The New Testament Of Irene Adler

“All Mankind’s Woes”
“The New Testament of Irene Adler” 
Immortal X-Men #2-3
Written by Kieron Gillen
Art by Lucas Werneck 
Color art by Dijjo Lima (R.I.P.)

“All Mankind’s Woes” mainly serves to establish Hope Summers’ role in this story as she becomes the newest member of The Quiet Council thanks largely to the machinations of Exodus, who considers her to be a messiah. For the uninitiated, Hope was introduced in a 2007 crossover story called Messiah Complex in which she was the first mutant child born following the Scarlet Witch’s “no more mutants” hex in House of M. As a result many factions of mutants and anti-mutant forces took an interest in her, and Exodus was among those who believed her to be a messiah. She was brought to the future and raised as Cable’s adopted daughter – hence the Summers surname – and she looks like a young Jean Grey because for a long time she was heavily hinted to be a reincarnated Jean. She eventually made good on her messiah status by using the Phoenix to bring back mutants at the end of Avengers Vs. X-Men, but that now seems like a lesser work compared to Jonathan Hickman making her the leader of The Five, the group who have collectively made mutants effectively immortal and have resurrected thousands of mutants in a short span of time. 

As you can see, Hope is a character with a lot of baggage. She’s also a character who Kieron Gillen has used extensively before, and he’s by far the writer who has done the most to make her a distinct person rather than a plot device. She was the star of his short-lived series Generation Hope, and was a regular cast member in his original Uncanny X-Men run. Gillen’s Hope is very much the pragmatic hard-ass Cable raised her to be, but she’s also a genuinely good and humble person who chafes at the adulation of people like Exodus. The second issue reestablishes all this in her actions – her power makes her thrive on teamwork,  she’s decisive and ruthless in her plan to stop Selene, and she inadvertently repays her debt to Exodus by informing him that the extent of his power is determined by how much others believe in him. It seems like it probably won’t be a good thing that Exodus, a zealot with cult leader tendencies and omega level powers, learns this about himself. But I like the dynamic Gillen is setting up here – a political alliance, a budding friendship, two mutants who requires other people to make them powerful. It’s an intriguing way to explore the “cult of personality.” 

“The New Testament of Irene Adler” is Gillen’s deliberate echo of Jonathan Hickman and Pepe Larraz’s now classic “The Uncanny Life of Moira X” in House of X #2. That story set up Moira and Destiny as parallel figures, and so this time we get a look into Destiny’s life. Gillen is largely connecting the dots on what other writers have put down over the years – most especially the work of Destiny’s co-creator Chris Claremont – but he does some interesting work in fleshing out the character’s romantic relationship with Mystique, which was largely left to subtext and cryptic Comics Code work-arounds for the majority of her publication history. The most crucial bit of continuity surgery performed in this issue is explaining Destiny’s murder by Legion during Claremont’s original Uncanny X-Men run and how that connects to Hickman’s reinvention of both her and Moira. It all fits together perfectly though I suppose it was already implied by Hickman – Destiny was aware through her visions of the future that she had to die for the Krakoa project to happen, and in retrospect she understands that the reason was Moira’s intense fear of her. 

Whereas the Moira story showed us paths Moira had already taken, this Destiny issue naturally gives us a glimpse of what may come down the line. Hickman and Gillen are both very sharp and deliberate writers, but the difference between them is best illustrated by the depiction of these things in text – Hickman gives us an elaborate timeline filled out with historical events, while Gillen gives us an abstract double page spread with events presented as evocative titles, like track names from an album or a catalog of Marvel trade paperbacks that have yet to be published. Hickman is concrete and meticulous like the scientist Moira, Gillen is artsy and lyrical and well-suited to the prophet Destiny. 

There are three very important things established by Destiny’s flood of new visions of probable timelines. The first is her vision of Gillen’s forthcoming event AXE Judgment Day, and Destiny imploring the other council members to trust her visions in order to protect themselves from a coming Eternals attack. The second is that she becomes aware of Sinister’s use of cloned Moiras, which she deduces is the reason every timeline she sees cuts off abruptly, and this all emphasizes how high the stakes of this story are now that as she puts it, “the universe is a snow globe tossed between the hands of a gin-addled child.”  The third is that every vision of the future Destiny has does not include Mystique, which is a nice reversal of Hickman’s “The Oracle.” Mystique only wanted to bring Destiny back, Destiny only wants to keep Mystique around. Both writers present these women as cold, calculating, ruthless self-described terrorists, but they really know how to make you root for their love. 

• Speaking of Mystique bringing Destiny back, the third issue addresses Mystique’s conspiracy in Inferno in a Quiet Council meeting, which gives Xavier the opportunity to whine about the others nitpicking the decisions he, Magneto, and Moira had to make in order to create the nation of Krakoa. I empathize with him, but the self-pity and passive-aggression is very unappealing and exactly why so many of the other characters have come to loathe him. It’s a good character beat, and also gives us an interesting moment in which the always judgmental Kate Pryde admonishes him for being cruel to Mystique. The traditional X-Men members in the cast – Kate, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler – have largely taken a backseat in Gillen’s story thus far, and it’s just nice to see one of them voice an opinion that is not fully on the same page as Xavier. 

• Lucas Werneck continues to impress, rising to the challenge of large scale action and montages of future events, while excelling at character expressions and body language in council debates. I’m fond of Werneck’s wide variety of line weights on any given page, ranging from the ultra-fine to thick chunky outlines to emphasize extreme depth of field, a bold figure placement, or a somewhat surreal effect. His page design also tends to feel loose and spacious, which helps to alleviate the density of Gillen’s text. It all comes out balanced rather nicely – issues that feel more generous with plot and detail than most other Marvel series, but with a visual style that makes it feel breezy rather than heavy. 

• Oh right, there’s a vision of what Exodus can become once trillions of people feed him with their belief. Even with him going after and destroying an evil Sinister…seems bad! I’m very much looking forward to seeing more on this topic. 

The Left Hand

“The Left Hand” 
Immortal X-Men #1
Written by Kieron Gillen
Art by Lucas Werneck
Color art by David Curiel

Immortal X-Men #1 flows so gracefully from where Jonathan Hickman left off in Inferno while firmly introducing a new era for the franchise more generally that it’s now even more baffling that Marvel insisted on lodging X Lives/X Deaths of Wolverine between the two stories. In every way that the latter story fumbles through plot points and inadequately “yes, ands…” Hickman’s story, Immortal X-Men artfully builds on what came before while reestablishing Kieron Gillen as an X-Men writer. 

But this is no surprise, as a major strength of Gillen’s work-for-hire writing is a skill for respecting what other writers have laid down while adding new ideas and value to the ongoing story. The best example of this is what Gillen did for Mister Sinister in his first X-Men run – he effectively fully reinvented the character while using what had come before, and the Sinister we’ve known through the Hickman era is very much the flamboyant Victorian eugenicist creep that Gillen gave us. Gillen picks up the Sinister baton once more, but in a totally new context provided by Hickman – he’s a major political figure in the mutant nation, he’s been instrumental in making mutants effectively immortal, and he’s cooking up ideas for chimera gene mash-ups. 

Gillen quickly reminds us of some elements of his Sinister that have been largely glossed over more recently, such as the fact that he electively became a mutant through extensive cloning of his own body and that he has no care for mutants beyond being genetic fodder for his experiments. By the end of this issue we see that Sinister has been using mindless clones of Moira McTaggert in a scheme to send information from his future selves back to the present so he can have advanced knowledge of events. He’s essentially approximating the precognitive powers of his rival Destiny, but with a difference – while she sees branching timelines ahead of her, he’s working on more empirical evidence of things that have actually happened to him, albeit in varying versions of his lived experience. It’s already shown to be a faulty system in a council vote scene, but a very intriguing development for the character and a clever spin on the utility of Moira’s powers. 

But why would Sinister see Destiny as a rival? This is unclear as of yet, though the opening pages of this issue establish that the two knew one another in England in the wake of World War I, and that she told him a secret that unexpectedly killed his clone body. The scene is a deliberate echo of the Xavier/Moira park bench scene from Powers of X – the setting, the casual conversation, the woman with great knowledge passing it on the arrogant man in a way that shatters his worldview. 

Destiny refuses to share the secret with Mystique, presumably to protect her from words so destructive they could leave Sinister dead and gasping “you’re a ghost, you’re a ghost” as he passed. But what does that mean? I don’t have a good guess at the moment, but I’m intrigued by the seemingly mystical effect of her words. The title of the issue – “The Left Hand” – would suggest that what we’re seeing with Destiny and Sinister here is a conflict between two opposing systems of magic. That, along with the sequence in which Selene reminds us of how “mutant magic” works, makes me think that “magic” could be somewhat literal here. 

Destiny’s prophecies and Sinister’s messages sent back to himself through the Moira clones also make me think of the evocative recurring phrase from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men: “Are these words from the future?” 

Aside from Sinister’s machinations the main plot point of this issue is Magneto stepping down from the Quiet Council in order to do whatever it is he’ll be doing on Arakko in Al Ewing’s X-Men Red, and his seat on the council being taken by Hope Summers largely due to the political maneuverings of Exodus. Hope makes sense in this book for three reasons – it makes sense for The Five to have a representative especially given their previous conflicts with the council in X-Force, Hope’s direct role in making mutants effectively immortal clicks into the title of the series, and this is a character who was central to Gillen’s previous work in this sandbox on Generation Hope and Uncanny X-Men. 

