X-Men: Forever #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: FOREVER #2
“Quiet Council”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Luca Maresca
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller, Jay Bowen & Kat Gregorowicz
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: Rachel, Cannonball, Jubilee, Exodus and Arakko fight a Stark Sentinel.
PAGE 2. Paul Neary obituary.
PAGES 3-5. Mother Righteous’ homunculus dissolves, and Professor X sends a message to the White Hot Room.
This scene takes place roughly alongside page 6 of Rise of the Powers of X #4. The two issues interweave, so you might want to look at the annotations for that issue.
“Sinister’s dead.” Fall of the House of X #3.
“Xavier murdered Rachel.” Rise of the Powers of X #3.
“Xavier freed me to @#$% over Rasputin, who’s also dead.” Rise of the Powers of X #4.
“Bring Rachel back. She’ll be furious, and rightly so.” Professor X makes clear that he killed Rachel in Rise #3, and Rasputin in Rise #4, so that they could be resurrected in the White Hot Room – the only way that they could readily travel there. That begs the question of why he didn’t just tell them that, but of course then Mother Righteous would have known what he was doing.
“Tell her team I’m sorry. They didn’t understand the road their words have led me to take.” “Her team” is the X-Men squad from Dead X-Men. In Rise #3, they stop Professor X from killing young Moira (and thus erasing Krakoa from the timeline) by convincing him of the importance of Krakoa, but apparently that’s set him on a path they didn’t have in mind.
“Our deal!” On page 12, Hope asks Destiny about her “deal” with Professor X. Destiny gives a partial answer that it has something to do with her and Mystique’s son Nightcrawler, but declines to explain further (“I’m not going to tell you before Raven”). In this scene, Professor X indicates that whatever he had promised to do, he isn’t in a position to act on it, but that if he did, it would not leave Destiny with a “clear mind”.
“And I fear you need a clear mind to survive Raven.” Last issue, Professor X tried to relay a message from Destiny to Mystique. Mystique replied that she wasn’t speaking to either Professor X or Destiny, and Destiny concluded that Mystique had read “the book”. We don’t know what that is yet.
“[A]ll the X-Men who have died in Orchis’ purges.” All the X-Men who died during Fall of X get resurrected here, even if they’re only off panel. Note, though, that this isn’t a general resurrection of mutants who died during this period. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Five didn’t resurrect a few other mutants while they were at it, or in the weeks leading up to this series.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
PAGES 7-8. Mr Sinister is resurrected.
“The New Arbor.” The Arbor was the resurrection location on the original Krakoa. Evidently the Five have established a new operation here. Exodus helpfully confirms that there was indeed a Cradle in Atlantic Krakoa, so that the Five have access to everything they need for the purpose.
Although Hope describes the resurrectees as “All the X-Men Orchis has killed since we’ve been gone”, Mr Sinister and Rasputin don’t fall into that category, so there were at least some others on the list.
“The least is to be last.” Exodus is referring to Jesus’ statement that “The first will be last, and the last first” (Matthew 20:16)
“I told you… We must be on the same side.” A recurring theme with Destiny and Sinister running back to Immortal X-Men #1.
PAGES 9-11. The Quiet Council in Exile discuss the plot with Rachel.
“Orchis is beat, but the AIs have made a move…” In Fall of the House of X.
“I’d have known earlier if my brain wasn’t messed with by Enigma.” Immortal X-Men #18 revealed that Enigma had prevented Mr Sinister from seeing some of the information on deleted timelines that had been gathered by his Moira Engine.
“Xavier is joining the AIs for two purposes…” As seen in Rise of the Powers of X #4.
The Quiet Council in Exile. As Sinister points out, none of the group are actually heroes, with the possible exception of Hope – who views herself as a soldier rather than a hero, and is not especially bothered by the thought of some of the cost falling on humans rather than mutants. Sinister sees mutants as an object of interest, and Exodus is fairly described by Sinister as a “mutant supremacist”. It’s a slightly less fair characterisation of Destiny, but she and Mystique were incontrovertibly villains for most of their career.
