Fireworks

“Fireworks”
Planet Size X-Men #1
Written by Gerry Duggan
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

• Is there life on Mars? Well, now there is. It was clear enough to anyone paying attention that this issue would be about the X-Men terraforming Mars, so going into the issue it was more about discovering exactly how and why this was being done. There were some things we already knew coming in – a need to replace their pharmaceutical facilities in the Savage Land to meet production goals, the pressure of learning that Nimrod was online and they couldn’t wait much longer on this part of the long-term plan of expansion – but in this story we learn that above all else, claiming Mars was about giving the Arakkii a proper home and getting around the problem of Earth suddenly being the host of millions of powerful, warlike mutants with no respect for humanity. 

• The miracle of a circuit of omega mutants transforming a dead world into a planet that can permanently support life is remarkable and quite a thing to behold on the page – oh man, look at those X-Men go! It’s the freakiest show – but the real flex on display in this issue comes at the end in a text page in which Mars is renamed Arakko, humans are forbidden to go anywhere besides one particular zone devoted to diplomacy, and the planet is declared the capital of the solar system. Oh, right, and Arakko is the “first” mutant world, implying an empire to come. Well, I sure hope someone – like, say, the lead writer of the franchise who developed most of these ideas and only has four scheduled comic issues for the rest of the year – writes more about all of this! 

• Pepe Larraz continues to dazzle with the sheer scope of his artwork and his gift for designing evocative new characters and settings. I don’t think there’s a lot of other artists who could’ve pulled this issue off with as much cinematic grandeur, but I say “cinematic” as though anyone working in cinema has approached some of the feats depicted so gracefully on these pages. The issue is full of things he’s designing from scratch that will become the basis of who knows how many other artists’ work – the Lake Hellas Diplomatic Ring, Port Prometheus, and the key Arrako leaders Xilo, Sobunar, and Lactuca – but the most incredible spectacle is how he manages to depict the transportation of millions of Arakkii mutants to their new planet. Every one of these pages is worth staring at and dissecting, the guy is just outstanding. The work he accomplished here cements him as one of the top tier definitive/transformative X-Men artists along with John Byrne, Arthur Adams, Jim Lee, Joe Madureira, and Frank Quitely.

• It feels a little strange that this issue wasn’t written by Jonathan Hickman but Gerry Duggan delivers here in a big way, conveying the grandeur of this moment while keeping it grounded in the characters, most especially Magneto and Jean Grey. Duggan pulls off a balancing act of writing in his own voice while matching Hickman’s tone, certainly much more so than any other writer in the stable. Some of this comes down to both of them understanding what they have in Larraz, an artist who thrives most when asked to do very narratively ambitious things. Duggan and Larraz have previously worked together on Uncanny Avengers and the two have real chemisty, so this issue sets the bar high for what they’ll be doing together soon on X-Men. 

• Magneto is the star of this issue and the prime mover on the project to transform Mars into Arakko, and in this act he cements himself as a savior to his people on par with Xavier leading the creation of the Resurrection Protocols. And of course, there’s Apocalypse, who rescued the Arakkii from Amenth in the first place. The Great Men of mutantdom have in fact done miraculous deeds for their kind – why wouldn’t people follow them? Also, I don’t know if this is something Hickman and Duggan had in mind, but Magneto essentially giving “Lebensraum” to his liberated brethren is quite a thing for a Holocaust survivor. 

• Absalon Mercator is the only omega mutant of Earth who does not participate in this very literal act of world-building, though we do see Magneto turned away from his mysterious realm in Otherworld. Clearly something is planned for Mercator, so the question is…when? 

• I am not a scientist by any stretch, but the science in this issue seems fairly legit! The final text page gets into more details from the perspective of NASA and is attributed to Thom DiRocco, who turns out to be a real scientist that Duggan follows on Twitter, so it’s a reasonable to assume he was consulted on how to do this story as correctly as possible. 

• It’s hard to fathom what it would be like to respond to the events of this issue as a human being. The notion of Mars suddenly being an inhabitable world full of powerful mutants with a totally alien society is wild, but living in a reality in which mutants are capable of doing these godlike feats would be a lot to process even if you’re already used to the idea of mutants and superheroes. I understand why a lot of people would feel frightened, but I feel like a lot of people would be awed and probably process this in religious terms of miracles and acts on behalf of God. 

• It would seem the great error in all of this is the declaration of Arakko as the capital of the solar system when Arakko is definitely NOT on the same page as Krakoa and we know from X of Swords that this is a society that up until a few weeks ago was on a path of brutal conquest. Now, sure, some of that was due to the influence of Annihilation, but c’mon. Magneto, with his goal focused on expansion, is taking a massive leap of faith here – or, really, he’s just blinded by hubris. Also, it’s more than a little condescending to force Planet Arakko into a diplomacy role to teach them a better way of existing. And Storm rather bluntly speaks to greatest benefit of having the Arakkii on Mars – it’s basically a whole planet of incredibly powerful randos who can be a cannon fodder defense one planet away from Earth.

• The Arakkii being pushed into a diplomatic role is also not the best move given that they know almost nothing about Earth, much less the Shi’ar or any of the other Marvel alien societies. Maybe their lack of history with anyone besides the Krakoan mutants makes them theoretically neutral?

• It’s worth noting that the Arakkii precognitive mutant Idyll’s prophecy from X-Men #14 was clearly referencing what would eventually happen on Mars, the red planet.

