Marauders #8 Review/Spoilers: Here Comes Tomorrow

[Rift]

Flashback to the Threshold, who are getting their asses beat by the bacteria they created to fight the mushroom people. A tree lady tells our main trio to go to the future, as that's their only hope for salvation.

The Marauders (sans Cassandra) bathe together and talk about the mission. Some of them think that going up against Sublime, Arkea and mushroom people, all while risking their own timeline, seems like a bad idea. But Kate guilts them into falling in line by giving a heroic speech. Bishop compares this situation to him traveling to the present and doing stuff here, though I don't think the situations are really comparable, so.

Later, Psylocke takes Crave to Greycrow's restaurant. Crave is obnoxious and constantly eats everything in his path, including the plates. Greycrow threatens to feed him bullets, but Crave eats his gun. Turns out, the alloy is delicious to him. Crave looks at the menu and is surprised - the words are foreign, but the Krakoan alphabet is the same as the Threshold's. (+1 for BobbysWorld's "The Threshold are a future Krakoa" theory)

Meanwhile, Cassandra is teasing a gloomy Amass, who's sad that mutantdom isn't as grand as it used to be. The Threshold had a continent and colonized two planets, Krazna and Teeamu, which are now just empty asteroids. (Note: Or maybe they called Earth Krazna and another planet Teeamu - not really sure how I should read this.) Mutantdom now is just an island and Arakko. Things aren't looking good. Cassandra mocks him because everyone he knew and loved is dead. Cassandra also relates to Amass being an outcast, as the Threshold people saw Amass as a potential body thief. She does stop him when he talks about wanting to merge with Krakoa, since it would break the rules. But then she talks about how they need to survive - even if it means breaking rules. She doesn't care about the rules, only caring about protecting mutants.

There can be no rules when it comes to mutant survival. Hence, I warned that Threshold's germs would grow into today's Arkea and Sublime. And hence, when the Marauders ignore me and go back anyway... there will be no rule but my own.

Meanwhile, Tempo and her new love interest are on the beach. Theia is sad because humans - who were part of the Threshold and lived alongside them as valued members of society - now outnumber the mutants and no longer live hand-in-hand with them. They talk about the mission and how risky it is, but Tempo's up for it. And her new gf is sending some signals, letting Tempo know that she's down to date.

Later, at the White Palace, the Marauders meet with Jumbo Carnation and Stitch, who sat down with Forge to make the Marauders some new uniforms. Basically, he made the Marauders (but not the Threshold trio) little Marauders logos. Tapping them will create sexy, skin-tight suits that will protect them from the evil bacteria.

The Marauders, Threshold and Hellion visit a place called Cooterman's Creek, which Sage determined to be the place where the Threshold were located. Amass uses everyone as Fusion Material to Fusion Summon another cool monster.



Data Page: Grove mentions how someone name Nightfount radicalized the Unbreathing and encouraged them to attack the Threshold. Not satisfied with the Unbreathing still living and being a potential threat, they wanted the Threshold to go to war with them and wipe them out. Sublime and Arkea were made to kill and hate, which they resented. Hate breeds hate, yadda yadda yadda. Everyone is dead.

Back to the Marauders. The plan is to go back in time 2 weeks before Arkea and Sublime started wreaking the ancient nerds. Back in the past, bacteria-controlled mutants are fighting giant rodent things. The Marauders fusion unfortunately undershots their jump, landing in the midst of the bacterial infection.

Cassandra is suddenly grabbed by a possessed mutant, who chokes her. Cassandra flashes back to her time in the wound and cries out her brother's name. Luckily for her, Fang saves her. But then the possessed mutant punches a hole through his chest. But then Aurora gets revenge on the mutant by cutting off his hand. Sadly, no one quips about how he's half-Hellion now.

Unfortunately, Fang can't heal fast enough, and he's exposed to the bacteria. The bacteria says that there's so much to learn and see in this body. The feeling is sublime.

Notes:

• I really like this take on Cassandra Nova. Just this mean grandma who offers unconventional wisdom. Who is proudly immoral and gleefully malicious, but can still connect to others and do the right thing - even if she hurts everyone around her to do so.
• The two planets of the Threshold's time seem to be loosely based on Russian and Spanish words. AKA languages of our current time. (+2 for BobbysWorld's theory)
• Tempo mentions that they plan on bringing the Threshold trio with them on the mission, and one of their tactics will be Amass merging them all. I'm still banking on Amass being Marvel's newest way of bringing in character fusions, since they're so obsessed with the concept. The current fusion isn't their usual fusion, but I wouldn't be surprised if future fusions will be.
• The Threshold's clothes come from short-lived, unicellular colonies that live on the skin's surface, then petrify into bespoke attire.
• No Hole sightings.

