ON THE X-MANHUNT: X-Force #9 lays a giant egg

Sage and Professor X go way back, to another war and another time. But now, in his hour of need, will Sage use her talents to aid the professor’s quest, or put a stop to his manic mission? X-Force #9, the penultimate chapter of “X-Manhunt,” was written by Geoffrey Thorne, pencilled by Marcus To, colored by Erick Arciniega and lettered by Joe Caramagna.

Our “X-Manhunt” coverage so far:
Uncanny X-Men #11
NYX #9
Storm #6
X-Men #13
X-Factor #8

Jake Murray: Welcome back to ComicsXF’s issue-by-issue coverage of the X-Men From The Ashes era’s second event, X-Manhunt. Now, the particularly observant among you will have noticed that we haven’t been covering X-Force on a regular basis. There are just … so … many … books. However, we at CXF always roll out the red carpet for the man whose dream became real, and then became a nightmare partially of his own making. I’m of course talking about Professor Charles Xavier. Joining me today on ToX duty is Adam Reck. Hey, Adam!

Adam Reck: Whew! Sorry I’m late, Jake! Just took me a second to get here with this comically large egg. This thing’s heavier than you’d expect! Oh! I see you brought your own comically large egg as well. Great thinking!

Jake: Now, if you’ve been following along, you’ll know the rules by now. Joining the regular reviewer for each chapter is a man who is loved and feared in equal measure. A man who boasts a terrifyingly impressive arsenal that includes laser-sharp insight and a supernatural ability to always find the Google docs links for these reviews. He is the hunter, I am but a simple man trying to protect his giant egg.

Armaan, welcome. The last time we reviewed a comic together was Rise of the Powers of X, a series in which Professor X plotted to travel back in time and kill a child, shot Rachel Summers and totally didn’t kill a bunch of naval officers. So tell me — how is it that we’re back again less than a year on, talking about the fall from grace of one Charles Xavier?

Armaan Babu: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m nostalgic for those days. Xavier was then, as he is now, throwing everyone he could under the bus for his narrow and self-serving vision of the greater good, but back then there was some point to his story. Now, he’s sort of ambling through everyone else’s tales, and at the penultimate issue of this crossover, I still can’t figure out the point of it.

I’m hoping through this hunt we can lock him away for good — and by that, I mean keep him out of the X-books for a good, long while, because nobody seems to know what to do with this man.

Please stop calling me Teresia

Adam: Hoo boy. How nice that Xavier, betrayer of the mutant race, clone-killer and intended child-killer, has so many favors to call in as he daintily skips from one disconnected From the Ashes book to another. This time he’s telepathically dialed up Sage, his longtime Hellfire Club spy. This is a character I’ve never particularly latched onto due to my dislike of X-Treme X-Men. But Sage was a central character to the Krakoan X-Force and is well aware of Charles’ sins and misdeeds, so it’s kind of odd seeing her drop everything to help him just because she claims they used to be BFFs.

Armaan: Professor X is certainly divisive. You have people like Storm and Sage going out of their way to help him, while others are doing all they can to take him down, and the choice of who is on his side vs. who isn’t feels completely arbitrary.

Jake: I found the way Geoffrey Thorne wrote Tessa’s relationship with Charles a little strange. The unwavering affection she had for him didn’t ring true for me. Even if we extrapolate the logic that she’s removed painful elements of her past from her “data bank” (this speaks to a wider issue I have with how Sage has been written in this series), I find the idea that she’d be unreservedly loyal to Charles farfetched. It’s one of those character beats that needs to be hit for the story to work, but it’s not grounded in continuity or credulity.

Armaan: You know, I want to talk about Sage a little bit, and her previous appearances in X-Force. During that run, she struggled with alcoholism, something to take the edge off the overwhelming amount of information her powers give her, and the stress a spot on X-Force would give anyone. Your mileage may vary on how well it was handled (I thought it was an interesting thing for her character to explore), but I find it disturbing that she’s just … deleted “my chemical addiction and some other traits.”

Part of what people complained about concerning the Krakoan era is the idea that characters were, in their wild new setting, not as relatable. That this new era is a chance for more human stories, to have the X-Men struggle through the kinds of things readers do. Simply doing away with something as heavy as addiction by being able to delete it does a disservice to the storyline and completely erases any investment one might have in Sage as a character. Any human quality she has, she can simply rewrite with a personalized software update. Why, then, would one care about her motivations? About the choices she makes? About her story, and her place within X-Force’s larger narrative? How is any of this more relatable?

It’s frustrating.