Empty Nest

“Empty Nest”
X-Men #17
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Penciled by Brett Booth
Inked by Adelso Corono
Color art by Sunny Gho

• Let’s start with the art, since that’s going to be the focus of most anyone’s response to this issue. The guest artist on this issue is Brett Booth, who is well-documented as being a major creep who has threatened online critics. In an ideal world, he simply would not be drawing X-Men comics in 2021– there’s no shortage of great artists who are not hugely problematic people who could be working with Jonathan Hickman on the flagship book. I really hope this will be his only contribution to this title.

Booth’s art on this issue isn’t terrible, though it’s a major stylistic shift away from the aesthetics of this era. His art is very ‘90s, merging elements of Jim Lee, Image-era Marc Silvestri, Whilce Portacio, and Michael Turner into a synthesis that isn’t quite a personal style so much as it’s a very good aggregate approximation of what cool comics art would’ve been like about 20-30 years ago. This is a style very associated with X-Men, but it’s been a long time since X-Men comics have actually looked like this. It’s an aesthetic that was once aligned with a stylistic revolution but now only comes off as retro, especially since Booth is coming on after recent issues featuring the more contemporary (and technically far more accomplished) styles of Phil Noto, Pepe Larraz, and Mahmud Asrar. 

Brett Booth’s style, however artistically inbred, is well suited to this particular issue, which calls for a lot of action scenes full of aliens to offset the more dry elements of Hickman’s plot. Booth’s presence here seems to be a deliberate callback to Uncanny X-Men #275-277, in which Jim Lee drew Chris Claremont’s final foray into Shi’ar space before getting pushed off the book a few months later. Booth’s draftsmanship is definitely not on par with that of Lee, but he can provide a similar vibe and spark some nostalgia for that era. He tosses in a little extra nostalgia value in drawing Cyclops and Jean Grey in their Walter Simonson-designed X-Factor costumes from the late ‘80s, making him one of the few to run with Hickman’s invitation for artists to draw the characters in whatever costumes they like from the past. 

I’m damning Booth with faint praise here – it’s not as bad as it could be, he’s not as horribly miscast as he could have been, he’s hitting nostalgia buttons for readers of a certain age – but it’s only because I’m reviewing the actual pages here. I don’t think a person who has behaved as he has should be getting this level of professional work, and I think Marvel editorial should seriously rethink their priorities and policies with creators. 

• This is one of those Hickman issues where he’s clearly setting plot in motion and doing his best to make it fun and enjoyable, even if it’s pretty obviously the story equivalent of eating vegetables so you can get your dessert later on. In plot terms, the main thing is that Storm is now in the position of collecting a major favor from the empress of the Shi’ar, which is clearly to do with the promised major Storm developments to come later this year. (This month’s issue of Marauders, which in retrospect takes place after this story, suggests that Storm is ready to move on to…something.) 

On a thematic level I believe we’re meant to take the central plot, in which the X-Men squash a rebellion against the Shi’ar Empire led by a cleric from a vassal world called Stygia, as a harbinger of things to come as Krakoa appears to be moving towards expansion in the Reign of X phase. The tension in this issue is that the Stygians have a valid complaint against the empire in the wake of an intergalactic economic crash, and the X-Men’s actions in rescuing Empress Xandra and preserving the Shi’ar status quo are not justified as anything besides maintaining a crucial alliance with this space empire. I presume Hickman intends for us to feel ambivalent about this. Given everything else he’s ever written, I can’t imagine he’s setting up Krakoan expansionism to be a fully positive thing.

• The last two pages elaborate on the X-Men election concept that was announced in the previous issue, and it looks like Hickman is indeed carrying over the “audience participates in the fictional election” tradition from the Legion of Super Heroes by letting the readers get to vote in one of ten characters – Banshee, Forge, Polaris, Boom Boom, Tempo, Cannonball, Sunspot, Strong Guy, Marrow, or Armor – in an online poll. It’s a cool idea, and I would say that Hickman’s use of Cannonball and Sunspot in this issue and obvious delight in writing both of them puts a thumb on the scale in favor of those two. Aside from them, I think Polaris and Armor have pretty good chances here. 

The in-story election makes it very difficult to figure out who might get voted in as X-Men. Who is popular on Krakoa? Who would people want to be their X-Men? I figure a substantial chunk of the roster will be classic members that the population will trust to protect them – Wolverine, for sure, and probably people like Colossus and Rogue. (This logic would apply to Storm and Nightcrawler if they were not members of the Quiet Council.) But aside from that, who might be trusted and beloved by the Krakoan nation, and also be someone Hickman would want to write regularly? I figure Monet would be a given, probably Magik too. I can imagine the people voting in The Gorgon based on his heroic actions in X of Swords, but not being aware that his flawed resurrection has brought him back as essentially a new person. Maybe the Arraki vote in Bei the Blood Moon?  Maybe the ex-villain population of Krakoa would want to get someone like Avalanche or Blob in there?

Sworded Out

“Sworded Out”
X-Men #16
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Phil Noto

• The end of this issue introduces a new structural conceit for the X-Men – Cyclops and Jean Grey will be the leaders, and the rest of the members will be voted in by the citizens of Krakoa. The concept is basically an inversion of a tradition from the Legion of Super Heroes – rather than the leaders be voted in, it’s the actual membership of the team. It looks like we won’t see how this plays out for a little while as the new team will be revealed at the Hellfire Gala, but it does seem like an idea that is going to backfire on Cyclops and Jean in some way. But in any case, it’s very pointedly different from the complete lack of democracy that went into the creation of the Quiet Council, and everyone involved is going into this new iteration of the X-Men with some understanding that the Council and the X-Men will come into conflict at some point. 