[KimberlyP]

I am wanting to love this book the same way I love XMen Red and Immortal. The cast is one of my favorites, but its a bit large and they keep tossing in more/new characters which crowds the panels. Somehow Orlando manages to give great moments to each member but then they dart off into another chaotic adventure wearing suits that obscure their faces and make it hard to follow sometimes. Ditch Cassandra and the newbies and I think we’d be golden.

[dragon1440]

I am glad that someone is giving Stitch her due! The Alpha Flight special was one of my first comics and I fell in love with her. Hoping groundhog is one of the humans allowed on the island. I wrote a fanfic once where she became a teacher at the school and had gotten ahold of some of the three fates from asgard unbreakable thread and learned to use that in conjunction with needles to do all kinds of things from wrapping p foes to creating a protective web. Since shes getting some love can St Elmo be reconned in as a mutant and resurrected please? haha

[king of hybrids]

Based on Judgement Day Omega spoilers:

I’m assuming that the tree Thresholder became the basis of Okkara and influenced the reappearance of the X-Gene among particular Deviant lines

end of spoilers

[Weather]

The best part of the book for me was the members of the group talking to Kate about going on this mission. Very compelling because that's how I feel about all this and I love the nuance of heroes not always wanting to go on missions to save people (in this case, a very stupid mission).

The rest for me was weak to bad. The last battles were so boring. The art is better, mostly when there is not a lot of movement.

[jwatson]

This was really good. It feels like this book has finally hit it's stride and it felt like an adventure. Love the costumes and i would say reading this it felt very much like the feeling i got when reading S.W.O.R.D. and that's a great thing.

I hope to never have to read the word livery again though i kept getting taken out of the story like is it pronounced "live-ry/li-ver-y/liv-ry is it two syllables or three" eventually i looked and up and found it's three but yeah. lol

[mugen]

Very good number I would have liked to see more, too bad they fell at the wrong time but we already know that they will bring grove back, after will they bring everyone back, we'll see.

the art was much better so hopefully we'll know more about the treshold.

[BobbysWorld]

So, I am back on my "Threshold is future Krakoa" bullshit, and more convinced than ever! I wavered last issue, had a moment of doubt, mostly because the glimpses we got of Threshold in that issue seemed so dissimilar to Krakoa - like the whole thing with a Breeding Sea that infant mutants crawled out of every twenty years like clockwork, and then were raised by the whole previous generation, communally? Mutants as we know them in the present, or even in the past as far back as Okkara, have never been anything like that....

But then after this issue reaffirmed my initial suspicions about Threshold, it occurred to me - duh, evolution has NEVER been like that, and never would be. That kind of regularity to new generations...that's not a naturally occurring process, and doesn't make sense even in the context of some first iteration of mutantkind evolving two billion years ago. There's no randomness to how Theia described Threshold's reproductive cycle....in hindsight, it very blatantly feels like the distant descendant of a deliberately implemented system of ensuring future generations of mutants.

Almost as if, upon discontinuing resurrection because the idea (as I outlined it in my theory) was to minimize Threshold's impact on the Earth, timeline and future....and still (initially) committed to the idea that upon its founding Threshold was only ever intended to be a TEMPORARY refuge, and someday, after the first generation - exhausted from its constant fighting for survival and just looking for a place to live in peace for awhile - had the chance to catch their breath, renew their spirits, explore what they were like as a people when not constantly embattled and thereby get a chance to ACTUALLY fulfill the promise of sanctuary that Krakoa had been pitched to them as and was the whole reason most of them joined it....

Like, if the idea was always that someday Threshold WOULD return to its 'rightful' place in time, and resurrection could then be utilized to bring back that first generation of Krakoan refugees, AND all the ensuing generations.....well, someone operating off that plan/perspective, and taking the 'make more mutants' aspect of Krakoa literally, figuring that the future success and survival of Krakoa/Threshold depended on mutantkind boosting their numbers and thereby expanding their roster of extremely powerful or combat/survival-capable members, or perhaps even producing more resurrection-capable mutants as well....

Well, viewed from that lens, I could see where an established, regular cycle of producing future generations and raising them communally might arise.....whereas that same sort of cycle occurring naturally in nature....not so much.

