Nightcrawlers #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NIGHTCRAWLERS #3
“Sins of Sinister, part 10: The Sacred Heart”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artists: Lorenzo Tammetta & Phillip Sevy
Colourist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Mother Righteous, in front of a Ghost Rider-possessed Galactus.
PAGE 2. Mother Righteous recaps the last few centuries.
The Silver Mercator is apparently some kind of hybrid of the Silver Surfer and Mr M (most recently seen in Knights of X).
The Low Key Corps appear to be some sort of collection of alternate versions of Loki, perhaps under reference to the Loki variants seen in his TV show. The name seems to imply something akin to the Council of Cross-Time Kangs.
Auntie Fortune is the Nightcrawler chimera based on Domino, as seen in the previous two issues. As Righteous says, she was one of the first Nightcrawler chimeras to be recruited. We saw her in the previous issue as a frail old woman – apparently she’s been kept around as some sort of ghost (she appears to be see-through), perhaps for her symbolic value as an original. The thing floating next to her is presumably one of the Cortez lanterns mentioned in issue #1, which use the brain tissue of the late Fabian Cortez to provide power boosts.
The Spineless Gamers and the Casino Entropic appear to be a hybrid of the Spineless Ones (Mojo’s race) with the clientele of Gameworld from Gerry Duggan’s X-Men. They seem remarkably unaffected by the hellish timeline of “Sins of Sinister”, perhaps because they’re not native to this dimension.
The Peregrine Child is a powerful magical creature which had a prominent role in the Death of Doctor Strange miniseries in 2021.
The Teeming Dupedom are presumably a whole society of Sinisterized Madroxes. It’s not entirely clear why they’re still around – since every new dupe is physically identical to its creator, shouldn’t they all age in tandem? But they also seem to be chimeras, so that might have something to do with it.
The Brood, again, seem unaffected by all of this. They’re the Brood, they infect stuff.
PAGE 3. Mother Righteous retrieves a Phoenix Egg.
The Phoenix Egg is a concept from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men – basically, it’s the Phoenix getting reborn after being destroyed. So it really ought to be quite a big deal, even if Mother Righteous regards it here as a bit prosaic.
“The sacred weapon I’ve been building…” The Reliquary Perilous, which she’s had her Nightkin (the Nightcrawler chimeras) working on for the course of centuries. We find out more about it later, but issues #1-2 present it as basically a collection of trinkets and items associated with prominent Marvel Universe characters.
PAGE 4. Mother Righteous disposes of a failing Nightcrawler.
“The fiftieth generation…” Evidently Dr Nemesis has indeed been cloning new Nightkin for her in the time since the last issue, with diminishing returns. Mr Sinister has also alluded to some mutant powers degrading with repeated cloning; these guys just seem to get a bit dimmer each time, though being raised in Righteous’s cult will also help there. Fifty generations in 900 years is one every 18 years, which sounds about right, even though these guys are clones.
Nemesis’s fungal computer brain is spread throughout the base; as we’ll see later on, he basically is the base.
“Traditions matter.” Issues #1-2 showed us that Nightcrawlers who were created to be under Sinister’s control could be freed for lengthy periods by Vox Ignis, but that eventually they started to succumb to his control again. Righteous created a religious tradition of the Nightkin “heroically” sacrificing themselves at that point, by hurling themselves suicidally against the force field that surrounds the Worldfarm. According to Righteous, these clone Nightkin are not truly susceptible to Sinister’s control, but she’s told them that they are. There are presumably two main reasons for that: it continues the flow of Nightkin willing to die to get at the force field, and it maintains Righteous’s control by keeping up a cultural tradition and making them doubt any thoughts that might otherwise make them think for themselves.
“The apostate and the false patriarch.” The apostate is Wagnerine, as confirmed on page 20. The “false patriarch” is presumably the monstrous original Nightcrawler, who fought by Wagnerine’s side in issue #2, and is now long dead.
PAGES 5-6. Mother Righteous and Dr Nemesis.
Nemesis is apparently enslaved to Mother Righteous, or at least in her thrall, but still maintains his characteristic insistence that he’s the cleverest person in the room.
“We have known the location of Sinister’s laboratory ever since your kamikaze idiots carried my spores into the Worldfarm!” Sinister’s laboratory contains the Moira clones that need to be killed in order to reset the timeline. It was stolen away to the Worldfarm in Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #1. Apparently, the hurling of Nightcrawlers at the forcefield has helped to get Nemesis’s spores into the Worldfarm, allowing him to see inside. But the tradition of futile suicide long predates Nemesis becoming involved with Righteous (at the end of issue #2), and presumably originally served the main function of cultural reinforcement. Page 10 seems to confirm that it also serves the function of weakening the force field very, very slowly over time.
