Nightcrawlers #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NIGHTCRAWLERS #2
“Sins of Sinister, part 5: The Apostate”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Andrea Di Vito
Colourist: Jim Charalampidis
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The Nightkin steal Mjolnir from Thor. It doesn’t happen this way in the story, for the obvious reason that Mjolnir can’t be picked up.
PAGE 2. The Nightkin prepare to head to Asgard.
As we’ll see shortly, we’ve jumped forward 90 years since the previous issue. That issue ended with the first Nightcrawler-based chimeras bringing assorted superhero trinkets to Mother Righteous, who told them that they needed to build “the Reliquary Perilous”, a “holy weapon” which could “purge the Sinister Strain from the heart of every mutant – with the white-hot fire of faith.” She established a quasi-religious cult around the Nightcrawler-chimeras’ sacrifices and the original Nightcrawler’s “Spark” philosophy (with herself in charge) and told them to steal various superhero-associated items to build this Reliquary.
What any of this had to do with actually defeating Sinister was unclear, and Mother Righteous had clear ulterior motives, but it was at least plausible enough that she had some sort of plan to break Sinister’s hold on humanity – after all, it wasn’t doing her any favours either.
Ninety years later, however, the Nightcrawler-chimeras – now calling themselves the Nightkin, and evidently replenishing their ranks by periodically freeing new chimeras through Vox Ignis’ powers – are still hunting down objects, with no apparent end in sight. Nor is it very clear how any of this helps Mother Righteous; the implication seems to be that her goal is simply to remain in charge of the Nightkin. The whole thing seems to be a riff on organised religion, with the idea that it’s become detached from its roots and now exists primarily for the purposes of sustaining its leaders in their own power (however marginal).
The narrator is identified later as Wagnerine – a Nightcrawler/Wolverine hybrid whom we saw last issue, the Wolverine in question being Laura.
The countdown credo is apparently the three lines (numbered in reverse) on this page, a parallel to Krakoa’s three laws. It’s effectively devoid of content beyond identifying three things as “blessed”.
“The Beast with a Million Heads.” Sinister, presumably – in the sense that he’s corrupted most of the human race. Millions sounds on the light side, actually.
“Ninety years ago, Asgard was sent spinning into the void.” In Sins of Sinister #1, Sinisterized Magik uses her own magic and a sword from Muspelheim to kick Asgard “away from Midgard, perpetually lost”.
“Magik of the Red Diamond.” Referring to Sinister’s logo, obviously – but for what it’s worth, the Nightkin refer to Sinisterized characters elsewhere as [name]-in-Sin. For some reason Magik gets a different descriptor.
PAGE 3. Magik’s forces attack Asgard.
Magik appers to be accompanied by weird hybrids of Sabretooth and something, and giant combinations of Chamber and… Abyss, maybe?
Volstagg and Balder can be seen among the defenders.
“I was reborn in the suit of Hearts.” Mother Righteous’s symbol. Obviously, the freed Nightcrawlers have just gone from one controlling Sinister to another slightly subtler one.
PAGES 4-5. Montage of previous Sinister attacks.
The Shi’ar. Panels 1-2 have Professor X bringing down the Shi’ar through paranoia, while the Nightcrawlers steal some shards of the M’Kraan Crystal – the cosmically powerful artefact first seen in X-Men #107 (1977). Xavier is boosting his power through “hybrid brains” drawing on psychic mutants like Amahl Farouk (the Shadoow King) and Carl Valentino (Somnus).
Loki, in his traditional villain outfit, is fighting to defend Asgard and demands to know why the Nightcrawlers aren’t helping too.
Otherworld. Wagnerine gives her answer here – according to their credo, the overwhelming goal is to take the artefacts, which has become a cause in its own right. But she does insist on page 6 that they will purge Sinister; everyone else is apparently just a distraction.
Banshee told us last issue that all the magic-users had fled to Otherworld. The three seen here are Elsa Bloodstone, Dr Voodoo and a horribly battered and scarred Dr Strange. He dies in the next panel.
