The planet Earth itself stands trial before the Progenitor in A.X.E.: Death to the Mutants #3. Written by Kieron Gillen, drawn by Guiu Vilanova, colored by Alex Guimarães and Erick Arciniega, and lettered by Travis Lanham.
Rasmus Lykke: Time is weird in comics.
I’m not talking about the medium here and how time acts strangely across the page. No, I’m talking about monthly comics and the serialized nature of the stories. As we’re nearing the end of A.X.E.: Judgment Day, there are more comics out tying into the story than at any previous point of the story (this week alone sees 3 releases, and that’s just the ones written by Kieron Gillen!). And yet, it feels like things are speeding up, moving at a breakneck pace, as we race towards the conclusion. Every issue is speeding along, as things grow more and more dire and our heroes perform more and more desperate acts. Everything’s coming to a head, as more pages somehow means less time passing.
Like I said, it’s weird.
Or maybe it’s just me. Do you feel similarly, Karen?
Karen Charm: I’d have to agree with you generally, but this issue strikes me a bit as an anomaly. Part of that has to do with the unfortunate reality of ongoing supply-shortage-related delays in the publishing schedule. The other part has to do with the way AXE: Death to the Mutants takes place in the imperceptible gaps of the main story. In that way, it’s both hurtling forward to a destination we (largely) have already seen, but also stretch out as far as possible.
None of this is to imply I’m not having a great time or that I think this is not one of the best mega events in recent memory. It’s also a continuation of Gillen’s Eternals series in ways that are rewarding and emotionally wrenching.
What’s also weird about time is that all of this has been happening in less than 24 hours.
Best Laid Plans of Eternals and Mutants
Karen: I’ve gotten used to the Progenitor taking over so much of the narration of A.X.E. that it’s refreshing to have our true blue Machine that is the Earth picking up the mic again. It’s as quirky as ever, even as it tells us the world is ending.
Because I read last week’s A.X.E.: Starfox, I assumed this scene between Eros and Zuras was going to be about his plan to secure humanity within reality pockets via Eternal technology. In actuality, this is happening much earlier, and they’re discussing letting the mutants commandeer the Eternals in order to get past the latter’s programming. It’s a pretty neat idea, except here we see that it doesn’t end up making much of a difference. But the Machine could have told them that, and it tells us, the reader.
This is the first time we’ve gotten to write together, Rasmus, so may I ask what your take on the Machine’s narration is? Have you grown as attached to it as I have?
Rasmus: Very much so.
It’s a delight every time it shows up and it was consistently one of the most enjoyable parts of Gillen’s Eternals run. It has such a quirky, fun and disarming voice. Like a friend, really. A friend who’s happy to hang out and tell you about what’s going on, even if it seems like they should have more important things going on. Things like the end of the world.
But before we get to that, we have Eros. Now I was lucky enough to catch Gillen talking about the reading order for these final issues, so knew to wait with last week’s A.X.E.: Starfox special for after this issue. But that’s probably not the majority of the readers and I can definitely imagine how that would lead to confusion. These release delays are a bummer.
I enjoyed the showdown between the Progenitor and the Eternals, with Ikaris’ arrow qualities being highlighted again, calling back to the earliest issues of Eternals. It was one of Gillen’s best distillations of the characters and it’s brought back to wonderful effect here, as we’re hoping against hope (this is a tie-in and not the main event, after all), that Ikaris will manage to take down the Progenitor. But instead we’re reminded that “An arrow is many things. Among them is ‘obsolete’.”, as he’s disintegrated.
Karen: Aaaah, I absolutely loved this swan song for Ikaris. Gillen’s Eternals run did the impossible and made Ikaris a captivating and endearing character. Inherently tragic, his compulsion for heroism is as unalterable as his role within the great Machine. His arc of grappling with the truth of Eternal resurrection was heartbreaking month in and month out. Seeing it tied up so well here at the end, that’s amoré. Vilanova draws a truly gruesome death for Ikaris though.
Rasmus: That skull just barely being visible through the charred flesh will haunt me. Masterful.
Karen: Also heartbreaking was the Progenitor destroying the resurrection chamber under the Machine’s narration – “Ikaris will not be back. No Eternal will be back.”
Gillen and Lanham give us a data page of the Machine’s defiant stand against the Progenitor as it takes over, which amounts to (literally), “come at me, bro.” By this point, long-time readers should be used to the Machine fumbling with colloquialisms, and it’s worth a chuckle at least.
My eye is not quite sophisticated enough to differentiate between our two colorists for this issue, but they compliment Vilanova’s rougher, darker drawing style well here. The Progenitor stabbing its staff into the Earth’s crust is a lovely page.
Rasmus: So the big plan fails. The Eternals-piloted-by-mutants fail and the Progenitor infects The Machine, causing it to start self-destruction, even as it fights back. Luckily, it’s not alone.
