The Complete Moira: Part 2
Last time we covered Moira’s history before the recruitment of the X-Men. This time, I’m going to go through her appearances from there through to her first published appearance, near the start of the Claremont run. This is, if anything, even more piecemeal than part 1 – that’s largely because these are mostly one-off stories published in no particular order. It settles down once we get to her debut.
Classic X-Men #43 (back-up) by Chris Claremont, Mike Collins & Joe Rubinstein (“Flights of Angels”, January 1990). This is the back-up strip which appeared alongside the reprint of X-Men #137, the climax of the Dark Phoenix Saga. The first page has a montage of flashbacks to the life of Jean Grey. They include an unexplained panel of young Jean Grey protecting Charles Xavier from an unseen attacker, while Moira bundles him to safety.
This ties into the vexed question of what on earth Charles and Jean were doing together before Jean joined the X-Men. X-Men #1 (1963) shows Jean arriving at the school with the rest of the team already formed, and seemingly not knowing much about it. Claremont established a back story where Xavier actually met her first, long before the other X-Men, and helped her to control her powers. What he didn’t establish was any good reason for the two of them to conceal that fact from the rest of the team. But occasionally he hinted at some sort of secret pre-X-Men adventuring career for Charles and Jean, which presumably contains the answer – and this flashback seems to be part of that. The most explicit reference is in Uncanny X-Men #381 (2000), where Jean talks about finding a secret cave full of treasure “before the founding of the X-Men, during a period when Charles Xavier and I worked alone.” It remains an undeveloped part of continuity, but apparently Moira’s involved in it somewhere.
Uncanny X-Men #273 by Chris Claremont and various artists (“Whose House Is This, Anyway?”, February 1991) Along similar lines, this story has a brief flashback in which Jean recalls Charles showing her Cerebro for the first time. Jean looks like a child. Moira is there, and for some reason she expresses doubts about the wisdom of the whole exercise – both the concept of being able to track mutants anywhere in the world, and the decision to involve young Jean. This scepticism about Cerebro seems odd in the light of the Hickman retcon, but maybe it’s all for Jean’s benefit.
X-Men: Origins – Emma Frost by Valerie D’Orazio, Karl Moline & Rick Magyar (“Will & Love”, May 2010). There’s room for debate about whether the X-Men: Origins one-shots are actually in continuity. Most of them fit well enough, but a couple of them are completely haywire. Emma Frost doesn’t pose any massive problems, though. It includes a scene of Moira and Charles visiting teenage Emma at home, shortly after her powers emerge, and trying to recruit her as a student. She tells them to get lost.
Uncanny X-Men #300 by Scott Lobdell, John Romita Jr & Dan Green (“Legacies”, May 1993). This has a flashback in which Charles recalls discussing his newly-formed X-Men with Moira. He insists that it’s a school; she calls them a “mutant strike force” and teases him about naming the team after himself. He also tells her about three possible future X-Men that he’s already identified – Storm, Colossus and Nightcrawler. Moira then tells him that Interpol has learned that Magneto is investigating the security arrangements at Cape Citadel (which he attacks in issue #1).
This fits with the common take on Moira as a sympathetic sounding board who’s sceptical about the superhero trappings of the X-Men – broadly, a supportive ally on the topic of the dream, but deeply unconvinced about the wisdom of dressing up in funny costumes and fighting people. Under the Hickman regime, this may be because she’s seen Charles going through the superhero team route before, and she’s waiting for him to realise that it doesn’t work. Quite why this flashback has scientist Moira relaying Interpol intelligence is a bit of a mystery. The HoxPox retcon may help to explain her gathering information that her role wouldn’t otherwise seem to justify.
There’s some vagueness as to how much involvement Moira had when it came to recruiting the original X-Men. Xavier’s recruitment drive is shown in a series of 1960s back-up strips, and since she’s not in them, any role has to be backstage. This flashback suggests that Moira is only just finding out who the X-Men are, but she ought to at least recognise Jean. The Emma Frost one-shot has her actively helping recruitment. And in Chaos War: X-Men #1, Claremont has Moira’s ghost say that she vetted all of the X-Men except for Jean – but obviously, HoxPox has retconned away Moira’s afterlife appearances. (Hardly the first time this has happened. But we’ll get back to that.)
X-Men: Legacy vol 1 #208 by Mike Carey and various artists (“From Genesis to Revelations”, February 2008). Among its many flashbacks, this has a scene of Charles showing Moira the blueprints for the Danger Room. Again, Moira expresses concern that Charles isn’t really training young mutants but developing a private army.
