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Feb 27

X-Men #7 annotations

Posted on Thursday, February 27, 2020 by Paul in x-axis

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the collected edition. And since we’re running behind, I’m going to see if we can keep this week’s annotations posts a bit shorter. But there’s a lot to say about this issue.

COVER / PAGE 1. Apocalypse with his sword, smashing a stained glass window version of Nightcrawler.

PAGES 2-3. Melody Guthrie gets word that her Crucible ritual is today.

Krakoa. Note that in the establishing shot, there’s still smoke rising from the volcano on the atoll that appeared in issue #2.

The Akademos Habitat, the Sextant. The home of the characters from the X-books’ various teen teams.

Melody Guthrie. Melody Guthrie is one of the miscellaneous siblings of Cannonball who eventually turned out to be a mutant. It’s a large family – officially her first appearance is in New Mutants vol 1 #42, but that’s as one of a number of generic background children. She didn’t get a first name until Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #444, where she showed up as a flying student at the school. Not that long after, House of M hit and Melody – or Aero – was depowered. So basically she’s a minor background character who was very briefly promoted to slightly more prominent status before being relegated again. The name Aero is currently being used by an unrelated character who has her own series, so we’ll see if Melody is allowed (editorially speaking) to take it back again.

Melody was last seen in the recent Fearless miniseries, where she was among the attendees at a superhero summer camp for girls; only the first half of that series if currently on Marvel Unlimited, so it’s always possible something more significant happened in the back end.

The characters sitting around the table are Melody’s siblings Cannonball (Sam Guthrie), Icarus (Josh Guthrie) and Husk (Paige Guthrie). Icarus died in New X-Men vol 2 #27, but he’s evidently been resurrected. The guy in the background is Skin, who has nothing to do with this sequence.

“That coffee the green kid is famo–“ Refers to an exchange about the excellent but apparently slightly suspect coffee in New Mutants #1.

PAGES 4-5. Recap and credits. The story is “Lifedeath” by Jonathan Hickman, Leinil Francis Yu and Sunny Gho. “Lifedeath” was the title of Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #186 (with a sequel in issue #198). The original story focusses on Storm coming to terms with the loss of her powers.

PAGES 6-8. Cyclops and Wolverine discuss Crucible.

I’m not sure how the daily cycle works for the Summers family in their house, but evidently this is the “night”. Logan seems to be saying that he never sleeps well. That doesn’t quite sit with Wolverine #1, where he’s pretty happy about the state of affairs on Krakoa, at least at the start of the issue.

It’s been strongly implied in previous issues that Jean is currently in a relationship with both Scott and Logan (we’ve seen in the floorplan that her bedroom has connecting doors to both). Hickman has consistently treated that as something that the characters accept as the current status quo and don’t feel the need to talk about, but hasn’t explained how it came about.

Chandilore. An apparently beautiful location in the Shi’ar empire. Over in New Mutants, Cyclops specifically cashed in the X-Men’s favour from the Shi’ar Empire by having a portal put there. There’s an implication that he has an ulterior motive here – but he does pitch it to Wolverine as a sightseeing trip.

Crucible. We’ll see later that Crucible is basically a ritual in which depowered mutants get themselves killed in combat with Apocalypse in order to earn the right to be resurrected (and thus get their powers back). I’ll come back to that, but suffice to say neither Cyclops or Logan is particularly happy about it, but neither seems to want to push the point very much – even though Scott goes out of his way to point out that this is somewhat uncharacteristic for them.

“We have to have a way to deal with this particular problem…” As we’ll see later, “this particular problem” is the mutants who were depowered on M-Day trying to get their powers back by mass suicide, thus overloading the Five. One of the functions of Crucible is to offer a route to re-powering which is so unattractive as to dissuade people from taking it up.

The implication seems to be that the depowered mutants are still being backed up on Cerebro, since nobody suggests that Melody is going to lose all of her memories after M-Day.

“Go find a priest.” On Logan’s suggestion, Scott decides to go and discuss the moral dimensions with “a priest”, i.e. Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler is probably the most religious of the core X-Men (certainly the most Christian). He’s shown an interest in becoming a priest at times.

PAGE 9. Cyclops briefly sees Cypher separate into three.

