Powers of X #4 annotations
As always, there will be spoilers, and page numbers are going by the digital edition.
PAGE 1 (COVER): Professor X, wearing Cerebro, surrounded by the floating heads of various X-Men from the present and “Year 100” timelines. Most of them are recognisable, and perhaps the others are more of the “Sinister line” mutants from Year 100 (Rasputin and North are both there, for example). The solicitation version of this cover shows that the guy partly obscured by the logo is orange and has a fin on his head, so I’m drawing a blank there. None of this has anything much to do with the story inside.
PAGE 2: The opening epigraph is another Professor X quote, not taken from anything in the issue. The significance isn’t clear, beyond the obvious point about making difficult choices driven by need.
PAGE 3: The credits. The story title is “Something Sinister”, which is self-explanatory. The small print in the bottom right reads “Sinister with the cape”, referring to the (familiar) version of Mr Sinister who replaces his predecessor in the course of the issue.
PAGES 4-9: “Year One.” Professor X and Magneto visit Bar Sinister – an entire island community of Mr Sinisters – and try to get him to focus his efforts on mutant DNA. A “Sinister with the mutant gene” kills the previous Prime Sinister, takes control, and agrees to a partnership.
Year One: We’re back – more or less – to the format of the earlier issues, which went through the “Year 1”, “Year 10”, “Year 100″ and Year 1000” time frames. But there’s no Year 100 section in this issue, presumably because the X-Men of Year 100 died last issue.
Mister Sinister: Right, deep breath. Mister Sinister is one of the A-list X-Men villains, and is generally portrayed as an amoral scientist obsessed with genetics in general, mutants in particular, and the Summers family most of all. His name and costume are, obviously, wildly over the top. By all accounts, Chris Claremont’s original idea was that Sinister was an eternal child (both physically and mentally) and that “Mr Sinister” was the body through which he interacted with the outside world. In other words, he was meant to look a bit wrong. But writers in the 90s took him at face value, and eventually the Further Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix miniseries (1996) gave him a proper origin story as Victorian scientist Nathaniel Essex, who becomes obsessed with evolution and gets powers from Apocalypse.
Hickman’s version of the character, however, draws primarily on Kieron Gillen’s stories in the Utopia-era Uncanny X-Men (2011-12) where Sinister became interested in creating multiple Sinisters and creating an entire hive-mind species that was basically just versions of him. This was presented in Gillen’s stories as a new direction for Sinister, but Hickman appears to have Sinister doing something essentially similar much, much earlier. A key plot point of Gillen’s stories was that creating all these extra fully-powered Sinisters required a vast power source – as in, a Celestial or Phoenix – so if Sinister is producing an entire community at this stage, he must presumably have access to a pretty impressive power source. Hickman used this version of Sinister in his Secret Wars series, and of course it also fits with the hive-mind theme of his story.
Gillen’s Sinister was notably more eccentric and flamboyant than other takes on the character (or at least, he was eccentric and flamboyant in a less conventionally supervillain-ish way), and Sinister’s behaviour here follows in that line.
Bar Sinister: Sinister’s island – one of an awful lot of islands in this series. A version of the island, looking much like this, appeared in Secret Wars. It seems to be made of red crystal – presumably the ruby quartz that (per retcons) a disguised Sinister supplies to Cyclops to help him control his powers.
“Bar sinister” is a faux-heraldic term supposedly coined by Sir Walter Scott and intended to imply illegitimacy – it’s a play on “bastard” and “bend sinister” (which is a real heraldic term).
Xavier’s wheelchair: For some reason, Xavier is in the floating wheelchair that he didn’t start using until 1991.
Sinister’s library: Sinister’s obsession with cataloguing the world’s DNA comes up from time to time. Most recently, Hunt for Wolverine: Adamantium Agenda (2018) claimed that he had actually completed it somehow. Xavier seems mainly concerned to have a comprehensive database of mutant DNA from which (presumably) to clone new mutants when needed. We’ve seen mutants emerging from pods in the start of House of X #1.
“I have seen the future and this cause – mutantdom – is yours”: Magneto is referring to the role that Sinister played in cloning mutants during Moira’s ninth life – although the data pages have strongly implied that far from making mutantdom his cause, he betrayed the mutants. Although Xavier and Magneto probably have a better plan than just relying on this obvious flake to co-operate, Sinister is likely to complete the database simply for his own obsessional reasons. But trusting the entire database to him seems, er, bold.
