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Jan 18

The Complete Moira: Part 3

Posted on Saturday, January 18, 2020 by Paul in Moira, Uncategorized

Three posts into the series, we finally reach Moira’s first published appearance! (For part 1, see here; for part 2, see here.)

X-Men vol 1 #96 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and Sam Grainger (“Night of the Demon”, December 1975). And here we are. Moira shows up at the X-Men’s Mansion, responding to the invitation from Professor X (which we saw her receive in Classic X-Men #2). This is the point where she gets introduced to the X-Men, who at this point consist of Cyclops, Banshee, Storm, Colossus, Wolverine and Nightcrawler. Later retcons will establish that Moira has met Cyclops and Wolverine already, but neither of them remember it. Sean is immediately taken with Moira, kicking off their romantic subplot which will later settle into a long-term status quo.

Moira and Charles both tell the X-Men that she has been hired as the new housekeeper, to look after the house and the X-Men while he’s away. At that point, the demon Kierrok attacks, and Moira promptly gets a machine gun from the armoury to fight it – though Banshee actually bundles her to safety before she has the chance to use it, and the X-Men defeat Kierrok without her. This story is reprinted in Classic X-Men #4, which adds a page of Moira and Charles having a private conversation where they reminisce about their past relationship.

So, a few points to note here. Chris Claremont seems to tinker with his ideas for Moira after the character is already up and running. The obvious question, with hindsight, is why on earth Moira pretends to be a housekeeper when she first appears. It’s not even an especially good pretence, since Storm immediately asks why on earth the Professor is revealing the X-Men’s secrets to a housekeeper – so he has to make clear that he knows and trusts her. Plus, Moira is a Nobel prize winning scientist, and she’s using her real name. Now granted, fair enough, it’s 1977 – the X-Men can’t Google her, and certainly can’t be expected to recognise the names of every Nobel prize winner. But you’d think Moira would at least bother with a pseudonym.

The closest we ever really get to an explanation for the housekeeper pretence is that Muir Isle is so sensitive that even the X-Men aren’t supposed to know about it – a plot thread that makes it as far as Muir Isle’s first appearance before being quietly dropped. As we’ll see, Moira is actually here to help Charles with the nightmares that he’s experiencing at the moment. (Those are due to Lilandra Neramani trying to make psychic contact with him from the Shi’ar Empire – a plotline that will sort itself out without Moira doing anything.) The idea seems to be that Charles is hoping Moira can help out with this unobtrusively and then go home without having to tell the X-Men very much. This sort of ultra-secrecy actually fits better with the Hickman retcon than with the way things transpired originally.

X-Men vol 1 #106 by Chris Claremont, Bill Mantlo, Bob Brown & Tom Sutton (“Dark Shroud of the Past”, August 1977). This is a fill-in issue told in flashback, set shortly after Moira’s arrival. It has a brief scene of Moira helping Charles with his nightmares.

X-Men vol 1 #97 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum & Sam Grainger (“My Brother, My Enemy!”, February 1976). The first published scene of Moira helping Charles with his nightmares. It establishes them as a former couple, but it also shows Charles being very apologetic for something that happened in the past. That plotline is repeatedly mentioned in Moira’s early issues, but gets completely dropped when the circumstances of their break-up are revealed a few years down the line. Again, it seems to be an idea that was started and swiftly revised out. These days, it can probably be taken as a reference to the events of Deadly Genesis.

X-Men vol 1 #98 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum & Sam Grainger (“Merry Christmas, X-Men…”, April 1976). Moira joins the X-Men and some of their supporting cast on a Christmas visit to New York. She and Sean soon wander off on what seems to be their first date. Soon after that, the Sentinels attack the X-Men and kidnap Banshee, Wolverine and Jean; Moira helps plan their rescue, but aside from that, she doesn’t do much else in terms of the main plot – because at this point, she’s a slow-burning background subplot. The added scenes from the reprint in Classic X-Men #6 give her a little bit more to do, but nothing terribly important. Moira also has a cameo in the X-Men story in Marvel Holiday Special 1991 (which leads directly into this story) and shows up in Marvels Epilogue (which retells this story), but neither of them adds much as far as she is concerned.