Xandar. Homeworld of the Nova Corps. Sinister wipes it out with a chimera of Legion, Proteus and Polaris – i.e., the children of Professor X, Moira X and Magneto. Hence “Heirburst Bomb”, a pun on “airburst bomb”. Note that Sinister himself – who was basically enslaved by Emma Frost in Immoral X-Men #1 – is seen here. Or someone in his trademark cape, anyway – it’s a silhouette.
PAGES 5-6. The Nightkin steal Mjolnir.
Thor is predictably unimpressed at them trying to steal Mjolnir, so they cut his arm off to make him drop it. A chimera of Nightcrawler and Lost (from Legion of X) is able to move Mjolnir, not by lifting it as such, but by using her gravity-altering powers to redefine “down” so that Mjolnir falls in whatever direction she wants to take it. Clever.
In fairness to Mother Righteous, Mjolnir was on her initial shopping list last issue and it doesn’t seem to have been readily available to her until now. If there’s anything to her claim that these items will somehow help, then maybe she really hasn’t been able to finish the set until now. I wouldn’t be too optimistic about that, though.
The Cortez sacrament will be some sort of distillate of Fabian Cortez’s power-boosting ability. Last issue, they were stealing “Brains of Cortez”, which were left hanging around in Sinister’s labs as generic power boosters.
Fimbulwinter – or Fimbulvetr, really – is the mighty winter that precedes Ragnarok.
PAGE 7. Recap and credits.
PAGE 8. Data page, in the style of the back cover of an old sci-fi novel. The first two paragraphs basically recap the crossover to date. The remainder refers back to Hope’s concerns in Immoral X-Men #1 that the mutants needed to take the initiative or be wiped out by cosmic powers; Sinister’s contribution was to provide the chimera needed for that to happen.
The Krakoan text in the bottom left is just the names of the participating comics in their reading order.
PAGE 9. The Narthex.
Nightcrawler’s old home on Krakoa, apparently uprooted and turned into a spaceship – presumably for its religious significance to the Nightkin.
The Chamber Nocturne are apparently Nightcrawler/Chamber hybrids using their powers to power the ship.
“It has been two years since he brought fresh novitiates.” In issue #1, Vox Ignis’ powers were able to free Nightcrawler chimeras – and only Nightcrawler chimeras – from Sinisterisation. Apparently, 90 years later, Sinister has only just stopped making them. Why? Was he deliberately providing Mother Righteous with a crew? Or were there just so many Nightcrawler chimeras that he didn’t notice a few going missing? Vox Ignis assumes it’s the latter on page 13, but is he right?
Also, if there are no more Nightcrawlers around, where does that leave Mother Righteous’s cult? She needs followers, and as we establish in this issue, the Nightcrawlers are infertile.
PAGES 10-13. Summernight prepares to die.
We saw last issue that the chimeras can eventually lose their independence and fall back under Sinister’s control. The same is clearly happening to this Cyclops-Nightcrawler chimera.
A flashback establishes that Summernight and Wagerine had a child (because her healing powers overcame her infertility over her long lifespan), only for the child to suddenly vanish as soon as it was born. Mother Righteous has promptly placed this tragedy at the heart of the religious, presenting the child as a sinless innocent and redeemer.
The Last Rite. Evidently the “father” is Nightcrawler and the “mother” is Mother Righteous, putting herself on a par with Nightcrawler. It ends with Summernight committing suicide in the same way that the Spider-Man chimera did in the previous issue. The barrier surrounds Orbis Stellaris’s Worldfarm, where Sinister’s secret lab has been taken.
Auntie Fortune is the Domino chimera from the previous issue, still alive but extremely aged.
PAGE 14. Wagnerine asks Vox Ignis about Mother Righteous.
Understandably enough, Wagnerine’s recent tragedy has shaken her faith. She points out that the list of sacred items for required for the Reliquary Perilous seems to just keep growing. However… Righteous’s vague explanation is that “it must be carried within the devil’s lab, to purge the Sinister strain”. There’s some truth to that, because inside Sinister’s stolen lab is the Moira clone who could be killed to rest the timeline. Presumably that’s what she means. But she doesn’t have a way in.
PAGE 15. Flashback: Mother Righteous visits Legion.
Legion basically tells Mother Righteous to get lost, gives up on the world in despair, and departs for higher planes with “what remains of my people” – presumably people who escaped Sinister by taking up residence in the Alter.
