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Jan 25

The Complete Moira: Part 4

Posted on Saturday, January 25, 2020 by Paul in Moira

For part 1, see here. For part 2, see here. For part 3, see here.

With the Proteus arc over, Moira… well, drifts for a bit. This is the period where she becomes the X-Men’s scientist friend who pops up regularly to explain the plot.

X-Men vol 1 #133 and #135 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Terry Austin (“The Dark Phoenix Saga”, May and July 1980). Moira reviews some scans of Phoenix and confirms that it’s all looking very bad. Beyond that, she doesn’t get involved. Surprisingly, she doesn’t seem to be at Phoenix’s funeral in issue #138.

X-Men vol 1 #141 and Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #142 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Terry Austin (“Days of Futures Past”, January and February 1981). Moira and Charles Xavier testify before Robert Kelly’s senate committee on mutants. As you’d expect, Charles is keen to promote peace and tolerance, while Moira is mutteringly darkly about gas chambers – something that fits perfectly well with Hickman’s Moira.

What doesn’t fit quite so well is Moira’s reaction to the main plot. Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants shows up to try and assassinate Robert Kelly. They’re defeated by the X-Men, who are being steered by a time-travelling Kitty Pryde from the future (swapping minds with the teenage Kitty of the present day). On learning that Kitty is a time traveller, Moira tells Charles – privately – that “if time travel is possible, if as a result history is … mutable, we’ll have to redefine our concept of reality itself. We’ll never be completely sure what … is … from one moment to the next. That’s frightening!” Clearly, post-Hickman, Moira is herself a multiple time traveller, so this reaction no longer makes sense at face value. You can fudge it if you think it’s the first time she’s encountered another time traveller, or if she thinks that travelling during your lifetime is somehow more destabilising. Or at a push, maybe she’s putting on an act for the benefit of anyone might overhear. But it’s not ideal.

This story also features Destiny, who immediately points out that there’s something anomalous about Sprite, but says nothing about Moira (who she also perceives as an anomaly, according to House of X #2). That’s easier to explain, since Destiny and Mystique already knew about Moira, they would have expected her to be there, and they probably hadn’t filled in their Brotherhood teammates about her.

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #146 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum & Joe Rubinstein (“Murderworld!”, June 1981). A makeshift stand-in X-Men team rescues a bunch of supporting characters from Arcade. Moira is just here to make up the numbers for the hostages.

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #148 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum & Joe Rubinstein (“Cry, Mutant!”, August 1981). This is the debut of Caliban, but it has a subplot where Sean Cassidy is introduced to his long-lost daughter Siryn (Theresa Rourke), who met the X-Men in Spider-Woman vol 1 #38. Moira is conflicted – she’s happy for Sean, but worries that Theresa will be a rival for her affections. She’s specifically concerned that Theresa will represent the possibility of fatherhood, which Moira feels she can’t offer to Sean, because she isn’t willing to repeat the experience of Proteus. This is a slightly odd thing to worry about given Sean’s age, and the fact that Theresa already provides him with a daughter. As a specific concern, it never comes up again. But it establishes a theme that Moira is understandably anxious about anything that brings Proteus to mind.

Powers of X #2 by Jonathan Hickman, RB Silva & Adriano di Benedetto (“We are Together Now, You and I”, October 2019). Moira and Charles go to Island M to approach Magneto and offer an alliance. By showing him Moira’s memories, they persuade him to join in their plan. Later, Moira writes about this in her diary, as seen in Powers of X #6.

This scene is tricky to fit in. In the original stories, Magneto only uses Island M as a base for a very short window. He raises it from the ocean floor not long before Uncanny X-Men #150. He flees the island at the end of that issue, and the X-Men seize it. Presumably Moira is expecting the island to appear, because it happened in a previous life. If so, Moira and Charles may be playing dumb in…

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #150 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Joe Rubinstein & Bob Wiacek (“I, Magneto…”, October 1981). Moira and Charles join Carol Danvers and Peter Corbeau in searching for the missing Scott Summers, who has gone missing in a storm in the Bermuda Triangle. In fact, he’s been washed up at Magneto’s Island M. After the X-Men drive Magneto away from the island, Moira joins them there for a picnic. She doesn’t do much in the issue itself.

