Krakoa Plays Kingmaker In S.W.O.R.D. #5

The King In Black has been defeted, but the impending Snarkwar looms over head. Find out how Abigail Brand responds in S.W.O.R.D. #5 by Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti, Marte Gracia, and Ariana Maher.

Zach Rabiroff: Fabian’s back, some Snarks get whacked, and a long-lost Acolyte makes a dramatic comeback. You ready to talk some S.W.O.R.D.?

Nola Pfau: My appetite, like Brand’s organization, has been thoroughly whetted.

Naked Ambition

ZR: You know that dream you have where you’ve been dead for a month, and then you hatch stark-naked from a goopy egg right before someone tells you to give a public address to the ruling council of your sovereign nation? Well, for Fabian “Don’t Call Him Nicieza” Cortez, dreams really do come true. The time has come this issue for Cortez to give his long-awaited pitch to the Quiet Council of Krakoa on the revision of the law against murdering humans, and they’ve set him up to do in the most delightfully awkward way possible: freshly-reborn, totally beslimed with egg juice, and genitals fully and gloriously akimbo. Now, the address he gives, and the council’s response to it, are both worth some real attention, but I think we should preempt that by talking about what really matters here: the phenomenal fashion choices on display from Krakoa’s ruling class. Nola, can I ask you to give your initial verdicts on some of the mutant-made looks we get to gaze on this issue?

NP: I think the thing that I really appreciated was, first, Cortez waking up to Jean in her 90s suit. Initially, I just thought “finally, it’s nice to see someone donning the old garb as part of this whole mutant clothes thing”—and given the promo art for the Duggan X-Men book, it was perfectly timed. Then, when the scene moved to the Quiet Council, I really understood what was happening. I don’t know that Magneto and Jean coordinated, but Mags has only worn the red and purple I think…once, since the start of this era? He’s almost always in that modern variation on his Marvel NOW! Suit. Here though, this is a message. Forcing Fabian to stand there nude as he addresses the council while Mags himself wears the very costume he wore when Fabian targeted him in the Asteroid M days? Whew.

On further thinking, it reminds me of when we first saw Cyclops’ modern suit. Like Magneto’s daily wear, it’s Marvel NOW! Inspired, but updated; he traded the red for blue, the X on his face for a return to the visor. Alongside the X now being on Xavier’s helmet, it’s very coded, isn’t it? The design says “I’m THAT Cyclops” but the color choices are cool, soothing, and the visor is familiar. “I’m in control, but don’t forget what I can do.” I’m absolutely living for this era of mutant clothes as statements.

ZR: I think you nailed it with this. Mags’s clothes aren’t just a fashion choice, they’re a shot across the bow, and not only for Cortez. We saw in X-Men #11 that Magneto basically wears his color-coded costumes like a mood ring, signifying his role and political positioning at that moment. So if his now-standard white is the toga candida of the respectable elder statesman, and black would suggest a return to stateless violence, then red is the costume of the antiheroic mutant freedom-fighter of old. In other words, it’s exactly the position Cortez is trying to stake out for himself, and Magneto is making it known that Fabian isn’t about to beat the master at his own game.

In other capsule fashion reviews: Jean’s ‘90s look is underrated; Peepers wearing his work clothes to a government hearing is very funny; Brand, as always, is so well-dressed that I would buy a Valerio Schiti-designed clothing line consisting entirely of her outfits; and I admit I got a kick out of Cortez gradually moving from embarrassment to let-it-all-hang-out pride while he stands naked in front of his interrogators. But I suppose we ought to get to the meat of the subject instead of just talking about the subject’s meat. How did you react to Cortez’s argument before the Council?

NP: “They’re already dead” is some grade-a justification bull#@$%. It’s naked fascist thinking, and that alongside his proud claim of being one of those Cortezes (is that new information? I don’t know) really make it clear where he belongs, i.e. lumped in with the Strucker twins. I know that Krakoa is all about giving all mutants a chance to be something better, but into the pit with those three. And Beast. Oh god, don’t tell Beast about this meeting, he’ll try to recruit Fabian.

ZR: I feel like I ought to be surprised that Cortez is descended from one of the most notorious genocidal imperialists ever to become the subject of a Neil Young song, but I admit that it seemed so natural I didn’t even blink. But as to that speech of his. I really try to keep the literature major inside of me under control, but…I think I feel a pretentious monologue coming on. Nola, will you forgive me for a moment while I become unbearably obnoxious?

NP: I always have, Zach.

