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. 

Sanctus Sacrum

“X of Swords Chapter 2”
X-Factor #4
Written by Leah Williams
Art by Carlos Gomez
Color art by Israel Silva

• The resurrection protocols introduced in House of X have freed the X-Men franchise from its endless cycle of pointless deaths and tedious, convoluted rebirths. It’s also opened up a lot of new narrative possibilities, and that’s the basis of Leah Williams’ new X-Factor series. But it’s also created a problem for a big story like X of Swords – if none of the X-Men can die, what does it matter if they fall in this epic battle? As long as the protocols were in place they could face any war as a battle of attrition they would inevitably win. 

This issue moves along the plot from the first chapter and establishes some new stakes: Yes, any mutant can and will be resurrected, but if they die in Otherworld they lose all established sense of self and their history. The person resurrected is a version of them made as a composite of infinite versions of the self in Otherworld and this self permanently overwrites everything saved in Cerebro. It’s got all the existential stakes of death, but the weird wrinkle of still existing as a comic book character. It’s a smart compromise that doesn’t break the innovation of the protocols. The downside is realizing most major stories from this point onward will have to do some version of this narrative workaround. 

• We find all of this out as Rockslide is resurrected after being murdered by Summoner in Otherworld in the first chapter. Rockslide is a perfect character to sacrifice in this way – he’s a minor character that has been hanging around the backgrounds of stories for nearly 20 years but doesn’t have a well-developed personality beyond “what if AJ Soprano was The Thing,” so nothing is really lost in this decision. There’s a lot of narrative possibilities in the new mysterious composite version of Rockslide, so the character finally has a distinct story purpose. Also the thing about him being this intangible ghost within a rocky shell now feels more creepy – a ghost of a boy no one knows, a shell of a person who is lost forever to anyone who knew him.

• Williams only has one chapter in the X of Swords saga, and she really makes the most of it in this double-sized issue – she works in a very good scene with her beloved Emma Frost responding very much in character with absolute horror at the realization that one of the students has permanently died, she builds on the processes of The Five and X-Factor, and you can sense her absolute delight in writing the text page explaining the hedonistic realm of Roma and the rhyming riddles announcing the sword bearers of Krakoa. There’s a strong “AHHH I CAN’T BELIEVE I GET TO WRITE THIS” energy in this issue, and that adds an extra bit of joy in reading it. 

• Carlos Gomez’ fill-in art on this issue is adequate but a bit too bland for a story of this magnitude, particularly as it comes just after dazzling world-building art by Leinil Francis Yu and Pepe Larraz. Gomez, who worked with Williams recently on The Amazing Mary Jane series, is a natural for Spider-Man comics – his art is basically the current Marvel house style spiked with a bit of J. Scott Campbell pizzazz. But in this issue we basically just get flat house style, and while it does the job it lacks a spark. It makes sense why he was hired for this issue but I think given the current roster of artists working for the X-office but not booked for a X of Swords issue this probably would’ve been better illustrated by Matteo Buffagni or Lucas Wernick. 

• The sword hub at the end of the issue is so very video game in both concept and design – Final Fantasy in particular, though I’m hardly a gaming expert. But I really appreciate the way Hickman-era X-Men borrows visual notions from video games but also creates environments and situations that would logically carry over to video game adaptations. Everything about X of Swords so far would make for a pretty cool game, and I suspect that factored into it on a concept level. As much as the Hickman era is pushing boundaries, it’s also very much about expanding X-Men IP for eventual use by other parts of the Disney family. It’s the best case scenario on the creative end for this sort of vertical integration, but it is absolutely is IP development for vertical integration. 

Into The Storm

“Into the Storm” / “The World” / “Disintegration” 
Giant Size X-Men: Jean Grey & Emma Frost, Giant Size X-Men: Fantomex, and Giant Size X-Men: Storm
Written by Jonathan Hickman with Russell Dauterman (Jean/Emma)
Art by Russell Dauterman (Jean/Emma, Storm) and Rod Reis (Fantomex)
Color art by Matthew Wilson (Jean/Emma, Storm) 

The Giant Size X-Men specials were initially sold as stand-alone one-shots, but as it turns out three of the five issues are, in fact, a coherent story arc that appears to advance the slow-burning Children of the Vault subplot. These three issues amount to 90 pages of story, but the plot isn’t particularly dense: Storm gets sick following getting zapped in her attack on the Vault in X-Men #5, Jean Grey and Emma Frost discover that she’s got a “machine virus” and will die within a month, Monet figures out that she can be saved in The World, and Fantomex brings Storm, Monet, and Cypher to The World to eventually extract the virus from Storm’s body. 