Hack the Planet
Rasmus: The heroes have a plan. They’re going to hack the planet.
Well, they’re going to throw bodies at the problem, hopefully buying enough time for Phastos to hack the planet, so it doesn’t blow up, killing… y’know, everyone. Good, bad, mutant, human, Eternal. The title has lied to us, it’s “Death to Everyone”. Unless the heroes can pull off their desperate plan.
Karen: As far as we’ve seen, this new plan doesn’t have as much assurance of working out as the one we just watched crumble to pieces. That is, aside from the general assurance that everything will be ok in the end somewhat, because this is monthly comics. Our narrator the Machine is really hoping they are able to figure something out quickly more for its sake than any of its inhabitants.
I do really like Nightcrawler and Phastos having this moment together. Kurt knows enough that any problem that arises, Phastos will be able to solve it. Kurt’s story continues in the magnificent Immortal X-Men #7, while here we follow Phastos into the pit. More on that in a moment.
Remember how the Progenitor destroyed the resurrection chamber, and we saw Ikaris and Syne caught in the destruction? Well, thankfully Syne had been brought back to life enough to make it out relatively unscathed. At least physically. Emotionally, she’s impaled with the knowledge that her sisters are dead. She reaches out to her human friend Sally, knowing that she’s dead too. Syne has only one person left to turn to…
Rasmus: Feeling sad for a three story killing machine was not what I was expecting going into this event, but Syne’s connection with her poetry friend was so touching, that this moment of her seeking any kind of connection was very tragic and haunting. So in the end she’s left with Exodus, the very mutant that killed her.
Bonding over early French poetry, they team up, as Exodus is a knight in need of a weapon and Syne is a weapon in need of a knight to wield it.
Karen: Syne the Memotaur has really been a break-out star of this event for me, and I’m happy there’s still some hope of her sticking around when everything is done. Vilanova and the colorists are giving us a messy, dripping monstrosity that might be just barely holding it together after escaping total destruction. We don’t get to see much of what she and Exodus are going to get up to together here, but I can’t wait to read that poem of theirs.. So many threads are drawing together for what is sure to be a massive final issue of A.X.E.: Judgment Day.
A Big Character Death
Karen: I’m happy to say that this comic passes the Karen Charm test by having a scene with Kro in it, so clink your glasses to that. He’s still hanging out in Lemuria by the site of the Celestial’s Second Host, which is a very deep hole in the ground. Quite handy for Phastos to just jump down to the bottom and warp ahead to the final levels of the Machine’s operating system.
This is a fun sequence, with the Machine aiding Phastos as he encounters waves of its own anti-intruder defense systems. It takes pride in the traps it has set up to stop anyone from doing what it knows Phastos must do.
Rasmus: Their dialogue here is so good. It does a lot to humanize the Machine and endear them to us, showing the relationship it has with both humanity and the Eternals. How it strives to be better and how it reflects on what it means being a better person. It’s very touching. And then Phastos does what you do when you have any machine related issues: He turns it off and back on, effectively killing the personality of the Machine, as it reboots.
Karen: CXF contributor Mark Turetsky made the connection between this scene and the death of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey and now I can’t unsee it. Except the Machine is really not so villainous as HAL, and is pretty willing to give everything up. As we’ve said, the Machine has been a continuous presence throughout this Eternals series but this is the most it’s felt like an equal character to the Eternals. It’s as caught in the programming as they are. The line about being “a better person every day of your life, from beginning to end,” is a punch in the gut.
Rasmus: It is. It’s so simple and so difficult, as we all know, as we continually strive to be better people than we were yesterday.
But the real gut punch for me came at the end, where Phastos asks the Machine That Is Earth “How are you feeling?” and it replies “The question makes no sense. I am the Machine That Is Earth. I ‘feel’ nothing.”, after just spending an entire issue being reminded of how much the Machine felt and how much of a personality it had, now it’s reduced from a person to simply a machine.
Karen: This issue has many signs of it being the end of Gillen’s Eternals run, and this final note is just that – final. Forget “death of the Author,” this is “death of the Narrator.” RIP
Last Words
- Who is that person who runs in to tell Exodus that “the monster is back?” Avengers fans, do you know?
- The nonsense of Eternal technology is a joy of the series overall. I love the “reality loom” and Phastos’ hammer super-tool.
- All event series promise big changes and usually big character deaths. (Effectively) killing the entire Earth definitely delivers.
- There’s an argument that could be made that The Machine has mutated from The Machine That Is Earth into the Machine that we know, which would make their death fit the title of the series. Because, let’s face it, this series hasn’t really been about the death of the mutants.
Karen Charm is a cartoonist and mutant separatist, though they’ve been known to appreciate an Eternal or two.
Rasmus Skov Lykke
Rasmus Skov Lykke will write for food (or, in a pinch, money). When not writing, he spends his time with his wife, their daughter and their cats, usually thinking about writing.
