Immortal X-Men #16 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #16
“The Island of Doctor Xavier”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Apocalypse – or rather, the version of Apocalypse from the desert landscape – with the Phoenix Force in the background. I think it’s meant to be perching on his left arm (note the claws). His Pharaoh trappings reflect the role that he’s been cast in for this re-enactment of the Book of Exodus.
PAGE 2. Shaw and Selene monitor Krakoa.
Recap: The External Gate was created in Excalibur #12 from the (involuntary) sacrifice of most of Selene’s fellow Externals. Now that the mutants are out of the way, Selene wants to secure the Gate and bring back the Externals. Charles Xavier has been repelling all the landing parties by turning them back telepathically. Last issue, Selene and Sebastian Shaw tried sending a group of soldiers with psi-blockers. Professor X responded by tearing them apart, apparently with his growing telekinetic powers; that’s the red smear they see next to the External Gate. This is not what Shaw was trying to achieve, and while it’s unlikely he cares about the soldiers himself, it hasn’t advanced his goals of actually profiting from his notional ownership of Krakoa.
It’s worth saying here that we don’t actually see Professor X killing the soldiers last issue. We see the fight starting, and then the next panel takes place the following morning and shows their bodies scattered by the Gate. We’ll come back to that.
PAGES 3-4. Shaw unveils his Hellfire Armour.
By this point, Shaw has either figured out that aligning himself with Orchis was a mistake (in the sense of not advancing his own goals after all), or at least has decided that it’s time to cut and run from them now. He certainly wants to pursue his goals with Krakoa independently of them, and to keep them at arm’s length.
As Selene points out, the “Hellfire Amour” was obviously named and designed back when he was still the Black King; since X-Men #25, the Hellfire Club has been under the control of the Kingpin, and Shaw is not welcome.
Despite Shaw’s claim that the armour was “designed by myself”, it’s obviously an opulent version of Iron Man’s armour. That said, Shaw is meant to be a technical genius, so it’s certainly possible that it really does contain a lot of his design work. Note that unlike Iron Man, Shaw doesn’t lower himself to actually building his designs. He commissions someone to do that for him.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits. The title is obviously a reference to “The Island of Dr Moreau”
PAGE 6. Shaw attacks Krakoa.
Meanwhile, the narrator for this issue is apparently Apocalypse – or, more accurately, the version of Apocalypse from the desert vision where most of the Krakoans are currently trapped. Apocalypse was a member of the Quiet Council but left before this book started, so he kind-of-sort-of keeps the them. (Jean Grey is also in that category, and hold that thought.)
“Apocalypse” gets to narrate a grand total of five pages of this issue, keeping very much at a distance from things.
PAGE 7. Apocalypse narrates.
The narrator tells us directly that they aren’t Apocalypse, though they rightly point out that their apparent function in the desert – testing the mutants and making them stronger – is something Apocalypse would probably approve of.
The narrator also claims to be “something grander” than Apocalypse, and describes this location as “the most dangerous room of all.” Page 22 indicates that they’re actually in the White Hot Room (see below). If so, this line – and the cover – would seem to indicate that “Apocalypse” is actually Phoenix. The narrator’s closing line – “They will not survive the experience” – should also be seen in the context of the White Hot Room being a place of death and resurrection.
The two mutants in the foreground in panel 4 are Chlorophil and Kafka. We’ll see later that they’re trying to farm some kind of weird local plant.
PAGES 8-9. Exodus and Hope rescue Egg.
Egg is still in his costume from the Hellfire Gala. His previous death was in A.X.E.: Judgment Day #1.
The random duplicated characters attacking him are versions of Wolverine and Bishop. Our attention was drawn last issue to the fact that Wolverine had once tried to kill Hope, and she flags the point again here. As for Bishop, he not only tried to kill her, he spent an entire volume of Cable fixating on it. That’s also come up recently in Children of the Vault (after a long, long period of being politely ignored because it broke the character). It’s suggested later on that this landscape is based on Exodus’s mind; it’s possible that he’s fixating on people who have directly tried to kill his Messiah, or indeed that Hope herself is. Either way, it’s clearly not a coincidence that the “bad guys” in this landscape are linked by being heroes who once tried to kill Hope.
