Powers of X #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers refer to the digital edition.
COVER (PAGE 1): Mister Sinister stands over some of the eggs from which cloned mutants are hatching. Once again, this is an odd choice of cover, since it has nothing to do with the issue (in which Sinister doesn’t appear).
PAGE 2: The epigraph is a very on-the-nose quote from Professor X saying that the real plan is something else entirely. Without context, it’s not clear who Xavier is referring to when he says that “they” will get it wrong, but Hickman’s run has been full of hints that all is not what it seems here. You’d expect Xavier to be referring to humans, but it could as easily be mutants…
PAGE 3: The credits. The title of this issue is “For The Children”, and Xavier has treated the X-Men – and mutants generally – in a very paternalistic way throughout Hickman’s run. But here, it’s a line of dialogue from Emma later on, when she decides to join Xavier’s plan. The small print reads “Once more I need three.” This might refer to the three back-up units that Xavier mentions in the next scene.
PAGES 4-7: The “Year One” scene shows Professor X visiting Forge to enlist his help in upgrading Cerebro to prepare a database of back-up copies of the minds of every mutant on the planet.
It goes without saying that this is all massively creepy and invasive, and plays into the interpretation of Professor X as a very ends-justify-the-means character. Xavier rather implies that he tried discussing this idea with Beast, who was quite emphatic about shooting it down – he describes that discussion in terms of technical feasibility, but it’s hard to avoid a vibe that Beast had serious ethical problems. Forge, in contrast, only seems to care about the technical challenge.
Timeframe: Once again, the timeframe here is rather obscure, but let’s assume that “Year One” means somewhere roughly in the region of the X-Men’s founding. There are a number of conflicting signals, though…
- Xavier has been discussing Cerebro with the Beast. Beast was the last of the boys to join the X-Men (in the late-sixties “Origins of the X-Men” back-up strips), so the X-Men team must exist by this point.
- Forge is wearing what’s effectively an X-Men uniform, but with a blank circle instead of the X-Men logo on the belt. The lighting in this scene makes it hard to tell whether the lighter parts are yellow (like the X-Men’s) or white. It looks more like the late 80s/early 90s uniforms than a Silver Age uniform – for what it may be worth, the design of those uniforms was credited to Moira (in Uncanny #262). At any rate, his costume is a bit weird.
- Xavier knows about the Shi’ar. This is odd, since Xavier didn’t meet Lilandra and make contact with the Shi’ar until X-Men #105 (1977). If he already knows about them at the start of the Silver Age, that seems to be a retcon.
Forge. A mutant inventor and ally of the X-Men who debuted in Uncanny X-Men #184 (1984) as a supporting character, before graduating to become a member right at the end of the Claremont era. He was Storm’s romantic interest for a long time, but more recently has gone through a string of breakdown stories. He seemed back to normal in Dead Man Logan recently. The idea that Forge had a formal arrangement with Xavier this early on is new – when he first appeared, he was a freelance inventor making weapons for the government. He’s not an established ally at this point in his career, though his interest in technical challenge over moral concerns is fairly in character.
“Dallas, Texas.” This is presumably Forge’s established base in Eagle Plaza, Dallas.
Generations of Cerebro. Xavier says there have been four generations of Cerebro, “counting the initial prototype.” This seems to be a reference to the “Origins of the X-Men” backup strip in X-Men #40 (1968), where a prototype version of Cerebro was named “Cyberno” – hence the numbering confusion.
“I would prefer five.” Xavier asks for five storage units: “One main unit, three backups and an additional one for… unforeseen complications.” That’s just a roundabout way of saying “four backups”, so it sounds as if Xavier has something more specific in mind. Xavier seems rather keen on the number five for some reason, given that we’ve just had The Five in House of X, and there were five members of the original X-Men team.
The Shi’ar. Xavier plans to use a “cloaked antimatter engine of imperial design currently in Earth’s orbit” as a power source, and “Shi’ar logic diamonds” as a storage medium. We’ve seen in previous issues that the Shi’ar apparently provided a home for mutants in the Year 100 timeframe. I’m not clear what the antimatter engine is, if it’s a reference to anything previously mentioned.
PAGE 8: A data page on Cerebro. This is a rather scattershot collection of data, some of which relates to Cerebro, some not. For the most part, the description of Cerebro just expands on what we’ve already heard. He’s making backups of every mutant mind – apparently without consent – to multiple “cradles” on a weekly basis.
The cradles: There are five locations listed. One is Moira’s No-Place (see below); one is the House of X on Krakoa itself; and one is Island M, Magneto’s former island base. The other two are “Summer House” and “The Pointe”, neither of which means anything to me – though “Summer House” might be something to do with the Summers family, traditionally cited as a major mutant bloodline.
“Moira’s No-Place”: One of the five cradles is “Moira’s No-Place”, Krakoa also has a “No-Place vent” which serves as a power source. No-Place was identified in House of X #1 as a flower which produces “a habitat that exists outside the collective consciousness of Krakoa”, unknown to Krakoa itself. (Incidentally, that data page contains two references to Krakoa as a collective consciousness, which is interesting with hindsight.)