“He is martyring himself … for the chance of a new Krakoa. He won’t be alone in that.” The other martyr Exodus has in mind is apparently Hope, for reasons we’ll come to at the end.
“Your timeline where you were whipped like a dog to hunt your peers?” Rachel’s timeline is the “Days of Futures Past” Sentinel-dominated apocalypse.
“Would you have gone as far as Bishop did?” Referring to the 2008-2010 Cable series where Bishop was committing assorted atrocities as he pursued Cable and baby Hope through time, in an attempt to alter history (which he believed would ultimately cancel out everything that he was doing, but still). Exodus would certainly disagree with Bishop’s agenda – he worships Hope, after all – but he clearly endorses the commitment.
PAGE 12. Hope, Destiny and Exodus leave together.
Hope’s mother was killed by the Purifiers when they tried to murder Hope immediately after her birth, in X-Men: Messiah Complex #1 (2007). In Uncanny X-Men #526, she was eventually identified as an Alaskan firefighter called Louise Spalding.
“Cable’s my dad in every way that matters.” Because Cable raised her from infancy to adolescence in the 2008-2010 Cable series.
Hope’s biological father has never been identified, but there’s no particular reason to think that he was any more notable than her mother.
Chlorophil and Kafka are the two mutants farming tubers in the foreground – minor pre-existing background characters who have been used repeatedly in this storyline as ordinary Krakoans in the crowd. Kafka picks up on the obvious implication of the X-Men’s plan: if they’re going to use up all their resources on sending the name characters back to Earth, does that mean the ordinary Krakoans are going to be stuck in the White Hot Room forever?
PAGES 13-15. Rachel discusses her plan with Prodigy.
Prodigy is basically correct that Enigma planned to get Phoenix off the board – or at least, Enigma claims in Rise #4 that this was his plan.
“I’m Askani, Protector of the timelines.” This refers to Rachel’s role in Besty Braddock: Captain Britain. Much like Mother Righteous in Immortal, Rachel’s approach to solving the problem is symbolic and semi-mystical, in line with the basic nature of the White Hot Room. She’s going to kill the already-dead Jean in a weird paradox which is going to kickstart the Phoenix. Presumably, the Phoenix is “at the end of its existence” because of Mother Righteous’s botched attempt to sacrifice it to kickstart her own failed ascension, in Immortal #18.
Prodigy clarifies that while the Krakoans are living people who’ve been physically transported to the White Hot Room, Jean isn’t. She’s in the White Hot Room because she’s dead and her spirit has gone to Phoenix Heaven. Basically, everyone’s been physically transported to an afterlife dimension except for Jean who got there the traditional way.
The Krakoan text on the wall behind Prodigy reads LIFE and FIRE.
PAGES 16-17. Kafka and Exodus.
Exodus confirms that if the Phoenix is successfully restored, the way back to Earth will be closed off, and all the background characters will be stuck there to build a new life in the White Hot Room. The obvious tease is that this is how Krakoa gets taken off the board – but it might still be misdirection.
PAGES 18-20. Sinister opens a portal for the resurrected X-Men to return to Earth.
And boy, it’s a broad definition of X-Men. We see rather more of the resurrectees in this issue compared to Rise #4. In page 18 panel 1 we have:
- Two small groups of actual background characters in the top left and top right.
- Slightly up the slope from everyone else, Proteus and Hope Summers.
- Immediately in front of them, Forget-me-Not (from Legion of X), Egg, Tempus and Elixir.
- Next to the pool, Exodus, Mr Sinister, Destiny and Rasputin.
- Further right, and facing us, Chamber and Archangel.
- The front row facing away from us and nearest the pool are Pixie, a guy who might be Greycrow, Fabian Cortez (!), Cerebella, Transonic, four of the Stepford Cuckoos (the fifth, Phoebe, is with X-Force), Karma, Wolfsbane, Mentallo and Hellion.