Moira has very limited interaction with the X-Men during their 1960s run (unsurprisingly, since she hadn’t been created yet). But X-Men: Deadly Genesis reveals that she opens a facility called Muir-MacTaggert Research & Development, a few hours from the X-Men’s school; Charles helps to design it. This is the home of the Mutant Genome Project (or “Project: Mutant”), where Karl Lykos briefly worked before becoming Sauron. Lykos’s involvement doesn’t seem to affect the plot of Deadly Genesis at all, so presumably it was just an attempt to nail Muir-MacTaggert onto a previously-mentioned part of Xavier’s back story.
Deadly Genesis suggests that Moira is spending extended periods at Muir-MacTaggert in New York, which begs the question of who’s looking after poor Kevin back at Muir Isle. It seems unlikely that she just locks him in his holding cell on his own for weeks at a time, but you never know. We never hear of any other staff from this period; maybe something awful befalls them at the hands of Kevin.
Deadly Genesis #4 says that “right after” the X-Men find Alex Summers, Moira helps Charles to do some tests on him, which is when she first meets Cyclops/Scott Summers. Their encounter is removed from Cyclops’ memory after Giant-Size X-Men #1, but we’ll come to that. Alex first appeared in X-Men vol 1 #54, in which Scott has already met him and already knows that he’s a mutant – something Alex doesn’t discover until later in the story. Presumably that was established in the tests mentioned in Deadly Genesis. Alex’s visit to Moira must take place before issue #53 (since after that, Xavier is meant to be dead, and he remains absent for the rest of the Silver Age run).
X-Men: The Hidden Years #10 by John Byrne & Tom Palmer (“Home is Where the Hurt is…”, September 2000). Jean has recently been to space and had a first brush with Phoenix, so Charles takes her to Muir Isle for Moira to run some tests. Jean worries about why Muir Isle is being kept secret even from the other X-Men, and Moira gives her the usual arguments about security that you’d expect from a story that’s taking this at face value. We’ll come back to the question of what’s so secret about Muir Isle in future instalments. For now, suffice to say that this doesn’t quite contradict Deadly Genesis, since that story makes Cyclops aware of Moira, but not of Muir Isle.
X-Men: Deadly Genesis by Ed Brubaker, Trevor Hairsine & Kris Justice (November 2005 to May 2006). This miniseries contains a string of flashbacks and back-up stories, in which Moira recruits a group of her own students and brings them to Muir-MacTaggert Research & Development: Petra, Darwin, Sway & Kid Vulcan. For those who aren’t familiar, Vulcan turns out to be the third Summers brother, and a pretty important character; Darwin has later stints in the X-Men and X-Factor; and the other two are cannon fodder. Moira runs training sessions with her four students, and Kid Vulcan is particularly keen on the idea of being a superhero one day, but for whatever reason she keeps them separate from Charles’ X-Men. Maybe she’s thinking of them as spares; or maybe she just doesn’t want all her eggs in one basket.
Charles visits to watch one of the training sessions, and Scott is brought along to train with Kid Vulcan – again, Scott’s memory of this will be wiped later. One of the back-up strips also shows Charles and Moira having another stab at recruiting Emma Frost. By this point Emma has left home and become a Hellfire Club dancer. Once again, she tells them to get lost, and Charles erases her memories of the encounter. Moira is generally a bit disturbed by Charles’ casual track-covering (though it’s in character for him in the Silver Age time frame), no doubt because on some level she just has to trust him to keep his word to stay out of her mind.
We’ll return to Deadly Genesis shortly, but first…
X-Men vol 2 #2 by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee and Scott Williams (“Firestorm”, November 1991). This has a flashback in which Magneto – who was de-aged to infancy in Defenders vol 1 #16 – is handed over to Moira’s care on Muir Isle. Moira finds indications of an instability in Magneto’s central nervous system, suggesting that his powers may cause mental illness. Moira hopes to modify Magneto’s DNA to eliminate the instability, and then use the same process to cure Proteus. Note that while this idea only becomes central to the plot in 1991, Moira actually talks about it as soon as Muir Isle comes on the scene in the late 70s – but more of that in the next post.
