Fall of the House of X #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #1
“The Trial of Cyclops”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X. This is one of two linked miniseries to complete the Krakoan era, the other being Rise of the Powers of X. The format echoes the twin minis House of X and Powers of X that launched the Krakoan era.
The title also alludes to the Edgar Allan Poe story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), though there’s no terribly obvious significance to that fact.
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Shadowkat in action. We can see a couple of Orchis footsoldiers reflected in Colossus’s first.
PAGES 2-4. Cyclops dreams about being hung after an Old West show trial.
Timely was the name of Marvel’s Golden Age predecessor. It’s not immediately obvious what that has to do with anything either. Marvel does have an established Old West town called Timely – it was the setting of the 2015 miniseries 1872, which was part of the “Secret Wars” event, and was basically “the Marvel Universe, but a Western”.
“Your Destiny.” The masked figure in the booth, presumably a dummy, is wearing the mask of the actual Destiny from Immortal X-Men.
The judge. Four of the people on the bench are Moira X, Dr Stasis, Omega Sentinel and MODOK – all major figures in Orchis. The fifth appears to be Professor X, though he’s also quite similar to the actual judge that we see on page 20. Cyclops’ narration says that the judge “throws me to the wolves”, which presumably ties to Professor X calling Rasputin away later in the issue.
Obviously, the woman in the crowd who prevents Scott from being hanged is a version of Jean Grey.
PAGES 5-6. Cyclops arrives at his trial.
Cyclops has been given a blanked out version of his visor, presumably because sewing his eyes shut (as in previous issues of X-Men was deemed too gruesome to do in public).
“I was thousands of miles away from the Hellfire Gala when I felt Jean die.” In X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.
“This is Paris – where they tried Magneto.” In Uncanny X-Men #200 and X-Men vs Avengers #4.
“This time, the trial will go their way, but the war will not.” Uncanny #200 ends with Magneto leaving the trial before a conclusion. However, in X-Men vs Avengers #4, Magneto does return to finish the trial, and uses mind control to make the presiding judge acquit him on a purely legal argument. (The story then points out that none of the other judges on the panel raise any objection to this outcome, implying that they were going to acquit Magneto on the same ground anyway.)
It’s not obvious from the dialogue – or, if you prefer, the blindfolded Cyclops just doesn’t notice – but the protestors on the right hand side of page 6 are actually pro-mutant protestors.
PAGE 7. Flashback: a generic example of the Fastball Special.
The idea of the Fastball Special as the earliest form of a mutant “circuit” has come up before – in X-Men Red, I think? – though if you want to be nitpicky, the end of Giant-Size X-Men #1 sees the X-Men combine their powers to eject Krakoa into space. And it’s even called a “circuit” in dialogue.
PAGES 8-10. Colossus and Wolverine under the courthouse.
We last saw Colossus in X-Force #47, where he was with X-Force and had yet to meet up with the rest of the X-Men after being freed from Mikhail’s control. In fairness, though, we already know that Wolverine goes on from that story to team up with the rest of the X-Men in X-Men #28-29, so X-Force was lagging slightly behind X-Men on any view.
PAGES 11-13. Alia Gregor and Karima Shapandar visit Cyclops.
Alia Gregor hasn’t been seen in a while – in fact, I don’t think we’ve seen her since Inferno. Her husband was killed during the X-Men’s attack on the Mother Mold station in House of X #3; Cyclops doesn’t remember these events because he died on the mission, and was then resurrected with his memories restored from an earlier back-up. She attempted to revive him as Nimrod, but interference from a Krakoan assassination attempt led to his human personality being mostly lost.
By Orchis standards, she’s a comparatively sympathetic character who Hickman was very, very explicitly positioning as a parallel to Krakoa (specifically, Mystique’s efforts to resurrect Destiny). She seems to be unaware of Orchis’ plans to move on to other superhumans once the mutants are out of the way.
Omega Sentinel, as we established back in Inferno #3, is possessed by the mind of herself from an alternate future; she’s come back in time to save the machines from being wiped out by mutants, in an inversion of “Days of Future Past”. Cyclops’ final question is apparently directed at her.
PAGES 14-15. Professor X summons Rasputin IV to him.
The Green Lagoon is the former Krakoan bar.
Professor X evidently returned to Krakoa after visiting Muir Isle in the last issue of Immortal X-Men. This is the first we’ve heard of him working with Rasputin IV in any capacity. Presumably there’s some pressing issue of timing that requires her to visit Krakoa right now, but it’s unclear what that is, or why Professor X knows anything about it.
PAGES 16-19. The X-Men fight Orchis.
We don’t know yet what the “invasion of Earth” is, but since the mutants presumably haven’t made contact with the Krakoan exiles in the White Hot Room, the most likely source of any invading force would be Arakko (where the civil war has now ended with the final issue of X-Men Red).