“I’ve played around with introducing that aberrant gene into my superior genetic structure… and let me tell you – I didn’t like the results.” We’ll come back to this when we get to the data page. We don’t find out precisely what the undesirable “results” were, though – is it something to do with Sinister’s mental state?
“The Sinister with the mutant gene.” This Sinister is dressed in the original, 80s/90s Mr Sinister supervillain costume. He’s Sinister Classic, in look if not in personality.
“I need you to forget why you’re doing it … until the day I tell you to remember”: This sounds a lot like a device to explain why the massive retcon isn’t reflected in people’s’ thought balloons.
PAGES 10-12: Two data pages (plus more of the wisdom of Stan Lee) in the form of a gossip column from Mister Sinister. The “Red Diamond” title refers to the symbol on Sinister’s forehead, and the Krakoa letter at the top is just an S. Most of these, I suspect, are foreshadowing for points much later in the Hickman run. But the small print does read “lies”, so maybe we shouldn’t take it entirely at face value.
“Sinister Secret #1”: This looks like it’s just gibberish, but who knows?
“Sinister Secret #2”: Probably a reference to Jumbo Carnation, the mutant fashion designer who was seemingly killed by muggers in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men #134 (2003). He was a bit part character, but he’d be one of a number of characters to inexplicably return from the dead in this series. He was also an early example of a character presented as creating a specifically mutant culture, which would fit with Magneto’s stated aims for Krakoa (and probably Professor X’s too).
“Sinister Secret #3”: The “deceased redheaded pretender” who “made a pact with the devil” is Madelyne Pryor, Sinister’s clone of Jean Grey. Her deal with the devil – or more accurately the demon N’Astirh – was the plot of 1989’s crossover “Inferno”, in which they led a demon invasion of earth. Madelyne did die at the end of that story, but she was later restored by Nate Grey in X-Man #5 (1995). I’m not quite sure why Sinister thinks she’s dead – perhaps he doesn’t regard the revived Madelyne as real. So far as I can tell, the “real” Madelyne Pryor – as opposed to a counterpart from another timeline – was last seen in X-Men #12 (2014), a Brian Wood story where a bunch of other villains raised her from the dead again, and she promptly wandered off to become a dropped plot.
Interestingly, House of X #4 also used the very specific term “pretender” in reference to another redhead, the Scarlet Witch.
“Sinister Secret #4”: Foreshadowing. Something washed ashore on Bar Sinister and we should look out for it.
“Sinister secrets revealed!” Sinister says that where he got his mutant gene isn’t interesting (though do we believe him?), but that the identity of the mutant is: John Proudstar, the original Thunderbird. Thunderbird joined the X-Men as part of the big shake-up in 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1 only to get killed off in the X-Men’s next mission, although his younger brother Warpath did go on to be a major character. Thunderbird isn’t an obvious choice for Sinister, given his mundane powers. Depending on when these Year One segments are happening, though, is the implication that Sinister had done something with Thunderbird before he even joined the X-Men?
For completeness: there’s already a story which shows Sinister getting additional powers after acquiring a sample of mutant DNA. It’s Gambit #14 (2000), in which Gambit and Courier go back in time and meet an early Sinister, who keeps a sample from Courier and apparently uses it to get his shape-changing powers.
“Sinister Secret #5”: “He’s the best there is at what he does” is obviously Wolverine, who’s had that tag line attached for years. Wolverine is apparently having an affair with a married woman, who has a child, and whose husband is having an affair too. Way too early to guess who those might be, if it’s anything more than a red herring.
“Sinister Secret #6”: The “progerian” (i.e., prematurely aged) mutant is the X-Men’s student Ernst, who made a secret deal with Sinister in exchange for his promise to clone a new body for No-Girl, as seen in the 2015 miniseries Spider-Man & The X-Men. Through Ernst, Sinister acquired “a DNA sample from every student and faculty member of the Jean Grey school… a nearly complete genetic catalogue of the next generation of the mutant race”, or so he claimed. Apparently he still has it.
“Sinister Secret #7”: The “two brothers [who] jumped out of a plane” are Scott and Alex Summers, the future Cyclops and Havok, who parachuted together from their parents’ plane to escape the attacking Shi’ar. See e.g. the flashback in Uncanny X-Men #144 (1981). Sinister himself first hinted at the existence of a third Summers brother in X-Men #23 (1993), and X-Men: Deadly Genesis (2006) finally established that a third Summers brother, Gabriel, had indeed been born after their parents’ abduction. Gabriel became Vulcan and went on to appear mainly in the Marvel cosmic titles, though chances are we’ll be seeing him again. Sinister hints here that there could be even more siblings.