X-Men vol 2 #1-3 establish that Moira does indeed try to use this process on Magneto, and also that it doesn’t work (or at least not for long). Those issues are ambiguous as to whether Moira already knows that the process is ineffective, but the plot only really makes sense if she finds out during the story. If so, the next few years – including the entire stint when Moira and Magneto first become allies – takes place when Moira privately believes that she has done something to alter his mind and make him more rational.
X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #2 by Fabian Nicieza, Jan Duursema and various inkers (“Point Blank”, September 1993). As an addendum to the previous entry, this has a brief flashback of Moira reading a book while toddler Magneto plays in a rockpool. The emphasis is slightly different here: as well as altering Magneto’s DNA, Moira hopes to simply raise him better this time around. The implication is that this is her second chance at motherhood, and a chance to avoid a repeat of Proteus – though her idea of what motherhood actually involves remains a bit suspect. Getting a second chance as a parent turns out to be a recurring theme in Moira’s stories, including the undertone that this is less about Proteus and more about proving something about (and to) herself.
Though Moira isn’t in it, Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4 (February 1975) is worth mentioning. It came out a few months before Giant-Size X-Men #1, it’s by Chris Claremont and Len Wein, and it’s the debut of Jamie Madrox. In that story, Madrox is a deranged naïf who has been living alone on a Kansas farm since his parents died six years ago, and stumbles into New York looking for help when his powers go out of control. (The implication is that Madrox has been completely isolated for six years, so I suppose we’re meant to take it that he’s been subsistence farming rather than selling his produce.) Charles Xavier shows up to calm him down and cart him away, promising to “cure his madness and teach him how to cope with his power”.
The next we hear of Madrox is in X-Men #104, which offhandedly mentions that Moira left him in charge of Muir Isle while she was away – so evidently he was cured pretty quickly and dropped off on Muir Isle for safekeeping, perhaps because he’s more used to the isolated life of the island. X-Men #126 mentions that he declines an offer to join the X-Men, and he’ll remain a background supporting character until he finally joins X-Factor in 1991.
X-Men: Deadly Genesis (cont.) And so we reach the massive retcon of 2006.
With the regular X-Men captured by Krakoa in Giant-Size X-Men #1, Charles asks to borrow Moira’s students. Despite her misgivings, she gives them the choice of whether to go (perhaps because she always viewed them as the understudies). Predictably, the hero-obsessed Kid Vulcan signs up the whole group, despite Moira encouraging him to reflect on it. Charles gives the makeshift “X-Men” psychic training which feels to them like months of work but in fact is merely hours. Moira protests about children being put at risk, but Charles insists that they need to know how to fight. Understandably, Moira is furious to learn later that her students have all apparently been killed in action, and amazed that Charles has responded by erasing Cyclops’ memory of events.
Moira records a tearful video diary about all this, in which she tells herself to “remember what a total and utter bastard Charles Xavier really is”, even though she knows she will forgive him. The whole story very much positions Moira as a frustrated and ineffective moral compass, and a victim of his manipulative single-mindedness. Tonally, that doesn’t fit all that well with Hickman’s interpretation, but there’s nothing here that causes fundamental problems; she knows the kids, she’s upset that they’re all dead. (The bigger problem for the Hickman run is Deadly Genesis‘ depiction of Krakoa, but that’s another story.)
X-Men Legacy vol 1 #217 by Mike Carey, Scot Eaton and Andrew Hennessy (“Original Sin, part 2”, October 2008). The first of many, many “Moira and Charles discuss the plot” appearances. This one is part of a crossover with Wolverine: Origins. Shortly after joining the X-Men, an angry and brainwashed Wolverine tries to murder Charles, and gets subdued. Charles and Moira discuss what to do with the raving lunatic.
Oh, and this is the chronologically earliest appearance of Moira’s signature jumpsuit.
Wolverine’s memory of all this is presumably erased as part of the mind-wipe which Xavier gives him in another flashback, later in the storyline. That explains why he doesn’t recognise her when she shows up for the first time. But according to Chaos War: X-Men #1, Thunderbird also sees Moira in some video calls during his brief time as an X-Man. If that’s right – and granted, it’s Chaos War: X-Men, full of ghosts of characters who turned out not to be dead after all – then perhaps Charles wasn’t so concerned about keeping Moira herself a secret until a little bit later. More about the whole secrecy thing next time, though.
Classic X-Men #2 by Chris Claremont & Dave Cockrum (October 1986). This reprint of issue #94 has an added scene in which Moira crosses paths with little Rahne Sinclair (who has just missed the school bus) and then gets a telegram – yes, a telegram – from Charles, asking her to come to America and help.