PAGE 20. Cyclops refuses to defend himself.
Presumably he declined to enter a plea and was treated as pleading not guilty. God only knows what country’s legal system he’s supposed to be being tried under, given that the trial seems to be in English. Is there a jury? The prosecutor is presumably meant to be talking to someone, unless he regularly addresses the judge while facing in the opposite direction.
For what it’s worth, there are no “capital cases” in France. The death penalty was abolished in France in 1981 and made unconstitutional in 2007.
PAGE 21. Orchis celebrate their win.
For some reason that I don’t follow in the slightest, Cyclops’ conviction of something-or-other provides the justification for Nimrod to try and kill Krakoa. Um… why?
Ben Urich has been writing supportive articles about mutants over in X-Men and Uncanny Avengers.
Alia seems to be reacting badly to the fact that Nimrod (the reincarnation of her husband) shows more interest in Karima Shapandar than in her. She’s presumably being set up for a face turn.
PAGES 22-24. Nimrod attacks Krakoa.
Oddly, Krakoa is awake. It’s seemed to be dormant every other time we’ve seen it since the Gala, but maybe this is connected with whatever Professor X is up to.
PAGE 25. Alia Gregor addresses the world.
The opening of Alia’s speech mirrors the opening words of Professor X’s speech to the world announcing Krakoa, which was quoted as the start of House of X #1. Frankly, none of this makes a great deal of sense – why is an attack on Krakoa “uncomfortable” in a way that merits a worldwide announcement? What’s Krakoa going to do that could have that sort of significance, by Marvel Universe standards? Where did Orchis suddenly get the authority to openly announce that they’re going to kill all mutants who refuse to leave the planet (which, until now, is something they’ve publicly denied)?
PAGE 26. The X-Men discuss the need to accelerate their plans.
This is a very, very, very traditional-looking X-Men line-up, certainly by the standards of recent years: Colossus, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Kate Pryde, Rogue and Gambit. Nobody with less than 30 years’ tenure.
Why is it “all falling apart”? This all feels terribly handwavy.
Iron Man’s plan is footnoted to two issues of Invincible Iron Man that haven’t come out yet, but over in that book, he’s mainly been assembling a large stock of mysterium in order to build something or other that will defeat Orchis.
PAGE 27. Kate Pryde visits assorted characters.
- In panel 1, Iron Man and Emma Frost from Invincible Iron Man. Although Shadowkat calls them “Mr and Mrs X”, Iron Man actually married Emma’s fictitious “Hazel Kendal” persona for cover reasons.
- In panel 2, Shadowkat checks in on Woofer, the mutant who was exiled to Arakko and who she entrusted with preparing a census of fellow exiles in X-Men #25.
- In panel 3, Juggernaut, who’s been raiding Cable’s armoury at the former X-Men Mansion. We saw that armoury in Children of the Vault.
- In the main panel, Ms Marvel and Captain America (Sam Wilson) fighting a Stark Sentinel alongside some other heroes who are too small to clearly identify. Sam’s home book right now is the regular Avengers title, but it’s hard to tell if it’s then.
- In the final panel, Polaris turns out to have been around on Earth (again, I don’t think we’ve seen her during Fall of X). She’s been hanging out on Magneto’s old Island M headquarters.
PAGES 28-30. Polaris recruits Broo and his Brood to help.
Jean evacuated Broo and the Brood under his control to Knowhere in X-Men #21.
PAGE 31. Recap and credits. Bit of an odd choice to put the detailed plot recap right at the end.
PAGE 32. Trailers. The Krakoan reads RISE OF THE HOUSE OF X.
PAGES 33-34. Data page – or back matter, really. An open letter from Cyclops for release after his conviction. Naturally, his lawyer is the She-Hulk. (Daredevil’s tied up in other plots right now.)
“When we breathed life into Mars, I was concerned that the worst in humanity would seize upon our actions and use them as pretext to forcibly deport us off-world.” Cyclops did indeed voice this concern in Duggan’s X-Men.
“Ben Urich’s expose.” The article he wrote in Uncanny Avengers with the Kingpin’s account of Orchis’ attack on the Hellfire Gala.
There was also the town of Timely in the Earth-616 version of the Marvel Universe established by Kang under his Victor Timely moniker. Duggan was the writer on the alternate Secret Wars version of Timely though. Again, this is probably all unimportant.
I’m not liking the idea of Colossus killing random Orchis goons when he could have incapacitated them instead. Peter’s usually reluctant to kill. I mean, this could be related to the trauma he went through in X-Force (being forced to kill an innocent and betray his friends while under his brother Mikhail’s control, then being forced to kill Mikhail to save his friends when free) but that trauma isn’t mentioned at all in the story. And Logan is still having trouble trusting Peter in X-Force, but there’s no trace of that here. It’s also annoying since Kurt and Peter were both mind controlled into killing innocent people and betraying Krakoa because a loved one betrayed them but there’s no evidence of them just having gone through anything similar.