PAGE 10. Data page: Destiny’s diary of the diaspora. We saw one of these last issue, marked as Day 9. This one is marked Day 107, but as Destiny points out, time seems to be screwy in this landscape. Destiny is clearly sceptical of this whole place, and Mother Righteous’s role in it in particular, and she still doesn’t have working visions of the future (probably because they’re outside normal time), but she’s starting to come round to things for want of any better option.
Now that the Five have been reassembled, they want to restart resurrection. Originally that required Cerebro and Mr Sinister’s DNA samples. But the Waiting Room (created in Trial of Magneto) allowed the Five to make contact directly with the spirits of the mutant dead. It’s not entirely clear how this gets round the need for a DNA sample – if you can do resurrection without a DNA sample by going direct to the Waiting Room, why didn’t the Krakoans just do that with the compromised members of the Quiet Council, and guarantee that any manipulation by Mr Sinister had been circumvented? Still, we see on the next page that it seems to work.
As covered last issue, Mother Righteous has been lying to the other mutants about how she wound up here. It seems likely that she’s been deliberately adding the members of the Five, who left Earth at the same time as everyone else, as it suits her to advance the plot.
PAGE 11. The Five successfully resurrect someone with Mother Righteous’s help.
Is she really contacting the Waiting Room? If not, who is this guy that’s been resurrected?
PAGES 12-13. Destiny grumbles about Mother Righteous.
Hope thanks Mother Righteous for her help, which we all know by now gives her magical power over you. Interestingly, Mother Righteous positively sends them out to find one last mutant – we’ll see later that this is Jean Grey, and why does Righteous want her involved?
Hope and Exodus do attach at least some weight to Destiny’s warnings, so they’re not complete idiots.
We see on page 13 panel 2 that this room is Atlantic Krakoa’s makeshift version of the Quiet Council chamber, and Hope, Exodus and Destiny are still regarding themselves as the Council. It’s not clear whether anyone else has been added yet.
Again, that’s Kafka and Chlorophil coming in to represent the masses.
PAGES 14-17. Professor X fights Sebastian Shaw and Selene.
Emma Frost tried to contact Professor X in issue #14 (the first issue of his vigil on the island), but he simply told her “Our children are dead. Leave me be, Emma.” He contacts her now to try and find out why Shaw is attacking the island, and learns that Shaw has lost control of the Hellfire Club. His solution is to give Shaw telepathically-raided passwords for a dozen key Hellfire accounts and tell Shaw to go and use them in exchange for leaving the island. Selene gets the gate (Shaw presumably asks for this because otherwise Selene will keep pestering him to go back).
When Shaw mentions the soldiers that were killed last issue, Professor X replies “I don’t understand. I haven’t killed anyone” (with the emphasis on the second “I”). Remember, we didn’t actually see what happened to those soldiers in the previous issue – the story cut past that bit. But Professor X seems confused about what Shaw is talking about, full stop. Hmm. We’ll come back to this.
PAGE 18. Data page – another excerpt from Exodus’s idiosyncratic translation of the Book of Exodus. This is Exodus 8:1, with Exodus as Moses and Apocalypse as Pharaoh.
PAGE 19. Hope and Exodus find Jean Grey.
Jean is delirious, but her dialogue here comes directly from the last page of Jean Grey #2. In that book, Jean is experiencing a series of apparent hallucinations in which she imagines making different choices at key points in her life. Jean’s presence here is interesting, because she died at the Hellfire Gala and didn’t go through the gates. She’s here because she’s Phoenix, and when Phoenixes die they go to the White Hot Room for resurrection.
PAGES 20-21. “Apocalypse” defeats Exodus.
Exodus is also conflating Apocalypse with Satan, who doesn’t feature in the original Book of Exodus – Exodus is presumably bringing in elements from Satan tempting Jesus in the desert.
“Apocalypse” claims that this is Exodus’s desert, and Exodus seems to confirm that it reflects a vision he had at some point in the past. Understandably, Exodus has until now assumed that this was a precognitive vision.