The X-Men’s battle with the Sentinels plays out in issue #99 and #100, with no Moira involvement.

X-Men vol 1 #101 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum & Frank Chiaramonte (“Like a Phoenix, From the Ashes!”, October 1976). Jean Grey has become Phoenix, and is in hospital recuperating from the experience. (Per later retcons, Jean has actually been replaced by the cosmic Phoenix, while the real Jean is in suspended animation underwater – but that’s years down the line.) Moira duly shows up at the hospital with the other X-Men. More waiting room scenes can be found in the Classic X-Men #9 back-up strip, and in the added pages in Classic X-Men #10-11 (which reprint the Moira-free X-Men #102-103). Aside from keeping the nightmare subplot ticking over, Moira’s contribution to these stories is basically to hang around and look worried along with everyone else.

X-Men vol 1 #104 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and Sam Grainger (“The Gentleman’s Name is Magneto”, April 1977). Now this is more important. Worried that she hasn’t heard from Jamie Madrox in a while, and fearing “an accident” at Muir Isle, Moira completely abandons the housekeeper schtick and asks the X-Men to investigate. Most of the team are coming from Ireland (where they’ve just had a thrilling adventure with some leprechauns), but Moira and Cyclops fly directly from New York to join them. It turns out that Magneto has been restored to adulthood and escaped. The inexperienced new X-Men team are completely outmatched by Magneto and wind up staging a tactical retreat, taking Moira and Jamie with them. Magneto, having proved his point, simply leaves the island a little later.

Most significantly, this is where we learn about the Muir Isle Mutant Research Centre. Cyclops is understandably angry that he hasn’t been told about it before. As presented here, despite the name, it’s actually a prison complex, designed to cage the most dangerous mutants in existence (though the only inmates actually identified are Unus, Dragonfly and “Mutant X”, which later turns out to be Moira’s son Proteus). Moira tells Cyclops outright that she hopes to “cure” their hatred for humanity, and she appears to mean doing it through science – essentially the same plot that rears its head again in 1991. Moira also says that this is her life’s work, begun when she and Charles were students and a couple. This story is also the first mention of Moira being a professor at Edinburgh University, though she can’t have spent much time there if she was at Muir Isle, and she seems to have given it up when she went to help Charles with his nightmares.

The obvious question is: why is Muir Isle so secret that even the X-Men ideally wouldn’t have known about it? Claremont seems to drop the idea, but as far as we can tell from this story, Muir Isle seems to be some sort of illegal prison which is experimenting on the inmates. Basically, early Muir Isle is presented as a very dodgy place indeed. Claremont seems to decide that he doesn’t really like this take, and it rapidly gets revised into a straightforward scientific research facility, with Moira as something of a public figure. The idea of Muir Isle as a prison won’t really come to the fore again until we get to Excalibur. Again, Hickman’s retcon arguably helps make sense of some of this by giving Moira something else that she and Charles might ideally be trying to keep secret from the team.

Moira doesn’t say in this story that she got as far as actually altering Magneto’s personality, and the idea doesn’t come up again until 1991. Given Magneto’s behaviour when he gets restored to normal, there’s little evidence of the plan working, but maybe Moira just assumes that even an altered Magneto is justifiably angry about his imprisonment.

For whatever reason, Moira seems surprisingly relaxed about getting back to Muir Isle to sort the place out after this incident (particularly given that her son is there), and won’t return until issue #110. In the meantime, though, Moira goes back to tagging along with the X-Men…

Iron Fist vol 1 #15 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Dan Green (“Enter, the X-Men”, September 1977). Claremont engages in a little cross-promotion between his two titles, as the X-Men drop by to visit Jean Grey and Misty Knight, and Wolverine starts a fight with Iron Fist. This issue has a very brief scene of Moira going on another date with Sean, in which she tells him that she is unsure whether she wants to “get involved” further, given her past relationship with Charles. That angle never gets developed in X-Men.