Gregor is apparently realizing that Karima and Nimrod plan on exterminating humanity after mutants are taken care of.
My guess is that Xavier and Rasputin have realized that Enigma is the power behind Karima and Nimrod and that Enigma became truly immortal when Mother Righteous stabbed Jean, so the only way to stop it is to go back in time and prevent Orchis’s actions at the Hellfire Gala from happening, which will also prevent Scott from being captured. This will probably be what they’re up to in Rise of the Powers of X. I also think it’s not going to work out.
(I don’t think Enigma IS truly immortal- I think that Scott’s dream is foreshadowing that it becoming immortal when Mother Righteous took Jean’s blood is the key to defeating it.)
Duggan forgot AGAIN that Rasputin isn’t supposed to be able to fly.
Re: France and the death penalty- it was mentioned in a data page in X-Men 29 and Uncanny Avengers 5 that normally the death penalty wouldn’t be available in France but Orchis had influence over the French judiciary.
I agree that Krakoa trapping Nimrod in amber makes no sense. It seems like a contrived way to temporarily take Nimrod off the board. (Although we know he’ll be back in X-Men 31.) First Krakoa wasn’t able to help Xavier against Shaw and Selene or Tony against Orchis’s ape-scientist but now it’s suddenly able to be useful. Second, Krakoa has failed miserably at containing people in the Pit but now it’s suddenly able to temporarily contain Nimrod. Third, how can Krakoa separate from the island and run away? it’s supposed to be an ISLAND.
Re: Orchis using the trial as an excuse to try to kill Krakoa and mutants in general- the excuse in the data page from X-Men 29 and Uncanny Avengers 5 was that Orchis needed the “headlines from the trial to make sure that the horrors of mutant tyranny are playing on every screen around the world”.
Re: why it’s all falling apart- I think the idea is that (a) the X-Men planned to have Scott freed before Orchis made their final move and (b) Orchis’s final move came several days before the X-Men planned.
I think the idea is that Orchis will be killing mutants publicly and that’s what Gregor meant by “uncomfortable”.
Re: the “invasion of Earth”- it was stated explicitly in Iron Man 13 that Tony’s plan was for ships to carry mutants from Arakko to Earth to stop Orchis.
Scott’s remark that only Jean can judge him is a reference to X-Men 14.
I’m not liking the idea that Krakoa was the best hope for coexistence between mutants and humans- it was Krakoa’s original sins that enabled Enigma to gain power, after all.
It’s kind of weird that Fall of the House of X doesn’t have any of the Fall of the House of X data pages that appeared in Sons of X, Sinister Four and Dark X-Men. Maybe we’ll see them in Rise of the Powers of X.
Michael-They’re probably going to go back in time long before the Gala. The cover of issue #3 of RoPoX shows someone pointing Forge’s neutralizer gun at Moira before she met Xavier. Also, Omega Sentinel started meddling in the timeline during the Claremont/Romita Jr. run on X-Men, which led to the creation of Orchis.
I wonder how far Marvel will allow the creators to reboot the timeline with the Krakoa era. I doubt that the plan to depower and kill Moira before she met Xavier will succeed since it’s on the cover. Although, Marvel did lampshade the fact that Moira was going to betray mutants on the cover of “Inferno”, so who knows what Marvel is doing anymore?
Also, “Enigma” is only immortal unless it comes across Phoenix or Galactus. The Essex engine was waiting for Mother Righteous to take the Phoenix off the board before achieving Dominionhood, but I’m pretty sure the Phoenix is still going to be the key to eliminating the Dominion.
The print version of the issue has the credit/recap page after the first 5 pages of the story, and Cyclops’ letter after the page with Krakoa swimming away.
(And speaking of Cyclops’ letter: why is he saying “I was born right here in the United States of America” when he’s in France? For that matter, why is he standing up in the courtroom if his back is broken?)
And: Krakoa takes out Nimrod in one panel by… spitting amber at it? What even?!
The team aboard the Blackbird in the final pages feels to me to be representative of the various subgroups (books) that arose from the start of the Fall in the Hellfire Gala 2023, suggesting that their separate storylines shall now converge.
Colossus – X-Force
“Shadowkat” – X-Men
Rogue – Uncanny Avengers
Gambit – Dark X-Men
Wolverine – who knows?
This issue was loosely plotted, even by Duggan standards. It bore little connection to anything going on in the previous weeks’ X-books- Charles just went back to Krakoa? Wolverine left X-Force’s stronghold, and is cool with Colossus again? Nightcrawler just… shows up?
Also, Cyclops offering no defense would make the trial much shorter. How is that an effective delaying tactic? “I won’t be used for Orchis propaganda.” I guess “mutant leader has no defense for crimes against humankind” isn’t going to help Orchis?