In the first panel, Cypher appears with a normal arm instead of his techno-organic one; Warlock is sitting in the chair opposite; and the tree of Krakoa behind them has a face. In the second panel, Warlock is absent, the tree has no face (though it speaks in some sort of incomprehensible symbols), and Cypher has his techno-arm back. It’s all very suspicious, and Cyclops registers it, but immediately concludes that he can’t have seen it. More alarm bells that something is not at all right on Krakoa.

PAGES 10-13. Nightcrawler tells Cyclops about the mysterious tower.

We’ve seen this forked tower before. In fact, the whole establishing shot of the landscape repeats Emma Frost’s introduction to Krakoa in Powers of X #5. The fact that all those buildings were already on Krakoa before the X-Men had really moved in always seemed a bit odd.

Nightcrawler has teleported into the inaccessible tower. He doesn’t normally teleport into places he can’t see, because materialising inside another object could be fatal. This is uncharacteristically risky – yes, they’ve established it’s hollow, but that doesn’t mean there’s no chance of appearing inside a table or a light fitting. Perhaps he was reassured by the prospect of resurrection.

The implication seems to be that the island has made the tower just for him, because as a teleporter, he’s the only one who can get inside.

Interestingly, while Kurt is meant to be the man of faith, he’s being much more critical and thoughtful about the conditions on Krakoa than other characters we’ve seen; he accuses Cyclops of blind faith. Perhaps it’s the fact that Kurt already has an especially strong philosophical commitment to a worldview that doesn’t fit with Krakoa. He’s being offered things that look wonderful, “and all it costs is the suspension of everything I used to believe”. This seems to suggest that he’s lost his faith but remains troubled by the thought that this is a place of temptation – which in Christian terms, tends not to come from the good guys.

“Are we really going to sit around and just watch a mutant die?” Yes, you are. And this is one of the clearest indications yet that something’s just wrong here.

PAGES 14-17. Exodus tells the children about Crucible.

We haven’t seen that much of Exodus until now, but he’s certainly serving his traditional role here of a religious zealot. Exodus isn’t explaining the position to older mutants; he comes across as if he’s running a Sunday school, and the children’s responses are a bit cult like.

Scarlet Witch. Wanda was indeed responsible for depowering most of the world’s mutants in House of M, with the “no more mutants” line. The “pretender” line has come up before and basically refers to the fact that she used to be presented as a mutant, but has since been retconned into something else.

Exodus says that the depowered mutants were “trapped in a body that was a prison.” Doubtless many of them felt that way, but there were presumably other with massively inconvenient “powers” that were pretty much happy to be rid of them – the likes of Beak, for example, who was not at all happy about being “re-powered” in X-Men: Blue. There’s an obvious irony in Exodus complaining (reasonably enough) that Wanda thought she knew what was best, at the same time as taking the religious leader role for the children – though of course there’s no indication that Exodus is imposing his will on the children, which is the real moral distinction.

PAGES 17-33. Melody dies in the Crucible, and is reborn with her powers.

Nightcrawler makes clear that he argued against the Crucible. He recognises that the risk of depowered mutants committing mass suicide had to be addressed somehow, but disapproving of the solution because, well, it’s self-harm and suicide. For him, entering the Crucible is an act which causes intangible harm to yourself and to the world around you, and is therefore a sin.

Nightcrawler appears to have been outvoted by a combination of pragmatists who don’t really care about the mechanics of the solution, and Apocalypse (and Exodus, presumably) promoting it as a mutant-nationalist ceremony to cement the values of their new society. Apocalypse’s spiel to Aero, however ritual, is all about talking up mutants as the master race, and depowering as not merely a personal loss but something literally degrading. Apocalypse really is in full-bore fascist territory here, and the fact that the X-Men are comfortable with this – or rather, that their discomfort doesn’t push them to actually doing anything about it – is troubling.

EDITED TO ADD: Note, by the way, that the other character who seems to have a real problem with Crucible is Cannonball, who is hesitant when speaking about it in the opening scene, and has to be stopped by Paige from intervening during the ceremony itself. Cannonball, of course, doesn’t live on Krakoa. One reason for using Melody in his story may be that it gives him a reason to be there.

The soul. Nightcrawler also raises the awkward question of how this whole resurrection thing fits with the soul. He raises three possibilities: (i) the soul doesn’t depart for eternity because somehow it knows it will be needed again; (ii) the soul is drawn back from the afterlife upon resurrection; (iii) the real Nightcrawler is relaxing up in heaven and he’s just a clone. This has always been an obvious philosophical quandary raised by the Five’s resurrections – and it’s clear that we are meant to take these as the “real” characters, since otherwise, er, Wolverine’s dead. But Kurt is the only character actually asking these awkward questions – and again, Cyclops’ first response is to say he doesn’t really want to think about it. (Indeed, at the end of this long discussion, Cyclops is “convinced” only of the fact that Kurt has questions – he seems to treat it as a mildly diverting academic debate.)

