Marauders dominates Dawn Of X with action, treachery, and humor on the high seas
Aux Features big issues
“AHOY, MUTIES”
In just two words, Marauders establishes itself as the cheekiest, most fun-loving title of Dawn Of X, the X-Men relaunch building on Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, and R.B. Silva’s brilliant work redefining Marvel’s mutants in last year’s House Of X/Powers Of X (HOX/POX). Charles Xavier has created a new mutant nation on the island of Krakoa, and defeated death with resurrection protocols that bring back fallen comrades using a mix of psychic data storage and the combined efforts of five extremely powerful mutants. Krakoa’s big play for international influence comes via its main exports, miracle drugs for humans that cure mental illness, extend life by five years, and function as adaptive antibiotics. But not every country is interested in these drugs or letting their oppressed mutants escape to Krakoa. Enter: the Marauders, a team of mutant pirates that take these super-drugs into anti-Krakoa countries and pull mutants out.
With the exception of one genuine disaster—the incomprehensible and already concluded Fallen Angels—Dawn Of X has impressively expanded on plot points introduced in HOX/POX. X-Men features standalone stories that introduce new threats and plant seeds that will bloom at some point in the future. X-Force follows Krakoa’s counter-intelligence/black ops team formed in the wake of Xavier’s assassination (he got better), tracking down mutant enemies and wiping them out before they can reach Krakoa. Excalibur explores the mutants’ relationship with the magic corner of the Marvel Universe, tapping into swords-and-sorcery fantasy with Betsy Braddock leading the team as the new Captain Britain. The uneven New Mutants splits time between space and Earth with two different creative teams, but Hickman’s issues with artist Rod Reis have been some of the most delightful installments of this relaunch.
And then there’s Marauders, a series that combines political intrigue with breathtaking action and a sharp sense of humor, digging deep into X-Men history while enthusiastically sailing into a future full of promise and danger. The first arc of Marauders expertly balances light and dark elements as it details the exploits of the new Hellfire Corporation, splitting power three ways between White Queen Emma Frost, Black King Sebastian Shaw, and Red Queen Kate Pryde, who has relinquished her Kitty nickname as part of her never-ending identity crisis. Krakoa’s teleportation gates don’t work for Kate for some mysterious reason, motivating X-Men like Storm and Iceman to stay by her side and protect her in case the resurrection protocols similarly malfunction.
This week sees the release of the first Dawn Of X collection, which features the first issues of all six series. It’s a puzzling approach, and while these books are deeply connected, forcing readers to buy a full collection to get one chapter of a series stinks of corporate greed. If you don’t like one of the books, you’re stuck paying for those issues in future books. It makes sense if this is a sampler to introduce readers to each title before they get their own individual collections, but this structure continues across all the future Dawn Of X volumes. That’s one way to get people to buy Fallen Angels, which is so bad it makes you wonder how it got through editorial in the first place.
Marauders is on the flip side of Dawn Of X, hitting on all of the major plot points of the Hickman era while enriching its steadily expanding cast of the characters. The drugs, the resurrections, the political machinations—they all play into writer Gerry Duggan’s story in big ways, and the scope only keeps growing. Duggan also does remarkable work incorporating the data pages that Hickman and designer Tom Muller introduced in HOX/POX, using them to build an ongoing side narrative. Most of the text pieces are correspondences from an unnamed government employee assigned to “The X-Desk,” keeping track of the Hellfire Corporation’s movements while experiencing first-hand the effects of the Krakoan drugs on their ailing mother. These data pages provide laughs via the employee’s frustrations over the lack of resources given to his department, but over the course of the series, this human is becoming a stealth mutant ally after discovering the benefits of these drugs and the ruthlessness of Krakoa’s enemies.
Marauders only gets better with the start of its second storyline in Marauders #7, welcoming the art team of Stefano Caselli and colorist Edgar Delgado to elevate the book’s visuals with sleek action and rich expressions that sell both the drama and humor of Duggan’s script. This issue introduces Callisto to the book’s cast, and the leader of the Morlocks brings even more style and swagger to the series as she takes on the role of Emma’s White Knight. Russell Dauterman and Matthew Wilson’s cover distills Callisto’s aggressive attitude in one striking, in-your-face image, tapping into her fashion model past with her sleek white suit while still presenting her as a formidable fighter, creating an X with two of her many, many knives.
The arrival of Callisto is notable for multiple reasons. She’s a representative of a mutant population that we haven’t seen on Krakoa, the Morlocks who previously lived in the sewers of New York City but have since relocated to sunny Rio Verde, Arizona, thanks to the Hellfire Corporation’s duffel bags full of cash. She has a deep history with both Kate Pryde and Storm, who defeated Callisto in battle to briefly become leader of the Morlocks. Callisto also provides the opportunity to address the legacy of the Marauders name, given that the original Marauders were a team of supervillains responsible for slaughtering the Morlocks during the “Mutant Massacre” crossover in the ’80s.
