No Exit

"Once More, With Feeling" / "No Exit" / "In Excess" / "Holocaust!"
Astonishing X-Men #1-4 [1995]
Written by Scott Lobdell
Pencils by Joe Madureira
Inks by Tim Townshend, Dan Green, and Al Milgrom

"Age of Apocalypse" is a fun story and fan experience, but when I look at those issues now I mostly see a formal experiment that went very, very well. The creators who worked on the book – basically a small army led by X-Men lead writers Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza – were all recent inheritors of the X-Men franchise, which was still very much defined by Chris Claremont's 17-year run on Uncanny X-Men. Those creators were all fans who'd lucked into running the show after Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and Whilce Portacio bailed on Marvel to form Image Comics in 1992, and mostly seemed to be doing their best to please fans of their predecessors through 1994. “Age of Apocalypse” wasn't just a sales stunt event, but an opportunity for all these writers and artists to flex and do something totally new that was an expression of their creativity rather than merely their adaptability.

The premise of the "Age of Apocalypse" is that the reader is tossed into a totally different X-world in which Charles Xavier died before founding the X-Men and the X-Men are instead led by Magneto on a planet which has been largely conquered by a despotic Apocalypse. The writers took this opportunity to radically reinterpret the franchise as a way of putting ironic twists on familiar characters – Beast and Cyclops are now baddies, Sabretooth is now a hero – but to build on then-recent narrative themes such as Nightcrawler discovering that his mother is Mystique or Iceman realizing that his low self-esteem has led him to not fully explore the possibilities of his powers. Nicieza took his X-Men book as an opportunity to add some details to Exodus, a major villain who was entirely vague at that moment, and Lobdell explored Sunfire, the temperamental Japanese X-Man who quit almost immediately after joining the team in Giant Size X-Men #1 and only appeared occasionally since. The plot of “Age of Apocalypse” is fine enough, but in the moment and to this day, the real thrill of it was in seeing the results of the creators going wild with the source material.

Astonishing X-Men has always been my favorite of the "Age of Apocalypse" mini-series, largely because it's illustrated by Joe Madureira just as he was hitting his stride. Madureira, only 20 years old at the time, is the definitive AOA artist and is responsible for the majority of the most memorable designs used in the event. In this series we get Sunfire, radically transformed into a being of living flame with a mask and bits of black armor to give definition to the contours of his body. There's Blink, a character he'd designed for the previous year's “Phalanx Covenant” event, remade from a cowardly young girl into a confident and heroic figure playing the Kitty Pryde/Jubilee ingenue role in this squad of X-Men. Madureira's most startling design is for the newly created villain Holocaust, who is basically a burning skeleton locked inside a hulking battle suit entirely comprised of clear armor.

Whereas the other artists drawing issues of the "Age of Apocalypse" event were working in the general stylistic milieu of Lee and Liefeld, Madureira's clean, cartoony line and dynamic storytelling style was more like Paul Smith channeled through the aesthetics of Japanese animation. Madureira's work here would turn out to be as influential and transformative as Arthur Adams and Jim Lee before him, and was crucial in establishing a new style for X-Men that was not based in emulating departed talent.

By the time Lobdell had started on Astonishing X-Men he'd had plenty of practice in writing ensemble casts, and in this mini-series he was showing off how naturally the rhythm of it all came to him while establishing a lot of world building. He fills out the tragic backstory of this Sunfire, establishes this version of Sabretooth as a rough equivalent of Wolverine totally at odds with the irredeemable monster he was writing in proper continuity as if to provoke a nature vs nurture argument, and makes Blink so cool and fun that Marvel editorial would have to go out of its way to create the dimension-hopping Exiles series as a way of bending the rules of continuity to satisfy fan demand given that the "real" version was killed off shortly after being introduced. The relationship between Sabretooth and Blink is particularly powerful, echoing the surrogate father/daughter dynamic of Wolverine and Jubilee but more poignant given the dystopian backdrop of the story. (It's worth noting that Lobdell and Nicieza very obviously patterned their regular continuity version of Sabretooth on Hannibal Lecter, so giving Blink the name Clarice has an interesting charge to it.)

Lobdell's cast of Astonishing X-Men is so different from the one that he was writing in Uncanny X-Men that the only character in both casts is Rogue, and this version of Rogue is a very different person. This Rogue is married to Magneto and co-leader of the X-Men, and carries herself with a gravitas far different from the loose cannon energy of her regular continuity counterpart. The most intriguing AOA versions of characters answer the question of "what if this X-Man had a totally different life?" in ways that invert what we know about them in compelling ways – a sullen Nightcrawler without Catholic dogma, a demented and sadistic Beast, or a smug and immensely powerful Iceman. Seeing those characters without constraints is a revelation, whereas Rogue without the burdens of her power or having to live down bad decisions of her past just makes her come across like a generic superhero.

The King Egg

“The King Egg”
X-Men #9
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu
Color art by Sunny Gho

Before Marvel formally announced Jonathan Hickman would be taking over the X-Men franchise they ran a few in-house teaser ads, the first of which was a white page with text that read: “When two aggressive species share the same environment, evolution demands adaptation or dominance.” So far we’ve seen Hickman address this theme with mutants vs humans, mutants vs artificial intelligence, and mutants vs homo novissima. This issue hits the theme on an intergalactic level, with the story opening in the distant past with the Kree Supreme Intelligence authorizing the genetic manipulation of the highly adaptive Brood as a weapon against their rival empire, the Shi’ar. The King Egg produces a patriarch which can sieze control over the intergalactic Brood hive mind and shift their purpose towards killing the Shi’ar. The Brood queens have responded to the threat by sending all their drones to destroy it. Here we have an advanced species subverting the adaptability of another species, and that species fighting for its survival at all costs. 

The majority of this issue is big action in outer space with the X-Men, Starjammers, and Shi’ar Imperial Guard fighting off the Brood. Leinil Francis Yu is always great with space battles, having previously done this sort of thing with Hickman when they worked together on the Infinity storyline in Avengers. There’s a great sense of scale and momentum in his pages – it’s all very much a comic, but the art conveys the feeling of a big budget movie. 

The story wraps up with a surprise twist – Broo, the mutant Brood student of the X-Men who has joined Cyclops and his crew on this mission, is compelled to eat the King Egg and suddenly becomes the king of all Brood. As a result of this, the mutants have effectively taken control of the Brood via the gentle and good natured Broo. This is a brilliant use of Broo, an extremely annoying character who now has a strong sense of purpose in the greater scheme of things. It’s still hard to tell exactly where Hickman is headed with this space storyline, but it’s safe to say we will eventually see the mutants try to use the Brood as weapons. But will Broo, always portrayed as a sweetheart, be down with this plan? Or will the serum created by the Kree in the King Egg override his every intention and push towards their plan in attacking the Shi’ar? 

Notes:

• The next issue is a tie-in with Empyre, an Avengers/Fantastic Four event about the Kree and Skrull uniting against Earth. It seems pretty likely the complications of the Kree’s meddling with the Brood will be the occasion for intersecting the plots? 

• Jean Grey’s monologue expressing the point of view of the Brood queens is a necessary bit of exposition, but I like how it’s also an expression of the character’s profound empathy. 

Swarm

“Swarm”
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Mahmud Asrar
Color art by Sunny Gho

“Swarm” picks up where Jonathan Hickman left off with his brief run on New Mutants, with that group back on Krakoa and in possession of an egg that Wolfsbane stole and brought home with her just for kicks. As it turns out, it’s a Brood king egg and the Brood have tracked it back to Earth, and are invading Krakoa in swarms. It’s the most conventional story Hickman has done so far in the main X-Men book, but it’s advancing his larger space opera macro plot and delivering a jolt of action film energy that the series has been light on amidst the more philosophical focus of recent issues. 

If you are new to all this, you should know that the Brood are an alien race that Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum introduced in the early ‘80s and are rather transparently the Marvel version of the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise. Hickman’s use of the Brood emphasizes the creepy otherness of the species, particularly in the scenes of the issue in which we observe teeming masses of Brood crawling through the husks of the space whales they use as organic spaceships. Mahmud Asrar, a familiar X-Men artist of the recent past who fills in for Leinil Yu on this issue, is particularly good at drawing the creatures in action sequences in which they’re still quite scary even as Cyclops, Magik, and Mirage wipe them out.

 I’ve never been particularly fond of the Brood, but Hickman and Asrar make me rethink my position on them as a threat. They emphasize just enough of what makes them distinctive to keep it from feeling such a blatant Alien rip-off while nailing the coolest visual aspects of “what if the X-Men fought a thousand xenomorphs?” 

This is the first traditional multi-part story of Hickman’s run so I’m going to hold off writing about the bigger story, so let’s move straight to notes…

• Vulcan features heavily in this issue, and will be central for at least another two issues going on the covers for those comics. Vulcan is a very complicated character – he’s the biological brother of Cyclops and Havok, but was raised in Shi’ar space and has a complicated backstory that involves both the history of Krakoa and a Marvel cosmic event by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning that I never read called War of Kings in which Vulcan, leading the Shi’ar, clashed with Black Bolt of the Inhumans leading the Kree. Hickman calls back to that story in this issue with a text page recapping the ending of War of Kings, in which Black Bolt and Vulcan are lost in the Fault, a rip in the fabric of time and space. This page is followed by a page of Vulcan lost in the Fault which directly echoes a page from Hickman’s FF #6 in which Black Bolt is lost in the Fault.  

I’m a lot more intrigued by Vulcan’s connection to the history of Krakoa, which was introduced as a massive retcon in Ed Brubaker’s Deadly Genesis miniseries. In this issue we see Vulcan after getting wasted with Petra and Sway, two recently resurrected mutants who were part of a failed second iteration of the X-Men that Moira McTaggert and Charles Xavier sent to Krakoa before the assembling the third wave of X-Men including Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus from Giant Size X-Men #1. This is a crucial element of the Krakoa story that Hickman has yet to address – like, what does the Krakoa we know from House of X onward have to do with the hostile monster island from the first modern X-Men comic? What was the early process of getting Krakoa the sentient being on board with being Krakoa, the mutant nation? And how do Petra and Sway feel about living on Krakoa when Krakoa murdered them?

• Perhaps the greatest flex of Hickman’s X-Men thus far is making two of the most annoying characters from Jason Aaron’s awful Wolverine and the X-Men run, the cutesy Brood mutant named Broo and Kid Gladiator, tolerable in their appearances in this issue. He doesn’t really do much to change either character – Broo is basically still a baby monster who’s always like “indubitably!” and Kid Gladiator is still a child version of Gladiator who is always like “RAD!” – but they’re both a lot less aggravating in this context than in Aaron comics where it seems like he was rather convinced they’re the most hilarious things in the world. Broo, always a novelty character up to now, has a clear utility in this issue’s plot too. It goes a long way.