The one non-critical thought I had was that the piece of Krakoa that ran away might contain Doug, a person used to merging with a non-human life form.
If this was a Gillen book, I’d assume the title alluded to it Usher-ing in the next era.
By the way, the O5, plus Havok and Polaris, did a mutant circuit before Wolverine was invented. I can’t remember the details, but it was exactly what circuits are now, people shooting their energy into eachother forva bet gain.
I honestly don’t think chucking a guy should count as a circuit, but whatever.
“For a net gain”.
Are you thinking of Xavier connecting the minds of everyone on the planet during the Z’Nox invasion?
There was some type of mutant circuit used by the X-Men in Marvel Team-Up Annual #1 to defeat Roger Zelazny’s Lords of Light, but that involved Wolverine.
Those are the only instances that come to mind.
Mike-We saw Doug merged with Krakoa as one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen in Moira’s Life Nine. So, yes, probably.
@Paul: As a non-Duggan fan, most of this landed clearly for me.
Re: MacGregor’s “uncomfortable” statement: I read this to refer to not just the destruction of Krakoa, but also the decidedly more menacing “liquidation” of the mutants who choose to remain on Earth.
As far as whether or not Orchis have any actual authority to do this is moot–it’s clear (at least to me) that what they’ve been gunning after the whole time was the rigged guilty verdict so that they can take advantage of already-inflamed levels of anti-mutant animosity and declare their absolute moral imperative to exterminate the rest of mutantkind with little to no pushback, legal or otherwise. Overall, this is consistent with what the Culture/Narrative petal of Orchis has been striving for.
@Michael: I buy Colossus or any X-Man outright killing anyone post-Gala, especially since they still believe most mutants are dead.
Re: Wolverine trusting Colossus: Logan did eventually vote yes to keep Piotr on the team.
Re: Krakoa running away: Krakoa hasn’t had a reliable source of sustenance since the Gala, so this was as much physical influence over a comparatively diminutive version of its body that it could muster under the circumstances.
@Douglas: We can reasonably assume that Cyclops wrote the letter in the US before being shipped off to Paris–it is, after all, one of those, “If you’re reading this…” messages.
@Mike Loughlin: I read it as Cyclops generally buying the team time in the months’ worth of lead-up to the trial (e.g., not divulging state secrets, having cheeky interviews/interrogations with MacGregor, Statis, et al, possibly providing misleading information)–and not during the actual trial itself. On that front, I would say he was reasonably successful.
Had to refund this issue because the Kindle app broke overnight and all downloads crash now.
Dodged a bullet maybe.
I don’t know if it qualifies as a circuit, but there was that time when the X-Men joined minds to contain or repair the M’krann Crystal – Uncanny X-Men #107-108 (1977) IIRC.
Reading between the lines with the whole “invasive alien/foreign species” repeated phrases, I vaguely think that Duggan is going for something about how Arakko and mutants from Elsewhere prove that all mutants are somehow invasive and foreign? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the prosecutor seemed to be alluding to that in his closing statement.
Otherwise, this felt very shaky. Some of Cyclops and Wolverine’s lines felt out of character. Everything was very rushed and things happened with a breathless tone that still went nowhere much.
I’m also not sure if Duggan is deliberately having Lorna make a huge mistake when it comes to inviting horror movie aliens to come attack humans in the name of mutant rights (especially with all the invasive species stuff). Or if it’s supposed to be a straightforward gathering of the cavalry.
I rather thought the woman from Scott’s vision might’ve been Madelyne – she’s got the same brooch at her throat
Also, a strangely understated plot hole: ORCHIS very clearly has a cure for mutation (Shaw uses it in Immortal, Stasis proposes removing Firestar’s X-gene) – if they’re concerned enough about public opinion to manipulate it as much as they have, why even advocate for “liquidating” mutantkind through mass slaughter when they could “cure” them instead? Wasn’t that Moira’s plan in the first place?
Diana, Orchis has been running their Mutant Cure camps in the books since FoX, so while they’ve been taking this road, I’m assuming it’s not like the movie X3 where you can just shoot darts of cure syringes at people (or like Forge’s gun.) I think Orchis has already done all the “soft” genocide they could and are now moving into their hard genocide.
X-Men vol 1 number 65. Xavier links millions of minds to harness the power of love. Polaris focuses the energy and relays it to Jean, who beams it into Havok, who boosts it with cosmic rays and shoots it into Cyclops, who absorbs it and shoots it via his “optiblasts” at the Z’nox planet/space ship, while Iceman stops him from overheating. This causes the Z’nox to all feel yucky goodness, and they fly away.
None of it makes a bit of sense, but there we have it. There was a later What If story where they keep doing the circuit to fight crime, but I’m not sure if that’s on Unlimited, and I can’t remember much about it.
