Maruders #10 -Fine I'll do it myself

[Saithor]

Since no one else will apparently

We open with Stryfe yelling about he regrew himself here and is going to use the superweapon to ensure he's the only living thing and thus will shape the future of all life to come. (Not how evolution works, but I will try to keep the prehistoric nitpicks to a minimum)

Kate leaps out of some punk rocker I don't recognize and threatens to steal Stryfe's brain because Spock's Brain was her favorite episode of OG Star Trek. Nah, she's here to stop Stryfe and his army of Amobeas. Stryfe is wondering what the hell she's doing here before telekinetically trying to rip her apart. The punk rocker, apparently called Amass, steps in and merges with Stryfe to hold him off, telling Kate to run for it before they get devoured by Stryfe's insane facial expressions

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Seriously man, the fuck is wrong with your face?

We suddenly cut to a data page detailing the security transcript of Kitty wrecking the Unbreathing's base and I am getting tired of the overuse of these data pages to compress stories even more.

We then cut to Katheryne outside the base in a submarine. She makes it ten feet before suddenly ramming into U-96 (I was just watching Das Boot, sorry). She starts piloting the sub all over the place and letting everyone know, or anyone whose listening at least, that Stryfe somehow returned and is now in the distant past and trying to rewrite all of history.

Meanwhile Arkea is throwing mutants against the wall Threia made to try and get through and possess everyone to kill her brother. Good luck with that. Grove says they just need to last till the Maruders are done and wonders where sublimes is. Next scene.

We then get a summary page I am ignoring because otherwise I will try to make a time machine to go back and invalidate this premise myself.

We cut to the Birthign Seas. Arkea is creating mutants out of it, Bishop is murdering them up something fierce. Sublime comes in looking like he stepped off the set of The Thing

Meanwhile Arkea breaks through the wall up above and starts trying to kill everyone only for Pryde to show up, and then Bishop blasts his way up from the Birthing Sea, having nuked all he could find of Sublime and Arkea down there. Too bad, the Thing reject was just a Sublime Mule with a multiplication gift, he starts sending all his other controlled mutants at the group.

Arkea and Sublime start villain monologuing at each other, only to be introduced by a third villain monologue, Cassandra Nova has entered the rap battle of villain speeches! She opens up her livery and invites both Sublime and Arkea in to infect her. They both immediately abandon attempting to infect the others and go all in on Cassandra because they are morons.

Everyone is trying to reorganize while the two bacteria fight over mutantkind's worst enemy, and Kate notices that Grove has her puzzle box and wants to know what's going on.

Cassandra pulls out a uno reverse card and nukes Arkea and Sublime into non-existence. Nova states she torched Sublime and Arkea...and also lobotomized everyone they had possessed?

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Seriously, WTF is wrong with everyone's face?

We cut to next morning. Tempo and Threia are in bed together. Tempo is reflecting on the fact they need to leave soon. Their suits are damaged and they need to head back, but at the same time Amass needs to be rescued, Stryfe stopped, and the Oxygen weapon nuked.

Kathryne is staring at the puzzle box reflecting on how many people she is leaving. Grove and the rest of the Maruders show up, Grove has turned into not-Groot, and assures Kathryne the Thresholders have got this. Cassandra meanwhile detects what she thinks is the secret plan of Kitty's and invades her mind trying to figure out What's in the box? Turns out it's Cenobites.

Nah, the box is a distraction. Sprite blasts Cassandra and paralyzes here while Kate leans down and in possibly one of the few times this kind of thing is acknowledged, straight up tells Cassandra that she killed Kitty's dad, and she'll never forgive her for that. So they are going to kill her. No, because they are morons, they are leaving her in Threshold's custody. Because that's definitely not going to backfire in the future. Everyone gets secret memories back of them planning this in the first place. Threia and Tempo say goodbye and the Maruders depart. Threia mourns Tempo leaving while Grove comforts her. And also says to start calling her Okkara now.

What even is marvel's history anymore? Let alone actual history. Stars this makes my head hurt

Next page is a letter from Pryde to her dead father. Explains everything. Kind of. Emma and Kate have wanted to kill Cassandra for a long time for the crimes she inflicted on Mutantkind and them as well (You know, just not Apocalypse. Or Shaw. Or Sinister. Or Mastermind. Or Dakken. Or...you know what forget it.). Emma got the crystal box which had a map to Nova's secret Krakoan Habitat. They decided Nova would be needed to solve the mystery so brought her onboard but used Somnus lockbox mind and Kate having a decoy mind to trick Cassandra. Says that Sublime and Arkea's minds got so fried when they reformed millenia later that's why they thought they were earth's first rulers (Gaah.), and that Cassandra was extremely useful, because even if she was a psychopath she was pointed in the right direction and how credit to the bacteria defeat should go to their useful psychopath. I guess that makes her the Dirlewanger to Beast's Heydrich and Apocalypse's Himmler. And Sinister's...Menegele? Eichman? Whichever one fits him best I guess.