So, squaring away the whole reproductive angle of Thresholders, as foreign to us as it might be (while kinda fitting with the more out there takes on what mutant culture might conceivably look like, that seemed to appeal to Hickman on a worldbuilding front in the first place - and again, my whole theory about Threshold was predicated on the idea that the concept of Threshold and its place in the overarching story of this era was Hickman's)....well, there's similarly a lot of other details that support the idea that Threshold was founded by time-travelers from the future, even if that doesn't mean Krakoa specifically.

There's the fact that so much of their civilization seems viral-based specifically because of how this enables their society to leave a very minimal footprint.....their clothes are literally as bio-degradable as possible, based on the explanation given for how they work. There's also the fact that for a society as scientifically advanced as Threshold appears to be....and with an awareness of other planets in their system and other life-forms living in other star systems....its a bit weird that not only did they never seem to TRY to become space-capable, they were described in the previous arc as almost having a cultural fear of outer space, with this being the whole reason they avoided exploring it or learning too much about it.

Yet, it doesn't seem that fear of something FROM outer space instilled this in their culture.....after all, they didn't exactly clutch their pearls and faint when an invading force arrived on their doorstep FROM outer space....so where does this fear of space, this aversion to exploring it come from? Well, if you once again look outside just the naturally-occurring possibilities, the reasons and ways this cultural fear might have arisen organically....you once again arrive at the possibility that this was a deliberately instilled cultural taboo. A society of time-travelers, extremely conscious of the destabilizing impact they could have on the timeline if they left too much of a footprint in the past and significantly altered the course of planets' natural evolutions...and always intending to someday pack up camp, clean up after themselves and once again depart, this time back into the future.....well, such a society might see it as very important that their descendants NOT venture forth into space, where their influence would quickly become too widespread to chart or manage, and inevitably create ripple effects not just for Earth, but the greater universe as a whole. By ensuring their society, even in future generations, kept their presence as tightly contained as possible, they might have thus hoped to circumvent any possible fallout from their presence in the past.

And as Rift noted, it also seems significant that Thresholders' names for Mars and its sister planet just so happen to be Russian-derived. Tbh, I'm aiming not to read too much into this particular element, because it could just be coincidental similarities to a linguistic aesthetic that Orlando's personally familiar or comfortable with.....like, its not necessarily that Orlando DELIBERATELY gave the planets Russian-based names, it could just be he was looking for a couple random names and happened to come up with stuff that sounds Russian because that's a personal go-to of his, for whatever reason. Hard to say, but it is still noteworthy.

However, I don't really need to lean into this point that much, to reinforce my theory....because the big, glaring point of interest for me.....is Crave's remark about the familiarity of the Krakoan alphabet. Obviously that - along with Amass remarking how familiar the land of Krakoa itself felt - like these were both pretty blatantly dropped as clues directly tying Threshold to Krakoa in some way. And coupled with the bit in Judgment Day: Omega, where we learned that Krakoa's existence predated Celestial arrival on Earth, and they took direct inspiration from how the whole island was networked when creating the Machine-that-is-Earth....

It again all seems that just like the repeated emphasis on having Kate and other characters refer to Thresholders as their ANCESTORS....the more obvious assertion seems to suggest that first came Threshold, and Grove, and then they were wiped out by Sublime and Arkea, but their initial existence led to the formation of the living island that was originally Okkara, with this being left behind even after Threshold and its inhabitants were long gone.

But as I originally theorized, this could all be a massive deliberate smokescreen building up to the reveal that its the other way around, and Threshold/its inhabitants that descended from Krakoa and its people, and in retreating into the distant past these Krakoan refugees created a time loop wherein Okkara existed because Krakoa existed because Okkara existed...aka the Longshot/Shatterstar Paradox, redux.

And I'm more convinced than ever that this is the order of things....because its the only possible way Crave could recognize the Krakoan alphabet and claim its letters were the same as the ones drawn directly from the first seed that spawned Threshold....which must have been Krakoa, obviously.

It had to be this way and not the other way around....because the Krakoan alphabet was literally invented by Doug.

This screencap is from House of X, making it explicitly clear that Krakoa itself HAS no native language, no alphabet that other beings CAN reproduce or mimic. Same with Arakko. And presumably with Okkara's original living avatar. That's why only specific individuals like Doug and Redroot can communicate directly with Krakoa and Arakko. If the Krakoan and Arakkii alphabets were ingrained in the islands or something they had previous awareness/familiarity with, aka remnants of the original Threshold alphabet long ago....then by learning these alphabets, more mutants would be capable of directly communicating with Krakoa and Arakko. Anyone who speaks and reads Krakoan would literally be reading/speaking the same language native to Krakoa itself. Obviously, that's not the case, and this page makes it abundantly clear: communicating directly with Krakoa is something specific to Doug and his power....and the Krakoan alphabet itself, wholly created by Doug....has NOTHING to do with Krakoa the island.