Kurt also makes the obvious point that if you’re religious, eternal life on earth may not be all that great. Don’t you want to go to heaven some time?

The wills. Some mutants have been expressing the desire to be reborn in other bodies. House of X has acknowledged that this might be a theoretical possibility, and it was always inevitable that someone would raise it. Scott and Kurt both seem to agree instinctively that this is a bad thing, and that taking the opportunity to upgrade yourself is one thing, but changing your body into something else (or someone else’s) is not. Neither is able to clearly articulate a moral justification for drawing the line there.

“I think I need to start a mutant religion.” This sounds like trouble, because surely Apocalypse and Exodus have done that already. What Kurt seems to be proposing, then, is a rival religion. Given everything that Kurt has said, it’s surely not going to be uncritically accepting everything that Apocalypse is saying and doing.

PAGE 34. Trailer. The Krakoan reads NEXT: ACANTI. The Acanti are gigantic whale-like aliens who were enslaved by the Brood back in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #158.

Bring on the comments

  1. Chris V says:

    Moira’s bigger plan is to stop the Phalanx and post-humanity though.
    Her plans had nothing to do with Xavier and Magneto. She wanted to manipulate them.
    Moira was the one who kept saying she needed to break Xavier.
    He’s pretty broken, but I don’t believe he’s as broke as everyone believes, based on hints like his conversation with Namor.
    So, there’s the issue of what Moira’s next life would be like.
    I don’t see how you just reset everything, if Moira’s goals are still incomplete.
    If Hickman is leaving at the end of this, then that leaves everything from House and Powers are being meaningless.
    We’re just supposed to forget that “mutants are doomed” and “machines always win” and move on with X-Men as usual.
    So, we wasted how long and how much money on this, supposedly, super-important event?

    Also, there’s the question of what a reboot means for Marvel.
    We know that what’s happening on Krakoa is going to play a role in the up-coming cross-over event, for one thing.

    Secret Wars restarted the Marvel Universe, but almost exactly the same as it was before, with only some very slight changes.
    Marvel is quite adverse to doing a hard reboot, like DC always does.
    So, there’s the question of how they reconcile Moira’s reboot with the rest of the Marvel Universe.
    I pointed out that it could be done, but I’m not sure how well it can be done, based on Marvel probably not allowing Hickman to mess with the continuity of the Marvel Universe.

  2. Adam K says:

    Really liked this issue. This is so different from what is usually done in a mainstream comic book that even though I didn’t love all of it, I respect the effort. It’s unique, weird and ambitious.

    I enjoyed it a lot more than this week’s Giant Size, which was too much of a Morrison rehash.

  3. Thom H. says:

    I agree this issue should have been published sooner. I gave up on this title as just filler, but I guess I’m buying it again now on the strength of the last two issues. As long as the Golden Girls stay away. Ugh.

    Despite the Crucible being horrible, this is the most sympathy I’ve had for the mutants on Krakoa since this storyline began. Who wouldn’t do whatever was necessary to regain their mutant powers? Feeling right in your body is an amazing thing.

    And Apocalypse gets to kill humans in order to make the mutant race stronger. I bet he’s super happy. Which is part of what makes the whole process gross.

    Anyway, that’s Magma on the cover of the next issue. I guess she’s back, too. Yay!

  4. Allan M says:

    Magma’s one of the four focal characters in the latest issue of New Mutants, #8, if you want more Magma in your life.

  5. Voord 99 says:

    On the souls thing: I believe – although I am not very knowledgeable in this area and invite corrections – that If you have consciousness and free will, then orthodox Catholic theology would indicate that you have a soul. Certainly, it is not the case that there is any question that a human clone has a soul – one substantial strand of Catholic objections to human cloning turns on the fact that it is offensive to the dignity of the separate person who is the clone.

    So I think it is fairly clear that, from a real-world Catholic perspective, what is being done here is the same as if you cloned a person who is still alive and then telepathically downloaded the original’s psyche into the clone – Kurt should go with the option that he is a different person from the original Kurt, but also that all of the long, long list of Catholic objections to human cloning apply.

