Warning: this article contains spoilers for S.W.O.R.D. #1!
The first issue of S.W.O.R.D. dropped this month, and just blew the roof off what was possible for Marvel Comics’ famous mutants the X-Men. From writer Al Ewing, and artist Valerio Schiti - the creative team behind this year’s Empyre crossover event - this new chapter in the X-Men universe’s fresh status quo is literally taking mutants where no-one has gone before. A journey into uncharted territory is enough to make the series interesting, but the means by which they achieve this incredible feat is just as noteworthy and emblematic of the new era Mutantdom has entered.
Clearly, Marvel’s mutant community has moved beyond the days of fighting for equal rights and a place in society. S.W.O.R.D. - which stands for Sentient World Observation and Response Department - was originally conceived as S.H.I.E.L.D. but in space, and has now been taken over by Krakoa and effectively become a mutant space program. Its base of operations is a massive, and appropriately blade-shaped, orbiting space station called the Peak, commanded by Abigail Brand. On top of being an interplanetary spy, Brand is also an alien/mutant hybrid pyrokinetic. Now that the station is back in service and under mutant control, it has received some pretty astonishing upgrades and its mission has increased in scope.
Krakoa already has impressive teleportation gate technology, but as Star Trek taught its fans, any decent space crew needs a precision teleporter, and the X-Men's blows the transporter out of the water. In classic Jonathan Hickman - Marvel’s “Head of X” - fashion, the process is complex and requires org-charts and diagrams to properly understand. It’s a combination of organic and non-organic technology supercharged by powerful mutant abilities. This kind of “mutant technology” has been seen before in the Five, the team of five mutants responsible for the resurrection of deceased mutants, only this time in space.
The Six, otherwise known as the “Uni/Multiversal Far-Retrieval Circuit,” represent the most ambitious and cosmically significant example of mutant synergy. The process is made of two stages: translocation and manifestation/retrieval. The First Stage requires five mutant teleporters linked together to do the heavy-lifting of the long-distance translocation and anchoring the Second Stage to save energy. The current teleport team includes: Blink, Lila Cheney, Gateway, Vanisher and Amelia Voght. This first stage is quarterbacked by a member of the Six, the space-folder Manifold. The other members of the six are: Whiz-Kid, a technopath; Fabian Cortez, an energy augmenter; Armor, a protective shield generator; Peter Quinn, who possesses broad-spectrum super-vision; and Risque, an implosive field generator. Each individual represents a node in a circuit that makes the whole thing possible, contributing power, control, protection, guidance, and the means to detect and extract whatever they might need. As is the case with the Krakoan Five, remove one and the system fails. By their powers combined, these six mutants allow for instantaneous travel to the farthest point of the unknown universe: the heart of creation itself.
This is the kind of wild innovation that would make Star Trek's Montgomery “Scotty” Scott feel pretty inadequate, and the sort of bold inter-dimensional/fringe science adventure readers have come to expect from the likes of Reed Richards, Tony Stark, or even Doctor Strange. To find the X-Men behind such an astronomical leap signifies without a doubt the start of a dauntless new age for the Marvel Comics mutants. It begs the question: what else does the future have in store for them now that the sheer vastness of the multiverse is no longer a consideration? What is S.W.O.R.D.'s final frontier?
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