the bottom left shows the cover of issue #15.
PAGES 2-4. A montage of Kid Omega’s deaths.
I don’t think any of these are meant to be specific scenes that we’ve seen before; we might or might not be intended to take them literally, and it doesn’t really matter.
The Commander Islands are a group of sparsely populated islands in the Bering Straits – they belong to Russia, but they’re pretty close to the outlying islands of Alaska. No bears live there, cyborg or otherwise, but they do have a lot of seals and guillemots.
Another of Quentin’s deaths comes from a poisoned bunch of flowers from the Church of Humanity, the Chuck Austen-era religious extremists.
Excalibur #18 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCALIBUR vol 4 #18
“Mad Women”
by Tini Howard, Marcus To & Erick Arciniega
COVER / PAGE 1. Rogue, Jubilee, Gambit and Rictor look mournful, while members of the Quiet Council (plus Cypher and Krakoa) are seen in the background. This doesn’t have much to do with the content of the issue, and feels like it was meant to cover an issue set before Betsy’s apparent return. The solicitation for this issue read “As the Council makes moves to protect mutants in the Otherworld, Excalibur must determine the fate of Betsy Braddock”.
PAGE 2. Saturnyne receives a petition from Krakoa.
Saturnyne has three empty wine glasses at her feet and apparently hasn’t been eating, given Ryl’s comments. She’s clearly still annoyed that her scheme to get Brian back as Captain Britain didn’t work, and that she’s now stuck with an entire corps of Betsies, as seen in “X of Swords”. It’s not immediately clear what’s littering the floor around her – it might be the shards of the mosaic she constructed in “X of Swords”, and which she used to reconstitute the new Captain Britain Corps, if she smashed it again after its work was done.
Charts – 7 February 2021
Apparently nobody is up for releasing singles in the same week as the Fredo album.
1. Olivia Rodrigo – “Drivers License”
Four weeks, and it’s still not even close. “Drivers License” has double the points of its nearest competition, and is still getting over 8 million streams a week. “Wellerman” by Nathan Evans featuring 220Kid & Billen Ted climbs 3-2, but it’s not likely to get any further against this sort of competition.
3. Fredo featuring Dave – “Money Talks”
18. Fredo featuring Pop Smoke & Young Adz – “Burner on Deck”
21. Fredo featuring Summer Walker – “Ready”
Three tracks from Fredo’s album “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”, which enters the album chart at number 2. That’s his highest position to date, but only just – his 2018 and 2019 releases both got to number 5. Fredo’s biggest hit single remains his appearance on Dave’s “Freaky Friday”, a number 1 in 2018; his previous best as a lead artist was number 13. It obviously helps “Money Talks” that Dave appears as a credited guest, and he’s an executive producer on the entire album to boot. Still, this seems like a step up in Fredo’s personal drawing power.
King in Black: Marauders #1
KING IN BLACK: MARAUDERS #1
“Queen in Red”
by Gerry Duggan, Luke Ross & Carlos Lopez
So this is a thing. Why is this a thing?
I will grant you, I am not the most receptive audience for a “King in Black” tie-in. To say I couldn’t care less about Knull is a considerable overstatement of my level of interest in Knull. He doesn’t even interest me as a Venom concept – Venom doesn’t cry out for a mythology involving alien space demons. But hey, Venom isn’t my concern.
What’s the thinking behind line-wide crossovers like this? There used to be a fairly obvious strategy for event comics. You had a central storyline in a core miniseries, and maybe one or two central books. And then you ran a bunch of tie-ins in assorted ongoing titles – maybe side quests, maybe just things happening in the margins of the main story. And why did you do all those tie-ins? Mainly, to sell more copies of the tie-in books.
X-Factor #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FACTOR vol 4 #7
“Suite No. 7: Scientia Vincere Tenebras”
by Leah Williams, David Baldeon & Israel Silva
COVER / PAGE 1: A rampaging Polaris with Eye-Boy in the background. It doesn’t have that much to do with the story.
PAGES 2-3. Speed visits Prodigy.
This continues the subplot of exactly how Prodigy died and how he came to be resurrected. While it’s been suggested that Sofia might have engineered her own death so that she could be resurrected with her powers restored, this issue suggests that Prodigy genuinely believes that he died in circumstances he doesn’t remember, and was legitimately resurrected.
Prodigy claims that he died “during the same O.N.E. attack on Xavier’s Institute that wiped out a bunch of other kids”. In the previous issue, he was vaguer in talking to Sofia – he told her simply that he had “died around the same time as Loa and Rahne”. Taken together, this account is decidedly confused. Rahne died in Uncanny X-Men vol 5 #16; Loa was reported dead in Uncanny X-Men vol 5 #11 (both part of the Rosenberg run). There was no O.N.E. attack on the Institute at around that period. The Institute had been destroyed by the Horsemen of Salvation in Uncanny X-Men vol 5 #3. A group of O.N.E. Sentinels commandeered by the Reavers did attack the Institute in Astonishing X-Men vol 4 #16-17, but it didn’t seem to kill any of the kids.