    (Might not be the most dynamic basis for an action story. “This week, the Uncanny X-Men face…the radical manipulation of the constitutive relationality and complementarity which is at the origin of human procreation in both its biological and strictly personal aspects!”)

    Obviously, though, in the Marvel Universe, that isn’t what souls are, at least not consistently, and the character of Kurt has already been part of a story about that. So really, he should already have had his crisis about this back when he lost his soul and that soul turned out to be something other than what is was supposed to be.

  6. FUBAR007 says:

    Chris V: I don’t see how you just reset everything, if Moira’s goals are still incomplete.

    My expectation is that her goal will be complete, but the price of preventing/stopping the Phalanx will be so high–i.e. some variation on “destroying the village in order to save it”–that some sort of reset will be necessary to move forward.

    Secret Wars restarted the Marvel Universe, but almost exactly the same as it was before, with only some very slight changes.

    That’s exactly what I expect.

    Based on his track record at Marvel so far, Hickman strikes me as this generation’s Jim Starlin. Like Starlin, he’s fascinated by manipulative asshole protagonists, “Type 2” decision making (sacrificing innocents and doing/allowing evil to stop greater evil, etc.), big cosmic threats that destroy everything, and then hitting the reset button at the end. For examples, see Starlin’s Infinity trilogy from the early 90s: a big cosmic threat arises (Thanos, Magus, Goddess), Adam Warlock manipulates everyone to do what he wants to end the threat, lots of death and destruction, and then the reset button gets pressed to put everything back the way it was minus the threat. Hickman’s Secret Wars followed a similar trajectory.

    How Hickman differs is that he does it all in slow motion, stretching the arc out over years to create a temporary status quo to play around with.

    My guess is that you’d prefer the post-Hickman status quo to be Krakoa, but with the nasty parts jettisoned. Though I think that would create the opportunity for interesting stories*, I doubt we’ll get that. When all is said and done, I expect the X-Men will be back in the mansion, acting as superheroes to protect a world that fears and hates them. Or, some iteration thereof.

    *And I can even envision the perfect title: X-Nation.

  7. Chris V says:

    In that context, the “maybe eleven” line by Destiny could apply to how the Marvel Universe gets restarted.
    It could be that the reset button does get pressed in the end, after Moira does succeed, but it won’t be because Moira dies.
    The solution could be something otherwise, where the Marvel Universe is restarted, almost exactly as it was before, but minus the threat.
    Maybe with Moira still alive (her eleventh life), but either no longer mortal or no longer a mutant.

    To solve the issue of “everything restarts when Moira dies”, maybe Moira will end up as some sort of cosmic being, outside of time and space, ensuring that the “machine-gods” menace doesn’t return.
    Maybe she’ll have been rewarded by becoming human, not having to worry about the great burden of her mutant powers anymore, just like the Moira we remember from the past stories, before the ret-con.

    Those are possibilities.

  8. JCG says:

    I wouldn’t read too much into Hickman saying he will put the toys back when leaving.

    As I recall that was more about not leaving a mess for the next writer, not putting everyone back in the mansion.

    Now, how he will end his run is totally up in the air at this point of course, but he did say there were some “systemic” issues with the X-Men that needed fixing.

    The run was marketed as a defining run at the beginning so I imagine Hickman will try to leave his mark on the franchise at least and not reset everything when leaving like FF and Avengers.

    He was fan of the X-Men as well, so this is not just another job like the previous runs of his.

  9. Chris V says:

    Yes, I would like to see the Krakoa status quo, without the creepiness.
    I think it’d be an interesting direction to see other writers work with on X-Men.
    After almost the entirety of X-Men history (minus the Morrison years) defined by angst and doom, it would be nice to see the possibility of an utopian future opening with the Marvel Universe.

    I like the idea that Moira’s plan is to eliminate mutants to save humanity.
    She’s driven by her sense of inevitability, due to the dehumanization of her living life over and over.
    “Mutants are always doomed anyway.”
    Then, in the end, the mutants stop Moira, but the seeds planted by Moira are able to be picked up by Xavier again, and turned in to a positive…a way to actually move towards Xavier’s dream.

  10. Chris V says:

    JCG-Yes, I agree with you. This was marketed by Marvel as one of the five most important stories in X-Men history. Marvel really needs to deliver, considering their declining sales.
    Fans are growing tired of hype with no delivery by Marvel.