PAGE 16. Vox Ignis has an idea to create more Nightkin.
This is of interest to Mother Righteous because she’s running out of followers, of course.
PAGE 17. Data page. Sinister’s diary records that the Quiet Council, following Hope’s warning, have decided to attack the rest of the universe. His goal remains entirely different: recover the Moira clone and reset history. Even Sinister considers that the attacks on the rest of the universe long since ceased to be any sort of pre-emptive defensive strategy and became just plain imperialist. The war with the Brood and the Annihilation Wave has basically wiped out Earth, but Sinisterised mankind has headed for the stars anyway.
Kenji Uedo is Zero from Generation Hope, who I don’t think has appeared anywhere since Storm #11 (2015).
PAGES 18-19. The Nightkin go to the X-Men Mansion.
The X-Men Mansion is still mostly intact, and Dr Nemesis is still there. We saw him there last issue, guarding the original Nightcrawler, who was still in monstrous form following recent issues of Legion of X. He’s apparently now starting to turn into a plant. Ostensibly, he’s being released so that he can breed new Nightcrawlers. That’s evidently not Wagnerine’s primary goal – but maybe it’s going to happen in some form, because there’s an issue #3 of this series. Or maybe not, if it’s just going to be Wagnerine.
PAGES 20-22. Wagnerine unleashes Nightcrawler on Mother Righteous.
Nightcrawler is not happy about this perversion of his Spark, to the extent that he can articulate anything about it. I think this is the first time we’ve seen Mother Righteous fight; she responds by drawing an energy sword from her body and summarily despatching Nightcrawler. Everyone else, she simply gets into line by using her influence over their souls, from their participation in her religion. The original Nightcrawler has never been part of that, so she resorts to regular combat.
EDITED TO ADD: As pointed out in the comments, the sword appears to be the Hopesword which Margali Szardos conjured from Nightcrawler’s body in Legion of X #10.
PAGES 23-24. Wagnerine learns that her child is alive.
The girl is actually part of the Reliquary. Wagnerine says that her love for “my child” and “my people” will “last a thousand years”, which of course is the time frame for issue #3.
EDITED TO ADD: As pointed out in the comments, because the child’s father is a Cyclops chimera, this is an echo of Mr Sinister stealing Cyclops’s baby son Nate.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
So…if Wagnerine and Summernight had a child together, then that means that Wolverine and Cyclops finally got it on, kind of? lol
Probably the most underwhelming of the SoS series so far. Here’s hoping Mother Righteous actually accomplishes something in the next 900/1000 years…
> PAGE 16. Vox Ignis has an idea to create more Nightkin.
Wagnerine does, she just gets Vox to present it.
> He’s apparently now starting to turn into a plant.
Fungus, in line with the mushrooms on his head throughout WoX/LoX. (And he seems to have gone waaaaay beyond “starting”, especially given the apparent side-effects of the Nightkin hacking him out. One wonders if there’s any meat left…)
Also, if the Nightkin (and chimeras in general?) are genetically infertile, how would Wagnerine’s healing factor help? And even if they were “just” physically sterilised, how was Summernight apparently fertile?
I kind of disagree about this being the least engaging part of SOS. It’s as impenetrable as everything Spurrier’s done but it tells the story it’s set out to do and does it well enough. Immoral X-Men, on the other hand, is a book by a writer I already feel very ambivalent about indulging in my least favorite aspects of his writing.
Note that the baby Mother Righteous stole is the daughter of a Cyclops hybrid and Banshee seems to regard that as significant. Sinister kidnapped baby Cable shortly after he was born. This is more evidence that Sinister and Mother Righteous think alike, only she uses magic instead of science, and Banshee is starting to realize that.
I think that Mother Righteous DOES have a plan- the solicits for next issue describe her as destroying the galaxy and the cover shows a zombie Galactus- Galactus being one of the few things that can kill a Dominion.
Can someone explain to me what Wagnerine thought Nightcrawler was supposed to accomplish? Wagnerine wanted to kill Mother Righteous, right? Mother Righteous can cause the Nightkin pain when she wants, yes, but I don’t see why they couldn’t just kill her when her back is turned.