• Always a pleasure to get even just a page of Hickman’s Sunspot! 

Crucible

“Lifedeath”
X-Men #7
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu
Color art by Sunny Gho

Let’s start with audacity of the title. Given that this is an issue about an event called Crucible that is mentioned by name many times over, it would be sensible to simply call the issue “Crucible” or similar. But no, Jonathan Hickman can’t quite ever be bold enough, so he named it “Lifedeath,” after one of the most famous and acclaimed Chris Claremont stories in which Storm struggles with life after losing her powers. It makes sense: This is an issue about what becomes of the million mutants who lost their powers to the Scarlet Witch’s “no more mutants” spell in House of M, and how to be reborn with their powers they must first die. It’s the core dilemma of the original Storm arc taken to a new extreme, with Nightcrawler and Cyclops on the margins of the story pondering the spiritual implications of the Krakoan resurrection protocols. 

Hickman takes his time doling out hints of what Crucible is through the first half of the issue, indicating the solemn intensity of the occasion and how heavily it weighs on the other characters. The context is revealed as we see Exodus explain the reason for the event to a group of mutant children around a fire in the forest, emphasizing the great evils of the Scarlet Witch and the horrors she inflicted on mutantdom with just three words. The children repeat language from the text pages referring to the Scarlet Witch and M Day in House of X #4 – “the pretender,” “NO MORE” – and suggest that an emerging part of Krakoan culture is the vilification of Wanda Maximoff and, by extension, the Avengers. This indoctrination makes sense, particularly given the extreme lengths the Krakoans must go to rectify her deeds, but the reader is aware that Scarlet Witch is still written as a heroic figure in Avengers comics. It now seems inevitable that she will enter this story at some point and have to reckon with a mutant nation indoctrinated to think of her as a Hitler figure. 

This scene is the first indication of what Hickman is planning for Exodus, a somewhat underdeveloped villain created in the 1990s that he’s placed on the Quiet Council. The main thing about Exodus is that he’s from the distant past – he was raised in the 12th century but held in stasis by Apocalypse for centuries – and that he’s a zealot who aligned with Magneto’s most extreme beliefs but was more harsh and unyielding. It would seem that Exodus’ zealotry is being positioned as a parallel to Nightcrawler’s spirituality here, as we see Nightcrawler wrestle with moral questions and decide that he must start a mutant religion for those questioning their faith in the context of Krakoan culture and the implications of endless rebirth. If the pure and heroic Nightcrawler is offering a theology based on kindness, forgiveness, and pursuit of peace, Exodus is clearly fostering a more violent and unforgiving fundamentalism in his young followers.

In the final third of the issue we see that Crucible isn’t merely about a depowered mutant dying to be “made whole” in resurrection, but rather a sacrement informed by Apocalypse’s “survival of the fittest” ethos. Melody Guthrie, the younger sister of Cannonball and Husk, must face the hulking and enormously powerful Apocalypse in a duel in which he taunts and tests her. The mutants of Krakoa don’t want to deal with mass suicide of depowered mutants – they want a show of dedication to fight for their people. They must be found worthy. 

This makes sense, but is also sort of troubling. The ritualistic nature of this speaks to both Apocalypse and Exodus’ roots in the distant past, and shows how their taste for bloody sacrifice and symbolism is shaping the emerging culture of Krakoa. This is another contrast with Nightcrawler’s sensibilities as a Catholic – he’s a very New Testament sort of guy, after all. It will be interesting to see how his hippie-ish brand of Christianity informs a new religion based upon many ideas that his culture has disproven, or at least called into question. 

Some notes:

• Hickman continues to tease the details of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, and Emma Frost’s apparently bisexual polycule situation. I realize some would love for this to all be spelled out and made full canon, but I actually prefer him sketching this out in ways that suggest something as filthy and overtly queer as the reader wants it to be. Don’t get hung up on the plausible deniability, get excited by how far he’s willing to go to suggest that Wolverine and Cyclops are regularly fucking each other. 

• I love that Cannonball, always an incredibly normal and down-to-earth dude, is just getting used to raising a family in the alien Shi’ar culture and comes home to discover that everyone he knows has created a new culture that’s maybe twice as strange. But hey, his dead siblings are alive, so he’s he to complain? 

• We finally see Warlock separated from Cypher’s arm and it’s very odd and creepy. It’s hard to tell whether this is hinting at something bad, or just showing us that Cypher is just a really weird guy with very unusual friends. 

Endangered Birds

“Space Jail” / “Endangered Birds” / “Spoilers”
New Mutants #2, 5, and 7
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Rod Reis

I already wrote about the start of Jonathan Hickman and Rod Reis’ mini-run on New Mutants back in November, but am now circling back to cover the subsequent three issues which have been published in a loose alternating pattern with a parallel story by regular series creators Ed Brisson, Flaviano, and Marco Failla. I’ll get to that stuff a bit later on once they’ve had a bit more time on the book. Given how tonally fresh and visually exciting the Hickman/Reis issues have been, the other issues have mostly felt like drab fill-ins in context and I’d like to get a better feel for what Brisson does on his own terms here. 

It was very wise of Hickman to lean so heavily on humor and self-awareness in this New Mutants arc, not just in terms of varying the tone of the overall X-Men line, but to flex some elements of his style that can get lost in his reputation as Mr. Epic Worldbuilder. The sitcom-ish tone also serves the characters well, at least in that each of them gets to be reintroduced as the essence of themselves as originally defined by Chris Claremont. A lot of baggage is being shed here in the interest of resetting this part of the franchise, and I’m all for it. In most cases this does nothing to go against how the characters have been written over the past few decades, but it’s very noticeable in the case of Wolfsbane, who seems to have regressed to a gentle naïf after about 30 years of stories in which she is traumatized and hardened. Maybe this is a hint that Xavier et al are omitting certain traumas from some people who are resurrected, or maybe it’s just Hickman bringing Wolfsbane back to what made her such a lovable and relatable character in the 1980s and it’s not something to overthink. Given the tone of this arc, the indication seems to be more the latter scenario. 

The focus of this arc is very much on Sunspot, who is obviously one of Hickman’s favorite characters and is now set up to be a central figure in all Shi’ar plot going forward. I’m quite pleased with this development as I adore Hickman’s version of Sunspot and also the way Sunspot’s narration makes a lot of Shi’ar plot I typically find rather dull and overly complicated quite fun and vibrant. I have a near lifelong history of disliking Shi’ar stories, but this one was a joy to read and I now feel invested in what happens with the Shi’ar empire and how it will intersect with the X-Men’s plans in the future. Even as a fan of Hickman going into this, I was skeptical about whether he could make me care about this aspect of things, but here we are. 

Some notes: 

• The “fuck or fight” scene with Magik in issue #5 is very funny, but also notable as one of the few times I can remember Magik being played as an overtly sexual person. She’s often sexualized in illustration, but despite frequently being played as a subtextual girlfriend of Kitty Pryde, she’s never had a real romantic or sexual plot. (I might be forgetting something, but I don’t think so? I know she had a few flirty lines in Brian Bendis’ run.) 

• The use of the Shi’ar Death Commandos from the Claremont/Chris Bachalo run in the 2000s continues Hickman’s reverential use of characters designed by Bachalo. 

• The text page replacing what could have been “seventeen glorious pages” of action in issue #7 with a tabletop game is both hilarious and formally inventive. A reminder that we’ve only scratched the surface of what can be done with the text pages! 

• This arc is a real star turn of Rod Reis, who impresses on every page with his distinctive approach to color and design, and mastery over gestural drawing and facial expressions. Thankfully he’s sticking with Hickman for a Fantomex special in the near future, and will hopefully continue to work with him through the duration of his X-Men tenure. Or maybe an Image book together? They have remarkable chemistry; it feels like they’ve only just begun their collaboration. 

• Cypher has been walking around with what appears to be Warlock as his left arm all through this arc and in House of X/Powers of X, but this has not been addressed in the text. I wonder when Hickman plans on getting into that, as it’s obviously significant.

The Oracle

“The Oracle”
X-Men #6
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Matteo Buffagni
Color art by Sunny Gho

My favorite narrative threads introduced by Jonathan Hickman in House of X – the machinations of Orchis, the confrontation of Moira and Destiny, the suicide mission on the Orchis forge, the looming threat of Nimrod, Xavier and Magneto using the promise of resurrecting Destiny as a method of manipulating Mystique – come together in “The Oracle,” the best single issue of an X-comic to come out since House of X/Powers of X gave way to the Dawn of X. Given that we’ve had to wait a bit for this to come together makes it feel like a payoff, but it’s still just set up. We now have a full sense of Mystique’s arc for the Hickman X-Men mega-story, and it’s something that pulls together everything that’s ever been interesting about one of the franchise’s greatest antagonists: Her nihilistic cynicism, her duplicitous and conspiratorial nature, her deep love for Destiny, and her limitless capacity for spite and bitterness. At the end of this issue Mystique is set on a course to become a threat to the grand project of Krakoa for reasons that make a lot of emotional sense. Even if she ends up doing horrible things, it’s easy to be on her side in this. 

At the beginning and end of the issue we see Destiny and Mystique together in flashback, as Mystique is told a vague prophecy that lines up with her experiences in the present. I love seeing them together because it’s the only time you ever see Mystique be vulnerable or deferential with another person. Destiny is the only person she truly trusts and admires, and there’s an implication that she’s also somewhat responsible for her political radicalization. Hickman’s characterization of Destiny is not far off from Chris Claremont’s depiction of her in the 1980s, but he leans harder on her essential spookiness and her icy ruthlessness. “They want us blind for some reason,” she says, accurately sensing that the removal of her special form of sight is deliberate. Moira’s fear of Destiny is rooted in her traumatic experience with her at the end of her third life and is tied to her tremendous guilt for her actions in that timeline, but I also get the impression that she understands that if anyone would call bullshit on the Krakoan mutant togetherness project and have the means to build a faction of skeptical mutants it’s Destiny and Mystique. Moira’s anxiety about this has now guaranteed that it will come to pass. 

The panel in which Mystique shouts “I WANT MY WIFE BACK!” at Xavier and Magneto is the emotional climax of the issue, but has more power in that Hickman is finally spelling out something that’s been elided for decades due to editorial policies, though it was screamingly obvious to anyone who read Claremont’s comics. This isn’t actually the first time the nature of their relationship has been made canon, but it’s certainly the most important. The metatextual aspect of this adds to a few extra layers of pathos to the story, particularly when you consider that Claremont’s writing implied they’d been living together as a lesbian couple for several decades and that they were as out with that as they were about being mutants, though Mystique’s shape-shifting always gave her the option to pass. 

