X Of Swords Chapter 2 Raises The Stakes When Death Has New Meaning In X-Factor #4

After their ill-fated trip to Otherworld, the mutants of Krakoa have learned a terrible truth and are preparing for war. But what is war without death? Leah Williams, Carlos Gomez, Israel Silva and Joe Caramagna show us in X-Factor #4.

Cori McCreery: SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! SWORDS! But uh. Also a very dense issue and uh, FEELINGS. 

Andrea Ayres: I’m still reeling from this issue. It’s certainly an issue we could spend the next few weeks unpacking, but here we are. Ready with our hot takes and hot faces, fresh from the crying. This was an emotional onslaught from start to finish. It begins with Siryn screaming for help and never releases us from that moment of tension. The crossover is a decidedly different feeling from the rest of the X-Factor run. It’s nice to see Williams flex her writing skills. There are massive, Krakoa-shattering implications regarding Otherworld and immortality. In keeping in line with Leah’s original intention for X-Factor, we see how protocols and rules can’t always predict or respond to reality.

A Desperate Wispy Thing

AA: Polaris crushed us in this text, I think that’s safe to say don’t you Cori? When Polaris delivers her brief monologue about self-hatred and the desire to “feverishly” seek validation from everyone around her? Yah. Definitely felt that one. The issue indexes heavily on the anguish she feels. She feels a pang of deep guilt and responsibility for not stopping the sword responsible for killing Rockslide. Gomez does a good job of capturing the emotional intensity of these moments with evocative facial expressions. I will admit, however, that there were times when the coloring dampened the emotional impact for me. Still, not really enough to take away from my overall favorable impression of this entry into our 22-issue saga. At one point, Xavier asks Polaris what is wrong because her “mind is like a siren.” And believe you me, that’s how I felt reading this issue. My mind is still on fire.

CM: Good Lord, Lorna in this issue wrecked me on an emotional level. When I started my complete X-Men read through back in December of last year, I had almost no knowledge of her whatsoever. Basically, I knew “green hair, maybe Magneto’s daughter?” and that’s it. But as I’ve read through five thousand issues and counting, Lorna has fast become my second favorite X-Man, falling behind only Kate. I love her dearly, which is a testament to the character since for the majority of her existence she’s been written extremely poorly. 

You have to cherry pick pretty heavily to get good Lorna stories, but I’m confident in saying that I will happily add X-Factor #4 to that list when asked for recs. That list will essentially be: Kingbreaker and War of Kings, X-Men: The Hidden Years but ignore anything that isn’t Alex calling her Magnetrix in the text, and X-Factor by Williams, Baldeón, and this issue by Gomez. All of Lorna’s inner monologue was spot-on, and truly felt in place for where Williams is leading her character. This is a woman who struggles with her place in the mutant world, she’s essentially their equivalent of a princess, but she is also so thoroughly shattered by the events of her life this far that she struggles to maintain that persona. Her expectations for herself are higher than anyone else’s expectations for her, save maybe her own father’s. She demands better of herself, but also deals so thoroughly with just not wanting to exist, and it’s absolutely crushing. God, I just love her so much. I’m so happy she’s in good hands finally. 

AA: Reading your words, I can feel how much she means to you. So much of who she is and how much she struggles stems from her relationship with her father. We get a real sense of the tension between the pair and it’s hard to read. My dad died before I ever got to resolve or move beyond the teenage angst portion of our relationship. We’re trapped in a time of locked heads and having that linger is a weight on my shoulders, can’t imagine what it’s like for Polaris. 

The way Polaris is holding the Rockslide is a great character moment. She is protecting Rockslide as much as she is using him to protect her; like a teddy bear. There’s concern on her face leading up to the moment the prophecies reveal themselves and Rockslide is smashed into pieces. It’s an interesting dynamic as it happens in the presence of Magneto. He treats her like a child still. She looks to others for validation because she did not receive it growing up. Even when we think there is a moment where Magneto may reveal a bit of sympathy for his suffering daughter he uses the moment to tell her that the pain she feels is her fault. It’s a message she’s received throughout her life, this time is no different. She blames herself for the suffering of others. How many of us do this? What’d you think about this moment? Was there any other part of this prophecy reveal that stuck out to you?