It’s weird how this issue doesn’t fit with what I assumed to be the run-up to this story. Clearly the other books are going to be running catch-up – Iron Man is two issues behind this, and who knows how many X-Men issues it will take to actually line up that book with the start of FotHoX.
Or they just won’t bother. I’ve seen an interview with Jordan D. White about the upcoming handover to Brevoort and he was very noncommital about whether the end of Krakoa will in any way lead into the start of the new era. My wager is that whatever comes next, it will sweep under the rug a lot of the previous five years. And if that’s how it’s going to play out, I could see why the current writers just… wouldn’t bother to make everything fit perfectly. If in a year’s time it won’t matter in the slightest, why work at it?
One thing that bothered me in this issue is how casually and playfully Colossus and Wolverine slaughter Orchis goons. Not the best look, particularly when mutants are very much being judged for their right to exist.
As for mutant “circuits”… I understand that there is no hard and fast boundary, but I want to note that the tradition of having team members with varied, specialized powers that may be mixed for better results goes back to very early Legion of Super-Heroes stories (1958, early 1960s at most).
The Z’nox story of X-Men #65 was published in late 1969, and Denny O’Neil (the writer of that story) was already working for DC at the time, so it is reasonable to assume that he was familiar with that element of LSH stories.
What Hickman presented to us some four years ago is significantly different from that venerable plot element, though; his presentation of “mutant circuits” has subtle metaphysical or at least mythological conotations and is presented alongside a whole lifecycle description for the origin of Dominions, their stages of development, and how they relate to the Phalanx and/or the Technarchy.
It wasn’t the most clear of ideas among those introduced in Hox/PoX, but it was presented with a lot of emphasis. Since this is Hox/PoX, that means that it was presented interpersed with lots of glimpses of a conflict between humans, AIs and mutants in very exotic environments in at least three very distinct timeframes and alongside tales of the Nine Lives of Moira, including one which has immortal Moira asking immortal Wolverine to kill her so that they can restart humanity’s history (from her viewpoint) so that they can avoid being subsummed into some form of huge gestalt (was it called a Dominion then? I don’t remember).
Somewhere in there we also found statements that the Five were not just furthering each other’s powers, but also becoming better integrated at a personality level and even finding the job of ressurrecting mutants refreshing somehow. Strong hinting that mutants were destined to become an astronomically significant melange of its own and would at some point direct rivals for the Dominion(s). Not by coincidence, the same storyline also featured the Chimeras – yet another variation of the idea of melding and mixing identities in order to achieve higher power levels and higher purposes.
Even the hints that the mutants in Krakoa had left behind their lives among humans, their jobs and other human worries and were now overcoming their human legacy of personal boundaries in relatioships converged thematically with the idea of a destiny of hivemind significance.
Hickman is nothing if not ambitious in his high concepts.
But, of course, it is far easier to present those impressive ideas than to effectively write them as plot points. All the more so if you want to keep writing and selling comic book stories with those ideas and characters for years if not decades to come.
Not much of those ambitions survived to this day; even before Inferno quite a lot was simply quietly forgotten, and most of the surviving plot ideas were hammered into more marketable forms by Al Ewing in Immortal X-Men since.
So in this issue we adopt a very early-1960s LSH conception of “mutant circuit”, where somehow throwing someone with superhuman strength qualifies. Oddly for someone who wrote so many Guardians of the Galaxy stories, Gerry Duggan is not very good at high concept and seems to aim instead to match its superficial optics with the complete avoidance of its substance.
Or maybe that is a good strategy for making presumably cosmic stories manageable? I will have to think some about that.
@Jon R- I don’t think that the “invasive species” thing is supposed to makes sense. Note that Scott says “invasive species, whatever the hell that means.”
I think Lorna gathering the Brood is supposed to be the X-Men being rewarded for Jean showing compassion. Jean decided to share her memories with Maddie and spare the Brood’s lives despite risking wrecking her marriage and both Maddie and the Brood wound up helping the X-Men against Orchis.
“the Five were not just furthering each other’s powers, but also becoming better integrated at a personality level…”
This was one of the things that I liked most about HoXPoX, how Hickman picked up on ideas about mutants from early science fiction. The mutant circuits and personality integration reminds me so much of the low level telepathy that allows mutants in Odd John, for example, to work toward a single purpose…on an island…at odds with humanity. The references were all there, but then sadly went nowhere. Or became more palatable and less interesting superhero versions of themselves, at least.
“Strong hinting that mutants were destined to become an astronomically significant melange of its own and would at some point direct rivals for the Dominion(s).”
That never occurred to me, but it would have been an amazing development. I wish more of this kind of thing had made it to the page during the Krakoa era.