One of the ways Xavier and Magneto are using their leverage over Mystique to their advantage is by having her spy on the Orchis station to make sure that the X-Men’s mission in House of X was actually successful, as they all died out of range of Cerebro and no one had retained their memories when they were resurrected. She returns with a good news/bad news message: Yes, the Mother Mold was destroyed, but it seems as though Dr. Gregor and Director Devo are moving along in creating something that looks quite a lot like Nimrod. We don’t actually know what the Orchis scientists are doing, though it’s connected with Gregor’s odd plan to revive her husband who died in the X-Men’s raid, but it moves that plot along in a way that invites speculation. It moves Mystique’s story forward by complicating her motivations – she cares enough about her people to want to stop Orchis, but not enough that she is willing to do anything more until she gets Destiny back. She tries to use this as leverage over Xavier and Magneto, and fails. The bitterness sets in, and it’s clear those men have no idea how much of a mistake they’re making by protecting Moira. 

Some notes: 

• Hickman has been writing Xavier and Magneto as a gay couple in subtextual ways, so it’s interesting that they’re the ones thwarting the reunion of a lesbian couple whose relationship is now entirely official in the text. 

• The plot point of Dr. Alia Gregor seemingly attempting to revive her dead husband in the form of Nimrod is a clever thematic parallel with Mystique’s quest to revive her lost wife, but also a cruel irony in that by raiding the Orchis forge, the X-Men apparently hastened the creation of the thing they were desperately trying to prevent. And I like that there’s a more poignant emotional context for the origin of Nimrod – it’s not just motivated by MUTANTS BAD, but rather a consequence of mutant aggression.

• Matteo Buffagni did a wonderful job as a fill-in artist on this issue, and his Sean Phillips/David Mazzucchelli-ish inky noir qualities were very well-suited to this particular story. I’m particularly fond of how he drew the subtleties of body language in the Destiny/Mystique flashbacks and how the surreal aspects of Krakoa appeared when filtered through his blunt realism. 

• The page revealing Mystique’s appearance in disguise in earlier scenes in the Orchis station was brilliantly executed, and recalls a similar trick Hickman used in his Avengers run showing the reader how the boy who became Starbrand had been in the backgrounds of scenes through the issue. 

• This is the first issue of an X-Men comic since House of X #1 to not include text pages, and the issue contains a few extra pages of art instead. They made the right choice here for the story, but I think that breaking the formal pattern was a subtle nod that this issue was meant to seem particularly heavy. 

• Gotta love the very low-key introduction of SENTINEL CITY on Mercury. Yikes!

The Red Coronation

“I’m On A Boat” / “The Red Coronation” / “The Bishop In Black” / 
“The Red Bishop” / “A Time to Sow” / “A Time to Reap” / “From Emma, With Love”
Marauders #1-7
Written by Gerry Duggan
Art by Matteo Lolli, Lucas Wernick, Michele Bandini, and Stefano Caselli
Color art by Federico Blee with Erick Arciniega and Edgar Delgado

Marauders is a peculiar series, both the most radical of the new Dawn of X series in concept and the most traditional in its storytelling. Gerry Duggan is enthusiastically exploring the possibilities of the new ideas Jonathan Hickman introduced in House of X/Powers of X – the issues of trade and diplomacy that come from both Krakoan sovereignty and the miracle drugs that drive its economy, the rebranding of the Hellfire Club as the Hellfire Trading Company, the quirks of Krakoan gates, the utility of the resurrection protocols – and is doing it, in of all things, a pirate comic. I was initially wary of the clean, direct “house style” art and emphasis on humor and action/adventure, but seven issues into the series it’s clear to me that Duggan is playing to his strengths as a writer while taking Hickman’s concepts very seriously. 

This is an ensemble series, but the star is clearly Kitty Pryde. Pryde, who now wishes to be called Kate rather than Kitty, is mysteriously unable to pass through the Krakoan gates and can only get to the living island by boat. In the first issue Emma Frost, the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, offers Pryde a seat on the Quiet Council of Krakoa in exchange for becoming the Red Queen of the Hellfire Club and heading up both the distribution of Krakoan drugs and missions to rescue mutants around the world who cannot find a way to Krakoa. Pryde is accompanied by her close friends Iceman and Storm, the mutant cop Bishop, and the newly resurrected and reformed villain Pyro. Sebastian Shaw, the Black King of the Hellfire Club, is the book’s primary antagonist and is actively scheming against Frost and Pryde. 

Each lead character in Marauders gets some fun moments, but it’s pretty obvious that Duggan is invested in Pryde above all else, and is doing what he can to push the character forward after a few decades of stagnation. The usual problem with the depiction of Pryde is that she’s often written in an overtly nostalgic way by authors who grew up in the early 80s, and that she’s frequently presented as a moralist scold. The latter bit doesn’t have to be a bad thing – it is a legitimate personality flaw that’s been with her since the beginning and it can be genuinely interesting – but Duggan seems rather pointed in steering clear of all that and emphasizing the ways she’s become willing to make ethical compromises. Duggan’s Kate Pryde comes across as a young woman who is so sick of her usual goody-goody patterns that she’s becoming reckless in search of a new identity – she’s more ruthlessly violent, drinking heavily, getting tattoos, and leaning hard into the whole pirate aesthetic. She also seems very depressed and lonely, and I trust Duggan to dig deeper into that as he goes along. 

It doesn’t always work, particularly in the first few issues. There’s a text page in the debut issue in which Wolverine sends a message to Kate asking for a list of goods, foods, and beverages to bring to Krakoa that is both wildly unfunny and nonsensical given that he’s a person who can freely teleport anywhere he wants, and she’s a person who is stuck taking long boat rides everywhere. Duggan fumbles some early story beats by delivering things we’ve already accepted as the high concept of the series, such as Pryde becoming the Red Queen, as big issue-ending reveals. Storm, a Quiet Council member and second to only Cyclops in the chain of command of the X-Men, doesn’t quite make sense as a subordinate supporting character in this series despite her close relationship with Pryde and only seems to be in the book because Duggan called dibs on her very early. 

Duggan’s greatest strength in writing Marauders is that while the circumstances of the story are exploring new ground, the relationships and motives of the characters are firmly rooted in continuity without getting bogged down in rehashing old stories. Frost and Pryde, introduced in the same issue back in the Claremont/Byrne era, have a long and complicated history together, and Duggan pushes them into a new phase of mutual respect and collaboration after too often being written as petty rivals who cruelly condescend to one another. Storm and Iceman are two of Pryde’s closest friends in the X-Men, but are also two people who’ve had very painful histories with Emma Frost. When Callisto is reintroduced in the seventh issue, Duggan gracefully acknowledges her contentious relationship with Storm, her past with the Morlocks, and her brief career as a model. I particularly like when Callisto shows a grudging respect for Pryde taking the name of the Marauders, the kill crew who slaughtered the Morlocks and nearly ended Pryde’s life in the “Mutant Massacre.”

Marauders has been illustrated by four different artists in the span of seven issues, and while they’ve all been somewhat bland and functional, they’ve all matched up stylistically so the series at least has a consistent visual aesthetic. It feels somewhat churlish to complain about the strong draftsmanship of Matteo Lolli, Lucas Wernick, Michele Bandini, and Stefano Caselli, but I do wish they had a bit more flair. They’re not exactly miscast for the tone or subject matter of the book, and Lolli is particularly good at drawing some of Duggan’s most imaginative action sequences, but it looks like it could be any mid-list Marvel book as opposed to what is effectively one of the flagships of the newly ascendant X-Men franchise. I just wish it looked more fresh. 

All told, I’m glad I held off in writing about this series because it’s been better with each passing issue, with Duggan deepening his characterization and steadily heightening the stakes. He’s even managed to make Jason Aaron’s Hellfire Kids characters from his dreadfully goofy Wolverine and the X-Men run a worthwhile set of antagonists in this, which is borderline miraculous. (That said, why does he take these awful little kids more seriously than Donald Pierce, a character who was presented as one of the more unhinged and terrifying villains of Chris Claremont’s original run?) But despite minor quibbles, I feel like Duggan is headed in the right direction and am grateful for his efforts in evolving Kate Pryde as a character. 

Into The Vault

“Into the Vault”
X-Men #5
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by RB Silva
Color art by Marte Gracia 

It’s such a pleasure to have RB Silva back with Jonathan Hickman. It hasn’t been all that long since they worked together on Powers of X – and they did make a small Mister Sinister story interlude in the recent Incoming special – but enough time has passed and enough artists have worked in the new X-Men world that Silva and Pepe Larraz designed for it to feel a bit like… coming home… for Silva to show up on this issue. Leinil Yu is still the regular artist for the known future, and while he’s been doing some of the best work of his career on the past four issues of X-Men, the chemistry of Hickman and Silva is so strong that it’s hard to come away from this issue without hoping he cycles into the regular artist slot before too long. 

It’s pretty obvious why Silva was assigned this particular issue. Powers of X proved him as a brilliant designer for sci-fi concepts and particularly good at interpreting and building on visual ideas established by Chris Bachalo. In this story we revisit the Children of the Vault, created by Mike Carey and Bachalo for the “Supernovas” arc in the mid-2000s, and get a look inside The Vault, a construct with accelerated artificial time that pushes human evolution forward. Charles Xavier, with the knowledge of Moira McTaggert’s experience in the distant future of Powers of X with the homo novissima, has identified this machine creating post-human beings, as the top existential threat to humanity. But the X-Men know almost nothing about the Children or The Vault, and need to send a group of uniquely qualified mutants – X-23, Synch, and Darwin – for a reconnaissance mission. 

Silva’s depiction of the inside of The Vault is brilliant – it’s like nothing and everything, a vast digital nowhere with elements that indicate technology and nod towards old depictions of virtual reality spaces, but mostly just comes across like an unknowable dark void. It’s instantly memorable, and the decision to make sure all pages within The Vault are laid out side by side in the print edition has the great effect of emphasizing the enormity of it.  The use of data text page elements merged into the design is also quite brilliant in both conveying information and advancing the distinct visual aesthetic of the line. Given that this issue ends on a cliffhanger with the team stranded within The Vault, it’s pretty clear that establishing this vibe was crucial, and Silva nailed it. 

This issue continues a pattern of every issue by Hickman setting up further story, and is particularly effective in making you desperate to know where the plot is going. It hadn’t occurred to me at all that he’d be pursuing the homo novissima thread from Powers of X so soon or that he’d explicitly tie it to the Children of the Vault in the present day, but it’s quite obvious and works very well. Unless I’m forgetting something marginal, Hickman is the first writer to dive into the Children since Carey left, and as he did with handling the Phalanx in Powers of X, he’s done a very good job of fitting them into his tech narrative and elevating the stakes accordingly.

