Rise of the Powers of X #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
RISE OF THE POWERS OF X #3
“The Ex Life of Moira”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: R.B. Silva
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Moira, on a bench, is approached by someone holding a gun. This is Moira as she appeared in the opening scene of Powers of X #1, where she approaches Charles Xavier and tells him about her earlier lives. The gun is presumably intended to be the same one that Professor X is holding when he approaches a much younger Moira in the issue itself.
PAGE 2. Young Moira leaves the house expecting her powers to emerge.
As established in House of X #2, Moira is reborn with the full memories of her previous lives but has to go through the motions of being a child in her first few years. This is the day when her powers are expected to emerge; until then, she can die permanently. We saw a version of this same scene at the start of issue #2, from Enigma’s perspective. In this version, from Moira’s perspective, her mother Lady Kinross is more clearly visible. Enigma’s version also has a panel of her looking rather downbeat before she leaves the house; here she seems more enthusiastic.
Based on her previous lives, Moira’s plan for life ten is to bring all the mutants together on Krakoa, though to what end is somewhat glossed over on this page.
PAGES 3-4. Moira finds a time-travelling Professor X waiting for her.
The bench is a call back to their first meeting in Powers of X #1, with the roles reversed and Professor X taking Moira by surprise.
Previous issues of this series and Dead X-Men have been (intentionally) inconsistent about whether Professor X wanted to talk to Moira or just kill her. The answer, apparently, is both.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits. The title, “The Ex Life of Moira”, refers to the title of House of X #2 (“The Uncanny Life of Moira X”).
PAGE 6. In the present, Enigma continues to address Moira.
This continues from the end of the previous issue, where Enigma approached Moira in the middle of some sort of battle involving Orchis (and specifically Nimrod). We didn’t see who they were fighting, though the implication was that it was something in Fall of the House of X that we haven’t reached yet.
Enigma’s comment that “I brought her here”, referring to Omega Sentinel, is explained on the next page.
PAGE 7. Data page – an attempt to explain the personal timeline of Omega Sentinel. In short:
- Omega Sentinel’s timeline diverges shortly before Orchis is formed, though apparently after Krakoa is founded. The opening of House of X #1 does indeed allow for a period of several months between the first settlement of Krakoa and the main action of that issue, and Orchis is described as emerging from various pre-existing organisations, so all this does fit with the idea in Inferno #4 that Orchis was formed by Omega Sentinel (in the sense that she brought them all together).
- According to Omega Sentinel’s account in Inferno #3, in her timeline the mutants won the war against post-humanity, defeating the Children of the Vault. A “lesser” version of Nimrod was created the following year, was sent back in time to fight mutants, and was defeated.
- Again according to Omega Sentinel, mutants won the war against humans and AIs. She said that “all our machine hopes rested in the timeless machine gods – Dominions – to save us… to take us in, so we could be. But the mutants captured the celestial powers – life and death – and using the Phoenix blade, the child of the sun, who wielded it with vigour, destroyed Titan after Titan, Dominion after Dominion”. This is covered in points A, B and C of the timeline here. The art in Inferno #3 shows the Child of the Sun (clutching some sort of spear) and three other figures in silhouette only. One of the other figures looks an awful lot like Deathbird, which might suggest that Hickman had Sunspot in mind for the Child of Sun, but it doesn’t really matter now.
- On Omega Sentinel’s account, “The trickster Titan – betrayer and coward of its brother and sister machines – downloaded my mind and pushed it through a black hole to infect and overwrite the me who lived in the past but had not yet awakened.” Enigma claims here to have been the “trickster Titan”. Enigma’s purpose in sending Omega Sentinel back in time was presumably to hasten a war between mutants and humans which would bring about the circumstances for his own ascension (i.e., he’s guaranteeing that events play out as he already remembers them happening). Anyway, this is points E and F on the timeline.