The White Hot Room is a Grant Morrison term, and one of those intentionally hazy cosmic ideas that’s very open to interpretation by different writers. Put very broadly, it’s a sort of home dimension for the Phoenix and an afterlife where Phoenixes go to be resurrected… kind of? It was most recently seen in Defenders: Beyond #3, an Al Ewing story, where it was described as “the highest plane you can reach without risking the abyss”.
PAGES 22-23. Professor X enters Mr Sinister’s lab.
Sinister’s animals are still alive and well, so that’s nice.
The implication here seems to be that Sinister is still present within Professor X, despite Forge’s attempts to cure him, and that he may have taken over Xavier’s mind at the point when he slaughtered the Orchis soldiers last issue. Also, Sinister is apparently trying to leave messages for Professor X during his periods in control.
PAGE 24. Trailers. The Krakoan reads DANGER.
My reading of the resurrection scene is that they’re resurrecting people who have died while they’ve been in the desert. In that case, they have access to the DNA sample from the dead body, so there would be no need for Sinister’s database.
I don’t think they’re resurrecting mutants who supposedly died in the past. First, that would go against the resurrection protocol as they could not confirm the individual was truly dead. Also, if they were resurrecting anyone, surely they would want to resurrect more powerful mutants first, not just random people.
Regardless, it can be assured that Mother Righteous is bringing back someone or something else in these bodies and is not connecting with the Waiting Room.
The White Hot Room was originally seen in Classic X-Men backup strips, written by Chris Claremont, which first featured the White Phoenix; it was only actually given that name and a greater fleshed out concept later by Morrison.
I think it’s a little interesting the “consolations” Orchis is making. Yeah, eliminate mutants, but the Externals are fine, Firestar is fine, CotV are fine.
Children of the Vault are not mutants. They are post-humans.
Another possibility is that Xavier doesn’t have a split personality and Sinister escaped from the Pit, killed the Orchis goons and is gaslighting him.
If Xavier does have a Sinister personality, I wonder if Xavier is the Sinister that becomes the Dominion.
I have to give Gillen credit. When Xavier seemingly killed the goons with his telekinesis, I wondered why he didn’t do the same to the Orchis goons at the Hellfire Gala. But now I realize that was deliberate. If Xavier does have a Sinister personality, then the Sinister personality has greater control over Xavier’s telekinesis. If Sinister killed the goons, then Xavier isn’t strong enough to use his telekinesis to kill that many goons.
How is it that Hope doesn’t know what the White Hot Room is? It’s where Mysterium is mined. Hope was a member of the Quiet Council.
It’s odd that Selene was able to use her ability to control inanimate objects to grab Xavier but not to protect herself against Shaw’s attack.
@Chris V- “Regardless, it can be assured that Mother Righteous is bringing back someone or something else in these bodies and is not connecting with the Waiting Room.”
Alternately, maybe she is connecting to the Waiting Room and plans to become a Dominion by absorbing all the souls in the Waiting Room. That could be the significance of the Mercy Crown- it connects to mutant souls and the narrator of the Fall of the House of X page told use it could be used to either save or destroy mutant kind.
@Mathias X- that does raise the question- why did Orchis want Selene so badly that they resurrected her from the dead? We know what Selene is getting out of her alliance with Orchis- the External Gate. But what is Orchis getting out of their alliance with Selene? The Fall of the House of X page said that Orchis was glad they had Selene because they didn’t need Mother Righteous but what did they need Selene for?
Chris – I know CotV are post-humans, but they’re also explicitly setting out to replace humanity which is what Orchis is intended to stop (and importantly, Orchis has plans to kill the Human Torch as well, so they aren’t stopping at mutants.)
This is so much better than adjectiveless it’s crazy.
I have to admit I had some questions about this arc, like the behavior of some of the X-characters and whether the desert scenes were too far away from any kind of X-Men story I’m interested in. Tying it all in to Jean and the White Hot Room and also Sinister basically removed all doubt. This is great and I can’t wait to see where they go from here.
I’ve seen in the comments here that Fall of X is Duggan’s pet project but are we sure about that? Because Immortal has been advancing the storyline way more than any of his books.
This and CotV are the gold standard right now for me.