X-Men Annual vol 1 #5 by Chris Claremont, Brent Anderson & Bob Wiacek (“Ou, La, La – Badoon!”, 1981). Moira appears briefly, to run some tests on the Invisible Woman.

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #158 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum & Bob Wiacek (“The Life that Late I Led”, June 1982). Professor X is in a coma following a recent trip into space. He’s brought to Island M, currently serving as the X-Men’s temporary base, where Moira treats him. From here on, Claremont seems to treat Moira as a de facto medic. (She also has plenty of opportunity around this time to explore Island M, if that’s relevant to any upcoming stories.)

Moira suggests that the X-Men go and erase the US government’s records of them, which they duly do (without any further involvement from Moira). This bit fits rather well with Hickman: on his take, she normally influences events through her alliance with Charles, but with him out of commission, she starts steering the X-Men more directly.

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #159 by Chris Claremont, Bill Sienkiewicz & Bob Wiacek (“Night Screams”, July 1982). The Dracula story. Moira appears in the epilogue, where she summons the X-Men back to Island M, reporting that Xavier has taken a turn for the worse. As it turns out, it’s false jeopardy, because there seems to be no real urgency about his condition in the next issue.

Issue #160 is the story where little Illyana Rasputin is trapped in Limbo and returns as a teenager. Moira doesn’t appear, but we’re told that she examines Illyana on her return, and pronounces her healthy.

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #161 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum & Bob Wiacek (“Gold Rush!”, September 1982). Charles emerges from his coma (after a lengthy flashback which takes up most of the issue), and Moira is there to see it.

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #163 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum & Bob Wiacek (“Rescue Mission”, November 1982). This is part of the Brood storyline. The X-Men are missing in space, and Professor X is in a deep depression (partly because he thinks he’s killed off another team, partly because he’s infected by the Brood). Moira, Havok, Polaris and Corsair help to supervise the reconstruction of the X-Men Mansion.

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #165 by Chris Claremont, Paul Smith & Bob Wiacek (“Transfigurations!”, January 1983). The X-Men are still off in space fighting the Brood, Charles is still brooding in his study, and since there isn’t much else going on, Moira, Illyana and Stevie Hunter are enjoying the Mansion’s swimming pool.

Reed Richards writes, asking if Charles can help with new mutant Xi’an Coy Manh (who debuted in Marvel Team-Up #100). Charles refuses out of hand, but Moira guilt trips him into it by threatening to either train Xi’an herself, or pass her to Magneto or Emma Frost. She tells Charles that her big mistake with Proteus was to try and deal with him alone, instead of coming to him for help. She might well be sincere about that, but she could just as easily be pushing Charles back on track by telling him what he wants (or needs) to hear.

Marvel Graphic Novel #4 by Chris Claremont & Bob McLeod (“Renewal”, December 1982). This is the origin story of the New Mutants, if you don’t know. It is on Marvel Unlimited, but it’s very hard to find, because it’s wrongly listed as “The New Mutants Marvel Graphic Novel” – and on top of that, it’s filed under “T” for “The”.

When Rahne Sinclair’s mutant power to turn into a wolf emerges, a lynch mob led by Reverend Craig pursues her onto Kinross land. Moira finds her, takes her in, and brings her to the X-Men Mansion. There, she helps Charles run tests on both Rahne and Xi’an, and keeps on pushing him to reopen the school. She also helps track down Roberto da Costa (Sunspot), before dropping out of the plot so that the New Mutants themselves can take centre stage. Charles duly re-opens the school to train the New Mutants, including Rahne (as “Wolfsbane”). New Mutants vol 2 #11 has a flashback which slightly expands on Moira taking Rahne in, but it doesn’t add anything important.

