Issue # 11
Pilgrims, part 1
Written by: Joe Harris
Art by: Matthew Dow Smith
Colors by: Jordie Bellaire
Letters by: Robbie Robbins
Editor: Denton J. Tipton
Executive Producer: Chris Carter
This issue begins in the Saudi Arabian desert with Arab soldiers guarding an oil field being attacked by a jihadist with a car bomb. One terrorist gets shot, knocking another one off a Jeep. Another man in a head wrap tells him to follow if he really wants to fight. The injured terrorist follows along to a pit where they find two scientists. One is trying to get the other to abandon the cave, but the other refuses. The scientist looking to evacuate continues to try but gets shot in the head by one of the terrorists. The mysterious terrorist asks about where a “source” is and takes aim at the running scientist, but the other terrorist who fell off the Jeep tells him not to kill her . The terrorist in the pit scoffs until he finds himself standing in an ominous pool of black oil. The scientist guesses that this terrorist isn’t one of the rest as he tells her to leave. She continues to protest as the terrorist in the oil starts being overtaken. Just as his eyes turn black, the other terrorist pushes a button on a remote and blows them all up inside the cave.
The next scene opens at a Saudi Arabian airport with Mulder joking with a couple Arab guards. The guard informs Mulder that all alcohol and pornographic material are prohibited, and knowing Mulder the latter might be difficult. Scully tells him he’ll survive and that they have higher priorities. She’s wearing a hijab that she’s trying to straighten. Mulder helps her as they discuss how strange it is that they got pegged for this assignment. A.D. Morales meets them and tells them where they are going. As they move along the corridor and discuss it, there’s a suspicious man reading a newspaper. After Mulder, Scully, and Morales head out, the man is gone.
At the oil field Mulder is reviewing security camera footage of the attack. He notices the camera glitches right before the bomb went off. Mulder asks if the tape has been spliced, but the Saudi guard says they can’t request anything more than they’ve been given. They head out to the oil field, and Scully criticizes the investigation since they covered up the crime scene just to get back to production. Scully asks about a hazard crew cleaning up a different area and how they haven’t received any casualty information. Across the field two more shady-looking men in suits are watching them. One pulls his sunglasses down, and we see that he has black eyes. Mulder and Scully then head to their helicopter to ride back to the hotel, and Mulder says he’s going to go shopping.
Scully chooses to go to the hospital to interview a survivor. He claims that the oil rig was never the real target and the terrorists were after the “other people”. Before she can clarify what he means, a nurse comes to change the man’s bandages. Scully goes to wait in the hallway and asks about why there’s a guarded room. The Saudi men ignore her, and she shows her frustration about the way she’s treated in that country. She sees a fire alarm and asks herself “what would Mulder do?”
Meanwhile, Mulder is in a market district using a computer. He’s communicating with the Lone Gunmen, who are helping him get the frames that were cut from the security footage. They identify the same glitch that Mulder noticed, but they identify a skip in the code in the middle of the attack. Mulder interprets this as a time loss event. Furthermore, before the time loss, the back of the second Jeep had only one passenger. After the jump there are two.
Returning to Scully, she’s pulled the fire alarm and is investigating whom the door guards are protecting. Once in the hospital room, she finds a person completely bandaged speaking to her in German. It is Doctor Eva Krause, the doctor the terrorist from the beginning advised to run away. Scully begins to be concerned for what she was exposed to after the doctor mentions that they found what they thought was oil seepage. The doctor tells Scully about the man who blew it all up. Just as Scully asks what man she saw, we cut back to Mulder.
Mulder is sitting in the computer room still talking to the Lone Gunmen. As they exchange some banter, a couple Arab men take out AK-47s and fire at Mulder. He escapes by crashing out a window. Just as he lands a man calls him by name, standing over him. As Mulder goes for his weapon, the man pulls out his and tells him not to do it. Mulder says, “But how are you...,” with a surprised look on his face. The issue ends with the man taking off his headwrap, revealing to Mulder that it’s Krycek.
The last time we saw Krycek alive was in the episode 21, season 8 “Existence,” when A.D. Skinner shot him in the head, supposedly killing him. Judging by previous appearances by past characters that we thought have been dead, could Krycek be another clone-like player in the greater conspiracy? Krycek has played about every side possible during the series, always one step ahead of Mulder and on multiple occasions coming to blows with him. Mulder thought he was dead, as did we all, so how will his reappearance bode with Mulder now?
