The Brood are vicious predators. They are single minded in their goal of proliferating across the universe. A hive mind that follows their queen without question. In X-Men #9, Jonathan Hickman, Leinil Francis Yu, and Sunny Gho dare to ask, “but what if a king?”

Chris Eddleman: Wow, it looks like we’re concluding the second half of our very first X-Men two-parter and what a rousing and fun adventure we had last time. Rob, I’m excited to see how our short Brood Saga Part Deux (okay, probably part one million) concludes. What’s gonna be the fate of that King Egg?

Robert Secundus: We need to quit yolking around, Chris, or else we’ll have to scramble for time to get this done! Over easy! Benedict! [Ed. note: this is no time to joke about eggs, there is a global shortage.]

A Brief History Of Brood

CE: The introduction is for me, at least, the true meat of the issue. It delves mightily into that Marvel Comics silliness that I absolutely crave and I loved every page of it, Rob. In short, we learn that a team of Kree xentolomogists (a fun portmanteau) were the ones who discovered the Brood, and that those rascally Kree decided to genetically modify the entire race by means of a control mechanism—the King Egg that has spawned many jokes and memes that we’ve constructed. When introduced, a King Egg causes all of the Brood to attempt to fight over it, which through that chaos makes them a directable weapon. It’s interesting to make the Brood somewhat subservient like this but, I think the concept of the King Egg is a very clever way to slightly reinvent the Brood.

RS: I think the way that the Brood are described here is extremely interesting. They’re not just from the early days of our universe, or some dark galaxy; they’re from a dead, collapsing universe. That’s giving me pause, since we’ve been travelling to, well, a number of collapsing timelines in recent X-History. And then the way the issue describes them, in their adaptable and hierarchical/hive natures, also sounds extremely familiar. The Kree here weaponize an entire species, an entire society of hyper-adaptable, ultra-united beings. Isn’t that similar to Moria’s project on Krakoa? To unite mutantkind into a societal weapon, a sword that can strike down their natural predators? Doesn’t it also sound like a biological dominion, this galaxy-spanning hivemind?

CE: I kind of felt that way, too, and it certainly hammered into a theme that I’ve also been trumpetting throughout the DoX era, which is the difference between mutants and their change through natural mutation compared to the very unnatural guided change of their enemies, in the form of the various transhuman groups that seem to cropping up. The Kree have also unnaturalized the already unnatural (at least to this universe) Brood, by genetically modifying them (whether just egg or more than egg), creating a kind of transsapient threat. I like the compares and contrasts we get to delve into with all of the villains of this run, and how they relate to the new paradigm of Moira and the rest of mutantkind.

RS: The other neat thing about the Brood, though, is that they work in two ways. In some senses we can draw parallels with the X-Men and Krakoa, but I think the issue also goes to great pains to parallel them with humanity. That monologue given at the climax of the issue, when Jean describes their thoughts to Scott, could just as well be applied to the humans. I found that monologue over those panels of just these wretched, slavering monsters in shadow to be absolutely haunting; the human beings of the 616 might look human, but this reveals their true faces. They have become monstrous.

CE: There definitely is something to be said about the very capitalistic comparisons we get about the Brood, and their never-ending hunger for more. There also is something to be said about a colonial race (the Kree), bringing patriarchy to an innately matriarchal society to cause discord to yet other races. There’s a lot to the metaphor. [Ed. note: Wild to get so much out of a species that came about becuase Claremont thought a Ridley Scott movie was pretty neat.]

The Boys Of Summer

CE: So because this is a superhero comic, and infodumps don’t an exciting story make, we have to continue our rad as heck space chase scene, as the Summers family tries to do a very high-stakes version of that egg project a lot of people had to do in home ec in high school. I thought these sequences were constructed in a very thrilling way, and Yu drew a lot of exploding debris, which I feel is one of the things I most like to see him illustrate.

RS: The chase was fun! The explosions were neat. But I think what I really like is how the characters are settling in. Even though X-Men currently has no main character per se, it’s been largely following the ever increasingly complicated Summers family, and so I like that we get to focus on them throughout, both on the shuttle, and on the station. I love that we get more of Vulcan, a character I never expected to enjoy.