    I mean, ending the threat of the “machine-gods” which have been leading mutants ever onwards towards extinction could be seen as a major plot-development, but it’s also a plot-development created exclusively by Hickman.
    No other writer before Hickman ever mentioned such an existential threat.

    So, I don’t really see how major a change that can be to the franchise.
    Hickman can say that mutants finally have a chance for a brighter future at the end of all this.
    However, how long before writers return to old, safe stand-bys again?
    “Humans hate mutants more than ever! They’re building more Sentinels! Mutants are on the verge of extinction again!”.
    There would be absolutely nothing to stop that retrogression, if everything is just reset at the end.

    Leaving a brand new status quo, like Krakoa, with the direction of the X-books being towards utopia rather than dystopia and extinction would work far better, if you ask me.

  11. An easy way to maintain Krakoa after Hickman’s run is for Krakoa to become Okkara again and then be killed or die, so that it’s a new normal island.

  12. wwk5d says:

    “To solve the issue of “everything restarts when Moira dies”, maybe Moira will end up as some sort of cosmic being, outside of time and space, ensuring that the “machine-gods” menace doesn’t return”

    Or someone could find a way to turn her into a human (someone earlier asked if Mystique still had Forge’s mutant-canceling gun) and then kill her, so she dies for good without restarting anything…

  13. Voord 99 says:

    Oh, how is easy – this is comics. I imagine if you killed Moira near Leech, she would die for good, for example. But it would need to be something interesting, which is where the writing challenge would be.

  14. neutrino says:

    Use the cure she developed in Life 3.

  15. Chris V says:

    I get a feeling that the cure she developed in life three is already in use with the Krakoan drugs.

    Here’s a swerve. Moira is revealed as an enemy of mutants, as I said above.
    Magneto freaks out and says that they must kill Moira and start everything over.
    Moira reveals that she tested the mutant cure on herself, and is no longer a horrible mutant freak, but part of the new master race, the normal humans.
    So, there’s no way to stop her plan.
    Why, there’s no way out for our Marvel-ous merry mutants.

  16. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    A thought occurred to me.

    Given that the Crubible is basically a deterrent to potentially suicidal depowered mutants, and given that its existence is basically a signal that people who kill themselves will not be resurrected – or at the very least will not be resurrected in for a very long time, basically that they will land at the bottom of the cue – I have a theory about Blindfold.

    It probably wasn’t intended by the writers – so far I haven’t encountered any interview or anything where it would be said that anything Rosenberg did was done as set-up for Hickman. But a future writer could connect those dots – and reveal that Blindfold killed herself specifically to avoid being resurrected (if, for example, it turns out that the ‘Krakoa is evil and the X-Men are fake pod people’ theory is true).

    Although Moira doesn’t want precogs resurrected anyway.

    Hm.

    I read Ruth’s action as a result of some horrific future she’s seen and wanted to avoid. And since Rosenberg’s run didn’t actually resolve this in any way, I’m looking for some potential resolution. Though now that I’ve written all that I still can’t quite figure it out.

  17. Karl_H says:

    Moira’s endgame almost certainly contains some kind of self-depowering. Once she “succeeds” — however she may be defining success — the only way to keep her success intact is to prevent her powers from kicking in when she dies.

    This doesn’t prevent some outside agent from curing her against her will before her plans are complete, of course.

    Chekov notwithstanding, I really don’t think we’re going to see life #11. Maybe as a pastoral epilogue she gets sent into at the very end. But no reboot that would affect the entire comics line.

  18. Jason says:

    the X-men have done cloning and possessions and mind transfers in the past, so some of the questions should be things they’ve dealt with in the past, even if not on this scale

  19. Alan L says:

    There’s a thought: can Leech be part of Krakoa? Wouldn’t him just setting foot on Krakoa take away Krakoa’s powers?

    I agree with many on this thread that this is the best–written issue of this book so far. Certainly in terms of presenting a thesis and constructing a narrative that develops it, this is both the clearest and the richest issue so far in terms of subject matter and execution. But I also think it’s the worst–written issue as well, because ruminating on the central ideas of this issue is like staring into a black hole. Your questions tumble into the hole, and disappear in the vortex. And nothing comes out by way of an answer.