Jake: It’s so emblematic of the approach to story in the From The Ashes era. Every decision is made on the basis of plot rather than character, which, let’s be fair, isn’t unusual for storytelling, but: a) you need to put the work into your characters to establish the verisimilitude for it to work in the first place and b) this is the X-Men. We readers act like we know these people, and we expect the creators to do the same.

Adam: Glad I wasn’t the only one scratching my head at this. Xavier very pointedly used Tessa for years. Heck, he’s even manipulating her in this very issue! And yet, she’s taking all opportunities to swear fealty to him. At least guest star John Wraith was willing to call her out for helping.

Armaan: I’ll be honest, this is the first time I can remember ever running into John Wraith, and I am even more confused as to why he’s here! Where’d he come from, why’s he helping Xavier, what are his powers, what’s even going on? Who is this man?

Adam: Great question! The answer is he’s a former member of Wolverine’s Team X who wears a cowboy hat, sometimes goes by the codename Kestrel, was definitely played by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and doesn’t usually look like this. Why he’s here is beyond me.

Armaan: Thanks, Adam! Frankly, wherever he appears he should have a caption box that says “Cowboy hat. Will.i.am played him in the movie.”

I dropped off X-Force early on, and chose not to read through the issues I’ve missed just to see what reading through this crossover would be like for fans not following along with all the titles, and I was left feeling completely lost, which seems the opposite of what a crossover should be doing.

Jake: I quite enjoyed John Wraith, aka Kestrel (I’ve been calling him Pastor assuming it was a nickname like Cardinal). He’s acting as a slightly detached and bemused external observer of X-Men nonsense, which works functionally. He was something of a reader insert, although I felt like Thorne didn’t take his critiques far enough to be humorous, or indeed speak for this reader. Further, seeing Sage’s rolodex of teleporters on page reminded the reader of the teleporters we didn’t get to see, but the likes of cameo queen Lila Cheney were unsuitable for the mission, so I get it. His dialogue was pretty snappy, and the Bible verse quoting bit Thorne gave him was fun.

Can I offer you an egg in this trying time?

Adam: “X-Manhunt” has been incredibly disjointed. Xavier continues to change his mental state, voice and motivations depending on the book and whatever continuing adventures he’s interrupting. Larger problems like the coup against Xandra or the psychic virus causing folks to kill their families have been pushed into the background so that Charles can pick up his Krakoan props one by one. All of this is to say, I did laugh out loud at Marcus To’s drawing of Charles struggling to hold up the last, preposterously large Krakoan egg.

Jake: The giant egg was actually the bit that made the most sense. Charles is definitely characterised as firmly in control, paternal and ultimately heroic here. There are a couple of potential explanations for this. The first is that these scenes are written from Sage’s perspective. The second is simply that Charles’ plan that he risked the lives of his adopted children for turns out to have been for a good reason. There’s no interrogation of whether the ends justify the means, or what objection the X-Men could or would have to him resurrecting his dead wife to protect their daughter. They’ve certainly been summoned to Chandilar for less.

Armaan: So all that’s left for this crossover is the Omega issue. What we’ve had through this crossover is Xavier dropping in, making a lot of X-Men mad at each other, and doing all of that to bring back someone who, I’m fairly certain, most people forgot was dead in the first place.

In essence, this crossover could have boiled down to a panel of Xavier saying “I retrieved the last egg and brought her to life.”

It’s worth nothing that through this crossover, we don’t actually get any insight into Xavier himself. Uncanny X-Men and NYX both had other people’s captions talking about his motivations; in other issues, he’s more or less just … around. For someone so fond of his speeches, he sure has little to say in this event he’s at the center of.

Adam: Sage doesn’t even bother demanding answers about how Xavier buried all these totems. She hand waves it away, but what Sage suggests actually doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Her exact line is: “You made an egg. Matured the body. Held off hatching until you psychically unlocked it.” This is a core misunderstanding of what The Five was capable of and why they were so important. Xavier doesn’t make eggs. Egg (Goldballs) made eggs. Xavier doesn’t mature bodies, that was the work of Elixir, Proteus and Tempus. And none of that worked without the power amplification of Hope.

Sage’s biggest concern seems to be why Xavier is willing to resurrect a non-mutant. But that custom was already broken when The Five resurrected Captain America in AXE: Judgment Day. I remain deeply confused why this crossover is so interested in using the iconography of Krakoa without doing the homework on how it worked in the first place.