• This issue also establishes the new status quo of Arakko, which is now on Earth as a result of Apocalypse’s bargain with Saturnyne at the end of X of Swords. Arakko – as a sentient body of land, and as a people – refuses to merge with Krakoa. Isca the Unbeaten is revealed to be one of the leaders of Arakko, and though she sits as part of a governing body, her power to never lose essentially makes her the de facto ruler of the nation as she always gets her way. She meets with Xavier and Magneto and peacefully but bluntly explains that the people of Arakko are hardened by centuries of war and will not be able to shake that off any time soon. 

Phil Noto’s art on this very talky scene is carried in large part by his very thoughtful coloring in which Xavier and Magneto wear their black and white clothing on a cool green background while Isca is surrounded by red and brown foliage that matches the earth tones of her armor. Noto also does a good job of conveying how gentle and effete Xavier is, framing him as small and distant in the frame as he clutches a Krakoan flower. I think this choice may have had a lot to do with how much dialogue he has in those panels, but it’s very effective in contrast with the tight shots of Isca that make her appear strong, confident, and unflappable. 

• The most important bit of news on the Arakko front is buried somewhat in the issue, as Cypher reminds the Quiet Council that there’s roughly twenty times as many Arakki mutants as there are Krakoan mutants. The immediate implication of this is that this would be quite bad for Krakoa should the two nations come into conflict, but the bigger problem is more obviously what is going to happen once the rest of the Earth finds out that a nation of several million battle-hardened mutants from a hell world now reside on the planet with them. I suspect that once this news gets to Orchis it will lead to the activation of Nimrod and the deployment of the machines being built in Sentinel City on Mercury, and this will go very, very badly for the mutants of Arakko. I suspect that one way or another only a massive tragedy on Arakko and the heroic intervention of the X-Men will unite the Krakoans and Arakki. 

• I do hope we get to see some Arakki mutants venture out into Earth and decide they like it a lot better than the nightmare they were trapped in. Seems reasonable, right? Surely some nature will beat out nurture here. 

Destruction

“X of Swords: Chapter 20”
X-Men #15
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Mahmud Asrar
Color art by Sunny Gho

“X of Swords: Chapter 21”
Excalibur #15
Written by Tini Howard
Art by Mahmud Asrar and Stefano Caselli
Color art by Sunny Gho and Rachelle Rosenberg

“X of Swords: Chapter 22”
X of Swords: Destruction
Written by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

• And so it ends! For me this hit just the right balance of hitting the beats I expected based on foreshadowing and structure while throwing enough curveballs to keep the plot suspenseful and interesting. 

• The most surprising part of the finale is the simple fact that Apocalypse made it out of the story alive! It felt a lot like this storyline was meant to end tragically for him, but instead he comes out of this story as both the character who ends the conflict and liberates the mutants of Arakko, but also gets a happy ending in reuniting with his wife and children in Amenth. He got everything he wanted, and he earned it by letting go of his ego. It’s amazing to think that in a little over a year Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard completely transformed Apocalypse from megalomaniacal arch villain with an incoherent philosophy into a sympathetic protagonist with a poignant backstory that explains a lot of what he’s done in the past but mostly points to interesting new directions for the character, whether he’s played as a hero or antagonist. This is a transformation on par with Chris Claremont fleshing out and adding depth and pathos to Magneto through the 1980s. 

• And as Apocalypse gets everything he set out to accomplish, Opal Luna Saturnyne maneuvers everything in place to achieve victory over Amenth but quite definitively is denied the one thing she desires – Brian Braddock as both Captain Britain and her lover. Her role in this story is interesting, never quite conforming to protagonist or antagonist, and ending with an acknowledgment of her broken heart. 

• X-Men #15 reestablishes the formal existence of the X-Men, which is a funny thing to say about the fifteenth issue of a comic book series called X-Men. There was some implication that anyone who was in action under Cyclops’ command was by default the X-Men, but the text pages in this issue show that the team was being phased out by the Krakoan government in favor of giving military power to the captains and X-Force (“the FORCE initiative”) for defense needs. But here we have Cyclops and Jean Grey deciding that there needs to be X-Men to act heroically without the hindrance of the Quiet Council’s politics. Jean is forced to step down from her seat on the council, which slightly disappoints her though she seems far more excited about creating a new sort of X-Men. It seems that the “anybody who needs to be an X-Man is an X-Man” approach will continue in a more formalized way, but likely with a more defined core group starring in Hickman’s flagship.

It feels more exciting for this development to happen as a response to a major crisis, and for it to come at a cost for Jean Grey. In retrospect the first year of Hickman stories was mostly setting narratives in motion and establishing the status quos of Krakoa, but now that we’ve got that all firmly in place the series can actually move forward with the most obvious element back in the mix – a team of superheroes. And Hickman is not hedging on the superhero thing, Cyclops and Jean Grey are presented as truly brave and idealistic people with pure motives, and the X-Men is a force for unambiguous good as a counter to the more pragmatic and morally dubious actions of the Quiet Council. This very earnest and retro portrayal of heroism feels as refreshing as any of Hickman’s more radical premises. 