“Sinister Secret #8”: Completely straightforward: Apocalypse has routinely surrounded himself with Four Horsemen, and he’d happily go back to the originals given the chance.
“Sinister Secret #9”: Something about a “non-couple couple” who’ve been “apart so long” that “friends are expecting … fireworks.” No idea who he’s referring to there, given that Rogue and Gambit are now married.
“Sinister Secrets Revealed”: Another mention of the Inferno crossover.
“Sinister Secret #10”: Sinister is claiming to have replaced somebody with a pawn at an early stage. This looks like another massive retcon in the offing.
PAGES 13-20: Year 10, and “months ago” Professor X brings Cypher to Krakoa to introduce them. Cypher uses his language powers to talk to the island, which tells its origin story. This is the set-up to House of X, but there’s a lot to unpack here.
Professor X is not wearing the Cerebro helmet here, the first time we’ve seen him unmasked in the modern time frame. This does indeed seem to be him – though that in itself raises questions, since he was in a different body when he returned from the dead in Astonishing X-Men #6 (2017). His safari outfit here is worryingly reminiscent of Cassandra Nova’s outfit in her first appearance, New X-Men #114 (2001). How he got back in touch with the X-Men, or at least Cypher, remains a mystery. Cypher was most recently seen hanging around in the supporting cast of Daredevil during the Charles Soule run.
Krakoa: We’ve seen plenty of Krakoa already in this series, but there are some points here worth noting – again, there are discrepancies here with established history. Cypher calls Krakoa “the secret island where mutants come to die”, which was indeed its role in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975) – but that story ended with the X-Men firing Krakoa into space. Other Krakoas showed up later, presented as having grown from seeds or cuttings or so forth, but this Krakoa seems to be positioned as the original. Perhaps Hickman is relegating the Giant-Size Krakoa into an offshoot, like some of the others we’ve seen. The X-Men had a pet Krakoa on their grounds in Wolverine and the X-Men, for example.
Note that on page 15, the plants Cypher is touching are infected with the techno-organic virus in the following panel. But we know from the Year 100 scenes – if it’s the same timeline – that Krakoa ends up absorbing him.
Krakoa can “speak”, but only at a very broad and general level. X-Men: Deadly Genesis retconned Krakoa into being a dumb monster, and Wolverine and the X-Men made it more like a pet; Krakoa’s intelligence level here is broadly in line with that take.
The origin of Krakoa: And now, Hickman goes completely off the reservation, continuity-wise, giving us a story in which Krakoa is one half of the primeval land Okkara, which was torn into two – Arakko and Krakoa – by some sort of demonic/magical invaders. Those invaders then get repelled by Apocalypse and the first Horsemen. Okkara, Arakko and Krakoa are all anagrams of each other, and none of the names seem to have any inherent significance. (“Krakoa” was presumably meant to evoke the Indonesian island Krakatau. “Okkara” is a craft brewery in the Faroe Islands, but I’m pretty sure Hickman’s not thinking of that…)
This is not Krakoa’s established origin story, which has usually involved hinting that it was mutated by radiation from nuclear tests – see most recently Journey into Mystery: The Birth of Krakoa (2018). But those stories can be read – with a bit of squinting – as involving Krakoa being altered or awoken by the bomb. This also seems to fit with various references in earlier issues that implied Apocalypse was older than previously suggested – though we’ve yet to find out how that would square with stories depicting his childhood in ancient Egypt.
PAGE 21: A data page on “Current Krakoan systems.” We’ve already seen the involvement of Cypher, Sage, Trinary and Beast. Black Tom Cassidy is normally a villain, but a low-level one – he has a part-wooden body, which probably explains why he’s been selected for a role interfacing with Krakoa.
PAGES 22-27: The Year 1000 time frame. The mutants – who can’t be assimilated directly into the Phalanx – have come up with the idea of downloading themselves into machines so that at least a copy of them can become immortalised in the great collective. After establishing that it works, they wait to find out whether the Phalanx will accept it.
There’s an obvious question of why it has to be a machine intelligence to be uploaded, and what’s wrong with the techno-organic virus – which Hickman made a point of showing us with Cypher earlier in the issue.
The sequence: Apparently just a string of words used to test whether the mutant persona has been successfully uploaded. But presumably it has more significance than that: “There was a city on the mountain, and behind it the sun shone brightly as it expanded to consume the city, the mountain, the world.” This seems like it might have something to do with the Mother Mold being dumped into the sun in House of X.
