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. 

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.

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!

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. 

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.