Body/mind mismatches: Somewhat unrelated to the rest of the page, we’re reminded again of the possibility of putting the wrong mind in the cloned body. This is likely to be harmful… unless a mutant has the powers to overcome it. So clearly that’s happening at some point.
Professor X: Xavier has twice restored his own mind from backup – in practical terms, erasing his own memories. So either there’s something he can’t live with or something he doesn’t want to know. Again, it’s clearly setting up a plot.
PAGES 9-13: The first part of the Year 10 (present day) sequence. Professor X and Magneto approach Emma Frost and enlist her to help sell Krakoa’s mutant pharmaceuticals and join their government. Emma’s initial reaction – unlike most characters we’ve seen so far – is to point out all the rational objections to this whole plan. In particular, she’s the first character to actually point out the obvious parallel with Genosha (even though Hickman has repeatedly referenced Genosha in other contexts). While she’s fairly easily won over, part of the point of this scene is to make clear that Hickman is well aware of these objections.
The statues: The one seen on panel is the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a Greek statue from the 2nd century BC. Emma also mentions seeing “the Canova”, which would be Antonio Canova’s Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss – but she says that she thought this statue was “a more appropriate place to meet”, perhaps because it’s sort of mutanty (it’s got wings), and it’s in ruins.
Hellfire Corporation: Emma regained control of the Hellfire Club and its associated enterprises in X-Men Black: Emma Frost (2018); this all reflects her pre-House of X status quo as shown in Uncanny X-Men.
PAGES 14-17: The second part of the Year 10 sequence, as Magneto and Professor X bring Emma to Krakoa, and she agrees to join their scheme. This is where Emma gives her “for the children” speech quoted in the epigraph. She’s long been written as having a genuine interest in the next generation of mutants; it’s entirely in character for that to be her motivation in terms of joining a grand scheme of this sort. The other main purposes of this scene are to reveal some details of the Krakoan government (typically uncomfortable) and to set up the premise for Marauders.
The Hellfire Trading Company: The Hellfire Corporation is going to “become the East India trading company of mutantdom” – and indeed the solicitations for Marauders #1 refer to Emma running something called the Hellfire Trading Company. The East India Company was a British company founded in 1600, originally with the intention of trading with India, but which developed over time to become the vehicle through which large chunks of Asia wound up in the British Empire. Which bodes well for any humans planning to trade with Emma’s company, doesn’t it?
Sebastian Shaw: Shaw was the Black King of the original Hellfire Club Inner Circle (original in terms of the first-published stories, that is), alongside Emma as White Queen. Xavier and Magneto want Sebastian Shaw to run the Hellfire Club’s dealings with adversarial nations (those listed in House of X #5, presumably). As Emma says, she “just got rid of him” in X-Men Black: Emma Frost – which, in fact, very strongly implied that she had killed him. Her reaction here, though, suggests that Hickman is taking advantage of that issue’s very, very limited wiggle room and declaring that he wasn’t quite dead after all.
PAGES 18-19: Data pages about “The Quiet Council of Krakoa”, Krakoa’s interim ruling body which… may or may not be all that interim. The government of Krakoa is decidedly lacking in transparency. It’s not democratic, it has no discernible accountability, and even the identities of its members appear to be secret. The reference here to “some debate” about reforming it is the closest we’ve seen so far to a suggestion of actual dissent over anything on Krakoa. We’re not told why it’s called the “Quiet Council”, but given some of the members, I’d guess that they hold their meetings telepathically.
There are 12 members of the council, divided into four groups, each named after a season. Most of the names are redacted; Professor X and Magneto are on the autumn list, while Black King and White Queen are on spring. The third “spring” member is presumably going to be whoever Emma insisted upon at the end of the previous scene, and we’ll learn about that in due course. All the “winter” and “summer” names are blacked out, but one of the winter names is in fact legible if you zoom in (which seems to be deliberate) – it’s Mystique. Cypher and Krakoa are also listed as attending, but not as part of the 12. Cypher’s presence is presumably at least in part to serve as an interpreter for Krakoa.
PAGES 20-22: The third part of the Year 10 sequence, as Xavier sends a telepathic message to mutants worldwide, inviting them to Krakoa – then goes to speak to Namor about it. Interestingly, even though Xavier’s speech is all about putting our differences aside and realising that mutants are all one people, we only see him approaching the villains – many of the same ones who were shown in House of X #5 arriving at Krakoa only long after the island was up and running. Something’s up here. Where are the X-Men?
Specifically, the characters shown listening to Xavier are:
- Exodus and the Acolytes. Followers of Magneto – Exodus in particular tends to be quasi-religious about it – which makes it all the odder that they need to be approached this way at all. The individual Acolytes aren’t always easy to identify given their very similar costumes, but there doesn’t seem to be much significance in the particular ones chosen here.
- Mr Sinister, apparently just finishing off on a particularly murderous experiment with some of his own clones. Again, it seems odd that Xavier is approaching him in this way, when he’s central to a big part of Xavier’s plan. As noted in relation to previous issues, he’s also not technically a mutant.
