Get in losers, the X-Men are going to space. Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti, Marte Gracia, and Ariana Maher give us S.W.O.R.D. #1.
Nola Pfau: Well, Zach, my docking clamps have engaged, and I’m ready to board.
Zach Rabiroff: Likewise, Nola. And with that big crossover out of the way, let me tell you, I’m just relieved that we won’t be talking about any more of those darn swords. Yes indeed, not a sword in sight. Not one single, ever-loving…ah. Ah. I see. Well, this is awkward. Anyway, on with the write-up.
NP: You…sword-of walked into that one. [Ed. note: Oh, so this is what we’re doing?]
Not Brand X
ZR: From the opening splash page of this issue, breaking the established rules of title-page design in the X-Men line with a jaw-dropping shot of a sunrise dawning over the globe of the earth, it’s clear that isn’t your typical sort of X-Men book. It’s not just a ridiculously virtuosic set-piece from Valerio Schiti and Marte Gracia (the latter of whom is working at an entirely superior level to anything I’ve seen from them in the past); it’s a kind of symbolic mission statement for what this SWORD team is, and what they stand for. This is a group with one foot rooted on earthy soil, and the other stepping into the great beyond; they are supported by and are emerging from Krakoa, but they are not fully of, or beholden, to it.
They are what comes next, as this issue makes a point to remind us more than once: the first generation of Krakoanauts probing into the unknown. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this shot happens to echo the famous opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey — this is, among other things, a quest to reach the next phase in mutant advancement, whatever that means. Nola, that’s enough initial windbaggery from me. I’m desperate to hear what you thought of our introduction to this book and this team.
NP: I thought it was pretty good, Zach.
Oh, did you want me to say more? I mean you’re right that it’s a reference to Kubrick’s work. I have to say the juxtaposition of that is fascinating to me; here’s this book full of heady language about the future and relating it all to us with visual imagery rooted in nostalgia. I like it, but then I like the specific genre of sci-fi it’s echoing a lot too.
That opening cast page really blew me away. It’s a big cast, and while I know that not everyone will have a major role in every arc, comics being what they are, there are still a lot of names to juggle here! I’m particularly pleased by Lila Cheney’s presence, because if you’re gonna be doing mutant space stuff, she should be involved, and if she’s gonna be involved, then at some point, something is going to go hilariously wrong. I, for one, cannot wait.
Blink’s presence is fascinating to me too, because it appears to be Exiles/AoA Blink, and not the original, despite the fact that the Krakoan state means she can actually return. How might she feel about an alternate universe duplicate occupying her “space” as it were?
ZR: At center stage, of course, is none other than the green-haired boss lady to rule them all. No, not that one. The one with a matching jacket and sunglasses that I would pay any amount of money to be cool enough to rock. It’s Abigail Brand herself, and let me tell you, even if nothing else in the pitch of this series appealed to me, the presence of this character might be enough to get me on-board. Brand has been on my list of personal favorites since her introduction back in Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men for the simple fact of her consistent, unapologetic competence: she is the qualified, capable public official in a government (not to say galaxy) that has never much prized quality or capability. She is also, by dint of her alien-mutant heritage, someone whose background makes her both eminently qualified for her work, and also a target for prejudice and blackballing. She’s had to work to get to the top, and damned if she’s ever going to be back on the bottom without a fight.
But by the time we meet her in this issue, coming off the heels of her outrage over the failures of Alpha Flight during the Empyre crossover and then the horrific assault on her crew during X of Swords, she’s been having kind of a rough time. It’s a set of experiences that seem to have redefined her relationship to Krakoa and mutants in general. Ever since her debut, she’s been something of an occasional ally to her fellow mutants, but has never quite defined herself as being among them: she’s used the X-Men as much as she’s relied on them, and when Beast was (briefly) her lover and employee, it was at a time when he was using SWORD as an alternative to the radical politics of Cyclops’ Utopia. [Ed. note: In the deeply underrated SWORD mini]
So, at least based on the excerpt from her personal log that we get here, her pivot to an alliance with Krakoa is based as much on aggravation with the bureaucracies and human superheroes who have let her down as on a genuine attachment to the Xavier-Magneto agenda. What doesn’t get stated outright in that log entry, but which I think is implied in every line of it, is that a sense of trauma and guilt underlies that decision, too, even if Brand won’t admit it to herself or anyone else: the loss of the old crew of the Peak clearly haunts her, even if she wasn’t in any position of authority to stop it. She’s angry, but she also continues to feel responsibility (she’s a natural commander, after all, and this was her crew). And Krakoa is for her, as for so many others, a chance for redemption.