CM: She’s internalized so much over the years while having to shoulder everything. She’s been paired with Havok for so long, that people tend to forget that she has her own problems that go beyond holding him together. It doesn’t help matters that the only writers to really tackle her mental health did so extremely poorly [Ed. note: Chuckles Austen and Peter David]. The stark differences between how Williams and David portray her mental health is staggering. With Williams, it feels real, it feels painful, it’s heartbreaking. With David it was a joke. Haha what a crazy broad amiright? Which is why much like our colleague Emily, the first time I heard Taylor Swift’s “mad woman”, I was like ‘OH THAT’S A LORNA SONG.’ She’s trying to find herself, but she still needs support and comfort, and she’s not getting that from the one person on the island who should be giving it, so she has to find it in the form of a rock teddy bear made from the corpse of a friend. I could cry about Lorna and her struggles all day, but it’s probably best to move on, just know that I will protect my baby with my dying breath. 

Dying Sucks

AA: No way around it, dying blows. Rictor confirms this.  It may blow less if you can be reincarnated a near-infinite amount of times? Or so we thought. X-Factor #4 introduces what one may call a slight wrinkle into the entire immortality thing. Apparently, if a mutant dies in the Otherworld, their Cerbero backup is corrupted. That’s what ends up happening to Rockslide. I don’t know about you but the panel where Rockside says “but I feel fine.”  Definitely haunting.

CM: And here we were worried about this event having low stakes. Hahahaha *nervous laugher*. So much for that thought, not a single one of our sword bearers are actually safe and now I’m terrified because I love an awful lot of these dummies. Also, I loved Rockslide, and therefore I’m already devastated. This is a horrifying new development in the protocols. It’s also a philosophical question we have been debating in the Slack, of what personhood means really. Rockslide’s not dead per se, but the personality he had is gone. His memories are gone. But you wouldn’t necessarily say someone with amnesia is dead, so what can we really say here? Is the implication that he can never get back what was lost to him enough to say that at least the Rockslide we know is dead? This is the exact kind of messy and tricky question I had hoped X-Factor would address, so I’m glad to see it happening here. 

AA: I’m really glad you brought up a bit of the discussion we had in Slack because I can’t stop thinking about what one of our colleagues said. I hope they don’t mind my bringing it up here but it got me thinking about the connection between memory, identity, and who we are. If we remember Giant Size X-Men: Storm something Storm says keeps circling around in my head. That is her question of “what is a life?” That question feels central to what X-Factor #4 is doing here. It’s asking us to better probe what makes us, well…us. Is it a collection of memories? Is it our body (husk)? Is it our DNA? If we take away or remove any combination of those do we continue to be the same person? Does any of that matter? And finally, how do others’ perceptions of us influence who we see ourselves as?

I thought I was very sure about how I felt about this until a colleague said they were not comfortable with linking memory so closely to identity. At first, I believed they were mistaken. Now I am not so sure. When I was a kid my mom had a brain aneurysm. When she woke up she didn’t know who we were or who she was. She was fundamentally changed but one of the lasting regrets and great personal pains of my life was that my family simply couldn’t accept this. To be honest, we didn’t know how. We expected her to be the same mom she was before and she couldn’t be. If we had made space for her to be different if we allowed her to be the same but new? What might have been? I can’t read this issue and not reflect on these elements. It feels like Williams is really prodding us to question the idea of resurrected mutants. I know when I read the past issues of mutants being resurrected. I’m going to need you to step in here, I’m wading into some deep ass waters hahaha.

CM: I too, have been thinking about my own life experiences and how they interact with this narrative. My step-dad’s best friend fell from a horse when I was younger and got amnesia from the ensuing head injury. But to my step-dad it didn’t matter that his friend no longer remembered him because the other memories were still there. I hadn’t really thought about this like this until our colleague brought it up, and ever since it’s been fueling things in my brain. Are not other people’s experiences with us all a core part of our being? Even if we no longer have a memory of the event ourselves? Will Anole still think of this as his Santo? Will those past memories still drive their relationship even if they are one-sided? How does real-world amnesia differ from this, where a whole personality is overwritten? These are extremely deep questions, and I am very intrigued by the ramifications of all of this to play out in future issues. 