We don’t know what Orchis’ goals are since they stated they would murder humans if any mutants return to the planet. Half of Orchis are post-human, themselves. Stasis has plans to pursue post-humanity as an alternative to mutants and machines. We also know that Nimrod and Omega Sentinel hate humanity as much as mutants and their goals include either wiping out humanity (Moira’s Life Six) or forcing humanity to become post-humans using nanotechnology (Moira’s Life Nine).
Besides which, Orchis doesn’t know the Children’s end game. They could believe that they are creating a human utopia, as it seemed on the surface.
@Jeff: completely agree!
Gillen sets up interesting mysteries, pays them off at a decent rate while introducing more intrigue, and is outstanding at writing good cliffhangers. I like the dialogue and narration, too, but his plotting on Immortal X-Men has been my favorite part of the book.
Lucas Wereneck’s art on this title will be missed. The expressive characters are exactly what a series built around politics and intrigue needs.
I’ve complained about the X-comics feeling disconnected, but credit where it’s due: great job tying a main X-book into the seemingly-disconnected Jean Grey series! I didn’t expect it, but it made me smile.
@Jeff- as I understand it, it’s more of a collaborative effort. Fall of X is leading into two series, Fall of the House of X and Rise of the Powers of X. Fall of the House of X will be written by Duggan (ironically, since none of the Fall of the House of X pages we’ve seen so far have appeared in Duggan’s books) and will resolve the Orchis plot. Rise of the Powers of X will be written by Gillen and will resolve the Sinisters/ Dominion plot.
While Morrison coined the term, the origins of the White Hot Room can be traced back to a Claremont classic x-men backup
Paul > Apocalypse was a member of the Quiet Council but left before this book started, so he kind-of-sort-of keeps the theme. (Jean Grey is also in that category, and hold that thought.)
Gillen’s rule seems to be that each issue has to be narrated by one of the current or former members of the QC. Earlier in the run, we had focus issues that delved into narrator’s backstory. The more recent issues show the ongoing plot from the narrator’s point of view.
IXM 1 – Mr. Sinister (Essex of Diamonds)
IXM 2 – Hope
IXM 3 – Destiny
IXM 4 – White Queen
IXM 5 – Exodus
IXM 6 – Black King
IXM 7 – Nightcrawler
IXM 8 – Mystique
IXM 9 – Shadowkat
IXM 10 – Professor X (Sinister personality)
I’XM 1 – White Queen (Sinister personality)
I’XM 2 – Hope (Sinister personality)
I’XM 3 – Rasputin IV
IXM 11 – Storm
IXM 12 – Colossus (under Chronicler’s control)
IXM 13 – Cypher
BTF S4 – Dr. Stasis (Essex of Clubs)
IXM 14 – Professor X
IXM 15 – Black Priestess Selene
IXM 16 – Apocalypse / Revelation
IXM 17 – Phoenix Jean Grey
IXM 18 – Mother Righteous (Essex of Hearts)
That’s nearly every character that has ever been associated with the now-dissolved Quiet Council of Krakoa. The only ones missing are Magneto and Orbis Stellaris (Essex of Spades) but I doubt they’ll get their own issues at this point since they are firmly in Al Ewing’s territory.
Paul > Professor X enters Mr Sinister’s lab.
Sinister’s lab is actually hidden on Muir Island off the coast of Scotland. The Moira clones were destroyed in SoS: Dominion but the rest of the lab is presumably still intact. That said, the vandalized diamond-shaped door that Xavier is looking at is a portal to the Muir Island lab (we see Sinister walk into his lab through the other side of the door in IXM 1).
I suspect the trauma of the Gala has made Xavier develop a split personality between his normal self and the Sinister persona installed in IXM 10. A call-back to the original Nathaniel Essex’s Jekyll-Hyde split personality in IXM 8. Xavier is moving up and down between Krakoa and Muir Island as he switches between personas (which might explain why Xavier wasn’t around when Captain Krakoa broke into the Pit).
The further we go into FoX, the more I’m convinced that Fall of X is structured as a spiritual sequel to the 1988 The Fall of the Mutants crossover.
