MaREADers: Marauders #1

In Marauders #1 by Gerry Duggan, Matteo Lolli, and Federico Blee, Kate Pryde is a ship without an anchor. Mysteriously unable to cross through the Krakoan gates, she steals a boat and sails rutterlessly towards the mutant homeland. She may feel like an outcast, but wants to ensure no other mutant does. Kate rally’s a crew of mutant scallywags and takes to the sea with a mission. Her and her Marauders will bring mutants home.

Christi Eddleman: Ahoy Muties! This is your Captain speaking. While our destination is unknown, I’m sure excited for you all to join us on our maiden voyage of this inaugural Mareaders DoX ToX. Let’s smash a bottle of champagne and get going because I’ve already nearly exhausted my nautical knowledge. [Ed. note: Don’t worry, I’m great at boats!]

Vishal Gullapalli: Ahoy! As First Mate I’m excited for this issue! It’s the first non-Hickman issue of any X-Men we’ve gotten in months, and it’s exciting to see how Gerry Duggan handles this new status quo for our beloved mutants.

Captain Kate

CE: For all of us that wondered about Katherine Pryde’s whereabouts during HoxPox, we get our answer right away. After all, the only glimpse we had was a single panel of her and Lockheed in Washington DC in House of X #1. In what appears to be your average idyllic “welcome to Krakoa” scene, Kate is not only denied entrance to Krakoa through a gateway, but also earns herself a black eye and a busted nose with some remarkable comedic timing.

VG: That opening scene answers a question everyone had been asking for quite a while: What happened to Kitty’s face? The answer is surprisingly funny, if a bit sad at the same time. This mystery of why Kitty can’t go through the gates is incredibly interesting, especially with the direction the book takes by the end of the issue.

CE: A first reaction may be to think perhaps Kate Pryde is yet another pretender, a non-mutant. However, we have quite a few reasons to believe that would be untrue. As we discovered in Powers of X #1, the chimera Rasputin was created using part Pryde DNA, so we shouldn’t really expect a retcon of Kate’s mutant-hood. Rasputin also was able to pass through gateways, which leads us to believe that if the problem lies with Kate’s powers, it’s one that can be fixed. [Ed. note: If only they had a geneticist who specializes in mutants around…]

Regardless, I can’t wait to see how it plays out. Vishal, any other theories?

VG: There’s likely an answer that no one has thought of, given how the majority of HoX PoX went. That being said, I think that there’s someone conspiring to keep her out. Kitty [Ed. note: Kate.] is a very important X-Man and mutant and certainly would make a few ne’er-do-wells on Krakoa antsy – far more antsy than Storm or Cyclops would. It may even be Emma, who’s using this as an opportunity to keep Kitty [Ed. note: Kate.] out of Krakoa entirely, although I doubt that idea. Kitty’s [Ed. note: Kate’s.] inability to travel through the Krakoan gateways means she can only access the island the old-fashioned way: by sea.

CE: This set-back really seems to sink Kate to an awful low. We know she spent at minimum 6 days at sea with only Lockheed as a companion, thanks to Duggan and Tom Muller’s delightfully lighthearted charts.It’s a remarkable feat to make the journey by boat, especially with only Logan’s choice of beverages to embibe. [Ed. note: Kate gets very drunk.] The experience of being denied entrance to “paradise” and have to make a miserable journey virtually alone seems to have changed her.

VG: This new Kitty – erm, Kate [Ed. note: There you go Vishal!] – is really refreshing. Not to say I didn’t love her previously, but now more than ever she feels like she’s grown up into a new role. The role, in this case, is Captain of a mutant pirate ship. So that’s new. After her adventure getting to Krakoa, she does seem to have her sea legs.

CE: I wonder if Emma may have had some role in this shift as well. Their telepathic conversation seems to indicate it is most certainly not their first. Perhaps Captain Kate wasn’t so alone on her seaside journey? Emma has made her two offers, which are likely the offer of becoming the Red Queen as well as a Captain for the Hellfire Trading Company. I love the dynamic we see between these two.

VG: Absolutely. Kitty [Ed. note: Kate.] and Emma have always had an awesome dynamic, and Duggan is tapping into their history and character growth to keep their interactions remarkably fresh. Speaking of character dynamics, though, there’s a lot of others to talk about: namely Kate’s new crew!

Every Captain Needs a Crew

CE: One might have expected Captain Kate to be incredibly deliberate in her choice of crewmembers, but in a truly delightful fashion, she stumbles [Ed. note: Literally] aboard her ship with a fun assortment of individuals. While Bobby and Ororo are natural choices, Pyro as a stow-away adds a fun element that I did not expect.

VG: Pyro brought an excellent new dynamic to the entire book, he was lovable basically from the start. Duggan’s also bringing back the classic Claremontian phonetic accents for him, which I cannot express just how much I love. [Ed. note: To be clear, this Pyro is St. John Allerdyce, the original flavor Pyro who did not have a one-night stand with Iceman.]

