X-Men: Forever #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: FOREVER #3
“Unhappy in Their Own Way”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Luca Marseca
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller, Jay Bowen & Kat Gregorowicz
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Destiny and Mystique fight, while Nightcrawler tries to intervene.
PAGES 2-3. Krakoa releases Cypher.
Cypher was spirited away by Krakoa in Immortal X-Men #13 and hasn’t been seen since. The only reason Krakoa gives in that issue is “I must protect him.” (Hope is able to understand that by copying Cypher’s powers, but then she loses contact with him, so she can’t ask Krakoa to elaborate.) Obviously, Krakoa anticipated the fall of Krakoa; they explain here that they could “sense the changing of the seasons”, though whether that’s a vague precognitive power or something else isn’t clear. It’s also a pun on “fall”, of course. Cypher has apparently slept peacefully through the whole “Fall of X” phase. It’s ambiguous whether he’s been within Krakoa itself or concealed somewhere on the island where Professor X couldn’t locae him.
“They tell me about the gala…” X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.
“…and the hell that followed.” The whole of “Fall of X”, basically.
“They tell me that they’ve been on the run and they were shot to pieces.” In Fall of the House of X.
The recognisable characters in the double page spread seem to be Exodus, Archangel and Apocalypse in the sky, and Pixie, Chamber, Mr Sinister, Transonic, Proteus, Fabian Cortez and Greycrow on the ground, along with a couple of characters who can’t really be identified in this level of detail.
PAGE 4. Recap and credits. The title, “Unhappy in Their Own Way”, refers to the opening line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877): “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Principally, that refers here to Nightcrawler, Destiny and Mystique, but we’ll see that it can also refer to Hope.
PAGE 5. Sebastian Shaw relays the Sentinel back door code to Emma Frost.
We first saw Shaw’s assistant – Siobhan, but he insisted on calling her Tessa – in Immortal X-Men #14. She was wearing the same clothes in that issue. I don’t recall anything in the past to suggest that she was an AI, but then there wouldn’t have been, would there?
Obviously, with Orchis collapsing over in Fall of the House of X, Shaw has decided to switch sides back to the mutants – either he because he expects them to win or because he think they’re the best option available.
PAGES 6-7. Cypher shuts down the Stark Sentinels with Shaw’s code.
Destiny was unable to see the future while she was in the White Hot Room because it’s outside the normal timestream. Now that she’s back in the real world, she can see “no way to win”. Two caveats are worth noting there. First, it’s not obvious that she would be able to see Enigma’s defeat, because the plan to bring it about involves further events taking place outside the timestream, and thus beyond her view. Second, she doesn’t actually say that she’s referring to the battle against Enigma. Destiny’s other overriding concern throughout Gillen’s run has been an obsession with being with Mystique for as long as possible; to lose Mystique would also be devastating to Destiny. (That said, she does seem to assume that Cypher is talking about the same subject as she is.)
PAGE 8. Shaw restores his powers.
In Immortal X-Men #14, Shaw injected himself with Orchis’ cure for the mutant gene in order to prove his loyalty. Apparently he always had a fallback plan to restore his powers if needed.
“If I die, you’ll find that Krakoa’s ownership has passed to you.” Shaw became owner of Krakoa – the physical island – in Immortal X-Men #14 as part of his deal with Mother Righteous, which apparently magically sorted out the conveyancing. (Don’t ask which country’s land law this purported to take place in, given that Krakoa had been recognised as an independent country immediately before the Gala…)
“I can’t believe you trusted Fisk with the money over me.” Emma did indeed arrange to transfer her (or Krakoa’s) assets to Wilson Fisk as a human ally, in X-Men #26.
PAGE 9. Hope sends a message to Krakoa.
Issue #2 ended with Jean Grey and the Phoenix being resurrected, but the Phoenix going into some sort of panic. Rather than set after it with the pistol she had at the end of that issue, Hope has a better idea: she gets the background Krakoans to join in sending a Morse code SOS by tapping Atlantic Krakoa in unison. Apparently Pacific Krakoa can detect this, so there are still ways of communicating with the exiled Krakoans after all.
PAGE 10. Cypher receives the message.
Obviously, the Krkoan reads “SOS”.
Manifold has been helping the Arakko forces to travel to Earth over in Fall of the House of X, where Emma has been co-ordinating everything telepathically – hence, she’s easily able to send him over.
The Six were the group seen in SWORD vol 2 #1 who combined their powers to retrieve mysterium – an exercise which also involved them making contact with the White Hot Room. The group members were Manifold, Fabian Cortez, Armor, Risque, Peeper and Wiz-Kid. Cortez was later kicked out and replaced by Khora, but she’s not here, and Cortez takes his original place with the group when we see them later.