Senator Kelly’s Mutant Registration Act = ORCHIS’s Ultimatum-X
Destiny’s vision of Texas = Destiny’s vision of the Hellfire Gala
Mutants scattered through the Siege Perilous = Mutants scattered through the Krakoan Gateways
Forge & Storm lost in an alternate Earth = Exodus, Hope and Krakoans lost in the WHR
The Adversary = Mother Righteous
Apocalypse & the Four Horsemen attack New York = Genesis & the Four Horsemen attack Arakko
The New Mutants on Ani-Mator’s Island = Xavier on Krakoa with Sinister’s creations
The death of Cypher = Cypher trapped in stasis within Krakoa
It’s possible Death will leave Genesis and join Storm’s Brotherhood just as Death/Archangel left Apocalypse and joined X-Factor.
Forge will probably build a machine to make it back to Earth from whichever alien planet the hacked Gateways sent him to.
No-Prize: if the Waiting Room can be used to bypass the need for actual gene samples of dead mutants , it could be due to Steve Orlando’s version of XMen 2099’s Cerebra (who migrated to present-day Earth-616 from SO’s own version of the 2099 universe) is supposedly a “bio-telepath/telekine” who can scan the genetic code for individuals (not just her fellow Z-gee mutants) from either the living individual or even from copies of it , and transfer/transpose it to organic mediums , such as Fabio’s eggs (which is how they were able to resurrect the Threshold Trio on present-day Krakoa) and Cerebra May be scanning the mutant souls / ghosts in the waiting room (since it’s Marvel-616 canon that souls/ghosts apparently their same genetic configurations as when they were still alive) , but if she becomes that essential to the process of resurrection , then the Five must change their name to the Six , even if there is already is a Six , who were in charge of mining Mysterium for Krakoa before the Fall of X LOL
When/where was it established that Mysterium is mined from the White Hot Room (and who mines it)?
Emma says that it is so in Iron Man #10, but that was news to me.
The Waiting Room has to get round the DNA thing, right? How else could it bring back Northstar’s adopted daughter, who surely Sinister didn’t harvest DNA from?
Although come to think of it, how did they find out she was a mutant, anyway? Never mind. Think about these things too much and you’ll go mad…
@Luis Dantas: “When/where was it established that Mysterium is mined from the White Hot Room (and who mines it)?”
I believe that was established in SWORD 1 (2021).
@Luis: Mysterium was being mined by the S.W.O.R.D staff, this was established on the first issue of their series.
@Jeff: “I’ve seen in the comments here that Fall of X is Duggan’s pet project but are we sure about that? Because Immortal has been advancing the storyline way more than any of his books.”
I think Duggan comes off as the head of the line because he’s got adjectiveless and is handling the Orchis threat who is bound to catch more attention. But the stuff Gillen is doing is equally important as it seems to be establishing what comes *after*.
@Luis Dantas: As Mike Loughlin mentions above, it’s established in Al Ewing’s S.W.O.R.D. 1.
But it’s not strictly true that it’s mined from the WHR. Mysterium is mined from The Mystery (hence the name). The White Hot Room is one part of The Mystery, but it is not the only part (see Defenders: Beyond). The mutant circuit of the Six teleport into The Mystery, where they compress a volume of primordial kirbon particles into solid mysterium, which they bring back to the Peak.
@Luis Dantas- It was mentioned in the SWORD series that Mysterium came from the White Hot Room.
Re: the Xavier twist: Remember how the Sabretooth series established the Pit prisoners could still interact with the surface through the island? Gillen has already brought up points from that series in Immortal #13 so I wouldn’t be surprised if Sinister is doing a similar thing rather than Xavier having a split personality.
Though the double personality is still a solid series – it never came up in SoS, but what Apocalypse did to the original Essex did leave him with a split personality. And considering Sinister’s involvement with the Black Womb project… maybe there’s something there.
Oh and re: the Waiting Room: it’s possible Mother Righteous isn’t even going there; the anomalous properties of the WHR might be allowing for perfect resurrections and MR, aware of that, is pretending to be an effect of the WR.
Zoomy-Sinister claimed he had a complete database of every mutant’s DNA except Legion, Mister M, and Franklin Richards (later proven to not be a mutant).
“Franklin Richards (later proven to not be a mutant).”
