Season Of Change

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

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

Let’s just go scene by scene…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lost Love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Oracle

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

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

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

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

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

Some notes: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

It Will Be Done

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

How do you write your way out of this? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• What is the “true purpose” of Cerebro? 

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

• Where is Moira X now?

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

• What happened in Moira’s sixth life?

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

• What about the drugs for humans? 

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. 

The House That Xavier Built

“The House That Xavier Built” 
House of X #1 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

House of X begins in the aftermath of extraordinary world-transforming change, and leaves the reader scrambling to catch up with what has happened in a sequence of vignettes and text pages that convey a huge amount of exposition and world building. Jonathan Hickman has been experimenting with this formal conceit for a little while, particularly in his excellent Image series The Black Monday Murders with artist Tomm Coker, but this is a more sophisticated iteration that is more integral to moving the story along.  There is other precedent for using text pages as part of a comics story, like Alan Moore’s Watchmen or the Keith Giffen/Tom and Mary Bierbaum version of Legion of Super Heroes, but in those cases the pages mainly provided context and subtext. Hickman is using text and charts to advance plot and to deliver crucial narrative reveals. The radical and inventive approach to storytelling emphasizes that this is a drastic break from previous X-Men comics, but more importantly throws the reader into the deep end of the plot without relying on any particular POV character. The scope of the story is important, and the text pages communicate that as well as a great deal of knowledge that only some scattered characters are privy to.

The story begins two months after Charles Xavier has established a mutant nation state on Krakoa, the living island that was both the setting and antagonist of the first “all-new, all-different” X-Men story in Giant-Size X-Men #1 from 1975. The X-Men have harnessed the unique properties of Krakoa to create mutant-only habitats around the world which are connected with “gateway” teleportation portals. Xavier and the X-Men have synthesized three drugs from Krakoan flowers – a pill that can extend human life by five years, another that cures mental illness, and a third which is an adaptive universal antibiotic – and are offering them to human governments in return for accepting Krakoa as a sovereign state. It is later implied that Xavier pursued drug angle to deliberately destabilize the pharmaceutical industry. Xavier has also developed a mutant language which he has spread telepathically as a means of advancing a distinct mutant culture.

We catch glimpses of Xavier in this story, but we barely hear from him. This version of Xavier, as designed and illustrated by Pepe Larraz, is a gaunt and vaguely dainty man wearing skin-tight black clothing and a giant Cerebro helmet that covers his eyes. The design is remarkably similar to that of The Maker, the evil version of Reed Richards who was a recurring nemesis in Hickman’s earlier Marvel work. The first scene of the book is ambiguous and creepy, as we see the new version of Xavier watch what appear to be adult clones of Cyclops and Jean Grey emerge from pods in some strange birthing chamber on Krakoa. His only line of dialogue is his catchphrase from the start – “To me, my X-Men.” It’s extremely unsettling, and immediately casts some suspicion about what he’s really doing. The only other time we see Xavier in this issue is when he greets Jean Grey and a young mutant on Krakoa. Larraz makes him appear entirely inscrutable, but also delicate and serene. 

House of X introduces a new form of human antagonism in the form of the Orchis Protocol, a “doomsday network” pooling the resources of many organizations – mostly AIM and SHIELD, but also stakeholders in SWORD, Alpha Flight, and Hydra – to keep mutants from disrupting human economies, taking over territory, and overtaking humans in population. The latter is a pressing concern as Dr. Alia Gregor, an AIM scientist and key member of this initiative, has discovered that mutants will inevitably become the dominant species on the planet within 20 years. Hickman is bringing back an idea from the start of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men in the early 2000s which had been undone by Marvel editorial in Brian Michael Bendis’ House of M in 2004. We’re back to a world where mutants are indeed the inevitable next wave of human evolution, and humans must either resign themselves to this fate or attempt to stop this, or at least hold on to power and privilege for as long as they can. It tilts the concept of the X-Men franchise to be more relevant to what has been happening in the world over the past few years, as right wing extremists rise up in a desperate bid to squash progress that is somewhat inevitable given societal trends and shifts in population.

The Orchis Protocol scenes establish a serious threat to mutants in the form of a Master Mold – a mother Sentinel that creates other Sentinels – bonded to a rebuilt Sol’s Hammer, an incredibly powerful Dyson Sphere designed by Reed Richards and Tony Stark as a planet-destroyer in Hickman’s New Avengers series. The device captures and harnesses the power of the sun to create new Sentinels, which is somewhat ironic given that in Roy Thomas and Neal Adams’ classic Sentinels story from the late ‘60s, Cyclops defeats them by using logic to trick the mutant-hunting robots into flying into the sun. The image of the Master Mold/Sol’s Hammer hybrid – which the Orchis doctors call The Forge – is rather striking, with the extreme Kirby-ness of the Sentinel design contrasted with a mosaic of solar panels. It’s like the Death Star reimagined as a hanging mobile in outer space. 