ZR: You are, as always, too kind. That opening line Cortez speaks, “Am I not a mutant?” put me immediately in mind of a remarkably similar piece of manipulative oratory: the climactic courtroom scene in Act III of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, has gone to court to enforce a grossly punitive contract for a pound of flesh from his broke Christian client. He justifies his claim to the court like this:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
The Merchant Of Venice

Like Cortez, an off-puttingly emotional and convincing case for his own humanity and his own history of victimization. Like Cortez, an implicit appeal for retribution because of past sufferings. And like Cortez, a sudden turn toward a particularly dark breed of vengeance:

And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute—and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
The Merchant Of Venice

We Jewish readers have always had a particularly fraught relationship with The Merchant of Venice, and this speech is a prime example of why. It’s flatly antisemitic, but it’s insidiously antisemitic. It gives Shylock just enough conviction in his logical and emotional appeal to capture the reality of his oppression, only to catastrophically undermine it by putting it in service of his own personal and unjustified revenge.

That’s exactly what Cortez is doing here. He’s making genuinely meaningful arguments in favor of the right of mutants to demand reparation from human society, but he’s ultimately using his logic as mere sophistry in order to justify his own power grab by way of murder. And in doing that, he not only demolishes his own case; he implicitly delegitimizes every militantly left-wing argument for mutant justice based along the same reasoning.

NP: Well said, and I’m glad you’re around to make these kinds of connections—I could recognize what he was doing, but I don’t have the historical knowledge on things like this the way you do. I did appreciate the little bit of him whining about only six figures as part of his familial “rejection.” Such a calculated little touch by Ewing, like here’s one MORE reason to hate him. Anyway, what say we set aside the war of words and move on to the Snarkwar?

The Hunting of the Snark

ZR: Over the course of the series [Ed. note: And Guardians Of The Galaxy], we’ve seen leading contenders for the Snark throne fall before a mysterious assassin like characters in an Agatha Christie novel. This issue sees two more victims, and the revelation of their killer (or should we say killers?) is one of the bigger surprises in an issue full of delightfully melodramatic reveals. To start with, at long last, we see what Amelia Voght has been up to for the S.W.O.R.D. team, and it turns out to be nothing she’d want to be particularly public about. Amelia has, in short, been acting as chauffeur for an intergalactic assassin at the orders of her boss. It’s quite the final stage of a journey for someone who once walked out on Charles Xavier because she wanted to be free of mutants’ ideological struggle. Some of the former Acolytes like Frenzy may have backed down from their previous militancy. Voght, it seems, has gone far beyond it. She’s willing to literally topple governments in order to preserve the safety of mutants, and she does it with a smirk. But as for that other assassin…well, what did you think of the hand behind the dark blade?

NP: We’ve hardly seen anything (or anyone) Arakki-based since the end of X of Swords (the hardcover of which comes out this week, so well timed, Marvel), and what we have seen has been…what, Bei and Doug, briefly? Isca? This is new, this is someone explicitly working with the Krakoans. It’s not that it was unexpected, but it’s nice to actually see it happening. That it’s happening in service of toppling political opponents is certainly interesting to me too, especially given that this part of Hickman’s overall arc is titled Reign of X. Reign is…a loaded term, to say the least, and we’re seeing here just how deeply it’s meant.

Khora is interesting to me as a character, I’m absolutely fascinated to learn more about her. She has that almost nineties sense of body horror in her mutation; she’s called Khora of the Burning Heart but it’s her entire torso that’s ablaze. It reminds me of characters like Chamber, or Maggott, mutants who are much more physically marked by their mutations than most of the X-Men’s main cast.

ZR: It’s a very cool design, and Chamber was also the comparison that popped into my head. With the key difference being that, for old-school mutants like Jono and Maggott, their unusual bodies were sources of ostracism from society and consequent shame. For Khora, however, who comes from a society of ancient mutants built on warrior pride in their powers and culture, that mutation is a source of strength and honor. That gives her a really interesting dynamic alongside the more humanized mutants of Krakoa, even as it separates her from them. As Brand notes in her files, Khora is aligned with the goals of the SWORD team, but perhaps only for the moment: her primary loyalties remain with her largely autonomous Arakki nation. And I think it remains an open question whether her commitment to an aggressive and merciless culture of battle will play well when she’s supposed to be taking orders and operating as part of a team. Think Worf on the bridge of the Enterprise, and I think you get some idea of what we’re in for with her addition to this roster. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a total plus.

NP: Well, as long as it’s like Worf’s concept and not the actual execution, which resulted in him jobbing to every attacking alien in order to show how threatening they were. I do love the Arakki tradition of naming mutants with their powers—Isca the Unbroken, and now Khora of the Burning Heart. It’s pleasing to me as a storytelling device; lurid, descriptive, and it conveys something about the way they conduct that culture…a power and passion that’s as much invitation as it is threat. I’m deeply hoping Hickman’s new book is Arakko-focused. I want to know more about these characters.