The next few issues of X-Men bring the nightmare storyline to a head, as Lilandra debuts and the X-Men fight the Imperial Guard – all without Moira playing any part, despite it being the reason she joined the cast in the first place.

X-Men vol 1 #109 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Terry Austin (“Home are the Heroes!”, February 1978). The X-Men and Moira finally return to the Mansion, now accompanied by Phoenix, Lilandra, and Jean’s parents. Moira allows Alex Summers (Havok) and Lorna Dane (Polaris) to join her on Muir Isle, thus starting to establish the wider supporting cast who’ll be based there for years to come. By this point, Moira and Sean are unequivocally presented as a couple. This is the issue where Weapon Alpha makes his first attempt to recover Wolverine for Canada; Moira gets knocked out in the opening seconds of the fight and plays no further part.

X-Men vol 1 #110 by Chris Claremont & Tony deZuniga (“The ‘X’-Sanction!”, April 1978). The whole nightmare storyline is resolved, so Moira decides to return home to Muir Isle. (You’d figure she’d have a bit more urgency about getting back to Proteus, but seemingly not.) Moira and Sean are considering settling down together, but he stays with the X-Men for now.

This is the issue where Warhawk traps the X-Men in their own Danger Room. Moira’s contribution to the plot is to be the gullible one who lets Warhawk into the building. Warhawk has metal skin and you might have thought his plan would be to pose as Colossus. Astoundingly, his actual plan is to claim that he’s come to fix the telephone, and Moira believes him. It’s not her finest hour.

Moira, Jamie, Alex and Lorna are all living on Muir Isle together by the time of Marvel Team-Up vol 1 #69 (another Claremont story, in which Spider-Man and Havok team up against the Living Pharaoh). Moira isn’t in that issue, because she’s visiting Edinburgh for the weekend.

X-Men vol 1 #119 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Terry Austin (“‘Twas the Night Before Christmas…”, May 1979). After a year’s absence, the Muir Islanders return, to start the build towards the Proteus storyline. They appear in a subplot where they meet up with Phoenix in Edinburgh, planning to spent Christmas in the city before travelling up to Muir Island for Hogmanay. It’s going to take them four issues to get there, so it’s a good job the book is now on a monthly schedule.

Classic X-Men #26 by Chris Claremont, Kieron Dwyer & Terry Austin (October 1988). The bonus pages in this reprint of X-Men #120 add a subplot where Jean and the Muir Islanders are hanging around at Cape Wrath waiting for their boat to Stornoway. (This is a mad way of getting from Edinburgh to Stornoway, but it’s probably Claremont’s attempt to square the conflicting references in his own stories. Maybe Jean just really, really wanted to see the most northwesterly point on mainland Scotland.) Moira and Jean talk about how Jean can hold on to her humanity after becoming Phoenix.

X-Men vol 1 #122 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Terry Austin (June 1979). The Muir Islanders finally set sail from Stornoway to Muir Island. Moira is now mainly worrying about whether Phoenix can control her power and – in what will become her recurring role – Moira would like to run some tests.

X-Men vol 1 #125-128 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin (September to December 1979). And so we reach the first full-on Moira MacTaggert story, the Proteus arc. After a week of running tests on Phoenix, the Muir Islanders belatedly notice that Proteus has escaped from his cell by jumping to another body (intruder Angus MacWhirter) and fleeing to the mainland. Well spotted, Moira. Excellent parenting there.

The Islanders summon the X-Men for help. Moira explains that Proteus is her son Kevin. He has two fundamental weaknesses: his constant need for new host bodies, and metal. The X-Men and Moira set out in pursuit of Proteus, and while the X-Men try to deal with matters in a conventionally heroic way, Moira just tries to shoot Proteus dead with a specially-prepared snipe rifle. She does have a thought balloon where she says that she loves him, but there’s a distinct sense that Moira’s been mentally prepared for this for quite some time, and long since wrote him off as a lost cause. And the X-Men do end up killing Proteus in the end, so this is probably intended to read as if Moira is both (a) very hardcore and (b) ahead of the X-Men in terms of the seriousness of the situation, rather than (c) incredibly cold towards her son.