As with Sinister, Hope was not created by Gillen but was largely defined by him, and so it makes sense he’d want to write her again given her “messiah” role is less a matter of narrative contrivance threading together three major X-Men crossovers and more her day-to-day job in mutant society. It should be interesting to see how she fits into this, and the suggestion that her role will directly lead to catastrophe is very intriguing. Her presence certainly does point in the direction of the Phoenix Force becoming a factor in the story, particularly as the front cover teases this with a Phoenix emblem on the empty chair at the center of Mark Brooks’ homage to The Last Supper. 

One of the most promising elements of Gillen’s new run is the writer’s interest in developing Exodus, a character with a bizarre backstory dating back to the Crusades and a crucial role in the Quiet Council who often seemed like a low key insidious presence in Hickman’s X-Men. Exodus is a zealot – “a man with an unyielding code” as Xavier says in Powers of X – and a man of faith who apparently observes a sort of mutant-centric Catholicism based on his knowledge that Jesus Christ was “The Nazarene Mutant.” Exodus sees Hope as the messiah, which is at least part of why he went out of his way to bring her into the running for Magneto’s seat without consulting the rest of the council. As with most of Exodus’ actions since the beginning of the Quiet Council his behavior is noble but there’s a lingering ominousness about him. He always seems to be quietly working a long game, which makes a lot of sense for a guy who’s lived as long as he has. The scale of his life gives him a patience that the younger mutants on the council simply do not possess, and since the impact of very long lives is clearly a major topic of this run I expect that to come into greater focus in regards to him as we move along.

Miscellaneous notes: 

• Lucas Werneck has stepped up his art game quite a bit for this issue, though I think the reality may be that he was simply given some time and encouragement to execute these pages on the level of the work he displays on his Instagram. Werneck’s style here strikes me as a pleasing blend of R.B. Silva and Adam Hughes, and his skill for drawing facial expressions and body language are well suited to a series in which a lot of the scenes will be people having conversations around tables. He’s also good at allowing a bit of implied space and breathing room to pages that may otherwise feel overly dense. 

• Gorgon makes a brief cameo in this issue that suggests the character has settled into something more closely resembling the Gorgon we knew before his death in Otherworld, which is a major relief since the last time the character appeared he was a yelping lunatic slicing up an ice cream stand in Simon Spurrier’s abysmal Way of X. 

• The one place this issue really left me wanting was Colossus basically being around to say “yes” and “no” in a few votes. It’s obvious there will be more room to explore his new role in all this in subsequent issues, but I’m just very eager to get his point of view on all this. Does he feel bewildered by this? How engaged is he? Does he actually understand that he’s a pawn for Xavier here and compromised by his brother Mikhail in X-Force? Colossus is another character Gillen has written quite a bit, so I’m curious to see his take on where he’s at today. 

• The text pages in this issue really do a lot to emphasize this as a jumping-on point for new readers as well as the starting point for a new phase of the story across the line. One page early on spells out the major secrets that are moving story along – the threat of humans at large learning of mutant immortality, a recap of Inferno including the revelation that while Orchis was created by Omega Sentinel she and Nimrod do not care at all about the fate of humans, and that Abigail Brand is collaborating with Orchis. The pages at the end updating the map of Krakoa from HOX/POX is also quite helpful, as is the updated org chart for Orchis. Seriously, after the extent to which X Lives/X Deaths was hostile to new readers, this all comes as a major relief. 

The Death of Moira X

Inferno #4
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Valerio Schiti with Stefano Caselli
Color art by David Curiel

Jonathan Hickman’s story ends here, and it feels like a proper conclusion even if he’s acknowledged in interviews that he’s not accustomed to leaving before getting to his planned ending. (I suppose he just kinda forgot about The Black Monday Murders and The Dying and the Dead when he said this, both of which stalled out indefinitely due to complications in the lives of their respective artists.) Inferno works because it pulls together the central threads of his run – the founding of Krakoa, the emergence of Orchis, and the fraught Moira/Destiny/Mystique situation – rather than gesture towards what could have been. The big status quo shifts of the second and third acts of this epic he had in mind may yet come to pass with other writers, or he could always come back around to writing them himself at some point. But whatever comes down the line is another thing altogether, as this issue provides a satisfying finale to the narrative he started in House of X. You could reasonably stop reading X-Men here, though the promo line at the end is apt: “To be continued, forever.” 

• “I see ten lives, Moira. Maybe eleven if you make the right choice at the end… but that is all.” 

Now we know why this is, as Mystique blasts Moira with the same gun designed by Forge that stripped Storm of her powers back in the original Claremont era. Mystique does this so she can kill Moira with impunity, but it’s clear enough that Emma Frost gave her this weapon to address her own existential concerns. Moira gets to be a human, as she longed for in her earlier lives, and everyone gets to rest easy knowing that one woman’s death wouldn’t mean wiping out all existence. The looming threat hanging over Hickman’s story is disarmed, while setting up Moira as a wild card for future stories. And to add insult to Moira’s injury of ensured mortality, she’s had one of her arms replaced with living technology, merging her with the very thing she’d been fearing all along. 

It’s easy to understand Mystique and Destiny’s motives and Emma Frost’s resentment of Moira’s power, and even Cypher’s disgust for Moira’s self-serving anxieties. But it’s harder to get why no one seems willing to give Moira the proper credit for being the entire reason they have a Krakoan nation and the miracle of resurrection. Moira is essentially punished for the crime of attempting to preserve this thing everyone is so invested in, albeit with zero transparency and a hidden desire to finally snuff out the conflict of mutants, humans, and machines by “curing” the mutants. But as sad as this is for Moira, it’s yet another thing she can learn from, and the young mutant nation can move ahead without its secret extremely neurotic and negative puppet master. On a metatextual level, the same character who had ushered in the new era of X-Men had held on too much of the dark anxieties driving the old comics, and had to be taken out so the new way could flourish.

And hey, even if Moira dies at some point there’s really nothing preventing her from being resurrected with her powers intact, just like all the depowered mutants made whole in the Crucible ritual. There’s just no getting around the value of her accrued knowledge. 

• The long-awaited confrontation of Moira, Mystique, and Destiny plays out in the same nine panel grid structure that Pepe Larraz used in House of X #2 and Valerio Schiti used again reprising that scene earlier in Inferno. Just as in that scene set in Moira’s third life, she’s captive and passive as Mystique and Destiny stand before her – the former glowering and aggressive, the latter still and inscrutable behind her metal mask. You watch Moira cycle through emotions – denial, defiance, bargaining, depression, acceptance – and we see that history has simply repeated. Despite any expectations we had going into this scene, it’s Mystique and Destiny confronting Moira about her desire to “cure” mutants. 

• The cycle breaks upon the arrival of Cypher, who has been keeping tabs on the situation and intervenes. Cypher, the best good boy of Hickman’s story, the mutant master of language who stops violence with rational communication. Cypher wins with logic and negotiation – Mystique would be murdering a human, and she would be exiled and Destiny would be removed from power. By stepping away the two of them can remain on the council and gradually consolidate power, as he does as well. Mystique is frustrated, but Cypher reminds her – you just got exactly what you wanted. And he’s right, since Inferno is basically a story about Mystique winning and becoming even more powerful, except for not getting to murder someone she had already tortured and made human. 

• By the way, this is my favorite panel in this issue. It’s the very definition of hypocrisy. 

• The confrontation of Magneto and Xavier with Omega Sentinel and Nimrod turns out to be much more bleak, but of course how could it not be? The machines show themselves for who they are – so indifferent to the humans that they murder them to get them out of the way, and announcing to the leaders of mutantdom that they are their true enemy. Of course this is hardly news to Magneto and Xavier thanks to Moira, so it doesn’t really matter that they end up getting killed and resurrected without memory of this battle. But it’s interesting to see how the machines believe they’re a step ahead of the mutants, but are in fact several steps behind. They don’t know about mutant resurrection, and when Nimrod destroys Xavier’s Cerebro helmet, it has no clue what the actual function of that device is. This is wonderfully ironic as the technology behind Cerebro was reversed engineered from the Nimrod of Moira’s sixth life creating the archive of mutant psyches. 

• Before Hickman launched House of X/Powers of X there was a cryptic Marvel house ad teasing the run with these words on a white background – “When two aggressive species share the same environment, evolution demands adaptation or dominance.” And here at the end of his story we see exactly what this means as the two aggressive species – mutants and artificial intelligence – are at war with the exact same motivations. Omega Sentinel, driven by her experiences in a future where the mutants win, echoes Cyclops’ defiant words from House of X #1: “Did you honestly think we were going to sit around forever and just take it?” We side with the mutants, we know they’re the heroes of this story. When Cyclops says this it’s an inspiring moment, and when Omega says it it’s a menacing threat. But through all of this, are the mutants any less ruthless? Are the mutants not incredibly bold in what they claim for themselves, down to terraforming the neighboring planet and declaring it the capitol of the solar system? 