Presumably the idea is that Mother Righteous is trying to pool enough magical power to ascend and become a Dominion – that’s essentially the goal all four clones have been working towards all along, as stated by the original Essex
Also, I think “in-Sin” is used here to refer to the two original corrupted Council members (Xavier and Hope) – Magik was presumably converted later.
Last ones, promise (and I don’t blame you for missing them, Spurrier’s opaque on his best days):
Righteous isn’t being vague when talking about Sinister’s lab – we learned in Immoral #1 that there’s a self-destruct trigger in there that could wipe out anyone with Sinister DNA. But it’s as inaccessible as the Moira Engine now.
And that energy sword is the Hopesword, presumably claimed from Margali after Righteous killed/sacrificed her (flashback panel in Nightcrawlers #1)
I’ve liked Legion of X and Nightcrawlers well enough, but I always get the same feeling before I read it: trepidation. I know I’ll have to remember storytelling beats I don’t completely remember or care strongly about. I know I’ll wonder why characters are doing certain actions and where it will lead. I know I’ll want Nightcrawler, my favorite X character, to succeed brilliantly but that it probably won’t happen.
That said, cutting out the “policing but not policing” and many semi-superfluous characters has made the two issues of Nightcrawlers smoother reads that LoX. I’m fine with Spurrier going his own way in this event and curious how the story will resolve.
Finally, I reserve judgement on the 10 y/100 y/1,000 y gimmick until I read the other two series, but this issue could take place 1 year after issue 1 for all the difference it made to the narrative.
“cosmically powerful artefact”
Felt to me like Legion was drawn and colored to parallel Doctor Manhattan, to the point of homage
Will have to wait until we have second issues of the other series, but I’m certainly enjoying this book. Spurrier is always weird while managing to have something to say, and I appreciate how each of these books is using the shifting time scales to worldbuild and tell different kinds of stories than one normally would. And I enjoyed Di Vito’s art as well, looking forward to the next two issues in this period.
The Chimeras make for a nice contrast to the notion of Mutant Circuits (which, come to think of it, are represented pretty well in SNAP, eg. Kraven / Cloak / Dagger / Dr. Strange, etc). Not sure how intentional that is, but given that Hickman introduced by concepts in HoX/PoX, I’d wager it is. Rasputin IV is expected to return, I suspect in issue 3 of Immoral, so maybe the idea will be addressed directly. I also wonder if Legion &co’s departure to ‘higher planes’ will similarly insulate them from Moira’s reset, such that we’ll see reference to them again in a future Spurrier story.
It was just in the most recent Incomplete Wolverine post that Paul asked why nobody seems to use any of the Generation Hope characters aside from Oya, and poof, this week we get a mention of Kenji Uedo. Velocidad and Transonic have appeared in passing in the Krakoan era, so can Teon be far behind? (Wouldn’t actually hold my breath, but now that Gillen is back, who knows?)
Speaking of Nocturnes, what ever happened to TJ Wagner?
“[Nemesis is] apparently now starting to turn into a plant.” Fungus, as SanityOrMadness points out above. Which is topical given the popularity of Last of Us.
This was the first issue of this crossover that engaged me. The whole thing has mostly been “insert-blank kills the Marvel Universe”, a concept that I don’t find interesting. But I liked Wagnerine’s story in this issue.
Two different Nightcrawler chimeras would effectively be siblings or worse genetically.
Page 3, the spidery abominations appear to bé Sabretooth (head and arms)/ Marrow (bone shards on the back) / Omega Red (tentacles) chimeras. There also is a Cyclops/Eye-boy/Cannonball hybrid with an eye for a head who seems to be having the time of its life blastin’ around in the background.
I must say the crazy design the artists are throwing around for the chimeras makes for a huge part of my enjoyment of this event.
Joseph S-It was never stated explicitly, but it was hinted at (based on the fact that Moira was learning from each of her past lives for her actions in each new life) that Krakoa’s interest in creating “mutant circuits” was based on Moira’s experience of the chimeras in Life Nine. The chimeras were essential in helping the mutant cause against the Man/Machine Supremacy, but Sinister sabotaged the chimeras. The “mutant circuits” were the replacement for chimeras in Life Ten.