- The Omega Clan – Omega White, Omega Red and Omega Black, from Uncanny X-Force #25 (2012). Confusingly, all three are clones (sort of) of the original Omega Red. Red and Black also both died later in the Uncanny X-Force run, though Red was among the dead characters revived as a zombie by Persephone in Return of Wolverine (2018).
- Gorgon, the high-ranking Hand member (who hasn’t previously shown much interest in mutant politics or identity).
Namor. Unlike the characters above, he gets a personal (telepathic) visit from Xavier, perhaps because he’s the ruler of Atlantis. Namor wasn’t originally a mutant – he predates the X-Men by decades – but was rather hamfistedly retconned into being a mutant during the 80s, on the logic that his power of flight couldn’t logically be attributed to his Atlantean heritage. He occasionally shows up as an X-Man in more recent years, but most recently he’s been used mainly as an erratic antagonist in Invaders – I’m only reading that series on Unlimited, so I’m way behind on his status quo. Continuing a theme for this issue, Namor is the first mutant we’ve seen refuse to play ball with Xavier’s grand ideas.
Namor doesn’t believe Xavier’s stated reasons for Krakoa. While it’s not very clearly worded (to put it mildly), Namor seems to be saying that he thinks Xavier is putting on an act of mutant nationalism, and should come back when he really means it.
Namor’s throne – a giant shell design with a Lovecraftian monster behind it – is strikingly similar to the one from Moira’s eighth life in House of X #2, where Magneto was using it as his throne on Island M. They’re not identical, but the differences are within the bounds of artistic licence. This is obviously leading somewhere.
PAGE 23: The Stan Lee page.
PAGES 24-27: The Year 1000 sequence, as the Phalanx declare the “copy your mind to a computer” approach to be an acceptable way for mutants to be absorbed into the collective. And then they’re going to kill everything on Earth to absorb it for energy. There’s an obvious parallel here with Professor X using Cerebro to restore dead mutants from back-up in House of X and insisting that this definitely does amount to recovering their soul. This is the inverse: since the mutants will all survive as electronic copies, what difference does it make the originals are all killed? Underlying all this is the question of authenticity, and whether – if you can make an absolutely accurate copy of someone – there is any meaningful difference between the two. We might instinctively object that the clones don’t have souls, but characters like Rasputin are also lab-grown and we don’t have the same instinctive objection to them. Why can’t the cloned X-Men have their own souls which simply happen to be identical to the originals’…?
“Primordial kirbons” Not a thing. Probably a Jack Kirby reference.
Titan society. The Librarian recounts a theory that every black hole is the result of a society so advanced that it collapsed in on itself, and contains “a super-massive machine brain” containing that society’s “collective intelligence.” This is apparently “an argument for independent Titan societies”, of which we learn more on the following data page. None of this seems to have any particular real-world basis.
Black holes. Nimrod posits that all black holes, being wormholes, could be connected – so instead of each one having a society at its centre, they might all be connected. The practical significance of all this lies in the Year 100 X-Men’s suicide mission in issue #3, where Rasputin and the future Omega disappeared into a black hole. In that scene, Omega said: “do you have any idea what lies at the heart of a real black hole? I’ll give you a hint – it’s where we’re headed… it’s where we’re all headed.” Perhaps she was predicting the eventual development of society (perhaps machine society) into something that would collapse into a black hole. At any rate, it all tends to confirm that we’ll be seeing Rasputin and Omega again at some point.
PAGES 28-29. Rounding off the issue, data pages about universal-scale societies, to continue from the planetary-scale societies listed in issue #2. As established in that issue, “SI” standards for “species intelligence”, and the whole scale is described in terms of machine copies of organic minds – humans (and mutants) don’t get a look-in. The previous scale took us up to the Phalanx at an SI of one million. This one – continuing the powers of ten motif – proceeds with Titans at 10 million, strongholds at 100 million (basically connected Titans), and “Dominions” which are curiously listed as “undefined”, when you might expect them to be 1,000,000,000.
The Kardashev Scale. This is real, and I covered it in the annotations for issue #2. The universal societies are claimed to be Type O on the Kardashev scale, but this doesn’t make a huge amount of sense – Kardashev’s scale only had types I, II and III, and while there have been various suggested extensions, I’m not aware of any of them including a Type O. (Type 0 – zero – is sometimes used, to denote societies like ours that don’t even qualify for Kardashev’s Type I.)
Strongholds. Oddly, having reached the second-highest level of societal advancement, the Strongholds are described as warring and expansionist. This is a rather bleak view of ascension, but then that’s kind of the point.
Dominions. Societies so advanced as to be literally godlike. One Dominion is said to control Earth’s area; presumably the reason we never hear from it is that we’re completely beneath its notice. Either that or it interacts with us more subtly. A god in the Marvel Universe usually means somebody like Thor, but Hickman seems to have something much more omnipotent in mind. The small print on the diagram page reads “galactic-universal” (next to the higher scale societies from issue #2) and “universal-abyss” (next to the universal societies from this issue). So that’s encouraging.