When Carey and Bachalo introduced this concept it was in some ways a workaround the “No More Mutants” status quo, but posed the question of what would happen if the X-Men had to face a species that was a step beyond them, reversing the usual humans vs mutants dynamic. It’s hard to imagine this story moving forward without the mutants having to confront some incredibly dark notions – like, they can’t possibly consider genocide, right? But then you look at the membership of the Quiet Council and realize if put to a vote, the more ethical and noble members of that body  – Xavier, Jean Grey, Storm, Nightcrawler, Kate Pryde – are in the minority. Yikes.

Some Notes:

• It’s nice to see Hickman continue to show love for Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo’s characters from Generation X. Synch, a character who has been out of circulation for about 20 years or so, makes his return in this issue via the resurrection protocols. He’s very charming in his scenes, but the text page of his medical file indicates that he’s very rattled by the experience of coming back to life years after his death to find all his former classmates have moved on with their lives. I suppose this explains a bit of why he’d agree to a mission that could go on for hundreds of years. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to him and his fragile emotional state after being trapped in The Vault.

• I’ve never been particularly fond of X-23 – I have a pretty harsh bias against “legacy characters” – but I think having her lead this mission into the unknown is a brilliant use of her that puts her at the center of a major narrative thread while also clearing her off the board for a little while. 

• I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that Hickman keeps showing Storm a bit overworked and rattled, or if this strain and her refusal to take it easy is setting up something for her down the line. 

The Accolade of Betsy Braddock

“The Accolade of Betsy Braddock” / “A Tower of Flowers” / “Three Covenants” / “Fall Back and Think of England!” / “Panic on the Streets of London” / “Watch the Throne” 
Excalibur #1-6
Written by Tini Howard
Art by Marcus To
Color art by Erick Arciniega

Serial stories don’t always click right away, but you can usually tell when an ongoing story has the potential to grow into something better as it goes along. Tini Howard’s Excalibur series seems like one of those to me. Howard is relatively new to writing for comics, and while she hardly comes off as green, it’s clear enough that she’s still in the process of learning on the job and finding her voice. In working on this series she’s essentially being mentored by Jonathan Hickman, and as she is now she reminds me a lot of Hickman when he himself was being mentored by Brian Michael Bendis in the early days of his career at Marvel. You can sense intelligence, passion, and ambition in the writing, but it’s muffled somewhat. Howard is good with dialogue and clever with her concepts, but there’s something missing or buried in the mix at the moment. My theory is that in playing “by the book” in pacing her plot in these issues, she’s denying a more peculiar personal narrative rhythm that would be more enticing. But you need to master the rules to break them well, so maybe that’s just what this arc is for her. 

Excalibur is the series in the new X-Men line that is exploring the concept of “mutant magic,” and is expanding on ideas set in motion by Jonathan Hickman that reimagine Apocalypse as a mutant mystic with ancient scores to settle. These elements of the plot are very interesting and entertaining, and I particularly enjoy the way Howard portrays Apocalypse as a man with an elaborate agenda that involves constantly manipulating the Excalibur crew to his own advantage, but also as a figure who is generally benevolent to the other leads despite having been their archenemy up until recently. 

The series is also about Betsy Braddock taking on her twin brother Brian’s role as Captain Britain in the wake of her ceding her identity as Psylocke to her former host body Kwannon following them splitting off into two separate people. Betsy has been one of my favorite X-Men characters for a long time, but I’m pretty cold on this version of the character – largely because I’ve never found the Captain Britain mythos at all interesting, but also because a lot of the body horror and complex identity issues that went along with the baggage of her living in another woman’s body was very intriguing to me. The version of Betsy in this story feels like someone different from the character I had some investment in. She’s more of an ordinary superhero now.

But as much as I’m personally bored by the Captain Britain-ness of it all, Howard hits those marks with full commitment. I appreciate how fully she’s leaping into the fantasy elements of this series, but feel that her efforts are undermined by Marcus To’s art. To is a strong draftsman who is particularly good at drawing body language and facial expressions, but his work lacks style and flair. His pages are highly functional but sort of drab and ordinary, and do a poor job of conveying the exotic beauty of Krakoa or the more spectacular fairytale imagery he’s called upon to illustrate when the story goes full-on fantasy. There’s no poetry in his linework. He’d probably do well with a more traditional comic series that focused more on comedy or soap opera, but he’s all wrong for a book like this which needs you to buy into high drama and wild imagery. 

This problem reminds me of the early phase of Chris Claremont’s work on the original New Mutants series, where he was paired with industry legend Sal Buscema for about a year before Bill Sienkiewicz took over and radically redefined the style and tone of the book. Buscema, like To, was an incredibly talented draftsman with a clean and old-fashioned style. But his dependable style was at odds with the aims of the series – it was stodgy instead of youthful. Sienkiewicz’s offbeat and highly distinctive style brought out the tensions in the series, and opened Claremont up to exploring elements of horror and abstraction that added a new dimension to a comic about mutant teenagers. Howard’s Excalibur needs this sort of aesthetic shift. The mysticism needs to be emphasized with atmosphere and style. It should feel more surreal, more fantastic. To is far from a bad artist, but he’s not serving the material well and gets in the way of the reader fully believing in Howard’s magic. 

Global Economics

“Global Economics”
X-Men #4
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu with Gerry Alanguilan
Color art by Sunny Gho

It’s remarkable how quickly Jonathan Hickman’s radical new vision for the X-Men has become the new normal, to the extent that this issue in which Charles Xavier, Magneto, and Apocalypse go to the Davos World Economic Forum to discuss the destabilizing effect of their new flower drugs on the global economy lands as a “yes, of course” rather than a “wait, what?” Truly, this is the All-New, All-Different X-Men. 

“Global Economics” builds on threads established in the first issue of House of X, and brings back two characters introduced in that issue – Chinese ambassador Ma Mingyu and the plainly sinister U.S. ambassador Reilly Marshall. Over the course of this story Reilly is revealed to be plotting an assassination attempt on the Krakoan leaders, but that plan is foiled by Cyclops and Gorgon. The bulk of the issue focuses on Xavier, Magneto, and Apocalypse addressing the concerns of the global elite and stating their intentions and goals. Each of them play to their strengths: Apocalypse intimidates with his enormous size and vast historical perspective, Magneto lays out the mutants’ plan to turn the capitalist system against humans to gradually negate their power and influence, and Xavier takes off his Cerebro helmet for the first time in the series to offer a message of love and faith in the possibility of coexistence. 

Xavier and Magneto’s respective monologues contrast their essential differences – idealism vs cynicism – but also the way the other’s perspective informs their current actions as they work together as the leaders of mutantdom. Magneto’s anger and ego are apparent in his gloating about the way he intends to whittle away the humans’ economic power, but he’s also set aside overt terrorism and violence in favor of pursuing soft power. Xavier is earnest in his desire for peace and expression of love towards all, but refuses to back down from claiming what is “rightfully ours.” For once they are on the same page philosophically, but in their words you see both the seductive qualities of their approaches to rhetoric but also the weaknesses that will no doubt lead to both of them making mistakes over the course of this run. It seems inevitable that Magneto’s self-aggrandizing anger – “you have new gods now” – will lead to something terrible happening. Xavier’s naïve hope will certainly be taken advantage of by some cynical, opportunistic force. 

This issue establishes the new role of Gorgon as a “captain” of Krakoa charged with protecting members of the Quiet Council. Gorgon is a relatively recent Marvel creation – he was created by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr for their best-selling “Enemy of the State” storyline in Wolverine in 2004, and his since been featured in many series as an antagonist but rarely in actual X-Men books. Hickman has a history with the character, having featured him in both Secret Warriors early in his Marvel career and later in Avengers World. Gorgon’s monologue in this issue lays out his change of heart, renouncing his previous service of Hydra and The Hand and embracing the visionaries of the Quiet Council. He’s “enlightened,” which means he’s embraced a brutal sort of mercy – he obeys the Krakoan law of “kill no human” but leaves an entire crew of assassins horrifically maimed. It’s not fully necessary, but it would be nice to see a bit more of how Gorgon came around to this change of heart, and his apparent reconciliation with Wolverine, who recommended him to this new position. 

Notes:

• Leinil Francis Yu continues to shine in small details on this series, particularly in the establishing shot of the dining room and all the well-rendered shots of food. I can’t imagine that when he signed on for another go at the X-Men he anticipated having to draw steak in two different issues, but he’s done well with it. 

• Very curious to see where Hickman is going with Reilly Marshall. In the first issue of House of X we learn that he’s a former black ops agent for both S.H.I.E.L.D. and S.W.O.R.D., but has a hidden affiliation that he managed to keep from the Cuckoos’ psychic probe. Is he involved with Orchis? Or perhaps some other concern that we haven’t learned about yet? One thing I find interesting about Marshall’s designed is that the other human characters introduced in House of X and this issue have extremely distinctive appearances that speak to their races and cultures, whereas he’s got the generic secret agent James Bond look – a blandly handsome clean cut white man. Seems pointed. 

Hunting Ground

“Hunting Ground” / “The Sword of Damocles” / “The Skeleton Key”
X-Force #1-3
Written by Benjamin Percy
Art by Joshua Cassara
Color art by Dean White and Guru-eFX

The first issue of Benjamin Percy and Joshua Cassara’s new X-Force series arrived in the context of a mostly quite jovial Dawn of X relaunch in the wake of House of X/Powers of X and spoiled the triumphant mood by ending with a nightmare scenario that threatened to undo everything: Human commandos arrive on Krakoa and murder several mutants, including Charles Xavier, whose Cerebro resurrection machine was destroyed in the process. It felt bad. It felt like “oh no, not this again.” But within two more issues, Percy and Cassara have proven themselves to not be doing anything cheap or dull, and the grim actions of the debut issue serve as the inciting incident for a series in which a set of X-Men do whatever they can to avoid anything like that happening again. It’s X-Force reimagined as a mutant CIA, and thankfully it seems that Percy isn’t interested in making that out to be an entirely good or respectable thing.

Of all the writers working in the context of Jonathan Hickman’s new X-Men status quo, Percy seems to be the one who best understands and matches his tone, and is the most invested in developing the consequences of the mutants creating a nation-state. Percy, who literally wrote a book about how to thrill audiences, is very good at pacing the action of his story and delivering bold, memorable images at a regular clip. Cassara’s art is well-suited to the hyper-violence and creepy imagery of Percy’s story, and is particularly good at framing pivotal moments and reveals. Every page has a very thoughtful rhythm, and Percy’s use of text pages steers away from Hickman’s use of charts to embrace his strength as a novelist with pages with plot beats that work better with the quiet interiority of prose than they would as illustrated pages.