For many years the human antagonists of the X-Men were psychopathic hate mongers, and the Sentinels were just their weapons. It was very narratively flat. But at the end of Hickman’s story we have machines with the same desires to both survive and thrive as the mutants, and the humans of Orchis are motivated by traumas inflicted on them by mutants and an understandable threat of mutants as an aggressive and arrogant species. Of the many gifts Hickman gave to the X-Men franchise, this is one of the most crucial, and one most likely to become central to all subsequent adaptations. 

• I was a bit confused by Xavier causing a huge telekinetic blast after Nimrod crushed Cerebro, given that the character is known to only be a telepath. But I remember early on in Powers of X there was another scene in which Xavier appeared to be using telekinesis, though that could have been explained as Magneto using his powers to drift a USB stick to his hands. I have two No Prize-worthy explanations for this – first, it could be that all powerful telepaths have potential for telekinesis and it came out in a moment of extreme duress. Second, it could be that Xavier had telekinesis added to his powers in genetic modification of his body before resurrection so that he could have a defensive power in the mix. 

• We never see Xavier and Magneto learn of what happened with Moira, but I suppose that’s just a story for another day. Or maybe more like two weeks from now, as locating and protecting Moira seems to be central to the plot of Benjamin Percy’s X Lives and X Deaths of Wolverine event. 

• There’s a nice bit of continuity juggling with Forge’s de-powering gun here. Mystique references a conversation she had with Forge about it in X-Men #20, a scene that felt a bit navel-gazing and tossed-off at first but is now a major bit of foreshadowing. Emma Frost has a copy of the gun thanks to a story in Marauders which also felt vaguely unnecessary at the time, but now seems like it was probably deliberately coordinated with Gerry Duggan. 

• The final scene with the Quiet Council illustrated by Stefano Caselli is a sentimental farewell to the characters, but also serves a metatextual acknowledgment of what Hickman accomplished with his X-Men run. Something incredible was built, something meant to last a long time. And it will, as the story is passed on to Kieron Gillen, Al Ewing, Gerry Duggan, and Benjamin Percy in the months to come. The story doesn’t really end and that’s a triumph for Hickman, a writer who knows how often narratives are rolled back to a status quo after a writer leaves a corporate comic series. Like Moira and Mystique he’s gotten exactly what he wanted, but it’s still bittersweet. There’s always something else beyond what you want and what you need. This is why it’s good that it’s obvious that of all the characters he used Cypher as his proxy, the guy who ends up quite happy with what he’s built and what he’s gained. 

The Mutants Always Win

Inferno #3
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by R.B. Silva with Valerio Schiti and Stefano Caselli
Color art by David Curiel

“The mutants ALWAYS WIN.” 

That’s the line that made me audibly gasp. The revelation that the Omega Sentinel we’ve been seeing since House of X #1 is not quite the Karima Shapandar from previous X-Men comics but rather a version of her from the future who’d come back in time to prevent a “mutant hell” in which the new dream of Charles Xavier – “mutant ascension” - had come to fruition, laying waste to humanity, post-humanity, and AI alike. It’s the reversal of decades of X-Men comics, including Hickman’s own run – we’re always meant to look at mutants as the underdogs, we believe Moira MacTaggert when she says that no matter what the mutants always lose. But in the future of Moira’s tenth life, it all actually works. It works so well that Omega has to come back and start Orchis and get Nimrod online well ahead of schedule. 

Omega and Moira are mirrors of each other in Hickman’s story – the woman who knows the actual stakes and what can happen, and attempts to steer history towards a desired outcome. Moira uses Xavier and creates the X-Men, Omega uses Devo and creates Orchis. Omega even transfers her experience of the future into the mind of Devo in a way that directly parallels how Xavier gains a similar knowledge of Moira’s lives. The wheel turns, and as the old song goes, everybody wants to rule the world.  

Omega is also a mirror of Kitty Pryde in “Days of Future Past,” a point Hickman highlights in a bit of dialogue – “all my days of a future past.” The method of time travel is similar – the consciousness of the future Omega has overwritten the consciousness of the younger Omega, just as the older Kate Pryde inhabited the body of the young Kitty. Zoom out and consider that the primary mutant antagonists of Inferno are Destiny and Mystique and it becomes clear that Hickman is ending his run on a story that deliberately echoes the climax of John Byrne’s run. (And of course, Grant Morrison did the same thing in their own way.)

As he did through a lot of House of X and Powers of X, Hickman does his due diligence in explaining how his story fits in with previous continuity in the most low key way possible, in this case elegantly explaining that the Nimrod that appeared in Chris Claremont and John Romita’s classic mid-‘80s stories came from the same future as Omega, sent back in time after the mutants of her timeline crush the Children of the Vault and the humans, but before they “tamed the Phoenix” and destroyed the Phalanx Dominions. (This is the only time the Phoenix has come up in Hickman’s run, a decision that obviously quite deliberate in terms of getting the X-books out of some familiar ruts.) 

Omega isn’t the only character on the sidelines from the beginning of Hickman’s story that we learn is more crucial to the plot than had been entirely obvious. In the first quarter of the issue we learn that Cypher has never quite trusted Xavier, and in alliance with Warlock and Krakoa has been monitoring what he and Magneto talk about in private so they’re not left in the dark. This confirms something suggested by the previous issue – the majority of the text pages we’ve seen through this era of X-Men have been data collected by Warlock, who is bonded to Krakoa and feeding information to Cypher. All of this leads Cypher to become aware of the Xavier/Magneto/Moira arguments from the first issue, and Moira’s demands that Destiny be wiped from existence. We’ll see what he does with that knowledge next issue. Given that Hickman writes Cypher as a pure-hearted mensch, it’s probably something very heroic!

This is a satisfying payoff to one of the lingering mysteries of Hickman’s run, and the pages leading up to this reveal highlight how much of what the mutants have accomplished – the mutant language, the gates and the gate controls, the drugs for humans, solving the problem of how to feed Krakoa – are mostly thanks to Cypher and his collaboration with the island. We already kinda knew this, but it’s good to have this foregrounded when we consider who deserves the credit here. Xavier and Magneto take credit for the ideas of their silent partner Moira in their position as figureheads of the mutant nation, but without Cypher there’s nothing much at all. 

Magneto and Xavier find themselves at odds in this issue, but in a way that feels quite fresh. They talk about feeling haunted by Moira’s insistence that the mutants always lose, and Xavier stands firm in his belief that this is not true, while Magneto’s faith is rattled. Magneto sees the situation clearly – with the success of what they’ve built with Krakoa, he and Xavier are just two among the millions. Xavier insists they still have control, but Magneto knows this is increasingly not the case. Magneto, a man defined by his arrogance, is humbled while Xavier, a man defined by his optimistic dreams, refuses to let go of his positive vision. Xavier seems foolish in this scene, but  the next scene shows us that Omega only knows a future in which Xavier’s dreams of ascension and Magneto’s dreams of dominance come to fruition. 

Emma Frost, who learned of what was actually happening with Moira in the previous issue, lets Mystique and Destiny in on the truth in this issue. Or…at least some of it, as it seems as though she has only shown them Moira’s trauma in her third life where she is tortured and executed by the two of them. Emma is manipulating them and Destiny knows it, but it’s hard to say to what end – they’re all terrified of the threat that Moira’s death ends their timeline, but it’s hard to say how “they have to be stopped” doesn’t force a situation in which Moira’s life is in jeopardy. Later in the issue Moira is abducted by Orchis, and Mystique and Destiny make their way to the Orchis Node where she’s held and appear to be brutally torturing her. (Moira’s lost half an arm off-panel!)  

Of course this just lures Magneto and Xavier to the Orchis Node to find and save Moira, but they arrive just in time for Nimrod and Omega Sentinel to show up. It looks like Mystique and Destiny set a trap to get Magneto and Xavier killed as revenge, and maybe this is what Emma wanted too, though we know from the opening scene of the first issue that she has them resurrected. Whatever is going on, Emma Frost clearly has a plan. 

It’s hard to tell how much Emma is playing up a fear of Moira’s power as a thing that threatens to destroy their world to manipulate Mystique and Destiny, and how much is her genuine emotional response to her learning the truth of Moira and her past lives. Emma is clearly smart enough to understand that if they believe the world ends with Moira then Moira must be protected at all costs, but she’s also someone where it would make sense that she would deeply resent everything depending on this one woman. 

But in either case this brings up one of the biggest questions of Hickman’s run, which seems likely to be answered in the finale – if Moira dies, does a timeline die with her? We have no good reason to expect this is the case, since we’re going entirely on Moira’s knowledge of things and her knowledge of each of those timelines would end with her death. On an individual level, the world ends with all of our deaths. But these are the stakes of the story, the tension that’s been at the heart of this since the start of Hickman’s run. It’s quite possible Moira dies in the next issue and they’re all standing around like “oh hey, the world…is still here.” And then there’s Destiny’s prophecy from House of X #2 – “I see ten lives, Moira…maybe eleven if you make the right choice at the end, but that is all.” What is the “right choice”? 

There’s a great little scene before Mystique and Destiny meet with Emma Frost in which Destiny is introduced to the Stepford Cuckoos. They insist the five of them have outgrown any form of individuality and are embracing a collective sense of self, but Destiny tells them they each have very different futures ahead of them, some of them extremely traumatic. They’re shaken by the experience, which gives us a taste of how unsettling it would be to have even a casual conversation with someone who can see the future. Now the poor girls have to live with the prophecy, and we the readers get to see how much of it will play out in the stories to come. 