Cosmic entities. A note tells us that the only threats to the Dominions are Galactus, the Phoenix and “universal abstracts”. This is basically the stock Marvel cosmic pantheon – a lot of embodiments of abstract concepts like Eternity, Chaos and so forth, plus more idiosyncratic creations like Galactus and Phoenix. Precisely what Phoenix represents (if anything) has been vague and inconsistent over the years, but Hickman’s description of it is “the singular universal manifestation of life” is reasonably traditional – whatever it may mean in practice.
PAGE 30. The closing quote is Namor: “When you see me again, understand what that means.” Namor didn’t actually say this in his scene with Professor X, so perhaps this is from the rest of the conversation.
The small print at the bottom reads “Prince of all.”
PAGES 31-33. The reading order, and the trailers: “NEXT: I AM NOT ASHAMED OF WHAT I DO” and “THEN: HOUSE OF X”. (Note that that last one is a trailer for Powers of X #6, not for House of X.)
I wish Xavier had visited both Forge AND Madison Jeffries to build Cerebro.
Could No-Place be Limbo? Would explain all the little Inferno references…
I’ve been convinced that the x0, x1, x2, x3 naming convention each denotes a whole chapter of X-Men history and not a specific year (which is still weird given it’s specified every time as ‘year one, year ten’ and so on). And with that in mind the recruitment of Magnet takes place close to UXM150 or wherever Octopusheim first appeared, whilst Forge’s reworking of Cerebro would be around the beginning of adjectiveless X-Men.
(And by ‘convinced by’ I mean ‘I saw a tweet were somebody explained all that’).
Wasn’t there a text page where Hickman described “the classic years”, “the revolutionary years”, “the lost years”, etc.
I’m sort of paraphrasing on the fly.
It would, basically, denote the Silver Age, Chris Claremont’s run, the past two decades…
Doesn’t that line up with the years references?
If you think about it, Emma is won over only because she was there when Genosha was destroyed.
The emotional significance of literally undoing Genosha is what is being invoked there (coming from the other survivor of Genosha, no less) even without saying a word about it.
@Paul, on Page 8, you trail off: “…on a weekly basis. Then he”
The identities of the Council have been figured out. It turns out that in the digital edition of the comic, the black-out rectangles are actually covering up their real names, and you can copy/paste the names from under them. I won’t post it here since it may be an unintentional spoiler (unless Hickman has confirmed it).
The Council infographic looks a lot like Mother Mold and the Forge–with the four “support struts” corresponding to the four “Seasons”, and replace the Mother Mold with an X.
Physics lecture: leptons are currently known as a fundamental building block of nature. Electrons are actually a type of lepton. The other is quarks which make up protons and neutrons. “Kirbons” are I think first mentioned here. (I notice they aren’t called “Leeons”…)
Also, you get black holes from gravitational collapse of a star much more massive than our sun. Since Hickman is more interested in sci-fi black holes, the Mother Mold ominously falling into the sun in HoX #4 has the vibe of an intelligence that could consume matter. /lecture
What could the significance of the number five be to Xavier?
I didn’t pick up on that before.
Surely, someone like Xavier isn’t interested in numerology, so I can’t see it simply being the symbolism of the number.
I can’t think of anything from X-history that would align as the importance of five.
@Chris V
Besides five original X-Men?
Yes, besides the obvious. Why would he be so obsessed with that number, just because the original X-Men happened to be five members?
Unless Xavier has OCD symptoms.
The review made it sound like Xavier chose five original X-Men purposely, instead of settling on four or looking for a sixth.
The only reason I can think that Hickman would be calling out “five” is thematic, since the “quincunx” shape (four outer dots, one central dot) fits the hive / society themes as seen in his SI diagrams and Council diagram as well as looks like an implied “X”.
X^0/Year One must mean something other then the founding of the X-Men, something broader than a literal Sol year. I would wager it’s a stage of evolution. Year One the founding, Year Ten Krakoa, Year Hundred … I don’t know. But I’d place the scene with Forge sometime after the Muir Island saga, no? In the earliest days of the Blue and Gold era, Xavier and Forge play chess, if I remember correctly, and it’s heavily implied that they have a history and friendship that exists largely off-panel, so this is something that could be filling that in. Also if we’re at Cerebro 4.0, that timeline might meet up. Otherwise, it would have to be after X-Men 150 but before the X-Men “died” in Dallas, since I’m pretty sure Xavier was off world by that point. After his return makes more sense, especially given the Shi’ar references.
Could it be a biblical reference? Five being the symbol of God’s grace?
Ah, excellent. That makes sense.
As far as the Krakoan council, wasn’t there a drawing released a while ago as concept art for this series, which actually shows all the council members, except one.
There’s a chair set up in the center, with Nightcrawler on it.
Five could have multiple references, some of them related to the series (CJ’s comment) and some of them more meta (there are many, many Biblical references in the book).