And that leads into Moira’s first published appearance… which is where we’ll join her in the next post.
Very informative!
I’ve been wondering about the Deadly Genesis version of Krakoa since HoXPoX. The fact that DG retcons it into saying unintelligible gibberish fits with the latest retcon.
Has anything in the Hickman era explicitly connected the entity from Giant Size X-Men #1 to the place the mutants are all living now, besides the name? I ask because after the recent X-Men #2, seems like little chunks of Krakoa or Arakko could be candidates for the enemy in GSX #1.
Yes, characters have pointed out that Krakoa has tried to eat them in past (Marauders springs to mind). The explanation for why Krakoa is now safe is that with so many mutants on the island, Krakoa can feed harmlessly on all the mutants’ energy without anyone really noticing.
Another Krakoa oddity is 2018’s Journey Into Mystery: Birth of Krakoa one-shot. This comic implies that atomic bomb tests in 1945 created Krakoa.
Of course, HoXPoX reveals that Krakoa is millennia old and even has siblings (or whatever). Maybe the atomic bomb test just woke it up? Or something?
Also, Krakoa is able to communicate with Sgt. Nick Fury and strike a bargain with him. I guess Krakoa became more picky about who to communicate with over the following decades?
HOXPOX clearly definied which mutants were Omega level, and the text pages confirm that Moira has an interest in them. She deals with a couple of them in this pre-appearance period in either a mothering or mentoring role: Jean, Magneto, Proteus, and Vulcan. She also allows the rescue mission in Deadly Genesis which rescues Iceman. And she pushed Xavier away which indirectly results in Legion being born, though that’s a stretch.
So the Omegas with active powers in this era that she doesn’t encounter are Storm (whom, as Paul points out, she does know is on Xavier’s rsdar), Franklin Richards (a toddler), and Mister M. (Exodus has his powers at this point, but he’s also in a coma in a cave, so.) Retcon in a meeting between Moira and Mr. M anytime before District X and you have textual grounds for contending that Moira’s been secretly working to gather and guide Omegas for decades.
Maybe Nick Fury has secretly been a mutant this whole time. That coupled with the infinity formula could explain away stuff over the years.
It is just an offhand line in one of the early installments of the Proteus story in the Claremont/Byrne run, but we are told that Xavier offered Jamie Madrox membership in the X-Men and was turned down because he prefered to work with Moira in Muir Island. Issue #126, just before he tells how he reacted to meeting Proteus.
Allan M-Per the retcon in House of X, Moira and Xavier were explicitly plotting the best genetic matches to allow them to birth Omega-level mutant offspring.
It’s not a stretch that Moira drove Xavier away to give birth to Legion. According to Hickman, that was their plan.
Thanks, Luis – I’ve changed that.
Chris, that’s quite interesting, I hadn’t heard that! Interesting
Didn’t Xavier wipe Moira’s memories of the Deadly Genesis team? That’s pretty hard to square with Hickman’s story.
Just Scott’s if I remember correctly.
Wish he wiped my memory of it.
@Chris V:
I had forgotten and you are correct. Moira does indeed write that she found genetic matches for herself and Xavier to produce a reality warping mutant. It’s not specified if Xavier knows about the genetic matches, though. And while Xavier doesn’t know until years later that David is his son, Moira does know, as established in Legion’s first appearance in New Mutants #25.
I feel like it makes more sense to be a Moira scheme, where she manipulated Xavier into meeting Gabrielle Haller in the wake of breaking off the engagement – presumably referring her to him as a potential patient that his telepathy could cure. If he’s in on the plan to get Gabrielle pregnant, then why did he break it off with her, without getting her pregnant so far as he knew, and not keep in touch?
At a stretch, Xavier initiates the plan to get Gabrielle pregnant, develops feelings for her, decides the plan is unethical and abandons it (and her). Moira doesn’t make a fuss since she finds out about David and proceeds to monitor him. This still means that young, idealistic Charles Xavier was committed to a plan of telepathically influencing, seducing and impregnating a catatonic Holocaust survivor, which is… a lot.
This is an instance where the sliding timeline could help the situation.
Instead of Gabrielle Heller, it could be Gabrielle’s daughter that Xavier has a relationship with, if Xavier is now too young.
Mr. Sinister has always had a hangup about coupling mutants to make better/more powerful mutants. Mr. Sinister was shown to be mentoring Moira in Excalibur #14 (2005), which also shows Mr. Sinister experimenting on Gabrielle Haller at Dachau.
