X-Men: Forever #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: FOREVER #2
“Quiet Council”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Luca Maresca
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller, Jay Bowen & Kat Gregorowicz
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: Rachel, Cannonball, Jubilee, Exodus and Arakko fight a Stark Sentinel.
PAGE 2. Paul Neary obituary.
PAGES 3-5. Mother Righteous’ homunculus dissolves, and Professor X sends a message to the White Hot Room.
This scene takes place roughly alongside page 6 of Rise of the Powers of X #4. The two issues interweave, so you might want to look at the annotations for that issue.
“Sinister’s dead.” Fall of the House of X #3.
“Xavier murdered Rachel.” Rise of the Powers of X #3.
“Xavier freed me to @#$% over Rasputin, who’s also dead.” Rise of the Powers of X #4.
“Bring Rachel back. She’ll be furious, and rightly so.” Professor X makes clear that he killed Rachel in Rise #3, and Rasputin in Rise #4, so that they could be resurrected in the White Hot Room – the only way that they could readily travel there. That begs the question of why he didn’t just tell them that, but of course then Mother Righteous would have known what he was doing.
Daredevil Villains #21: Death’s-Head
DAREDEVIL #56-57 (September & October 1969)
“…And Death Came Riding!” / “In the Midst of Life…!”
Writer: Roy Thomas
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Syd Shores
Letterer: Artie Simek
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
With the Starr Saxon storyline that he inherited from Stan Lee out of the way, Roy Thomas moves on to his own stories. Thomas often liked to dust off forgotten characters from earlier issues, but apparently he didn’t find Daredevil’s rogue’s gallery all that inspiring. Instead, he bombards the book with new villains during his run. First up is Death’s-Head, not to be confused with the more popular Transformers-adjacent character.
In our previous instalment, Daredevil faked Matt Murdock’s death in order to thwart Starr Saxon’s blackmail scheme. Karen Page was distraught about that, and Daredevil made matters even worse by stealing his cane back from her. But never mind, because Starr Saxon is now dead, and Daredevil can break the good news to her that Matt is alive. So our story opens with Daredevil swinging merrily across town to see her, showing absolutely no signs of concern about the distress that he’s put her through. The man is a psychopath.
But when Matt arrives at Foggy’s office, Karen isn’t there. She’s decided to go home and see her family. We learn that Karen is the daughter of Dr Paxton Page – “the man who perfected the cobalt bomb.” A cobalt bomb was a type of nuclear bomb designed to make the target area especially uninhabitable, which seems like overkill in the event of World War III, but there you go. It was supposed to be a thought experiment to support the argument that nuclear weapons were too dangerous to exist. Roy Thomas was particularly keen on the threat of cobalt bombs; he had created the Cobalt Man for X-Men in 1967.
Dead X-Men #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DEAD X-MEN #4
“Hyperballad”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artists; David Baldeón, Bernard Chang & Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fight their alt-Moira.
PAGE 2. Paul Neary obituary.
PAGES 3-4. The X-Men and Moira are dragged back through time.
Issue #3 ended with the cyborg alt-Moira from issue #1 attacking the X-Men and their local counterparts in Moira’s fifth life. This turns out to be a bit of an anticlimax, as Dazzler calls on Rachel to haul them all back through time and bring Moira with them.
The montage on page 4 shows scenes from Moira’s earlier lives.
- Top left: Moira sees Professor X in a bar in her second life. This is page 8 panel 4 of House of X #2.
- To the right of that, a generic-looking campus scene. By elimination, this is probably meant to be her uneventful first life.
- On the second tier, on the left, Destiny threatens Moira before killing her in her third life.
- To the right of that, a Sentinel blasts Professor X and Moira in her fourth life. This is page 17 panel 4 of House of X #2.
- Below that, Moira and Logan in the Preserve in her sixth life.
- In the bottom tier, on the left, Moira and a wheelchair-bound Xavier in a futuristic city. This is Moira’s fifth life, where they built a mutant city.
- To the right of that, Moira with a sniper rifle, about to kill one of the Trask family. This is her seventh life.
- Next, Moira approaches Magneto. This is her eighth life, and specifically page 21 panel 2 of House of X #2.
- To the right of that, Moira with Apocalypse. This is her ninth life.
- And finally, above Frenzy’s head, a generic head shot of Moira, presumably representing her tenth and present life (from the perspective of this divergent Moira).
Fall of the House of X #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #4
“The Turn”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artists: Jucas Werneck & Jethro Morales
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Moira and Cyclops fight.
PAGE 2. Paul Neary obituary.
PAGE 3. Data page (!). The opening quote is Magneto’s line “Promise me you’ll watch Charles… Three began Krakoa. Moira betrayed us. I… deserted my post. Now Charles is alone with his dream.” This is from Magneto’s death scene in X-Men Red #7, which has since been positioned as foreshadowing for Professor X caving to Orchis’ demands in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023. That in turn ties to Professor X’s role in this issue, of which more later.
PAGES 4-6. Apocalypse leads his forces against Orchis.
