Friday, December 6, 2019 by Paul in Annotations Posted onby Paul in

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

COVER / PAGE 1. Apocalypse takes Rictor under his wing.

PAGES 2-3. Recap page and credits. This is “Verse III: Three Covenants”, written by Tini Howard, with art by Marcus To, colours by Erick Arciniega, and letters by Cory Petit.

PAGES 4-6. Rictor is stuck indoors, unable to leave the house without starting earthquakes.

Rictor. Rictor was first introduced as one of X-Factor’s students in X-Factor #17 (1987), and went on to have stints in the New Mutants, X-Force, and X-Factor Investigations. He and Shatterstar were a couple for a long time. When we last saw him, in the recent Shatterstar mini, he was running a bar in New York, and he and Shatterstar were still on decent enough terms. The idea that his powers are out of control is new, and since he evidently has access to the internet, it’s unclear why he doesn’t simply contact the X-Men for help. But it’s evidently a plot point, since somebody keeps making psychic contact with him, asking him to “come home.” There’s a suggestion later that he’s worried about damaging Krakoa itself, which is understandable, but there’s clearly more to his power loss than that.

Given all the bottles on the floor, Rictor’s presumably been drinking heavily. He also seems to be sleeping in a box full of earth for some reason – presumably he thinks it limits the damage he could do in his sleep.

The news. It’s covering complaints about the Krakoan gates, supposedly because “some mutants” are “shedding their clothes before stepping into the gates.” We haven’t seen anything like that, so presumably this is meant to be your typical groundless bigotry – though I suppose it’s conceivable that Krakoa has taken particular exception to somebody’s jacket at some point.

PAGE 7. A data page with an excerpt from mutantsunmuted.com, which looks to be a Reddit-style thing. As well as Rictor asking for thoughts on whether going to Krakoa might help, it’s all people asking about the practicalities of visiting Krakoa – suggesting that a lot of mutants plan to drop in but not to stay. Of course, from what we’ve seen, there’s no conventional technology on Krakoa, so presumably the permanent residents don’t have internet access.

Rictor is being evasive about his problem (perhaps just to avoid attracting attention), and says there’s nobody he could go with. The obvious candidate would have been Shatterstar and, as already mentioned, the two of them were on good terms when we last saw them. We’ve seen Shatterstar on Krakoa already, albeit only as part of a crowd scene in X-Force #2.

PAGES 8-9. Morgan Le Fey yells orders at Marianna Stern, who has to try and explain the plot to her.

Morgan understands that the Krakoan gate is a mutant-linked intrusion into Otherworld, but other than that, her grasp of the plot is shaky. It’s maybe understandable that she thinks Coven Akkaba are allies of Apocalypse rather than a heretic sect who turned on him – and that confusion might explain why Morgan approached Stern in the first place, demanding that she sort out the problem.

Morgan also assumes that the identity of the new Captain Britain will be a matter of tremendous interest to the British public. Stern has to gently break it to her that the British haven’t noticed and, by implication, might not be that bothered even if they did. (Thus far this series has been concerned with matters almost wholly removed from modern Britain.) But she’s going to tip off Black Air and see if anything comes of it. Stern has her own agenda here, of course – she’s trying to encourage Morgan to restore her access to Otherworld’s magic by pitching it as the last push that will get the job done.

Black Air. A dodgy and corrupt paranormal British intelligence department introduced during Warren Ellis’s run on Excalibur. They were pretty much shut down after being defeated by the original Excalibur, but occasional splinter cells have cropped up claiming to be Black Air. As far as I can see, they were last seen in Fear Itself: Wolverine #3 (2011), when a random woman claiming to work for Black Air showed up in a coda, setting up a story that never happened. However, from dialogue later in the issue, it seems the name has just been reused for a division of MI-13.

The dragon outside the window is, of course, Shogo, as transformed at the end of last issue.

PAGES 10-12. Captain Britain, Gambit and Jubilee discuss the plot.

Shogo. Rather bizarrely, the claim seems to be that Shogo can become a dragon in Otherworld because he’s a child and young enough still to see the world in magical terms. So apparently any child who came to Otherworld could do this if they were young and innocent enough, though that doesn’t really expect why he remains in a stable dragon form rather than wandering all over the place. It’s all a bit Hallmark Card for my tastes, I’ll be honest with you.