What If…? Mr. Sinister put the idea into Moira’s head about finding mates to produce Omega level mutants? And that Haller was a good fit for Xavier? And maybe that Joe MacTaggert was a good fit for her?
I’m not sure though, because Moira knew not to trust Sinister from previous lives.
She was upset that Xavier and Magneto were forming an alliance with Sinister.
It does sound more like a Sinister plot.
Plus, the hints given originally for Sinister’s motives were that he was trying to breed a mutant powerful enough to defeat Apocalypse.
That doesn’t work with Hickman’s ret-cons.
Isn’t Thunderbird or Warpath perturbed at one of them being dead for so long as part of a long term plan?
The only reason Warpath joined the Hellions was to avenge a death Xavier planned to undo
It’s not a part of the plan though. Nobody organised Thunderbird’s death in order to achieve some goals. And it’s not like he could have been brought back earlier (I mean, not by Xavier’s plan of The Five), but somebody delayed that due to ‘the plan’.
Deadly Genesis is a weird one. I always for the feeling Brubaker had planned a longer run which didn’t eventuate for whatever reason.
Deadly Genesis and Rise and Fall of the Shi’Ar Empire are definitely an arc. It gets weird with the Extremists, a story that’s a set up for nothing at all – in contrast to what Carey was doing at the same time it’s not a lead-in to Messiah Complex and after MC it doesn’t get picked up anywhere.
Then it’s MC time – which I guess Brubaker had no say over whether Uncanny will participate in or not. Uncanny had nothing to do with MC before the crossover and the ‘let’s move to San Francisco’ thing that happens after the crossover is also something that doesn’t really connect with what happened in MC.
And I like MC very much! It springs from adjectiveless X-Men, it’s a decent finale for New X-Men and it throws interesting wrenches into X-Factor that impact everything else the series does afterwards. But Uncanny is just sort of there.
Anyway, my point was supposed to be: maybe Brubaker had a longer run planned, but that got derailed and curtailed by MC and the editorial mandate with the move to San Francisco. But considering how the Etremists don’t have anything to do with Deadly Genesis and Rise and Fall, I can’t help but wonder if… that was it – DG and RaFotSAE was the run Brubaker had in mind and the rest was just filler stuff because he was asked to steer the so called flagship title through the status quo change. After MC it’s the weird ‘hippie illusion in SF/Russian road trip’ mess of a story, and after that Fraction comes on board. Technically they co-write the next story, but the San Francisco setup seems to me to be mostly Fraction. Mainly because he’s the one that sticks and writes the book for years afterwards.
/after doing some checking/ wait, Fraction was on Uncanny for only two years and a bit? A little over 30 issues? I was certain his run was much longer than that.
30 issues is an eternity in comics anymore. 🙂
Also, it occurs to me that this Complete Moira project is going to come in handy when the announced Moira comic is published. So much easier to cross-reference what has come before.
Re: original Thunderbird, doesn’t one of the Sinister Secrets imply that the Thunderbird that died was a Sinister in disguise or something? Clue to do with red boots etc. Hence why the first Proudstar brother is conspicuous by his absence.
I don’t have it in front of me, but I think the secret was that Sinister had spliced Thunderbird’s DNA into his own to create a (or the first?) mutant Sinister.
Kind of wondering when the Sinister shoe is going to drop in the new X-books. Man’s got a lot of secrets that need some explaining.
It was definitely that, Thom.
It makes me wonder about what is the significance of that fact.
Why would Sinister choose Thunderbird’s DNA?
Thunderbird didn’t have the greatest power set, after all.
I wonder if this will end up being a plot point when Krakoa gets around to cloning Thunderbird.
Could this interfere with the law to never create multiple copies of the same person?
I mean, it is Essex and not John Proudstar.
Still, will two individuals with the same DNA somehow end up causing a problem with Krakoan laws?
Same/similar DNA doesn’t seem to stop Xavier and Proteus from existing at the same time, so I don’t think mutant Sinister and Thunderbird would be against the rules.
And I agree: why Thunderbird? Unless he had some power that we never saw. Or unless Hickman needed to use a character who a) had been to Krakoa before and b) was no longer alive.
Without going through all the hox/pox annotations, is there a list of the most noteworthy mutants NOT resurrected yet? Destiny obviously but who are the other big names?
El Aguila?