I remain eXtremely skeptical about that claim by Dan Slott. In the most recent volume of the “History of the Marvel Universe” by Mark Waid, Franklin Richards himself says to Galactus at the actual end of the 8th Marvel Multiverse in the Far Future, that he, FR, is “the most powerful X-gene mutant ever born”.
In the present-day, the sole and only source for the claim that FR is NOT in fact an X-gene mutant is from Charles Xavier alone**, and as we all know by now, CR is proven to be what TvTropes calls an “UnReliable Narrator” i.e. a serial pathological liar (of course, supposedly for the “greater/greatest good”), so there IS room later for DS’ notorious retcon*** to itself be undone , and as hinted in Ryan North’s latest issue of his own post-DS volume of Fantastic Four (the one with the Dinosaurs), FR may reveal in soon in upcoming issues that he himself is actually both a) an actual X-gene mutant all along , and b) back to full-power at his Secret Wars 2/Battleword 2 power levels (which to be fair, DS already did himself in his final storyline)
*the same one that retconned most , if not all , of the military histories of the Earth-616 marquee American superheroes / anti-heroes / vigilantes of them being involved in the RL World War 2 and Korean War and Vietnam War — and maybe even the 1st and 2nd USA-Iraqi Wars and the USA/Allied-Afghan War — as now having taken place instead in “The Sin-Cong Conflict”)
** likewise , the sole source for 616-Pietro & Wanda NOT beinb both a) X-gene mutants , and , b) 616-Magneto’s bio-kids , is the High Evolutionary , a proven and confirmed serial pathological liar (he repeatedly insisted that 616-SpiderWoman Julia Carpenter was actually an evolved spider who was one of his H.G.Wells-style “New Men”, as well as the 616-Gwen Stacy clone with the most character development actually being a random woman surgically modified by him to be physically identical to the OG 616 Gwen Stacy, and both of these claims were proven to be 100% lies)
*** as inorganic as the Ike Perlmutter-mandaated Rick Remender-written retcon of P&W’s identity/parentage, it actually still had supporters, but DS’ retcon of FR’s I/P apparently has None Whatsoever
“the more I’m convinced that Fall of X is structured as a spiritual sequel to the 1988 The Fall of the Mutants crossover”
That is such a huge stretch.
“Mutants scattered through the Siege Perilous = Mutants scattered through the Krakoan Gateways”
That happened after Inferno, not FOTM.
I wouldn’t say the comparison between Fall of X and Fall of the Mutants is a stretch, at all. If anything, I’ve felt Marvel has been fairly upfront about the parallels even at the level of marketing – see: the Mark Brooks promotional spread featuring a number of dead mutants, and the cover that obviously inspired it.
I love this series so much it actually kind of makes me feel additional disappointment: I’ll be reading through other comics in the line, spotting bits and moments I like, and when there’s a new issue of Immortal I’m like: oh, right! Comics can be this good, all the time. Decent writing isn’t just a happy accident.
If only Ewing wasn’t busy with the Arakko stuff – which manages to feel weirdly lacking in momentum at this point, despite a full blown civil war…
I loved how it tied into other plotlines and elements in the line, especially with the Jean moment. An excellent way to reward readers for reading more of the line, rather than punishing them for not doing so (i.e., storylines that are incomprehensible without s dozen of editor notes when these have already gone out of fashion).
Because the Sinister Xavier storyline had already been done, not once but twice (on the pages of this same comic, and in Carey’s X-Men Legacy), I doubt that’s what we’re seeing here.
I had the same reading as a few others here: we’ve not checked in on The Pit in a bit, Krakoa is dormant, and the island is nearly completely uninhabited. It makes more sense to me that Sinister is ou and about, but messing with Xavier for whatever reason.
Also, I catch myself wondering: are we at a stage where we have any kind of idea of what post-Krakoa will be like? And who might be sticking around to build and flesh it out?
Oh, I know. Claremont will come back to write a book for some reason titled Excalibur and it will be about Xavier and suddenly-alive-again Magneto rebuilding the mutant island nation from ruins. It writes itself! You could throw in the Omega Sentinel and Sugar Man, why not.