Marvel Graphic Novel #4 has several references which suggest that Moira’s father is still alive – as noted back in part one, that contradicts later flashbacks. But we never see him, so it doesn’t really matter. If he is indeed still alive, presumably he dies at some point.

Rahne also mentions that Moira (somehow) manages to get appointed as her “guardian” even during the course of this story. That really doesn’t make much sense, unless there’s some serious manipulation of the courts going on, but run with it. At this stage, it’s merely a device to justify Rahne enrolling in Xavier’s school; the idea of Moira as Rahne’s adoptive mother won’t come alone for a while. In fact, having enlisted Rahne in the New Mutants, Moira flies straight back to the UK – accompanied not by Rahne, but by Illyana, who won’t join the New Mutants for a while yet.

New Mutants vol 1 #1 by Chris Claremont, Bob McLeod & Michael Gustovich (“Initiation”, March 1983). Moira and Illyana meet with Gabrielle Halller, who wants Moira to help with her autistic mutant son David Haller (Legion). Moira tries to steer Gabrielle towards Charles Xavier but is shocked when Gabrielle reveals that Charles is David’s father. This sits a little oddly with Powers of X #6, which implies that Moira actively identified potential mates for both herself and Charles who might parent reality-altering mutants. Under Hickman, Moira probably has to be putting on an act for the benefit of Gabrielle and Illyana.

New Mutants vol 1 #3 by Chris Claremont, Bob McLeod & Michael Gustovich (“Nightmare”, May 1983). Moira has an angry phone call with Charles, who by this point is heavily under the influence of the Brood, and is acting wildly out of character. Later, Moira and Sean discuss David. Moira is uncomfortable with saving Charles’s son, partly because they could have been parents themselves if their relationship had panned out, and partly because treating David reminds her of Proteus. This never really comes to fruition, but Claremont seems to be positioning Legion as Moira’s opportunity for a do-over with Proteus. In the event, though, we don’t get back to Legion’s storyline for another 23 issues!

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #167 by Chris Claremont, Paul Smith & Bob Wiacek (“The Goldilocks Syndrome! (Or, Who’s Been Sleeping in My Head?”, March 1983). The X-Men return and defeat the Brood. Moira helps Sikorsky (the Starjammers’ medic) to clone a new body for Xavier using alien technology, and then to transplant his mind into that body. Obviously, this is all massively useful experience for Moira in the Krakoan era – but she doesn’t have much to do in the issue itself.

After this, Moira seems to drop off Claremont’s radar for the next year or so, aside from a couple of cameos.

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #168 by Chris Claremont, Paul Smith & Bob Wiacek (“Professor Xavier is a Jerk!”, April 1983). If you look closely, Moira’s in the Danger Room control booth in one panel of a montage.

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #175 by Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr, Paul Smith & Bob Wiacek (“Phoenix!”, November 1983). The wedding of Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor. Moira and Sean are among the guests. They seem very happy.

New Mutants vol 1 #22 by Chris Claremont & Bill Sienkiewicz (“The Shadow Within”, December 1984). Warlock showed up in the previous issue, so Moira and Charles examine him and discuss his unusual physiology. This is a tricky scene to square with House of X, which gives Moira plenty of knowledge of techno-organic beings and the existential threat they pose to mutants. Moira should certainly be interested in examining Warlock, but she and Charles probably shouldn’t be quite this surprised by the basics. You can argue that they’re putting on a show for Warlock. Generally speaking, though, one of the issues with the Hickman retcon is that Moira has spent a fair amount of time hanging around with techno-organic characters and if she’s got a big issue about them, she hides it very well. We’ll come back to this when Moira joins the cast of Excalibur.