Screenshot 2022-11-12 211941.jpg

Plus.....if Krakoa truly originated in the time of Threshold.....it still wouldn't make sense for the Threshold and Krakoan alphabets to be identical.....because Krakoa literally didn't exist as its own entity until Annihilation split Okkara, four thousand years ago. If any language/alphabet were to be derived from Threshold's-language-as-a-source-point......it would have been the Okkaran alphabet that matched Threshold's original alphabet, NOT the Krakoan alphabet. And given the fact that Krakoans and Arakkii weren't able to initially understand each other when Summoner first arrived, and they had to telepathically translate.....its pretty clear that modern Krakoan is NOT the same as what Okkarans spoke.

[BobbysWorld]

There's just no way for the Krakoan alphabet to spring from the Threshold alphabet, even as something rediscovered, or something passed down via Krakoa just as Crave claims the Threshold alphabet was drawn from the first seed that spawned Threshold, whatever that means in specific.

The only reason the Krakoan alphabet is associated with Krakoa at all....is because of Doug's association with the island. For the island, or something from the island, some 'seed' of it.....to be the source-point of Threshold's alphabet.....the only possible way for that to be true is if the island was not actual the origin of the alphabet, but just the intermediary....linking its creator, Doug.....to the first generation of Threshold and their alphabet.

Thus, the only way it makes sense for Threshold society and Krakoan society to share the same alphabet....is if Crave and his generation of Thresholders are descended from Doug and his generation of Krakoans. NOT the other way around.

Lastly, this isn't an actual clue supporting my theory, more just stuff that's come up since I first wrote that theory that I think further supports my suspicions as to where this is all headed, what the original blueprint Hickman had for the whole era was, and that the X-office is still following.

Because as Rift and anyone else who read my theory knows....the entire point of it was that Threshold only came about because at some point in the future, Krakoan society would decide the only way to truly be free of the constant threat of extinction is to leave entirely, rather than continue to fight Orchis and any other like-minded future organizations, and then take Krakoa and their society two billion years into the past, found Threshold, and set in motion the events that led to the clue of the two billion year old mysterium box with a message from Kate to herself.

BUT. But but but....like I said back then...this does not actually mean that I think the books are building up to mutants leaving the present and recreating Threshold. In fact, its the exact opposite. That's the entire point of the theory and what I believe Hickman's overall story and theme always intended. I know a lot of people are speculating that mutants and the X-Men are going to abandon Earth at some point in the near future, and possibly move entirely to Arakko, or something like that. I get why people are having those suspicions, because I think those are the conclusions the books are AIMING for people to draw. That they WANT people to think that Fall of X will result in some mass exodus of mutantkind, either to space....or possibly....to somewhere else, like the distant past.

Because timing wise....we'll be reaching the end of this Marauders arc right around the same time as the end of the Sins of Sinister event, or possibly a little before that. And all of this will happen just a few months prior to the start of Fall of X. Exactly the timeline required for Xavier, the Quiet Council, the Great Ring, other major mutant leaders....to be informed by Kate and crew of the truth about Threshold and its origins. That once upon a time....and sometime in the near future.....Krakoans will see a mass exodus as a viable choice. There's just enough time for that to be laid out in both readers' and characters' minds, as a possible course of action or desperate escape hatch, if things get TOO bad during Fall of X, and there seems to be no other chance of survival. They have a back-up plan now, a break glass in case of emergency option. Yeah, things didn't work out as planned for Threshold THIS time around, but now armed with knowledge of why it ultimately was destroyed, even if they go back in time and restart that timeloop again....they won't make the same mistakes and this time Threshold CAN work out as planned.

Much like the entire era is predicated on 'supposedly' learning valuable insights from Moira's past lives, future timelines like Omega Sentinel's, and Destiny's visions, etc....that can be used to make different choices, better choices, even if they just press a reset button or restart a cycle or loop of events they've already seen play out once.



The Big Bobbysworld Theory was always that Krakoa and Arakko themselves are NOT the defining hallmarks of the Hickman era. The make it or break it elements that all his themes and his big Act Three rest on. Its NEVER been about their fall or demise as marking the end of the Hickman era and making way for something new.....because they're just the settings, ultimately.