Note that Destiny is more interested in rounding up Nightcrawler and dealing with her family crisis than she is in dealing with the White Hot Room.
PAGE 11. Nightcrawler arrives.
Nightcrawler has been with the regular X-Men over in Fall of the House of X. That’s the Hopesword he’s carrying, and more of that later.
Nightcrawler learned that Mystique and Destiny were his biological parents in X-Men Blue: Origins #1.
PAGE 12. Mystique attacks Destiny.
Mystique regained her memories of Nightcrawler’s origins after resisting Professor X’s psychic control during the Hellfire Gala. In X-Men Blue: Origins #1, she told Nightcrawler that Destiny had had a vision of Azazel – a mutant Satan impostor who was previously meant to be Nightcrawler’s father – dominating the world.
To avert that, Destiny engineered the creation of Nightcrawler as a child that Azazel would believe was his own, thus putting Nightcrawler in a position to thwart Azazel’s schemes (in Uncanny X-Men #428-434). In Mystique’s account, Destiny always sees Kurt as principally a tool for altering the future and has no real interest in him as a person; Mystique finds that unacceptable. The story ends with the two of them visiting Professor X, where Destiny asks to have all of their memories of Kurt erased. Mystique insists on retaining her memory of the fact that Kurt is her child, and Professor X complies with this request, while warning Mystique that her mind will invent new stories to fill in the gaps (hence explaining away a bunch of earlier stories which are being retconned out).
In issue #1, Mystique read a book that Destiny had written with further predictions – confirmed on the next page to be the set of prophecies that she started writing in Immortal X-Men #3. We now learn that the book disclosed that Destiny had regained her knowledge of Nightcrawler’s origins, but chose not to share it with Mystique. That’s what Mystique is angry about.
PAGES 13-15. Destiny explains herself.
Destiny’s explanation is that when she had her first batch of visions after being resurrected, she saw various futures in which she learned about Nightcrawler. By seeing those futures, she likewise gained knowledge of what had happened – but note that she hasn’t recovered her actual memories of the events. Destiny insists that Nightcrawler would have died anyway if he hadn’t been allowed to follow the course he did.
The flashback in page 13 panel 2 is a repeat of a panel from X-Men Blue: Origins #1.
Destiny also explains that she didn’t tell Mystique about these visions – or any other ones – because Enigma would have overheard, and would have learned about the future timelines that Destiny now knew about. The book was intended to be read by Mystique in the event of Destiny’s death; we’ve established already that Enigma apparently doesn’t listen in to people’s thoughts, and presumably Destiny was comfortable that he either wouldn’t be aware of the contents of her book, or at least wouldn’t be able to break the code without reading her mind.
“Xavier promised to clear it.” This is the deal that Destiny made with Professor X, as mentioned last issue.
Once again, Destiny’s dialogue here strongly suggests that she is more concerned about the loss of Mystique than she is about the cosmic threat.
PAGES 16-18. The Hopesword is passed to Hope.
The Six are able to open a portal to the White Hot Room but the presence of actual Krakoans in this normally-conceptual realm is causing htem problems. According to Destiny, this is also the cause of Jean’s problems (when she was transported to the Room to be reborn following her death in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023).
The Hopesword was presented in Legion of X and Uncanny Spider-Man as an embodiment of Kurt’s own hope, conjured from his body by Margali Szardos. As we’ll see later, this issue presents it as Legion in artefact form. In Uncanny Spider-Man, however, Legion was hanging around Kurt as an invisible Bamf that only Kurt could see, though the real Legion was said to be inside Kurt himself. Legion wasn’t even there when Margali created the sword in Legion of X #10 – he was off fighting the Technarch in a different plotline.
This looks a lot like a continuity error, but if we want to square it all away, let’s say that Legion has been using his powers over time to reinstate Kurt’s soul to its previous state, and decanting himself into the sword – something that would at least make reasonable sense for him to try and achieve.
As in the previous issue, Hope is resigned to sacrificing herself as part of the plan to resurrect Phoenix, at the very least by being marooned in the White Hot Room with the rest of the background characters; this fulfils her messianic role. We’re also reminded once again that Hope sees Cable as her real father, and never knew her parents – something that she also mentioned in the rpevious issue. Cable himself drops in to say goodbye.
PAGES 19-20. Hope and Legion start their hunt for Phoenix.
Hope is more comfortable with a large gun because it echoes her father figure Cable. Quite how shooting the Phoenix advances matters, I confess I don’t quite follow.
In his narration, Enigma reminds us that he learned about this plan to resurrect the Phoenix from Mother Righteous, as shown in Rise of the Powers of X #4. Enigma can’t interfere with the White Hot Room directly because it’s outside time, but his solution is to interfere with Hope’s personal history.
PAGE 21. Flashback: Enigma approaches Louise Spalding.