The first issue of this arc is essentially a tribute/cover version of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s famous “quiet issue” of New X-Men in which Jean and Emma perform a similar “psychic rescue” with Charles Xavier, and as such it’s more of a showcase for Russell Dauterman’s considerable skills as an artist. The Fantomex issue is also a blatant Grant Morrison tribute, with several scenes involving Fantomex quoted directly from New X-Men issues. This is all very nice and well-executed, but feels a little odd in the context of Jonathan Hickman’s larger project on the X-Men, which before this point had excised the “hey, remember this?” nostalgic references that had piled up quite a bit in recent years and fully metastasized in Mark Guggenheim’s vile X-Men Gold run. And true, those nostalgic nods were almost always to Chris Claremont comics, but the spirit is still the same. Also, the “hey, I’ve already read this” feeling makes these issues seem more slight than they actually are. 

The Fantomex issue illustrated by Rod Reis is quite good. The plot depicts scenes from Fantomex’s life in which he brings different groups of people into The World, the artificial environment with accelerated time where he was created and raised. There’s an implication of unreliable narrative, that there’s only so much we should believe about what we’re seeing from the perspective of a man who is a living lie from a fake world – a “living contrivance, a product… a hall of mirrors with no end” as Psylocke puts it in Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. But as much as the truth of it all is ambiguous, we see how Fantomex’s awareness of this weighs on his actual soul. 

The big reveal of this issue is that Fantomex and Ultimaton – both products of A.I.M. and Weapon Plus’ project of developing mutant-hunting super soldiers in The World – are essentially identical twins raised with as much variance as possible. Fantomex was discarded as a baby, and the other gradually evolved into the Ultimaton we see in Morrison and Chris Bachalo’s “Assault On Weapon Plus” story. Each time Fantomex returns to The World he encounters Ultimaton at different stages of his development, always asking him if he would like to leave with him. Ultimaton always declines, and as time goes on sees Fantomex as an abstraction – “some primal direction of man, some primal direction of me.” The issue leaves off with Fantomex bringing Storm, Monet, and Cypher to The World, and the plot thread concludes in the Storm issue with Fantomex deciding to remain in The World with his ersatz brother. To be continued, of course, but there’s a nice emotional charge to this beat – Fantomex embracing the only sort of family he has, and giving up something of himself to help or guide this warped reflection of himself. 

The Storm issue covers interesting ground. It’s a story about Storm fighting for her life, though in the first few pages Emma Frost points out how “overly dramatic” this is given that they have the means to immediately resurrect her. The point of the story is that Storm is a person who would fight for survival regardless – she refuses to surrender to anything, she will always try to find a way to overcome obstacles. Storm is also quite dramatic. It’s part of her charm. 

The mechanics of the plot of this issue are driven largely by Monet and Cypher, who are clearly two of Hickman’s favorite characters. The story serves as a reminder that part of Monet’s impressive set of powers is advanced intelligence, and her genius is ultimately what saves Storm. Monet largely serves a plot function here, but her presence in this story, as well as in House of X and Empyre: X-Men amount to Hickman making a case for her as an essential X-Men heavy hitter from here on out after years of the character being sidelined as a result of relative obscurity. 

Cypher is more of an observer and interpreter in the plot, just as he was in the Nightcrawler special. At the end of the issue we see the machine virus entirely removed from Storm’s body and held in a containment field to prevent it from rapidly evolving in the artificially accelerated time of The World. In the epilogue we see that Cypher recognizes that the machine virus is sentient and conscious. This is left as a ticking time bomb, as the possibility of an artificial intelligence developed in the artificial time of The Vault attaining “evolutionary critical mass” in the slightly different artificial time of The World can become an existential threat to mutants down the line. 

We’ll be returning to this machine virus thing at some point, but it’s hard to say which ongoing plot this beat connects to – is this going to remain a part of the Vault thread? Or maybe, since there’s a direct tie from A.I.M. to Orchis, this is part of how their Sentinels evolve to a Nimrod state? It could just as well be part of the Phalanx subplot. Just as with the mysterious tower built for Emma Frost in the Magneto special, it feels like it could be quite a while before we find out the actual significance of this issue to the macro plot. 