Issue # 12
Pilgrims Part 2
Written by: Joe Harris
Art by: Matthew Dow Smith
Colors by: Jordie Bellaire
Letters by: Neil Uyetake
Editor: Denton J. Tipton
Executive Producer: Chris Carter
This issue begins where the last one left off, with Alex Krycek standing over Mulder, aiming a gun at him. Mulder acts confused as to why he’s seeing him again, and Krycek seems to be confused as well. Mulder overpowers him and asks if he shoots would he bleed out or dissolve into the green goop the others turned into. Krycek still doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or he’s feigning ignorance. (In light of Krycek’s checkered past, either event is plausible.) The men who tried to shoot Mulder catch up to the window and begin firing at them both. Mulder gets a hold of the Lone Gunmen and asks for help to guide them both out of the market area. They attempt to guide them into an alley, but the interference with the satellite grows, and the men pursuing them even stop to look into the sky. Krycek says that it’s like last time, and the “cradle is full.” Mulder can’t tell the Lone Gunmen what he’s seeing exactly as there is a bright light and a loud “fpfpfpfpfpfp” sound. In the next panel, Krycek has vanished, and the Arab men have cornered Mulder.
Scully is in the hospital talking to Dr. Krause. Scully assures her that she will try to clear her name. Dr. Krause is unwilling and tells Scully about a man who is looking to take what they found in the ground out of the country. Dr. Krause disconnects her life support system, causing an alarm to go off. Three guards head toward the room, but one of them shoots the other two. The shooter has black eyes and pushes a nurse aside before returning to normal. Two more guards appear and shoot the man. They ask the nurse if she’s alright. Scully yells for help again, but when the nurse appears, Scully is gone. The nurse looks around the room, but we see that she is now infected with the black oil. The nurse approaches the window, and we see Scully hanging off the ledge by her fingertips.
Back in the U.S. Embassy, Mulder is being grilled by A.D. Morales. Mulder isn’t giving any information to her. Scully enters the room, to both Morales’s and Mulder’s surprise. She mentions that she hung from a ledge while bullets flew around. Scully tells Morales that Dr. Krause took her own life. Morales tells them that Dr. Krause was an archeologist working on a secret dig that the Saudi government might not have even been aware of. Morales informs Scully that the CIA was looking to interview Dr. Krause before Scully snuck into the room and she died. Morales knew about the doctor but only tells Scully that “I know what I’m told, Agent Scully...”
Mulder and Scully meet in the hallway after their meeting with Morales. Mulder asks Scully what time it is. She states her time, and Mulder asks if she remembers what she saw in Yellowstone, the gigantic alien UFO (back in issue #5). Back then, the Acolytes witnessed the same UFO as it rose from the ground and said the same thing Krycek said before he disappeared: “The cradle is full.” Mulder shows Scully his phone’s clock, and it is two minutes behind Scully’s. This proves that he experienced another time loss incident when he saw the bright light in the sky. As they leave, Scully tells Mulder what Dr. Krause told her. Behind them, a janitor is mopping the floor. He looks up and his eyes turn black.
Mulder takes Scully to the Saudi desert, and they discuss the case they’re on. Scully expresses her characteristic skepticism with Mulder’s lost time and seeing Krycek. Mulder places one stopwatch on the road and keeps the other in the car. Between panels of Mulder waiting for the light to return, we see Morales talking to someone. Whoever is talking to her is accusing her of failing. Between this, Scully tells Mulder to get out of the road, just as he sees a light. It turns out to be a large truck that he barely dodges. Whoever is talking to Morales tells her of secrets they are privy to that are ominous and terrible. Mulder, having dodged the truck, finds his stopwatch smashed in the road. He turns to look at Scully, but she has disappeared. We’re left seeing CSM smoking and standing in the shadows talking to Morales, and Mulder standing at his SUV yelling for Scully, who has vanished.
Scully’s vanishing harks back to Season 2’s episodes “Duane Barry” and “Ascension,” when Scully was abducted. We’ll have to find out what happened in issue #13 to know for sure, but there are a lot of old details in this series that fans can appreciate.
Issue #13
Pilgrims Part 3
Written by: Joe Harris
Art by: Matthew Dow Smith
Colors by: Jordie Bellaire
Letters by: Robbie Robbins
Editor: Denton J. Tipton
Executive Producer: Chris Carter
We begin this issue in the Lone Gunmen’s secret Arlington lair. The last time we saw the guys, they were trying to assist Mulder in escaping gunfire in a Saudi Arabian market district. Now they are tracking a perimeter intrusion on their own screens. Byers is trying to track whatever it was and notices fighter jets scrambling from Andrews Air Force Base. The big screen flashes an “Intruder Detected” alert. Frohike and Langly are in the bushes trying to find whoever is signaling their system. They stumble across a figure stooped in the grass and offer assistance. When the figure turns around they realize that it’s Alex Krycek. Krycek says, “I have to find it,” and quietly, “the cradle is empty”. As Krycek walks away we are left seeing Scully standing in the mist, presumably left by the same UFO that took Krycek and left him in Arlington.