New Mutants vol 1 #23-24 by Chris Claremont & Bill Sienkiewicz (“Shadowman” / “The Hollow Heart”, January and February 1985). This is the storyline that guest stars Cloak & Dagger. Moira gets to talk down a crazed Sunspot. But for our purposes, the main point of interest is that Moira and Rahne are now talking as if they were in a mother/child relationship – emotionally, and not just on paper. In practice, of course, there’s been no real opportunity for that relationship to develop, and very little on the page to support it beyond the fact that both characters insist that it exists. And this will remain the case – Moira and Rahne will spend very little time together, yet both will generally insist from this point on that they regard each other as mother and daughter.

You could certainly read this as a relationship that both characters really want to believe in for their own reasons. As we’ll see, writers have a range of takes on this relationship – some take it entirely at face value, some seem to be more sceptical. Claremont seems generally to believe in it, but gives Rahne some reasons to be insecure. Once again, it fits the model of giving Moira a second chance at parenthood.

New Mutants vol 1 #26-28 by Chris Claremont & Bill Sienkiewicz (“Legion”, “Into the Abyss” and “Soulwar”, April to June 1985). Moira has a prominent role in this story, but it’s not really about her. When David Haller’s unstable powers start causing psychic “explosions”, Moira calls in Professor X to help. He duly arrives on Muir Isle with half of the New Mutants in tow, including Rahne. Rahne is understandably worried that Moira isn’t actually that interested in her (particularly as Moira actually shows more interest in Sean at first), and also wants to talk about her conflicted feelings about her powers; Moira is reasonably maternal towards her here, though her protestations of love feel a bit over the top.

Before all that can go any further, Moira and Wolfsbane are drawn into Legion’s mindscape, soon followed by Charles, Mirage, Cypher and Gabrielle Haller. Inside, they meet many of Legion’s alternate personalities and the permanently-absorbed persona of Jemail Karami, a reformed terrorist who is now trying to fix Legion’s mind. At the end of the story, David’s multiple personalities are supposedly reduced to four (his own, Jemail, and alternate personalities Jack and Cyndi), and he emerges from his coma. The end of the story is meant to tie in to a scene in Secret Wars II #1 (also featuring Moira) where Charles senses the Beyonder coming, but the two don’t actually fit together very neatly.

X-Men Legacy vol 2 #3 and #24 have very brief flashbacks of Legion being treated on Muir Isle, with Moira in the background. They’re cameos at most, and besides, they’re probably better understood as panels showing how Legion imagines his parents treating him. (Basically, Legion imagines Charles abandoning him in order to go and do more important things. This is sort of true – once Legion falls into a coma in 1991, Charles does seem to forget about him. But it’s not really how things played out in the 80s, when Charles wound up leaving Earth shortly after this story, and didn’t return for several years, at which point he did in fact return to Muir Isle as a top priority.)

At any rate, Legion will indeed remain on Muir Isle with Moira for the foreseeable future.

Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #199 by Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr & Dan Green (“The Spiral Path”, November 1985). Moira drops by the Mansion to tell Cyclops and Wolverine about Charles’ terminal illness, as mentioned above.

The Mirage & Wolfsbane story in Marvel Comics Presents vol 1 #22, by Sue Flaxman, Rod Ramos & Jose Marzan Jr (“Suffer a Wolf to Live”, June 1989). Moira frets when Wolfsbane goes missing for a few days (to have an exciting adventure with magical wolf people). This is placed is way out of publication sequence, but it requires Rahne and Dani to be spending some time on Muir Isle for no obvious reason, so it might as well go in the aftermath of the Legion arc, when both characters were there. We can also shoehorn in X-Man #12’s anecdote about Moira and Rahne having storytelling sessions on the cliffs of Muir Isle. This window after the Legion arc is one of the most plausible times for that sort of relationship-building to take place.

Next time we’ll cover the remainder of the original Chris Claremont run – which is to say, the Shadow King storyline.