    I just cannot get on board with Kurt’s reasoning for starting a mutant religion. Why make up a fake story to explain what’s happening around them when there are genuine and generally clear scientific explanations for everything going on in the contemporary mutant culture on Krakoa? No supreme being is punishing Kurt and his friends for getting themselves scientifically resurrected. None of the resurrected mutants feel they are at all different than what they should be. So it makes sense that Kurt is losing faith in his previous religious beliefs; he can no longer make them support his current existence. And it makes sense psychologically that he would pivot to starting a new religion, as most people who leave a religion look for something to replace that presence in their lives. But I can’t get behind the reasoning, really, and even though Kurt insists he’s been thinking about all these things, I can’t see how he could have thought much about this new religion idea. As an explanation for mutants and Krakoa, it would be far too little, way too late. The answer to who has made all these new mutant achievements possible is Xavier and Moira, and Cypher and Krakoa, etc. It’s too late for the answer to be “my new mutant god.” As to the legend and lore of Krakoa and Arrako, and whatever came before in that time…well, Apocalypse was there, and he’s on Krakoa now. He seems to remember everything, and I don’t see why he wouldn’t tell you what went down back then in the past. I don’t see the reason why Kurt wants to invent a fanciful explanation for it when the explanations are all readily available and observable phenomena.

    And what would Kurt propose to do with this newly made–up religion? If he’s establishing this thing to counter Apocalypse’s cult-y crucible idea, surely he is just competing with Apocalypse for sway over some poor flock of mutants (most of the mutants I know from reading about these characters over the years ought to be credited with a little more self-determination than this “special mutant religion” concept would allow for, but that is just another way Hickman’s “mission” in this story manages to punish you for having read these stories in the past––I don’t think, for instance, Boom Boom would be too big on the idea of joining a cult, but Hickman’s script calls for all of the mutants to join the cult, so to hell with their previous characters, this is just what has to happen); and if Kurt is mainly competing for sway with Apocalypse, what is he basing this new need for power and control upon? I don’t buy some politically canny “Two Popes”–style narrative with Pope Nightcrawler and Pope Apocalypse. What Kurt really needs is a mutant philosophy, or to become a therapist for mutants, or something that produces actual results for these people. What on earth does he hope to explain to other mutants with his preposterous sermons? What will these sermons even be about? What questions does Kurt need to answer by making up his own story about how the answers should go? Can’t he just ask Beast for some science to explain any of what’s going on with this isle of mutants?

    As a payoff to this relatively well–constructed issue, this was an entirely bogus outcome. The answer to the question when you say, “my whole religious belief system was clearly wrong about all this stuff, so what other gods and miracles can I hitch my horse to that will get me somewhere with this new condition?”…the answer is this: no gods, no miracles, because you don’t actually need them. If you can explain this stuff and repeat it in a laboratory (what is this mutant resurrection process in this context but a science experiment, with the results endlessly successfully reproduced?), what need have you of any religious explanation? Especially when the very premise of this whole comic is that genes express differently in different organisms via genetic mutation. I found Kurt’s religious belief credible when it was presented as something he inherited from his youth. It spoke to the way social microcosms with less access to scientific information might process the existence of the mutants. But on an island with the other mutants, whose genetic realities have been revealed via science, and where every new development is the product of science and technology, what could be the purpose of what Kurt is proposing here? I was simply not convinced by the conclusion to this issue; not convinced at all.

  20. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    Your criticism of the issue seems to be based on what you think the mutant religion will turn out to be instead of anything that’s actually in this issue.

    I mean, it’s certainly possible that in a few months we’ll learn more and all your points will be vaild. But it’s equally possible that what Kurt calls a religion at the end of the issue will be more akin to philosophy or just a general set of ‘live your life well’ tips.

  21. neutrino says:

    @Chris V

    “As far as my theory, another clue I happened upon (which I may be totally wrong about) is the fact that the Krakoan drugs are labeled L I M.
    LIM-domain protein have been implicated in cancer.
    Now, some people online have guessed that this is Krakoa’s plan to kill off the humans with cancer-causing drugs.
    Yeah, Marvel isn’t going to allow the X-Men to be implicated in attempted genocide of the human race by giving them cancer.”

    I’m the one who pointed out the LIM sequence. It wouldn’t be the X-Men implicated in a cancer plot, it would be Moira, possibly with Xavier and Magneto (if that is them). Moira doesn’t want Destiny resurrected because she could blow the whistle and the X-Men would try to stop her. Destiny has human children and grandchildren and wouldn’t want them killed.