As we head into the final issue of Hickman’s run the epic scale of his story narrows to just a few key characters – Mystique and Destiny confront Moira, Magneto and Xavier confront Omega and Nimrod, Emma Frost and Cypher wait in the wings as the probable cavalry. 40 pages, maybe a little more, and it’s all over. Do the mutants always win? Let’s hope so, since Hickman’s made such a show of how that’s far more interesting and complicated than them always suffering and losing.

Solve For X

Inferno #2
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Stefano Caselli
Color art by David Curiel

Mystique dominates this issue, appearing on around 75% of the pages as the story shows how she manipulated her way into resurrecting Destiny and getting her voted on to the Quiet Council in the seat vacated by Apocalypse. As a shape shifter Mystique gets what she wants by never appearing to be what she really is, and in this issue we’re nudged to consider something that’s been right in front of us the whole time: Maybe Mystique and Destiny are actually the heroes of this story, and not the antagonists? After all, their invention in Moira MacTaggert’s third life is what put her on a course towards creating the nation of Krakoa, and their combination of foresight and information gathering via infiltration appears to be the only thing that’s giving the mutants an advantage over what appears to be the inevitable attack of Orchis and Nimrod in the next issue. 

As Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men story comes to a close it looks like each of his three tentpole events asks us to consider that the worst person we know has made a great point – first with Magneto realizing his dream of a united and superior mutant nation, second with Apocalypse’s survivalist ethos proven to be justified, and now with Mystique and Destiny securing the future by any means necessary just as they were trying to do in their first major storyline Days of Future Past. 

At this stage of the story our protagonists Moira MacTaggert, Charles Xavier, and Magneto appear to be hamstrung by their pragmatic natures. They cling to a sense of control over their grand designs and scramble to adjust to the unexpected chaos introduced by Mystique and Orchis. All three of them are tripped up by their arrogance and pride, though only Xavier and Magneto seem to be aware of this being one of their shortcomings. There’s no question in the narrative that what they’ve done to create Krakoa has been a net positive, but we now see the limits of their vision, particularly as they let Emma Frost in on the big secret and it all looks terrible from her perspective. 

This issue of Inferno is illustrated by Stefano Caselli, one of the two primary artists of the Marauders series and one of Hickman’s earliest Marvel collaborators back on Secret Warriors and then later on Avengers during the Time Runs Out phase. It makes sense that Caselli was assigned this issue of the series – the narrative doesn’t really demand anything particularly iconic or imaginative, and the plot is mainly a series of conversations that play to his strengths in drawing faces and body language. It’s meat-and-potatoes art, but like… high quality meat and well-prepared potatoes. 

• Mystique’s scheme to revive Destiny is revealed in this issue, and it turns out we already watched most of it in the previous issue, which raises the question of whether or not Xavier and Magneto even attempted to wipe out the possibility of her rebirth as demanded by Moira. The surprising element is that Mystique fulfilled the psychic transfer requirement by imitating Xavier and manipulating Hope into doing it for the first time with “his” encouragement. There’s something rather sweet about this moment – it plays on Hope’s emotional vulnerabilities but also comes across as a kindness, a show of faith in her talent and capabilities. The scenes that follow with Mystique taking care of Destiny as she copes with being overloaded by the past and future rushing into her mind at once is more bittersweet, particularly as Destiny realizes the degree to which Mystique had become unmoored and unhinged in her absence. I hope whichever writer inherits Mystique and Destiny after this story spends some time unpacking this, it’s very ripe.

• Emma Frost is bribed into voting for Destiny because Mystique has stolen something she was desperately seeking – a seemingly sacred item called the Kara Katuça, which she was attempting to  acquire from the unnamed hidden society introduced in a conspicuously random scene at the Hellfire Gala in Hickman’s final issue of X-Men. It’s an odd thing to wedge into the story at this late stage – we only have around 40 or so pages left to go – but I suspect this thing with a name that translates to “black box” in Turkish may end up as a deus ex machina device in battling with Nimrod.

• Emma Frost is the first mutant to be let in on the secret of Moira MacTaggert in a scene that is set by the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Louvre in Paris, the same place where Xavier and Magneto recruited her as the first member of the Quiet Council back in Powers of X #5.  (Also, more obviously, the depiction of Emma reading Moira’s mind is a direct visual callback to Xavier doing the same in Powers of X.) 

This makes some sense of why Hickman placed Moira in Paris – this scene was very likely sketched out from the start – and the deliberate recurrence of the sculpture makes me wonder why it was chosen to appear in these pivotal scenes. The first time around I thought the work, which is believed to have been created to commemorate a naval victory, was just a nod to Emma taking to the seas in Marauders. But at this stage it seems more like it’s setting her (or Moira, who is more directly visually contrasted with the sculpture on panel) up to be the “goddess of victory” at the end of this arc. The first issue certainly telegraphed a savior role in the first scene, in which we see Emma resurrect Magneto and Xavier presumably after a disastrous Nimrod/Orchis attack to come in the next issue. 

As for the scene itself, Emma quite understandably is furious to have been strung along as she has been through all of this, just as Mystique was upon realizing Magneto and Xavier were playing her for a fool. But she also understands how serious the situation is, and I suspect as we move through the end of this story and into the X-world beyond Inferno that this is the start of her taking on an even larger leadership role.

• The most startling moment of this issue comes in a rather quiet scene between Omega Sentinel and Nimrod in which she tells the developing AI that she’s been monitoring its progress and that it is ready to see what she really is. This line is also the epigraph at the start of the issue, and the previous issue also opens with a line from Omega Sentinel as the epigraph. This strikes me as the set up for what could be a Rabum Alal-level reveal in the third issue, and made me realize that through all of this I have never once given any thought to Omega Sentinel or her presence in the story from the very first issue of House of X.

I went back through all of her scenes and the pattern is clear – from her first lines she is constantly critiquing Orchis and telling them that their plans are likely to end in disaster. Her role as a critical observer is ambiguous, and it’s unclear if she serves any particular master. Director Devo and Doctor Gregor seem to defer to her, but do not answer to her. The alternate timeline version of Omega Sentinel works in tandem with Nimrod but their relationship is also ambiguous, as it defers to her at some points. Her perspective is consistently cold and seemingly neutral. 

So what might she really be? Hickman’s story has an odd recurring theme of characters who are programmed in some way to betray – Cylobel in Powers of X is genetically altered to do this, Isca the Unbeaten’s power dictates that she do this. The alternate Omega remarks on this theme as it’s introduced. The odds seem good that Omega Sentinel will be compelled to betray Orchis, but I don’t think it will be in favor of the mutants. I think it’s more likely that she represents the interests of what will eventually become homo novissima. As a human fully bonded with machines she’s certainly a form of post-humanity. And it makes a lot of sense for this major theme to come around to some sort of conclusion at the end of Hickman’s run. 

I do appreciate the notion of Omega Sentinel not being what she seems coming up in an issue largely focused on Mystique getting what she wants by not seeming to be what she is either. It now seems like Omega and Mystique have been placed in parallel through the entire story as thematic echoes. 

• Colossus is revealed as the new 12th member of the Quiet Council at the end of the issue, which feels like a sensible move, particularly as he fills out what is essentially the X-Men table. This would feel like a fairly unremarkable element if not for the oddly ominous final panel, which tigthens in on his face as Xavier announces “in him, we can trust.” It seems to deliberately signal that something’s not right here but I don’t think we actually have enough space in the plot for there to be some Colossus twist, particularly as this is the first we’ve really seen of Colossus in Inferno or Hickman’s entire story to date. There was a similar move in the previous issue in the ascension of Bishop to Captain Commander, and my sense is that Hickman is stoking paranoia but both characters are poised for big heroic moments. 

• Next issue looks to be rather brutal and bleak as Nimrod and Orchis are prepared to strike. I can’t wait to see the chaos. 

Season Of Change

Inferno #1
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Valerio Schiti
Color art by David Curiel

Before reading this issue I had a feeling of vague dread about it, nervous that the end of Jonathan Hickman’s run on X-Men was premature and a bad compromise that kept more mediocre comics moving along while denying the promise of what we had been told was a long term three act story. I’m still a little sore about that possibility, but the first issue of Inferno is such a strong and exciting start to paying off plot threads started in House of X and Powers of X that whatever happens down the line, this story will probably feel like a satisfying conclusion. 

Let’s just go scene by scene…

• The opening sequence calls back to the opening of House of X, but with Emma Frost reviving Xavier and Magneto. A cool bit of symmetry and foreshadowing. The cover of Inferno #2 seems to directly refer to this sequence, but given Hickman’s aversion to covers that spoil plot action it’s probably like how a few covers of Powers of X referred to plot from previous issues. 

• The text pages updating us on Orchis’ aggressive advances in scale and the mutants’ failed attempts at attacking the Orchis Forge do a nice job of establishing that the stakes have been raised and many things have been happening since we left off from Hickman’s X-Men series. It essentially serves the same effect as the opening scrolls in the Star Wars movies, advancing plot that you don’t really need to see and throwing you into an action sequence set up by this information. This information also gives us a tiny pay off to Broo becoming king of the Brood, a plot point from X-Men that was probably intended for something bigger and more dramatic. Oh well, at least it’s not a total loose end. 