In numerology, the number five also represents perfection, and a number of other connotations that can be applied to this series.
It could also apply to Moira’s 10th life, where she’s breaking all the rules.
It could relate to Xavier’s usage of Cerebro to download consciousness, since the number is a combination of matter and spirit.
It can also signify something about the difference between mutants and humans, as far as the differences between the two’s ability to control the material world.
Namor is still an erratic antagonist over in Invaders; issue 9 is out and we’re still in the same “Namor attacks the surface world and turns a bunch of humans into water-breathers” story. I imagine it’ll wrap up with #12 (hopefully). Interestingly, Invaders #9 mentions recent goings-on at Krakoa, so I guess Invaders is happening in the (in-story) months-long lead-in to Krakoa becoming a nation and before the main current-day plot?
Also, this same Invaders story (in #4) revealed that while Xavier was initially looking to recruit mutants he stumbled across the amnesiac Namor. Xavier uses his telepathy to try and heal Namor’s mind, but unintentionally gives Namor multiple personality disorder to help him deal with the PTSD he’s been suffering from since the end of WWII.
Of course, Xavier made Namor forget about this meeting but was lazy enough to leave a photograph of him with Namor behind (and Namor conveniently relapses into amnesia so he can still be discovered by Johnny Storm). Namor remembers now, though. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to play nice with Xavier? (probably not)
The identities of the Council have been figured out. It turns out that in the digital edition of the comic, the black-out rectangles are actually covering up their real names, and you can copy/paste the names from under them.
I and several others have been unable to replicate that process. Nonetheless, there is one box that you can read through the black if you zoom in and look closely. There’s also a promotional image that appears to correspond to the council. Lastly, Emma’s other pick has been confirmed by a Marvel writer on twitter. These reveals are consistent with the source of the cut & paste rumor.
I’ve fixed the typo under Page 8.
@Chris V: I’m not aware of any stories suggesting specifically that Xavier wanted five members on the original team, but it was established back in Uncanny #300 that he already knew about Storm, Nightcrawler and Colossus but chose not to bring them in.
Over at unstablemolecules.net we’ve been trying to slot the scene with Forge into 616 continuity, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it can only be done with massive and insufferable retcons. We place it right around Uncanny #289, but to do that you’ve got Charles having this Krakoa scheme through nearly all of the X-Men history, or a whole lot of memory blocking shenanigans.
You can’t cut and paste from a digital comic, they’re graphics files! But it’s correct that one of the blacked-out lines is legible if you zoom in (which must be on purpose), so I’ll add that.
@Nu-D
@Paul
Sorry for spreading an unsubstantiated rumor. If I could edit my comment, I would!
Yeah, I don’t think the Forge bit was supposed to be anywhere near the founding of the X-Men. The Shi’ar reference alone puts it after the original Phoenix story.
Year One is just the (not recent) past.
“Xavier has twice restored his own mind from backup”
I’ve been surprised at how many people online have thought it was saying Xavier had twice done it to somebody else.
Nu-D-It’s possible that Hickman did mean for Xavier to have a scheme like Krakoa for almost the entirety of the X-Men’s history, based on Moira’s life.
It would seem like Moira would have had to manipulate events in the lives of herself and Xavier to lead to this point.
Moira must have known what she planned to do with life 10 after life 9.
She tried to set up a mutant commune (life 5), she sided with Magneto to help him realize his dream for mutant dominance (life 8), she sided with Apocalypse to set up a world where the “strong survive” (life 9).
Each one failed.
Apparently, her intent in life 10 has been to stop Nimrod (as seen at the end of life 9) and also find a way to make mutantkind immortal.
It doesn’t seem that she has been keeping her master plan from Xavier all this time.
Yes, there was promotional artwork released to announce the House of X/Powers of X series.
It showed a number of mutants standing around an empty chair.
The mutants standing around the chair were the members of the Krakoan council.
So, Marvel had already revealed all of the council member except one before this series started.
I think the mystery member on the artwork was Emma’s choice.
For those who don’t want to know the redacted Krakoan council members, don’t click on this link.
I found the promotional artwork:
https://static3.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/house-of-x-heroes-villains-header.jpg
@Dave I’m guilty of that.
I’m glad in this issue that there are individuals who are at least trying to point out problems with what Xavier is planning. To be honest, Xavier looked rather maniacal when talking with Forge.
I’m reminded that Moira’s knowledge “radicalized” him in HoX #2. Also, in PoX #1, Moira said that in him she found her “strong man”–whose tarot card apparently implies dominance and control. (It turns out it’s hard to find…reliable, consistent discussions of tarot on line.)
The Tarot cards can have different meanings in different traditions.
This web-site has a pretty good summation of the most common meanings.
There isn’t a “strong man” Tarot card. Moira’s comment doesn’t seem to apply to the Tarot anymore in Powers of X #1.
There is a “Strength” card in the Tarot though.
https://daily-tarot-girl.com/tarot-card-meanings/list-of-tarot-card-meanings/
Maybe too obvious to mention, but the other candidate for “once more, I need three” in the issue besides the back ups may be the three council seats Emma refers to.