The Phalanx: These far-future Phalanx are said to be the “forerunners” (whatever that means) of a galactic empire that is “believe[d]” to dominate the known universe. The speaker acknowledges that this is all very vague and metaphorical, and so it must be if there’s some doubt about the very existence of an all-encompassing empire. The implication seems to be that the Phalanx are all-pervasive and that the lower species are “free” of their empire simply by being beneath their notice.
PAGE 28: Another quote from Xavier, similar to the opening one.
PAGES 29-31: The reading order, and the trailers: “NEXT: SOCIETY” and “THEN: FOR THE CHILDREN”.
@wwk5d
“Given how long the series and franchise has been published, 30 issues is a footnote…”
Yes, but given that Giant-Size X-Men #1 through Days of Future Past is largely regarded as the “golden age” of the series, and Banshee appears in a good three quarters of it, it’s unfortunate his membership is as remembered almost as distantly as Thunderbird’s.
@Job
“I have no idea why the Cypher scene was in this issue and not HoX #1. Everything we’ve seen in this series already implied or conveyed everything we saw in this scene.”
Previous issues didn’t imply that Krakoa used to be part of a larger landmass that got severed by a demon and had a chunk exiled to another dimension by Apocalypse and his first never-before-seen Horsemen.
“Previous issues didn’t imply that Krakoa used to be part of a larger landmass that got severed by a demon and had a chunk exiled to another dimension by Apocalypse and his first never-before-seen Horsemen.“
lol jesus this book
@Ylu
“Previous issues didn’t imply that Krakoa used to be part of a larger landmass that got severed by a demon and had a chunk exiled to another dimension by Apocalypse and his first never-before-seen Horsemen.”
Obviously that’s not the Cypher scene I was talking about.
Besides, it’s unlikely that Krakoa origin crap is going to play out in HoXPoX, it’s probably set up for the ongoing, so I’m going to bet it wouldn’t actually fit into any issue of HoXPoX.
@Voord 99
I’m not that familiar with Banshee – in what way is he “gender-nonconforming”? Just because of the name?
According to mythology, a “Banshee” is a female spirit (or fairy woman) who heralds the death of a family member by wailing or shrieking.
Hence, “gender-nonconforming.”
Also, thanks Paul! I totally flipped Woods’ X-Men with Fractions’ Uncanny.
The story goes that Banshee was a woman in Roy Thomas’s original pitch, but Stan Lee vetoed it because it was the 1960s and Marvel didn’t do female supervillains (except to pair off with the token girl in team books). So, same costume, same powers, same name (despite it being female-specific), but now a man. Siryn is essentially Banshee as originally conceived.
Alas, I was indeed just engaging in gentle humor about Banshee’s name, and there was nothing more to it than that.
Although I’ll add to what Col_Fury says above that the “ban-“ part of “banshee” (Irish bean) even means “woman.”
Yep, it does.
That is interesting. I just sort of figured that Roy Thomas didn’t realize that a banshee was specifically female when he created the character.
“As Cerebro does as it was intended to do, Sinister does what he does best and the future comes to an end.”
I guess what he does best is now ‘being fabulous’, that future probably was COMING to an end, but cerebro wasn’t in the issue at all. The cover concentrates on that, though. Obviously something changed along the line.
“Obviously that’s not the Cypher scene I was talking about.”
Was there more than one Cypher scene this issue? The main point of Cypher’s bit was,to me, to show the Krakoa backstory.
The other point of the Cypher scene, I think, was to show how important Cypher is to Xavier’s plans. He’s only divulged the details of The Plan (or parts of it) to Magneto, Sinister, and Cypher on panel.
I think Hickman is just trying to tell us that Cypher is not just another background character. His TO-arm is clearly connected to the distant future with the Phalanx.
@Paul
That doesn’t match up with Roy Thomas’s version of the story. He told Peter Sanderson in an interview (The X-Men Companion published by Fantagraphics Books) that he basically just screwed up and that Banshee should’ve been a female.
Stan Lee wrote at least one female villain before the MU even started: Morgan Le Fey. Black Knight #1, 1955. As for the MU proper, well, there’s the Enchantress who debuted three years before Thomas created Banshee.
Ok, I saw where the Stan Lee veto thing came from but it doesn’t make a great deal of sense…
“One thing I felt bad about after (Banshee’s) first issue was that I thought he should have been a woman,” Thomas told The X-Men Companion. “But Stan felt it wouldn’t look good for five X-Men to be fighting a supervillainess,” he added in Comics Creators On X-Men.
