X-Lapsed, Episode 29 – X-Force #3 (2020)
X-Force (vol.6) #3 (February, 2020)
“The Skeleton Key”
Writer – Ben Percy
Art – Joshua Cassara
Colors – GURU-eFX
Letters – VC’s Joe Caramagna
Design – Tom Muller
Head of X – Hickman
Edits – Robinson, White, Cebulski
Cover Price: $3.99
On-Sale: December 11, 2019
Well, that didn’t take long, did it?
Ol’ REDACTED has only been dead for like twenty-pages… and now they’re back! I guess that’s just the world we’re living in nowadays. Not only that, but our new Court of Owls looking group of bad guys gets a name… Wolverine and Quentin Quire fight something out of Attack on Titan… and I furrow my brow as Jean Grey jokes about how often she’s died.
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I have to start by complementing the cover of this issue. Jean looks so cool.
I was interested to hear you say that the Professor was resurrected quickly. This really stuck with me as I read Ecchs of Tens part 2 yesterday and one of the plot points was that the resurrections usually take a long time. This is not the impression given here. The only thing that delayed this resurrection was Jean working out how to operate Cerebro. I feel more and more like we are being expected to have picked up plot points that were left out of the books.
The Beast/Jean conversation about death was a weird one. You reacted as though visiting graveyards is unusual. Here in the UK it's not uncommon for people to visit graveyards or cemeteries for a day out and a lot of the bigger ones have picnic areas and cafes. They're often seen as just a shared public space.
I know when my Mum would take me and my sister to graveyards she would occupy us with looking for the longest lived person, the youngest person and for unusual names. Looking back it's blatantly obvious that she was getting us to practice our reading and arithmetic. It was all about education with my Mum.
I wouldn't say spending time in graveyards makes you unafraid of death though, or that being unafraid makes you more heroic. Surely true heroism requires some element of personal risk.
As for your question about deaths, I think Hank is about the only character on this team who hasn't died and been resurrected so was the only person who Jean could have that conversation with. Such a weird choice.
You're definitely right that these "deep" conversations are very forced and inorganic. It feeds into the idea that Krakoa is altering the characters somehow. In some ways you have to admire Hickman for setting up the idea that everything is being manipulated by Moira because it means when I read bad dialogue I wonder if it is a sign that Jean was altered in her post Orchis resurrection. He's given the creators a perfect excuse for bad writing.
I don't know if I've said it in my recent comments but I just wanted to thank you again for the amount of work you're putting into this series. It's really enjoyable to be a part of it.