- As stated in Inferno #3, Omega Sentinel then forms Orchis. The timeline says here “Harvested by Enigma +15. Timeline ends.” It’s not clear what this means, since the timeline is shown as continuing; he might mean that this is fifteen years before the end of time.
- Point G on the timeline simply recaps the creation of Nimrod in Hickman’s X-Men and Nimrod allying himself with Omega Sentinel as Orchis’ AI faction in Inferno #3.
- Point H is the fall of Krakoa in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.
- Point I explains what’s about to happen, at least on the existing timeline: over the next ten years, Orchis transform Mars into a Worldmind thanks to Omega Sentinel’s knowledge of far future technology, and ascend to join a “friendly Dominion”. This is essentially the version of events we saw in issue #1, in the timeline where Dr Stasis tried and failed to ascend.
PAGE 8. Enigma continues his pitch to Moira.
Enigma explains that he is “trapped inside this timeline and its dependents” and wants to use Moira’s connection to deleted timelines to free himself from that timeline. The idea of timelines that are deleted but still exist is, shall we say, confusing, but probably the simplest way to think of it in comics terms is that it’s the equivalent of a character from the current DC Universe visiting the pre-Crisis Earth. It’s out there, because it’s part of the sequence of events that created the current timeline, but it’s not part of the current timeline, and getting to it is a rather trickier proposition.
The unspoken question is why Enigma wants to travel to these other timelines, and what he hopes to achieve by going there. Up until now the emphasis has been on how powerful Enigma is, but he seems preoccupied here with his limitations.
PAGES 9-10. No-Place X comes under attack again.
This is apparently a second wave of the attack we saw last issue; these events were also shown in broad terms in Dead X-Men #3.
PAGES 11-12. Moira and Xavier talk.
This is a very different version of Moira from the post-Inferno version. Although her primary interest does seem to lie in breaking out of her cycle of reboots, she honestly seems to have expected that her plan would work out quite well for other people. There’s also a question of what she means by “trapped”, given that on Destiny’s predictions in House of X #2, this is her last life. Note that she stresses herself as “trapped”, which is the same wording used by Enigma to describe his link to the timeline on page 8.
As in earlier issues of Immortal X-Men, Professor X presents Krakoa as a compromise where he departed from his dream in favour of a vision of mutant separatism and essentialism that he never actually believed in.
He also suggests that he formed the X-Men in part to rebuild a family following the deaths of his parents (and loss of his stepbrother and stepfather). It’s not entirely clear which choice he thinks he’s making between “being part of a family” and “being loved”, or how killing Moira (and thus altering the timeline) bears on that. But fundamentally he views Krakoa as a negation of his dream and seems to think that erasing it from history will restore the dream, even if he is no longer able to serve as its figurehead.
PAGES 13-14. Rasputin learns that Cypher is Sinister and warns Rachel.
Sinister is too preoccupied to keep up the pretence. Rasputin actually does believe that Sinister is working with Xavier, but that doesn’t reassure her in the slightest.
PAGES 15-20. Rasputin and Rachel stop Professor X from killing Moira.
Rachel says that “my team” wants to convince Professor X that Krakoa matters – which seems to suggest that she’s letting the Dead X-Men cast speak to him. If so, we might see more of that in Dead X-Men #4. At any rate, she appears to persuade Professor X that Krakoa was a good thing, at least in some respects. The subtext here may be that since Krakoa was a deviation from Professor X’s vision (and of the traditional X-Men format), he is more than receptive to the idea that he was right all along; note that he immediately gives Moira a warning to “think of something other than yourself”.
Zero Fluid. That’s normally the weird energy source that turned Jonathan Hart into Jack of Hearts, but it seems an odd reference point.
PAGE 21. Data page: Enigma communicates directly with Moira. Some of this is recapping previous exposition about Titans, Dominions and so forth from a data page in Powers of X #5.
“In this timeline, the Phoenix is dead. I have arranged it.” Enigma is presumably referring to the condition of Jean Grey over in Immortal X-Men / X-Men: Forever.