Oh, and if we’re doing lower case lettering, there ought to be accents on bébé.

Gambit is written weirdly here. It seems as though we’re meant to take it that he’s overly concerned with Rogue and not worried enough about Brian, but it comes across very much the other way round – everyone else seems dismissive about his perfectly reasonable concerns for Rogue, who was left comatose under the “protection” of a genocidal maniac. Betsy bizarrely asserts that merely being a mutant “makes her safe in a way Brian and Shogo are not”, but Shogo’s a dragon, Brian’s still got his powers – what on earth is she talking about? Either there’s a twist coming here or this is just all over the place.

“If you see a ballista, steer far away.” A ballista was an ancient Roman bolt thrower. Very early artillery.

“I thought you can’t read your brother’s mind?” The idea that mutant siblings are immune to each other’s powers comes up from time to time, but this particular claim doesn’t ring a bell.

PAGES 13-19. The heroes attack the castle, find Brian completely corrupted, and retreat.

Not much to add to that, really. A coda at the end has Morgan encouraging Betsy to accept the mantle of Captain Britain permanently, “from one reluctant warrior queen to another” – Morgan did say in issue #1 that she had stepped in to rule Camelot in the king’s absence, but more generally this is a disingenuous comment by the veteran schemer. Why Morgan wants Betsy to remain Captain Britain isn’t immediately clear, but the obvious reasons would be in order to hang on to Brian, and in the hope (canvassed earlier in the issue) that she’ll be rejected by the British.

PAGE 20. Data page – a memo from “the Department” to MI-13, Black Air and the like, basically telling them to keep an eye on characters with known connections to Otherworld. “For immediate and official release” sounds more like a press release to me, but there it is.

MI-13. “The Department” has been mentioned before as the current UK government department in this field, and is apparently one step up from MI-13. MI-13 is a paranormal-focussed division of British intelligence, introduced in Excalibur #101, and again connected with Pete Wisdom. It’s named, of course, by analogy with MI5 and MI6.

(Originally the real-world numbers actually went up to MI19, but most of the others were wartime enterprises or got folded into other departments – MI4 were mapmakers, for example. Happily for Marvel continuity, the number MI13 wasn’t used. Or so they claim…)

The list is mostly obvious candidates: the Braddock family, Morgan le Fey, and the other founding members of the original Excalibur. Courtney Ross was a Captain Britain supporting character from the original 1970s run who was killed in Excalibur vol 1 #4 and had her identity stolen by a Sat-Yr 9, her counterpart from another world. That’s presumably who the Department are referring to here. This “Courtney Ross” was last seen in New Excalibur #17 (2005) when she was still swanning around being generally accepted as Courtney Ross, and running Courtney’s old bank. Her connection with Otherworld isn’t obvious, except in the sense that she’s part of the Captain Britain / Excalibur supporting cast.

PAGES 21-25. Apocalypse drags Rictor to Krakoa’s Cornwall outpost, hoping to use his powers to master stone as a focus for mutant magic. Pete Wisdom shows up looking for Betsy.

“Humans learning to pay for their magic.” Apocalypse seems to believe that mutants can – somehow – break the normal rule of magic that everything a price in the end. Whether he’s found a wonderful new evolved method of magic, or he’s just trying to develop the mystical equivalent of a perpetual motion machine… well, I guess we’ll find out. At any rate, he thinks stone is an important focus for what he’s trying to do, and that’s why he wants Rictor.

The gate. Unlike the Central Park gate in this week’s Marauders, Apocalypse shows up in a gate near Rictor’s house (so presumably in Queens?) which is being largely ignored by the human picnickers. Until Apocalypse shows up, of course.

Pete Wisdom. British secret intelligence agent, mutant and member of the original Excalibur during the Ellis run, though he and MI-13 had their own series too. His power is to make hot knives appear from his fingers, which he’s helpfully demonstrating here (let’s be generous and assume he’s staying ready in case Apocalypse does something). Pete always wears identical black suits as seen here. Aside from a possible cameo in issue #1, he hasn’t been seen in a while – I think the last we saw him was in X-Force #9 (2014) alongside his MI-13 cohorts.

PAGES 26-27. The trailer reads NEXT: WORD TO THE WISE.