Bring on the comments

  1. Jason says:

    “On learning that Kitty is a time traveller, Moira tells Charles – privately – that “if time travel is possible, if as a result history is … mutable, we’ll have to redefine our concept of reality itself. We’ll never be completely sure what … is … from one moment to the next. That’s frightening!”

    As soon as I heard about this retcon, my mind flashed on this bit of dialogue. I was surprised to see people online saying that it’s brilliant because “you’d have to look pretty hard” to find something in Moira’s published history that contradicts the reveal. Because … really? It took me about 60 seconds for me to think of something that contradicted it.

    If you like the retcon, fine, of course. There are few retcons that work 100% perfectly … that’s almost part of the definition of the term. If it worked perfectly, we’d probably just be calling it a “reveal” rather than a ret-con, right? Still, it’s bemusing to see people defend this as being something that makes perfect sense within the extant material, and actually organizes X-continuity into a coherent whole that makes sense. Because, wow, even a cursory glance shows that it categorically does not.

  2. Chris V says:

    Mystique apparently doesn’t know about Moira though.
    Otherwise, why did she attempt to kill Moira?
    She said that she would only hunt down Moira if Moira betrayed the mutant cause.
    Plus, she would presumably expect time to restart if she murdered Moira, something she doesn’t experience.

    I think that only Destiny realized about Moira’s existence, and apparently didn’t share what she knew with Mystique before she died.
    I would assume because Destiny didn’t sense that Moira had broken her promise.

    That doesn’t address why Mystique wanted to murder Moira in this time-line.

  3. Joseph S. says:

    Yes, fine, Jason, but continuity is inconsistent already, even just restricting ourselves to Claremont’s Moira stories, as Paul has painstakingly detailed here. And in many cases, the ret-con resolves issues that otherwise were glaringly incongruous or just plain odd. That’s the nature of decades long serialized storytelling, they’re literally making it up as they go, which results in shifts, changed plans, abandoned ideas and characterizations.

  4. Michael says:

    That statement by Moira still works if you stretch it a bit.

    After the retcon, Moira’s entire plan is based on “being completely sure what.. is..” which she can be. due to her reincarnating. Just her, not anyone else.

    If Cable bodyslides into her timeline out of nowhere, that’s an unforeseeable variable.

    She needs the control over her lives and her fear is based on losing that control.

  5. Chris V says:

    She isn’t exactly sure of everything that will happen though.
    She wants to have control, because she is trying to change events in each of her lives.
    She’s never really sure what those changes will cause though.
    She knows that Nimrod being activated is very bad and wants to stop this…she is sure she knows how and why Nimrod comes online…so, she sets out to stop it.
    Then, she doesn’t know what will happen next, because each of her lifetimes occurs differently, mostly based on her own actions.
    She is trying to control and shape where the future moves though.

    You could argue that she has tricked herself in to believing that she does “completely know what is going to happen”, since she is convinced that mutants are always going to lose.

  6. Paul says:

    “Mystique apparently doesn’t know about Moira though.
    Otherwise, why did she attempt to kill Moira?”

    Mystique doesn’t try to kill Moira in “Days of Future Past”. She takes out Moira and Charles with gas, but expressly passes up the opportunity to hurt them, claiming that Charles is more use to her as a hostage (and showing no particular interest in Moira one way or the other).

  7. neutrino says:

    “This is a tricky scene to square with House of X, which gives Moira plenty of knowledge of techno-organic beings and the existential threat they pose to mutants.”

    But did it? The Librarian said the Phalanx were machines that would absorb the post-humans and destroy the Earth, but not that they were techno-organic. Warlock’s race was called the Technarchy back then, and the Phalanx weren’t mentioned.

  8. Chris V says:

    Paul-I meant during Claremont’s second run, when Moira faked her death after Mystique attempted to kill her.

  9. Tony says:

    I think that lines fits perfectly actually. Moira isn’t a time traveller at all, she resets the universe. Perhaps time travel is something she hadn’t thought of yet when it came to ways to ensure this timeline succeeded.