- The group in the bottom left are hard to identify, though the woman in blue with the gauntlets is Surge.
- In the bottom right corner, viewed from behind, the Dead X-Men cast: Dazzler, Jubilee, Prodigy, Frenzy and Cannonball.
The returnees are consumed here by buds; we see them emerging from flowers on Krakoa Prime over in Rise #4.
Atlantic Krakoa is virtually wiped out by this, from the look of it, but Hope seems confident that enough of an oasis remains to rebuild. She confirms that she’s stayed behind to do “messiah &%$&”, which rather suggests that she’s expecting to be the second martyr that Exodus mentioned earlier.
PAGES 21-23. Hope lights Jean’s funeral pyre.
Using a fragment of the Phoenix’s force. This does apparent restore Jean in some form – though we don’t see her clearly. The Phoenix is much less comfortable with what’s happened, partly because it’s been resurrected itself. But its discomfort may be to do with the fact that, over in Rise of the Powers of X #4, Enigma has been rounding up the other Dominions to help it to defeat Phoenix.
PAGE 24. Trailers. The Krakoan reads FAMILY REUNION.
Note that Xavier says “Are we all trapped in our nature? We will see.” That suggests that whatever Xavier’s plan is, it requires Moira to act unselfishly.
Re: Destiny’s deal with Xavier- in X-Men Blue: Origins, we saw that Xavier erased Destiny’s memories of Kurt. Presumably,.she wants them back and Xavier is worried they might compromise her effectiveness.
Note that Xavier realizes that he no longer belongs in a leadership role because he sacrificed innocent people to stop Ochis. Destiny and Exodus, however. still think they should be leaders, confirming that they really are villains.
Note that Destiny says that Xavier had TWO reasons for joining the AIs. The second one probably has to do with whatever suggestion he planted in Moira’s head in Rise of the Powers of X 3.
Note that neither Exodus nor Destiny disputes Sinister’s characterization of them as villains. At least they have SOME self-awareness.
Hope’s willingness to sacrifice innocent people reflects her father’s sins. When Cable’s wife was killed by Stryfe, he became obsessed with stopping Stryfe and eventually wound up shooting his friend Hammer in the back and crippling him.
It’s weird that when Exodus asks Rachel how far she would go, no one brings up that Rachel almost destroyed the universe to stop the Beyonder before Storm talked her out of it. I guess GIllen was unaware of that part of her history.
It really does feel like Krakoa broke the characters and set up so thoroughly you have to do something massive to ever put it right again.
Like Hickman’s Avengers, he breaks the toy box.
And he had to reset the entire multiverse to fix that.
And it’s still not entirely clear if the Illuminati murdered the “Justice League” and Namor killed a universe.
@Michael: To be fair, Rachel was in a very different place back then. Pre-Wolverine-stabbed-Spiral-kidnapped Rachel was a half-feral young woman slam dancing her way between passions. Rachel’s had some ruthless incidents after that, but she’s not at all the same person who did that stuff.
Also, Hope, Destiny, Sinister, Exodus. Which one of those would be likely to know about that old interlude with the Beyonder? Exodus presumably knows about Bishop via Hope, and knows Rachel’s basic story about being a Hound from a bad timeline because she seems generally open about it, and probably because the general DoFP timeline is required background reading for the Quiet Council. But the Beyonder just doesn’t seem like something there’s a reason for people to chat about.
Gillen remains the best steward of the X-line after Hickman’s departure… getting two books by him this week was a feast.
But this book gave a moment to remind us that, for all his other great character work, the most exceptional might be finally giving Exodus a personality. For decades, he’s just been used as a plot point, but Gillen made him an X-Man. The scene with him eating the potato was great, as was Hope cheering when someone finally got him to laugh.
I’m hoping that post-Krakoa, his face-turn over the last few years sticks, the same way Emma’s and Magneto’s and Frenzy’s did. He’s far more interesting as a fanatic who’s trying to be part of a society than just another Omega threat.