“As god does not exist, and as Voltaire insisted, we should make him.” Referring to Volatire’s line that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”, from an essay in 1770. This isn’t what Voltaire meant, of course. He did believe in God, but his point in that quote was that whether or not it was actually true, religious belief was also necessary to a functioning society.
PAGES 22-23. Moira lets Enigma in and tells Omega Sentinel about him.
Straightforward.
PAGES 24-26. Professor X, Rasputin and Rachel return to the No-Place.
Professor X decides that Mr Sinister has outlived his usefulness, and hell, it’s just a clone anyway.
It’s not yet clear why Professor X thinks that the option of resurrecting Phoenix is worse than rewriting the timeline. After all, one thing we do know is that Phoenix can defeat a Dominion, and the X-Men have access to it, so what’s the big deal. Note that Xavier shoots Rachel with the same high-tech gun that he was about to use on Moira, and there might be some significance to that.
PAGE 27. Trailers. The Krakoan reads FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X.
Between this, Wolverine, and Cable, there was a WHOLE lotta cliffhangers involving people being shot in the X-Books this week, and yet we can pretty much assume they’ll all get better.
I think by “trapped” Moira meant that she is destined to live out her life and die in this lifetime, meaning no more chances to reset the timeline and live her life over. Basically, it seems we are seeing that Moira’s obsession seems to be with immortality rather than creating a perfect reality. This seems contradictory with other comments by Moira which seemed to point out that it was the constant cycles she was trying to escape, that she didn’t want to continue to “die” only to be reborn. Although, Destiny’s line to Moira was that she could maybe have eleven lives if she “made the correct choice”. It was an odd line because another life would seem to imply another failure. Whatever the intent by Hickman, Percy’s ad-hoc justification of having Moira get reborn within a robotic body as an “eleventh life” was certainly not the intent of Hickman.
“Harvested by Enigma. Timeline ends.” is very confusing in how it’s set up on the timeline, but it simply seems to be saying that after the “Trickster Titan” sent Omega Sentinel back in time that ended the 10A timeline. It could have been made clearer by placing it differently and without the “+15”.
Enigma’s purpose wasn’t simply to hasten a war between mutants and humans. That war was was already fought in Life 10A with Krakoa victorious. In the Life10A timeline, the events which led to Essex gaining ascendancy were not possible (Sins of Sinister, Stasis with the CotV, etc.) Enigma’s purpose was to stop Krakoa from winning the war, hence tricking Omega Sentinel into founding Orchis, thinking she was doing so to achieve Machine dominance.
If the Dominions/Enigma exist outside of time and space, then how does Enigma not have access to Moira’s earlier lifetimes? Prior to Dead X-Men, it was accepted that they were gone when Moira died and reset the Earth-616 timeline, but we know that the “Dead X-Men” are able to travel back in time on those pathways, meaning it should be accessible to Enigma.
I have found myself losing all interest in the Krakoa era now. I find myself continually wondering what this would have been like if Hickman had remained in the book. It’s very apparent that this is a completely different direction that Hickman’s end game, as the books are geared towards setting up the status quo for the Brevoort reboot. It’s hard to care about any of this anymore. It feels like people just running around to stretch out the next few months so Brevoort’s vision can take over.
“Based on her previous lives, Moira’s plan for life ten is to bring all the mutants together on Krakoa, though to what end is somewhat glossed over on this page.”
I think the idea is that Moira originally intended for Krakoa to serve as a haven for mutants and only decided to turn it into a trap years later.
Enigma being the Trickster Titan was foreshadowed in several places:
In Immortal X-Men 3, one of Destiny’s visions is “the Dominion of Orchis”.
In Children of the Vault 3, Serafina sees that a Dominion is manipulationg Ochis- “They are not even in control! It wears them like a glove– a mind behind comprehension forces their every move!”
In Resurrection of Magneto 1, Adam Brashear concludes there is a connection between Orchis and Enigma.