ZR: Interesting, isn’t it, that Hickman’s most intriguing contributions to the X-Men mythos have been mutants from the distant past, and mutants of a distant future yet to come. It has a Tolkien-esque effect on the X-Men’s story, making this generation of mutants merely one chapter (albeit a pivotal one) in an endless epic of mutant history that stretches much farther in either direction that we had previously imagined. That’s an impressive feat of world-building, and it’s decidedly different from any of the time travel plots these books had circled around in previous decades. Here’s hoping that whatever stage we’re heading into post-Hellfire Gala lets us get a richer view of this mutant Silmarillion.

A bit of S.W.O.R.D. Play

NP: The Tolkien reference is a good one, because S.W.O.R.D.’s plan here is much like the Fellowship’s—a two-person surgical strike in the heart of enemy territory. Amelia Voght and Khora popping in to assassinate two of the Zn’rx contenders for the throne, thereby ending the Snarkwar that’s been teased since the start of this series (what a great red herring), and ensure that Brand has someone out in space in her pocket. All of this comes to light as Voght and Khora pop in on the council via teleportation, which feels…like a glaring security flaw to me? Generally the meeting place of heads of state is not so open access. Perhaps being space spies, S.W.O.R.D. has some kind of ability to bypass. Fabian, of course, does not appreciate the intrusion.

ZR: The dramatic entrance of Voght and Khora definitely feels like a piece of political theater, and it suggests what we already know to be partially true, which is that the actions of the ostensibly independent S.W.O.R.D. are sanctioned (if not outright ordered) by the Krakoan state. Which raises a tricky question in itself: just how many members of the Quiet Council know the truth about what’s going on here? Magneto does, of course: he needles Brand about it afterward, slyly implying that her own willingness to discard Snark life as less-than-human has as much to do with personal animosity as hard-nosed realpolitik. (That Magneto himself had just engaged in a pretty stunning display of rank hypocrisy, standing up for the universality of the law just before teleporting into space to supervise the violation of it, seems largely to pass his notice.)

I don’t think it’s much of a leap to assume Charles is collaborating with Erik on this behind the scenes, too. But does anyone else know? And how would they react if they knew that Krakoa was orchestrating a campaign of political assassination on a galactic scale that effectively out-X-Force-es X-Force? I’m not sure we can know the answer to that right now, but it certainly feels like something that could come back to haunt them.

NP: Decisions, coming back to haunt Xavier and Magneto? I dunno, seems like a reach.

The other thing that stands out to me here is the play to remove Fabian from the group. Khora is named as his replacement, but he’s specifically there for his ability to amplify mutant powers. Thanks to another data page, we know some more about what it is that Khora does, aside from ventricular arson and dramatic entrances. She can share her life force with others, powering up their abilities. When she keeps it to herself, it makes her stronger and faster, so I wonder, does it just boost the powers of other mutants when she loans it out, or does it boost all of their physical abilities? Either way, in Brand’s own words, she’s the answer to a prayer, and Brand’s been praying a lot based on that last page reveal.

ZR: Ah, mysterium, my old friend. It’s good to see you again. And so much of you, too! There’s a jigsaw puzzle coming together here, and it’s not quite clear what it’s all adding up to, but it does feel like we’re getting closer to seeing it. The installation of a friendly Snark ruler in order to maintain non-aggression in our region. The removal of The Five into Shi’ar space during Knull’s attack, as part of a pre-determined protocol for mutant repopulation. The teaser for the promisingly (if probably inaccurately) named Planet-Size X-Men, which holds out the prospect of a literal red mass on Mars or beyond. And now we have S.W.O.R.D. …growing? Breeding? Doing something with vast stores of these pyramidal objects from the highest heaven, which Victor Von Doom warned them to handle with care. I have never been happier to say that I really don’t have any firm idea what this is all about, because it means that Ewing (and really every writer in the line right now) is building carefully to something that feels like a real turning point. I just hope Schiti keeps them all well-dressed while it happens.

X-Traneous Thoughts

Voght and Xavier flirting was cute.
Cute, yes. But if Khora stabs Charles right after, just to send a message? Even cuter.
Then Voght and Khora can walk off into the sunset? Love that for them.
Seriously, though, no one tell Valerio Schiti how much the fashion industry pays compared to comics, because I promise you we will never see a S.W.O.R.D. #6.
Krakoan Reads: LAST DANCE