Mr Sinister arrived at the Worldfarm in Immoral X-Men #3, and the attack of the Diamond Empress (Emma Frost) was covered in Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #3.
“A millennium ago, Destiny stole the Moira clones…” In Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #1. Destiny’s motives are basically confirmed in Immoral X-Men #3. That’s Orbis Stellaris, another Sinister variant on the right hand side of the panel.
PAGE 7. Mother Righteous reflects on Destiny.
Mystique. The flashback to Destiny with her corpse is new. The other three characters in that panel are Sevyr Blackmore, Nova and Hercules, who were serving as Mystique’s Freedom Force in Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #2.
“She’d tried to reset it herself, sometime in the second century – and failed. Utterly.” In Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #2. Storm has Destiny killed in order to prevent her from rebooting the timeline.
PAGE 8. Data page. You know, in the days of digital comics, you could always push an update to fix a really glaring spelling error in the title.
Anyway, we’ll find out later that the “Eater of Sin” and the “Vengeance Swarm” refer to the Ghost Rider-possessed Galactus, and the “Lonely Bullet” is Juggernaut.
PAGE 9. Recap and credits.
PAGE 10. Auntie Fortune summons Vox Ignis.
Auntie Fortune is obeying Righteous’s order from the end of page 7.
“In the name of the Spark…” As seen in previous issues, Righteous co-opted Nightcrawler’s philosophy of creativity for her own purposes.
“The golden child…” Presumably Wagnerine’s child, stolen by Righteous in the previous issue, and made a symbolic part of Righteous’s cult. We’ll see it later in the story.
“A death with purpose…” In a sense, Righteous is correct – she has given the Nightkin a sense of meaning in their lives, whether or not it’s well founded. But this is also an obviously ironic reference in light of the ending of the issue.
PAGES 11-13. Vox Ignis returns with a Ghost Rider Galactus in tow.
The Spirits of Vengeance. Storm mentions in Sins of Sinister #1 that the Spirits of Vengeance all left Earth only a few years into Sinister’s reign. Apparently at some point they’ve turned Galactus into their new host, something which is only possible because of the cosmic entity’s anger at what Sinister has done to his lovely timeline.
Vox Ignis is Banshee possessed by a Spirit of Vengeance who got kicked out for not being vengeful enough, as established in Legion of X. The poor guy has spent decades setting up this moment, and is desperate for Righteous’s approval, only for her to view it as a minor plot point. Which, in the grand scheme of things, it kind of is. This seems to fit into one of the themes of “Sins of Sinister” – that we and the Sinisters view this story as a diversion which will inevitably self-cancel, but the other characters are invested in it as a real and meaningful world.
“A thousand years ago, the Sinisters shot an unstoppable object right through the brain of a Titan…” This was shown in one of the montage sequences in Sins of Sinister #1. The Juggernaut “volunteered” for this mission through psychic manipulation. He was temporarily shrunk, and Hope fired him as a bullet (using Domino’s luck powers) in order to kill Thanos. As for Juggernaut, he just sailed off into space, with nobody bothering to retrieve him. But thanks to gravitational slingshots and such forth, he hasn’t just been going in a straight line all this time. Thanks to his magical powers, the poor guy seems to still be alive.
Anyway, as per Destiny’s calculations, Juggernaut kills Galactus and then breaks the forcefield. It’s worth noting that Destiny didn’t have a hand in firing Juggernaut in the first place – she and Mystique had long since fled the Quiet Council by that point. Apparently she’s just engineered a bunch of other things to come together at this point.
PAGE 14. Auntie Fortune sacrifices herself to break the force field.
Naturally, Righteous sacrifices her longest serving follower to get through. Once the force field is down, she won’t be needed any more.
PAGES 15-16. Mother Righteous explains the Reliquary Perilous.
Righteous essentially explains that, as well as helping to weaken the force field, the deaths of the Nightkins have been given a religious significance which allows them to power up magic. The other items in the Reliquary are other items with inherent significance – she refers specifically to the Hopesword that was created from Nightcrawler in Legion of X #10, the Phoenix Egg, and “a villain’s notion of perfection”, i.e. the Rasputin chimera created and manipulated by Mr Sinister in Immoral X-Men #2-3.
Righteous reveals that her plan was never to save the universe from Sinister (which is no surprise), but also, she has no direct intention of intending. Rather, she’s convinced that the Moiras will eventually be destroyed, probably in the course of the current climactic battle. Her main aim is to infect them so that the next timeline will be altered in her favour, by making sure that she will retain all the knowledge (and secrets) that she learned during this timeline.