Moira pursues Proteus to Edinburgh, where he’s planning to possess his father Joe MacTaggert. Moira meets Joe at his home and they argue about Joe’s refusal to give her a divorce. That isn’t how Scots divorce law worked even in 1979, but let’s assume it’s different in the Marvel Universe. (In the real world, even if she didn’t want to rely on Joe’s behaviour, she would have been entitled to a divorce by this point simply on the grounds of over five years’ separation.)

Moira tells Joe about Kevin, having never previously disclosed Kevin’s existence to him. Predictably, this leads to another argument, which Moira briefly considers killing Joe herself, and then leaves. Proteus arrives, kills Joe, and takes his body, at which point he takes on Joe’s hatred for Moira and starts going after her. The X-Men arrive to help and Sean in particular is surprised to learn that Moira is married, something else that she hadn’t mentioned to him before either. (Early Moira is very, very secretive – despite the fact that Joe talks as though his marriage to the famous scientist is public knowledge.)

Proteus torments Moira for a bit, but the X-Men kill him. Moira mourns the death of Joe and Kevin, but is also relieved to be free of them, so that she can start a new life with Sean. We’ll see in several future stories that Moira’s feelings about Proteus appear to be very conflicted; sometimes the emphasis is on the loss of her child, but there will also be a focus on Moira getting a second chance to either parent a child (ie, Rahne) or solve the puzzle of an out of control mutant (ie, Legion). The net effect is to treat Proteus as less a character, and more a challenge that Moira failed to solve.

At any rate, this story clears Moira’s old family off the board, leaving the way clear for her to start a new life with Sean.

The Proteus arc also claims that Moira is not a mutant and doesn’t register on Cerebro, but we have to take it that that’s an aspect of her Hickman-era powers. It’s hardly infallible – it can’t pick up Proteus either.

X-Men vol 1 #129 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin (“God Spare the Child…”, January 1980). This is usually classed as the first part of the Dark Phoenix Saga, but it opens with a brief scene of the Muir Islanders waving goodbye to the X-Men. Sean, who lost his powers a while ago, finally decides to quit the team and stay behind with Moira.

One last story to complete this chapter of Moira’s history:

Classic X-Men #36, back-up, by Fabian Nicieza, Mark Bright & Joe Rubinstein (“Outside In”, August 1989). Moira is still mourning Joe and Kevin, who have symbolic (but empty) graves on Muir Isle. Kevin’s original body is still in Moira’s lab and she toys with bringing him back from the dead. The mechanics of this are impenetrable technobabble, but Moira appears to be saying that Proteus’s mind is somehow linked to his DNA code, that if a new Proteus body was cloned then the original Proteus’s mind would somehow be drawn to the body. Needless to say, this issue is extremely Hickman-friendly because it asserts that Proteus’s powers can, in some incomprehensible way, restore an original soul to a copied body – which is basically what Proteus is doing on Krakoa.

The story also has Moira hoping that this time round Kevin might turn out better (which, unfortunately, it tries to tie in with the circumstances of his original conception). At any rate, Sean persuades her to leave the past behind her and she symbolically destroys Proteus’s original body.

But this idea isn’t forgotten quite yet. Even though Moira doesn’t actually bring Proteus back, she does keep a record of his DNA, as revealed in Excalibur vol 1 #73 (which specifically refers back to this back-up strip). So Moira is very much keeping her options open with Kevin – something that also fits rather nicely with his eventual role in the Five. (Assuming that’s really him, by the way. For some reason, in the annotations of History of the Marvel Universe #6, the Five’s Proteus is described as “presumably Kevin MacTaggert”.)

Next time: Wolfsbane. And Legion.

Bring on the comments

  1. Chris V says:

    I’m not sure about that. Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza were hardly the most talented writers to take over the top two X-books.
    Lobdell simply tried to copy Claremont as much as possible.

    I don’t believe that the sales on Uncanny and X-Men would have been so high under Lobdell and Nicieza if it were not for the cartoon show and the speculator boom.