“I think I must have wanted to create an adult, leprechaunish character, which Werner and I did, and I think I let that overrule the fact that of course I knew that a Banshee was really a female,” Thomas confessed in The X-Men Companion. “I think I made a mistake there.”
^Curious that he neglected to mention the bit about Stan Lee’s objection in his interview for the X-Men Companion. I also find it difficult to reconcile “Stan thought it wouldn’t look good.” with “I wanted to create a leprechaunish character, and I let that overrule the fact that I knew banshees are supposed to be female.” In one interview he calls it his mistake. In another, he says Stan had a problem with it.
Enchantress was created as Executioner’s partner, and was part of a plan to get rid of Jane Foster.
I think the point was that there were no female villains operating independently in the Marvel Universe.
The few female villains that did exist were paired off with female characters.
So, Banshee would have broke that mould.
Leaving the Enchantress aside, Thomas still gave conflicting accounts as to why Banshee was male. It can’t be both “My bad” and “Stan made me.”
I always think its hard to to get original creator stories when filtered through the internet. A particularly bad example is when Claremont used to post at ‘Cordially Chris’ over at X-Fan back when he started on X-Treme X-Men. Fan opinion terribly influenced story outcome and coloured his opinions of “how he intended the story to end”. It was downright contradictory. Same with his recent Xplain the Xmen podcast where he curries favour with the interviewers by agreeing with their theories. It’s incredibly frustrating.
I’m enjoying these annotations – a lot of stuff I miss. I thought the conversation between. Abort and Cypher was really neat because it was actually a chance for Cypher to just converse as a regular person. No battle or anything. And to be acknowledged for the powers he previously felt were very dull yet have so much potential. On the other hand, his original “death” was one I considered “real”. It had such a massive long term impact on the other characters and was kept intact for so long, it really bums me out that he’s back as though it never happened. It’s unlike the majority that followed that were so obviously temporary and pandering. To me, it would have been much more effective to stick with the original “resurrection” of the character using Ellis’ Douglock scenario with, I believe, Warlock basically thinking he was Doug. 29 whatever years later I still remember the character description “a dead boy cast in wires”. So haunting. And if he HAS to be back, a way to do it that doesn’t invalidate the original death but instead builds on it. Sigh.
Luke –
You raise good points. However, keep this in mind: This version of Doug was brought back via the transmode virus in the Necrosha storyline (which in itself was apparently a get out of Death free card for a handful of characters, with enough ambiguity to allow a few to slip through the cracks.)
But in Doug’s case, he remained alive by reprogramming the transmode virus in his body… and of course he’s been a carrier since before his original death, so if anyone was going to come back this way, it might as well be him.
This probably also explains his technorganic arm… he manipulated the virus within himself to make it more overt for whatever reason.
So it’s not that he’s back as if it never happened, it’s that after 9 years of being alive again, enough time has passed to overshadow all those years he was dead.
And given that the deaths of Doug and Warlock were both regrettable when they happened, I’m cool with any storyline that brought them back, as long as it made sense.
@Evilgus
Perhaps, but the X-Men Companion was published in 1982. There was no internet (as we know it) around to influence anybody.
Speaking of Cypher and Necrosha, how old is he meant to be? I’ve wondered this since he was brought back. He was 15 or 16 when he died, but he *seems to be* a young adult. All good and fine, comics be comics, but how old is he actually meant to be?
@Dave
“Was there more than one Cypher scene this issue? The main point of Cypher’s bit was,to me, to show the Krakoa backstory.”
No, the Cypher scene was his in-person talk with Xavier. The Krakoa backstory was all exposition. It wasn’t a scene. It didn’t have to be narrated by any character. It could fit literally anywhere in any issue because it doesn’t fit anywhere.
Evilgus
Wow, I remember when Claremont was doing that!
The fandom for X-treme X-men on that site was pretty intense (New X-Men was very popular and Joe Casey/Chuck Austen’s Uncanny X-men was…not so much). and his interactions with the fans was pretty heavy through the Invasion-era arc. I have a feeling that it influenced what happened with the two Australian characters (who were interestingly enough from my home city, the Gold Coast).
Neither here, nor there but X-Fan circa 2002 was pretty amazing – they had Claremont, Mark Millar, Jason Aaron (right at the start of his career), Chuck Austen, Frank Tieri and others all posting there, some quite regularly.