• Jean Grey’s forced exit from the Quiet Council and Apocalypse going off to Amenth marks the first shift in the Krakoan government, and I’m curious to see what the council does to replace them. I think it’s quite possible they don’t replace Apocalypse on the Autumn seats, given that he has not given up his position and he’s the man who reunited Krakoa and Arakko and liberated the Arakkii from Amenth. It’s a given that Jean will be replaced, presumably by another traditional X-Men member, as that was more or less the point of the Summer seats. Archangel seems to be a likely candidate, or maybe Banshee? Iceman doesn’t feel right, Beast is the head of the mutant CIA, Wolverine wouldn’t want it, and most everyone else is busy. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to get someone like Mirage in the mix, to represent the mutants of the Sextant. 

• And what of Betsy Braddock? The ending establishes that she is the one true Captain Britain henceforth and that there is a new Captain Britain Corps of infinite versions of Betsy throughout the multiverse, much to the chagrin of Saturnyne. The text page at the end of X of Swords: Destruction indicates that our Betsy – Betsy Prime – is “missing,” which is quite an improvement over her presumed death in Excalibur #14. But we don’t see this, as this is setting up the next arc of Excalibur. That book should be quite interesting going forward, between the contentious relationship between Betsy and Saturnyne, and how much this story fleshed out the realms of Otherworld. I’m quite looking forward to seeing more of Sevalith and The Crooked Market in particular. And hey, what about Mercator?

• Isca the Unbeaten did turn to join the X-Men once the tide is turned by Apocalypse claiming the mantle of Annihilation, but I feel like it’s a fumbled beat. She doesn’t actually DO anything in this moment, she is simply shown feeling the compulsion to switch sides. It’s one of the few beats in Destruction that feels sort of inert. But it will be interesting to see what becomes of Isca – she is remaining on Arakko, and hence will be living on Earth. I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot of the Arakkii’s acclimation into Krakoan society through her eyes. It’s bound to be a very complicated process. Millions of Arakkii have been liberated from the hellish dominion of Amenth, but will they actually interpret this as such? It looks like they might just be going from being the vassal state of Amenth to the vassal state of Krakoa.

• The merging of Krakoa and Arakko represents the next stage of expansion for mutant society, loosely following the stages of societal types laid out in Powers of X. It seems very likely that the overall Hickman story follows Krakoa as it moves up through these ranks, and the next step is probably expanding into the cosmos in alliance with the Shi’ar. The “next” teaser at the end of Destruction certainly points in this expansionist/imperialist direction: Reign of X. 

• Pepe “The God” Larraz delivers some truly astonishing pages in Destruction, this time shifting gears from the more atmospheric world building of the previous two Larraz issues to focus more on busy fight scenes in which he’s require to draw a staggering number of characters like a modern George Perez. His storytelling is excellent here, nailing all the big dramatic beats with great claritiy and potent emotion. His work on this storyline cements his position as the best and most exciting currently working for Marvel Comics, though nearly all the runners up – Mahmud Asrar, R.B. Silva, Rod Reis, Phil Noto, Joshua Cassara – also provided art for the story, and Carmen Carnero and Stefano Caselli stepped up in a major way for this too. 

Into The Storm

“Into the Storm” / “The World” / “Disintegration” 
Giant Size X-Men: Jean Grey & Emma Frost, Giant Size X-Men: Fantomex, and Giant Size X-Men: Storm
Written by Jonathan Hickman with Russell Dauterman (Jean/Emma)
Art by Russell Dauterman (Jean/Emma, Storm) and Rod Reis (Fantomex)
Color art by Matthew Wilson (Jean/Emma, Storm) 

The Giant Size X-Men specials were initially sold as stand-alone one-shots, but as it turns out three of the five issues are, in fact, a coherent story arc that appears to advance the slow-burning Children of the Vault subplot. These three issues amount to 90 pages of story, but the plot isn’t particularly dense: Storm gets sick following getting zapped in her attack on the Vault in X-Men #5, Jean Grey and Emma Frost discover that she’s got a “machine virus” and will die within a month, Monet figures out that she can be saved in The World, and Fantomex brings Storm, Monet, and Cypher to The World to eventually extract the virus from Storm’s body. 

The first issue of this arc is essentially a tribute/cover version of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s famous “quiet issue” of New X-Men in which Jean and Emma perform a similar “psychic rescue” with Charles Xavier, and as such it’s more of a showcase for Russell Dauterman’s considerable skills as an artist. The Fantomex issue is also a blatant Grant Morrison tribute, with several scenes involving Fantomex quoted directly from New X-Men issues. This is all very nice and well-executed, but feels a little odd in the context of Jonathan Hickman’s larger project on the X-Men, which before this point had excised the “hey, remember this?” nostalgic references that had piled up quite a bit in recent years and fully metastasized in Mark Guggenheim’s vile X-Men Gold run. And true, those nostalgic nods were almost always to Chris Claremont comics, but the spirit is still the same. Also, the “hey, I’ve already read this” feeling makes these issues seem more slight than they actually are. 

The Fantomex issue illustrated by Rod Reis is quite good. The plot depicts scenes from Fantomex’s life in which he brings different groups of people into The World, the artificial environment with accelerated time where he was created and raised. There’s an implication of unreliable narrative, that there’s only so much we should believe about what we’re seeing from the perspective of a man who is a living lie from a fake world – a “living contrivance, a product… a hall of mirrors with no end” as Psylocke puts it in Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. But as much as the truth of it all is ambiguous, we see how Fantomex’s awareness of this weighs on his actual soul. 