Finally, Nimrod is part of Elgar’s Enigma Variations, and we were shown in X-Men Forever 1 that Enigma took his name from the Enigma Variations.
“As stated in Inferno #3, Omega Sentinel then forms Orchis. The timeline says here “Harvested by Enigma +15. Timeline ends.” It’s not clear what this means, since the timeline is shown as continuing; he might mean that this is fifteen years before the end of time.”
This is probably a typo. In the data page at the end of issue 1, F reads “Harvested by Enigma +!5. Timeline ends.” it must have been reused in this data page by mistake.
Note that Forge explained in issue 226 that when his power-neutralizing gun was used on Storm, it didn’t completely take away her powers, just her ability to consciously use them- the weather sometimes changed in response to her moods, for example. It appears that Forge’s gun didn’t completely take away Moira’s connection to deleted timelines, either. (Which makes Mystique and Destiny look like idiots for trying to kill her if her powers weren’t completely negated- if half the universe was destroyed when she died, that would be a Very Bad Thing,)
To resurrect a Phoenix you have to kill a Phoenix first–which may be why Xavier shoots Rachel here.
That panel on page 11 where Xavier says “stop” and there’s a “zzzzzzz” sound effect is very odd. Wonder if something’s going on there.
Xavier fires at Moira with his left hand and at Rachel with his right hand, curiously. Sinister dexterity?
“Being loved”: killing Moira, or indeed killing Rachel, makes Xavier a traitor and a villain. (The “Timeless” look ahead called the person in the mansion “Prisoner X,” but now that person is referred to as “Inmate X”; my suspicion is that the distinction will be that nobody is keeping him there but himself.)
Note that Enigma claims that the real Karima’s personality was destroyed when he caused the future Omega Sentinel’s personality to take over her body. That means that even if the X-Men defeat Enigma, the real Karima’s personality won’t return- she’s effectively dead. It would be nice to see some of the X-Men who knew her react to this.
We know that Sinister will be appearing in Heir of Apocalypse. I’m wondering if he’ll be back later on in this crossover or this is it until Heir of Apocaylpse.
I think Xavier shot Rachel so she’ll be able to contact Jean in the afterlife or something along those lines.
Hmm…Xavier implanted something in Moira’s mind saying she wouldn’t remember any of this. Is Xavier still “Sinisterized” (per Douglas’ comment)? If the intent of Moira’s thought about “uniting all mutants” was to show that Moira did not intend to betray the mutants at first, could Xavier have tampered with her mind to cause her to betray Krakoa, knowing that Moira’s betrayal of Krakoa leads to the nation’s downfall?
Could Xavier’s line to Moira to “think of something other than yourself” apply to the fact that Moira is still a mutant at this point in time? If she is solely helping mutants because she is a mutant, would thinking of “something other than yourself” refer to Moira deciding to wipe out the mutants? Hence, perhaps Xavier caused Moira to betray Krakoa.
Xavier says that Krakoa is a deviation from his “dream” so the “Sinister” version of himself could not allow Krakoa to exist.
@Chris V- From the solicits, it looks like Moira will make the right choice in issue 5 and get her eleventh life, whatever that is.
Re: the ending- I don’t think it’s just to make way for Breevort. Enigma has been foreshadowed since the first issue of Immortal X-Men, long before Breevort came aboard. I think the problem was Hickman revealing that the Trickster Titan was responsible for Future Karima taking over Karima’s body meant that the Trickster Titan- or a Dominion- would be the Final Boss of the Krakoan Era and not Orchis. Which wouldn’t be a problem if Hickman had actually bothered to introduce the Trickster Titan or give the Dominions some personality. So they decided the Trickster Titan/ Dominion had to have a personality based on one of the X-Men’s main enemies. The X-Men’s top 5 enemies are Magneto, Apocalypse. Sinister, Mystique and Shaw and they went with Sinister because of Gillen’s love of Sinister but also because none of the others would really work. (I know you’ve suggested that the Trickster Titan could have been Warlock but Warlock bodyjacking one of the X-Men’s allies would have been horrible character assassination,)
I don’t think that Xavier caused Moira to betray the mutants since Sinister wanted Moira dead as much as anyone. I think whatever Xavier did is intended to redeem Moira. We’ll see if it works.