  10. Paul says:

    Ah, well we’ll get to Dream’s End. But I think the most likely reading of Hickman’s retcon is that Mystique was in on the scheme.

  11. Chris V says:

    Hmm… Interesting. That would imply that Mystique would have more power on Krakoa than anyone other than Xavier or Magneto.
    She’d be one of only three people to realize that Moira was alive and also a mutant.

  12. Chris V says:

    I also got the feeling that Moira chose to fake her own death due to Mystique.

  13. Joseph S. says:

    Hmm, yeah that is interesting about Mystique. Assuming (according to the ret-con) that she didn’t know that Moira had been replaced with a Shi’ar golem, killing Moira could have been an attempt to reset time (and thereby return Destiny to life as well). Though of course, reality continuing to exist would be an obvious sign that she failed, though how would Mystique know whether or not her reality would cease to exist or continue as a divergent timeline (in fact, I’m not 100% certain that anything in PoX definitely proves that this is not the case aside from, perhaps, the Librarian’s exposition towards the end of issue 6, and even that might very well have been speculation?)

    That does beg the question as to what Mystique knows. If she did know she killed a golem, then she knows of Moira’s existence (a circle of trust which only Charles and Erik seem to be a part of. Maybe Apocalypse? Can’t recall precisely but I think the dialogue in HoX 6 in the scene in Moira’s no-place suggests he does not know.)

  14. Luis Dantas says:

    Moira’s power does not imply that the world ceases existing for other people after her deaths. Maybe it does in fact work by turning back the clock for the whole world or universe, maybe it just sends Moira’s consciousness into another variation of her time of birth.

    Either way, Mystique has no reason to expect Moira to be alive unless she went out of her way to find hints of some kind.

    Granted, that would be entirely in character for her; Mystique has been involved in secret conspiracies and covert intelligence gathering literally from her first appearance.

    But otherwise, far as she knows Moira has indeed died and never been exposed as a mutant in this timeline.

  15. Chris V says:

    Which is why I think it’s important that Destiny is dead, and that Moira wants her to stay dead.
    Destiny is the only one who can share the truth with Mystique, about Moira’s existence and her being a mutant.

  16. Jason says:

    “That’s the nature of decades long serialized storytelling, they’re literally making it up as they go, which results in shifts, changed plans, abandoned ideas and characterizations.”

    I know that, Joseph, because I am a reader of comics. I get how it works.

    That’s why trying to do some all-encompassing retcon to try and fix continuity in one shot is a misguided decision on Hickman’s part. The Moira retcon screws up as many things as it “fixes,” so it strikes me as a pointless exercise. Before the ret-con, you can look at inconsistencies and say, hey, life is inconsistent, whatcha gonna do? Hickman has now put things within this ridiculous “master plan” lens, forcing a reader to jump through mental hoops to explain how every inconsistency can still somehow “work.”

  17. Arrowhead says:

    UH, sorry to interrupt ya’ll NERDS but everyone seems to have missed the BIG NEWS from the latest Marvel solits…

    X-MEN: RELOAD TPB
    Written by CHUCK AUSTEN
    Penciled by SALVADOR LARROCA
    Cover by SALVADOR LARROCA
    ON SALE MAY 2020
    Out of the blockbuster NEW X-MEN finale, the X-Men reload for an astonishing new era! With Jean Grey dead and the school in ruins, how will the X-Men move on? Professor X departs for Genosha as Cyclops and Emma Frost find themselves at a crossroads. Should the Xavier Institute be rebuilt? And what will become of their blossoming relationship? Plus: A Shakespearean saga of two star-crossed lovers — one a mutant and the other a human! The return of Xorn! A surprise twist for Gambit! And the Juggernaut officially joins the X-Men — but if he’s truly as reformed as he seems, why is he still in touch with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants? Experience the final act in Cain Marko’s difficult journey to heroism! Collecting UNCANNY X-MEN (1981) #437-443, NEW X-MEN (2001) #155-156 and X-MEN (1991) #157-164.
    416 PGS./Rated T+ …$39.99

    THATS RIGHT NERDS… THE CHUCK IS BACK BAYBEE!

