[Astonishing X-Men] #21

[hermionesviolin]

I didn't get the Emma cover, but am kind of confused 'cause the image on *my* cover doesn't actually happen in the comic. It's gotta be Hisako, but she doesn't go all badass like that in this issue.

Love the opening panel :) Two-page spread of Logan and Hisako coming in on this badass flying motorcycle with Logan saying "Sorry we're late."

Logan: "Agent Brand's brilliant plan went south. Our pretend burning wreckage stopped pretending.
We get through this, I'm gonna pop a claw through her eye, you guys cool with that?"
Emma: "Absolutely."
Scott: "Logan, we don't just... Nah, go for it."

Hank: "Very likely, Ms. Ichiki. High marks for the stowaway student."
Hisako: "I"m not... I have a new, uh..."
Logan : "She's called 'Armor.' She's our new teammate."
Hisako: "I mean, that is... Logan said."
Emma: "Oh, it's lovely. God knows the team's gonna need some new blood soon."
[Love her blasé assumption that they won't all make it out of there. Which was already prophesied at the end of the previous arc]
Scott: "Did he teach you the handshake."
[karabair, Scott's dry humor makes me think of you.]

Brand: "I think we oughtta split up."
Hank: "At last we agree on something."
Brand: "You're coming with me."
Hank: "And so ends that era."

Brand's "more than normally unstable" line made me hee, but on reflection, Emma really doesn't strike me as someone who reads as unstable.

Kitty to Piotr: "So I was wrong. // Not only are you clearly destined to wipe out this race. // You apparently have to do it... // ...one at a a time."

"Rasputin and Pryde, you will come with us."
Piotr: "It's unlikely."
"Your translators are primitive. // It is not an order. // We are asking. // We are asking for your trust."
And the page ends with a panel of another Breakworlder saying, "I am unimpressed." Nicely played.

Ord: "We already have intelligence on the X-Men."
Danger [I enjoy how her speech "bubbles" match her, btw]: "Not like mine.
I was created to kill them."
Ord: "And yet they live."
Danger: "I was distracted by a more important mission.
And I was younger then."

Emma: "If I'd known you were such a submissive I'd've gone with an entirely different wardrobe."
Scott: "I'm trying to drive."
I like that their "first talk since the mansion" is interspersed with tactical talk -- that the different parts of their lives don't just stop when one comes to the forefront.

Emma: "Stop pretending everything is the way it was."
Scott: "It's not! That's the point!" And the page ends with a new panel where we see Emma flanked by clouds of black smoke, and Scott's speech balloon jutting off: "I'm in love with you now."

The main healer woman: "Of course it's absurd, but...
... I imagined you an actual giant."
I really love that.

woman: "You saw the care center?"
Piotr: "It's appalling."
Kitty: "It's medieval. The technology this planet has... are all the hospitals this primitive?"
And then we get this great panel where the woman is looking to the side, the top and bottom of her head cropped by the panel, and in the open space of the red sky is her speech balloon: " 'Hospital.' You have a word for it. // There are no others."
It continues, and given all we've seen of the Breakworld I shouldn't be surprised (and I think she might have said as much when we met her the first time), but it still hurt: "To care for the wounded, to honor the dead or fight for the weak... // On the Breakworld, these are the closest we have to sins. // But I don't think compassion is a sin."
And then she turns to face them/the reader sidewise, with almost a grimace, and closes out the page: "I think it may be a mutation." Best line EVER.

And then we get the explanation.
Piotr: "Why exactly did you rescue us?"
woman: "Oh, I haven't rescued you; this is possibly the most dangerous place on the planet. // If Powerlord Kurun knew a thing about it, this mountain would be a crater." Well that's intriguing. "I sought you out because I believe you may be the instrument of our salvation."
Kitty: "You don't believe the prophecy?"
woman: "I didn't, and then you were here."
And as we read the continuation of her speech we see this giant sculpture of two hands clasped, as if holding on to keep one from falling (or that's how I read it anyway). "And I thought perhaps it's not the prophecy that's wrong, but the interpretation. // A world in chaos, perhaps, but not destroyed. Re-formed. // Reborn."
Piotr: "I am not a Messiah."
woman: "By the world, no; you're a man. // But you've been thrust into the arena, willing or no. The world is watching. // I've been in the area. A show-killer; that's what I was bred as. // The throng screams and your head crows with only two choices: Kill, be killed. I won so often the roar became like the air to me. I couldn't even hear it. // And in the silence, the third choice can be heard. // I have no agenda for you. No plan, no coup. // I brought you here so you could have a moment to hear that great silence, understand that third choice. To know that even on a warrior world, we can be made to understand it too. // We can be better. // Rest tonight. // And tomorrow you do what you will."
1. That this woman was bred as a show-killer is disturbing.
2. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this roar-silence-third choice thing, but I think I can be sold on it.
3. I like that she doesn't have an actual plan, just wants him to have a choice. (Also that she doesn't see him as a Messiah.)
3a. I like that she lays it out and then gives it up to him ("And tomorrow you do what you will").

Brand: "You can stop whining. I don't need your guts to keep me warm."
Hank: "Oh. // My."
Oh Joss and your BYO-subtext.

prisoner: "Power's not for the weak, isn't that your thing? Keep our deal, and you'll have your throne. // And we'll give you the means to keep it.
We'll give you Colossus."
I can totally see this being one of Brand's alternate plans (of course she would privilege saving the Earth over saving Colossus, though her ideal would be to save both) but I really don't want her to turn into a bad guy, so while I know of course this plan will be thwarted I also hope there's a trick involved in this plan. (I would also accept that the prisoner is acting/bluffing on his own initiative.)

Piotr: "Best to sleep, I guess. Now I am Messiah, tomorrow will probably be busy."
"Atherton's a heavy sleeper, night before a big day. He's got the killing you in the morning, then a haircut later." -"Shindig," Firefly

Piotr: "They bring me back from dead. They want me dead. I will destroy them. I will save them. // I'm so confused ... so tired."
Wow, hello naked Kitty. And she looks intense in that next panel. I am torn between thinking it is the prettiest image of her I have seen in AXM thus far and being a little bit scared.
Piotr: "Now I am more confused. // ...but somehow not as tired."

Emma: "I'm sorry..."
Scott: " [...] Sorry for being so mean? Sorry you ever met me? Sorry that you basically-- // Oh."
My initial thought was that she told him telepathically, though it's ambiguous and could obviously refer to the fact that Danger just attacked them.

Emma holds Scott's body, is in diamond form and then changes to human and cries. "He said he loved me."
Emma (in the alterna-cover shot, though without the weird colors): "This man, this extraordinary, ordinary man is in love. With me." My immediate reaction is to wonder how a telepath can be surprised by something so major as that, but Emma has complexes, so I could see her being so sure that would never be true that she would be willfully blind to it.
Danger: "That's all over now."
Emma: "Oh, it's over all right. // Do me one favor, dear... // Kill me. // Please do try to make it quick."
The framing makes it look all "Woe my life is no longer worth living," but she's gotta have a trick up her sleeve.