This is the first time we’ve seen Enigma in physical form, with his crown symbol on his forehead in place of the usual card suit. Louise Spalding, a firefighter from Anchorage, has previously been identified as Hope’s mother, and she was brought up in a previous issue.
PAGE 22. Trailers. The Krakoan reads PHOENIX.
From last issue, what seems to be going on with the Phoenix is that it has to die and reborn on a deeper level than normal. Death and rebirth are its thing, but Mother Righteous’s damage is past the norm for it and would be a complete and total death that it can’t come back from. The stuff they did last issue will let the Phoenix have a complete rebirth outside of its own abilities, but the Phoenix either doesn’t understand that or doesn’t trust it, and is hanging on to life with its fingertalons.
It’s a reversal of what you’d normally expect, where the host is fighting to not die but the Phoenix itself is okay because rebirth is what it does. Jean trusts the plan. For Jean the details are new but the process isn’t. For the Phoenix, things are entirely outside of its power for once and it’s not trusting these mortals to help. Hope didn’t expect that wrinkle, so now she needs a weapon powerful enough to finish the dying Phoenix off so that the rebirth they’ve set up will kick in. If you need something that powerful, yeah, Legion is probably a safe bet.
I’m guessing that the resolution won’t just be Hope shooting the Phoenix, but some combo of Jean/Hope/Legion also convincing the Phoenix to trust and have faith in Jean and it together as a partner rather than a host. They get reborn in some new configuration closer than ever, yadda yadda, save the world and then go off to explore that in new solo title.
Proteus looked like iceman in that panel.
The annoying thing about giving Sinister a duplicate of Cypher’s powers is that everything Doug this issue could have been done by Sinister, so his waking up adds nothing to the plot. In fact, I’m not sure what the point of Krakoa kidnapping Doug and giving Sinister Doug’s powers was- the entire plot would have proceeded mostly the same way if Doug was in No Place X and Sinister was also onboard disguised as someone else.
We saw that in issue 16, Shaw had something in his vault that he described as “this most precious thing, in case I ever need it”. Apparently, that was the antidote to the Blightswill derivative that neutralizes powers.
So when is Nightcrawler appearing here relative to Fall of House of X- before or after he sabotages Sentinel City?
I’m not liking the idea that Mystique feels the need to rescue Xavier so that he can fix Destiny’s mind. They’ve got Rachel, Exodus and Emma Frost right there plus Fabian Cortez’s power enhancing capability. Between the four of them, even if they can’t completely get rid of all of the blocks Xavier put on, they should be able to fix it enough for Irene to function as Kurt’s mother. It seems contrived so that Mystique (presumably with help from Wolverine as per X-Men 34) can go after Xavier and risk spoiling whatever plan he has regarding Moira.
Note that Hope is telling Exodus not to revert to being a villain after she’s gone.
Re: the Hopesword- note that in Sons of X, Ruth tells Legion that Kurt is the key. And in Uncanny Spider-Man 5, Legion tells Kurt that he’s hiding inside Kurt’s heart, his hope. I have a feeling that Spurrier’s idea was that the Hopesword was necessary to restart the Phoenix, that that’s why Kurt was the key and that’s why Legion hid inside of it. The problem is that things apparently got jumbled between him and Gillen and Gillen thought that Legion WAS the sword.
So, is Enigma Hope’s dad? That seems to be the implication at the end of the issue?
I guess that Manifold teleporting the Hopesword to the White Hot Room was the reason why Destiny felt it was so important to keep him out of Orchis’s hands.
On a side note, what does everyone think about Saladin Ahmed writing Wolverine?
I don’t think that makes sense. That would imply that Enigma was responsible not just for his own creation, but also potentially for his own defeat, which seems self-defeating (heh). Enigma said he can’t stop what is happening in the White Hot Room, but he has an alternative to stopping the Phoenix. It then has Enigma meeting Hope’s mother. Presumably to tamper with Hope before she’s born so that she doesn’t become the mutant’s saviour right now.
I am most looking forward to Mark Russell on X-Factor. That was a pleasant surprise.
Weird that the supposedly leaked “From the Ashes” memo got a lot of the writers correct while other things were wrong. Perhaps it was an early draft and Brevoort made changes.
@Chris V- Breevort said that there are 3 or 4 more titles that will launch by October whose names haven’t been released. Possibly the missing titles on the list- like Sentinels and Mystique- are the ones whose names haven’t been released yet.
Fantastic issue. Almost the entire Quiet Council makes an appearance here with some sort of role to play (except Sinister).
Also loved that X-Men: Blue–still one of the best things ever to come out of the Krakoa era–is getting a necessary follow-up here, and the revelation that Destiny was severed from any maternal feelings for Kurt due to them being removed was quite a gut punch that I hope gets explored in the future. What a lovely, deliciously complex character and terrible person she’s become these last 3 years.