I’m not sure if this is the same Rasputin IV from Life Nine or if Sinister just creates the Rasputin IV chimera again in this timeline. Rasputin IV was sucked into the blackhole during Life Nine. There was speculation that any characters sucked into the blackhole prior to Moira’s death may be returning during Hickman’s run. Of course, we never saw that happen.
I speculate that Hickman’s original story, prior to him leaving early, would have featured the Omega Sentinel of Life Nine returning to lead Orchis in this life, rather than travelling back from the alternate Life Ten timeline we saw in “Inferno”.
Assuming Mother Righteous wants to destroy the Diamond Sinisters and is actually doing everything to accomplish that – in this issue she’s using the Nightkin Faith against them.
If she’s at least partially faith-powered, she might need people to believe the Reliquary will work for it to actually work. She might even need to build a religion around it and have that religion in place for, oh, let’s say a thousand years to build up enough faithpower.
In which case the heresy of Wagnerine, the doubt she’s certain she’s sown among the Nightkin might sabotage the Reliquary.
“Kenji Uedo is Zero from Generation Hope, who I don’t think has appeared anywhere since Storm #11 (2015).”
He was seen also in the last issue, he was the “Uedo protein” with wich Nemesis was feeding Nightcrawler. You can see that he has eyes and mouth inside the container in which he is crammed, and Nemesis talks about it as if it were sentient, saying it doesn’t like noise.
In retrospect, it looks like Auntie Fortune already having hearts on her costume last issue, even when still Sinisterized, was some art error/miscommunication.
I suspect whatever Righteous’ plan is, it has something to do with the all those dead Nightkin bones accumulating around Sinister’s lab. Like maybe because of how the religion views their sacrifice, those corpses are holy artifacts in a sense, meaning she’s amassing a horde of holy artifacts around the forcefield, until there’s one day enough to do… something. Or something of that nature. Spurrier’s all about the airtight plotting where everything converges in the end, and there’s one moment in particular in the previous issue that reads this way.
Cosign w/ Jenny, Mike Loughlin, and Bengt pm the quality of this issue. So far it’s the only with any real emotional hook and I’m surprised I’m invested in Wagnerine’s story at all. All the other issues have been tediously moving the needle from point to point in rather mundane ways (including under Ewing’s pen).
It’s also unfortunate that SOS was being compared to AOA in interviews/press releases leading up to this year. While the scope was obviously much smaller in AOA, there was a sense of dread and desperation and personal stakes that just isn’t present in this event so far.
Moonstar Dynasty said: So far it’s the only with any real emotional hook and I’m surprised I’m invested in Wagnerine’s story at all. All the other issues have been tediously moving the needle from point to point in rather mundane ways (including under Ewing’s pen).
That;’s partly a function of an AOA-style crossover that has to fit a lot of scale and world-building into a few issues, and it’s partly a function of how archly Sinister has been portrayed since Gillen’s Sinister revamp way back in the Schism era of the X-Books.
A storyline based on that Sinister, characters he’s influenced, and rival Sinister variations has to negotiate a lot of irony and metacommentary along the way to the emotional hooks.
I actually thought this was a decent bit of worldbuilding, though like others I am at a loss to see what Mother Righteous’s plan is supposed to be.
@Ryan T – there’s actually an issue in X-Men Legacy where Legion takes Blindfold on a date to the moon, and Ruth says the whole setting reminds her of a story she read about “a guy with so much power he forgets how to be human”, a la Manhattan taking Silk Spectre to Mars. The Doctor Manhattan comparison is definitely something Spurrier has done before.
Not much to add, but I was also pleasantly surprised by this issue. Have not been enjoying Legion of X overall, because of the diluted cast and convoluted concept. Here, something clicked: the scale felt palpable, the pace was tight, there were no wasted moments, and the central character helped anchor the whole thing.
There’s still an uncanny amount of suspension of disbelief at stake in making sense of folks taking a full century to suspect MR’s motives… But I was really pleasantly surprised by this.
Have to agree, as well, that Ewing’s opening issue was fairly bland and disappointing…
Oh, also, regarding the AoA storyline: I’ve just started reading it for the first time (my entry point was pre-Onslaught, Prof X pining for Jean and all…), but I think a slightly off-putting effect of this event is having quite a few titles disregard it completely.