Thom H. said: The mutant circuits and personality integration reminds me so much of the low level telepathy that allows mutants in Odd John, for example, to work toward a single purpose…on an island…at odds with humanity. The references were all there, but then sadly went nowhere. Or became more palatable and less interesting superhero versions of themselves, at least.
And in Marvel terms, Jack Kirby was strongly influenced by Stapledon novels such as Odd John and First and Last Men. The pre-Marvel-Universe mutants seen in Kirby’s issues of the, uh, problematic Yellow Claw series of the 1950s were a gestalt of reality-warpers.
The Stapledon influence is also very likely why the earliest issues of Uncanny X- Men in the 1960s gave Magneto psi powers and had bits like the teenage X-Men being “train ed to receive” broadcast thoughts from Professor X. nThere were a couple of early hints that telepathy was a default mutant power, or one that all mutants could potetially achieve.
In terms of Dominions — which transcend time and space — there’s also the Claremont/Byrne “Days of Future Past” timeline from which Nimrod originates. DoFP had telepathic cross-time mind-switching via Rachel and Kate Pryde connecting up, and from a Hickmanesque perspective that could easily be read as a mutant circuit reaching across time and timelines. A gestalt of mutants might therefore become a mind across both space ad time.
But, it’s now likely that nothing like that will be happening.
@Michael: Yeah, probably on the Brood. It’s just that the optics on having the Brood attack “humanity” at the behest of mutants makes this seem like such a horrible idea that I have to wonder.
I also think part of that is my reaction to the issue as a whole. Orchis currently has the hearts and minds of most people. And the entire focus from the mutant side is “Well then, it’s war”. Wolverine and Colossus happily get chopping and smashing, everyone gears up for fights, Iron Man is ready to bring in the troops on ships, Cyclops admits he was delaying to give his allies time to get ready, and Lorna grabs the creatures that will lay their eggs in your belly if Broo slips up.
Of course it’s going to end in epic battle. It’s a mainstream action comic book where you smash evil and prejudice in the face with your fists. And the X-men have every reason to be angry and smash happy! But when the villains are bringing so much attention to the PR side, the focus right now feels kind of like it *should* be leading to further problems.
[…] OF THE HOUSE OF X #1. (Annotations here.) Mmm. Yeah, it’s not the best start to the year, is […]
Duggan, eh? I enjoyed his Deadpool, and Iron Man is much better than this. But as some of the comments point out it is less to do with team dynamics. So I wonder how much is just poor handling of editorial mandates. Still things like Rasputin flying or various characters simply being where the story needs them to be just feels sloppy. I trust Gillen’s side will be better, especially as he’s also got the better artist (no shade to Wernick).
@Joseph S.: I don’t know that that particular excuse applies here, because those problems – poor pacing, dumbed-down concepts, sloppy mistakes – have pretty consistently been part of Duggan’s writing for as long as he’s been on Krakoa books, from Marauders on down.
This is exactly the kind of Bad Comics I fear that we are returning to with the end of the Krakoa era. Oh well.
Kitty becoming the very grimdark Shadowkat was at least shown on the page. Colossus being murdery is even more jarring.
And I haven’t enjoyed the need for all the spotlighting on wider Marvel heroes. The X-Men and Krakoa didn’t need the lift; it’s come at the cost of panel time for the hundreds of other interesting x-characters that have been allowed to shine during Krakoa. Why don’t we have the main X-Men pairing up with unusual selections? I guess as we’re going back to the core property again. Bah!
In Amazing Adventures, Blob and Unus had a move where they combined their powers to launch someone (Beast) into the air. I think it would be very funny to treat them as mutant technology pioneers.
Maybe a big problem with Fall of X and Fall of the House of X is basically this:
Immortal X-Men was the main Krakoa book and should have continued being the spine of the X-Men line. I think sales were too good on Duggan’s book and not good enough on Gillen’s that things got flipped for this final act of the Krakoan era. Gillen’s book became a side book, and therefore his plots did too. The vacuum is filled with stuff Duggan hadn’t fully thought out because it was not really meant to take center stage. I don’t doubt eventually the books would dovetail all along but I don’t think Duggan’s was supposed to be the lead.
Duggan’s “X-Men” book may have sold significantly more than Gillen’s “Immortal X-Men”. I don’t know. It was certainly not better than “Immortal”, but it was somewhat more friendly to unseasoned readers.
But I suspect that the decision to give the reigns mainly to Duggan does not have a whole lot to do with the specific sales figures. It feels like an editorial decision based on plans for the line. Duggans seems to be somewhat more amenable to make concessions for events and the like.
It feels to me like the close collaboration between writers (e.g. the X-Slack that Leah Williams and others talked about extensively in interviews) that Hickman fostered broke down pretty rapidly after he left. Ewing, Gillen, and Spurrier collaborated closely because they already knew each other anyway. Duggan, Percy and others went off in their own directions.