The real hallmarks of the Hickman era, the backbone of the story, its structure and all its themes.....is the nihilism born of constantly trying to craft an ideal or preferred future. The trap of trying to outwit fate, use cheatcodes like reincarnation, timeline resets, time travel and visions of the future.....to engineer a specific desired outcome.....only to really engineer self-fulfilling prophecies instead. The stagnation that comes from calling do-over life after life, timeline after timeline, never actually moving forward....because none of your re-do's are ever QUITE good enough. Grass is Always Greener Syndrome leading them to start over and shoot for something better each and every time, rather than just....try and work with what they've got.

And thus the real point of Hickman's overall story, and what I think the books are still aiming for, and this arc and stories elsewhere are all laying the groundwork for....is reaching that eleventh hour when its make it or break it time, down to the wire, here's the last possible point for continuing forward versus hitting that reset/time-travel/shoot-a-Moira-clone button and going back to the start to try and do it all over again, just better this time.....

And instead of hitting that button, the characters choose to break this never-ending, always-repeating cycle instead. Its not about the era ending with mutants making a mass exodus to Arakko or the distant past, enacting the first steps of the Threshold plan in real time...its about all of that being raised as possibilities, as a way out when things seem most dire, a guaranteed safety net when the actual future holds no guarantees of even basic survival......and mutantkind choosing NOT to take the escape hatch, but to instead power through in the present, no matter the risk, because the future is still better than just eternally resetting the past and suffering through infinite loops of the same mistakes and just slightly different outcomes.

The Big Finale isn't aiming to be the choice to leave....but rather, the choice to stay even when leaving's never looked more appealing and staying looked more risky.

In fact, just before the Hickman era, aka the time Hickman would have first been pitching his grand plan and big outline to the X-offices....we had IvX....which was when the idea of mutants leaving Earth FIRST came up....and it was tossed about as a very popular rumor, that with the Terrigen cloud making Earth inhabitable for mutants, they were going to go find or terraform their own planet elsewhere. And frankly, if that was a direction the X-offices wanted to take....that was the IDEAL moment to do it, and they were never going to get a more ideal set-up for mutants being entirely understandable and sympathetic in leaving Earth...not even because they wanted to, but because they simply saw no other option.

And say what you will about Hickman, but he's never struck me as a writer who finds inspiration in doing a slightly less-understandable/reasonable version of an idea someone else already had.

Nah, instead I'd argue that he found inspiration in crafting a story that definitively said no matter what, no matter how bad things get, mutants - and the X-Men in particular - will never just give up on Earth entirely, because its their home too. No writer can control what future writers do, but the way I picture where this is all leading to.....the grand finale is meant to cement mutant ties to Earth, make their choice to fight for it, fight for their right to stay on it, as so resolute....that any future stories aimed at making them leave Earth will feel like non-starters, cut off at the knees by how strongly the Hickman era makes a case for them NOT doing that, no matter the story circumstances.

And to wrap this all up....mark me down as part of the camp that thinks 'the Fall of X isn't about the end of Krakoa, but the end of Xavier's influence on Krakoa, the last of the three founders removed from the decision-making stage and making way for his students, successors and the younger generations to finally be in charge of their own UNCHARTED destiny from here on out.'If I might redirect peoples' attention to the specific warning Magneto left Storm with, in his deathbed speech....he said watch Xavier, because he's afraid of what Xavier might do - specifically how he was worried Charles might make MARTYRS of them all.

Magneto: If we live....I fear it will be soon. Our enemies will strike...and Charles will feel forced by events to act. To do something -- because something must be done, however terrible -- and because, in the no-place of his heart, he can not see as choice. And on that day....he will martyr us all. He is a good man, Ororo. We must be wary of good men. For what will they not do...to show how good they are? Watch him."

I have a suspicion I know exactly what that was foreshadowing, and what the Fall of X will be. How Xavier might martyr them all in a last ditch effort to make all that he's done feel worth it, in the end.

[BobbysWorld]

Never mind. Just gonna upload the rest and drop a link so no more walls of text, opt-in reading only lol.

https://pdfhost.io/v/VP8ep~fGB_Furth...om_Bobbysworld

[gonnagiveittoya]

Wait a minute.

Is this whole time travel plot going to result in incorporating the time travel powers Kitty has in the Days of Future Past movie somehow

[BobbysWorld]

Wait a minute.

Is this whole time travel plot going to result in incorporating the time travel powers Kitty has in the Days of Future Past movie somehow

I doubt it? I mean, who knows, but I'm not really sure why it would since its not like they need to come up with any more in terms of time travel mechanisms than what they've already utilized via Tempo and a circuit based around her powers.

[davetvs]

Wait a minute.

Is this whole time travel plot going to result in incorporating the time travel powers Kitty has in the Days of Future Past movie somehow

I swear, you are the funniest person here.