  18. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    This stuff hasn’t been collected before? I mean, it’s dreck, but I thought basically everything after 2000 has been put into TPBs six months after the last part of the story-arc came out.

  19. ASV says:

    Probably collected in long out-of-print 4-6 issue chunks.

  20. Arrowhead says:

    After YEARS of DISRESPECT Marvel FINALLY relents to fan demand and acknowledges The Chuck’s
    ONE-OF-A-KIND X-Men Epic!

    …SO for all you other CHUCKLEHEADS out there… Let the speculation begin!!! What does this mean for the future of the franchise???

    The return of MAXIMUS LOBO? The secret identity of the F***Buddy who fathered Nurse Annie’s Son CARTER? Will ICEMAN FINALLY come out as GAY AS HELL??? Archangel just straight-up bleeding on everyone… Such a dope superpower…But will Marvel finally address the CRUCIAL CONTINUITY that mutants can’t get AIDS??? What about Blind Gambits precognitive powers? Azazel’s MASTER PLAN to f*** for centuries until his babies rule the EARTH? ???

    Not to mention the scenes that those PRUDES in EDITORIAL forced Austin to CENSOR… will we FINALLY get to see a giggling Nurse Annie give comatose Havok an INTIMATE SPONGE BATH???

    Will a long lost Austen interview buried in the special features of the X2 DVD reveal MORE hideous details of Nightcrawler’s FREAKIST MUTANT GENITALS? (STILL CANONICAL haters)

    AND is the world finally ready for MAMMOMAX XXX: HIS EROTIC ORIGINS???

    Let the speculation begin, Chuckboiz… only one thing is for certain…

    HIS NAME IS CHUCK
    HE WRITES X-MEN WHO F***!!!!

    (Mic drop)

  21. Andy Costello says:

    @Arrowhead:
    …and YOU apparently missed that the rest of Chuck Austen’s run has already been reprinted as X-MEN: UNSTOPPABLE in Feb 2019 and X-MEN THE TRIAL OF THE JUGGERNAUT in November 2019.

    Yet, Claremont’s run from 2000 still has never received a TPB treatment — Just the Omnibus edition from last year.

  22. Thom H. says:

    That’s the most fun I think I’ve ever had reading a blog comment.

    As for the continuity issue: it seems like the new(est) thing in comics is to pick and choose what you want to be in continuity. Look at DC’s last few reboots — complete hodge-podges of what came before.

    Comic companies trust that fans can roll with larger disruptions to the ongoing narrative, and that they will stick around for the sake of a good story. (And I know not everyone thinks this story is good.)

    I think in service of revitalizing the X-Men franchise, it’s worth breaking a few of the characters. Especially when the character getting most bent out of shape is Moira. I don’t particularly care if she’s written consistently. And, as others have pointed out, she never really has been anyway.

  23. Rob says:

    Didn’t Mystique contend in her ongoing series that the Mystique who killed Moira and gutted Banshee wasn’t her at all, but an imposter that was never revealed, meant to explain away her inconvenient and erratic behavior?

  24. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    Don’t know about that, but there sure was a subplot once about how her shapeshifting powers made her mentally unstable. Apparently one of the telepaths ‘fixed’ her afterwards. Not sure which nor where that thing happened.

  25. Moo says:

    Oh God, I’d nearly forgotten Austen tried to turn Gambit into a Stick (Daredevil)/Tarot (Hellions) hybrid.

  26. Joseph S says:

    Yeah, I think I’m a way most of the Hickman era works best as a kind of soft reboot, since its foundation is built upon a meta-level commentary.

    We can easily imagine our past X-Men stories as existing in one of Moira’s past lives, which can easily resolve any lingering inconsistencies.