I know not everyone enjoyed X of Swords, but the characters were all in the same place from chapter to chapter.
@Luis Dantas: as Hickman was leaving, it was announced (or said in an interview) that Duggan was the new “Head of X.” I knew that was a bad idea at the time, but he & Percy were the other Krakoa-era writers with the longest tenure on the books. I would have preferred Gillen, Ewing, Leah Williams, or Vita Ayala in the role (assuming any of them would want it). Oh well.
One thing I just realized- in X-Men 24, Destiny told Rogue “I see a Jovian bolt from the heavens.” Jovian means associated with Jupiter, where Lorna is now.
@Jon R. If Orchis has won the PR war and the public sees the mutants kill and smash them, isn’t that the setup to return things to “the world hates and fears mutants”?
@Sam: Yeah, true. But there’s “the world hates and fears mutants” and then there’s “the world hates and fears mutants to the point where the public is fine with an organization killing every single mutant on earth… and *then* the mutants and their monstrous alien allies kill all of the ‘heroes’ that were trying to protect us from them”. One gets you with the X-Men as a heroic scrappy underdog. The other gets you.. well, where we’re at right now. 90% of the way to Days of Future Past and killing camps.
If that’s the way they want the post-Krakoa status quo to be, then fair enough. I wouldn’t like it, but it’s their choice. But working through it all, I think my problem is that I don’t have a lot of faith in Duggan’s plotting. Is this supposed to mean something, or is it just something to take at face value and not think about the fallout?
Gotta say, the screwball special is pretty stupid. If Colossus wants to kill a human, he doesn’t need to throw him at Wolverine. He can just throw them anywhere. Or just do pretty much anything to them.
I’m sure it was meant to show how desperate Piotr and Logan are, but instead it makes them look like complete sadists.
@Jon R – my guess would be the latter. I don’t have any confidence that there’s anything deeper it in. I fully expect Tom Brevoort to return to the old status quo and maybe there will be an occasional reference to the Krakoa era, most likely something like “we used to hang out on Krakoa, why have you suddenly turned evil (insert villain’s name here)?”
@MasterMahan – we’ve learned from decades of Hulk comics that 616 humans can survive being thrown very long distances at high speeds. In reviewing HoX/PoX, over half of Orchis comes from SHIELD, STRIKE, SWORD, ARMOR, and Alpha Flight (60%, actually), so there are better than even odds that everyone’s been killing a member of what are considered “good” organizations. If my reading of the text is correct, all the members of Orchis were assigned to it from their original organizations, so many of them may look at it as an assignment rather than something they’re a true believer of. So there’s that.
@Sam- but at the same time, none of the Orchis goons seems to have a problem with things like killing innocent humans at the Gala just to frame the X-Men. So if they were members of “good” organizations, they seem to have lost whatever scruples they had.
I completely forgot that a lot of Orchis goons came from law enforcement agencies that deal with superhumans, but it’s possible:
A) they were less than heroic or competent to begin with, and were assigned to Orchis by supervisors who wanted to get them out of their hair;
B) Orchis brainwashed or is lying to them;
C) the less murderous members of the organization were eliminated or quit and replaced;
D) According to a recent Pentagon investigation, a high number of US military personnel hold white supremacist views. The FBI has released several reports detailing the high prevalence of such views in the police. I doubt Marvel would publish a comic calling this out (unless Victor LaValle or Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote it), but they could use the fictional nature of the agencies and mutants as cover.
@Michael: That’s precisely the flattening-out Duggan’s brought to the table – pre-Inferno, ORCHIS was primarily concerned with completing the Mother Mold and Nimrod as (they claimed) defensive measures against impending human extinction at the hands of mutants. Post-Inferno is when you start seeing Nimrod, MODOK and Stasis soaring through the skies of New York on an evil hovercraft, cackling evilly
My understanding of ORCHIS being made up of people from other organizations was that they are skilled and experienced but left those other organisations when a big anti-mutant group came along that appealed to the bigotry those individuals always had. It’s part of showing us that these are insidious attitudes that can be found everywhere, and the people with helpful skills got together over it.
I think it’s part of why they are more acceptable to kill than real SHIELD agents, these are people that actively chose to join this group. I doubt the goons have been privy to the full mutant genocide plans but the general idea has always been clear and they’ve been pretty eager to do their part. I don’t think they have anything more to do with their former organisations beyond the color-swapped costumes (which I assume they stole, or basically is just a handy visual and we’re not meant to worry that much about it).
Does Rasputin IV only have Quentin Quire’s telepathy or his telekinesis too? Telekinetic powers would allow her to fly.
About the issue overall, it definitely lacks the substance of HoxPox but we’ll see where it goes. I have concerns over the new era but we still have a finale before that happens.