@Douglas- I think that Moria still might be Traitor X and/.or Inmate X.
Basically, I just wanted to see what Hickman’s intentions were with the “Trickster Titan”. If it was Warlock merged with Krakoa, as the evidence heavily pointed toward, what was the “Trickster Titan”’s true goals? Considering the sympathy that Hickman had towards Doug and Warlock as probably the two most purely heroic characters of Hickman’s Krakoa era, I don’t see Hickman’s intent to have been making Doug/Warlock/Krakoa the villains.
The ret-con of the “Trickster Titan” as more Enigma ends up being another whitewashing of the mutants/Krakoa. The evil villain was responsible for sending Omega Sentinel back in time to sabotage Krakoa, whose victory was the only thing stopping the ascendancy of Essex/Enigma.
Under Hickman, the intent seemed to be that “mutants win” simply leads to another dystopian future and the “Trickster Titan” is in the role of preventing mutant dominion.
Of course, this seems to lead to a lot of horrible outcomes in the present also (with the foundation of Orchis), so it would have been really interesting to see where Hickman planned to go.
Michael said: “Which wouldn’t be a problem if Hickman had actually bothered to introduce the Trickster Titan or give the Dominions some personality.”
Okay, this sentence made me laugh out loud. I mean, love him or hate him (and I fall in the middle), has Hickman ever given *anyone* some personality?
To be clear, I’m just making a joke here. I respect that Hickman’s got some great ideas (though I personally have no interest in reading them), and I definitely am not making fun of Michael’s choice of phrase.
@Chris V- Except that Enigma wouldn’t have ascended in the first place if the Krakoans hadn’t allowed Sinister into their midst and if Xavier hadn’t forced the mutants through the gates. Enigma is a result of the Krakoans’ own hubris.
Xavier forcing the mutants through the gates isn’t an example of hubris. It’s an example of the creation of Orchis stopping Krakoa from achieving victory. Xavier did what he felt he had to do to save mutantkind from Orchis’ attempted genocide. It was Mother Righteous’ tampering with the gates which led to the mutants not ending up on Mars, as was the plan.
If Orchis didn’t exist, it would have been impossible for Enigma to exist. That’s why Enigma had to send Omega Sentinel back in time because Krakoa being allowed to win negates the possibility of Enigma existing. Enigma is a product of his own tampering with the timelines, just as the eventual natural dominance of the Machines not happening in Life 10 was the result of Moira tampering with the timelines.
The lesson from Life 10A and Enigma now is that mutants were right in their hubris as the endpoint of Krakoa is mutant dominion, not Enigma.
In Ewings defenders, the Beyonders said they contained Enigma. I think the idea is that while Enigma can travel across all of time and space he is limited to the timeline where he was created and any branches off of that.
So Xavier is planning to ressurrect Phoenix… or so he has told Rachel, anyway.
I realize that much has happened since 1980, but I sure wish there was some sort of on panel acknowledgement of how weird that is.
How and when did Xavier ever acquire enough understanding of the nature and attributes of the Phoenix to even start such an attempt?
Why does he – and for that matter Rachel – even believes that Phoenix is dead or, indeed, that she is in some way mortal?
Xavier having to choose between having a family and being loved I think means he can either be “good” and have his family die or kill Moira and Krakoa to save his family but be hated by it.
And it does seem this book is working on the assumption Moira honestly did belive in Krakoa and first but that she gave up on it.
In PoX, Omega Sentinel did whisper that Nightcrawler’s name was Kurt when one of the Orchis members called him “the mutant”, so Hickman might have intended for her to retain her original personality.