I had a hell of a lot of fun there for a few years but probably dropped off sometime around 2005 or 2006 I would guess when I was busy with work/uni and wasn’t reading the X-books as much. It had changed a lot by then and I recall it wasn’t getting as much traffic as it had some years earlier. I was sad to hear it was no longer operating.
“It didn’t have to be narrated by any character.”
It had to be narrated in some way, and Doug’s power makes him a very good option.
I could see it easily going in HoX instead, as it seems like the only reason for it to appear in PoX is so that it had a ‘Year 10’ segment, but that’s also been true with previous issues.
I don’t know. The Cypher/Xavier scene dropped some tidbits that felt consequential to me. At the very least, Cypher infecting Krakoa with the TO virus on the sly seems significant.
And knowing that Doug has better communication with Krakoa than Charles does is interesting. It was kind of funny how Charles thought Krakoa said “sad” when he really said “here’s my entire origin story…I miss my sister.” So dropping Krakoa’s origin at that point was at least a good joke in the context of the Cypher/Xavier conversation.
Also, seeing Charles without his portable Cerebro and in his best Cassandra Nova drag answers and/or raises some questions. I realize that lots of people wear safari outfits to the jungle, but Hickman must understand the connotations of those clothes for X-readers.
I don’t want to be a Hickman apologist. I’m sure he’s dropped breadcrumbs in a haphazard or unsatisfactory way before. In fact, I know it from reading some of his Avengers run. I just don’t think he’s doing that here.
The Krakoa back story flashback is pitched as vague and unreliable, and it’s presumably intended to play as mythic. Given that, having it relayed through Cypher is the best option. If Krakoa speaks to us directly in then you remove his sense of mystery. And if you just do it as a scene set in the past, then (a) you’re presenting it as fact, and (b) it messes up the Powers of Ten structure.
I guess you could point to bother/sister bonds now….Krakoa saying he misses his sister. Professor X and Cassandra. I noticed someone mention the John Sublime and his sister plot from Wood’s X-Men, although that probably doesn’t figure in here.
It could go along with whatever point Hickman is making about “motherhood” in the series.
Plus, it references family, with the first issue of House of X, when Cyclops talks about how all mutants are part of a family, when talking about Franklin Richards.
At the same time, didn’t Professor X wear his safari outfit when he was in Cairo (in Uncanny X-Men #117)?
I always associate it with early-Claremont X-Men, rather than with Cassandra Nova.
Yeah, but his was more of a dapper Indiana Jones look than colonial big game hunter. And the pith helmet is Cassandra-specific.
@Paul
“if you just do it as a scene set in the past, then (a) you’re presenting it as fact, and (b) it messes up the Powers of Ten structure.”
It messes up the structure anyway, as it’s still narration about the distant past prior to any “year of X,” and that has nothing to do with the story thus far, and is unlikely to be addressed in this miniseries.
@Dave
“It had to be narrated in some way”
We have tons of exposition in each issue as it is. This was even the first issue that had explicitly unreliable exposition. There’s really no consistency to any of this, and thus no reason why any scene absolutely has to be presented in the place or issue in which it’s presented.
Hell, is there any reason why Moira IX had to be resolved in the previous issue? The X-Men have been gearing up to stop Mothermold since the first issue. Moira IX obtaining/passing along the Nimrod data doesn’t change that.
“though we’ve yet to find out how that would square with stories depicting his childhood in ancient Egypt.”
Just a period where Apocalypse was awoken too early.
Oof, HoX #5 reads like a 10-year-old child’s fan fiction.
I’ve sort of lost hope in this book after House of X #5 too.
What was the big reveal supposed to be? The issues marked with red were meant to feature a major moment in the series.
Everything in the issue has been hinted at since issue #1.
It was all guessed at by different people posting in these review threads.
It was all quite obvious by this point.
It seems that the book really is just suffering from uninspired writing, needless ret-cons, and poor characterization.
I haven’t been impressed with the book since House of X #2, to be honest.
I thought Hickman was going to eventually move back in to more interesting territory, even though he seemed to waste a lot of time and space with the series.
It seems more like Hickman is playing with “smoke and mirrors”, rather than dealing with big ideas, like his Fantastic Four or Avengers.
Still, this is for the next issue’s discussion.
It’s been interesting so far.
@Chris V
“What was the big reveal supposed to be?”
All the bad guys realize the good guys and right and are like hey good guys let’s all be friends and then they shake hands YAY!!!!!