NP: I mean I would pretty flatly reject that this is about redemption for her, because as you say, she’s not responsible. She wasn’t in charge, she literally had nothing to do with the old incarnation of SWORD by the time it ended. She’s not out here trying to atone for anything, she’s out here because she sees a job that needs to be done and she sees in Krakoa a means of doing it. Abigail Brand is not someone who messes around, and she’s had enough of people getting in her way.
ZR: Oh, I totally agree that Brand isn’t actually culpable for what happened, and she clearly knows it, too. But at the same time, she’s a born commander, and this was her crew, even though she was removed from command. She lost people who depended on her, and (even if by no fault of her own) she wasn’t in a position to save them, and I think that’s going to haunt her in ways she might not say out loud.
NP: That’s fair, I think! I suppose I just instantly rejected it because I don’t see the pathos here, y’know? Brand might feel responsible after a passion, but she’s not doing the usual rounds of self-blame and such. She’s just pissed that folks got in her way, and now she’s gonna do it right, so that everyone can see they should’ve listened to her all along.
ZR: Meanwhile, at the, uh, polar opposite of Brand is Magneto, acting as the Quiet Council’s liaison to the semi-independent SWORD team. I think we get quite an interesting version of the character here, and one that isn’t exactly like the man we’ve seen in other X-Men books. He’s an elder statesman, but maybe one who’s no longer at the height of his influence or capabilities. Oh, he’s powerful, don’t get me wrong: he manages to put the Peak into a geosynchronous orbit all by his lonesome. But there’s something a little sad about his interactions with the rest of the SWORD crew, starting with that visual image of him looking up at Brand, his tiny head just about at the level to kiss her shoes.
Three cast members here are former acolytes (not to say Acolytes) of Magneto, and each of them has, in their own way, moved on. There’s Frenzy, first of all, who’s been publicly burned by her association with his erstwhile cult in the past, and doesn’t seem much enthused with being reminded of it. There’s Fabian Cortes, looking as much as ever like the fratty douchebag from an ‘80’s teen sex comedy, but who, hilariously, is disliked by literally everyone, everywhere in this comic. He simpers to Magneto, but it’s all talk, and frankly he just seems grateful to be in a room that isn’t collectively asking him to leave.
And then, with that inimitable Ewing touch, is Peeper himself, the least-loved of all Jack Kirby’s Marvel creations, and a former member of the shortest-lived iteration of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. There’s an adorable, poignant interaction between former leader and former lackey, as Magneto seems genuinely to take an interest in the poor guy’s well-being, while Peeper is a little embarrassed to be reminded of his sordid past.
What all these moments have in common is that they paint Magneto as someone whose ideas have, just maybe, been supplanted by newer and more interesting ones. There are shades here (in much milder form) of Grant Morrison’s out-of-touch demagogue fighting past battles over and over again, while new ideas pass him by. He’s a famous, respected relic, but he’s still a relic. The people who once followed him are where the future is at.
NP: Why am I here, again?
Oh right, it’s to tell Zach when he’s wrong: There are more than three acolytes here. Amelia Voght is also present, as one of the Teleport Team operating under Manifold. She has no speaking lines, of course, but that’s fine for now—she was a believer in Magneto’s teachings at the time, but joined the capital-A Acolytes after the events of Fatal Attractions, so her direct history with the man himself is pretty slim.
Hey, remember when Fabian and Amelia kidnapped Moira that one time, and Amelia was loudly advocating for her death? Good times. Can’t imagine why everyone would prefer they live on a space station far away from Earth.