These specials were designed as showcases for artists, and as can be expected, these issues give a lot of room for Russell Dauterman and Rod Reis to flex. They’re both quite good but I prefer the loose, gestural qualities of Reis’ art to the extremely tight and slick lines of Dauterman. The latter’s work is beautiful and dynamic but a bit too stiff at times, and while he can draw very nuanced facial expressions, there are many panels where the faces seem oddly blank and vacant. Dauterman is called on to draw abstract environments in both of his issues, and while they work well on his terms, they seem rather cold and static compared to Reis’ more surreal and dreamlike drawings within The World. It’s an intriguing contrast of styles, with Reis more connected to cartooning while Dauterman’s aesthetics are more rooted in animation. 

Wait And See

“Wait and See”
Giant Size X-Men: Magneto
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Ramón Pérez
Color art by David Curiel

It’s been a bit difficult to find the appropriate level of expectation for the Giant Size X-Men issues. Each of the three published so far has felt less substantial than any of the regular issues of X-Men written by Jonathan Hickman, and have done more to gesture in the direction of future stories than deliver something more satisfying in the moment. The comics have all delivered in terms of serving as showcases for talented artists, and with this Magneto issue the Canadian illustrator Ramón Pérez– mostly known for his indie and web comics – gets to show off his considerable craft on a very mainstream title. Hickman’s primary interest here seems to be in letting the artist flex, and in laying in plot details for later on. The former is a great idea when working as a writer in a visual medium, the latter goal is fine in the abstract but in the case of this issue it mostly just undermines a story that presents itself as a quiet character study. 

The plot of the issue is basically that Emma Frost has asked Magneto to acquire an island for her, and he accomplishes that with the help of her profoundly arrogant ex Namor, the mutant monarch of the seas. At the end of the issue we see Magneto assemble a tower with a Sentinel head built into the side for Frost, and well, that’s that. We’ll find out what Emma is going to do with this island some other time. It looks cool, so there’s that. There’s some bits of deep sea adventure in the middle of the story with Namor, but in narrative terms that’s what happens in 30 pages.

The meat of the story is mostly in observing Magneto at this moment of his life. He’s typically a character defined by his unrelenting ideology and antagonistic relationship with humans, but in this issue we see him rather contented by the founding of Krakoa and his station as one of the fledgling mutant nation’s leaders. Magneto has been a steady presence in Hickman’s story thus far, but his most memorable scenes have involved him making grand and unapologetically arrogant speeches to human leaders. This facet of Magneto is not on display in this issue. Instead we him willing to wait patiently for Namor among a bunch of puffins on a small island, and dining with Emma Frost, a woman he clearly recognizes as both a peer and a friend. The latter is notable – even though these characters have a good amount of history as colleagues, it’s actually pretty rare to see Magneto engage with someone besides Charles Xavier or Rogue as either a respected friend or confidant. His tendency is to be alone, and to project a superior aloofness.

Magneto, Emma Frost, and Namor are all characters with major superiority complexes and a flippant contempt for humans. In contrasting today’s Magneto with two characters he has so much in common with, we see how much he’s changed in the recent past. His rage has subsided upon the realization of his lifelong dream of a mutant nation, we see him as magnanimous and respectful - not just of Emma and Namor, but of the human man living on the island. The entire story is him doing a favor for Emma, whereas Magneto’s role since the start of House of X has largely involved him sending other mutants out to do his bidding. I get the sense that in the long run of Hickman’s story, this will be understood as a glimpse of Magneto at a good moment in his life. This state cannot last for him, and that’s his tragedy. 

The matter of Emma’s island tower is intriguing but makes the issue feel unresolved and incomplete, and since the issue ends on an inert “that’s it?” moment it undermines the understated character development that was the actual focus of the issue. It may have landed better if the issue ended on another quiet Magneto moment, or if Perez’s last page didn’t feel like such an abrupt ending. But I think Hickman is more to blame here – whereas the previous Giant Size issues have advanced an ongoing mystery with Cypher and presented a cliffhanger with Storm, both of which are tied to macro plots introduced in House of X/Powers of X, it’s hard to get a sense of how significant this story development is when all Emma says in the end is that she intends to…invite people to this island. Uh, sure? I trust Hickman enough to pay off on this in some way, but this could just as well be an entire issue about Emma Frost needing a place to hold off-site meetings. 

