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. 

Society

“Society”
House of X #5 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

“Society” is perhaps the most radical issue of House of X/Powers of X thus far in terms of how it relates to X-Men comic books produced by anyone prior to Jonathan Hickman. The resurrection protocol hinted at in earlier issues but revealed here flips something that had become a crutch of the X-franchise – the tedious cycle of killing off characters for dramatic effect and then muddling through increasingly dull and convoluted ways of bringing them back – into something that is now simplified and central to the emerging mutant culture. The issue presents the process as a sort of spiritual ritual, and Charles Xavier’s crucial role in it positions him as a messianic figure for all of mutantdom. The Krakoan nation, the big plans for the future, the X-Men, the creation of a distinct mutant culture – that’s all well and good, but this is what really seals the deal for all of mutantdom to follow his rule. 

This is a brilliant conceit, and the scene in which Storm reintroduces her reborn brothers and sisters to the Krakoan people is one of the most moving and powerful sequences in the history of X-Men comics. This is mutant culture, this is mutant pride, this is justice and revenge. This is Storm, written as she ought to be for the first time in around 30 years. She is now the high priestess of mutants, a true and iconic leader of her people. No other character in the canon could have carried this scene. You get her natural gravitas and commanding presence, her radicalism, and her long personal history with the characters being resurrected. Her sense of joy, triumph, and righteousness in this moment is overwhelming. Pepe Larraz’s rendering of her face and body language is brilliant in conveying the essence of her character. As with his depiction of Nightcrawler, it feels like we’re really seeing these beloved but often poorly handled core characters again for the first time in many years.

The resurrection protocol puts every major X-Men character back on the table with minimal fuss, and keeps writers from having to mess around with continuity to just use whatever characters they want to write. The Matthew Rosenberg mini-run that directly preceded HOX/POX in which he killed or severely wounded a large number of major characters with the full knowledge of what Hickman was about to do now feels particularly hollow, childish, and pointless. Three of the characters resurrected in this issue – Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Wolverine – had been brought back to life in three different stories in the very recent past, and this renders those comics particularly pointless. Each of those stories was overly complicated, sweaty, and dramatically inert. In the words of Charles Xavier, “NO MORE.” Hickman has closed off the possibility of other writers doing these sort of bad stories indefinitely. This is a huge gift to the reader. 

Xavier isn’t just keeping his X-Men in circulation. He’s reviving hundreds of mutants he has catalogued, and rebuilding the mutant population of the earth. The resurrection plan is ongoing, but it’s clear enough that this miracle machine of rebirth won’t last for long. The resurrection mechanism relies on five specific mutants – Goldballs, Tempus, Proteus, Elixir, and Hope – and the use of Cerebro as a method of cataloging and preserving mutant minds. The vulnerabilities of this system are obvious, and are bound to be dismantled at some point. And given that mutant culture is now so focused on organic technology, it’s a glaring problem for something so crucial to involve a machine when machines are the enemies of mutantdom. The notion of preserving mutant consciousness is clearly derived from Moira’s knowledge of Nimrod’s archive, so what happens when some version of Nimrod inevitably becomes a reality in this timeline? Surely this is all very vulnerable to technological attack and exploitation.

And then there’s Mister Sinister. All of this is possible thanks to his archive of mutant DNA, but we already know that Sinister is up to something with all of this. What will be the actual cost to Xavier’s deal with this devil? We’ll probably get some idea of this next week.

Some questions about resurrection:

• Was Wolverine reborn with adamantium via reality-warping Proteus hand-waving, or will he need to re-up with the new body? I would quite like to see Magneto put it back on his skeleton to atone for ripping it out back in “Fatal Attractions.” 

• Similarly, has being reborn stripped Warren Worthington III of his Archangel metal wings and the genetic tampering of Apocalypse? I would hope not, as I vastly prefer Archangel to Angel on a visual and conceptual level. 

• Is this resurrection system at all compatible with Moira’s reincarnation power? Could Moira X be copied as Moira XI is born into a new timeline? 

This issue is extremely bold and sets up a lot of story to come, particularly in the final sequence in which all of the “evil mutants” who were not already on Krakoa arrive to join Xavier’s mutant society. But given that we have three more issues in this story, much of the dramatic momentum built up over the past 8 issues comes to a halt by the end. The issue is powerful in terms of giving the X-Men a major triumph, both in defeating their “great enemy death” as Storm puts it and in fully establishing Krakoa as a sovereign nation thanks in some part to the psychic nudging of Emma Frost. But unlike previous episodes, there’s less “now what???” urgency. 

But there are a lot of good questions going into the final three issues of this story: 

• Where is Moira X now? And what has she been doing in the more recent past? 

• What happened in Moira’s sixth life? 

• How will Orchis find out that they did not actually kill eight major X-Men, and can this moment please involve Cyclops pulling a “surprise bitch, I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me” on Dr. Alia Gregor? Surely this will result in a major panic on their end that will hasten the creation of Nimrod. 

• What will happen with the Phalanx as it absorbs Nimrod’s archive of mutantkind in the distant future of Moira 9’s timeline, and how will this reflect on what is happening in the standard timeline? And will Cylobel figure into this?

• How exactly did Moira learn about the true capabilities of Krakoa, and how did the mutants come to know of the major applications of Krakoan fauna that we’ve seen in the story so far?