Mostly from memory so I may be wrong: Thunderbird I, Destiny, Blindfold, Tempo, Joseph, Rusty Collins, Siena Blaze, Fitzroy and Fantomex still seem to be dead (huge asterisks around the latter). Destiny and Blindfold are banned from resurrection.
Most of the dead New X-Men (Wallflower, Wither, Tag, etc,) are still dead..
We’ve seen one revived Hellion (Bevatron) but the others haven’t cropped up.
Of the old Freedom Force crew, Pyro’s back but Avalanche, Stonewall, Crimson Commando and Super Sabre are still dead.
Most of the dead Acolytes are still dead so far. And man, I’d forgotten how many dead Acolytes there are. They die almost as much as the Teen Titans!
All the dead X-Force/Statix crew are still dead.
Petra and Sway from Deadly Genesis still seem to be dead.
The Nasty Boys are still dead.
(El Aguila is still alive, but lost his powers on M-day.)
At the risk of being crucified, I guessed Hickman chose Thunderbird based on the notion that he was the first dead X-Man (which would mean he was either unaware of or ignored Changeling, whose powers actually make a lot more sense as the basis for Sinister’s powers). Of course we’re also completely ignoring a quality origin established in Gambit’s Nicieza-penned ongoing that did a better job establishing where Sinister got his powers, why he was linked to Gambit, and likely the genesis of his interest in mutants.
On this topic. I’m deeply uncomfortable with the idea that Xavier would hand over the corpse of one of his students to an inherently evil mad scientist, and Sinister’s entire role in this retcon really grosses me out. Even if I bought into the concept of “mutant identity” I don’t understand the trade-off. Sinister has always been an unrepentant and iredeemable villain. Perhaps instead of piling on me, can someone please explain to me why I shouldn’t be totally put off by his entire involvement in this scheme?
How about Cassandra Nova? She was in the picture of all mutants IIRC. That would really interfere with playing the guilt card about Genosha. Unless she’s already back in Professor Xavier’s body again.
Mr. Sinister had been cataloguing mutant DNA for over a century before the X-Men came along, right? Do we know that Xavier handed over Thunderbird’s DNA to Mr. Sinister, or did Mr. Sinister just already have it catalogued before the time of Proudstar’s death?
Anyway, my understanding is that by the time Xavier started working with Mr. Sinister (despite Moira’s protests), it was to get access to Mr. Sinister’s vast catalogue of mutant DNA, so that he could resurrect dead mutants. I guess he figured the trade-off of bring back all of his dead friends vs. working with Mr. “I’m an amoral pile of crap” Sinister was worth it.
Having said all of that, yes, Changeling would have been a better fit, given powers that Mr. Sinister has demonstrated in the past.
And also yes, the Mr. Sinister plot was super great in Nicieza’s Gambit series. 🙂
Xavier didn’t hand Thunderbird’s body to Sinister, the possibility doesn’t even make sense. There already is a ‘mutant Sinister’ (the one with the cape) when Xavier first makes contact with the man. The men. With Sinister. This was all depicted on page in HoXPoX.
@neutrino Cassandra Nova, while not seen on Krakoa so far, had no need for resurrection – she was alive the last time we saw her (in X-Men Red).
Also, isn’t Cassandra something other than a mutant? I realize that’s splitting hairs given her powers, but she was portrayed as either a) the next step in evolution after mutants or b) some kind of parasite. Or both? Morrison can be a little vague sometimes, and I didn’t read her appearance in Red.
Like I said, she was on the every mutant page IIRC. Here body and powers were based on Xavier’s genome, so if Sinister is a mutant, so is she.
Yes, but Moira didn’t want Sinister involved with Krakoa, and Xavier/Magneto decided that they needed Sinister for their plans.
Sinister is more of an outlier, as far as Krakoa.
It’s not important that he’s a mutant, it’s important that he’s working with Krakoa because of the mutant DNA database.
I’m not sure that anyone outside of Sinister (well, and Krakoa) even realizes that this version of Sinister is a mutant.
Wasn’t that part of the House of X reveal; that this version of Sinister has Thunderbird’s DNA is a secret?
I don’t think the same case can be made for Cassandra Nova.
Based on the Morrison story, Nova is a Mummudrai, and not a mutant.
Her whole reason for existence is to sow discord between humans and mutants, so that she can make sure that Xavier’s dream is never a possibility.
She is described as a parasitic entity. She embodies the opposite qualities of Xavier.