Going back to the darkness of the tone, it’s because comics have gotten darker. On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is a very dark universe and 10 is a very bright universe, the Marvel 616 universe is probably at a 3 right now. Days of Future Past is a 1 (as are countless What If timelines), but when it was originally published, I’d put 616 at a 6 or 7 (I’d say it was at an 8 before Gwen Stacy died). That’s part of the reason that Days of Future Past stuck out so much. If the same story happened with the current Marvel Universe, I don’t think it would have the same effect.
Hell, within the past 20 years a school bus full of depowered mutant children got blown up and an entire town, including children, got blown up to kick off Civil War. Comics are set in a bleaker universe as the target audience has shifted away from kids. Rating things at 3 might be too generous.
@Sam: there are so many comics that very little can have an impact. During the 2000s & 2010s, Marvel was chock full of universe-shattering events that had to be swept aside and/or set up the next one. Increased “big” stories have led to an increase in violent/tragic acts depicted in super-hero comics.
The sheer amount of Avengers & X-comics made it hard to tell what was important. Combined with the history Marvel accumulated up to that point, 616 history became too messy. New #1s with every creative team change has made the universe less cohesive. I prefer good stories over continuity, but it’s not like most Marvel comics of the last 20 years have been exceptional overall. The MU is a mess, and will continue to chug along regardless.
Yeah, I think superhero comics are currently in a bit of a bind. Many readers are tired of bombastic, world-shattering storylines which inevitably have to end with a reset, the apocalypse on endless loop. They seem empty of real consequence. But if writers/editors try to dial things back to a human/character level, then they’re considered regressive or old-fashioned.
I suppose the marketing has become the product at this point. Every story has to include every hero, every villain, every reference to past stories, more “shocking” deaths and more “shocking” resurrections so that it can be billed as the biggest thing ever. But once Morrison and Hickman and Ewing (and Wolfman/Perez, Johns, etc.) have ended/restarted the DC and Marvel universes again and again, what’s left? How much bigger can you go?
Even in titles like Daredevil, which seem like they could stay grounded at street level, the remit seems to be “play the greatest hits, but bigger!”
Any X-book’s preoccupation with “fascists” rings somewhat hollow in the Krakoan era given how many of the most evil people on Marvel Earth were not only amnestied by Krakoa but given positions of authority in Krakoa’s government. Orchis has former HYDRA members, what of it? Krakoa made Gorgon one of their generals, and he was one of the leaders of HYDRA. I realize this is basically a reflection of what the X-fandom is like these days and how they see themselves, but it always smacks of a lack of self-awareness in the books.
It’s especially funny going back to Hickman’s X-Men #4 where Magneto gave this big speech about how mutants were just going to buy and subvert all human institutions, “we are unstoppable, we will rule everything, you will gnash your teeth in impotent rage” etc etc., and humanity’s response was to simply send some killer robots after the mutants, because that works every single time.
The “how is it that bad guys can bamboozle the public and be evil and get away with it” isn’t a reflection of recent American politics.
It’s a tired and lazy storytelling trope that goes back to ROBIN HOOD and THE THREE MUSKETEERS. As in: these ideas were good once and at some point they became labored.
I haven’t read FALL OF X but all y’all descriptions make it sound like DARK REIGN where Norman Osborn took advantage of Tony Stark centralizing power and then failing to notice a Secret Invasion.
In the 1980s DC Comics transformed Lex Luthor into Donald Trump FOR YEARS because “evil businessman that the hero cannot touch” was a level of impotence that editors loved to graft onto their protagonists, from Superman to Spider-Man. Norman Osborn was that kind of bad guy at least twice: once for an indefinite Spider-Man run and then for that line-wide story arc.
Kingpin was that in the SPIDER-MAN cartoon show; Kingpin was that in Daredevil comics and the Netflix series. I mentioned Lex Luthor in comic books and two cartoon series. Marv Wolfman used Vandal Savage for that in Superman titles in the 1989s.
Taking the same ideas and escalating the stakes to supposedly genocide doesn’t exactly shock me but I ain’t going to be fooled into taking it as verisimilitude either.
I did really like the idea that the X-Men were unconsciously, unintentionally escalating and provoking additional tensions with Orchis by blindly and repeatedly throwing kill squads at these attempted posthumanists.
It’s hard to know how much of the setup was hubris from the mutants, and how much was hubris from Hickman. It didn’t feel like we were meant to baulk at Magneto’s supremacist monologues, or the humans who were accidentally brain damaged by Xavier and became mutant worshippers, but maybe in the end it was going to be revealed that they were the baddies.
As for the untouchable archenemy, I understand why writers do it, but it is tired , and it kind of flies in the face of a core tenet of the superhero story – they’re a power fantasy. It struck me a couple of days ago how the original concept of Superman was near-identical to the concept of the Punisher. Dude has the power to do violence on the powerful that deserve it. Inverting that does nothing for me personally.