Quentin Quire is featured prominently in the second and third issues, and Percy’s version of the character is based fully in Grant Morrison’s original characterization of him as an arrogant young man who is a bit too eager to tell you about how much he loathes humanity and feels that Charles Xavier is too soft in his morality. This is great news if you’re like me and despise Jason Aaron’s cartoonish and defanged approach to the character, but it should be noted that Percy has not entirely abandoned some surface aspects of that version of the character and his relationship with Wolverine. But it’s a relief to see that the most important thematic elements of Quire are back in play without necessarily turning back the clock on more recent character development.

The third issue, in which Xavier is inevitably brought back to life by The Five and Jean Grey using a back-up Cerebro helmet, goes deep into the philosophical – and narrative – question of what happens when all mutants are effectively immortal now. Jean Grey, who was no stranger to death and resurrection before all this, gives a soliloquy about her feelings on the matter and concludes that without the threat of death, people become less selfish and more focused on the collective good. I like this framing a lot – it becomes less about bravery, and more about an aspirational value of cooperation and selflessness.

Hordeculture

“Hordeculture” 
X-Men #3
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu
Inks by Gerry Alanguilan and Yu
Color art by Sunny Gho and Rain Beredo

The biggest surprise of Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men and New Mutants so far has not been about plot developments – all that renovation was left to House of X/Powers of X – but rather about the tone: Who could’ve predicted from all that heavy and portentious setup that it’d be so funny? New Mutants is played like a sitcom, and while X-Men has been doing a lot of world-building and filling out big ideas, it’s been very light-hearted and sorta goofy. In this issue the X-Men discover that their newest enemy is a group of ecological terrorists comprised of four elderly women who are rather transparently based upon the cast of Golden Girls. That may sound awful, and it probably would be in the hands of a lesser creative team. But Hickman’s dry wit and Leinil Yu’s designs make it all work, and this quartet of scientists is played for laughs while revealing themselves to be a credible ongoing threat to the X-Men and Krakoa. 

I like to imagine the original pitch Hickman gave to Marvel editorial in which he had to explain that from now on flowers would be central to the X-Men mythos, and that they would need to have enemies going forward who would want to steal and breed their special mutant flowers. Hordeculture – NOT Whoredeculture! – are a group of rogue botanists who were radicalized by their experiences in the agrochemical and biotech industries and have decided to take it upon themselves to sieze control of the world’s food supply and return to the world to a “natural state” with seven billion fewer people on it.

Of course, Krakoa throws their plan into chaos and they successfully steal Krakoan flowers for their studies. The X-Men lose, and this sets up inevitable chaos down the line. This issue is just…planting seeds…for later developments, but it’s a rather fun bit of narrative gardening.

This issue is the first where we get a glimpse at the new interpersonal dynamic of Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Emma Frost. It’s been a very long time since these characters were all together in print: They were the central love triangle of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men in the early 2000s, but Jean died at the end of that run and it’s only just now that all three are alive together at the same time. Hickman is clearly having a lot of fun with this, and is deliberately subverting expectations while leaving all salacious details to the subtext. So from what we’ve seen in this and the last couple issues: Jean and Emma have a catty rivalry but also respect one another as friends and colleagues, and there is a strong insinuation that there is an open relationship situation in which Emma gets to “borrow” Cyclops from time to time, but Jean is his primary partner. (Presumably a fair trade-off for Jean to hook up with her housemate Wolverine now and then.) What a fun, sexy time for them all.

Some notes:

• As the X-Men accumulate new enemies from the worlds of science, politics, and business please note that almost all of them are elderly and/or white. They all have very understandable political agendas that are more about seizing or maintaining power than any kind of overt bigotry. They act in self-interest and self-preservation to either perpetuate the status quo or bend it to their advantage. This is a major improvement over the various human enemies X-Men writers have been working with for ages.

• Yu continues to nail key panels. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the body horror of this panel, which low-key reveals just how sinister the women of Hordeculture can be…

•…and this glorious reaction panel, which ought to get a second life on social media. 

Summoner

“Summoner”
X-Men #2
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Pencils by Leinil Francis Yu
Inks by Gerry Alanguilan
Color art by Sunny Gho

“Summoner” is clearly built to continue some momentum from other recent X-Men comics – we’re still spending time with Cyclops and time-displaced children Rachel and Cable, there are references to the events of the New Mutants and X-Force comics from last week, and the plot advances the Arrako/Apocalypse/missing Horsemen thread from Powers of X – but the actual content of the issue feels more like coasting. 

That’s fine, since we’re still finding our bearings and getting used to how familiar characters behave in the new status quo. In the case of the leads in this issue, we’re still seeing Cyclops form a traditional family unit out of his bizarre set of blood relations. It’s maybe slightly weird that the other characters don’t call attention to this, but it makes a lot of sense that Rachel and Cable – who is a teenager at the moment, having killed the older version of himself in Extermination – would be eager to finally have the dad they always wanted. You know, a dad who is physically only about 10-15 years older than either of them, but a dad nevertheless. 

I quite like Hickman’s take on Cyclops. He’s leaning into the character’s rich and complicated back story without directly referring to it, and presents him as though all the bizarre facts of his life are just lived reality and weird to others but mundane to him, kinda like someone who's been a celebrity all their life. As a reader fully aware of the context and subtext, it all reads as “this is a total weirdo” and “this is a capable leader who’s seen it all and isn’t easily rattled.” Kind of a chicken-or-egg thing with him, really. Hickman has fun with Cyclops’ dialogue too, allowing the character to poke fun at his weird life and history of bad decisions based in horniness. And then there’s this line, which shamelessly panders to everyone who was VERY HYPE about the layout of his house on the moon in the previous issue…

The rhythms of this issue feel similar to the more low-key world building issues at the early stages of his Avengers run. It’s a straight-forward adventure, but the meat of the issue is in establishing some new concepts by having the heroes encounter it in the field. In the case of this issue, it’s the notion of “Summoners,” the magic-wielding heroes of Arrako, the lost twin of Krakoa. At the end of the issue a fragment of Arrako merges with Krakoa, and the Summoner meets with Apocalypse, who clearly intends to bring back the rest of Arakko and make Krakoa whole again. This is not tremendously thrilling in and of itself, but it’s reasonable to assume this is headed towards some climactic resolution in the near future. Hickman seems very aware of that, and wisely leans on jokes to make this a fun read. (I quite like the callback to Sunspot’s “…and that’s why people love me” from last week’s New Mutants in the Cable dialogue. Maybe this is going to be a runner?)

Leinil Yu’s art leaves a bit to be desired in terms of depicting facial expressions but he excels at illustrating freaky monsters and exotic terrain, and that’s what really matters in this issue. His best image in this issue, in which the trio of X-Men ride through tall grass towards the Summoner in the distance, is very striking in its simple, elegant composition and owes a lot to the cinematic tradition my friend Sean T. Collins calls “monumental horror.” The monsters are cool looking, but this shot is genuinely creepy. 

The Sextant

“The Sextant”
New Mutants #1
Written by Jonathan Hickman and Ed Brisson
Art by Rod Reis

There isn’t anything disappointing about Jonathan Hickman and Rod Reis’ revival of New Mutants besides the fact that Hickman will be not be sticking around beyond the first arc, which is setting up elements of space opera plot that will blossom into something bigger for the X-Men line at some point in the future. Hickman explained in a podcast interview for SKTCHD that aside from his regular work on the primary X-Men comic, he’ll be doing brief runs on other series to tell bits of stories that are crucial to his macro-plot. This is a cool idea, but if you’re invested in the core classic New Mutants cast – Sunspot, Magik, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Cypher, Karma, Cannonball – it’s bittersweet to have a writer nail the essence of these beloved but often under-written characters and then bail so quickly. These issues are going to have to be savored. 

Ed Brisson, the only X-Men writer to carry over from the pre-Hickman era, is ostensibly the co-writer of this issue, and will be the sole author of the series once Hickman wraps the opening space adventure. Brisson can be pretty good, but I don’t really notice any traces of his voice or aesthetics in this issue.  The tone and script is about as Hickman-y as it gets, albeit on the more light and funny end of his spectrum. A lot of the issue is devoted to establishing ideas about where the New Mutants – and the other younger characters like the cast of Generation X and the students that populated the X-books of the 2000s – fit into the grander scheme of mutant society as the first generation of mutants plentiful enough to develop actual community, setting up plot for the Shi’ar story, and elaborating on the mechanics of Krakoa and its miraculous fauna. It’s a comic book that’s heavy on ideas, but still mostly is focused on the joy of getting to spend time with these revitalized characters. The characters are having a reunion of sorts in-story, but the more important reunion is the audience and the characters. It feels like hanging out with old friends. 

The issue is packed full of wonderful character beats and genuinely witty dialogue, to the point that it feels more like a hang-out sitcom than a standard action-driven superhero comic. Hickman has fully internalized the voices of the characters as established by Chris Claremont in the 1980s, and the smallest bits of plot are enough to set the conversational dynamics in motion. Hickman lets the characters conform to their archetypes – Sunspot is vain and egotistical but extremely warm and generous, Mirage is tough as nails but very thoughtful, Magik is intense and scary – but he allows for shading and growth. This is particularly noticeable in Wolfsbane, who retains some of her classic naif qualities but is more mature and has distanced herself from her fundamentalist upbringing while still seeming idealistic and spiritual. 

The star of the show is Sunspot, which should come as no surprise to anyone who read Hickman’s use of the character in Avengers. I think it’s safe to say that no one has ever loved Sunspot the way Hickman does, but in writing him, he’s certainly won many people over on the character’s charms. A lot of Sunspot’s personality could come across as grating but Hickman has a great feel for the nuances of his ego, and makes it clear that he’s a very pure and decent guy. The more arrogant elements of his character are quite cute because they aren’t fully delusional, and are the words of someone who has the raw confidence to be openly proud of his achievements. When he says a line like “I’m an amazing hero and that’s why people love me,” it just makes you go, “damn, Sunspot IS an amazing hero and that’s why I love him.” The joke isn’t that he’s not self-aware, but that he somehow lives life without much anxiety and zero imposter syndrome. What must that be like? 

Rod Reis’ art in this comic is top-notch. The fundamentals are all strong – nuanced facial expressions and physicality, storytelling, compelling backgrounds – but there’s also a level of stylishness that sets his work apart. Reis, who started as a color artist, colors his own work and it seems clear that he’s thinking about color as a compositional element on the most basic structural level of his pages. The current X-Men is blessed with a lot of top quality color artists but what Reis accomplishes here is probably the most effective at conveying the somewhat alien beauty of Krakoa and signals a sense of “you are looking at something fresh and new” that backs up the more radical moves of the storytelling. This isn’t so much the case for other new X-Men titles like Marauders and Excalibur, where the artists Matteo Lolli and Marcus To deliver quality draftsmanship that nevertheless looks a bit too ordinary and “house style” for comics that are otherwise quite ambitious and forward-looking. Those books look fine, but New Mutants looks like the future. 