Remember when Bendis and Millar wrote stories about every super villain deciding to team up to take down the heroes more effectively (Marvel Knights Spider-man, Secret War, the dumb stuff with the Hood, etc.)?
This is more juvenile than that.
@Job
“All the bad guys realize the good guys and right and are like hey good guys let’s all be friends and then they shake hands YAY!!!!!”
It’s not the bad guys realising that the good guys are right. If anything, it’s the good guys realising that the bad guys are right. Apocalypse specifically applauds the X-Men for coming around to his way of thinking.
That, plus the specifics of what they were doing in the first scene and the implications in the data pages, and Xavier being fine with Emma straight up using her powers on a UN ambassador, gave me a palpable feeling of dread throughout that issue. Most of it was easy to guess, but seeing them do it brings home the idea that the X-Men aren’t necessarily heroes anymore.
Or a case of the bad guys realizing that “hey, seconds after the X-Men have returned me from the dead, they’re more powerful than they’ve ever been, and I’m surrounded by a hundred of them” is the wrong moment to step out of line.
Hickman’s always been better at sketching out ideas than followthrough, and I’m sure there are plot points in the series that are going to be abandoned. But I would be very, very surprised if of the follow up series by him or someone else doesn’t have some “evil mutant” rebellion within the year.
@Alex Hill
“it’s the good guys realising that the bad guys are right. Apocalypse specifically applauds the X-Men for coming around to his way of thinking.”
Apocalypse’s way is just destroying anyone weaker than him. Apocalypse claiming the X-Men came around to his way based on House of X is a Trump supporter saying “You just proved my point!!!” after you explicitly disagreed with him. It’s even more juvenile writing.
“Xavier being fine with Emma straight up using her powers on a UN ambassador”
So they can magically do anything, including coming back from the dead exactly the way they were when they died. It’s pure 10-year-old fan fiction.
The bad guys haven’t been returned from the dead, they arrived via Krakoa gateways.
Now, I have no idea what some of them are doing there – the petty criminals concerned with financial gain (like Mesmero or Black Tom), the would-be tyrants (Selene) – I have no clue why they would come there, why they would be interested in the common mutant cause. Though others make ideological sense – Apocalypse, as he explains himself, or Exodus. (And a lot of the rest are hangers-on with no individual purpose anyway, so they’re fine).
Buuut… Sinister’s not even a mutant. And sure, he’s important to the story and all that, but… not a mutant. And if he counts because he implanted himself with mutant genes, then I guess Deadpool and Pandemic are just around the corner?
Also – it’s a group shot, I shouldn’t focus on it, but it’s still annoying that the reveal of the baddest of the bad arriving at Krakoa includes actual X-Men (Frenzy) and x-affiliated characters [Random, Marrow (previous X-Force member, last seen among the short lived Magneto’s Brotherhood alongside freaking Elixir, who gets the hero treatment in this very issue)].
Normally I’d just shrug it off, but when we’re encouraged to focus on the tiniest details to find some clues and whatnot because this is such a finely crafted masterpiece, it’s especially annoying somebody couldn’t be bothered to read their wikipedia pages.
@Job
“Apocalypse’s way is just destroying anyone weaker than him.”
Ehh…I would say he cares about “survival of the fittest”, but usually that is overwhelmingly pro-mutant. Even in Age of Apocalypse where he gets pretty much everything he wants, he has his Horsemen and several armies of mutants to conquer humans. And in Milligan’s “The Blood” storyline, he explicitly takes up the mutant cause after Decimation. So this team-up is not out of left field. And it’s not like he doesn’t know the team: Polaris, Sunfire, Angel, Gambit, and Wolverine have all been Horsemen.
It seems that the new status quo is “sanctuary for mutants, first and foremost”, since freaking Sabretooth is getting defended by Cyclops and Emma Frost. I agree that this is probably going to end badly.
@Krzysiek Ceran
I thought Xavier and Magneto were trying to make that very point, that large chunks of the X-Men are former villains (which the group shot shows). I guess they said “pretty-please” to Krakoa to let Sinister on.
We already knew from future scenes that Apocalypse and Sinister were going to join the mutants on Krakoa.
That was hardly a surprise.
We also know that Sinister will eventually start doing some “sinister” things, and will eventually betray the X-Men.
All that has already been shown.
I don’t think Job was saying that the X-villains were all returning from the dead.
I think he was making the point about earlier in the issue, where it was shown that any mutants who died can be brought back from the dead.
It seems that Hickman was really interested in giving an explicit explanation for why all these X-characters have come back from the dead (Scott, Jean, Logan, etc.).