The big reveal of this issue is that Fantomex and Ultimaton – both products of A.I.M. and Weapon Plus’ project of developing mutant-hunting super soldiers in The World – are essentially identical twins raised with as much variance as possible. Fantomex was discarded as a baby, and the other gradually evolved into the Ultimaton we see in Morrison and Chris Bachalo’s “Assault On Weapon Plus” story. Each time Fantomex returns to The World he encounters Ultimaton at different stages of his development, always asking him if he would like to leave with him. Ultimaton always declines, and as time goes on sees Fantomex as an abstraction – “some primal direction of man, some primal direction of me.” The issue leaves off with Fantomex bringing Storm, Monet, and Cypher to The World, and the plot thread concludes in the Storm issue with Fantomex deciding to remain in The World with his ersatz brother. To be continued, of course, but there’s a nice emotional charge to this beat – Fantomex embracing the only sort of family he has, and giving up something of himself to help or guide this warped reflection of himself. 

The Storm issue covers interesting ground. It’s a story about Storm fighting for her life, though in the first few pages Emma Frost points out how “overly dramatic” this is given that they have the means to immediately resurrect her. The point of the story is that Storm is a person who would fight for survival regardless – she refuses to surrender to anything, she will always try to find a way to overcome obstacles. Storm is also quite dramatic. It’s part of her charm. 

The mechanics of the plot of this issue are driven largely by Monet and Cypher, who are clearly two of Hickman’s favorite characters. The story serves as a reminder that part of Monet’s impressive set of powers is advanced intelligence, and her genius is ultimately what saves Storm. Monet largely serves a plot function here, but her presence in this story, as well as in House of X and Empyre: X-Men amount to Hickman making a case for her as an essential X-Men heavy hitter from here on out after years of the character being sidelined as a result of relative obscurity. 

Cypher is more of an observer and interpreter in the plot, just as he was in the Nightcrawler special. At the end of the issue we see the machine virus entirely removed from Storm’s body and held in a containment field to prevent it from rapidly evolving in the artificially accelerated time of The World. In the epilogue we see that Cypher recognizes that the machine virus is sentient and conscious. This is left as a ticking time bomb, as the possibility of an artificial intelligence developed in the artificial time of The Vault attaining “evolutionary critical mass” in the slightly different artificial time of The World can become an existential threat to mutants down the line. 

We’ll be returning to this machine virus thing at some point, but it’s hard to say which ongoing plot this beat connects to – is this going to remain a part of the Vault thread? Or maybe, since there’s a direct tie from A.I.M. to Orchis, this is part of how their Sentinels evolve to a Nimrod state? It could just as well be part of the Phalanx subplot. Just as with the mysterious tower built for Emma Frost in the Magneto special, it feels like it could be quite a while before we find out the actual significance of this issue to the macro plot. 

These specials were designed as showcases for artists, and as can be expected, these issues give a lot of room for Russell Dauterman and Rod Reis to flex. They’re both quite good but I prefer the loose, gestural qualities of Reis’ art to the extremely tight and slick lines of Dauterman. The latter’s work is beautiful and dynamic but a bit too stiff at times, and while he can draw very nuanced facial expressions, there are many panels where the faces seem oddly blank and vacant. Dauterman is called on to draw abstract environments in both of his issues, and while they work well on his terms, they seem rather cold and static compared to Reis’ more surreal and dreamlike drawings within The World. It’s an intriguing contrast of styles, with Reis more connected to cartooning while Dauterman’s aesthetics are more rooted in animation. 

The King Egg

“The King Egg”
X-Men #9
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu
Color art by Sunny Gho

Before Marvel formally announced Jonathan Hickman would be taking over the X-Men franchise they ran a few in-house teaser ads, the first of which was a white page with text that read: “When two aggressive species share the same environment, evolution demands adaptation or dominance.” So far we’ve seen Hickman address this theme with mutants vs humans, mutants vs artificial intelligence, and mutants vs homo novissima. This issue hits the theme on an intergalactic level, with the story opening in the distant past with the Kree Supreme Intelligence authorizing the genetic manipulation of the highly adaptive Brood as a weapon against their rival empire, the Shi’ar. The King Egg produces a patriarch which can sieze control over the intergalactic Brood hive mind and shift their purpose towards killing the Shi’ar. The Brood queens have responded to the threat by sending all their drones to destroy it. Here we have an advanced species subverting the adaptability of another species, and that species fighting for its survival at all costs. 

The majority of this issue is big action in outer space with the X-Men, Starjammers, and Shi’ar Imperial Guard fighting off the Brood. Leinil Francis Yu is always great with space battles, having previously done this sort of thing with Hickman when they worked together on the Infinity storyline in Avengers. There’s a great sense of scale and momentum in his pages – it’s all very much a comic, but the art conveys the feeling of a big budget movie. 

The story wraps up with a surprise twist – Broo, the mutant Brood student of the X-Men who has joined Cyclops and his crew on this mission, is compelled to eat the King Egg and suddenly becomes the king of all Brood. As a result of this, the mutants have effectively taken control of the Brood via the gentle and good natured Broo. This is a brilliant use of Broo, an extremely annoying character who now has a strong sense of purpose in the greater scheme of things. It’s still hard to tell exactly where Hickman is headed with this space storyline, but it’s safe to say we will eventually see the mutants try to use the Brood as weapons. But will Broo, always portrayed as a sweetheart, be down with this plan? Or will the serum created by the Kree in the King Egg override his every intention and push towards their plan in attacking the Shi’ar? 