Pax Krakoa

“Pax Krakoa”
X-Men #1
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Pencils by Leinil Francis Yu
Inks by Gerry Alanguilan
Color art by Sunny Gho

Welcome to the new normal. “Pax Krakoa,” the first proper issue of Jonathan Hickman’s flagship X-Men series, has the feeling of the opening episode of the second season of a television show. After all the major paradigm shifts of House of X/Powers of X we’re coming back into the story in a more low-key way, and just getting a feel for the new world of the X-Men. We get a sense of what X-Men field missions are like, we see what domestic life on Krakoa is like for some of our heroes, and check in on Orchis after the X-Men wrecked their Mother Mold. There’s some action at the start as the X-Men attack an Orchis base, but even that scene is mostly just Cyclops and Storm spouting exposition that brings the reader up to speed on recent changes and the X-Men’s new mission. 

This could be dull in narrative and plot momentum terms, but since everything is still so new it’s just a pleasure to take in some smaller character moments. The issue is largely focused on Cyclops, and establishing Hickman’s take on the character. This version of the character is very much in line with the mutant survivalist radicalism that was central to his depiction from the mid 2000s through the mid 2010s, but relieved of the burdens of being played as a pariah or terrorist, this Cyclops gets to be portrayed as a purely heroic figure.

Hickman is relatively subtle in shading in Cyclops’ flaws, which mainly come down to his myopic idealism. His line early in the issue – “we called incremental change ‘progress’ when what we’ve really needed was a great leap forward” – resonates in a very earnest DSA sort of way, but the use of the phrase “great leap forward” comes across as Hickman nodding to the catastrophic failures of Mao’s Communist revolution that Cyclops himself is not fully considering. Later on he tells Polaris about how he felt when his son Nathan was born, and while his dialogue is certainly expressing his emotional truth, the reader (and Polaris) know very well that he’s telling a very simplified version of the story where he didn’t in fact make several huge mistakes. He yadda yaddas years of bad decisions and failures to arrive at a “because I believed in a thing, now it’s real” conclusion about the new Krakoa status quo, and Polaris asks him if he actually believes it. Of course he does! He’s Cyclops. He’s the best there is at what he does, and what he does involves monomaniacal focus and a lot of self-delusion. 

Later in the issue we spend a bit of time with Cyclops’ confusing extended family at his house on the moon. (The Blue Area of the moon, to be exact – the place where Jean Grey killed herself in the “Dark Phoenix Saga.”) Cyclops lives with his two brothers, his time-displaced son, his daughter from an alternate future, Jean Grey (their marriage seems to be reinstated?), and Wolverine. There is a strong implication that Jean Grey is in a polyamorous relationship with both Cyclops and Wolverine, which is quite a thrill to behold. I have no choice but to stan this heroic mutant polycule on the moon. This scene is pleasant and fun, but also supports the general theme of Cyclops hammering his deeply bizarre life into a happy new shape, and the mutants of Krakoa more generally deciding what “normal” is to them now that they’ve stepped away from human society and are building a new one. Maybe in mutant society, the Summers-Grey clan is as normal as it gets. 

At the Orchis Forge we finally get to meet Doctor Killian Devo, the organization’s leader, and see the immediate aftermath of the X-Men’s suicide mission to foil their plans. At least 32 Orchis soldiers and scientists were killed in the raid, and Devo’s line lamenting this – “Mutants, just look at what they have done” – directly echoes the language used in the internal X-Men memoranda laying out the numbers of how many mutants have been killed by humans in various attacks and genocides. Hickman portrays Devo as an idealist who truly believes he’s working for a greater good – the “last hope of humanity.” His personality is set up as a parallel to Charles Xavier, and so is his visual representation – like Xavier, he also wears a machine that covers his eyes but provides him with a more expanded range of vision. So here we have three leaders – including Cyclops – with grand vision, but no one can see their eyes. 

We also check in with Doctor Alia Gregor, who is quite traumatized following the death of her husband Erasmus, who died as a suicide bomber in House of X #3. Devo comes to console Gregor and speak well of Erasmus, showing him to be a decent and considerate leader. The issue ends on an intriguing bit of information – Gregor apparently has figured out how to resurrect him – that could potentially even out a mutant advantage the Orchis people aren’t even aware of yet. 

Some notes:

• Note how the Orchis scientists de-evolve themselves into apes as a last ditch effort to fight the mutants. Also, “all these apes have PhDs!” is a classic line. Never let anyone tell you Hickman isn’t funny. 

• One of the mutants rescued by Storm and Polaris is not a mutant at all, but rather an artificially evolved posthuman from The Vault. This character is Serafina, who was created by Mike Carey and Chris Bachalo in the “Supernovas” arc about the Children of the Vault. It would seem that Hickman is a drawing a line from this pre-existing concept to the homo novissima species from the far future timeline of Powers of X. 

• We spend a bit of time with Storm, who appears to be over-extending herself in the pursuit of bringing as many persecuted and captive mutants as possible to salvation on Krakoa. Storm seems to be particularly zealous about the Krakoan nation in this run so far, and I’m curious to see where Hickman is going with her. 

• I love every establishing shot of the Orchis Forge in this issue, and in previous issues of House of X. It’s always so visually interesting and sets a mood in a way that feels very Star Wars-y, but very unlike what you typically get in comics, where establishing shots are generally quite dull for no good reason. It would seem that Hickman is drawing a lot on the Empire in his depiction of Orchis, and even the gradual reveal of Doctor Devo recalls the way The Emperor was not introduced right away in the original film series. 

• Wait a minute, does Alia Gregor have a shard of M’Kraan crystal?

• Now that this issue is out, the blessed run of 13 consecutive weeks of Hickman issues has come to an end. The next issue of X-Men won’t be out for a month, but there will be an issue of New Mutants written by Hickman in between. I will be writing about every Hickman-written issue of X-books as they come out, but I haven’t decided on what I will do with non-Hickman material. I will write about anything I find particularly interesting as it comes up, but I may only cover the spin-offs in chunks of issues or story arcs at a time, or skip some things entirely.

House of X

“House of X” 
Powers of X #6 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by R.B. Silva with Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia and David Curiel

Powers of X #6 is the end of the beginning; the final notes of the overture to what is promised to be Jonathan Hickman’s grand mutant opera. Now that the full shape of House of X/Powers of X is known, we can see that this was very much the origin story of the Krakoan nation, and how this bold new plan for a unified mutant front was devised with the knowledge of Moira MacTaggert’s nine previous lives. It’s so simple when put that way! 

This issue is focused on Moira, and its primary action is centered in the far future timeline of the ascension, which we now know to be the end of Moira’s previously unknown sixth life. It’s not quite clear how Moira is alive this far into the future, much less fairly young looking, but she’s there in the preserve that was introduced in the first issue of POX along with the Wolverine of this timeline. They’re the captive of the Librarian who set up the ascension plan with the Phalanx, who turns out to be homo novissima, the end-stage hyper-evolved product of centuries of genetic engineering. The machines, the Nimrods, all of this extermination of mutantdom? All just a diversionary tactic to keep mutants from interfering with the process of breeding something far beyond human or mutant. 

Wolverine kills the Librarian after Moira extracts everything she needs to know to carry over to her next life. And then her next three lives after that. It’s unclear how she ended up on the path that brought her and Wolverine to the Librarian’s preserve – a story for another day, I hope – but it’s now much more understandable how her 7th, 8th, and 9th lives were so angry and desperate. This leaves the Moira of this timeline, our timeline and the one she believes to be her last life, in a position of desperation and some degree of repentance for having been involved in so many awful things. The House of X has to work. 

The centerpiece of the issue is a set of Moira’s diary entries that fill in lot of details about how the House of X plan came together with Charles Xavier and Magneto, and explain how this retcon fits into previous X-Men continuity. There’s some very casual bombshells dropped in these pages – for example, the revelation that Moira and Xavier both became the parents of reality-warping mutants (Proteus and Legion, respectively) because they knew they would need someone with that power to enable the mutant resurrection protocol and deliberately found mates who would produce this sort of offspring in combination with their own mutant genes. I actually gasped upon reading that bit. 

We learn a lot about how necessary it was for Moira to break Xavier’s inherent optimism and idealism, and how difficult it was for her to deal with the “casual arrogance” of Magneto. She notes that Sinister has turned himself into a chimera mutant, decades ahead of schedule compared to the other timelines. There’s also some oblique explanation for how the plot of the Magneto/Moira storyline in X-Men #1-3 by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee – the best-selling comic book story of all time! – fits into all of this. 

The story ends with Xavier, Magneto, and Moira meeting after the Krakoan nation has been established, and the Quiet Council is nearly complete. Moira is in hiding, as she’s been for many years. It would seem that the only people aware of her being alive or her role in this grand plan are Xavier and Magneto. 

Moira seems very paranoid in her isolation, and is deeply afraid of the notion of Destiny being revived to placate Mystique, or of precognitive mutants in general because she fears what would happen if the other mutants discovered that mutantdom is snuffed out in every iteration of her life. This makes some sense given that she has up to 2000 years of regrets and anxieties to live with, but it also seems like a deep-seated fear of Destiny in particular after her ordering her agonizing death at the end of life three. And what does she actually fear Destiny telling the other mutants – that mutantdom is doomed every time, which many probably would believe anyway given everything they’ve personally experienced, or that in her third life she tried to wipe out mutants herself? 

Hickman ends HOX/POX on a high note, but undercuts the sense of triumph with Moira’s nagging doubt. What if this is still not enough? What if the mutants resist this attempt at species-wide unity? What if mutants really are doomed, just as they’ve been in all of Moira’s previous lives, and most every other future and alternate timeline in the history of the franchise? These are the stakes going forward, and they’ve never been higher.  

So now we look ahead to the new X-Men series by Hickman, which begins next week. Hickman has planted seeds for major stories with most of the X-Men’s major antagonists: 

• Orchis will certainly seek retaliation for the destruction of the Mother Mold, and will be an ongoing threat for sure. 

• Nimrod will inevitably be created at some point in his run, and we’ll probably see the beginnings of the genetic engineering that will eventually lead to homo novissama. 

• Apocalypse will begin a quest to find his original Horsemen on Arrako, the lost twin of Krakoa. 

• We’ll need to explore the mystery of what Mister Sinister has done to take advantage of the genetic archive, and how he may have sabotaged or corrupted the resurrection protocol.

• “Inferno 2,” anyone?

•  It’s only a matter of time before Destiny is resurrected, and we’ll get to see whether Moira’s fears are valid. How will all the mutants of Krakoa respond to learning about Moira and her many lives? I suspect that the deeply nihilistic Mystique will be not be pleased, and this will set her up to go rogue.