Marauders #7 directly addresses this in a scene between Callisto and a fellow Morlock on a Rio Verde golf course, where Callisto makes it very clear that she’s done living in the dark and will do whatever it takes to give her people a better life. When asked if she takes offense at Kate calling herself a Marauder, Callisto responds: “Kate was on the spot and reached for a name. She blurted the one that hurt her bad. Let her have it.” Kate was nearly a casualty of the massacre herself, harpooned by an energy spear that left her stuck in her phased state and in danger of disappearing completely. The aftershocks of that story still resonate to this day, and her post-massacre status led to teenage Kate developing a friendship with Franklin Richards, which is an integral element of the X-Men/Fantastic Four miniseries that began last week.
Callisto makes her big Marauders debut by walking into a wardrobe fitting for Emma Frost by the newly resurrected mutant fashion designer, Jumbo Carnation, introduced in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run as the victim of a hate crime. One of the things this book does best is ground the characters with scenes that show them enjoying each other’s company, whether it’s having the Marauders go get tattoos together or having Emma and Kate share their disdain for men over drinks. In just a few pages, Duggan establishes a thorny relationship between Callisto and Emma that is still rooted in mutual respect, and there are two great moments between Callisto and Jumbo. The first is when she whips out her knife and cuts the sleeves off the white duster he wants her to try on so that it fits her punk aesthetic. The second is when she hands him a knife and says: “If you get into trouble again, pull this and go for the eyes.”
Callisto’s knives are a constant source of humor throughout this issue. She throws a knife at Storm’s head when she runs into her old rival, and Storm catches it before she gives her best frenemy a welcome hug. “They just whip knives at each other’s faces,” Pyro says in disbelief. “No wonder the Brotherhood never finished off the X-Men.” It’s a tiny action moment, but it says a lot about both characters’ toughness and how that unites them. The action in Marauders has been phenomenal since the start, and Duggan takes full advantage of the powerhouses on this team to make this the most thrilling series in Dawn Of X.
Kate’s phasing power is used to devastating effect, and she has no problem phasing objects into the bodies of her attackers, causing them unspeakable pain. At one point, she phases her ship through another vessel to prevent a crash, pushing herself to save her crew. The combination of the fire-controlling Pyro and the fire-breathing Lockheed allows the team to blaze through their attackers, and facing off against soldiers with power-dampening armor brings out the physical prowess of characters like Storm, who whips out her Vibranium knife and starts stabbing enemies in their eyeballs. Marauders #7 gives Bishop the action spotlight as he charges into Madripoor to find out what happened to Kate, who has disappeared after being betrayed by Sebastian Shaw. All Bishop does is throw a grenade through a gate before shooting up hostiles, but Caselli and Delgado make it look so damn cool, steadily building the momentum to Bishop’s hilarious final line: “‘Kill no man’ don’t mean ‘%#$@ no man up.’”
That cool factor is vital to Marauders’ success, and even when it’s being goofy—Pyro has a skull tattooed over his entire face—it does so with so a mixture of confidence and glee that brings out the fun these mutants are having in their new world order. Yes, they’re still dealing with an onslaught of people and machines that want to see their entire species obliterated; but for the first time, mutants have the upper hand. There’s a feeling of liberation and endless possibility on the open seas, and even though Marvel is teasing dark times ahead for Kate and her crew, the first seven issues have proven this creative team knows how to set high dramatic stakes while still delivering blockbuster, crowd-pleasing entertainment.
38 Comments
I’m so tired that I read “Hickman’s issues with artist Rod Reis” and got sad that there was infighting in such a good creative team.Carry on.
If they wanted to do a sitcom about vicious infighting at a comic book company, “Issues” might be an apt title.
I’m liking a lot of this stuff but the whole marketing side seems very much peak 90s X-Men. They are separate books but they want you to collect them all, even if they are never clear on timelines so things get confusing(X-23 is in Fallen Angels but then she also just walked through some weird alt time area for a thousand years in X-Force(or was it X-Men). The way they are doing trades is just awful. And finally, she will always be Kitty Pryde. We all went away to college and decided to stop being called Kitty and instead go by Kate but no matter how many times you tell them, your family is still going to call you Danny errrr I mean Kitty. 🙂
How’s it going, Danny?
The trade collecting them all together is just for the first issue sample pack. They’re all getting individual collections (and New Mutants is collecting each of its arcs separately, so the first TPB weirdly collects 1-2, 5,7).
According to this they are doing both. https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/11/25/marvel-collect-x-men-dawn-of-x-comics-2020/Nothing like confusing market saturation to sell graphic novels
I wonder if the real-life Kitty Pryde finally threatened legal action over what Claremont 100% admitted was the use of her name for one of his characters
Yeah, it’s classic X-men. I do like that the story of mutants is a world wide thing (though I haven’t seen it mentioned in other non-mutant titles as much as it seems like it would be, like what do the FF and Avengers think of all the mutants just nationing up. To be fair, I don’t follow a ton of titles though so I might’ve missed it.) but the story spread is sort of killer.We’d probably stop calling her Kitty, if they stopped drawing/writing her like she was 25. At least until she was an old lady and it was cute again. But I’m all for having comic characters age in real time (that shot of a story from 1987, the year I was born, is hilarious. Yeah it was a long time ago, but isn’t Franklen like 14 now? Then again there’s some timey-wimey bullshit going on there so he might be a bad example) it’s a little odd to have Spiderman who’s been kicking around since the 60’s still kind of a kid.