Notes:

• The next issue is a tie-in with Empyre, an Avengers/Fantastic Four event about the Kree and Skrull uniting against Earth. It seems pretty likely the complications of the Kree’s meddling with the Brood will be the occasion for intersecting the plots? 

• Jean Grey’s monologue expressing the point of view of the Brood queens is a necessary bit of exposition, but I like how it’s also an expression of the character’s profound empathy. 

Hunting Ground

“Hunting Ground” / “The Sword of Damocles” / “The Skeleton Key”
X-Force #1-3
Written by Benjamin Percy
Art by Joshua Cassara
Color art by Dean White and Guru-eFX

The first issue of Benjamin Percy and Joshua Cassara’s new X-Force series arrived in the context of a mostly quite jovial Dawn of X relaunch in the wake of House of X/Powers of X and spoiled the triumphant mood by ending with a nightmare scenario that threatened to undo everything: Human commandos arrive on Krakoa and murder several mutants, including Charles Xavier, whose Cerebro resurrection machine was destroyed in the process. It felt bad. It felt like “oh no, not this again.” But within two more issues, Percy and Cassara have proven themselves to not be doing anything cheap or dull, and the grim actions of the debut issue serve as the inciting incident for a series in which a set of X-Men do whatever they can to avoid anything like that happening again. It’s X-Force reimagined as a mutant CIA, and thankfully it seems that Percy isn’t interested in making that out to be an entirely good or respectable thing.

Of all the writers working in the context of Jonathan Hickman’s new X-Men status quo, Percy seems to be the one who best understands and matches his tone, and is the most invested in developing the consequences of the mutants creating a nation-state. Percy, who literally wrote a book about how to thrill audiences, is very good at pacing the action of his story and delivering bold, memorable images at a regular clip. Cassara’s art is well-suited to the hyper-violence and creepy imagery of Percy’s story, and is particularly good at framing pivotal moments and reveals. Every page has a very thoughtful rhythm, and Percy’s use of text pages steers away from Hickman’s use of charts to embrace his strength as a novelist with pages with plot beats that work better with the quiet interiority of prose than they would as illustrated pages.

Quentin Quire is featured prominently in the second and third issues, and Percy’s version of the character is based fully in Grant Morrison’s original characterization of him as an arrogant young man who is a bit too eager to tell you about how much he loathes humanity and feels that Charles Xavier is too soft in his morality. This is great news if you’re like me and despise Jason Aaron’s cartoonish and defanged approach to the character, but it should be noted that Percy has not entirely abandoned some surface aspects of that version of the character and his relationship with Wolverine. But it’s a relief to see that the most important thematic elements of Quire are back in play without necessarily turning back the clock on more recent character development.

The third issue, in which Xavier is inevitably brought back to life by The Five and Jean Grey using a back-up Cerebro helmet, goes deep into the philosophical – and narrative – question of what happens when all mutants are effectively immortal now. Jean Grey, who was no stranger to death and resurrection before all this, gives a soliloquy about her feelings on the matter and concludes that without the threat of death, people become less selfish and more focused on the collective good. I like this framing a lot – it becomes less about bravery, and more about an aspirational value of cooperation and selflessness.

Hordeculture

“Hordeculture” 
X-Men #3
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu
Inks by Gerry Alanguilan and Yu
Color art by Sunny Gho and Rain Beredo

The biggest surprise of Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men and New Mutants so far has not been about plot developments – all that renovation was left to House of X/Powers of X – but rather about the tone: Who could’ve predicted from all that heavy and portentious setup that it’d be so funny? New Mutants is played like a sitcom, and while X-Men has been doing a lot of world-building and filling out big ideas, it’s been very light-hearted and sorta goofy. In this issue the X-Men discover that their newest enemy is a group of ecological terrorists comprised of four elderly women who are rather transparently based upon the cast of Golden Girls. That may sound awful, and it probably would be in the hands of a lesser creative team. But Hickman’s dry wit and Leinil Yu’s designs make it all work, and this quartet of scientists is played for laughs while revealing themselves to be a credible ongoing threat to the X-Men and Krakoa. 

I like to imagine the original pitch Hickman gave to Marvel editorial in which he had to explain that from now on flowers would be central to the X-Men mythos, and that they would need to have enemies going forward who would want to steal and breed their special mutant flowers. Hordeculture – NOT Whoredeculture! – are a group of rogue botanists who were radicalized by their experiences in the agrochemical and biotech industries and have decided to take it upon themselves to sieze control of the world’s food supply and return to the world to a “natural state” with seven billion fewer people on it.

Of course, Krakoa throws their plan into chaos and they successfully steal Krakoan flowers for their studies. The X-Men lose, and this sets up inevitable chaos down the line. This issue is just…planting seeds…for later developments, but it’s a rather fun bit of narrative gardening.

