To Pull the Eternal Heist in X-Men #13

Judgment Day strikes the X-Men in X-Men #13, written by Gerry Duggan, drawn by CF Villa, colored by Matt Milla and lettered by Clayton Cowles.

Tony Thornley: Welcome Stephanie! Glad to have you on as we transition into year two of this series. Hell of an issue to guest on too!

Stephanie Burt: Big fan of transitions here. Plus I’ll follow Illyana Rasputina wherever she goes. And here she is in X-Men #13.

Eternal Kaiju

Tony: X-Men #13 takes a break from the long-simmering Orchis plots to go widescreen action in an event tie-in. It feels like a parallel to the opening of year one. The first issue of this volume featured the team fighting kaiju in New York City. Now they’ve shifted to multiple kaiju in the waters outside of Krakoa.

The X-Men facing the Hex is a perfect introduction to this squad as a team. These Eternals are a massive (no pun intended) threat to Krakoa, but these are the big damn heroes of the X-Men. The team steps up, with everyone pitching in to take down the Hex. Forge even does it while sipping a pina colada (naturally he’s also building a rail gun that’s a nanite delivery system).

Stephanie: Forge is doing his best Tony Stark impression (except that Forge apparently drinks). He wants to be the Tony Stark of Krakoa. Fun to watch. Maybe less fun to have as a teammate. He’s been the butt of jokes and more-than-jokes about how big tech never goes as planned; the nexus of fears about Native American history taking revenge on Western hubris; and a bad boyfriend for Storm to react against. I like him best when he gets to be two out of three, but I’m OK with just the first one here. It’s a good first fight.

Tony: I have to say, I enjoyed the dynamic right away. Even though I liked the just-departed lineup better than this one, this feels like a team Duggan is more comfortable writing. Havok and Firestar barely get page time, but otherwise, the roster feels like an actual cast of characters. In year one, a couple of the characters (Rogue especially) hardly got page time until halfway through. On the other hand, everyone gets at least acknowledgement in X-Men #13, and most of the squad actually gets a few solid moments at a minimum.

But that’s me rambling. What did you think of our opener?

Stephanie: It’s good! I’m with you 100% about Duggan’s comfort with these characters. Jean and Scott tell us their fight is a typical date night (for them). Bobby’s still getting a feel for the amazing, arguably endless extent of his powers. And Firestar can’t stop comparing her experience on an X-team (her first X-team ever, unless you count her five minutes as a Hellion!) to her stint as an Avenger. I’m honestly not sure she wants to be here.

Tony: She doesn’t, and I like that! I love that her family also isn’t happy about it, as we see in a letter from her dad to Emma on the last page.

I think you’re exactly right on the dynamics. Plus Everett is still just the breakout star of this book. I really hope if anything comes out of this volume of X-Men, it’s Everett Thomas as an X-Men mainstay.

Stephanie: Also there is an Eternal named Ikaris, who wants the X-Men to win and the mutants to survive, but he’ll only help the X-Men on condition they don’t kill any Eternals. Hi, Ikaris. You shoot energy beams from your eyes and can fly and would look right at home in a Legion of Super-Heroes comic, if DC were publishing Legion of Super-Heroes comics at the moment (and I wish they were) [Ed. Note: Technically, they are!]. I guess you can hang out with us here for now. Tony, would I care more about him if I knew more about the Eternals going in?

Tony: Yes, definitely. And for any readers who are unfamiliar, please go read Zoe and Karen’s EXCELLENT write-ups on Eternals. Short version though— Ikaris is basically Superman, if Clark was a lot less personable, and he recently discovered that the Eternals’ resurrection protocols, unlike the mutants’, is powered by HUMAN SOULS (dun dun DUN!). So for an Eternal to be resurrected, a human needs to die. So of course, he doesn’t want Eternals to die, because he doesn’t want humans to die to resurrect them. Absolutely one of my favorite details from the Gillen/Ribic Eternals.

Suicide Squad

Tony: Love the big action set pieces this issue goes all in on. Transitioning from the fight with the Hex to everyone but Scott and Jean staging what could be a suicide mission was a lot of fun. It felt uniquely X-Men to me.

Stephanie: I dunno about uniquely, but it makes for good adventure stakes. In fact, this issue comprises adventure stakes and nothing but adventure stakes: I love the dialogue and the asides, but the plot itself feels more like a Superhero Comic Plot (™) than like the kind of plot that other Krakoa-era mutant comics produce. The role-playing game designer Robin Laws divides story beats into the procedural (take down the bad guy, grab the MacGuffin, destroy the fortress: basically, do something to a thing or a body) and the dramatic (hook up with someone, break up with someone, test a friendship, convert a rival: basically, do something with someone’s mind and heart). 

Claremont-era comics stood out for their very high ratio (compared to other cape comics) of dramatic beats to procedural beats. That’s one reason I like them. Same with modern comics by Vita Ayala, Leah Williams, Ryan North. Same with the best parts of Duggan’s Marauders. X-Men #13 is almost entirely procedural beats. Much of it stands or falls on the action art. 

Tony: I love how you put that, and I was thinking that it was uniquely X-Men because of the mix of the procedural and dramatic as you described. It would just be bog standard superhero action if we didn’t come to care about the characters as much as we have. But yes, the art is definitely where it rises and falls.