• X-Force’s attack on the Orchis Forge introduces Nimrod and shows how easily it can dispatch mutants as formidable as Wolverine and Quentin Quire. This is another matter of establishing stakes, but more importantly it sets up the Orchis leads Devo, Gregor, and the Omega Sentinel trying to figure out how it is that they’ve been assaulted by the same mutants over and over again. Gerry Duggan’s X-Men series has been teasing at Orchis learning of mutant resurrection but this sequence is far more interesting in that their speculation is further off the mark – Devo is doubtful of the mutants making a scientific breakthrough – and not quite grasping the scale of what has been accomplished with the Resurrection Protocols. A lot of the tension in this issue comes from Orchis lacking a lot of information but having acquired enough data to be right on the verge of figuring out some potentially catastrophic things. 

• We flash back to Mystique and Destiny confronting and murdering Moira MacTaggert in her third life, recreated by Valerio Schiti in a direct panel to panel copy of the memorable sequence illustrated by Pepe Larraz in House of X #2. Hickman has used this trick before, most notably in his Fantastic Four run in which Carmine Di Giandomenico redrew Steve Epting’s excellent scene depicting The Human Torch’s supposed death. The variance in the scenes comes on the fourth page in which we get some new dialogue from Destiny that we certainly could not have been privy to prior to later reveals in House of X and Powers of X. The ending of the scene has a significant change in dialogue that suggests that the Larraz and Schiti versions of this sequence are presented from different perspectives and memories – probably Moira’s the first time since that one focuses on her fear and pain, and Destiny’s in this one since it focuses more on her message and vision of the future. 

• We see Moira in her present life, somehow holding the burned research book from her third life. Hickman and Schiti make a point of showing us this thing, which given our current understanding of how Moira’s lives work simply should not be possible. Hmmm.

• Moira’s movement triggers an unusual spike in Krakoan gateway activity that leads the Orchis network – which we see includes the ape scientists from X-Men #1 and Hordeculture from X-Men #3, two more random loose threads from the series that it’s nice to see in the mix here – to realize that Moira’s location is unique and presumably both important and deliberately hidden. The spike was likely caused by her use of a No-Space, a mutant technology that would be unknown to Orchis as well as nearly all living mutants. Hordeculture, who we learn has been instrumental in Orchis’ understanding of Krakoan biological technology, figure it out: Moira has two totally different portals. X-Force’s intelligence agents discover that Orchis is on to something, but you get the horrible feeling that this won’t be enough.

• Moira returns to her No-Space to be confronted by Magneto and Xavier, which gets a huge amount of exposition out of the way. Moira has become understandably embittered by her isolation, and resentful of these men have been surveilling her while also failing to stop the emergence of Nimrod. The crux of this scene is Moira reiterating that as she sees it, the two greatest threats to their mission are Nimrod and Destiny. She instructs them to use their knowledge and privilege to wipe out the possibility of her resurrection, which they appear to carry out separately. The sequence with Xavier collecting Destiny’s preserved genetic materials from Mister Sinister is presented quite ominously, with Sinister appearing even more Satanic than usual. This calls to mind the promise of his betrayal in Powers of X, in that he knows far more than Xavier realizes, and that Moira emphatically did not want Xavier and Magneto to form a partnership with him, aware of what other versions of Sinister did in her previous lives. 

• A text page establishes that Black Tom Cassidy, whose powers allow him to commune with Krakoa’s living flora, has been suffering from seemingly psychotic episodes and dreaming of both being consumed by the island and machinery moving under his skin. This is an ominous lead-in to a scene with a rather chipper Cypher waking up to meet with his two best pals in the world – Krakoa itself and Warlock, a techno-organic creature related to the Phalanx. We see an echo of the sequence from Powers of X in which Cypher seems to infect Krakoan flora with the techno-organic virus, but this time it appears more benign. This panel – in which we see Cypher’s mutant hand, a living machine, and vegetation in apparent harmony – is also essentially another version of Black Tom’s nightmarish vision. File under foreshadowing. 

• We see a ceremony in which Storm coronates Bishop as the new Captain Commander of Krakoa, as Cyclops steps down from the position as lead captain. Cyclops will remain a captain, but Storm is surprised – “normally you’ve never given these things up without a fight,” a low-key nod to the classic Uncanny X-Men #201, which Hickman previously had Storm reference upon Cyclops’ resurrection in House of X #5. The scene also establishes Psylocke as Gorgon’s replacement and emphasizes the captains’ increasing independence from the Quiet Council’s supervision. 

• The final scene is a Quiet Council sequence in which Moira’s urging to remove Mystique from power leads Xavier and Magneto to a rather ineffectual and wishy-washy suggestion to the rest of the council to consider the possibility of stepping down if they…like, want to, or something? It’s clear that they have not really thought this through, and Nightcrawler and Sebastian Shaw are particularly dubious of the proposition. This move entirely backfires as Mystique moves to replace Apocalypse’s seat on the council with…Destiny, who enters the council chambers very much alive. This startling cliffhanger is essentially Hickman’s equivalent to Grant Morrison’s Xorn reveal in New X-Men – “X-Men emergency indeed, Charles…the dream is over!” 

But of course Mystique, a master of manipulation and subterfuge armed with the foresight provided by her dead wife, would be several steps ahead of Xavier, Magneto, and Moira. And all you need to do is look at the Winter table of the Quiet Council to glean how she pulled this off – Mister Sinister would have the means and the knowledge to tip her off, and Exodus has the telepathic power necessary to activate a Cerebro unit. Flash back to Magneto telling Moira of the composition of the Winter table – “it’s where we parked all of our problem mutants.” It’s also worth noting that Schiti’s art in the Quiet Council scene depicts barren branches and leaves falling from Krakoa’s trees. Winter has come.

(By the way, there’s a neat bit of symmetry in that Destiny seems poised to occupy the third seat on the Autumn table, and the corresponding seat on Arakko’s Great Ring is occupied by their precognitive mutant Idyll.)

And of course the specific things Moira was trying to avoid – Nimrod coming online and Destiny being resurrected – have come to pass in large part because her actions have either accelerated the timeline or forced the issue. And while Nimrod is an unambiguous nightmare, it actually remains to be seen whether or not Destiny will be the problem Moira fears or if she simply represents a threat of having her motives and methods undermined that’s more personal than structural. 

Schiti’s work on this issue is some of the best of his career to date, and it’s clear that he’s done his best to level up to the demands of the story and to absorb some of Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva’s stylistic decisions to keep a sort of visual continuity with House of X/Powers of X. Schiti does some outstanding work depicting facial expressions and body language – just look at Sinister’s delight upon Destiny’s entrance, and how Xavier’s body shifts from a defeated slump to a stiff and anxious posture upon seeing her. He also does nice work with Hickman’s recurring image of reflected faces, particularly Sinister’s ghoulish eyes on Xavier’s helmet and Xavier and Magneto on Destiny’s featureless and inscrutable metal mask. 

• The title Inferno is, of course, repurposed from the major crossover event headed up by Louise Simonson and Chris Claremont in 1988. This is also obviously an echo of Hickman’s prior repurposing of Secret Wars for the finale of his Fantastic Four and Avengers mega-stories. The title suits the story in the sense that everything is about to burned down either literally or figuratively by a scorned woman – Mystique in this story, Madelyne Pryor in the original. But it’s also worth noting that the original Inferno was unique in that all of its story threads – the mystery of Madelyne Pryor, Magik and Limbo, Mister Sinister and the Marauders, X-Factor believing the X-Men to be dead – effectively concluded all major plot threads Simonson and Claremont had established starting around 1983. Maybe this establishes a tradition that can carry into future comics and the movie franchise: “Inferno” doesn’t have to be a particular story, but rather a spectacular crisis that pays off on years of plotting. 

The Beginning

“The Beginning”
X-Men #21
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Nick Dragotta, Russel Dauterman, Lucas Werneck, and Sara Pichelli
Color art by Frank Martin, Matthew Wilson, Sunny Gho, and Nolan Woodard

• This issue marks the end of Jonathan Hickman’s run on this particular title, though not the end of his X-Men run – his Inferno miniseries will launch in September and pick up on the Mystique/Moira and Orchis threads of the previous issue, and I strongly suspect there’s another thing coming before year’s end that won’t be announced until after next week’s Planet Size X-Men special. A new X-Men series by Gerry Duggan and Pepe Larraz starring the team introduced in this issue will launch next month, and I haven’t decided whether or not I will cover that on an issue-to-issue basis or simply write about it in chunks as I do all the non-Hickman titles. 

• At this point I’m inclined to think that Hickman’s story isn’t following a standard three act structure as much as it’s working on a more musical logic – House of X/Powers of X is an overture establishing themes, and this issue is the end of a movement that began with the first issue of this series but also included his New Mutants issues, the Giant Size specials, and the entirety of X of Swords. 

The overall structure of this phase includes motifs and story sequences that recur like melodies, in this issue we get an echo of the opening of X-Men #1 in which Cyclops recalls how Xavier saved him as a child in the form of Cyclops explaining to, uhhhh… MCU head honcho Kevin Feige… why Xavier’s dream continues to motivate him. It highlights the earnestness of the character, and effectively ends his arc as the central protagonist of this particular series. Cyclops is a true believer who finds his purpose in being an X-Man, and in a new society where there was no longer a formal X-Men team, he just kept making new X-Men groups until finally deciding to formally recreate and reinvent the X-Men. There’s an innocence and optimism to what he and Jean Grey are doing now that was notably missing from the start of this phase, and regaining that spirit is the triumph at the end of this arc. 