This issue is the first where we get a glimpse at the new interpersonal dynamic of Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Emma Frost. It’s been a very long time since these characters were all together in print: They were the central love triangle of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men in the early 2000s, but Jean died at the end of that run and it’s only just now that all three are alive together at the same time. Hickman is clearly having a lot of fun with this, and is deliberately subverting expectations while leaving all salacious details to the subtext. So from what we’ve seen in this and the last couple issues: Jean and Emma have a catty rivalry but also respect one another as friends and colleagues, and there is a strong insinuation that there is an open relationship situation in which Emma gets to “borrow” Cyclops from time to time, but Jean is his primary partner. (Presumably a fair trade-off for Jean to hook up with her housemate Wolverine now and then.) What a fun, sexy time for them all.

Some notes:

• As the X-Men accumulate new enemies from the worlds of science, politics, and business please note that almost all of them are elderly and/or white. They all have very understandable political agendas that are more about seizing or maintaining power than any kind of overt bigotry. They act in self-interest and self-preservation to either perpetuate the status quo or bend it to their advantage. This is a major improvement over the various human enemies X-Men writers have been working with for ages.

• Yu continues to nail key panels. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the body horror of this panel, which low-key reveals just how sinister the women of Hordeculture can be…

•…and this glorious reaction panel, which ought to get a second life on social media. 

It Will Be Done

“It Will Be Done”
House of X #4 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

How do you write your way out of this? 

If this issue was in fact the demise of six crucial X-Men characters – Cyclops, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Archangel, and Mystique – plus Husk and possibly Monet for good measure, it would be one of the best character send-offs in the history of Marvel publishing. Dramatic, triumphant, tragic, horrifying. It’s the ultimate X-Men story, really. It truly puts to shame all previously published deaths of these characters. (Yes, almost all of them have died at least once, and with the exception of Jean’s various deaths, they’ve all been in either underwhelming or outright awful stories.) 

But we know very well in advance that most or all of these characters will return for Dawn of X next month. Cyclops, Wolverine, and Jean Grey are on the cover of the forthcoming X-Men #1, written by Jonathan Hickman. The reader is fully aware of this, and Hickman is playing on this knowledge in the story. This is his version of Harry Houdini putting on handcuffs and leg-irons, getting locked in a packing crate, and getting lowered into the East River. 

How is he going to write his way out of this??

But let’s not speculate. At this point we know this is a mug’s game. The outcome of this issue is enough to remind us that the radical narrative moves of HOX/POX isn’t about to let up at any point.

“It Will Be Done” is framed by an internal X-Men report on the two major extinction-level events for mutants – the Genoshan genocide at the start of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men and the “mutant decimation by the pretender Wanda Maximoff” in Brian Michael Bendis’ House of M. The document – “Look At What They’ve Done” – fills in other major mutant crimes and files them by affiliation. Given the particular anger towards Wanda “Scarlet Witch” Maximoff and the strident tone of the document, in which the Avengers are put on equal footing with flagrantly anti-mutant hate groups like the Purifiers and Reavers, the implication would be that the document was created by Magneto. 

But this issue isn’t about Magneto’s rage, it’s about Xavier’s. We see him at the end of the issue a broken man, with most of his closest and most beloved students and lieutenants dead after stopping yet another attempt at genocide by the humans. The final pages let his resolution - “no more” – echoing out through the images of the tragedy of this issue, and the endless series of hate crimes presented over the past two decades of publishing.

It’s a powerful use of text, particularly in the context of how the text pages have been used for dry informational purposes so far through the series. This is all emotion. Grief, then rage, then resolve: NO MORE. 

The pages directly reference Wanda Maximoff at the end of House of M, so it’s certainly intentional that Xavier is echoing her fateful words – “no more mutants” – in House of X. But what will Xavier do? It had already seemed like he’d gone radical from the start of the story. What is the next step further?

Pepe Larraz continues to impress with this issue, delivering some of the best action scenes I’ve seen in comics in many years. His pacing – which I suppose to some extent is the pacing of Hickman, but still – is exquisite, and he gives each moment of triumph and tragedy an appropriate level of gravitas. I particularly love his shots of the Mother Mold, which are consistently ominous but oddly beautiful – a sci-fi bust sculpted by Jack Kirby, backlit by the sun. The scene in which Wolverine destroys it as it vaingloriously rants about its own creation myth, couched in the story of Prometheus. As predicted, the AI was not fully mature. The X-Men have snuffed out a mad god. 

Some major questions going into the last 5 issues of HOX/POX:

• What becomes of the “dead” X-Men? And is this development setting up the answer to the question of what Xavier was doing in the first scene of House of X #1, and an explanation of how it is that the two Stepford Cuckoos killed in New X-Men are alive and well?

• What is the “true purpose” of Cerebro? 

• How will the agendas of Apocalypse, Mister Sinister, and Exodus fit into all of this?

• Where is Moira X now?

• What is happening with the Phalanx in the far future of the Moira 9 timeline, and how does it relate to what is happening in the primary timeline?

• What happened in Moira’s sixth life?

• How did Xavier and Moira learn of the true capabilities and potential of Krakoa?

• What about the drugs for humans? 

One Down

“One Down”
All-New X-Men #26-29 (2014)
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils by Stuart Immonen
Inks by Wade von Grawbadger

Stuart Immonen has been working steadily in mainstream comics since the early 1990s but has over the course of this decade become one of the best and most widely imitated artists in the industry. If Marvel has a “house style” in the mid-to-late 2010s, it’s a post-Immonen look, and the two artists drawing the initial wave of Jonathan Hickman X-Men comics – R.B. Silva and Pepe Larraz – are highly gifted pencilers whose aesthetics nevertheless boil down to “I can’t believe it’s not Stuart Immonen.”