    I never had the same interest in the X-Men comics again after Claremont.
    I think I’d give Anne Nocenti more credit as an editor than Shooter.

    Plus, the Outback Era took place after Shooter left Marvel, I believe. I would classify the Outback Era as one of the strongest periods in the X-Men’s history, alongside of the Romita Jr. and Byrne eras.

  2. Taibak says:

    I wouldn’t credit much of Claremont’s success to his editors, but I would say Shooter was probably more influential. After all, Shooter was the one who insisted that Jean die at the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga and commissioned God Loves, Man Kills.

    That said, Claremont was known to be a fairly low-maintenance writer. Outside of Dark Phoenix, there were very few cases where he needed a lot of guidance from editorial.

  3. Moo says:

    “I would classify the Outback Era as one of the strongest periods in the X-Men’s history”

    I would classify it as nearly the opposite of that.

  4. Chris V says:

    Taibak-That was sort of my point about Anne Nocenti though.
    Apparently, she was a very hands-off type of editor who gave Claremont a lot of creative freedom to tell his stories.

    Bob Harras and Tom DeFalco were the exact opposite as editors.

  5. FUBAR007 says:

    Chris V: Did the MLK description ever hang on against scrutiny?

    It was a metaphorical shorthand. The gist was that Xavier favored integration with human society while Magneto favored separation from/domination of human society.

    I’m not sure about that. Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza were hardly the most talented writers to take over the top two X-books.
    Lobdell simply tried to copy Claremont as much as possible.

    Sort of. Lobdell and Nicieza, at Harras’s direction, were playing out Claremont and Simonson’s plot threads. Of which there were many and of which I’m convinced Harras maintained a list. He kept the franchise going by gradually working through that list, culminating in 1999 with The Twelve. Once the list was exhausted, Harras…rehired Claremont.

    I don’t believe that the sales on Uncanny and X-Men would have been so high under Lobdell and Nicieza if it were not for the cartoon show and the speculator boom.

    The two core X-Men titles remained at the top of the sales charts throughout the 1990s market collapse and well into the 2000s, years after the end of the speculator boom. The X-franchise’s secret sauce was that Claremont’s formula got readers emotionally invested in the characters and their development. When Marvel abandoned consistent characterization and tight continuity is when that audience began to attrit away, and the X-titles gradually descended into the midlist.

    That was sort of my point about Anne Nocenti though.
    Apparently, she was a very hands-off type of editor who gave Claremont a lot of creative freedom to tell his stories.

    Claremont worked best with an editor who curbed his excesses and kept him focused, but nevertheless let him set the course. Louise Simonson, most notably, did that. Nocenti, too, though to a lesser extent. Harras had his own vision for the franchise that conflicted with Claremont’s.

  6. FUBAR007 says:

    O’Brien: Proteus torments Moira for a bit, but the X-Men kill him. Moira mourns the death of Joe and Kevin, but is also relieved to be free of them, so that she can start a new life with Sean. We’ll see in several future stories that Moira’s feelings about Proteus appear to be very conflicted; sometimes the emphasis is on the loss of her child, but there will also be a focus on Moira getting a second chance to either parent a child (ie, Rahne) or solve the puzzle of an out of control mutant (ie, Legion).

    This, for me, is the critical point where Hickman’s retcon breaks down. I find Moira’s thoughts and emotions during this period irreconciliable with Hickman’s cynical, ruthless master manipulator. Moira’s guilt and pain in the stories as originally written simply don’t jibe with someone who, as Hickman implied, deliberately sought to get pregnant with an omega mutant. Ditto, her relationship with Banshee, her anguish over experimenting on baby Magneto, etc.

    If we hadn’t been inside Moira’s head throughout the Claremont years and after, I could halfway buy Hickman’s retcon. But, Pre-Hickman Moira was just too loving and compassionate to be the icy, detached manipulator Hickman has portrayed her as.

    IMO, the retcon really works better when viewed as a soft reboot.

  7. Voord 99 says:

    On sales history: there are two things to be disentangled from one another.