  22. Alan L says:

    “Your criticism of the issue seems to be based on what you think the mutant religion will turn out to be instead of anything that’s actually in this issue.”

    I would say that the issue is building up to this revelation––it’s almost an essay explaining the way in which Kurt begins to feel the need for a mutant religion. The issue ties Kurt’s incuriously religious wonder about the cathedral–like structure only he can enter to his dislike of the crucible ritual––itself reminiscent of social rituals of much earlier civilizations, of Conan, of Game of Thrones. From what I can see, Hickman is implying that Kurt’s mutant religion will be some more advanced idea of religion, kind of an “evolution” of religion, but it is disappointing to me to see that in the march of time what Hickman thinks will stick around is religion itself. He doesn’t suggest that the mutants will evolve beyond the need for religion. And so the idea of starting a mutant religion looks very out-of-date, and ultimately silly––Kurt would have to just make up its tenants, its deities, its rules. In a world which is not ignorant of the forces which make up its composition, this becomes a very willful process of play-acting. Kurt has no reason to do any of this save that he is himself a religious person, and he ultimately sees the need for that outmoded thinking even when there are plausible scientific explanations for everything occurring around him. He needs a religion, even though during the issue he basically admits that his experience of life has now outgrown his need for such justifications. He has died and lived again, without the interference of a deity; he has transcended that process. That he still clings to his need makes some psychological sense––but since when has Hickman cared about the psychology of his characters? And it rings false to me just in terms of the expanse of lived experience Kurt has known.

    So my criticism is that this ultimately basically well–crafted issue delivers its coup de grace with a blunt thud, accompanied by the swirling dust of disappointments dithering around it. The conclusion we’ve arrived at is short–sighted and unconvincing. It’s not so much that this will pan out to be a bad idea in the future; the conclusion of this issue is bad now, just as it stands. The summation of Nightcrawler’s essay on his lost faith and his qualms about the X-men’s way forward is for him to just start down his own pathway of prevarication––substituting his collection of made-up stories for the made–up story he perceives the crucible to be. It’s a bad ending; a dumb idea that it’s impossible to get behind for this character. For one thing, Kurt seems too intelligent to fall into this backwards line of thinking in the first place. He’s too level–headed to become the next L. Ron Hubbard.

    So I don’t like the issue; I think Hickman botched the ending, and because the whole issue is structured like an essay whose point unfurls right at the end, the ending colors everything that has gone before. It puts into harsher relief the miserable humorlessness on display here––something that has been with the series since the get-go; and I have perhaps become too desensitized to that abject lack of a light touch. Knowing the issue has been building to a really backwards-straining idea makes the crucible itself seem like something obviously ripped out of Game of Thrones, or another fantasy series of its ilk––and if the point of it all is that Kurt will establish a religion to rival Apocalypse’s traditions he is establishing on the island, the Game of Thrones-ery of it all seems very deliberate. Warring religions vying for power amongst the mutants would be a hard leap for me to make; if one of the warring religions is led by one of the best and noblest X-men heroes, it’s a leap I prefer not to make at all. The whole issue is more pat and corny than it first appears, because the conclusion it’s been building up to is so stale, so much of a letdown.

    It’s a similar narrative effect to one in the film Saving Private Ryan; from the Normandy scene on, the film seems like a listing–out of the relentless demoralizations of war––be the war “just” or “unjust”––but the bookend scenes in the beginning and end recontextualize the movie and make it into something maudlin, patriotic, and much safer than the screenplay otherwise intends. In a way, the screenwriter seems to be saying that the scale of war dwarfs human experience in a way offensive to the human spirit; but then the director is insisting with his bookend scenes that it was all worth it in the end, anyway. We earned the sacrifice brave men made, and that conferred glory upon their deeds. It’s an assertion which takes apart all the writer’s more challenging ideas, like the script’s insistence in nearly all the war scenes that any objective besides war in carrying out the war––be it bureaucratic, humanistic, or otherwise––delivers missions and objectives and detours which while appealing to one’s humanity are in fact pointless and demoralizing; the choice to include these ill–judged bookend scenes demolishes these themes by making the whole movie seem as trite as what’s included in the bookend scenes. That is a movie whose purpose is betrayed and ruined by its conclusion, and the X-men issue comes apart in a similar way for me, because of a similar error. A misjudgment of purpose at the end of the story fractures and crumbles the subject matter, the tone, the conviction with which the narrative has up until that point been prosecuted. And that’s why the issue bothers me so.

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