Yes, it makes sense to try and focus the event and define the story arc through a limited set (three series, three issues). Age of X was even more limited than that, and it worked beautifully, in my opinion.
But here, the balance feels off: a story about the X-Men *finally* handling the Broo/Brood situation coming out the same week as this creates a mildly off-putting, fan-ficky effect. Scattered incursions into Hickman’s vault of cliffhangers and false starts…
It just doesn’t feel right.
@Chris V, Ah, that’s a great reading, I like that a lot. But, and I guess it’s strange I hadn’t thought of this before, but does that mean there wasn’t resurrection in the previous Lives of Moira? I suppose that squares with the idea of her having to find a partner to birth Proteus.
I also think both @Michael and @Krzysiek Ceran’s reads make good sense re: the similarities between the various suits of Essex, and in particular Mother Righteous needn’t some centuries to build up her faith. It was in Spurriers books that we’d gotten those data pages on how various divinities were meant to accumulate power in the MU so that all would be consistent.
re: scope of SoS:
@Salomé H.: I agree that the limited scope of SoS hurts what is otherwise supposed to be an immersive, cosmic experience. Not that I’m necessarily looking for 30 issues of X of Swords tie-ins or 40 issues of Judgment Day, but the super brisk, compressed storytelling, partial impact to the line, and the glaring exclusion of X-men aren’t doing any favors.
@Salome H: I agree, but I don’t think Percy of Duggan would have added anything of value to SoS. To me, not making SoS a line-wide event makes me wonder if there was a lack of confidence in the event itself, the X-writers not participating, or both.
I’m growing a deep dislike for Duggan’s writing so I’m frankly glad he’s not involved with this event. What is a writer that cannot engage with anything slightly more complicated than basic superhero action going to add to a apocalyptic event exploring organized religion, eugenics and fascism?
I get the argument about it being a bit weird how only a small part of the line is involved with this kind of event, but at the same time Age of Apocalypse had a huge novelty factor at its time and I feel part of the deal with SOS is – somewhat similar to Judgment Day, since Gillen loves his metacommentary – exploring our expectations about this kind of alternative reality event. How much will be affecting the actual timeline, how’s the reset going to happen, who is going to remember all of this? So I think it’s fine if they’re giving other writers freedom to do the narratives they want in the meantime.
All that said, I’m adding to the choir that this was the best event issue so far and this book surprisingly seems the best out of three – imo this structure puts some restraint into Spurrier’s less ideal impulses (less out-of-place humor, more limited cast, less of Spurrier’s take on Kurt that doesn’t fully work for me) while Ewing at what he’s better at.
This was actually my favorite issue of SoS so far, with the exception of the Alpha issue. Nightcrawlers is the only one of the three SoS miniseries that I feel is better than its ‘main reality’ counterpart book, probably because it’s mostly focused on Nightcrawler with minimal presence of Legion.
I have to give Spurrier props for actually being able to write a well-rounded transgender character like Mother Righteous.
Salomé H. > But here, the balance feels off: a story about the X-Men *finally* handling the Broo/Brood situation coming out the same week as this creates a mildly off-putting, fan-ficky effect.
The current arc of X-Men has already passed the Sins of Sinister point; it takes place in the ‘rebooted’ timeline where Mr Sinister has (presumably) been defeated and didn’t pull off his replacement scheme.
Seemingly in the SoS timeline, the X-Men weren’t around to stop the Brood Annihilation Wave so it hit Earth while everyone else was distracted.
Mike Loughlin > To me, not making SoS a line-wide event makes me wonder if there was a lack of confidence in the event itself, the X-writers not participating, or both.
According to Gillen, SoS was originally pitched as a line-wide event but they moved away from that because (i) they just did a line-wide event with Judgment Day, and (ii) they were afraid too many books tying into SoS would dilute the premise.
So while Gillen, Ewing and Spurrier are doing the alt-future SoS, Duggan and Percy are moving towards setting up Fall of X. Duggan’s Hellfire Gala 2023 one-shot coming in July is meant to end ‘Destiny of X’ and kick off the ‘Fall of X’ line of X-books.
Ryan T > Felt to me like Legion was drawn and colored to parallel Doctor Manhattan, to the point of homage
Like CitizenBane said above, Simon Spurrier has been channeling Doctor Manhattan for Legion for a long time. It’s part of the Watchmen obsession amongst British writers.
