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.