Unlike the other issues of Giant Size X-Men, this one was not conceived with the artist in mind. The issue was originally meant to be drawn by Ben Oliver, and Ramón Pérez stepped in when Oliver had to bow out of the commitment. He did a good job with it, particularly in drawing the most uneventful pages where it’s really just Magneto hanging out on an island and looking off into the distance. He presents Magneto as a powerful but unknowable figure, but also someone with an obvious soulful interiority. His ability to convey this is crucial to the successes of this issue, since Hickman really went “show, not tell” in this story. 

The Red Coronation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hordeculture

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

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

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

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

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

Some notes:

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

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

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

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. 

Once More Unto the Breach

“Once More Unto the Breach”
House of X #3 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

The new dynamics of humans and mutants in House of X put humans at a severe disadvantage – they don’t have natural godlike powers, they don’t have access to miraculous Krakoan biotech, and they’re doomed by evolution to be phased out within a few generations. But they do have money and political power and advanced technology. They also have the motivation of a deep fear of mutants, and it’s a fear that this issue suggests is totally valid. The mutants are now rejecting human laws, and allowing mass murdering psychopaths to essentially kill humans with impunity. Humans on a space station face the terror of having a squad of immensely powerful mutant soldiers attack them without warning, and with intelligence gathering resources far beyond what they could have expected. All the humans have to consider at this point are drastic asymmetrical moves, whether it’s the forces behind Orchis building a Mother Mold, or one Orchis scientist resorting to a suicide bombing in the hope of foiling the X-Men’s mission. 

“Once More Unto the Breach” sets in motion the second phase of the HOX/POX story, in which the X-Men – the actual X-Men! – head off to shut down the Mother Mold and prevent the creation of Nimrod. There’s some heavy work done in the text pages of this issue explicating the direct evolutionary path from Sentinel to Master Mold to Mother Mold to Nimrod, but it mostly provides a lot of simple joys just by giving us cool moments with beloved characters. 

Nightcrawler gets a spotlight scene in which he recons the Mother Mold station, and you can sense Jonathan Hickman and Pepe Larraz’s enthusiasm for the character on the page. Larraz draws one of the best Nightcrawlers I’ve ever seen, very true to the classic model of the character illustrated by Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Paul Smith, and John Romita Jr but a bit more slender and delicate. He doesn’t look human at all, but he still has a familiar joyful, handsome quality. 

The other X-Men on the mission get smaller moments. Monet is regal and intelligent, but deeply pessimistic. Jean Grey is gentle and essentially pacifistic, but her empathy for those she presumes to be innocent is offset by what comes across as a distant, spacey affect. Cyclops is intense and focused, Mystique is aloof and clearly has her own agenda, and Wolverine is jaded and skeptical. 

The biggest character moment in this issue is the reintroduction of Emma Frost, who arrives as a Krakoan ambassador to retrieve Sabretooth from a human super prison after he was apprehended by the Fantastic Four in the first issue. Larraz’s drawing of Emma’s entrance is extremely fabulous. She rolls in like Beyoncé, but with somehow even more grandiosity and confidence.

True to form, she’s righteous and condescending, and is highly effective in her immediate goals of establishing Sabretooth’s diplomatic immunity but an abject failure in terms of engendering any sort of goodwill for the mutants of Krakoa. The humans in this courtroom scene are exasperated and rightly so. The reasoning around letting Sabretooth – a man who has killed hundreds of people over the years in cold blood, often just to satisfy his sick urges – go free is not particularly sound. Emma lords the superiority of her race over the humans in a rather cruel and hateful way. This hubris is bound to backfire horribly on the X-Men. 

The issue ends with the death of Captain Erasmus Mendel, who sets off a bomb under the X-Men’s ship as they prepare to dock the station. Mendel is the romantic partner of Dr. Alia Gregor, the primary Orchis character in the story thus far. Gregor, already so focused on building the Mother Mold and stopping mutantdom from supplanting humanity on earth, will certainly not take this well. The scene doesn’t do anything to make the Orchis operatives more sympathetic – they are unambiguously working towards genocidal ends – but it does convey Mendel’s rational fear of the X-Men and their high chances of thwarting the thing they’ve put so much work into, a thing he believes is entirely justified. 

This scene is important in depicting the emotional reality of the Orchis characters, but also in reminding readers that the X-Men are scary. Not just Wolverine and Archangel, but every last one of them. If you’re about to face them the odds are stacked hopelessly against you, and you probably will panic, or destroy yourself if just to temporarily knock them off balance, or leave them stranded in outer space. 