As above, Legion (omnipotent guy) and Blindfold (younger teenage girl)’s relationship is a take on Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre. In X-Men Legacy, they go on a date to the Moon where they draw a smiley face on its surface. X-Men Legacy ended with Legion removing himself from existence (it didn’t stick). Legion’s current status quo is that he is an omnipotent being that lives on Mars inside a unique construct of his own making.
Of course the twist is that where Manhattan had grown detached from humanity and society, Legion is all about community to the point of hosting a mutant communal space inside his head. David and Ruth have a much healthier relationship as well. So I’m not surprised Spurrier homaged the ‘I’m leaving for a galaxy less complicated than this one’ ending for Legion again in Sins of Sinister.
It’s also one of the things I resent about the Spurrier take on Legion. To me, the big idea behind Legion is that he is a mutant who can switch between a seemingly infinite set of different powers, the twist being each power comes with a different personality, ranging from the mild-mannered to the utterly-deranged. He’s like Ben 10 but with the powers coming from himself instead of a watch.
Spurrier has seemingly done away with all of this in favor of making ‘reality warping’ into his dominant power. As for the personalities, he currently has none, other than ‘Why do you hate me dad???’ It doesn’t help that the TV show which popularized him also portrayed Legion as a generic reality warper. (I did enjoy the show though.)
I understand why Spurrier went for this approach with Legion, he was doing a mental health take where David reconciling all his different personalities made him a healthier, more whole person. The ‘I rule me, we rule us’ stuff. But the problem is ‘generic reality warper’ makes for largely unusable characters except in very specific contexts which is why David’s rooted in Arakko all the time now. It’s like if Ben 10 turned into Alien X permanently and started living on the Moon 24/7.
Hopefully once Spurrier wraps up his run in Fall of X (with a Xavier-Legion resolution), the next writer who handles Legion is able to reconcile the Spurrier take on Legion with the classic take. Maybe we can have some of the Legion personalities escape from the Altar?
Mike Loughlin > Finally, I reserve judgement on the 10 y/100 y/1,000 y gimmick until I read the other two series, but this issue could take place 1 year after issue 1 for all the difference it made to the narrative.
The ‘Year X’ narrative device is here to echo the timeframes Hickman used to describe the various mutant futures in HOX/POX.
Year 1 (The Dream) – In this case, Mr Sinister’s dream of turning everyone into versions of himself by subverting the Resurrection Protocols.
Year 10 (The World) – The Quiet Council of Sinisters remake the Earth in their image. Planet Arakko is destroyed.
Year 100 (The War) – The Empire of the Red Diamond vs the coalition of other galactic superpowers.
Year 1000 (Ascension) – Orbis Stellaris attempts to form/join a Dominion.
@Diana: I agree that the energy sword MR uses has to be the Hopesword that Margali Szardos forged from Kurt’s soul in LoX 10. So in this timeline, Nightcrawler was killed by his own soul.
Diana > Presumably the idea is that Mother Righteous is trying to pool enough magical power to ascend and become a Dominion – that’s essentially the goal all four clones have been working towards all along, as stated by the original Essex
The way I understand it, Nathaniel Essex the Victorian scientist wanted to find a way to prevent machine ascendancy so he released four different clones of himself into the world before he died. These four clones would have a subconscious desire to look at different avenues for subverting the machines.
That said, I think Orbis Stellaris is the only Essex who wishes to create a Dominion. He’s already created/taken over a Stronghold with the World Farm, and he’s clearly looking to expand. Mr Sinister has (to my recollection) never expressed any interest in Dominions. The Gillen take on Sinister is that his big goal is to turn everyone into a version of himself – a goal he’s actually already accomplished and is coming to regret. Dr Stasis is a human supremacist who wishes to create more resilient and advanced strains of humans through genetic engineering.
As for Mother Righteous, I think what she really wants is a religious cult centered around herself. In the main timeline, she goes around giving gifts to various mutants while demanding their gratitude in return. She already had Ora Serrata, Selene, Banshee and Sebastian Shaw wrapped around her finger. In the SoS timeline, she has taken over Nightcrawler’s Spark religion while using Vox Ignis to recruit Nightkin as her followers. The followers + stolen relics increase her magical powers, but I don’t think she wants a Dominion; just to eliminate Sinister’s (and probably Stellaris’) current plans.