    There’s total sales of the X-books, and then there’s relative position of the X-books in a market where sales have overall declined. I don’t think there’s any question that Chris V is right that the speculator boom artificially inflated sales in much of the Lobdell/Nicieza era, but that FUBAR007 is correct that the X-books remained *relatively* stronger in sales compared to other comics in the US direct market for years after that.

    One might however wonder if being at the top of a market in overall catastrophic decline is rather like having a really good deckchair position on the Titanic.

  8. Chris V says:

    The X-Men titles might have remained at the tops of the sales chart, but their sales also declined with the market collapse.
    Something has to be on top, even if the ship is sinking.

    The sales actually continued to increase after Claremont left the first time, during the Lobdell/Nicieza era, but that also coincided with the speculator boom.

    Then, Morrison got a bump in the sales again, for the first time since during the Lobdell period.
    Then, the sales began to decline pretty steadily after Morrison.

    I was saying that that I feel that sales would have began to drop on the X-Men titles after Claremont left, if not for the cartoon show and speculator boom.
    The two core X-Men books might have remained at the top of the sales chart, but I don’t believe that the sales would have increased after Claremont left X-Men if not for the speculator boom.
    I think Lobdell and Nicieza would have seen lower sales than the Claremont run otherwise.

  9. Chris V says:

    Ha, Voord! We posted at the same time, and both went to the Titanic metaphor.

  10. Joseph S. says:

    @ Chris V Absolutely fair point, I think that’s right. It never really help up to scrutiny (nor did the antonymy between MLK and Malcolm, which was either propagated by hardliners or by white liberals fearing escalation). Magneto being a Jewish survivor sets up a much more interesting allegory, one which I would wager was mostly unintentionally. It is there as soon as Magneto rules Genosha, but becomes impossible to deny once we get Fassbender’s version of the character in First Class. And that is Magneto as an analogue for the excesses of the state of Israel. I’m surprised, to be honest, that this hasn’t come up more often. Devin Faraci wrote an interesting piece on these parallel’s when that film came out

    https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2011/06/10/the-devins-advocate-x-men-first-class-magneto-as-a-critique-of-israel

    But the recent efforts by the BDS and International Solidarity Movement to paint Israel as an apartheid state analogous to South Africa grants further credence to that interpretation, given Genosha was a fairly obvious stand in for that country.

    I think this also works because it happens as Magneto is increasingly seen as an anti-hero, so that one might read his actions in a different light, depending upon one’s one’s views on Israel, the occupation, the efficacy of establishing ethnic or minority states, etc.

    I would just add that I think this plays into our potential reading of HoxPoX because Krakoa needs to say something new about withdrawal/secession that wasn’t covered by the Utopia era. Perhaps this is accomplished in the emphasis on trade and diplomacy, that might very well prove to be enough. But as many of us in these comment sections have noted, in pointing out the aspects of Krakoa that feel “off,” Hickman is primed to make a grander statement about the problems of nationalism and the fantasy of retreat.

    @ Luis et al. Agreed! But Claremont at least was the point through which the growing line was organized, giving some coherence to the overall narrative and direction, even if, as has often been said, he threw nearly as many bad ideas into the books as good. Still, rereading his run, for every dropped subplot there are remarkable slow burn developments that you just can’t get away with anymore, and which I think are (or were) one of the things I love about comics, which were a SERIALIZED medium. For me, that seriality was essential to making comics what they were. Collecting stories in trade didn’t just inaugurate the era of decompressed storytelling, they essentially changed the logic of the medium.

    Which is not to say this is all bad, but it is different. Like Paul, I’m of the opinion that drawing a line underthings and calling it a day is more often than not the way to go. But for that to happen a book needs to properly find its legs and have more space to develop. Cancelling a book after 6 or 12 or 18 issues just leads to reboot fatigue and appropriate jumping off places more than jumping on.

    One might make the same argument about the changes we’ve witnessed in TV, a result of the “Golden Age”. This couldn’t have happened without home media and later streaming. Most series couldn’t count on viewers watching every episode, in order, multiple times to untangle complicated plot threads (something that comics, as a collectors medium, started to encourage around the time the Direct Market came into being).