ZR: Damn it! Voght! I can’t believe I forgot about Voght! Yes, of course, you’re right: [Ed. note: Nola is always right] she’s here, too, and I’m ashamed that I forgot about her, despite owning her first appearance since I was seven, and being absolutely sure that it was going to skyrocket in value as a result of being the debut of the hit character find of 1993. Alas, being forgotten in the face of the crowd is kind of the Amelia Voght story in a nutshell, since she is, at best, the third-most-important retconned angry ex of Charles Xavier.
While we’re on the subject of Voght and Xavier and Moira, though, remember how there was also that time she became righteously furious at Charles because he was manipulatively developing Cerebro technology without telling her about it? Kinda makes you think.
NP: It sure is seeming more and more obvious why she’s here, isn’t it? I can’t imagine Charles, Erik, or Moira particularly wanting to see her around Krakoa, bygones or not.
The other bits of interaction I really glommed onto in this issue were Magneto’s exchange with Ambassador Paibok, of the Kree/Skrull Alliance. It’s the first time we’ve really seen the declaring of Scarlet Witch as an enemy of the Krakoan state have actual political consequences, and Magneto’s response here really struck me; it’s one thing to consider it in the abstract, but how he must feel as a (admittedly bad) father, to have this woman whom he accepted as his own turn out to be pretending to be a mutant on top of the genocide she’s responsible for. My thoughts on taking this angle with Scarlet Witch herself are decidedly more complicated, but given that the plot beat does exist, this is precisely the kind of after-effect I’m looking for. I want to see political tensions running high, and I want to see a man balancing his personal fury, anguish, his sense of betrayal, against the safekeeping of his people on a cosmic political scale. Those are stakes, and Al Ewing, you have got me eating it up.
Six It Up
ZR: My favorite Big Idea in this issue is the concept of mutants themselves as a kind of organic technology, creating ever more complicated outcomes through the network of their communal interactions. It totally, crazily redefines teams like the X-Men as not such superhero cliches, but an actual part of mutant evolution, from the Fastball Special on up. So if the Five is a resurrection machine, this new concept of the Six is, perhaps, an evolution machine. To go back to that comparison to 2001 I made earlier, they have the function of the monoliths, advancing mutantkind to their next major leap, whatever that is.
NP: Notable too that the SWORD station has a very monolithic feel to it, when we see it in full. I’m also reminded of another Clarke story, Rendezvous With Rama…ah, the literary references are just all over the place. Speaking of, I think there’s one other pretty important book, Ewing makes heavy reference to here…Zach? This stuff is way outside my experience, so it’s your time to shine.
ZR: From the prosaic text of the data page, we get the Extremely Al Ewing ascent into the holy unknown: the six aren’t just voyagers, they are quasi-religious voyagers, piercing the heavenly strata to bring back a tool of the gods. And I think I know what Ewing is drawing from for this.
Look above at the diagram we get for the circuit formed by the Six.
And here, courtesy of Wikipedia, are the ten Sefirot (the divine emanations of God that extended to create all aspects of the universe) of the Tree of Life, as described in the Jewish mystical texts Zohar:
Drawing from Kabbalah mysticism isn’t new for Al Ewing: it’s actually been a central theme of Immortal Hulk. But while that series explored the dark aspects of the divine, this one gives us the above to his below. In Kabbalah, it is impossible to probe or progress through any sphere of the Tree of Life in isolation; a journey to the heart of the divine can only happen when energy moves freely through every node of creation. So, too, with the Six, who possess power when working in tandem as a circuit that goes far beyond what any of them have alone. So, I know, I know, this is all very esoteric, and you are patiently waiting for me to shut up and get back to comic booking and I will, but damn it, Nola, Zack knew I was going to nerd out on post-Biblical mysticism when he offered me a permanent contract, and it’s too late to back out now.