Torn

“Torn (part 2)” 
Astonishing X-Men #14 (2006)
Written by Joss Whedon
Art by John Cassaday

I am not a fandom-y person, and don’t really go in for “shipping” and all that. It’s just not how I’ve ever engaged with fiction. That said, if I have an OTP – “one true pairing” – in all of fiction, it’s Scott Summers and Emma Frost. It’s not because I want to be either of them, or that I fancy them, or that I think it’s a particularly romantic pairing. It’s more just that there is something about the combination of these characters that rings very true to me. 

It makes a lot of sense to me that Cyclops, after falling out of love with Jean Grey, would gravitate to someone who could offer the same telepathic radical transparency but without Jean’s idealism. Both Jean and Emma can see him for exactly who he is, but whereas Jean judges him for his weaknesses, Emma accepts him as he is. She finds him interesting and wants to help him be the man he yearns to be. That gives him permission to be vulnerable. He’s exhausted by having to always live up to Jean’s example and expectations. 

It makes sense that Emma Frost would be attracted to a man with his power, ambition, and nobility. Emma is innately drawn to status, but also to puzzles and broken things. She is a domme, and likes to assert power and influence over him. But just as she gives him the freedom to let down his guard and be something else, he’s accepting of her desire to follow a more noble calling with the X-Men rather than with the Hellfire Club. While other X-Men doubt her motives and morality, Scott takes her at her word and gives her his full respect and admiration. 

They found each other at the perfect crossroads in their lives, where she was ready to be “good” and he was finally willing to loosen up and be a bit “bad.” Over the course of their relationship – which in publishing time runs from around 2002 up through 2014, mostly told in stories written by Grant Morrison, Joss Whedon, Matt Fraction, Kieron Gillen, and Brian Michael Bendis – they bring out the best and worst in each other. There’s something very honest about this love story, and how it begins and ends in very messy ways. 

While Grant Morrison established the Scott and Emma romance in New X-Men, it was Joss Whedon who fully developed it during his run on Astonishing X-Men with artist John Cassaday. Whedon’s story picks up where Morrison left off, with Scott and Emma officially together shortly after Jean Grey’s latest death. Morrison only ever wrote Scott and Emma’s romance as an illicit psychic affair, but Whedon gets to explore the dynamics of them as an actual couple. He’s the one who establishes them as partners in leadership, to the chagrin of most of the other X-Men – Scott defers to Emma in many decisions, and this is where her ruthlessness starts to seep into his own attitude. This is the beginning of his gradual political radicalization. 

Whedon fully dives into the Scott and Emma relationship in Astonishing X-Men #14, the second part of the “Torn” story arc. This issue is primarily focused on a confrontation between the two of them that echoes the sort of “psychic therapy” she gave to him during the Morrison run, but with a more aggressive “tough love” bent. Emma starts by prodding at his weak spots – his idealistic love for Jean, his envy of Wolverine’s macho charisma, his insecurity over his position as the leader of the X-Men – but he resists that approach. He’s aware of all that, he’s done the work to move on. But she’s really just softening him up so he can get to his darkest secret, a repressed memory of him as an adolescent deciding that the only way for him to have full responsibility his devastating eye-blasts would be to make sure he couldn’t control them and had a failsafe in the form of his visor. At the end of the issue, Emma gives him the control he’s denied himself, but in doing so effectively cuts off his access to the power altogether. It’s hard to tell whether she’s being cruel or kind, even if she’s only doing this as a pawn of the demented psychic being Cassandra Nova. It’s both. 

This plot could set in motion the end of their relationship, but it only makes them stronger. Whedon’s removal of Cyclops’ power echoes what Chris Claremont did with Storm in the ’80s, and uses it as an opportunity for him to prove his mettle and leadership skills without relying on the brute force of his mutant gifts. The power returns in time, and along with it his inability to control it, but Scott interprets what Emma did for him as a gift. He wants someone who will call out his weaknesses and illusions, he wants someone who will help him become a better person. It’s all he ever wants, really – he’s always been written as myopic and obsessed with being the best he can be. And Emma, a curious combination of dominatrix and school teacher from the start, has always been someone who wants to break someone down to build them up. Whedon saw what had been on the page for years and took it to a logical, if not entirely romantic, conclusion.