    Finally I’ll just add, Louise Simonson deserves so much more credit than yall are giving her!

  11. Thom H. says:

    @FUBAR007: I think you make a really interesting point. If we have access to Moira’s inner state during the time of the original Proteus incident, then it does seem as if Hickman’s portrayal of her as cold and calculating is incorrect.

    But if we ignore that information (her thought bubbles, essentially) then Hickman makes a stronger case. I’m wondering if the difference in those takes has something to do with the change in comic conventions over time. At one time, we cared to know what our characters were thinking and feeling, while now we’re mostly just interested in their actions.

    Of course, it’s also a possibility that you can have a child for a cold, calculated reason but also feel some maternal attachment to them despite your machinations. I think that’s what Paul is pointing out. She feels *something* for Kevin, but maybe not as strongly as you might expect.

    Either way, I agree that a lot hinges on Moira’s thoughts and feelings about Proteus.

  12. Chris V says:

    That back-up story in Classic X-Men by Nicieza is the biggest problem.
    It’s very contradictory of the Hickman ret-con.

    I’m not sure if it’s that modern readers don’t care about the inner monologues of the characters.
    It’s a matter of for a story like what Hickman is crafting with his X-Men, mystery is very important.
    The reader has to be kept guessing and looking for clues or figuring out what is a feint.

  13. Luis Dantas says:

    I was bothered by how cold and calculating Moira was from life 7 onwards.

    That is why I think that pre-Hickman stories fall into the continuity of Moira VI, while Hickman’s feature Moira X.

  14. Chris V says:

    I can’t see Marvel allowing that, really.

    It would mean that we know how the current Marvel Universe is going to end, since the pre-Hickman stories take place in what we think of as the current Marvel Universe.

    It also creates other problems since the Immortal Hulk book, for one, has already referenced Krakoa.
    That would mean that Immortal Hulk has to take place in the same life-time as “Dawn of X’.

    Unless Marvel is giving Hickman far more power than we realize, and Marvel has allowed the entire Marvel Universe to be rebooted to an extent.

  15. Dazzler says:

    If we have to ignore Moira’s actual thoughts in order for Hickman’s story to make sense, it doesn’t make sense.

    Also, I think FUBAR007 mostly hit the nail on the head in terms of the X-Men’s fall from the top of the sales charts. I was absolutely hooked on the books even when I didn’t like them because of the consistent characterization and tone. That all went down the toilet when Morrison took over, and that was the beginning of the end.

  16. FUBAR007 says:

    Thom H.: I’m wondering if the difference in those takes has something to do with the change in comic conventions over time. At one time, we cared to know what our characters were thinking and feeling, while now we’re mostly just interested in their actions.

    Chris V: I’m not sure if it’s that modern readers don’t care about the inner monologues of the characters.

    I don’t think it’s the readers that have changed; it’s the editors and the writers. Doing away with thought bubbles and focusing less on the interior lives of the characters became a trend at Marvel starting with the Quesada/Jemas era and has, over time, become the new normal.

    IMO, it’s not an improvement generally speaking, and I strongly suspect it’s one of the reasons why Direct Market sales never from recovered from the 1990s crash. The characters have become opaque and thus less relatable and sympathetic. The emotional hook for most readers isn’t there anymore. As a result, the reading experience has become more transactional, emotionally detached, and dependent on novelty in concept, plot, and storytelling craft.

    Unless Marvel is giving Hickman far more power than we realize, and Marvel has allowed the entire Marvel Universe to be rebooted to an extent.

    They already let him do that once with Secret Wars 2015. I suspect a similar kind of reset is how Hickman’s run will ultimately end, Moira’s 11th life being the Chekhov’s Gun waiting to go off.

  17. Chris A says:

    Dazzler reminds me of the old conversation we had years ago: every comic is someone’s last and we all have jumping off points, or points in the franchise that in hindsight ought to have been the jumping off point.

    Like I can’t imagine Spidey selling his marriage to Mephistopheles.