As for MR’s plan, the ‘white-hot fire of faith’ once again reminds me of the Phoenix, and a Phoenix Egg was one of the items in MR’s list in issue 1. I believe Hope (and Exodus) will eventually end up with it. As Michael mentioned, there is also a zombie Galactus on the cover of the next issue. Given that a reliquary is a container for holy relics and the ‘Reliquary Perilous’ that MR conjured in issue 1 looked like a flaming heart, my best bet is that she plans to have Galactus feed on the magical energies of the stolen relics and then use it to destroy the World Farm.
YLu > I suspect whatever Righteous’ plan is, it has something to do with the all those dead Nightkin bones accumulating around Sinister’s lab.
My thinking is that she is slowly battering down the force field surrounding the lab. One Nightkin teleporting into the force field won’t do anything, but one (or more) Nightkin a day BAMF-ing full-force onto the field for over a thousand years might break or weaken the field enough for MR to do something.
@GN- Sinister states explicitly in Sins of Sinister that his end goal with the Moiras and the Sinisterization process is to create a Dominion. The difference is that Sinister is actually immortal while Stellaris is dependent on machines to keep him alive so Stellaris needs a Dominion more than Sinister.
@Michael: Oh wait, that’s right he did! You’re absolutely right, it was in the data page of Sins of Sinister 1. It must have slipped my mind.
So Mr Sinister does want to create a biological Dominion from all of the Sinisterized beings he creates. It’s just that once his in-progress plan backfired on him, he wanted to reset and start over. But he couldn’t reset since the Moira Engine has been stolen by Destiny, Mystique and Orbis Stellaris.
OS seems to be in the process of creating his own Dominion through the Progenitors and the World Farm. So he probably deprived Sinister of the reset mechanism so OS can complete his plans uninterrupted.
Mother Righteous seems to be opposed to both Sinister and Stellaris’ plans since she wants to ‘purge the Sinister Strain from the heart of every mutant’ and seems to want to destroy the World Farm.
Whatever plans Dr Stasis might have had in regards to Dominion are moot since he was taken out early. (This was likely done because Dr Stasis’ plans along with Nimrod and ORCHIS will be shown in Fall of X so they did not want to reveal it in SoS.)
My guess is that SoS will end with someone (most likely Stellaris) creating a Dominion right before the reset button is hit. The timeline resets all the way to the beginning of Immortal X-Men 10 and Sinister’s ‘replace the QC’ plan is foiled. But the Dominion survives the reset and shows up in the 616 timeline to menace the mutants.
Regarding whether SoS ought to have been line wide, I think it’s worth mentioning that the rather interesting “each time period shares the same artist” schtick would have been all but impossible with additional titles.
Though I share Miyamoris’ view of Duggan’s writing, I’ll say this much: it would’ve been interesting to see a Sins of Sinister Hellfire Gala
The “Frost Giants” are presumably a chimera of Emma Frost, Iceman, and some size-shifting mutant?
Also, the becoming a fungus thing with Doctor Nemesis seems to be about him distributing his brain functions into the fungi, which is why he’s unhappy about being cut off.
Or perhaps he’s just imagining it, who can tell?
Dr Nemesis is an unreliable narrator since he cannot even tell that Cloak and Dagger are genetic X-mutants (as confirmed by noteable Marvel demon D’Spayre) and that Marvel’s divine pantheons are not creations of human belief, though they are indeed empowered by it, since their own emergence on the Earthly Plane actually preceded the historical evolution of baseline humanity in the Marvel Universe.
@Chris V [by the way are we meant to read that V as the letter or the number?]
“I’m not sure if this is the same Rasputin IV from Life Nine or if Sinister just creates the Rasputin IV chimera again in this timeline. Rasputin IV was sucked into the blackhole during Life Nine.”
It seems this has been answered in this month’s Immoral, but that said, we also saw Monet and Forge travel through a black hole in this month’s X-Men so it’s not clear why that black hole would necessarily destroy Rasputin IV from Life Nine.