• The rest of the issue mostly nods cryptically in the direction of plot threads unlikely to feature in Inferno – whatever is going to happen with Mars, Emma Frost seeking some resource from a hidden society in an unnamed city that I’m reasonably certain are being introduced in this issue, and a selection of Sinister Secrets that hint at new developments for Cypher and Sinister, upcoming changes in the membership of the Quiet Council, and “an unknown material of immeasurable worth” in Otherworld. It seems like a lot of plot threads going forward will involve precious resources and competition between various societies, which makes sense as the Reign of X phase is above all else about “expansion,” as Emma puts it in her speech at the Gala. 

• The opening scene with Namor, Magneto, and Xavier is a delight, but of course it is – it’s four pages of Namor dialogue written by Jonathan Hickman, the definitive Namor writer. Namor’s presence is mainly to deflate the two heads of state at their own self-congratulatory party, though if it turns out that the mutants do in fact terraform and colonize Mars his boast about controlling 70% of the planet might end up looking like less of a brutal own on them. But the crux of the scene is Xavier not shrinking from Namor asking him “How goes the empire building?” “Well, I think.” The hubris sets in…but an Inferno awaits. 

• The issue is broken into four scenes by four artists – longtime Hickman collaborator Nick Dragotta very much at home in a Namor scene that plays to his East of West strengths, the X-Men membership reveal sequence by the slick but somewhat sterile Russell Dauterman, some pages by Lucas Werneck that nicely convey the social dynamic of the Gala, and Sara Pichelli shifting her usual style a bit for the last few pages with Emma Frost at her most theatrical. The shifts in style work this issue – different moods for different parts of the party. 

• I don’t love the celebrity cameos, not because they’re celebrity cameos per se, but rather that if you’re doing a big Gala like this it is pretty laughable for it to be mostly unglamorous comedians and older rappers rather than… you know, anyone who you’d actually expect to show up to something along the lines of the Met Gala. You expect Rihanna and Lady Gaga and A$AP Rocky, you get Marc Maron and Patton Oswalt and George R.R. Martin. 

Lost Love

“Lost Love”
X-Men #20
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Francesco Mobili
Color art by Sunny Gho

• It’s been 14 months since X-Men #6, the instant classic issue in which Mystique infiltrated the Orchis Forge and discovered that Dr. Alia Gregor – the Orchis scientist who murdered her back in House of X #4 – was making progress in her creation of Nimrod. This issue finally circles back to that plot, showing us that Dr. Gregor has completed Nimrod and is using the body of this endlessly adaptable mutant-hunting weapon to host an approximation of the consciousness of her husband Erasmus Mendel, who died in the X-Men’s attack on the Orchis Forge in House of X #3. We also catch up with Mystique, who returns to the Orchis Forge on a mission to completely destroy it and everyone there. Things don’t quite work out well for either of them.

Mystique’s infiltration is immediately detected when Nimrod goes online and while her attack is fully botched, Nimrod’s solution to the problem of getting rid of her black hole bomb results in Erasmus Mendel’s consciousness getting wiped out. Dr. Gregor fails in her attempt to bring back her beloved husband, and Xavier and Magneto continue to deny Mystique the resurrection of her wife Destiny as punishment for failing her mission. Of course, they are actually refusing to resurrect her in order to honor the wishes of Moira MacTaggert, who fears the cruel precognitive Destiny more than anyone else.

• Mystique and Dr. Gregor are parallel characters with the same base motivation – they just want to be reunited with their dead spouse. This is a resonant and relatable emotional center for two characters who are otherwise callous monsters. Dr. Gregor builds the tools of genocide, and while she at first seemed to view her work as a matter of pragmatism, the loss of her husband twice over as a result of mutant intervention has surely radicalized her. Mystique, on the other hand, is a character who only operates in self-interest – her attack on the Orchis Forge is motivated entirely by her will to survive and the promise of Destiny’s return. She doesn’t really care about mutants at large beyond wanting to protect herself, and the denial of Destiny’s resurrection is pushing her towards actively working against Krakoa out of spite. 

And who was Destiny? Whereas Mystique is a bitter and unforgiving nihilist out for herself, Destiny was a woman whose ability to glimpse visions of the future made her a paranoid zealot. She was utterly ruthless in her quest to destroy the enemies of mutants, and her righteous crusade – as well as their genuinely loving relationship – gave Mystique’s life shape and a mission. In the time since Destiny’s death she’s mostly regressed to her worst impulses of selfishness and capricious cruelty. Would Mystique be better off with Destiny back in her life? Emotionally, sure, but we know very well that Destiny’s return would almost certainly result in outing Moira MacTaggert and her supposedly doomed mission. It would probably tear Krakoa apart, possibly spark a mutant civil war. Mystique would just end up radicalized by her beloved Destiny once again. 

• Director Devo also returns in this issue, and in his conversation with Omega Sentinel we get a bit more insight into who he is. His previous appearances in X-Men #1 and #6 portrayed him as a fairly easygoing and gentlemanly figure, and while he still conforms to type here there’s also a glimmer of his cruelty as he gloats about realizing the mutants fear Orchis. We already knew that he was motivated in part by his disgust for the arrogance of the mutants – “the bold declarations of inevitability” – but we now see that he’s just as arrogant. And of course he is – the mutants, the humans, the artificial intelligences, the Children of the Vault – they’re all fighting not just for survival, but for dominance. Absolutely no one involved has peaceful coexistence in mind – except maybe the X-Men, who spent years fighting for the original “peaceful coexistence” iteration of Charles Xavier’s dream. 

• This issue is illustrated by guest artist Francesco Mobili, whose art style rhymes somewhat with X-Men #6 artist Matteo Buffagni, though whereas there’s a softness to Buffagni’s line, Mobili’s linework can look slightly stiff. Mobili’s just sort of functional in conversational scenes but he really shines in rendering Nimrod and illustrating the action sequence on the Forge station. I get the sense in looking at his art that he’s still in the process of finding his style – he’s got the raw talent, but he hasn’t quite landed on a distinctive aesthetic yet. 

• The text above the “previously…” recap copy is “A Tilting Within,” a phrase that struck me as odd and distinctive. I looked up and found that it’s from a poem by Marie Howe called “Annunciation.” Here’s the full text:

The poem is from Howe’s collection Poems from the Life of Mary, and “Annunciation” is from the perspective of Mary as she is told by the Archangel Gabriel that she will become the mother of Jesus Christ. It’s pretty easy to see how this matches up with Dr. Gregor’s experience in this issue and the “birth” of Nimrod, though Hickman is going for a brutal irony in making this allusion. 

• Moira MacTaggert makes a silent cameo at the end of the issue, but her activity when Xavier and Magneto arrive at her No-Space to inform her that Nimrod has gone online says quite a bit: She’s reading Destiny’s diaries. The promo pages at the end of the issue suggest this Moira/Destiny story is coming to a head much sooner than I would have expected in the fall with a new Inferno.

• It would seem that given the contextual clues of the Hellfire Gala next month and what seems likely to happen in Planet-Size X-Men, Magneto and Xavier are going ahead with their plan to terraform Mars before Orchis and Nimrod can prevent this part of their masterplan.

Inside The Vault

“Inside the Vault”
X-Men #18
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Mahmud Asrar
Color art by Sunny Gho

 • This is the issue I’ve been waiting for – a return to the Vault plot after many issues of detours into Shi’ar space, alien invasions, and the whole X of Swords affair. I will admit that this issue is a little disappointing to me in the sense that I was expecting it to show how X-23, Synch, and Darwin survived in the Vault for thousands of years of artificial time, but it’s now apparent that’s what we’re going to see next month. The story for this issue reintroduces the premise and lead characters – only fair since it’s been 12 issues since we left off and this story will be collected in separate volumes – and gives some space to reacquainting us with the Children of the Vault, characters who haven’t appeared since their co-creator Mike Carey last wrote them in X-Men Legacy just over a decade ago. 

• If you’re feeling totally lost: The Children of the Vault are a group of characters introduced in Carey and Chris Bachalo’s “Supernovas” arc from 2006. The Vault is an environment with artificially accelerated time, and the Children are the super-evolved humans created as a result of existing in this space. They are not mutants, but they are also not human – they are effectively post-human, like the homo novissima introduced by Jonathan Hickman and R.B. Silva in Powers of X #6. X-23, Synch, and Darwin were dispatched by Charles Xavier and Cyclops to the Vault in X-Men #5 to gather information on the Children and their society, which is congregated in a place called The City within the Vault. 

• We went into this issue knowing very little about The City, and come away from this with some breadcrumbs of information – though The City is vast, it is sparsely populated as a result of a  population control mandate. We see that the Children answer to a central artificial intelligence, and that artificial intelligence engages with them in very scientific terms of analysis and objective goals. We see that the central artificial intelligence is developing the Children to be capable of “occupation/subjugation” of the outside world, and they must be further upgraded in order to compete with the rising mutant population. It is not clear who this artificial intelligence serves, and it’s never been revealed who created the Vault in the first place. 