PAGE 17. A data page explaining more about how this magic virus works.
PAGE 18. Vox Ignis is separated from Banshee.
Again, Vox Ignis stresses that this universe should be treated as real, and Mother Righteous treats it as disposable.
Mother Righteous helpfully spells out what she needs to do in order to alter the timeline, so that we all know what the heroes need to do to stop her.
PAGES 19-20. Wagnerine returns.
Wagnerine is still alive because she has X-23/Wolverine’s healing powers, and we’ve seen in the Children of the Vault storyline that those powers can keep Laura alive for centuries.
Mother Righteous finally describes her powers – apparently, every time someone expresses thanks to her, she gains more control over them. Seems a bit specific, but there it is. Mother Righteous has indeed been keen throughout Legion of X to prompt her followers to thank her.
Mother Righteous mocks Wagnerine for “waiting all this time only to fail at the last moment”, which is ironic in light of the next few pages.
PAGES 21-23. Banshee and Wagnerine defeat Mother Righteous.
Banshee has apparently been given an extended lifespan by Vox Ignis. It’s maybe a bit of a sudden turn for him to go against Mother Righteous quite this quickly after a thousand years of following her, no matter how clear the evidence, particularly if her powers are supposed to give her control over him – but then again, he has been separated from her for years, and he has just been separated from the Spirit of Change, both of which could make a difference.
Wagnerine asks the entirely reasonable question of how any of this matters if the story is heading for the cosmic reset button – again, one of the themes of this whole crossover. Banshee’s answer is reasonable enough: they lived out their entire lives in this world, and for him the real meaning lies in regaining control.
Moira here is the robot version of Moira MacTaggert, who arrived along with Sinister in Immoral X-Men #3 and was noticeably missing in Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #3. She has the heart that Mother Righteous was going to use, but quite how she can use it is unclear.
Moira and Banshee were a couple for years back in the 80s and 90s, for anyone who doesn’t know.
PAGE 24. Trailers.
Nemesis’ weird spaceship form seems deliberately drawn to resemble Ego the Living Planet.
Don’t really know what to make of this one. Feels a bit anti-climatic.
Why IS Nemesis working for Mother Righteous? He doesn’t seem to be under her control, nor does he seem to be ignorant of her intentions. (He mentions her “unscientific little payload”.) Maybe he wants the reset button to be hit but agreeing to sacrifice a child seems out of character, even if he did work for the Nazis decades ago. And he has to know that Mother Righteous plans to use the knowledge she gained against Krakoa.
Re Juggernaut -it’s confirmed in the Sins of Sinister Dominion preview that it was Destiny who fed the Quiet Council the information that enabled them to target Thanos.
I’m not buying that the information Mother Righteous gathered would give her such a great advantage. Once Xavier, Hope, Exodus and Emma are de-Sinisterized, the whole timeline changes dramatically. The only information that would be useful to her was that Orbis Stellaris was planning to use the World Farm to create a Dominion, since he started that plan before Sinister killed Hope. (And maybe that Jon Ironfire killed someone during the Genesis Wars, although she had no guarantee that would happen in the new timeline.) Basically, Mother Righteous wasted a millennium getting the same information Sinister can get from ONE Moira.
Besides, isn’t her goal supposed to be to create a Dominion? We still don’t know how she plans on doing that.
Re: why Banshee can attack Mother Righteous- keep in mind that her control over the people who thank her has to be limited or else she could have just ordered Wagnerine to kill herself centuries ago. Apparently, she can only control the people who thanked her as long as she’s specifically concentrating on them- both Banshee and Wagnerine are able to attack her as long as she’s distracted. That’s presumably why Sinister didn’t have any qualms about thanking her- he knew or guessed this limitation and figured he’d just reboot the timeline when she wasn’t looking.
But that’s the problem- Spurrier made such a big deal about whether Legion would thank Mother Righteous and Banshee and Wagnerine easily defeat Mother Righteous despite having thanked her.I think the key is that Mother Righteous says she has dominion over your flesh and anything in it- presumably, once Legion thanks her, she gets his powers without the multiple personalities and becomes almost unstoppable. But its not very clear and having her defeated so easily by people who thanked her seems to undercut the suspense.
I wonder how Moira plans to activate the heart without killing a baby. I also wonder if Sean is really dead.
“waiting all this time only to fail at the last moment”
Is tha a Princess Bride reference?
@Michael
Since Nightcrawler’s mom did her magic on him and he became a giant fungus brain, Dr. Nemesis hasn’t been entirely sane. He was literally just casually hanging around as Sinister’s prisoner for a decade.