Meanwhile, Mulder is standing in the Saudi desert. He is walking from the location where Scully was abducted and has no cell signal. Luckily for him a truck drives up and allows him to hop in for a ride. The driver is a woman in a hijab, which is odd since Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow females to drive. This could be good for him or very bad, considering he is a highly sought after individual in the country after prying where they didn’t want him to.
Back with the Lone Gunmen, they have Krycek in a chair with headgear hooked on. Obviously it is some sort of lie detector of the Lone Gunmen’s own design. Krycek claims to not know how he arrived in Arlington, and Langly confirms that he isn’t lying. Langly and Frohike note that he might think he’s telling the truth, but seeing as it’s Alex Krycek they are wary. Not to mention the fact that he’s been presumed dead for the last decade. Krycek seems surprised by this news.( If he is the same kind of resurrected player from a game that should have been over after the failed colonization conspiracy, does this mean the other clones were unaware of their status? We’ve already seen Mr. X dissolve into the same green goo that previous alien hybrids have turned into when killed). Further research into Krycek reveals abnormal brain wave patterns that Scully notices. When they run the raw data they’ve recorded from his brainwaves they get the word “SHELTE.” Langly points out that it could be “shelter” without the “R,” but Frohike thinks it could be an anagram. Scully asks Krycek if he knows anything about it, but he denies knowing. Though, between his denials there is a clear flashback of when he was locked in a missile silo pouring black oil from his mouth, eyes, and nose.
Scully and Krycek are outside in the next scene. Krycek tries to put his jacket on her since it’s cold out, but she refuses. He then tries to explain that he’s confused to how he’s in this situation at all, but Scully isn’t buying it. There are more flashbacks to Krycek hemorrhaging the black oil as he denies any memory. Scully knows he’s hiding something, but he maintains his claim that he is clueless.
Back in the Saudi desert, Mulder is riding with the woman still. Mulder discovers that she speaks English and asks if she can take him where he can make a phone call. She informs him that it’d be a bad idea, and he responds with how odd it is that a female is driving at all and wonders why she thinks it’s a bad idea. She tells him, “They are studying you.” Mulder continues his questioning and discovers that Krycek is the one studying him and he is being used to hunt “the forsaken ones.” She says that “they” are using Krycek, and he is using Mulder. Mulder finds an AK-47 under his seat and pulls it on the lady and demands to know what Krycek is after. As he does this, her eyes turn black, and she drives the vehicle off the road, sending it careening off a cliff and crashing at the bottom.
Back with Scully, she is in Crystal City, Virginia, waking up a shirtless A.D. Skinner. Scully begins to explain the situation, but Skinner assumes correctly that Mulder is missing. As he says this, Krycek enters his apartment. Skinner is shocked to see him, as the last time he saw Krycek was when he shot him in the head. Skinner tells Scully that he received a phone call from Mulder saying he was on the way back, which he just said to get Kryceck alone. He tells Scully to go home and wait for him and that he’ll take care of Krycek. Right after he shuts the door, he slams Krycek against the wall.
In the next scene, the truck Mulder was in that was crashed is lying at the bottom of the cliff. The lady driving the truck wakes up inside the cab and seems confused. She asks Mulder, who’s standing outside, for help, but he uncharacteristically walks away. Back in Virginia, Scully is in her apartment typing out her thoughts into a MacBook. She thinks about the Yellowstone incident from the beginning of the series and expresses how she is lost without Mulder. The next scene is at an airport in King Khalid International Airport in Saudi Arabia. Mulder is on the plane, like Skinner told Scully. However, we see that CSM is also on the plane a few seats behind him. Once Mulder arrives back home, where Scully has been waiting, she greets him, and Mulder tells her not to worry. He tells her that he’s trying to figure out what is happening as well, just as his eyes turn black.
This is not looking good for Mulder or Scully. Mulder has had several run-ins with the black oil in the past. It has been a large part of the series story arc dealing with the alien race attempting to colonize the Earth. The Season 10 comics have rekindled the conspiracy very well in my opinion. In the original series, the alien colonization was set for 22 December 2012. All the similarities to the first mythology arc in The X-Files series seem to be reoccurring, albeit in a different fashion. We’ve seen major players like Mr. X, CSM, and Alex Krycek return. Mr. X dissolved into the green goo, as mentioned above, and we’ve seen CSM be overpowered by a shadowy figure using telepathy of some sort. If the hierarchy is consistent from the first conspiracy, then CSM would be controlling Krycek, although Krycek is notoriously unreliable on either side. If we’ve seen this many players return to the game, could more Syndicate members end up rejoining the conspiracy?
We’ll have to follow the series further, but thus far, it has been a very well-crafted story. The artwork has also been excellent! The use of shadows and colors has enhanced the mood that The X-Files demand. Now with this cliffhanger, we will continue the “Pilgrims” story line next with Part 4.
Special thanks to Bellefleur for editorial assistance.
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