The issue is mostly focused on world building and introducing new human antagonists, but Hickman spends a good chunk of the issue (re)introducing two of the franchise’s most crucial characters, Cyclops and Magneto. Cyclops appears midway through the issue to establish the new role of the X-Men in this post-Krakoa world. Cyclops arrives in Manhattan through a Krakoan gateway to apprehend Sabretooth, who has just been captured by the Fantastic Four after robbing a Damage Control facility with Mystique and Toad. (Damage Control has been reimagined by Hickman as a corporation mainly interested in stealing and archiving the work of superhero scientists like Reed Richards and Tony Stark, which explains how Orchis managed to build their own Sol’s Hammer.) Cyclops explains that he wishes to take Sabretooth back to Krakoa, and the Fantastic Four understandably object – the guy is a hugely prolific serial killer and had just injured or killed several guards. The X-Men are now granting amnesty to all mutant criminals to build their mutant nation. And really, why not? Virtually every member of the X-Men is a criminal one way or another anyway. Cyclops just spent several years of publishing as a noble sort of terrorist revolutionary. 

The scene with Cyclops and Reed Richards sets the tone for Hickman’s version of the X-Men’s leader, and given that Reed Richards was the primary hero of the writer’s previous epic Marvel story through Fantastic Four, Avengers, and Secret Wars, it’s a clear passing of the narrative baton. Hickman’s characterization of Cyclops is close to that of Kieron Gillen and Brian Michael Bendis – he’s intense and altruistic, and is monomaniacally obsessed with the survival and advancement of mutant culture. He’s very cordial with the Fantastic Four – he’s been friends with them since he was a teenager – but he can’t help but be a little condescending to them, and doesn’t seem to get that he’s being a little creepy when he tells the Richards to let their mutant son Franklin know that he can join his family on Krakoa any time he likes. His non-mutant parents, of course, aren’t welcome. 

It’s unclear how much Hickman will reference previous stories in this run, but it’s worth noting that what Xavier is achieving with Krakoa is a bolder and more all-encompassing version of what Cyclops was attempting with the island of Utopia in the Matt Fraction/Kieron Gillen era. The key difference is that Utopia was the makeshift tactical solution of a soldier – a fortress under siege, more like a cult compound than Xavier’s vision of an entirely new culture and homeland for mutants. At this point in time, no one is expected to be a soldier on Krakoa.

Magneto appears in the issue as Xavier’s proxy, serving as an ambassador greeting a handful of human dignitaries at the Krakoan habitat in Jerusalem. (Hickman is not shying away from the Zionist parallels of Krakoa by setting this plot there, and centering it on Magneto, a Holocaust survivor.) Magneto is clearly overjoyed by what Xavier has accomplished, and why not? It’s the mutant supremacist separatist culture he’s always envisioned rather than the assimilation fantasy that Xavier had always pursued. Hickman wants the reader to question this – how did Xavier arrive at this reversal of intentions? He also wants us to think about why Magneto was never capable of doing this himself. 

Magneto was given the task of confronting these humans about Xavier’s deal precisely because he is an intimidating presence who is unafraid to tell them that that Xavier’s offering is a gift and an incentive, not a negotiation. He’s serving as Xavier’s enforcer, but even at this early stage it’s clear that getting the thing he’s always wanted in life will not mellow him out even a little bit. With this leverage, and with Xavier’s encouragement, he appears ready to take everything too far. His entitlement knows no limits, and his rage and fascist impulses cannot be quieted. At the end of the issue, he gloats about the power mutants now have over humans, and the inevitability of a mutant future. One of the dignitaries – who is established as neutral in all of this –asks him, “Do you know what you sound like?” Magneto tells him that, yes, he does. The question of who he sounds like is left ambiguous – Hitler? A God? Just an overzealous douche? It seems obvious that this question will be the central theme of Hickman’s Magneto going forward.

Pepe Larraz is a revelation in this issue. Larraz has been a strong artist for some time, and turned in excellent work in the recent X-Men event miniseries Extermination. His art still greatly resembles that of Stuart Immonen – hardly a bad thing given that Immonen is one of the best artists working in the medium – but he in some ways surpasses Immonen in this issue. Larraz and colorist Marte Gracia realize Hickman’s concepts with vivid detail. Many comic book artists struggle with drawing evocative settings but this is where Larraz thrives – he nails the natural but somewhat alien beauty of Krakoa, and the way the mutant vegetation of its habitats looks lovely but surreal in the context of human cities. The interior of the Orchis station at The Forge is also quite evocative. Those designs are more familiar from the visual vernacular of science fiction, but Larraz fills out the cold, sterile, and cavernous spaces with atmosphere and details that feel slightly off. A long shot establishing Orchis experimentation on Krakoan vegetation in the station is a subtle bit of foreshadowing that also emphasizes the contrast between the crushing machinery of mankind and the organic beauty of mutant biotech.