  27. MasterMahan says:

    That is a magnificent recap of what made Austen’s X-Men run so… unique.

    Still, good on Chuck for apparently growing since then. So far the She-Ra reboot hasn’t had any mid-air public sex or rednecks in power armor.

  28. Douglas says:

    There’s a bit of a get-out-of-jail-free card for inconsistencies in terms of what Xavier knows and doesn’t know about Moira (and what Moira therefore tells him in pre-Hickman comics): Hickman notes that Xavier has twice deliberately replaced his own mind with an earlier backup version (and doesn’t indicate when those times were, or when the backups were from). Presumably in each case there was something he needed to *not* know. And if the first time he backed up his mind was before he met Moira, and he then knew through her that e.g. Onslaught was going to happen at some point, he could have made sure that Onslaught would not have access to Moira’s secret by not knowing that secret himself.

  29. Chris V says:

    I don’t believe that Onslaught ever occurred in any of Moira’s other life-times though, did it?

  30. Chris V says:

    Joseph S-That’s not plausible with what Hickman has revealed.
    First, Hickman pointed out that it was solely in the current Marvel Universe that Magneto created Asteroid M, Avalon, and Genosha.
    She said it was due to Xavier sharing Moira’s plan with him. Magneto decided he could create a mutant “stronghold” on his own without anyone else’s help, and then he found out that he was unable to succeed on his own.
    Although, why a mutant nationalist like Magneto wouldn’t consider creating a mutant nation on his own, but only through the ideas of Moira, is sort of odd. However, that’s what it says on the page.

    Also, looking at Moira’s past lives, there only seems to be one life-time where it’s possible to slot the past X-Men stories that are inconsistent. That would be life six.

    In life one, Moira never gets involved with mutants.
    In life two, Moira dies before she even meets Xavier.
    In life three, she sees mutants as a cancer and feels that Xavier is an arrogant ass. She wants nothing to do with Xavier.
    In life four, Moira and Xavier are married.
    In life five, Xavier and Moira found Faraway, instead of Xavier founding his school.
    In life seven, Moira killed off the entire Trask family before they could build the Sentinels. This is inconsistent with the continuity we know.
    In life eight, Moira joined Magneto.
    In life nine, Moira joined Apocalypse.

  31. SanityOrMadness says:

    Thing is, marriage or no marriage, life four was implied to be nearly the same as the MU – they showed the flaming Phoenix Five! How many domino pieces need to fall in exactly the same ways to get to something as specific as AvX?

    Also, in life two, Xavier gives a speech on TV that’s identical to one from Morrison’s NXM, I think?

  32. Chris V says:

    Yes, which seems to be odd, because it seems to infer that it may have been due to Moira’s influence that Xavier refused to reveal himself as a mutant for so long in the current time-line.

  33. Taibak says:

    Do we know for sure if Magneto was a mutant nationalist and/or megalomaniac in his other lives?

  34. Chris V says:

    Well, he would have had the same background of being a Holocaust survivor and watching his children die.
    Nothing that Moira did would seem to have caused Magneto to become a mutant supremacist.
    In fact, Moira wanted to change this aspect of him when she had the chance after he was deaged.
    You’d have to guess that he was the same in past lives.

  35. Paul says:

    The general thrust of House of X is that Moira didn’t set any of Charles, Magneto or Apocalypse on those paths – she chooses them because they’re influential figures who were on broadly that path already. (So Hickman is careful to show us that Charles was already planning the X-Men before he met Moira, for example.)

  36. Ryan D. says:

    In Uncanny X-Men #150, couldn’t Moira and Xavier have met with Magneto shortly after he nearly killed Kitty but before Magneto fled Island M? This seems more likely than before the battle, during which Xavier mentally attacks Magneto.

    At that beach scene where Xavier mentions “changing Magneto’s perceptions,” Moira is even seen smiling right behind him.

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