@Jon R- Xavier, Storm, Kate, Colossus and Magneto all knew and they were on the Council. Besides, Xavier’s conflict was over whether they should go with the “kill kiddie Moira” plan or the “use the Phoenix to save the universe” plan. You’d think he would’ve brought it up:
Exodus: We should use the Phoenix to stop Enigma from destroying the universe.
Xavier: When Rachel had the Phoenix and tried to stop the Beyonder from destroying the universe, the solution she came to was destroying the universe first!
@John- But this story demonstrated why Exodus can NEVER be a hero. The point isn’t that he’s willing to resort to measures that kill innocent people if neccessary- it’s that unlike Xavier he thinks he still deserves to be in a position of leadership after he does.
“Exodus helpfully confirms that there was indeed a Cradle in Atlantic Krakoa, so that the Five have access to everything they need for the purpose.” Like I was wondering below, what do they do for the genetic information?
@Uncanny X-Ben: I do wonder if Hickman’s point was something like “when you sacrifice the ideal of peaceful co-existence, you end up with terrible consequences.” But either he didn’t emphasize that idea strongly enough or he never got the chance to return to it before leaving.
In either case, we’re left with core X-Men who routinely kill humans with no remorse and Xavier pointlessly stepping down as leader for the 100th time. It’s an ugly look for them.
Xavier resorting to killing innocents in order to protect mutantkind and realizing that he can’t return to a leadership role is a good character beat.
It is too bad that it won’t be allowed to last. And that it is so much of a rethread of the situation after Onslaught.
By an optimistic view, this is a perfect setup for some engaging plots in the new Jed MacKay Cyclops-led X-Men book coming. He just might pull it off; he seems to be a good writer and I like what I saw so far of his characterization and his ability to deal with arcane, abstract entities and high stakes dilemmas. Perhaps surprisingly, that is an useful skill for X-Men writers these days.
Whether he (or anyone else) will have the pull to give the best creative directions to the line is another matter entirely.
I have no idea where Hickman was going with his end of Krakoa, but it should be remembered that Hickman showed that a.)mutant ascension leads to a dystopian world which ended up creating the seeds of Krakoa’s destruction (Omega Sentinel travelling back in time to form Orchis), and b.)Moira helped found Krakoa as a trap.
Also, one of Hickman’s aborted plans was for Storm to have her and Black Panther’s son in the World who would become a unifier for both humans and mutants, but Marvel nixed those plans. That makes it sound like Hickman’s intent was to find a way out of the neverending cycles. The fact that Hickman replaced the Storm’s baby idea with the techno-organic virus in those Giant-Size issues and featured Doug communicating with it at the end (“I’ll be seeing you too.”), makes me wonder if Hickman was going to return to that idea with a different unifier.
@Michael: Yeah, I just didn’t see why the X-Men on the Council would have mentioned it in general to Exodus. It’s just not that been relevant up til now as Rachel’s been doing her own stuff, and casually sharing the dirt on your friend’s youthful fuck-ups isn’t something Kate or Storm would do. Maybe if Rachel had put herself in for a Council seat it might have come up from controlled Colossus being influenced to spike her candidacy?
Totally agreed that Xavier would drop that information during this if he needed to, though! But we never saw the conversation and don’t know if it was necessary. Either way, it’s something that Exodus *could* have validly known through some circumstance (Xavier as you said, Kate rambling while drunk, etc), but I don’t think him not knowing it necessarily means that the writer didn’t know about it or forgot it.
I do also wish we could see that initial conversation about the plans between Xavier and others from a flashback. I get why we didn’t, it’d have taken the mystery away from what plan C was, but still it’d have been interesting to see how that went in flashback.
I, for one, am very happy Marvel vetoed that Storm/T’Challa magic baby plot.
Storm already has an alternate future daughter brought back to the present no-one ever did anything with, no need for another.
Also I don’t think it would be a good idea to further tie Storm to Black Panther books in that way. (I know she still visits regularly, but that would be on another level).