Jake: The point on Krakoan iconography is such a good one. We moved from an era in which concepts such as The Crucible, mutant circuits and even Krakoa itself were so rich with symbolism. They were fascinating, knotty emblems of a culture forming before our very eyes; they encouraged debate, varying interpretations and ultimately encouraged readers and creatives alike to deeply explore their meaning and their consequences. This era feels surface level. It doesn’t encourage intellectual interaction from its readers, so it doesn’t receive it. Stories like that rarely stand the test of time.

Armaan: If this crossover proves anything, it’s that this era actively discourages readers from thinking too much about what’s happened. The most fun we’ve had, I think, as readers through this event is last week in X-Men and X-Factor, where both comics leaned into the silliness of the situation.

Adam: Anyway, Charles resurrects Lilandra. They steal a plane and vroom off to the Omega issue.

Effin’ and Jeffin’

Jake: Because the continuing X-Force plot is so removed from the “X-Manhunt” stuff, it can be covered almost entirely in isolation, which says a lot about this event. It’s honestly felt like more of an interruption than anything else.

Adam: I appreciate how Thorne and To have to interrupt the Sage stuff to get back to the story they were telling. It’s very odd. But hey look, Colossus has a sword arm!

Jake: The villain of the series is El Diabla, who is essentially a Hispanic Enchantress, an incredibly powerful mage intent on sowing chaos throughout the world. Her motivations are as yet unrevealed, although it’s clear she has a problem with Forge and his ability to identify the “fractures” he formed X-Force to prevent. Forge and El Diabla represent the classical order-vs.-chaos dichotomy, and it broadly works. Thorne writes Forge flying around like a nerd trying to reason out solutions while El Diabla serves yassified villainy. And she’s not afraid to get really nasty (see issues #6 and #7 in particular). It’s a tried and tested method, and it’s good fun here, too.

X-Force has been fighting her nonstop for (checks notes) three and a half issues now. She’s a pretty good villain on the face of it, but without knowing why she’s so determined to not just defeat but humiliate X-Force, her shtick is wearing thin at this point. The structure of the fight scenes is pretty much the team taking turns getting their shit rocked. If only they could come together and fight as a team. Wonder what will happen in issue #10? Anyway, the star of the show for me is Betsy Braddock, who’s spitting the sort of venom she was missing in Excalibur. She’s also swearing a lot, which is fun and accurate representation for the potty mouth posh girls I’ve met at various points in my life … not that they need any more representation.

A lot of the issues I’ve highlighted — a lack of a strong narrative hook, a raison d’etre; pacing so focused on fast-paced action that it often rushes through the emotional beats and character moments; good art but lacking a distinctive visual style — speak to the overall problem with this series. It’s not bad, it’s just not memorable.

Armaan: Thank you for that recap, because coming in blind to this issue — even with the recap — was bizarre, and confusing. A crossover is meant to bring fans in, to try new books they ordinarily might not be following. Anyone coming into this issue solely because of “X-Manhunt” has little reason to want to continue this series. I understand needing to continue the story already in the works, but X-Force #9 seems deeply uninterested in pulling in new readers.

Adam: I regularly remind whoever will listen that To is a very good artist and that folks do not give him enough credit. While his style is reminiscent of the Pepe Larraz-esque linework that seems to be the standard house-style for Marvel today, To does it better than most. If this ongoing, largely meaningless fight stuff is lacking, it’s certainly not his fault.

Armaan: I’ve got to say, I admire how this week’s Exceptional X-Men handled the event. They’re not really a part of the crossover, but they do still take a moment to acknowledge it’s happening, and in doing so we learn a little more about the perspectives of people affected by it, however distantly. We’re not left scratching our heads as to what really happened in that issue, or why Xavier is acting completely differently than he did from a previous part of the crossover, nor are any of the book’s characters crossing seemingly arbitrary lines. If all the comics we’ve read for the series had just done that, I think we’d all be a little less exhausted.

X-traneous Thoughts

Lilandra died way back in 2009’s War of Kings #4. As far as comic book characters staying dead goes, 16 years is a pretty long time.
Steve Rogers wasn’t the only non-mutant resurrected by The Five. In fact, at the end of AXE: Judgment Day, Jean Grey formed The Phoenix Foundation, which dedicated 5% of The Five’s work to resurrecting “the vulnerable, the weak, the poor and those whom the world abandoned,” chosen by Jean herself.
John Wraith hasn’t been seen since a flashback in Ben Percy’s Wolverine Vol. 7 #9.
Colossus should absolutely get to warp his steel hands into new weapons whenever he wants; that is a really fun extension of his powers.
“X-Manhunt” will mercifully conclude in X-Manhunt: Omega next week. Confused? Looking for that Alpha issue? Don’t! There wasn’t one!