Wasn’t Namur confirmed as a mutant back in the Lee-Kirby day’s when Magneto tried to recruit him?
Re: timing of Forge/Xavier, It’s not just that Xavier has connections with the Shi’ar (so, after the X-Men put Lilandra onto the throne, at least), it’s that Forge also apparently knows who the Shi’ar are and some sense of their technology.
My guess is that this takes place between Muir Island Saga and X-Men v2 #1-3. Forge isn’t wearing the X on the belt since he’s not on the team anymore. This also accounts for Forge’s familiarity with Xavier, Beast, and Shi’ar tech, and for Xavier being on Earth and in a wheelchair. Any later and he should be in his hoverchair.
My premise that Year One has two meanings. In-story, it’s the foundations of the alliance that leads to Krakoa (Xavier-Moira-Magneto-Sinister-Forge-???) rather than the earliest days of the X-Men. It ends when all the pieces are in place, presumably next issue. Second, from a meta perspective, Year One is the end of the foundational period of the X-books, namely the end of the original Claremont run, just after where I’ve put the Forge scene. And is also a story which results in a Xavier/Magneto/Moira schism, conveniently. Hickman’s already indulged in some meta commentary in HoX/PoX (“the lost decade”), so giving recognition to Claremont tracks.
“The identities of the Council have been figured out. It turns out that in the digital edition of the comic, the black-out rectangles are actually covering up their real names, and you can copy/paste the names from under them. I won’t post it here since it may be an unintentional spoiler (unless Hickman has confirmed it).”
I will.
AUTUMN
Professor X
Magneto
Apocalypse
WINTER
Mister Sinister
Exodus
Mystique
SPRING
Black King Sebastian Shaw
White Queen Emma Frost
Red Queen Kate Pryde
SUMMER
Storm
Marvel Girl
Nightcrawler
KRAKOA
Cypher
Krakoa
Allan-So, you’re saying because it’s the “lost decade”, that period isn’t considered part of the Year One time-period.
OK, I thought that all of the periods Hickman put on that info-page (Silver Age, Claremont run, lost years) were all part of Year One.
However, the problem with stopping at the end of the Claremont run (as much as I’d like that), is that most people place the “lost decade” as taking place during the Morrison run and lasting until Krakoa.
Hickman mentioned that the “lost decade” was a period when mutants had no leaders, or something to that effect.
So, it was a period when all the major X-characters….Xavier, Magneto, Jean, Scott, Logan were all dead.
That means that the post-Claremont period up until the Morrison years must be part of Year One too.
All of the characters thought of as mutant leaders were still alive during the 1990s.
Re: Chris V: I took “the lost decade” as Hickman making some meta-commentary about X-Men history in this series, as it’s the period where the series went off the rails creatively and saleswise. Your in-story rationale is correct, but it also felt meta to me.
(We should also remember that said info page was about a previous Moira timeline and won’t align 1:1 with what we see in this current timeline.)
So in my frame, Year One of the current timeline is about Moira and Xavier putting the pieces in motion for her dream to come about. Years 2-9 are everything post-Claremont (first run) through Rosenberg, and Year 10 is Hickman. So the “lost decade” is roughly Year 7-8.
How nice that we’ve spent pages establishing the functions of a mutant government without any indication of what this mutant society is even like or what the mutants who comprise it even do there or feel about it.
At least Morrison took the time to explore the ramifications of establishing a school with actual students, after he introduced it, and later details about Mutant Town and mutant culture as distinct from general American culture.
Hickman has zero interest in fleshing out a society or its denizens, he’s only interested in organization and structure.
@Walter Lawson
That was back in UXM #6, and there were hints, not anything definitive (Cerebro wasn’t used). Xavier “wonders if he’s a mutant” and Magneto tells an underling to tell Namor that he’s a mutant, but I think that may have just been trying to appeal to his ego as someone with powers. Toad and Mastermind do chat about the wings on his feet, though.
Then again, that was also an issue where Magneto had strange ESP powers, so I don’t know what to think.
The council names were gotten out of a digital review copy, not a digital commercial copy of PoX #5. Reviewers must have gotten a PDF or something instead of image files.
Also, remember in PoX #1 when five birds were flying overhead just before Moira met Xavier?
I thought that was intentional at first, then didn’t find anything to back that up for a while…
« So, it was a period when all the major X-characters….Xavier, Magneto, Jean, Scott, Logan were all dead. »
Hmm, but wasn’t the accompanying image for that panel the Phoenix Five? (Speaking of things that come in Fives)
I agree it’s a meta-commentary, but it’s also the post-Decimation fallout, including Utopia and everjyjinj up to Rosenberg.
The reference to the ‘lost decade’ wasn’t part of an info page; it was in House of X #2 as part of Moira IV’s life, which seems to have played out largely the same as ‘our’ reality–except for the X-men and everyone they knew dying at the hands of the Sentinels. I agree with everyone who’s saying that it was most likely just meta-commentary.