NP: It’s interesting to me that you mention the “above” and “below;” that’s something I spent a lot of time thinking about in my time covering Excalibur, and I kind of love that we’re seeing more of it here. Beyond that, I have nothing to add to this. My mom tried to raise me Catholic but it didn’t really take, and I don’t know anything about Sefirot except that he had long white hair and an even longer sword. So, unless you want some puns built around Kabbalah/cobble, what say we talk about the, uh…actual plot of the book?
The Cosmic Macguffin
NP: Okay, so the structure here is pretty straightforward; beyond a lot of expository conversation between Magneto and Brand and a tour of the station, we see Manifold’s team teleport the Six to retrieve a shiny pyramid-shaped artifact from…well, somewhere. It’s probably fine that they have it, right? Nothing bad has ever come from daring characters risking cosmic annihilation to touch the shiny artifact.
I mentioned earlier that I really appreciated the way this issue’s opener evoked the style of sci-fi I’m fond of, and if I liked that, then I loved this. It has exactly that feel; this isn’t a space war, it’s not opera. It’s people, simple people (albeit powerful ones) reaching into the void of space for a handhold with which to pull themselves into the future. It’s notable to me that, with the exception of Frenzy sparring with an Ambassador, there’s no violence in this issue. The action is passive in nature; teleport out, retrieve the thing, bring it back. It’s not focused on pain or recovery, it’s focused on possibility, and I truly love that.
ZR: I also really appreciated how willing this issue was to buck the conventions of superhero comics. Maybe that’s a comment on the freedom the X-Men line is allowing to its books at this point, or maybe it’s a testament to confidence that Al Ewing is starting to feel as a writer this far into his career. But either way, this quest for the ineffable Mysterium pyramid is at the heart of the issue, and whatever it is that the adventurers brought back from the void obviously has the potential to be some kind of extraordinary leap for mutants everywhere.
So what is Mysterium? Obviously, I don’t have any idea, and I don’t think I’m supposed to at this point. It’s, you know…a mystery. At this point, I can only find a couple of clues to hang a theory on. For one thing, the object seems to be the same one that Storm is poring over in the recently-released teaser image for Reign of X (which might tell us nothing, since these teaser images have somewhat notoriously been designed to screw with the minds of over-obsessive fans, but never mind). For another, the pyramid shape has a marked resemblance to the tarot card tower motif that the creators have been playing with ever since the start of this era. And then there’s the oddity of that fantastic Dr. Doom quote at the end of this issue: “You have stolen fire from Heaven to hold in your hands. How could I object? I have done the same myself — with one significant difference. I wore gloves. Be careful.” That reference, to the Greek myth of Prometheus and the stolen fire representing the knowledge of the Gods, has shown up once before, in this memorable scene from House of X #4:
Which might imply that whatever this forbidden knowledge is, it has the power to destroy as well as to advance. And that mutants might not be the only people out to harness its force. How about you, Nola? Do you have any theories on what’s going on here?
NP: Honestly I have none, and that is absolutely the thing I love most about this issue. They’ve retrieved the mysterium, and I know what would usually happen after an event like that, which is that things would go…poorly. They might still, here, but every time I’m likely to assume that they will these days I’m reminded of Hickman’s early edict that these are stories about hope, that he’s pushing back against the idea that the X-Men always lose. When you pair an idea like that with a writer like Ewing, someone who specializes in the liminal and the, as you said, ineffable, I think you get a story that goes into interesting, new spaces. Which, frankly, is exactly what a forward-facing, hard-scifi comic should be about.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- The biggest unsolved mystery of this issue: what did Cable name himself after, and how drunk did Wiz-Kid have to get him before he admitted it?
- Look I don’t know the canon explanation, but I’ve no-prized Cable and Stryfe’s names thoroughly, and as far as I’m concerned it’s the only explanation that matters:
- Can we just take a few extra moments to appreciate how cool it is to see Wiz Kid again, and how cool and fashionable he looks? Moment of silent reverence, everyone.
- Krakoan Reads: BLACK
Zach Rabiroff edits articles at Comicsxf.com.
Nola Pfau is Editor-in-Chief of WWAC and generally a bad influence.