CE: It is completely shocking to like Vulcan, a character that I couldn’t actually muster a single iota of interest in prior to this series. I think one of the side effects of making all of the villains at least partially into heroes was having to make them somewhat likeable, and it didn’t seem to be too difficult with Vulcan. Just give him a bit of likeable warrior gimmick and boom, instant himbo. [Ed. note: Our resident himbo expert, Allison Senecal, is still debating if we can properly award him the title “himbo”.]

Also in this issue is the continuation of the Kree interrogation of our loveable Starjammers, who get joined by the equally loveable Shi’ar Imperial Guard. Is this just a “best of” all of the loveable space X-Men characters? Is that pandering?

RS: It is certainly pandering to me, as it contains my favorite space X-Men character, KID GLADIATOR! I love Kid Gladiator. Wolverine and the X-Men has its flaws, but it was the first time I began reading X-Men in earnest, and so I have an immense fondness for all those kids. And he has a (very extreme) voice that Hickman really gets.

CE: He is kind of a crappy teen™ in a way that is pretty enjoyable. One particular facet of the chase that I enjoyed was the “Scott Summers” gets to be very calm and capable. Even when they had to warn the folks aboard the Kree station that it was about to get Kool-Aid Man’d, Scott was just flying casually, even after one of the Acanti took a big bite out of the back of the ship. It might seem to crush the tension a little bit but, I think it was a nailing of character that Scott just seemed to be slightly ahead of the hairy situation.

Hail to the King Baby (I Had a King Egg But I Eated It)

RS: Speaking of Wolverine and the X-Men characters that I love, hey, it’s noted Avenger and Wakandan Agent Broo! The mutant Brood whose mutant power is individuality and empathy! [Ed. note: An important point of distinction is that Broo is a lower-case “m” mutant. He does not possess an X-Gene because he isn’t human.]

Broo is another one of my favorite characters, though so far he’s had very few stories that have capitalized on his potential. Throughout a good chunk of WatXM he was feral, and otherwise he’s been reduced to “says lines that Beast would say, but Beast for whatever reason isn’t in this scene.” And now, like Egg before him, he’s been exponentially elevated to extreme importance!

CE: He has gone from weird nice outcast to definitely King of all the Brood, just because he decided to have a delicious breakfast! Even though they seem to josh on each other pretty hard, Hickman has a soft spot for Jason Aaron originals, and I agree that it’s interesting to see Broo raised to such prominence. This also means, for the future, that the X-Men have a possible ally in the struggle against all of their enemies. It’s very X-Men to eventually have to ally with your enemy (and especially very DoX), and so this makes for some interesting story going forward.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the Data pages and especially the other races that the Kree tried to modify for weaponization. While the Tal Ba-Rii and Gu’Knoiss seem to be completely new from my research, it appears that the Kree tried to modify a few other races. The Sidri and the Scatter are kind of not unlike the Brood in terms of being kind of insectoid but they attempted to mess with the Phalanx! As in, the beings in the future who are an incredibly vast intelligence, and messengers for those black hole dwelling civilizations mentioned in HoXPoX. Probably not a great idea for the Kree to attempt messing with them. This is pure speculation but, I wonder if this a slight hint towards the inevitable clash of mutant and Dominion.

RS: If, as we’ve been speculated, Moira hopes to create an Organic Dominion, the Brood would certainly be a useful tool to have around! Or, well, they’re from a collapsed universe… might they have been the result of such an attempt? We’ll have to wait and see…

CE: This issue was (like the last one) a bit light on those big concepts that we crave, even if we got a fun retcon for the Brood’s origin. That being said, sometimes a superhero story just needs to be a thrill ride with fun twists and turns. And while the quiet issues of X-Men have seemed to be the norm prior, I absolutely loved the blockbuster feel of this two-part story. It was riveting and fun and that’s all I needed it to be.

RS: In some ways it was a light issue of blockbuster action, but honestly, it feels weighty to me, both because of that monologue and because of that final page. I have no idea what Krakoa looks like next week. Are the Brood going to hang out there? Or are the X-Men going to begin to establish some kind of galactic empire? Will this tie in to Empyre itself? I have no idea what comes next.

X-Traneous Thoughts

“For this is righteous millenial work I am engaged in”- I like the Accuser, who could be talking about ending the diamond industry.

Vulcan definitely likes fire.

Krakoan at the end reads “EMPYRE” It’s tie-in time, folks.

Chris Eddleman is a biologist and co-host of Chrises On Infinite Earths.

Robert Secundus is an amateur-angelologist-for-hire.