Similarly, Xavier’s epigraph in this issue also reads kind of meta. A part of me gets the feeling the ‘they’ in that are referring to the us, the readers, who ‘think’ something is going to go one way but in actuality the plan is something else entirely. I think this is also partially supported by Hickman’s interviews at SDCC where he said they were doing some stuff that people would be convinced they knew where it was going but it would be…different. Your mileage on that will obviously vary.
@K: Yes! The emotional significance of Genosha was palpable in that scene. Hickman isn’t doing a lot of characterization in these minis, but when he does it’s so right on. I find it pitch perfect.
I can confirm that Marvel sends out pdfs for reviews (or at least used to, back when I was reviewing comics) so it’s possible that the names could have been copied and pasted from that.
I took the “Lost decade” line to be a reference to the Post-Morrison Decimation through to the pre-House of X stuff.
Essentially the period of time in which the line as a whole went through a series of less than successful directions.
I forgot to mention that as much as I’m on the ‘Hickman does poor characterization / doesn’t do characterization’ side, I do think that his Emma is spot on.
Also he sold me on Marauders with this issue. Even if the name is still terrible nonsense.
I never read that whole period where Namor was an X-Man. Did he ever get detected and hunted by a Sentinel? Was there ever a “this thing that only affects mutants is also affecting him” scene? Or do we only know he’s a mutant because people say he is, which seemed to be what was going on in the 90s?
I’m wondering if he’s wound up becoming Schrodinger’s mutant, where any future team can decree he is or isn’t one without breaking continuity.
@PersonofCon
“Maybe too obvious to mention, but the other candidate for “once more, I need three” in the issue besides the back ups may be the three council seats Emma refers to.”
That’s how I saw it too.
Once more = “Okay, one more time. For the children.”
I need three = the three seats on the council.
Some thoughts:
1. A Dominion exists beyond the comprehension of any intelligences below its order of magnitude. All universal societies exist partially outside of time. And there’s a sizable Dominion which supposedly has authority over the sector of space that Earth is in. So by definition what we’re talking about is a god.
2. Moira was wondering why it is that machines always emerge to destroy the mutants. If there is a machine god with some degree of control over human events, an “ineffable” kind of control that no lesser intelligences can even perceive, well, that might answer that question.
3. We saw Moira die in the ninth timeline. So presumably that’s the end of the story. Except that Cylobel is in X3, and the “Nimrod the Lesser” / “Nimrod the Greater” duality seems very awkward if those are two separate versions of reality. So let’s imagine that year 1,000 follows directly from year 100.
4. We’re being led to believe that a machine copy of a mutant is interchangeable with the flesh-and-blood version, down to the mutant powers being retained when put back into a body. What would happen if there were a backup of Moira’s mind? Even if her body really truly died, that backup would still be around, still carrying a perfect copy of her soul and power. And her power is to transmit her consciousness and memories back in time to the moment of her birth.
5. I think the Librarian is Moira, and we’re going to see her second death in her ninth life. If I’m right, then that means everything we’re learning about machine intelligence in X3 is knowledge X1 Xavier has.
6. If only a high-level Species Intelligence can even detect the existence of a Dominion, then the only way for the mutant species to defend itself against the eventual extinction subtly orchestrated by the local Dominion is to start moving up that ladder of SI classifications.
7. If 10 million mutants formed a psychically linked nation, and that nation extended (through the use of Gateways) across the planet, and they had complete dominion over the other species of Earth (“You have new gods now.”), that collective consciousness is somewhere between an Intelligence and a Worldmind, going by the definitions in Powers of X #2. Not enough to deal with a Dominion, but getting there.
8. Here I’m getting into wilder speculation, but how might Krakoa close that distance? Well, if they were able to connect together the mutants of, say, ten alternate realities, that would be another order of magnitude. Mutant species from ten planets might be another. Ten time periods. Connecting together the mutants of Moira’s ten lives (through the space inside black holes?) multiplies that by ten again. With each power of ten there’s more mastery over reality, and at some point they’ll have ascended enough to be aware of the Dominion’s movements and be able to formulate a response.
9. I suspect that at least one of Xavier’s two backup restorations has nothing to do with any of this, and is just an excuse to do away with the “call me X” business from Astonishing X-Men.
10. If this is really all about mutant ascendence, that gives a lot of room for stories along the way. It also provides an easy reset button at the end, because if they manage to secure their metaphysical future at the end of this, nothing will be different from how we thought the Marvel Universe was arranged before all this. Hickman’s run seems like it would naturally be a (very long) short-term arc.
-It’s possible that Hickman did mean for Xavier to have a scheme like Krakoa for almost the entirety of the X-Men’s history, based on Moira’s life.
It would seem like Moira would have had to manipulate events in the lives of herself and Xavier to lead to this point.
If it does indeed get revealed that Xavier has been knowingly working toward establishing Krakoa all along, I will reject this story outright and be done with the X-Men once and for all. It would undermine every bit of story that’s come before, rendering Charles’ “dream” a charade, every battle with Magneto a terrible lie, and put nihilistic rot at the core of it all.