It certainly takes a lot of skill to mimic Immonen. His draftsmanship is excellent, he’s brilliant with facial expressions and body language, and he’s particularly gifted in rendering lighting for dramatic effect. Larraz and Silva, while each having some identifiable stylistic flair on their own, have come to draw their pages with very Immonen-ish designs and rhythms, and the particular line weights of his illustrations. They didn’t always draw quite like this, so it seems like a reasonable assumption that they’ve adjusted to market demands. If that’s the case, the very fact that they are drawing the ultra-hyped House of X and Powers of X launch would prove that to be a winning strategy. 

Immonen himself has not worked for Marvel for over a year, and has shifted his attention to other projects after completing a run with Dan Slott on Amazing Spider-Man with issue #800. This was the culmination of a period in which Immonen was clearly Marvel’s top artist, during which he only worked on high profile comics with top writers – Fear Itself with Matt Fraction, All-New X-Men with Brian Michael Bendis, Captain America with Rick Remender, and Star Wars with Jason Aaron. Though Fear Itself was the flagship title of a crossover event, his work on All-New X-Men was his true star-making work. Immonen, whose aesthetics have shifted over the years while always retaining core strengths, had fully solidified into what is now his iconic style with All-New X-Men. His style was a fresh look for the X-Men – very earthy and grounded in its action, and elegant in rendering the emotional details of Bendis’ very soapy approach to the series.

All-New X-Men #26 is the opening chapter of Immonen’s final arc on the series before handing the book over to rising star Mahmud Asrar. The story is mostly about the return of the future Brotherhood, who were the antagonists of the “Battle of the Atom” crossover from a year before. The primary cast of All-New X-Men were the time-displaced original five X-Men from the ‘60s – teenage versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman, and Angel. They were brought to the present by the adult Beast to emotionally torture the adult Cyclops after Cyclops appeared to have murdered their mutual father figure, Charles Xavier. 

The future Brotherhood, who originally present themselves as the X-Men of the future, are mainly focused on trying to get the original X-Men to return to their place in the timeline, but turn out to be driven more by a hatred of the X-Men and their failures. The future Brotherhood is led by a son of Charles Xavier who looks just like his father and has all of his powers, and has a grudge against the X-Men for not honoring his dad and his vision. “They stand on my grave and they speak of his legacy and they have done nothing but make a mockery of it,” he explains near the end of this arc. “The X-Men murdered him and then went on like nothing happened. They moved into his house and they took his money and they didn’t even have the courtesy to keep his name on the school he built.” 

Charles Junior may be a psychopath with childish grudges, but he’s not entirely wrong. His read on the X-Men and their reckless behavior – “You don’t think about how your actions affect the future!” – is entirely correct. Bendis was affectionally critiquing years of X-Men comics, and tying together the larger themes of family and legacy at the center of his X-Men. Everything in the Bendis period comes down to the question of what the X-Men ought to be in the absence of Xavier, and there’s never any tidy answer. Charles Junior, who turns out to be the secret love child of Xavier and Mystique, has valid concerns about what the X-Men do in his father’s name but despite appearances, he’s very much the product of Xavier’s absence. He looks just like his father and is also a powerful psychic, but he lacks his old man’s moral compass and humanitarian vision. He’s much more like his spiteful and manipulative mother. 

There are two sequences in the “One Down” arc that stand out, almost entirely as a result of Immonen’s top-notch artwork. The first is the opening scene of #26, in which the adult Cyclops checks in on the teenage Jean Grey in her quarters. The two characters had mostly avoided one another up until this point in Bendis’ story. It’s very uncomfortable for Cyclops to be in the presence of the teen version of his late wife, and ultra weird for the teen Jean to be around the adult version of the guy she finds out she marries later in life.

Immonen illustrates this scene with remarkable nuance – you hardly even need to read the dialogue to pick up on exactly how the characters feel and are relating to one another. Immonen captures the odd emotional reality of the situation, and the confusing intimacy of their conversation. Cyclops feels an easy rapport with any version of Jean, but is doing everything he can to behave appropriately around her despite his feelings. Jean can’t help but be attracted to him, and admits she prefers the adult Cyclops to his younger self. “It’s like, instead of hoping you’d grow up to become this man, you DID become this man,” she tells him. He does the right thing and pulls away in this moment, and Jean is visibly frustrated.

The second is the extended sequence in #27 in which the future Brotherhood ambush the X-Men in their own home, which at the time is the former Weapon X facility in Canada. Raze, the future son of Mystique and Wolverine, has entered the building under the guise of a wounded X-23, warning about the presence of a shape-shifter. Triage, the X-Men’s young healer, tends to her wounds. “You’re the healer?,” Raze says as he transforms into his true form and slashes his throat. “You first.” Immonen nails the beats of this reveal, and then goes on to perfectly render a sense of claustrophobia and terror as the Brotherhood cut out the power in the facility and start picking off team members. 

Bendis is known for writing to artists’ strengths, and it seems clear that he took note of Immonen’s skill for lighting when deciding to set a key action scene in an underground bunker lit only by creepy pilot lights. Colorist Marte Gracia does great work here too, presenting all of these scenes in a wash of dull red ambiance. A lot of superhero comics suffer for a vagueness of setting, but Immonen and crew keep you in fully aware of physical space in these issues, and it enhances the overall tense and anxious feeling of the story.