I’m just not sure that it’s an interesting direction.
I really don’t get the problem here. The mutant utopia has arrived, and it’s SO creepy.
They’re separatists (only mutants are allowed on Krakoa), they’re supremacists (humans will do as we want, also killing them is no big deal), and now they’re functionally immortal (via Goldballs of all people).
How all this equals fan fiction is a mystery to me. Especially since it’s more obvious than ever that Charles is harboring a secret. Oh, and most likely Doug is, too.
I have a feeling that Scott, Jean, Logan, Ororo, etc. (even Magneto?) don’t know the extent to which this utopia is built on deception and bad intentions. We’re (more or less) still seeing the shiny, celebratory facade they’re seeing. But when the rug gets pulled out from under them it’s going to be really interesting.
What is that going to do to the X-Men though?
So, all these characters we once cared about, they’re all just mindless followers. Oh, they fell for the evil plot all along.
Why do we want to read about these characters?
Plus, they’re all just clones now anyway.
I thought it was an interesting idea to show a different side of mutants.
I thought the idea that they were going to set up their own mutant nation and actually make it work was interesting.
I mean, we saw an aborted homeland for mutants with Genosha, which wasn’t realistic. It was basically a place to stick refugees, rather than an attempt to create an actual mutant nation.
We saw mutants take up the cause of separatism with Scott’s Utopia, but that wasn’t really an attempt to start a mutant nation, with their own culture and economy.
So, these aren’t new ideas, in and of themselves.
I don’t know why we need to go down the road to “they’re all creepy and there’s an evil plan underneath it all”.
Marvel tried really hard to make the Inhumans in to the X-Men.
Instead, it just ruined what made the Inhumans distinct.
Now, it seems like Hickman is trying to make the X-Men in to the Inhumans.
There’s still 3 issues to go, so I will withhold judgement until I see where all this is going, but if one of the goals of HoXPoX is to finally draw a line under Decimation so that now mutants are flourishing instead of being nearly hunted to extinction, I’m all for it, whether it’s due to magic or Goldballs. (Which are probably the same thing.)
Honestly, I’m done with that direction. Is HoXPoX so far a flawless masterpiece? No. I want to learn more about what sanctuary really means on Krakoa–can Sabretooth really kill people and Xavier’s okay with it? What would an adversarial Wakanda / Krakoa relationship be like? Are Cyclops and Cable really going to take advice from Sinister and Apocalypse? What about mutants who don’t believe like Xavier / Magneto do? Where do they fit in? What split up Xavier and Moira? How do the rest of the MCU view the X-Men now?
I find all this more interesting than the recent history of flagship X-Men books being utterly miserable. Can we have a detour like this before getting back on the inevitable train towards DoFP (which I’m sure Marvel will revert to as soon as Hickman is done in a few years)?
With almost any other writer, I’d agree with the fan fiction accusations. But Jonathan Hickman has earned the benefit of the doubt for me, and I trust that he has a plan for this that goes beyond ‘the X-Men are now functionally immortal.’ Whether or not you’re on board with that plan is another matter entirely, and I can understand people being turned off by the sinister (no pun intended) undertones; this isn’t going to be for everyone, but so far it very much is for me and I’m actually considering buying single issues past HoXPoX to see where this is going.
Also, on a metatextual level I adore how Hickman has taken the fact that the X-Men are well known for coming back from the dead and made it an actual strength of them.
@CJ But Hickman is such a big picture guy that I’m honestly not sure if we’re going to get those things fleshed out before he runs towards another universal sci-fi metaplot thingie.
I guess that’s what the other five ongoings might be for, but then there’s the question of whether the books will inform each other and if so whether that’s going to be a two-way street or not.
I was giving Hickman the benefit of the doubt (and still plan to finish House/Powers), until this issue (#5).
I love Hickman’s writing and have bought and enjoyed almost all of his comic work.
However, when the “big reveal” for issue #5 turned out to be something that’s been guessed at by almost everyone on the internet, I started to lose faith.
Yes, everyone realized that the characters were clones from way back at the beginning of the first issue.
Yes, we already realized that Apocalypse and Sinister were joining Krakoa after we saw scenes in the future that already told us both characters were going to come to Krakoa.
The last “big reveal” issue, about Moira’s powers, featured the sort of big ideas I’ve come to love in Hickmnan’s writing.
It made me very excited about the direction Hickman was taking the X-books.
However, not much has really happened since those first three issues of the series.