Anyway, despite being properly useful, she needed to be gotten rid off because what would happen when she decided what was best for mutantkind was killing Professor X? (Honestly that doesn't sound any different from Charles' general attitude towards everyone) Or kill off the Quiet Council for the good of mutantkind? (Again, pot, kettle.) Or levelling Krakoa? (Okay, that one the QC probably won't do). But mostly because she killed Kate's father, and nuked Emma's students. Because personal retribution is for QC members for past actions of people on Krakoa and no one else. Oh, and they will raise a glass for revenge for Genosha. Except not, because you left her alive, in the past, so she can pop back up in the future and probably try to repeat her Genosha trick all over again now that you've given her motivation.

We cut to the Green Lagoon, Tempo is mourning not having Threia around, but Kitty has a surprise. They've got backups for and resurrected Amass, Threia, and...some third mutant I don't recognize because I don't think they were in this issue. But they are back and are in the Black and yellow Spandex I'm guessing is the uniform.

Meanwhile in the past, someone escapes out of the Threshold cells and gets to a safe location. It is Cassandra Nova swearing revenge on all of mutantkind, then is immediately attacked and devoured by a wandering Pterygotus. You are welcome Krakoa, I just saved you another extinction event.

And yes Stryfe was essentially a footnote to all of this.

[JB]

Well done, Saithor! The Broken Land sees you.

Thanks for the recap because I heard rumblings about Kate and Emma's plan for Nova but barely knew the details. That's pretty awesome how they used her then tossed that menace billions of years away from them.

[Frontier]

So I see Krakoa believing in second chances is only up to a point and completely up to the discretion of their governing body. Figures .

I mean, this makes more sense from a character perspective, but still.

[Diammandis]

[Outburstz]

So this whole arc was about the origin of Oakkra which was the main reason people had an issue with it in the first place lol

[Saithor]

I swear to god they are going to travel to the birth of the universe and it's going to be Wolverine evolving from an otter. Again!

[Kingdom X]

So this whole arc was about the origin of Oakkra which was the main reason people had an issue with it in the first place lol

Wait yeah this most wild part of this was Grove(?) saying he was actually the OG Krakoa+Arakko entity. This book is so weird, cause I feel like it should be more important but it just be doing whatever.

[JB]

[Diammandis]

incoming the reign of apocalypse

[Rift]

Since no one else will apparently

My bad lol. I forgot.

It was an okay issue. Tbh, I'll miss Cassandra Nova. Yeah, she was an irredeemable ass. Yeah, I think Kitty did the right (and cool) thing here. But she was so full of personality. She stole the show. Her talk with Amass made it look like they were setting up a friendship between them.

Also, I remember in past issues, Grove was referred to as "they." I guess that doubled as foreshadowing to them becoming Okkara and eventually splitting. But meh, I didn't really care where Okarra came from in the first place. Felt like a waste of time. But Tempo got a hot, giant gf so it wasn't a total waste.

[Aeon]

Is this series now please over? And those freaky faces gone?

[Rift]

Is this series now please over? And those freaky faces gone?

We have at least two more issues, a Genosha arc.

[Saithor]

No and no, the aneurysm faces are still around. I think it’s pretty clear the series will continue and probably even return to Theshold given the fact that both Stryfe and Nova are still back there waiting for an excuse to screw over the Marvel timeline.

MSo much with this issue. I’ll try to stick with just this issue and not issues covering this entire run.

1). Stryfe: There better be a followup on this, because otherwise Stryfe’s main contribution was setting up last issue’s cliffhanger, explaining that he’s in the past to take over the world (of course), and proceed to provide the issue’s first example of “What the fuck is wrong with you face?!”. Outside that there was really no reason to include him.

2). Kitty, why is Cassandra still alive? Seriously, why is your revenge leaving a powerful, likely to be vengeful enemy in your own distant past, in the care of people whose civilization you know disappears at some point? Just kill her! And then say she stayed in the past. Or trap her on Krakoa and say she stayed in the past. Or just kill her and have her put at the back of the resurrection queue and dare any of the other QC members to convince the 5 to bring back the person responsible for the largest genocide caused to mutants. There’s just a level of stupidity in this I find a more annoying. I can forgive Sublime and Arkea being idiots about Nova’s Gambit because they are fricking Bacteria.

3). Threshold characters in the future. It’s nice for Tempo to keep her girlfriend, but these characters are doomed to obscurity the moment Orlando stops writing for the X-office.

4). The Art. I’m usually a writing over art guy for a lot of comics, but this is just not grabbing me. In a different series maybe but in this case it’s hard to pay attention, especially with how screwed up face can get.

5). Too. Many. Characters. This isn’t a knock on Orlando, this is a knock on this era. TheX-men passed the critical mass of characters long ago and it shows. I couldn’t tell you what most of the characters were doing this issue. I hadn’t reread any backup issues but I read the first few and I completely forgot about Sprite. Bishop gets one cool moment but it’s kinda off page and ultimately it feels like he’s somewhat wasted. I do not get the writing room’s obsession with making entirely new places with plethoras of characters. Like, not individual supporting cast members to add, things like Wolverine’s CIA agent buddy? That’s fine. But we’ve now had three whole new enclaves of mutantkind introduced between Arrako, Threshold, and the Otherworld mutant population suddenly being inflated, and whatever my criticism of Howard in other books at least we didn’t get four or five Otherworld specific mutants. We actually could have used a couple given the type of story being told, but for now I’ll take not having a half dozen new characters.


I’ll get my thoughts on Threshold done later