• The issue ends on a text page in which Charles Xavier authorizes this trio of X-Men to kill, rationalizing that since the denizens of the Vault are not technically human, it does not break the Krakoan law against killing humans. This is reasonable, particularly given the circumstances they’re being thrown into, but it highlights a recurring theme of Xavier being so spooked by what he knows of homo novissima via Moira McTaggert in Powers of X that he seems quite gung ho about full-on genocide of any and all post-humans that emerge regardless of whether they’ve actively threatened mutants. This is understandable, as we the readers are aware that Xavier isn’t wrong when he says post-humans “represent the single greatest existential threat to mutants,” but it’s a strong suggestion that it’s only a matter of time before Xavier and the Quiet Council deliberately perpetrate some horrific large-scale crime, whether it’s wiping out the Vault or something else. 

• Though I admit I prefer R.B. Silva’s depiction of the interior of the Vault from #5 as it suggested a more nebulous sort of non-space, I appreciate the way Mahmud Asrar draws The City as this super-developed nowhere zone sorta like the under-occupied “ghost cities” in China. It’s ominous in a different way, all these empty buildings and infrastructure representing the threat of a population boom that hasn’t yet been authorized. 

As usual, Asrar is very good at rendering physicality and expression. He’s particularly good at drawing X-23 in Wolverine mode – there’s a particularly well-executed sequence in which she leaps down to eviscerate Serafina, and another panel I like a lot later on in which she’s leaning forward with her arms down in a very animalistic stance. Like a lot of artists he’s a little awkward in translating Chris Bachalo’s designs into his own style, but I think he does pretty well with Fuego, the Child with the flaming skull head. 

• The next issue, in which these X-Men escape the Vault, can’t come quickly enough. I’ve been excited about seeing how Hickman depicts thousands of years of elapsed artificial time for quite a while now. 

Sworded Out

“Sworded Out”
X-Men #16
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Phil Noto

• The end of this issue introduces a new structural conceit for the X-Men – Cyclops and Jean Grey will be the leaders, and the rest of the members will be voted in by the citizens of Krakoa. The concept is basically an inversion of a tradition from the Legion of Super Heroes – rather than the leaders be voted in, it’s the actual membership of the team. It looks like we won’t see how this plays out for a little while as the new team will be revealed at the Hellfire Gala, but it does seem like an idea that is going to backfire on Cyclops and Jean in some way. But in any case, it’s very pointedly different from the complete lack of democracy that went into the creation of the Quiet Council, and everyone involved is going into this new iteration of the X-Men with some understanding that the Council and the X-Men will come into conflict at some point. 

• This issue also establishes the new status quo of Arakko, which is now on Earth as a result of Apocalypse’s bargain with Saturnyne at the end of X of Swords. Arakko – as a sentient body of land, and as a people – refuses to merge with Krakoa. Isca the Unbeaten is revealed to be one of the leaders of Arakko, and though she sits as part of a governing body, her power to never lose essentially makes her the de facto ruler of the nation as she always gets her way. She meets with Xavier and Magneto and peacefully but bluntly explains that the people of Arakko are hardened by centuries of war and will not be able to shake that off any time soon. 

Phil Noto’s art on this very talky scene is carried in large part by his very thoughtful coloring in which Xavier and Magneto wear their black and white clothing on a cool green background while Isca is surrounded by red and brown foliage that matches the earth tones of her armor. Noto also does a good job of conveying how gentle and effete Xavier is, framing him as small and distant in the frame as he clutches a Krakoan flower. I think this choice may have had a lot to do with how much dialogue he has in those panels, but it’s very effective in contrast with the tight shots of Isca that make her appear strong, confident, and unflappable. 

• The most important bit of news on the Arakko front is buried somewhat in the issue, as Cypher reminds the Quiet Council that there’s roughly twenty times as many Arakki mutants as there are Krakoan mutants. The immediate implication of this is that this would be quite bad for Krakoa should the two nations come into conflict, but the bigger problem is more obviously what is going to happen once the rest of the Earth finds out that a nation of several million battle-hardened mutants from a hell world now reside on the planet with them. I suspect that once this news gets to Orchis it will lead to the activation of Nimrod and the deployment of the machines being built in Sentinel City on Mercury, and this will go very, very badly for the mutants of Arakko. I suspect that one way or another only a massive tragedy on Arakko and the heroic intervention of the X-Men will unite the Krakoans and Arakki. 

• I do hope we get to see some Arakki mutants venture out into Earth and decide they like it a lot better than the nightmare they were trapped in. Seems reasonable, right? Surely some nature will beat out nurture here. 

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!

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. 

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.

It Will Be Done

“It Will Be Done”
House of X #4 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

How do you write your way out of this? 

If this issue was in fact the demise of six crucial X-Men characters – Cyclops, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Archangel, and Mystique – plus Husk and possibly Monet for good measure, it would be one of the best character send-offs in the history of Marvel publishing. Dramatic, triumphant, tragic, horrifying. It’s the ultimate X-Men story, really. It truly puts to shame all previously published deaths of these characters. (Yes, almost all of them have died at least once, and with the exception of Jean’s various deaths, they’ve all been in either underwhelming or outright awful stories.) 

But we know very well in advance that most or all of these characters will return for Dawn of X next month. Cyclops, Wolverine, and Jean Grey are on the cover of the forthcoming X-Men #1, written by Jonathan Hickman. The reader is fully aware of this, and Hickman is playing on this knowledge in the story. This is his version of Harry Houdini putting on handcuffs and leg-irons, getting locked in a packing crate, and getting lowered into the East River. 

How is he going to write his way out of this??

But let’s not speculate. At this point we know this is a mug’s game. The outcome of this issue is enough to remind us that the radical narrative moves of HOX/POX isn’t about to let up at any point.

“It Will Be Done” is framed by an internal X-Men report on the two major extinction-level events for mutants – the Genoshan genocide at the start of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men and the “mutant decimation by the pretender Wanda Maximoff” in Brian Michael Bendis’ House of M. The document – “Look At What They’ve Done” – fills in other major mutant crimes and files them by affiliation. Given the particular anger towards Wanda “Scarlet Witch” Maximoff and the strident tone of the document, in which the Avengers are put on equal footing with flagrantly anti-mutant hate groups like the Purifiers and Reavers, the implication would be that the document was created by Magneto. 

But this issue isn’t about Magneto’s rage, it’s about Xavier’s. We see him at the end of the issue a broken man, with most of his closest and most beloved students and lieutenants dead after stopping yet another attempt at genocide by the humans. The final pages let his resolution - “no more” – echoing out through the images of the tragedy of this issue, and the endless series of hate crimes presented over the past two decades of publishing.

It’s a powerful use of text, particularly in the context of how the text pages have been used for dry informational purposes so far through the series. This is all emotion. Grief, then rage, then resolve: NO MORE. 

The pages directly reference Wanda Maximoff at the end of House of M, so it’s certainly intentional that Xavier is echoing her fateful words – “no more mutants” – in House of X. But what will Xavier do? It had already seemed like he’d gone radical from the start of the story. What is the next step further?

Pepe Larraz continues to impress with this issue, delivering some of the best action scenes I’ve seen in comics in many years. His pacing – which I suppose to some extent is the pacing of Hickman, but still – is exquisite, and he gives each moment of triumph and tragedy an appropriate level of gravitas. I particularly love his shots of the Mother Mold, which are consistently ominous but oddly beautiful – a sci-fi bust sculpted by Jack Kirby, backlit by the sun. The scene in which Wolverine destroys it as it vaingloriously rants about its own creation myth, couched in the story of Prometheus. As predicted, the AI was not fully mature. The X-Men have snuffed out a mad god. 

Some major questions going into the last 5 issues of HOX/POX:

• What becomes of the “dead” X-Men? And is this development setting up the answer to the question of what Xavier was doing in the first scene of House of X #1, and an explanation of how it is that the two Stepford Cuckoos killed in New X-Men are alive and well?

• What is the “true purpose” of Cerebro? 

• How will the agendas of Apocalypse, Mister Sinister, and Exodus fit into all of this?

• Where is Moira X now?

• What is happening with the Phalanx in the far future of the Moira 9 timeline, and how does it relate to what is happening in the primary timeline?

• What happened in Moira’s sixth life?

• How did Xavier and Moira learn of the true capabilities and potential of Krakoa?

• What about the drugs for humans? 

We Are Together Now, You and I

“We Are Together Now, You and I”
Powers of X #2 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by R.B. Silva
Color art by Marte Gracia

The second issue of Powers of X is largely spent moving plot forward in three of its time periods – Charles and Moira recruiting Magneto for what will presumably become the Krakoa plan, Charles and Magneto sending Cyclops on a mission to disable the Mother Molds before they can create Nimrod, and the future X-Men (led by Apocalypse!) moving forward in their plan to attack Nimrod. The really wild stuff goes down in the +1000 year period, in which we learn that what we’ve seen there is not Earth but rather Nimbus, a “worldmind” created by the humans and machines in the interest of attracting a “Type III civilization.” The Type III civilization that shows up at the end of the issue is none other than the Phalanx, the hive mind cybernetic species that was at the center of several stories written by Scott Lobdell in the 1990s. 