I think the name change to Kate is a nice nod to her using that name in the Days of Future Past storyline. So we knew she changed it at some point in the futre, and now we’ve reached that point. She’ll always be Kitty to those of us who grew up with her, but it fits the character to change it.
Kate Pryde.Yeah.No.
It dates back to her 5th or maybe 6th appearance – it was the name her future self used in days of Future Past.
“Jumbo Carnation”? Never change, Grant. Never change.
I love they are tapping gleefully into Grant Morrison’s back catalogue of ideas.
I’d be fine with them using this current event as the basis for a full-on undoing of Decimation and repudiation of everything done to undo Morrison after his run.
Me too. The lost decade and a bit coming out of that came at a high cost.
So this whole line is just fash shit now. Okay
Glad the art wasn’t the same as the cover, I hate the traced over 3d models style (even more than comics which just use 3d models), it always sucks all the power and movement out of the illustration. I also don’t love the “old friends try to kill each other as a way of greeting” trope, but it gets a pass from me here because Storm is cool enough to pull it off.
Reading X-Men/FF, I guess I’ll still be waiting for someone’s brilliant new take on the FF not to just be “hey, anybody ever think Reed’s just kind of a dick before? I must be the first!”
His peak dick actions are only ever in non-ff books. Sure he fucks up and is sometimes a dick in the core book but he typically isn’t building black site prisons and altering his child’s biology without telling him.I suspect that folks who WANT to write the FF core book don’t really see Reed as “captain asshole”.
Reed isn’t Captain Asshole. Reed is id and ego with no super ego (and his id self preservation skills are questionable at best). Forge is similar, except he does understand as a mutant, his tech can be turned against him. Reed just sciences. If you can appeal to him that the idea has merit, he’ll do it. The other three are there to buffer Reed and keep him in line. That is a difficult dynamic to maintain for 60 years and not have Reed grow up or just look like a dick.
Ultimate Reed is Captain Asshole. He knows what he is doing is wrong and doesn’t care.
Yeah, I agree.Hickmans run (which we reference faaar tooo much) shows that the smartest “Reed’s” often leave their family behind to their detriment.They absolutely are what keeps him grounded and from going utterly off the rails.
Reading X-Men/FF, I guess I’ll still be waiting for someone’s brilliant new take on the FF not to just be “hey, anybody ever think Reed’s just kind of a dick before? I must be the first!”
Dawn Of X has impressively expanded on plot points introduced in HOX/POX.Fox in socks on box on Knox.
The main symptom of hocks pox is lesions on the calves.
The main symptom of hocks pox is lesions on the calves.
Labeled in Aux.
Duggan continues to be one of the unsung heroes of Marvel’s Heroic Age. Easily one of the most consistent and unique writing voices I’ve encountered in the past few years.
Callisto throwing a knife to storm is a callback to their fight during the Morlocks’ first appearance in Uncanny X-Men 170 or so. She tosses the knife to Storm to intimidate her before they fight for leadership of the group, but Storm calmly grabs it out of the air.You know, back when Chris Claremont occasionally trusted his artists to depict action in art without writing 18 paragraphs over the top.
I dunno. The style of panties Emma is wearing in her meeting with Callisto changes from panel to panel. It just completely wrecks the believability of the entire issue.
That’s just what she wants you to think.
Maybe Emma’s wearing Mystique and she’ll whip her off to use as a weapon in a future issue?
I hate how they are doing New Mutants. I just want the story with the OGs, not those wannabes…
It’s my favorite of the Dawn of X titles too, but I still don’t get how we finally have an X-Men pirate series but it’s without Kurt? Odd choice!
X-books are renowned for cast shakeups so i wouldn’t exclude him from the X-booty-count yet.
While I’m enjoying the adventures of Kate and co., I really don’t like those kiddie villains who were formerly the kiddie Hellfire Club, and the fact that they’ve managed to appropriate technology to spy on Krakoa. Can’t the mutants assign Selene or Emplate to deal with those brats? I’m also hoping for Franklin Richards to make mincemeat out of those Verendi kids.
It’s really good, but Hickman’s X-Men is still my favorite. The recent Mystique issue was awesome, and I absolutely loved the issue where Magneto, Charles, and Apocalypse met with world leaders!
I think a lot of this sounds really cool. But I’m curious about the new path for mutant acceptance being tied specifically to a new mutant-exclusive wonder-drug, rather than, say, the idea that mutants are people and deserve respect and dignity like all people do.
When did Callisto get her regular arms back? Last I remember she had tentacles now because of reasons.