Hickman can work this in without doing utter violence to all that’s come before by making it a plan Charles and Moira set into action and then blocked from their memories. I’m ok with that. Or maybe Krakoa just isn’t in a direct historical line with the 616 books we’ve been reading all these years. I’m ok with that too.
I’ve been largely at a distance from the X-Men since the end of Whedon’s astonishing run, but kept an eye on goings on. If this is truly a permanent, all sweeping retcon to Xavier’s motives behind every story since 1962, I’m done for good.
Last week, I compared these series to Foundation, and it seems the thematic connections are a bit stronger. In one of the later novels, the protagonists meet a member of a hive race of humanoids, one of which was even a mutant adversary with mental powers in a previous book. Those books even read a lot like “telepaths vs. humans” after a while. A protagonist has to decide whether or not to merge the galaxy (over millennia) into a singular consciousness.
Xavier restoring legacy versions of his mind (basically a retcon machine) is pretty crucial. It’s possible that this could have something to do with the missing “Life 6”–maybe he saw something then that would damage his current resolve.
@CJ
“Those books even read a lot like “telepaths vs. humans” after a while. A protagonist has to decide whether or not to merge the galaxy (over millennia) into a singular consciousness.”
Jesus, stop making me want to read the entire Foundation (and Robot) series again. I don’t have time!
Odd that the Foundation novels should be raised, as two weekends ago I re-read the last two for the first time since they were published. They’re dross. Foundation’s Edge, which you’re describing, does address the themes you describe and those are similar themes to Hickman’s. But Asimov’s treatment of them is awful. His stories involve characters trying to solve problems by reasoning with each other about the probable motives and actions of their adversaries. But when the adversaries have powers to manipulate minds, those motives and their probable outcomes are totally arbitrary, since they can always be changed at an instant. So when a protagonist chooses course A, on the assumption the antagonist must be planning B, it is meaningless. Plus, Asimov writes female characters like they’re all a bunch of empathy robots with no actual thoughts or reasoning in their heads.
Anyhow, back to HoX.
I’ve been working on a theory that the two re-writes of Xavier’s personality have to do with carefully controlling how much of Moira’s prognostication and the Krakoa plan he knows at a given moment in continuity. He’s letting himself download a few extra files here and there, or wiping memories of the Krakoa plan, so that Hickman can keep Xavier’s motivation in the 616 stories intact, while also weaving the Krakoa plan into all of Charles’ history.
If that’s what’s happening, it’s going to have to be pretty fussy, with dribs and drabs of the Krakoa plan coming and going at various moments in time. I’m guessing there are two main moments—shortly before founding Xavier’s school, and shortly after the “schism” of the triumvirate in 1991-92–that Charles is working on advancing the Krakoa plan, and that at other times he’s wiped those memores and stored them in one of the extra back-up cerebros.
But, it appears the back-up cerebros didn’t come along until 1991-92, so that makes it difficult for them to be the mechanism for this. Meaning either there’s a different method for Charles, Erik and Moira (and maybe Sinister) to manage their memories, or all three knew about the Krakoa plan from 1962-1992. That latter choice makes every damn story with them a lie, which is unacceptable, IMO. So we’re getting even more fussy with who knew what and when. I’ll take it, but it’s hard to swallow..
FWIW, Foundation and Earth is even worse. In the course of that book, the characters tell one another the history of the Foundation no fewer than 10 times. Over and over and over again. By page 200 for the fifth (in publishing order) book your reader really ought to have the premise sorted out and shouldn’t need you to spell it out again.
Re: Nu-D, mindwipes/blocks are definitely in the mix. Xavier to Sinister last issue:
“First, I need you to begin the good work… And then, I need you to forget why you’re doing it and that we were ever here… until the day I tell you to remember.” Xavier’s holding his fingers to his temple here, i.e. using his telepathy. Xavier doesn’t need Cerebro to wipe minds – just ask Cyclops! – so we can cover off everyone except Xavier himself.
But that’s where I hit the wall. We have two mind rollbacks for Xavier, but they seem to be specifically using upgraded Cerebro. So I have zero explanation for Xavier between the Silver Age and whenever Forge upgrades Cerebro (1991 or whenever).
@Allen,
Agree. Since Erik was brought into the loop c. UXM #150, it’s impossible to reconcile quite a bit here with known continuity. Both Xavier and Erik (and Moira) need periodic memory manipulation between Moira’s reveal and recruiting Forge c. UXM #281-89. So that memory manipulation needs to be via a mechanism other than cerebro back-ups.
But similarly, there needs to be a lot of memory manipulation after UXM #281-89, and it’s implied here that the Cerebro back-ups are how its done.
Like I said, this all gets very fussy when you try to fit it into the continuity we know. I’m not thrilled with it, but it’s WAY preferable to “Xavier was secretly scheming this all along and allowed the X-Men to kill Magneto, allowed Erik to extract Logans adamantium, allowed Moira to screw with Magneto’s DNA, etc. etc. all in the name of his grand scheme.”