Also, Joseph is a clone of Magneto. Surely, they won’t be bringing Joseph back, because Magneto is already around.
Dazzler-We already discussed this.
First of all, yes, that Gambit series was great.
Secondly, the reason why Sinister having Thunderbird’s DNA was considered so disturbing was due to the fact that Sinister was already getting involved with creating chimeras.
Something that Moira warned Xavier and Magneto about, from her prior life.
Sinister genetically engineering a clone of himself with mutant DNA wouldn’t make him a chimera, in the sense of Moira’s warning.
So, Hickman may not be ignoring the fact that Essex already genetically engineered himself to have mutant DNA from Courier.
The term ‘mutant’ applied to Sinister still rubs me the wrong way. Mutants are born mutants. However Sinister engineered himself, he’s still not a, you know, organic, naturally-grown mutant. He is, quite literally, a GMO. Enhanced human or something.
Well, we know that Krakoa isn’t very picky about establishing if a being is a mutant or not.
The Reavers were able to infiltrate Krakoa simply by putting some of a mutant’s skin on their bodies. Krakoa recognized the Reavers as Domino.
Based on that, Krakoa would recognize Sinister as Thunderbird based on having Thunderbird’s DNA.
Like I said, it’s not important if Sinister is really considered a mutant or not (you’re right, he shouldn’t be), Xavier and Magneto feel they need Sinister for their plan.
The fact that Moira didn’t want Sinister involved with Krakoa would seem to imply that the idea that Sinister is actually a mutant isn’t truly honest.
“Anyway, my understanding is that by the time Xavier started working with Mr. Sinister (despite Moira’s protests), it was to get access to Mr. Sinister’s vast catalogue of mutant DNA, so that he could resurrect dead mutants. I guess he figured the trade-off of bring back all of his dead friends vs. working with Mr. ‘I’m an amoral pile of crap’ Sinister was worth it.”
I think that’s pretty much been my understanding, but it rubs me very wrong. I disagree strongly with the trade-off. Resurrection is fine if it comes along, but selling your soul to the devil in pursuit of it is not heroic. Stuff like this is what makes it impossible for me to relate to the actions of the purported protagonists.
“The term ‘mutant’ applied to Sinister still rubs me the wrong way. Mutants are born mutants. However Sinister engineered himself, he’s still not a, you know, organic, naturally-grown mutant. He is, quite literally, a GMO. Enhanced human or something.”
I agree 100%. He’s definitively not a mutant. I don’t think it’s particularly clear that any of the character who have been resurrected are mutants either or if they should count as themselves any more than Ben Reilly should count as Peter Parker (or was it vice versa?). If it was engineered in a lab, by definition it is not a mutant.
“Well, we know that Krakoa isn’t very picky about establishing if a being is a mutant or not. The Reavers were able to infiltrate Krakoa simply by putting some of a mutant’s skin on their bodies. Krakoa recognized the Reavers as Domino.”
Will people be mad at me for complaining about this detail? It’s an intelligent security system but it’s by far the worst security system the X-Men have had since they’ve had one.
I think people are complicating it too much. If Sinister giving a self-clone two X chromosomes made a female Sinister, then surely giving a clone an X-gene made a mutant Sinister.
Dazzler-
A.)We’re not supposed to be completely accepting and sympathetic to what’s going on with Krakoa.
The people in charge of this project are all shown to be flawed individuals (Moira, Xavier, Magneto).
Anti-heroes have always been popular. I think a lot of people find it easier to relate to someone who is trying to do the right thing, but willing to use unacceptable means to gain their ends.
A lot of the time, it can be harder to relate to someone who always does the right thing.
If you’re reading this within the context of a superhero story, it probably won’t work.
These characters aren’t meant to be completely heroic.
B.)You’re overthinking it.
Since they are being cloned from the DNA of mutants, they are born with the mutant gene.
Therefore, they are mutants.
Xavier downloads the personalities, memories, and life experiences of the individual in to their minds after they are cloned.
This would make them the exact same person they were before they died and were cloned.
C.)I was being flippant.
“(El Aguila is still alive, but lost his powers on M-day.)”
Hmm. All of the mutants that lost their powers on M-Day and are still alive and didn’t get their powers back in one of the many ways major characters did… they could be killed and resurrected as mutants?
Does Dani have her powers back in New Mutants for instance?
Could the new X-Factor book take a dark turn and have the team was hunting down former mutants to kill them so they can be resurrected as mutants?!