@neutrino- But it was Hickman in Inferno who introduced the idea that Karima’s future self had infected and overwritten her present day self. (I have to wonder if Hickman changed his mind about Karima between Powers of X and Inferno.) The difference is that Hickman left open the door that it might be possible to restore Karima’s original personality while GIllen made it clear Enigma had essentially murdered Karima.
“Zero Fluid. That’s normally the weird energy source that turned Jonathan Hart into Jack of Hearts, but it seems an odd reference point.“
Since Sinister’s whole deal is appropriating mutant powers, could “Zero” here be referring to Zero the Generation Hope character? As in these Sinister clones are made up of his kind of amorphous bio-gunk?
Relatedly, I’m pretty sure Sinisterized Doug’s use of the code phrase “Untouchable” implies his force field comes from Unus.
Good call, especially since Zero is a Gillen character and he’s already been used as an infinite source of biomatter in Sins of Sinister.
While I have some mild curiosity about what Hickman might have intended for an ending, I remain baffled at why so many people seem to think it would be any better or more coherent than what we’re getting. Hickman writes *brilliant* setups, but I have yet to read a single good *ending* from him. That’s part of why I thought HoXPoX was genius — it *didn’t* end, it just sequed into a new status quo where anything could happen.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Hickman left Krakoa explicitly *because* he didn’t have a good ending, and wanted to be remembered as the architect of a fascinating era, and not the person who rode it into the ground.
I thought Zero Fluid might have been meant as a reference to Maverick’s brief time as Agent Zero, when he had acid powers. But it makes more sense that the clones are based on Kenji’s powers and Xavier just explained it badly.
@Michael Hickman seemed to be leaving open the possibility that Karima’s original personality remained despite the infection, with the possibility that it could be restored as you said. He did have the intention of returning the toys to the box.
@Chris V: How did the evidence heavily point toward Warlock being the Trickster Titan, since he’s neither a trickster nor a Titan? Neither is he really a betrayer of his brethren nor a coward.
The biggest example of Krakoa’s errors would be Emma revealing Moira’s power to the rest of the Council, esp. Sinister, enabling the creation of the Moira engine and Enigma.
@neutrino: I can’t speak for Chris V, but Warlock’s earliest appearances have him seeking sanctuary because he won’t fight his father, Magus, to the death.
Along with his alliance with mutantkind to oppose machine dominance, that could put him in the “coward” and “betrayer pf his brethren” categories.
If Warlock had been more heavily featured in the Dominion storyline, I would have been a lot more interested. Maybe there’s still time.
@Alexx Kay: I thought Hickman’s Secret Wars was a pretty good ending to his run on the Avengers and Fantastic Four. It probably didn’t match the brilliance of his set-ups, but it was a solid closer.
I maintain that it’s Hickman’s blah second acts that really ruin his storytelling. He’s got the beginning and ending figured out with basically nothing in between. So I’m also curious about how he would have ended Krakoa.
If the writing on the “main” X-Men title had been better, if there had been less weird and seemingly-rushed storytelling decisions, and if the Dominion plot was less confusing… people would still want to know what Hickman planned and possibly assume it would be better than what we’ve been getting, but not as many. I’ve enjoyed the Gillen & Ewing comics more than most of Hickman’s X-comics, but the elements I listed above have knocked the era down a peg. I liked this issue, and I have confidence that the Gillen & Ewing books will end well. If only we didn’t have the bad Gerry Duggan comics clogging up the line…
@Omar Karindu: That’s not really heavily pointing to it. He’s usually not considered a trickster, rather as naive. His father didn’t call him a coward, especially after beating him twice. He hasn’t especially active against AI, being dead during the Phalanx Covenant. He even made peace with his father at the end.
[…] OF THE POWERS OF X #3. (Annotations here.) The Rise half of this event continues to feel much more coherent than Fall, without the same sense […]