The Phalanx were based partially on the Technarch, the abstracted technological race introduced by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz in New Mutants in the 1980s with the characters Warlock and Magus. The connection between the Technarch and the Phalanx – and the “techno-organic virus” that’s connected to both concepts – is clarified and reworked by Jonathan Hickman in this issue. If you are not familiar with how this has worked in the past, you will only be unnecessarily confusing yourself to concern yourself with those back issues now. As it stands as of this issue, there is a clear hierarchy of artificial intelligence in X-Men comics that follows a powers of ten scale: machine > hive > intelligence > Technarch >  worldmind > Phalanx. At the end of the issue the blue inhabitants of Nimbus – there’s been no indication of who or what they are – willingly submit themselves to the Phalanx, asking for “ascension,” the process by which the Phalanx add an intelligence to its collective self. Perhaps Nimrod’s archive of mutant consciousness, which is in their possession, is the primary offering here?

This issue is mainly about the necessity of collectivity for both the survival of a people and its potential to thrive on increasingly larger scales. We start in the zero year with two bitter rivals, Xavier and Magneto, forging an alliance with the understanding that their people are unlikely to achieve much unless they unite as visionary figureheads. In the present, on the nascent nation-state of Krakoa, we’ve seen real progress – X-Men and “evil mutants” cooperating and living together with a shared goal. Moira states it outright in her pitch to Magneto: “I believe the one thing I haven’t tried yet – all of mutantdom as one – is the thing that means more than just surviving, but thriving and assuming our rightful place on this Earth.” 

The final pages of the issue lay out models of society in orders of magnitude based on the Kardashev scale of measuring a society’s technological advancement. The Phalanx are at the top end of categorization – a collective society that controls an entire galaxy, or multiple galaxies. It’s an imperial force, consuming and integrating lesser societies. In the terms outlined there, we see in this issue the X-Men move from machine (solitary individuals) to hive (a team, basically), with the goal of leveling up to an intelligence (a society.) (Perhaps Krakoa is the beginning stage of an eventual organic worldmind?) It seems obvious now that a central tension of Hickman’s X-Men will be the necessity of a mutant society and the difficulty of attaining such a thing from within and without. Naturally this narrative seems to hinge on Magneto – can he embrace a collective ethos, or will his ego and rage get in the way? 

Notes, Annotations, and Speculation:

• Nibiru, the former frozen gas giant that was transformed into Nimbus, is based on a pseudoscience doomsday hoax positing that a planet-sized object would collide with Earth in the early 21st century. Hickman kept the part about Nimbus being on an elliptical orbit beyond Neptune, but resisted the temptation to refer to Nibiru by its other common name: Planet X.

• Hickman has mentioned the Kardashev scale in an early interview about HOX and POX, noting that he would explore “how mutants bend the Kardashev scale.” In this issue we see how the machines bend the scale as they evolve into Technarchs, worldminds, and Phalanx. But what about the mutants? Is it possible that the mutants, in alliance with the Shi’ar, have also leveled up in the distant future? And when the blue person mentions attracting “universal predators,” could it be that one of these is…the Phoenix? The distant future version of the Phoenix seen at the end of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run, where we see Jean Grey in the “white hot room,” looks a lot like a collective mutant intelligence. Or perhaps “mutants bending the Kardashev scale” is more about what happens if mutation is introduced to the Phalanx on a galactic level.

• While the other covers in these parallel series seem to correlate to the events of the story told in the pages, this issue’s cover does not at all, at least in a direct sense. Of the characters depicted on the cover – Magneto, Mystique, Emma Frost, Sabretooth, and Toad – only Magneto appears in the issue, and Emma Frost has yet to pop up in the narrative. But it works in a broader thematic sense, in that this issue is laying the groundwork for a mutant society that attempts to integrate traditionally villainous and antagonistic characters. These are the characters who represent a resistance to the sort of conformity and collective identity that comes so easily to the machines.

• The promo art for Powers of X #4 tease the revelation of the “true purpose” of Cerebro, the helmet we see Xavier wearing at all times in the present. Cerebro has traditionally been used as a mutant-finding device, and as a machine that amplifies psychic powers. But could it be a way of creating a collective mutant intelligence? And could that, in turn, be the thing that leads to the creation of Nimrod’s archive of mutant consciousness 100 years down the line? It would advance Charles’ agenda of mutant solidarity, and also push mutants up the scale of civilization. I also suspect it would open up Charles to a terrible mistake given that he’s using a machine, and this story is positioning machines as the enemy and chief competitor of mutantdom.

• As the first act of the story comes to a close with the Phalanx reveal and all necessary set-up exposition out of the way, next week we finally get to see…. y’know, the X-Men! Doing X-Men things! I’m very much looking forward to Hickman’s versions of Nightcrawler, Husk, and Monet.

The Uncanny Life of Moira X

“The Uncanny Life of Moira X”
House of X #2 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

“The Uncanny Life of Moira X” is one of the most radical X-Men comics ever in terms of the magnitude of the retcon being introduced and its implications for all future X-Men comics, but it’s also a bold narrative move so early in Jonathan Hickman’s tenure as the lead writer of the franchise. After two issues of setting up several major plots across four time periods, he’s stepping back from all that to focus on the origin story of Moira MacTaggert, a supporting character who was killed off nearly 20 years ago. Moira – a brilliant scientist and former lover of both Charles Xavier and Banshee – was always understood to be a human ally of the X-Men. In this issue we learn the truth: She’s a mutant with the power of reincarnation, and the Moira that we have known all along – and the Moira who appeared in Powers of X #1 last week – is the tenth Moira. It’s not an X, it’s a 10. 

The issue tells the story of Moira’s many lives, and how living through different timelines gradually radicalized her and set her up for her proposition to Charles Xavier in her tenth life, which she has been led to believe could be her last. Much of the story deals with Moira’s learning curve in figuring out what to do with her extraordinary circumstances – she spends much of her second life coming to grips with the odd experience of reliving your life from the start, and what happens when she deliberately changes events. 

Hickman addresses a lot of interesting details of Moira’s experience here – what it’s like to be a fully aware adult in the womb, and what it’s like to meet the love of your life again only to know too much about them going in and have that prevent the possibility of repeating the romance. Other details are left to the reader’s imagination, such as what it must be like to live adult lives and then be forced to relive childhood and puberty over and over again before getting on to the agendas of adulthood. Moira’s lives are outlined in a flowchart in the back of the comic, and she’s lived around 500 years. Imagine the sort of patience she must have developed along the way. 

The most brilliant sequence in the issue shows what happens at the end of Moira’s third life, in which she succumbs to self-loathing of her mutant nature and uses her scientific brilliance to devise a “cure” for the X-gene. Her lab is attacked by Mystique’s Brotherhood, and all of her colleagues are murdered. Destiny, an old blind woman who can see the future, confronts Moira about what she has done. 

Pepe Larraz’s interpretation of John Byrne’s character design highlights an essential creepiness to Destiny’s eye-less golden mask, which is even more unsettling in its contrast with Moira’s highly emotive face as she faces her captor’s righteous dismissal of her work and promise to murder her in any new life she has should she go down this path again. Hickman’s Destiny is cold and ruthless, but speaks nothing but truth. Destiny only wants to ensure that Moira uses her gifts to help her people in her lives to come, and sees to it by having Pyro burn her alive – “And slowly, so she doesn’t forget how dying like this feels.” This is the most nuanced and horrifying depiction of a terrorist act to ever appear in an X-Men comic.

Moira’s story is largely about the responsibilities of members of oppressed groups who have the option to pass. Moira can opt out of living as an out mutant, and can also choose to work against her people. But she is in a unique position of power in terms of helping her people, and after her experience with Destiny she becomes increasingly radicalized and focused on working for the greater good of mutants. We see her go through different approaches and iterations on mutant philosophies – lives spent with Xavier, a life with Magneto, a life at the side of Apocalypse – and all of them fail in the goal of protecting mutants from the the machines. We leave her in a pivotal moment that sets up the beginning of this story – the establishment of the House of X, and a world in which she and Charles Xavier “break all the rules.”

Notes and observations:

• Moira’s seventh life spent hunting down and killing all of the Trasks, the family responsible for the creation of the mutant-hunting Sentinel robots, explicates an emerging theme that was suggested in Powers of X: The machines are an inevitability and evolve in parallel with the mutants. The struggle in this run is not so much between human and mutant but rather mutants and machines: the natural inheritors of the planet and the creations of man. The machines carry out the social orders enforced by their creators – programming passed down from a ruling class. 

• Moira’s sixth life is not accounted for in either the story or the flowchart of her lives in the back of the issue, which is clearly a big deal. I suspect this will be addressed in one of the next few issues, and it will be the life in which Moira discovers the truth about the nature of Krakoa. 

• This issue opens up the possibility of a continuity reboot, and that we’re already in the new timeline, with the first hints being that the two Stepford Cuckoos who had died in the Grant Morrison run are both alive in House of X #1. Many of the characters who were killed off in Matthew Rosenberg’s Uncanny X-Men run, which just ended a few weeks ago, are already slated to be regulars in forthcoming X-comics. It would seem that Rosenberg actually did what he said he was doing in that arc – tell the “last X-Men story” – and in a pre and post-Crisis sense of things, it looks like he actually did. It seems very likely that we’re in Moira X world now, and that up until recently we’ve been in another Moira’s timeline.