No clue about the depowered mutants. Considering Scarlet Witch’s magic was involved – and Beast claimed to have ‘exhausted all scientific possibilities trying to reverse it’ – a case could be made that any and all genetic samples taken from depowered mutants before they were depowered were rendered inert because of magic.
I was wondering the same thing about Dani. Wikipedia claims she was repowered due to the whole technoorganic takeover from Dead Souls/Rosenberg’s Uncanny. The wiki literally says it was Dark Beast’s removal of the TO infection that somehow gave her back her powers, though I personally don’t remember anything like that being stated in the book. Could be I simply forgot.
Anyway, is the shining bow a part of her powers? Because she’s definitely been using that recently.
Shiny bow (usually just the arrows, really) has traditionally been from Dani’s mutant powers, going back to 90s X-Force. She gets a shiny sword from valkyrie powers.
Reversing M-day depowerings is up for debate. Wanda’s powers can retroactively change things, as established way back in Byrne’s Avengers West Coast. So it’s potentially possible that she ruined all the cell samples they’d been collecting by retroactively killing the X-gene in them. Then again, in the House of X #5 text page about resurrecting all mutants, they refer to the dead and depowered in the very same sentence, which suggests that they can bring them back as mutants if they die. They only set a timeline for full Genoshan revival, though; nothing explicit about depowered.
X-Factor is especially well-placed to deal with this since Prodigy is in the cast, and he’s probably the most prominent mutant whose depowering never got reversed.
Moira didn’t want the others working with Sinister because of doubts about his mutant status, but because his treachery killed most of the mutant leadership and destroyed Krakoa in her ninth life (where he was also accepted as a mutant).
Cassandra Nova is Xavier’s genetic twin and also constructed her body from his genome, so that should satisfy Krakoa.
I know that was why Moira didn’t want to work with Sinister.
The tag-line of Krakoa is, “Krakoa is for all mutants”. I’m not sure how that would work, if Sinister were accepted as a mutant and also told that he couldn’t live on Krakoa.
Xavier and Magneto never explicitly stated that they are allowing Sinister on Krakoa because he is a mutant.
They wanted to work with Sinister because they wanted to utilize his DNA database.
As far as Nova, yes, that would probably satisfy Krakoa, but Nova being classified as a Mummudrai instead of as a mutant or a human will probably make it possible to exclude Nova from joining Krakoa.
@Chris V: My problem with this Sinister stuff isn’t that the characters are imperfect or even that the Krakoa concept is imperfect. I like flawed characters and concepts that have nuance and aren’t strictly black-and-white. Even ignoring the broader problems I have with this setup, I can’t wrap my head around any stated justification for involving a guy who is pure evil, no matter what he might contribute.
An apt comparison for me would be NASA’s Operation Paperclip where they brought Nazi rocket scientists on board instead of killing them. I would have killed the Nazis. I do not care if their scientific knowledge died with them. I want the Nazis dead, I don’t want them in America enjoying freedom. Find another way to put some idiots on the moon.
It’s particularly stupid and nonsensical given the fact that the average mutant never seemed to have a problem getting resurrected before any of this, but even if I thought the concept of mutant immortality was worth pursuing, you’re just plain bad guys when you make this kind of deal with the devil in its pursuit. Honestly I wish the characters were merely presented as flawed but with great intentions.
The Operation: Paperclip metaphor is pretty apt.
The US wanted to beat the USSR in the Cold War, and was willing to make a deal with the devil.
It happened in the real world.
The USSR was certainly not morally impeccable either. Their whole totalitarianism and gulags thing…
I think that Moira, Xavier, and Magneto do have good intentions. They are attempting to put an end to the never-ending mutant/human struggle and avoid the genocide of mutants.
I’d say those are good intentions.
My main thought there is that Moira having seen that scenario play out a handful of times doesn’t convince me that it’s this inevitable thing. Plus I don’t buy into the sudden urgency to tackle this mutant/human issue in such aggressive fashion (particularly when you’re pretending this was the plan all along). I don’t even think it’s the kind of issue you solve but rather a theme of the series.
I would much rather have not gone to the moon than to bring on Nazi scientists personally, so no surprise I can’t stomach the Sinister stuff. Apocalypse at least has an ethos, though I also just plain don’t buy into mutants as a race or identity of any sort but because it’s a mutation. And as a bonus I detest the sensibilities of data pages and doopspeak. Lots not to like, for ‘ol Dazzler.