• Sabretooth’s breakout from imprisonment and pursuit of vengeance. Perhaps he is recruited by Mystique? We’ll see. I’d be more excited for him to just claw his way back up to the surface and go on a rampage at the worst possible time…like, say, after the resurrection protocol is inevitably broken. 

• We’ll certainly see the Phalanx again, but I wonder if the notion that the worlds Moira inhabits in each of her lives dies with her is just a bluff. It doesn’t make much sense, and Hickman has put way too many pages into establishing the notion of the Phalanx absorbing the offering of the mutant consciousness archive to just never show us what happens. The Librarian makes a point of stating that once the Phalanx merges into a Dominion it will exist outside of time and space, and I believe that is the path to this popping up in the main timeline down the road. Also, it seems very likely that the Moira 6 version of Wolverine will be merged with the Phalanx, and the Librarian mentions this as a possibility in passing. Given the layers of abstraction in the Phalanx/Dominion concept, it would be narratively useful to give it a familiar face in the form of the franchise’s most popular character.

• It can’t be too long before things with the Hellfire Club go wrong, and I suspect the long term arc of Hickman’s run will bend towards Magneto doing something horrible and breaking off from Xavier. I think he’s setting the readers up for a heartbreak right now.

Some lingering questions:

• How exactly is Moira alive in the far future of life six? There’s a line about her having the same blood type as Wolverine, but that only barely makes sense. If that’s the hand wave explanation, then OK, sure, but it’s awfully flimsy.

• I’m not quite sure why this issue, HOX #2, and HOX #5 were color coded as red. This and HOX #2 are both Moira issues, but she’s not in HOX #5 at all. I suppose they are all big reveal issues, but in that case, wouldn’t POX #3 with its Moira 9 reveal also be one of those?

• How were the full capabilities of Krakoa discovered? Moira clearly learned about this from Apocalypse in life nine, but when did she and Xavier begin work on this in life ten? And how does this relate to the formation of the second class of X-Men in the original Krakoa story back in Giant Size X-Men #1? 

• What will Moira do with what she learned from the Librarian in life six? Is the X-Men’s longtime association with the Shi’ar actually about Xavier courting a galactic society as a form of ascension? Or is that more about forming the alliances that led mutants to end up in Shi’ar systems in her ninth life? 

• Surely there’s a good number of mutants who aren’t totally into the Krakoan mutant society thing, right? We don’t see any dissent among the ranks in this story, but I have to assume this will be part of the narrative in Hickman’s X-Men and the assorted spin-off series going forward. 

I Am Not Ashamed

“I Am Not Ashamed”
House of X #6 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia and David Curiel

The opening sequence of “I Am Not Ashamed” resolves a big question from the first issue of House of X: How did Charles Xavier, who had always preached an assimilationist dream of peaceful coexistence, arrive at the isolationist solution of creating the Krakoa nation-state? The first issue took place in the immediate aftermath of Xavier’s psychic message to the world, and in this issue we get to see that speech in full. Xavier offers his pharmaceutical miracle drugs to humanity in exchange for Krakoan sovereignty, but explains that while he was once inclined to present this as a gift, it will now come at a price and with conditions after being disillusioned by humanity’s genocidal actions against mutants. The change of heart makes sense, and issue #4 laid a lot of the groundwork for this by emphasizing the emotional impact of these genocides on Xavier. Like most everything in House of X/Powers of X, it’s all cause and effect, and it’s a natural evolution of Xavier’s characterization rather than a betrayal of anything that came before.

One of the key narrative shifts in House of X is in reestablishing Charles Xavier as the leader of mutantdom, and as a mostly benevolent and decent man with a big dream. He’s still got some dubious morality and a god complex, but he’s firmly positioned as the protagonist of the story. Much like Chris Claremont, Scott Lobdell, and Grant Morrison before him, Jonathan Hickman presents Xavier as an inspirational visionary rather than as an unethical and manipulative creep, as he was portrayed through much of the past decade and a half. Hickman played on this history a lot through this story, giving the reader reason to be freaked out by Xavier and assume the worst. But at least for now, we can take Xavier to be a good person with honorable goals who is doing what he believes is best for his people, and for the world at large. 

The bulk of the issue depicts the first meeting of the Quiet Council of Krakoa, and the establishment of the nation’s first laws as the group decide the fate of Sabretooth. The scene does a good job of asserting the value system of the X-Men – mutants must never kill humans, mutants must multiply and thrive, Krakoa is sacred – and gives Pepe Larraz plenty of room to flex on drawing the body language and facial expressions of the assembled cast. The long shots establish a lot of character detail in physical gesture and bearing, and tighter talking head shots convey volumes about personality in what characters do with their hands as they speak. Even without following the dialogue, you get the gist of the conversation in how they move – Mister Sinister’s flippant cruelty, Storm’s seriousness, the thoughtful quasi-spirituality of Exodus, Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw’s different shades of blue blood haughtiness, and Mystique’s impatient, dismissive demeanor. 

A highlight of the scene is when she interjects to taunt her son Nightcrawler for his religion – their relationship is never mentioned, but her callous disdain for the boy she abandoned is very apparent. Nightcrawler’s thoughtful and kind-hearted reply to her question asked in bad faith is a good argument for nurture mattering more than nature, as he’s clearly a much better man for never being raised by this deeply nihilistic woman. 

The final sequence is a celebration of the establishment of Krakoa, and feels a lot like the Ewok celebration conclusion of Return of the Jedi. Larraz also shines here, as he conveys a lot of character beats without the support of dialogue. The scene depicts joyful post-resurrection reunions, a conciliatory moment between Wolverine and his nemesis Gorgon (who has been given a key military leader role), and gives a suggestion of the new dynamic of Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Emma Frost in a cleverly illustrated sequence in which Jean begrudingly passes Emma a beer. It will be fun to see where Hickman goes with this – are we basically going to get an Archie/Betty/Veronica dynamic, or will this get more progressive in its sexual politics? A bit of both would be fun. We’re beyond “human laws” now, but it remains to be seen what gets defined as mutant sexuality, particularly in light of the mandate to procreate. 

Some notes:

• We finally get to see Moira X in the present day, though only in a cameo in her No-Space. But what is she up to these days? Why is she in hiding, even from Krakoa? And does anyone besides Charles Xavier and Magneto know about who she actually is and her role as the chief architect of this grand scheme? 

• It seems that this panel gives us our first glimpse of Doctor Killian Devo, the director of Orchis. I’m particularly excited about this character, and appreciate that Hickman has made the new main villain of the X-Men a guy called DOCTOR DEVO. Stan and Jack would be very proud! 

• I had assumed that we’d get back to Orchis in this issue, but we’ll clearly move on to finding out what their plan is following the destruction of their D̶e̶a̶t̶h̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶r̶ Mother Mold in Hickman’s X-Men series. 

• I filled in the map of the primary Krakoa in the Pacific Ocean with the names of locations for my own purposes, but here it is for you too. It’s just a lot easier to take in at a glance this way. Note the friendly tip of the hat to George R.R. Martin!

• We’re nearing the finish line of HOX/POX now, and there’s still a lot to be resolved in the final issue of Powers of X. Like, what will happen when the mutant consciousness archived becomes part of the Phalanx? What happened in Moira’s 6th life, and why has that been a secret? How did Moira find out about the true potential of Krakoa? And do all of those questions actually tie together? The finale of House of X is hopeful and optimistic, but there’s a nagging sense that the finale of Powers of X will show us the hidden cost of all this, or introduce a narrative catch that complicates everything we’ve seen. 

For The Children

“For the Children”
Powers of X #5 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by R.B. Silva
Color art by Marte Gracia

It’s a bit strange to slow narrative momentum to a crawl in the final third of a 12-issue story, but here we are with a 10th issue that feels like an epilogue following the double climaxes in the middle of the story and the previous issue’s triumphs and revelations. “For the Children” is a series of four conversations that mostly fill in details and set up plot to come, mostly with regards to establishing the new purpose of the Hellfire Club and setting up the premise of Gerry Duggan’s Marauders spin-off. There’s some light intrigue in terms of teasing out the membership of the Quiet Council of Krakoa, but it would seem that question was mostly answered by this bit of promotional art by Mike Deodato from a few months ago. 

The plot is inert, but the exposition is necessary and gives Jonathan Hickman some space for pleasing character moments. It’s nice to see the often marginalized Forge take on a big role as Cypher has in previous issues, though it’s hardly surprising given Hickman’s consistent interest in scientists and engineers through his body of work. It’s fun to see Hickman revisit Namor, the prickly and extraordinarily arrogant anti-hero of his New Avengers run. The extended sequence in which Xavier and Magneto recruit Emma Frost into their grand scheme fills in some crucial information about the X-Men’s pharmaceutical business that has been simmering in the background since House of X #1, and provides a crucial beat in which a very intelligent character voices skepticism of their master plan with a nod towards previous disastrous iterations of the “mutant island nation” notion on Genosha and Utopia. 

The final sequence in the distant future offers some plot movement, but the acceptance of Nimrod’s mutant archive into the Phalanx galactic hive mind is rendered with about as much drama as someone swiping a debit card and waiting a few moments for approval while having a vague concern about their checking account getting overdrawn.  Nimrod the Greater provides a huge amount of exposition regarding the evolution of machines and societies. There’s a few lines that nudge the reader to notice the parallels with the main plot about the establishment of the Krakoan nation-state – “a society so advanced that it collapsed in on itself,” “we asked for sovereignty, but with it came an unexpected price” – but it’s all just setting us up for the reveal of what happens when mutation and mutant culture is absorbed and assimilated into the Phalanx. It’s interesting, but not particularly exciting. 

R.B. Silva shows some signs in this issue of strain in keeping up the demanding schedule of producing six consecutive issues of Powers of X in what seems like a relatively tight window of time. His work is still quite good, but you can observe some cut corners – copy/pasted panels, more panels without backgrounds. I suppose some of this comes down to the extremely talky nature of Hickman’s script, and in fairness, Silva goes to town on drawing the holographic sea life of Forge’s home in Dallas. There is a slight blunder in that Silva draws Forge in his Jim Lee-era costume despite this sequence with him and Xavier apparently taking place long ago – this error seems to be addressed by blacking out his X belt buckle, though it’s still a generic X-Men uniform years before he’s a member. It’s no big deal, though.

Notes and observations:

• Magneto really hitting that “grow to an inferno” line hard, just in case the reader didn’t quite pick up on how aggressively Hickman was laying down the notion of an “Inferno” sequel in POX #4. 

• The covers for POX #4 and #5 are reversed in terms of their relationship to actual plot developments in each issue, but I figure this was done to throw off reader speculation. It worked on me! 

