Out Of The Vault

“Out of the Vault”
X-Men #19
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Mahmud Asrar
Color art by Sunny Gho

• In all the time I was wondering how Jonathan Hickman would depict thousands of years passing in a single issue the obvious thing – the thing he chose to do – never occurred to me: A timeline similar to the way he mapped out the lives of Moira MacTaggert in House of X. It’s very effective in condensing the story while offering some intriguing details, and in keeping the focus of the issue on Synch’s experience in The Vault and the close emotional bond he forms with X-23 along the way. The balance of emotional weight, hard sci-fi, and narrative density is Hickman at his finest, and X-Men #19 is one of his best issues of this volume so far, probably second only to the Mystique-centric story “Oracle” from X-Men #6. 

• Back at the start of this storyline in X-Men #5 when we’re introduced to Synch, we’re reminded in the text pages that his resurrection has put him in an awkward situation as all of his friends from the Generation X comic have moved on with their lives while he’s re-entering life a few years behind them. On the other side of his mission in the Vault he’s in an even stranger situation, having lived far beyond one life entirely removed from everyone but X-23 and Darwin, and now he’s the only one who remembers their time together. It’s a strange sort of tragedy, but because Synch is a fairly optimistic character, the issue ends on a hopeful rather than maudlin note that directly echoes his cautious optimism going into the Vault with X-23. 

Hickman has clearly made it a mission to spotlight characters from Generation X out of personal affection for them, but what he does for Synch in this story goes beyond merely giving an old character from prime airtime. Synch, a character who has been absent from publication for 20 years, is both refined and redefined in this story – the essential Good Dude Romantic Lead elements of his personality are unchanged, but the circumstances of his experience are now unique and fascinating. From here on out he’s an old man in a young man’s body, a seasoned veteran who is now the mutant nation’s living repository of information about what could be their greatest existential threat. He’s now a narrative mirror of Moira MacTaggert, embarking on his third life and carrying the full knowledge of past lives like precious cargo. (Also, like Moira in Powers of X, he owed the extension of his life to borrowing the powers of a Wolverine.) 

• We learn quite a bit about the Children of the Vault in this issue, and get a sense of how a deliberate technological approach to evolutionary development differs from the natural processes that result in mutantdom. It’s all quite advanced and there’s every indication that the existence of the Children and the Vault is part of some larger plan, but we are totally in the dark on whose plan it is. This issue makes it clear that Orchis is not responsible for the Vault, though they are aware of it and have captured and dissected Children. (Serafina of the Children was rescued along with several mutants from Orchis custody in X-Men #1.) 

It seems probable that Orchis may co-opt the Children at some point in the story, but for now it’s a whole other situation. I suspect the mystery of who created Homo Novissima may be equivalent to the mystery of Rabum Alal that runs through Hickman’s Avengers run and culminated in one of the best reveals in that story. 

• Aside from a brief cameo from Cyclops and Charles Xavier at the end of this issue, this two-part story is notable for being entirely focused on post-Chris Claremont cast and ideas. Synch was introduced in 1994, everything else in the Vault story was created in the 21st century. It’s fun to imagine what an X-Men reader in the ‘80s might make of this story if you could somehow send these two issues back in time. The most recognizable element would be a female version of Wolverine! 

• Synch looks great with a bald head and beard, by the way. Mahmud Asrar did a fabulous job in aging him up along with X-23 and Darwin. Asrar did a typically fantastic job on this issue, it’s too bad this is apparently his last issue of the series for the foreseeable future. 

• We don’t really have conclusive evidence that X-23 and Darwin died in the Vault, so it’s quite possible those versions of the characters are still in the custody of the Children and their powers of survival and infinite adaptation will be integrated into future generations of Children. Bleak! 

Inside The Vault

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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