Oh, I have no problem with that plot idea being vetoed.
@Chris V: Common misconception re: Krakoa having been a trap from the getgo – it couldn’t have been, because in Omega’s timeline Krakoa worked, the united mutantkind defeated humanity, the machines *and* posthumanity. Karima coming back is somehow the catalyst for Moira turning against mutants (this was never explained), but that simply couldn’t have been her original intent; what’s more, Gillen reinforces this in RotPoX #3 where her child self seems pretty optimistic that mutant solidarity will work.
Right, but what Hickman put on the page (in “Inferno”) was that Moira was going to betray mutants, and Hickman said that his plans with Moira changed at a fairly early date.
“Inferno” also has an infographic (presumably still by Hickman) showing the branching point between life 10A and life 10B – 10A couldn’t have happened in the first place if Moira was going to betray mutants all along.
I think we’re talking about two different things. I was making a point about Jonathan Hickman as the writer. You seem to be referencing the fictional in-story.
Is Xavier just, like, the mental equivalent of the Hulk now? So potentially dangerous that he has to constantly put himself in exile?
Planet Xavier, where the Illuminati ship him off in a rocket?
@Diana: ” Karima coming back is somehow the catalyst for Moira turning against mutants (this was never explained)” Karima founded Orchis and led to the creation of Nimrod far earlier than in her other lives. Moira decided to remove mutants from being a threat to dominance of baseline humanity.
@Chris V: Exactly. The components of “mutant supremacy is bad” were there, but never quite all tied together. I think that idea went out the window — more or less — with Inferno and Hickman’s exit.
And I get that Xavier feels bad for killing some humans and maybe even for creating the disaster that was the Krakoan nation, but stepping aside seems like a cowardly move. He compromised his principles, handed the reins to a bunch of psychopaths, and everything went to shit. He should at least have the moral courage to try to clean up the mess he made.
@Thom H.
What do you think he could attempt to do?
I don’t necessarily disagree that stepping aside is cowardly, but how could he justify doing otherwise? Would he even have the opportunity?
It is not like he could just come to Scott, Ororo, Kurt and Sage and tell them that he goofed badly, but now he is wiser and more transparent and will do better. Even if they believed his sincerity, there would be a crippling trust issue.
It would be irresponsible to simply give him a second chance without at least a period of observation to measure, at a minimum, his emotional and mental stability.
@Thom H- There’s two issues here. The first is that Xavier knows Scott will consider killing humans who were fighting against Orchis murder but he doesn’t want Scott to wind up hating Hope (and maybe driving a wedge between Scott and Cable).
The second problem is this- as Luis alluded to above, now that Xavier has killed people who were fighting AGAINST the villains as part of his plan to save the world, how do the X-Men know he won’t do the same to them? If Xavier is helping Scott and Storm lead an attack against some villains, how do they know that Xavier isn’t secretly planning to kill Havok or Gambit in order to win? If the X-Men need the help of the Fantastic Four or the Avengers to fight a foe, how do the FF or the Avengers know that Xavier isn’t planning on killing the Human Torch or the Black Panther as part of his strategy? It’s impossible for anyone to trust Xavier at this point.
@neutrino: But human dominance isn’t the issue for Moira – her concern was preventing the rise of posthumanity and their assimilation into a Dominion that would be able to perceive her. Karima founding Orchis doesn’t substantially move the needle on that (especially considering Orchis and the Vault – the only actual posthuman faction at the moment – aren’t related)
@Diana: She’s concerned about preventing decimation of mutants by AI, like it happened in her fourth, fifth, sixth, and ninth lives. AI is linked to the rise of post-humanity. As the Librarian said in life six, “Sentinels gave us years. Nimrods gave us decades.”
I’m sure this is been answered and I missed it but how are they bringing back the dead in the white hot room… who’s doing the telepath part?
@Scott- Exodus is a telepath and Hope can duplicate telepathy.