• The Forge/Xavier discussion about building Cerebro is the first scene of the series that perhaps didn’t really need to be dramatized, where all the information could’ve been conveyed in a text page. Still, it’s nice to get a moment with Forge and to observe Xavier as he advances his ambitions. And of course, we get a reminder that Xavier has off-world connections to the Shi’ar empire, and possesses something called “logic diamonds.” Surely all very useful information for later. 

• Emma Frost, Xavier, and Magneto meet at the Louvre by the Nike of Samothrace, a surviving masterpiece of Hellenistic sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of Victory. The statue, which is believed to be created to commemorate a victory of the navy, would seem to foreshadow Frost’s forthcoming nautical adventures in Marauders in which the Hellfire Club will become, as she puts it in this issue, “the East India trading company of mutantdom.” 

• So Moira X has a No-Place, eh? I’m just dying to see what she’s been up to in the present day. 

Society

“Society”
House of X #5 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

“Society” is perhaps the most radical issue of House of X/Powers of X thus far in terms of how it relates to X-Men comic books produced by anyone prior to Jonathan Hickman. The resurrection protocol hinted at in earlier issues but revealed here flips something that had become a crutch of the X-franchise – the tedious cycle of killing off characters for dramatic effect and then muddling through increasingly dull and convoluted ways of bringing them back – into something that is now simplified and central to the emerging mutant culture. The issue presents the process as a sort of spiritual ritual, and Charles Xavier’s crucial role in it positions him as a messianic figure for all of mutantdom. The Krakoan nation, the big plans for the future, the X-Men, the creation of a distinct mutant culture – that’s all well and good, but this is what really seals the deal for all of mutantdom to follow his rule. 

This is a brilliant conceit, and the scene in which Storm reintroduces her reborn brothers and sisters to the Krakoan people is one of the most moving and powerful sequences in the history of X-Men comics. This is mutant culture, this is mutant pride, this is justice and revenge. This is Storm, written as she ought to be for the first time in around 30 years. She is now the high priestess of mutants, a true and iconic leader of her people. No other character in the canon could have carried this scene. You get her natural gravitas and commanding presence, her radicalism, and her long personal history with the characters being resurrected. Her sense of joy, triumph, and righteousness in this moment is overwhelming. Pepe Larraz’s rendering of her face and body language is brilliant in conveying the essence of her character. As with his depiction of Nightcrawler, it feels like we’re really seeing these beloved but often poorly handled core characters again for the first time in many years.

The resurrection protocol puts every major X-Men character back on the table with minimal fuss, and keeps writers from having to mess around with continuity to just use whatever characters they want to write. The Matthew Rosenberg mini-run that directly preceded HOX/POX in which he killed or severely wounded a large number of major characters with the full knowledge of what Hickman was about to do now feels particularly hollow, childish, and pointless. Three of the characters resurrected in this issue – Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Wolverine – had been brought back to life in three different stories in the very recent past, and this renders those comics particularly pointless. Each of those stories was overly complicated, sweaty, and dramatically inert. In the words of Charles Xavier, “NO MORE.” Hickman has closed off the possibility of other writers doing these sort of bad stories indefinitely. This is a huge gift to the reader. 

Xavier isn’t just keeping his X-Men in circulation. He’s reviving hundreds of mutants he has catalogued, and rebuilding the mutant population of the earth. The resurrection plan is ongoing, but it’s clear enough that this miracle machine of rebirth won’t last for long. The resurrection mechanism relies on five specific mutants – Goldballs, Tempus, Proteus, Elixir, and Hope – and the use of Cerebro as a method of cataloging and preserving mutant minds. The vulnerabilities of this system are obvious, and are bound to be dismantled at some point. And given that mutant culture is now so focused on organic technology, it’s a glaring problem for something so crucial to involve a machine when machines are the enemies of mutantdom. The notion of preserving mutant consciousness is clearly derived from Moira’s knowledge of Nimrod’s archive, so what happens when some version of Nimrod inevitably becomes a reality in this timeline? Surely this is all very vulnerable to technological attack and exploitation.

And then there’s Mister Sinister. All of this is possible thanks to his archive of mutant DNA, but we already know that Sinister is up to something with all of this. What will be the actual cost to Xavier’s deal with this devil? We’ll probably get some idea of this next week.

Some questions about resurrection:

• Was Wolverine reborn with adamantium via reality-warping Proteus hand-waving, or will he need to re-up with the new body? I would quite like to see Magneto put it back on his skeleton to atone for ripping it out back in “Fatal Attractions.” 

• Similarly, has being reborn stripped Warren Worthington III of his Archangel metal wings and the genetic tampering of Apocalypse? I would hope not, as I vastly prefer Archangel to Angel on a visual and conceptual level. 

• Is this resurrection system at all compatible with Moira’s reincarnation power? Could Moira X be copied as Moira XI is born into a new timeline? 

This issue is extremely bold and sets up a lot of story to come, particularly in the final sequence in which all of the “evil mutants” who were not already on Krakoa arrive to join Xavier’s mutant society. But given that we have three more issues in this story, much of the dramatic momentum built up over the past 8 issues comes to a halt by the end. The issue is powerful in terms of giving the X-Men a major triumph, both in defeating their “great enemy death” as Storm puts it and in fully establishing Krakoa as a sovereign nation thanks in some part to the psychic nudging of Emma Frost. But unlike previous episodes, there’s less “now what???” urgency. 

But there are a lot of good questions going into the final three issues of this story: 

• Where is Moira X now? And what has she been doing in the more recent past? 

• What happened in Moira’s sixth life? 

• How will Orchis find out that they did not actually kill eight major X-Men, and can this moment please involve Cyclops pulling a “surprise bitch, I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me” on Dr. Alia Gregor? Surely this will result in a major panic on their end that will hasten the creation of Nimrod. 

• What will happen with the Phalanx as it absorbs Nimrod’s archive of mutantkind in the distant future of Moira 9’s timeline, and how will this reflect on what is happening in the standard timeline? And will Cylobel figure into this?

• How exactly did Moira learn about the true capabilities of Krakoa, and how did the mutants come to know of the major applications of Krakoan fauna that we’ve seen in the story so far? 

Something Sinister

“Something Sinister”
Powers of X #4 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by R.B. Silva
Color art by Marte Gracia

The plot of House of X and Powers of X is focused on the decisions of Charles Xavier, but eight issues into this twelve issue story we have had very little insight into the man and what is driving him. When he appears in the story he’s inscrutable and unknowable, and he’s defined entirely by his actions. Jonathan Hickman puts the reader in the position of what is must be like to actually be in the character’s presence. His mind is a mystery, but everyone else’s mind is an open book to him. He’s got an elaborate agenda, but it’s hard to understand what he’s doing at any given moment. You get the sense that he’s a benevolent figure, but he doesn’t make it easy to trust him. 

The majority of “Something Sinister” is focused on Charles Xavier advancing his plans in two time periods, and trying to parse exactly what he’s doing is just the same as working out what Hickman is setting up in this issue. The first scene, in which Xavier and Magneto visit Mister Sinister and attempt to con him into building an elaborate archive of mutant genetic samples, seems to set up the return of the core X-Men who died in the previous issue. The second scene, in which Xavier brings Cypher to Krakoa to commune with the living island to develop a bond that can lead to establishing a nation-state there, fills in some crucial back story and establishes a connection to Apocalypse. 

The gears of plot are moving towards a payoff, so the thrill of this issue is more in the character details. The Sinister scene is remarkable and hilarious, and builds on Hickman’s previous use of the character in Secret Wars by establishing “Bar Sinister” as official canon rather than just an alternate reality thing. Hickman’s Sinister, which is heavily indebted to Kieron Gillen’s reinvention of the character as a glam mega-narcissist who has cloned himself into an entire species, is a delight. He’s the ultimate queen bitch, and the presence of the theatrical and flamboyant Magneto pushes him to up his game as a melodramatic scenery chewer. 

The first text sequence of the issue is a cheeky mutant gossip column written by Sinister featuring blind items about various mutants, and it’s inspired. It’s also the first narrative nod towards storylines that will exist after HOX/POX is over – apparent ethical non-monogamy in the mutant society, a bit more hinting about Apocalypse’s original horsemen, something about Madelyne Pryor, and an item that forces everyone to go look up the word “progerian” and try to figure out who that could be referring to. (If we’re taking this literally, it best describes Ernst, who was heavily implied by Grant Morrison to be a reformed and reborn Cassandra Nova.) 

Speaking of Cassandra, please note that Xavier’s wardrobe in the Cypher scene is notably similar to that of his evil twin, and that makes the otherwise benign and hopeful sequence echo the scene in “E is for Extinction” in which Cassandra grooms Donald Trask to prepare the mega-sentinels that caused the Genoshan genocide. I suspect Hickman is just trying to spook us with this and add to the general sense of unease about Xavier in this story, and that this is more like the positive version in which Xavier sets up the opposite of his sister’s evil actions. 

Miscellaneous notes: 

• I like the way Hickman nudges the reader to consider the perspective of certain text pages. The page outlining the interface with Krakoa designed by Cypher to delegate responsibilities suggests that it’s internal X-Men information until the final bit in which there is speculation on whether Forge has a “massive subterranean laboratory” for development of Krakoan biotechnology. Suddenly it seems more like an Orchis intelligence report. And if that is the case, how exactly are they gathering some of this information? 

• Note the vast gulf between Charles Xavier’s ambitious plans for Krakoa and him knowing virtually nothing of its history until Cypher directly communicates with it.

• The sequence at the end of the issue in the distant future with the blue people – it’s still unclear exactly who these people are – confirms that they are attempting to upload Nimrod’s archive of mutant consciousness into the Phalanx. The issue concludes with the blue people waiting to find out whether the Phalanx will accept this offering. There’s a mirror of this plot point in the Sinister sequence, in which Sinister explains that he introduced mutant genes into his own carefully bred genetic system, and we see that the version of Sinister who agrees to collaborate on a mutant genetic archive is the first mutant Sinister. 

• Also, while it’s pretty clear that Hickman doesn’t plan on drawing too much on loose ends of other people’s stories, it is worth noting that his Sinister is directly inspired by Gillen’s version of the character and that version of the character was studying/experimenting on the Phalanx.

• This issue was advertised with a caption promising to reveal the “true purpose” of Cerebro, and while that didn’t quite happen, it now seems like a safe bet that Cerebro may be a psychic archive of mutant minds directly inspired by Moira X’s knowledge of Nimrod’s archive and connected to the plan we see Xavier set in motion with Sinister in this issue. 

• Cypher passing on the techno-organic virus to Krakoa via his Warlock arm probably doesn’t bode well, given that it’s a form of the Phalanx. Hmmm…

• RB Silva has revealed himself to be particularly inspired in drawing physical comedy in this series, first with how he drew the physical mannerisms of his oddly cute Nimrod, and now in the slapstick antics of the various Sinisters. He gets some amusing little moments with Cypher and Safari Xavier in this issue too.