Ororo helping Kate out is only natural, she’s basically her mother figure and she’s so full of love. Bobby brings a great amount of levity to the book, and I love that Kate just drafts him onto her crew while she was getting drunk off Wolverine’s liquor.

CE: The dialogue between all of the crew members is incredibly natural, in what is perhaps a stark contrast to HoXPoX, where I felt a constant doubt that each of the characters were who they seemed. This seems like the beginnings of a very fun team-up.

VG: We can’t talk about Kate’s crew without mentioning perhaps the star of the show, the adorable purple dragon named Lockheed! In just this one issue Lockheed reaffirmed that he and Kate are a great pair, and also made me absolutely love Pyro when they teamed up. That dragon really brings the whole team together, and it’s a joy to see him properly back with the (former) X-Men.

CE: Lockheed being forgotten would definitely have been a shame. He was the only one loyal enough to stick by Kate’s side as she stole a boat and picked up Wolverine’s groceries. For anyone thinking the reason Kate can’t get through the gateways is that she’s an imposter, well, I think Lockheed would know. It’s heartwarming that by the end of the issue, her crew stick by Kate’s side for the long boat-ride home. The only potential crew member we don’t get to see on the boat is Bishop, who is up to some rather important detective work elsewhere.

The World’s Unrest

VG: Well we start with Bishop in Taipei, trying to allay the fears of people who claim that people are being kidnapped by the Krakoan gates. It becomes quickly obvious that these claims are nothing more than fear mongering, but that’s not something that stops a guy like Bishop. This serves a really important purpose: we get to see how certain regimes are treating the advent of Krakoa and the gates appearing in their nations. Taipei isn’t the only region treating Krakoa in this negative way, though, right Christi?

CE: We get snapshots from around the globe of countries afraid not only of Krakoan sovereignty, but actively discouraging mutant emigration to Krakoa: in North Vainon the gateways are blockaded by the military, in Brazil they’ve developed mutant-hunting quadripeds, and of course, our villains de jour, the Russians are shipping would-be defectors to gulags. As Bobby attempts to investigate why mutants are traveling through the Russian gateways, an encounter with a scary-looking guy in a power-dampening Iron Man type suit reveals that Bobby is a briefs guy as he narrowly escapes bullets from the Russian military. This encounter is what brings together our intrepid crew. [Ed. note: The Xavier Files Media Empire is going to take a bold political stance by saying the Russian government is pretty bad.]

VG: The Russians really don’t like mutants, huh? After they try to kill Iceman for showing up unannounced, Kate and her crew mount a stealthy assault on the base Bobby was ambushed in, discovering that there were dozens of mutants imprisoned just for being mutants and wanting to go to Krakoa. This is clearly something happening around the world, making the Marauders’ mission statement really important for mutants at large. Kate’s also a great spokesperson, delivering the message in the same pose she once declared “Professor Xavier is a jerk!”

CE: Duggan does an excellent job establishing the need for the Marauders. Gateways are great, but humans will be humans. We are definitely reminded that even though HoX PoX and X-Men dealt with some large scale threats, plain old human bigotry will always be an issue.

This issue does a lot of fantastic set up for a run that looks to be very distinct from what we’ve seen from Hickman. While fitting beautifully into the world that HoXPoX created in both Duggan’s writing and Lolli and Blee’s art, Marauders tells it’s own story that I am so excited to follow.

VG: Absolutely, I really enjoyed HoXPoX and X-Men #1, but this issue has finally convinced me that this new status quo for the X-Men and mutants in general is something that can work across the line, not just in the hands of one writer. I can’t wait to see where this and the rest of the X-books go.

X-Traneous Thoughts

The Krakoan teaser reads “Next: Shipout”
Based on the data pages and some dialogue, it seems like mutants have reclaimed the word “muties,” which is a small, but interesting, development.
Perhaps even more worrisome to me than Kate’s inability to use gateways is the fact she turns down food twice in this issue. Something must truly be wrong.
“Ororo. I. AM. The. Stash.” – Kate Pryde
“I take it you’re using nonlethal rounds against civilians? Nope. How unfortunate for you.” – Kate Pryde [Ed. note: She just shoots him in the knee folks.]
“You’ve been fighting for your life for years against impossible odds, and you never once gave someone an extra shot in the ribs simply because they deserve it” – Emma; While fifteen pages later, Kate does just that.
Get used to calling her Kate folks.
We’ll be back next week for Excalibur #1!

Christi Eddleman is the worlds first Captain Kate Pryde cosplayer and co-host of Chrises On Infinite Earths
Vishal Gullapalli is a comics enthusiast studying computer science to enable his media consumption, and writing on the side.