Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: empyre, marauders, marvel, x-force, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

Overly-Decompressing Kate Pryde's Resurrection – Marauders #11 [XH]

Published Mon, 17 Aug 2020 16:30:08 -0500

by Jude Terror

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We've got three X-Men books that hit stores last week to recap here in X-ual Healing, North Korea's favorite weekly X-Men recap column (go ahead, prove me wrong). Last week saw the release of X-Men: Empyre #3, Marauders #11, and X-Force #11. And I'm gonna tell you all about everything that happened in them. If you were interested in my thoughts on the big DC Comics news last week, scroll down to the bottom and click on the first part of this column, the recap of X-Men: Empyre #3, where I have some things to say about it. Otherwise, read on for a recap of Marauders #11.

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities. Still, thanks to a corporate merger, a line-wide relaunch, and Jonathan Hickman's giant ego, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in all of comics.

MARAUDERS #11
MAR200916
(W) Gerry Duggan (A) Stefano Caselli (CA) Russell Dauterman
THE QUEEN IS DEAD!
The Marauders…the Hellfire Trading Company…all of Krakoa is reeling from the death of Kate Pryde.
Rated T+
In Shops: Aug 12, 2020
SRP: $3.99

Marauders #11 Recap

The issue opens with Nightcrawler writing a letter to the deceased Kate Pryde, updating her on all the happenings since she, y' know, died. Iceman is apparently so distraught he's stopped banging Christian Frost over it. The X-Men gives Kate Pryde's body a Viking funeral, as Jewish tradition dictates. In a master feat of comics decompression, this one scene takes up an entire third of the issue, just to set the stage for something we already knew: Kate is dead.

Emma Frost has a cry in her palace when she finds a visitor: Lockheed. She reads his mind and learns that Sebastian Shaw murdered Kate. She vows revenge. A prose page gives us Charles Xavier's speech from the funeral about Kate. Emma brings Lockheed to Healer and asks him to keep Lockheed a secret. She asks Xavier to try to bring back Kate one more time, and he agrees.

On a subway in Washington DC, Storm meets with Delores Ramirez, a CIA agent in the agency's X-Desk department. Storm thanks her for the intel that led to stopping Verendi's plot to spread poison mutant drugs. Ramirez thanks her in return for the drugs helping her sick mom.

In Krakoa, The Five, once again try to resurrect Kate, but her body just sits motionless in the egg. It dawns on Emma that Kate will never break out of the egg because that's not the way she operates. Emma beckons Kate's body to phase out of the egg instead, and she does. Xavier returns her memories, and we learn that in all the past attempts (eighteen of them), the husk simply drowned because it wouldn't hatch on its own.

So Kate is now alive again, and the Marauders have their leader back. Nightcrawler seems to have plans for the 18 dead Kate bodies, whatever those may be. Hopefully, not necrophilia, but mutants are into weird stuff on Krakoa. Kate only has her memories up until the last time she had her mind read, which means she doesn't remember her own death, but Emma confirms it was Shaw. They agree to take care of the matter together. The issue ends with a prose page showing Agent Ramirez's report about meeting Storm.

Well, I'm glad Kate is back, but that was a kinda crappy explanation for why it took so long. They also dragged out this resurrection for an entire issue, which was even more decompressed than usual. It still leaves the mystery of why Kate can't pass through Krakoan gates. In any case, now that Kate is back, the storyline with Shaw can move along, which should be interesting. But this issue was, once again, an example of something that could have been accomplished in two pages taking an entire issue instead.