Up in the sky are the two crossed space stations from the previous issue.
Apocalypse and his forces have arrived in time to save Krakoa from Orchis. Krakoa has been on the run from them ever since issue #1. As Apocalypse points out, Krakoa feeds off mutant energy, which wasn’t a problem when it had a whole mutant population and could take trivial amounts from each one. Without the mutants around, he’s been starving, so Apocalypse needs to offer up some life force.
Resurrection of Magneto #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO #4
“Reawakening”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artists: David Curiel & Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Magneto attacks Orchis footsoldiers. He’s in his black costume, rather than the red one worn in the issue.
PAGE 2. Obituary for Paul Neary.
PAGE 3. Magneto advances towards Orchis soldiers.
As in previous issues, this opening splash page is a tarot reference – it’s loosely based on the Rider-Waite version of the Hierophant. That card doesn’t show the Hierophant with three helmets, but it does show him in a purple cape between two pillar type structures, raising his right hand in the same position as Magneto here, and with two worshippers in the position of the two Orchis footsoldiers. It also has two crossed keys lying on the floor, replaced here by two Orchis cards.
Daredevil Villains #20: Starr Saxon
We’re skipping Daredevil #48, which is another Stilt-Man story. And with that, we’ve reached the end of Stan Lee’s run as writer.
DAREDEVIL #49-55
(January to August 1969)
Writer: Stan Lee (#49-50, 53), Roy Thomas (#51-55)
Pencillers: Gene Colan (#49, #53-55), Barry Smith (#50-52)
Inker: George Klein (#49, #51, #53-54), Johnny Craig (#50, #52), Syd Shores (#55)
Letterer: Artie Simek (#49, #51, #53-55), Herb Cooper (#50), Sam Rosen (#52)
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
You only have to look at those credits to see that this is a bit chaotic. Perhaps Stan Lee was keen to stick around until issue #50 because it was a nice round number. But instead of ending his run with a grand finale, Lee hands the book over to Roy Thomas in mid storyline. And the story just keeps going, in the book’s longest arc to date. In practice it’s really six issues rather than seven – issue #53 is a fill-in with a token framing sequence to continue the plot – but that’s still far longer than any continuous arc so far, and far longer than anything we’ll get in the rest of Roy Thomas’ run. The Masked Marauder hung around for the better part of a year, but that was as a recurring villain. This is one continuing arc.
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.
Daredevil Villains #19: Biggie Benson
DAREDEVIL #47 (December 1968)
“Brother, Take My Hand”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: George Klein
Letterer: Artie Simek
Colourist: Not credited
Biggie Benson is another random crime boss who shows up in Daredevil as a one-off villain. I could stop there. But there are a few reasons to spend more time on this issue. The least interesting of those reasons is that Biggie isn’t strictly a one-off villain; he comes back looking for revenge in a couple of issues time. But that’s just to get the plot rolling.
A better reason to pay attention to this story is that it introduces Willie Lincoln, who shows up periodically as a supporting character for the next year or so. Since the supporting cast still consists entirely of Foggy Nelson, Karen Page and Debbie Harris, any new recurring character is at least somewhat noteworthy.
But more than that, this is A Very Special Issue, and we haven’t had one of those yet.
We open with a flashback to a few months ago, as Daredevil visits Vietnam to entertain the troops with a display of acrobatics. In the audience is Willie, who is losing his sight after being injured in battle. Willie is a huge Daredevil fan, and apparently he’s insisted on hanging around in order to see his idol in person. This being the Silver Age, the melodrama is cranked up to 11, and so Willie’s sight gives out on him in the middle of Daredevil’s performance.
X-Force #50 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #50
“Violent Answers”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colour artist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. It’s the final issue of this run so X-Force pose for the camera. Look, some of them are even smiling.
PAGES 2-4. Beast II and Wonder Man reach Beast Prime.
We’re picking up from the end of the previous issue, with Beast II and Wonder Man heading out to sea in search of the Krakoa-era Beast, and X-Force opening fire because they figure this new Beast has already turned bad on them. The Krakoan Beast – helpfully wearing a distinctive suit at this point – promptly punts Wonder Man back to the surface.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
Rise of the Powers of X #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
RISE OF THE POWERS OF X #3
“The Ex Life of Moira”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: R.B. Silva
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Moira, on a bench, is approached by someone holding a gun. This is Moira as she appeared in the opening scene of Powers of X #1, where she approaches Charles Xavier and tells him about her earlier lives. The gun is presumably intended to be the same one that Professor X is holding when he approaches a much younger Moira in the issue itself.
PAGE 2. Young Moira leaves the house expecting her powers to emerge.
As established in House of X #2, Moira is reborn with the full memories of her previous lives but has to go through the motions of being a child in her first few years. This is the day when her powers are expected to emerge; until then, she can die permanently. We saw a version of this same scene at the start of issue #2, from Enigma’s perspective. In this version, from Moira’s perspective, her mother Lady Kinross is more clearly visible. Enigma’s version also has a panel of her looking rather downbeat before she leaves the house; here she seems more enthusiastic.