Wait, where was the title error? It looks fine on my version.
I feared that having a 900-years jump mid-story would be anticlimatic. My fears were justified.
To be fair, this event just isn’t working for me. It all feels like a bunch of characters with odd obsessions and random mysteries aligning with random factions for no clear reason and engaging in ridiculously ambitious schemes that somehow ultimately never meant much. Very 1990s, come to think of it.
It doesn’t help that the characters seem weirdly static for people who have lived through literal centuries. Hardly anyone seems to have felt like even changing a codename or costume. These must be very bored characters. I bet that in this timeline Punisher hasn’t even been relaunched fifty times yet.
Man, Destiny has really upped her game since her first appearance. Remember when she couldn’t see far enough to realize she was going to cause a robot apocalypse?
Re: Juggernaut, Destiny may also have had a hand in deciding the location of the clones (since she stole them to begin with) and thus could put them where Juggernaut would be.
“Low Key Corps” might be a nod to Neil Gaiman’s _American Gods_, where Loki spends some time (not very) disguised under the name “Low Key Lyesmith”.
@Michael: I’m not sure if it’s only her sending back information, and am guessing we’ll get more specifics in the climax. Her own description of it sounded like it did a lot more than Vox’s simple guess that she was sending back secrets. She did give him a gold star, but that doesn’t mean that’s all of what it is meant to do. The data page backed that up somewhat when talking about how it could be message or bomb depending what the maker puts inside.
So it might not just be the secrets people told her, but the pure power she’s absorbed from those and the artifacts. Or something meant to take down or alter Krakoa in the past in order to let her get a better hold on Legion.
Or of course, Si Spurrier could have just been extra flowery with her descriptions of the thing and yeah, it’s just information. 🙂
So, now there is the Sins of Sinister: Dominion one-shot closing this event proper.
Going by the solicitations, we are already very close to the start of “Fall of X”, with X-Men: Before The Fall – Sons of X by Si Spurrier coming in May and X-Men: Before The Fall – Mutants’ First Strike by Steve Orlando coming in June. Apparently “Fall” will be to some degree a consequence of this event.
There are other two “Before the Fall” one-shots announced and a 2023 Hellfire Gala special as well.
Fall of X proper will, by my understanding, begin with the August issues, which will include the start of a considerable number of new ongoings and limited series.
@Luis- Fall of X proper, as I understand it, starts with the Hellfire Gala- Orchis does something to Krakoa and the X-Men at the Gala, which is why Maddie, Alex, Warren and Remy have to start up a new team of X-Men on their own.
@Jaymes- Paul is referring to “Contigency Plans”.
“which will include the start of a considerable number of new ongoings and limited series.”
Including Alpha Flight! Dare we hope that it might be good?
The art will be gorgeous, at least. And it reunites Northstar and Aurora. So…maybe?
I’m intrigued by the JMDM/Nauck Mag-neat-o book, since it appears to be partially set in the Silver Age era.
Oh, I forgot about Magneto, which is also going to feature ’80s New Mutants and beautiful art. Fun!
@Michael
OH! Thanks. I was looking more at the issue title and wondering if it was supposed to be “Sacred Heat” or something. XD
“Anyway…Juggernaut kills Galactus…”
Sounds like a Marvel Snap match.
It’s very strange that Mr M has stuck around as a character, albeit with a long gap. I loved “District X” and the concept of Mutant Town, but Mr M was really built for that context: “harmless old man in mutant neighbourhood is actually God”. Outside that context, “man is actually God” is less interesting.
I enjoyed how tightly connected all the Year 1000 books were. Do we know why Alessandro Vitti didn’t draw this one? Just a time crunch?
Kind of a lot of very-convenient stuff happened here. The one I just can’t explain away is the arrival of Wagnerine just in time to rescue her baby. Where has she been? How did she end up in this exact place at this exact time?
[…] #3. (Annotations here.) You’ll have picked up that one thing I really like about the “Sins of Sinister” […]
“Auntie Fortune is the Nightcrawler chimera based on Domino, as seen in the previous two issues. As Righteous says, she was one of the first Nightcrawler chimeras to be recruited. We saw her in the previous issue as a frail old woman – apparently she’s been kept around as some sort of ghost (she appears to be see-through), perhaps for her symbolic value as an original. The thing floating next to her is presumably one of the Cortez lanterns mentioned in issue #1, which use the brain tissue of the late Fabian Cortez to provide power boosts.”
It actually holds Auntie Fortune’s brain, which projects an image of her former body.