Up until this week, we had several lead-in issues mostly written by Kieron Gillen, the writer of the main series, two issues of the main series, and two ties-ins, one of which was written by Gillen and the other very closely hewed to the first issue of Judgment Day, filling in a big unseen scene from that book. It’s been a very tight, very Gillen-centric sort of event (and with him writing nearly 50% of the total comics being released under the Judgment Day banner, I imagine it will remain as such) and, while that makes for a cohesive and focused story, it’s not exactly how events tend to play out in full.
So, welcome X-Force #30 to the party with its Judgment Day branding and spot on the list of tie-ins and its complete and utter lack of even the briefest of allusions to the event that it is supposedly a part of.
No, X-Force #30 kicks off a storyarc that will see Kraven the Hunter come to Krakoa titled “The Hunt for X” and why it carries the Judgment Day banner is anyone’s guess. The recap page doesn’t even make mention of the event that it supposedly ties into, which is always a good clue of how much it really will. Now, perhaps I am being hasty and quick to, er, judgment. X-Force #30-33 are all listed as tie-ins to Judgment Day and it is certainly possible that, by the time we reach that fourth issue, forking over $15.96 in the process (more in Canada!), it will stand revealed to have a marginal connection to the event. But, you’ll have to pay to find out.
Every event has these sort of cheap, money for nothing tie-ins. The kind that sucker in completists and dumb critics, while causing loyal readers of the title to fret if their favourite comic is suddenly going to get derailed by an external story that they have no interest in. It’s part of doing business, as it were. I imagine if you ask most people involved and they would rather not slap a Judgment Day banner on the cover of a comic that has literally nothing to do with the event whatsoever, lying to everyone for the sake of selling some extra copies. But, it works. Branding a book as part of an event does increase sales. I’m not usually the sort to pay attention to that, but, when I was writing about War of the Realms, I went back to see the effect on sales and, yes, titles like Squirrel Girl and Asgardians of the Galaxy did see significant increases on the charts when they became involved with the event (though, those books actually, you know, had stories related to the event). It’s a shrewd, short-term business move that may work in the long-term if it gets some eyeballs on the book and people like what they see, if they’re not completely turned off by the lie that got them to buy it.
X-Force #30 is a fine enough comic on its own. It has nothing to do with Judgment Day, however. But, that’s the way you do it when you’re putting out a bigtime superhero comic book event.
And, it’s a shame, because the other two comics released this week, Death to the Mutants #1 and X-Men #13, are the exact sort of tie-in issues that you want. In his newsletter last week, Gillen called Death to the Mutants #1 “aka Eternals #14 aka Eternals #17 if you’re inserting the specials” (Eve of Judgment #1 was Eternals #13) and he’s not wrong. Narrated by the Machine, it’s basically if the ongoing Eternals series had a tie-in issue, showing us what Ikaris and the rest of the exile Eternals are doing, covering the events of both issues of Judgment Day in the process. Meanwhile, X-Men #13 skirts doesn’t just expand upon the Hex/Krakoans fight from Judgment Day #2, it expands upon/ties into scenes from Death to the Mutants.
For Jean Grey, it seems like the instruction of a torn man. Ikaris is betraying his people because he disagrees with their war, but he only wants their efforts to make war on the mutants stopped. They are still his people and, in stopping their actions, he can’t bear to see them killed. There are certain lines that he won’t cross and, should the mutants cross that line, he may be forced to stand alongside his people even as they do something that he disagrees with. And, from her perspective, this is a perfectly valid reading of this instruction.
We know more than that.
We know that Eternals can’t ever really die, not forever. When an Eternal dies, the Machine resurrects it, but does so by taking the life essence of a human, killing that human. Ikaris along with some other Eternals, upon learning this fact, have left Eternals society and are trying to find a new way to live that doesn’t involve killing innocents so that they may live. When he tells Jean “kill no Eternals,” what he’s really saying is “kill no humans.” And to add another layer to this multi-layered instruction, Ikaris’s instruction is, unknowingly, allowing the mutants to avoid unknowingly breaking one of their own laws: “Murder no man.”
How this idea evolves, though, is interesting and comes from the intervention of the new Celestial adding a fourth principle for the Eternals: “You have 24 hours to justify yourselves.” While framed at the end of Judgment Day #2 as a statement for the entirety of world, it also acts as new essential Principle for Eternals, it seems. We don’t see too much of how that affects the Eternals (Druig stalls, for example – how can he justify himself, really?), but the final two pages of Death to the Mutants #1 has Gilgamesh and Ikaris address this new principle, briefly, with the former saying, “This world bleeds because of our arrogance. We hurt humans by existing. Even I, who tried to protect them, killed them indirectly. We die, they die. The Principles have always been riddles. I know the answer to this one.” To which Ikaris replies, “...I think I do too,” which we see him using his eye beams. The final page reveals his answer to this new Principle and the evolution of his thinking it has caused:
DEATH TO THE ETERNALS.
What exactly this means is anyone’s guess at this point. It’s a subtle evolution from “kill no Eternals” to “death to the Eternals,” and, yet, still comes from the same impulse. The idea that Eternals live at the expense of human lives disgusts Ikaris and some of the others – so much so that they seek out the Deviants as part of their efforts to find a new path forward. With this new Principle forcing the Eternals to justify themselves, the answer for Ikaris is obvious: there is no justification for an existence that comes at the expense of others. The only way he can justify his existence is to find a way to eliminate the Eternals. It’s a chilling final page that, for me, blows the event wide open in a bigger way than the end of Judgment Day #2.