  18. Chris A says:

    Chris V mentions IMMORTAL HULK but that title already had the end of the universe and the implicit reboot of same.

  19. Chris V says:

    That story took place in the far future.
    The Immortal Hulk is planning to bring about the end of the universe, and prevent it from every starting over again.

  20. Col_Fury says:

    If there was any doubt left that this era of X-titles are set in some alternate reality or whatever…

    X-Men #10 is going to be an Empyre tie-in. It’s in the April solicits. There may be other X-books that will be part of the crossover (I haven’t gone through the whole thing yet), this is just the one I noticed.

    So, you know, there you go.

  21. neutrino says:

    April seems to be the month that crossovers and guests stars from the X-Men are allowed again, which should settle it if the continuity is referenced.

  22. Allan M says:

    The events of the New Mutants space arc are clearly referenced in Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy #1, too.

  23. neutrino says:

    How much? Do they actually reference mutants forming their own state on Krakoa?

  24. YLu says:

    The solicitation for the April issue of Deadpool would seem to settle pretty definitively whether this new era is taking place within the regular Marvel universe.

    Re: Moira’s old thought bubbles not matching the new revelations
    Generally, in these kinds of situations, you can pass off any discrepancy as a character going into extreme method acting, and rehearsing in their heads what they *would* be thinking if they were the way people thought they were.

    Like how spies in fiction call themselves by their fake names in their internal narration. (I have no idea if real spies do this, but the ones in fiction sure seem fond of it.)

  25. Dazzler says:

    Okay, so the person driving our heroes’ mission is a such a sociopath that she reinforces exaggerated fake thoughts in her own head in order to better manipulate people into thinking she has ordinary human emotions. This is the satisfying answer.

  26. Thom H. says:

    @YLu: That’s a great explanation. I’d never considered that thought bubbles could be performative, too.

    Weirdly, this idea makes me like Moira even more. But I like my mutants kind of weird and morally ambiguous.

  27. Jason says:

    Those last two comments juxtaposed are quite fun. 🙂

  28. Chris V says:

    Neutrino-I don’t know if you are wondering, but the Immortal Hulk issue does explicitly reference mutants forming their own island nation of Krakoa.
    He sees it as a positive step.
    It makes him begin to rethink his idea of ending all of reality, but he decides that it won’t accomplish enough to convince him to change his plans.

  29. Luis Dantas says:

    @Chris V: It is really no longer a big deal to establish that past stories had their own continuity and that the current ones do not necessarily follow from them.

    That used to be a big deal back in 1986 with Crisis, but not today. Marvel itself has rebooted its own timeline several times already, with various amounts of spotlight and demonstrated consequence.

    – Twice in Doctor Strange stories (1969 and late 1973).
    – Once in Excalibur (Cross Time Caper, 1989-1990)
    – House of M and its reversal
    – Secret Wars (2015), as noted

    I am probably missing some others as well.

  30. Chris V says:

    Not really pertinent, but the Engelhart Sise-Neg Dr. Strange story wasn’t meant to reboot the timeline.
    Marvel editorial forced that ret-con on the Engelhart story after they worried about offending their religious readership.
    Engelhart meant for it to be the true origin of the creation of the Marvel Universe.

    I was hoping that Secret Wars would have been much more of a reboot than it was, considering it was disappointing how minimal Marvel allowed their continuity to be changed.

  31. Taibak says:

    Wait… when did the universe reboot during The Cross-Time Caper?

  32. YLu says:

    Does it really count as a reboot if they make a point out of the new reality being identical to the old? What do you call a difference that makes no difference?

  33. Luis Dantas says:

    @YLu: Considering that such a situation leaves the door open for convenient reveals that there was a previously unrevealted difference, I would say that it does count.

    For a while, DC’s Hypertime worked not too differently from that scenario. It created a sort of fluid continuity that is remarkably appealling, since that is how comics work in practice anyway.

  34. Luis Dantas says:

    @Taibak: I guess I misremembered. Cross-Time Caper involved a lot of travel among alternate timelines and somehow I remembered it to have retroactively changed the past as well.

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