X-MEN vol 7 #17
“Visitor”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inkers: JP Mayer, Ryan Stegman & Livesay
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Cyclops, Psylocke, Temper, Magik and Juggernaut are all still fighting the 3K X-Men throughout this issue, and their plot doesn’t advance that much.
Kid Omega. He survived the explosion in issue #14 thanks to a psychic “macro” that created a telekinetic shield around him while he was unconscious, only to be opened on the arrival of an “authorised ally”. We’ve seen him do something broadly similar when he used pre-prepared mental traps to beat the more experienced Professor X in issue #13, though that was reusing a trick he’d picked up from Cassandra Nova.
His list of authorised allies includes all of his current teammates and the Factory supporting cast, but it also includes Phoebe Cuckoo, who was his girlfriend in the Krakoa run of X-Force. She very much isn’t now, but clearly Quentin still thinks she rates a mention – or her name just comes to mind when he’s panicking.
SUPPORTING CAST
Magneto. Beast claims that with his current lack of control over his powers, he’d risk wiping out Merle if he actually cut loose, even with the benefit of the drug he took last issue. Nonetheless, he seems to have no real trouble in controlling the Sentinel.
He wryly tells the twin that the other X-Men will probably have made annoying speeches to her, but he won’t be doing that – but, as Cassandra points out, he goes on later in the issue to do exactly that. His speech is about the imporance of using violence with control, so that it’s more than just a tantrum.
Beast. He claims to have total faith in Magneto, because “He’s terrorised me since I was a teenager.” This seems more like awe than rationality.
Xorn. He finds Kid Omega. As in issue #15, he believes that if Kid Omega was dead, he’d feel it.
Ben Liu. He’s alarmed at seeing Magneto in trouble, and unhappy that Magneto is in action at all in this condition. As in previous chapters of this arc, he wants to get more involved and take action, which prompts a warning about the damage he could do without proper control of her powers. As it turns out, his plan doesn’t involve using his powers – yet, anyway.
Jennifer Starkey. She and Ben take …
Piper Cobb … back home to her mother…
Rose Ellen Cobb. Yes, she’s been an anti-mutant campaigner in the past. But she hardly rates as a villain in this story since she’s just worried about her missing daughter. Presumably, Ben, Jennifer and Piper will be asking her to talk to the twin and exercise some motherly persuasion. Given Rose’s aversion to mutants and the fact that her new daughter is a violent monster, this may not go brilliantly.
VILLAINS
3K. There’s a lot of 3K in this issue – everyone listed below is a 3K member except for the twin, who’s allied with them anyway.
According to the Chairman, 3K’s agenda is to take control of evolution, “correct nature’s mistake in favouring the flatscans” and “rectify the randomness we have always been so at the mercy of in increasing our number.” In other words, the aim seems to be to promote mutant dominance, but by creating suitable mutants rather than relying on naturally occurring ones.
3K has a charter which expressly forbids the members from assembling clone armies, apparently due to their mutual mistrust. Mr Sinister was not invite to join.
The Chairman. He thinks it’ll be good propaganda for 3K that Magneto is using a Sentinel. Evidently the hope is to get the mutant population on side. He claims to be a mutant, and to have a track record with “clone troops” of his own. We still aren’t told who he is.
Cassandra Nova. She seems to be competing to show that her protégé, the twin, is more valuable to 3K than Wyre’s X-Men. She gets quite agitated on seeing Magneto in a Wild Sentinel, seemingly offended that one of the machines she used to wipe out Genosha in New X-Men #115 is being hijacked. (Or maybe just a machine of that type? Either way, she seems possessive about it.)
Astra. The “Doctor” is indeed Astra. She had a brief cameo in House of X #5 as one of the villains arriving on Krakoa, but aside from that, 3K seems to be her first major role since she created a clone version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in the 2012 miniseries Magneto: Not a Hero.
She has a new Magneto clone, also called Joseph, and seems more interested in doing flamboyant supervillain things than actually advancing 3K’s agenda. She still wants to churn out Magneto clones and believes that flipping the Earth’s poles would be a great idea. (This was her plan in the “Magneto War” crossover in 1999, where she was introduced.) Nobody else in 3K seems to have any time for this nonsense, and it’s not entirely clear why they want her there – scientific knowledge, presumably, but the Chairman seems to have that too. In issue #15, she was the one responsible for teleporting the 3K X-Men to Alaska, but that’s her mutant power, and she can’t have made the 3K leadership simply as a stand-in Magik.
Joseph. The new Joseph stands silently behind Astra, dressed as Magneto. He’s clearly listening to the argument but it’s hard to read his reaction. The Chairman isn’t sure whether this is Astra’s third or fourth Joseph.
Wyre. He seems very happy with the performance of the 3K X-Men, although since he also takes the opportunity to break into the Factory, you have to wonder whether the criterion is “are they making a good distraction”. Nonetheless, he does describe them as killers and hardcases, which he clearly regards as a good thing. He regards training killers as an area of great experience, and he looks down on Cassandra’s approach of simply manipulating the twin into helping – he dismisses the twin as a “stray”.
According to Cassandra, Wyre was 3K’s second choice after Sabretooth turned out to be dead (following the “Sabretooth War” storyline in Benjamin Percy’s Wolverine). Presumably, the role is just to be a killer for hire, since Sabretooth would hardly be interested in 3K’s political agenda and Wyre isn’t even a mutant at all.
The 3K X-Men: Schwartzchild, Constellation, Galatea, Timebomb, Psychovore and Juice. Like the real X-Men, we only see them briefly in this story as the fight continues in the background.
According to Cassandra, they’re ex-SHIELD agents. Cyclops thinks that their tactics are too dependent on leader Schwartzchild being around. Schwartzchild claims to be baffled by how someone with powers as mundane as Cyclops became a mutant leader, missing the point about what leadership entails – although it’s hardly an unusual attitude in the Krakoan era, and Arakko insisted on all their leaders being omega mutants.
Piper’s twin. Since her agenda at the moment is to smash up Merle by way of revenge, Magneto’s speech about tantrums actually sems to give her pause. But Cassandra quickly gets her back under control by playing up Magneto’s hypocrisy about speech-giving to undermine him.