AA: *Vigorous head nod* The consequences are so deep. 

There’s again a sense within the issue itself that they are dealing with questions they never conceived of until now. There are issues with the resurrection protocols, the idea of having these husks, and how all of the stakes are amplified in times of war. Emma calls attention to the cavalier attitude of the would-be generals (aka the Quiet Council) with respect to sending people to slaughter. Either way, the lack of established precedent in times of war (referenced on page 20) tells us a lot about how messy things are going to be from here on out.

Well, Damn

AA: Okay, what do you think? Do you think Doug has it right on that closing data-page? Some of the sword-bearers definitely feel obvious enough. ‘Yana being perhaps the most obvious followed by Storm? Perhaps there will be something horrifically inaccurate about one of the interruptions or the prophecy is able to be read in multiple ways? So many directions it could go.

CM: We get confirmation that ‘Yana is right, as her sigil lights up immediately unless they’ll light up for any sword no matter the bearer? But I did really appreciate that she scowled when she heard the prophecy and then was basically just “Fine $&% it, let’s go.” I think he’s right on most of these, but think that somehow the one he thinks is him and Warlock will be the one that is horribly wrong. There are a few sets of twins in the X-Men, but I do think this is Brian and Betsy, mostly for the sword descriptions that go with them. But more importantly, now that we have the stakes for the event with how Otherworld death works, who do you think isn’t coming back the same? 

AA: Oh crud you really got me with that question there. Who ISN’T coming back the same? I feel like if I had even an inkling as to the answers to this I’d be writing the comics and not reviewing them hahaha. Something that Lorna says, “Saturnyne wrote the instructions for me using the Earth’s geomagnetic spectrum…” I wonder if there is something that will happen to the polarity resulting in something going wrong? You know this is the problem with comics. You read too much into everything. And by that, I mean my favorite thing about comics. At any rate, I think given what we know about Otherworld death people are likely to meet parts of themselves they weren’t necessarily ready to ever learn about. What are your thoughts on who won’t be coming back the same? 

CM: I think Brian’s not coming back at all. I feel that in my bones that our good boy is just not going to make it. The cover to Excalibur after the event has neither Braddock twin, but does include Meggan. I don’t feel like Betsy is gonna die, but who knows? On the subject of good boys absent from post-Swords covers… New Mutants has a Warlock sans Doug. So I also think Doug’s not going to do well on his trip to Otherworld. Gorgon probably loses his fight, but does anyone really care about Gorgon? 

I hope •┤Ȧ├• dies. He deserves it. [Ed. note: Periwinkle Papa? More like Perishedwinkle Papa]

AA: I feel like it’s hard for me to argue with your calls here. I feel like one way or another  •┤Ȧ├• is going to get what’s coming to him. Cori, I feel like we have only scratched the surface of this issue, it’s so deep. There’s so much more I could say, but I won’t because I know our readers have lives.

CM: And now we get to rest while the rest of the crew tackles the rest of the event. I feel like our issue was dense enough to take two months off, see you all on the other side! 

X-Trenuous Thoughts

• I LIVE FOR FAE BULL%&$#. Pump these Otherworld data pages into my VEINS. 
• The Seelie and Unseelie courts referenced in the data pages may refer to the Scottish interpretation of good vs bad fairies. Seelie: good/pleasant. Unseelie: unfavorable/unhappy.
• Otherworlds in Celtic lore (and their associated castles) take the form of common motifs in Irish tales:
  • A messenger who summons the hero by challenging them or asking for help;
  • A perilous passage marked at the point of transition by some form of water;
  • A threatening giant with magical powers who lives in a demonic castle;
  • A powerful woman who teaches and tests the hero;
  • A magical cup.
  • All this and more in Whitaker, Muriel A. “Otherworld Castles in Middle English Arthurian Romance.” Late Medieval Castles, edited by Robert Liddiard, by Nicola Coldstream et al., Boydell & Brewer, 2016, pp. 393–408.
• I need to see how Merlyn and Lady Roma come into this. Okay, we need a ToX for the data pages alone…
• Krakoan reads: Mauramasa