Stephanie: Fortunately the action art in X-Men #13 is superb: varied, colorful, given to changes of scale. In a book with Eternals and Bobby Drake and a living island and kaiju and (at the end) a Celestial, things can get very big very fast. And they do.

I’m into the two-panel pages. I’m into the colorful circles and flaming linearities and clashing diagonals we get when Jean and Bobby and Firestar and Illyana all use their respective powers. I’m into the cosmic Kirby machinery they have to fight, shut down, and then just watch. I had so much fun just looking at what happens this issue even though what happens is mostly fighting and not much feelings.

Tony: Will I miss Larraz and Gracia? Absolutely, but Villa more than proves himself capable of filling those AMPLE shoes in X-Men #13. I don’t know if he’s a star in the making but following Larraz and trading off with Cassara will definitely help him grow. You talked about the layouts and the action, and I really enjoyed the character acting. That aforementioned Forge scene and the frantic body language in the fight in the armory both look great. That’s one of the big strengths of Marvel’s house style, and Villa really proves himself throughout the issue.

Stephanie: I love Bobby saying “I think a change of scale is appropriate,” and then holding his teammates inside a giant ice globe. And I love the dialogue about how Bobby’s powers work when Synch is synched to them. Synch has really become the reader-surrogate for this comic, no? The one who explains what’s happening and sometimes feels lost, or out of his depth, until he remembers how best to use his powers?

Tony: Exactly, and you felt for him when he loses an arm to the armory’s guardians. Thank goodness he was synched to an elemental right then, but he was in serious pain for an instant.

Stephanie: Firestar, on the other hand, does not belong on an X-team and knows it. I see the start of a fine running joke here: “The Avengers had a device for this,” “The Avengers would never have gone in blind,” “The Avengers never boiled their dumplings,” “The Avengers never wore white after Labor Day,” etc.

Tony: The Avengers never blew up my horse.

But hey, the X-Men got it done, and with a style that’s all their own.

Stephanie: Technically the X-Men did not blow up Firestar’s horse, because Emma Frost was not an X-Man at the time. Hey, what if Butter Rum was a mutant horse? Could the Five… no. Not going there [Ed note: I would absolutely like to go there, and yes, I do not see why they couldn’t. Prove me wrong internet.].

Judgment Comes

Tony: Okay, I said Alex didn’t get much page time, but the page time he did get… he was a complete dumbass and not in the traditional “Alex Summers is a himbo” context. Immediately he says “Let’s go get a drink.” He realizes how stupid it is the moment he’s called out, and tries to backpedal, but it happened.

Stephanie: Alex has almost unlimited energy powers. You want him on your team if you’re a team that’s likely to see high powered action. Except that you don’t, because he’s consistently the mutant most likely to get mind controlled, deceived into doing villain stuff, or persuaded to wander off and do something irrelevant. That said he’s supposed to be an adult: how dumb do you have to be to wander off, for real, in search of Fred Dukes and a stiff drink when the world is at stake and the Five might need help not dying? I mean, really, Alex?

Tony: No joke! I kind of wanted to slap him myself!

Stephanie: Illyana’s attitude here appears to be “I can’t believe I have to work with these people.” She takes saving the world very seriously, and she wishes they would. I hope that serious Illyana (and Scott) versus frivolous Alex (and Angelica) becomes a running joke (or more than a joke). Duggan writes good jokes.

Forge can’t help taking an Eternal-tech souvenir from the ruins of the cosmic engine the X-Men disable. That’s in-character (and Illyana knows she can’t stop him). I dunno about the peyote joke, though: I’d like to hear whether Native American readers find it disrespectful and out of character, or disrespectful but completely in character for Forge, or just fine and funny. I’m betting on option 2.

Tony: Yeah, I’d be curious too. It could be read as Forge leaning into a dumb joke he’s heard all his life.

Stephanie: Silver-Age comics, and later Kirby comics, and some Avengers comics, tend to build higher and bigger and more impressive, until you get to the Ultimate-Super-Cosmic-Most-Invincible-Powerful-Entity-There-Ever-Was [Ed. Note: *Breathes Out* (until the next one)]. The Ultimate-Super-Cosmic-Most, in the current Marvel Comics universe, remains the Celestials. And here’s a Celestial. What next? Tony do you want to say more about how the fight scenes look, or about the too-big-to-fight Celestial at the end?

Tony: Goodness did Villa ever make our Celestial Judge look good, and he framed it so well. I’m hyped, because clearly the event is making a shift from what everyone expected with this moment. We’re about to get a shift to character examinations, and considering this team includes Cyclops, Magik, Forge and Havok, it’s not going to be sunshine and roses in upcoming issues. Scott in particular seems to be in trouble from what we’ve seen in future covers and solicits.

Bring it on!

X-Traneous Thoughts

• Props to the art direction as well as the artist for this beautiful action issue, BUT Havok’s energy bursts should always appear parallel to the plane of the page. They don’t here. 
• Illyana appears in her black armor-costume, and she says her stepping discs go through Limbo. So this comic must take place before “The Labors of Magik” (New Mutants #26-28).
• As fun as this X-Men #13 was, I think scheduling-wise it might have had a better impact coming out last week alongside AXE #2.
• Matt Milla is a great choice for a new color artist, and I look forward to what else he’ll bring.

Tony Thornley

Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.

Stephanie Burt

Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids.  Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.