Gillen finding a way to loop the Six back into the fold from all the way back in SWORD #1 was such an elegant threading of the needle, too; how Ewing-like! It’s these small details that enhances the plot and gives these story beats meaning.
It’s something of a minor miracle that Rachel is not only doing something of importance, but that her involvement in the plot feels both necessary *and* organic. Now I’m curious in what her role will be and what kind of dynamic will exist between her, Betsy, and Forge in the X-Force relaunch.
The steady development of Hope and Exodus’ relationship…this was never a pairing I would have ever imagined, nor was I much interested in it initially, but Gillen has managed to completely sell me on it. Looking forward to seeing how Forever and RoPoX wraps.
At the wishy-washy power levels of someone like Legion, I don’t think there’s necessarily any real difference between hiding in the Hopesword and actually being the Hopesword.
@Michael
“In fact, I’m not sure what the point of Krakoa kidnapping Doug and giving Sinister Doug’s powers was- the entire plot would have proceeded mostly the same way if Doug was in No Place X and Sinister was also onboard disguised as someone else.”
Then there would have been another character to juggle, and this thing’s already densely packed enough as it is. Though I suspect removing Doug from the board was more about generating a really ominous note to end Immortal on and presage Fall of X than about story demands.
The title of this comic always reads like a threat to me.
Feels like I have become a follower of writers in this time and age.
I liked Si Spurrier’s take on Nightcrawler. Kieron Gillen’s, not so much. I just keep under the impression that there are arbitrary things happening and I am being told directly that they matter very much indeed, presumably for some reason that is just above my pay grade.
That is an excellent description of his style. I tend to enjoy his stuff, but still.
@Luis Dantas: funny, I thought the AXE issue of Immortal X-Men was the best Nightcrawler-centered story of the era. He was heroic, smart, and funny. Spurrier wrote some good comics featuring Kurt (Way of X started and ended well, Uncanny Spider-Man/ X-Men Blue were enjoyable), but he got so bogged down by his plotting that Spurrier’s Kurt lost some of his personality. I actively disliked a large chunk of his run (abandoned babies, Margali turning Kurt into a monster, Kurt walking away from everything before Fall).
I like Gillen’s writing a lot, but I would prefer plotting that’s less opaque. I don’t need every story to be 101, but the airiness of magic and Big Cosmic Concepts (like Enigma) takes me out of the story. Other comic book writers I like – Grant Morrison, Ewing, Hickman – can get too caught up in meta-concepts or Big Ideas in a similar manner. I’ll take weird comics over boring or bad comics. What I want is more straight-forward storytelling.
Was the binary code to stop the ORCHIS Sentinels that Doug yells supposed to mean anything? None of the binary to English translators I tired got anything out of it, but it seems like it would be odd for it to just be gibberish.
X-MEN: OR ELSE
THE X-MEN ULTIMATUM
THE ULTIMATUM OF X
But Azazel * IS still Kurt’s biological parent , since Azazel was able to psychically control Kurt as one of his biological offspring in the Draco storyline and Kurt was able to imprison Azazel on the earthly plane using familial blood magic in his resurrection story by Jason Aaron . Furthermore , despite Mystique wanted and expected a daughter , not a son , and she supposedly being able to control her own genes well enough to ensure that her child with Destiny would only have XX chromosomes , Kurt was still conceived and born as a male , not a female , which means that his unexpected/unwanted Y-chromosome had to come from somewhere , or rather someone , and that has to be Azazel .
* according to Mystique , she combined the genetic materia/info of both Azazel and Christian Wagner , which she obtained from having sex with both of them in her female form , with her own to create the sperm cells with which she , in her male form , impregnated Destiny
** No-Prize time : since Azazel is both a natural-born mutant and a magically-transformed-by-the-power-of-human-belief-demon , maybe his genetic material is also magical too , so that Mystique was unknowingly and unwittingly actually invoking him when she thought she was just copying him so her own artificial sperm cells transubstantiated into Azazel’s natural sperm cells LOL
*** Azazel would not mind sharing his filiation of Kurt with another male , Christian Wagner , for the following reasons :
1) MMF threesomes are known as the “(Western-style) Devil’s Threesome” and Azazel is indeed a (Western-style) Devil being an actual 616-Hell-Lord after all
2) Mystique reproduced Western Succubus-Incubus style by getting inseminated as a female by a male and then inseminating another female as a male , and Succubi and Incubi are one of the of the most prominent & popular species / races in any version of the Western Hell-Realms
3) Azazel was finally able to have a son who was physically in physique and powers significantly similar to himself (all of his other children were physically little to nothing like him , being either passing as too human – ex.Kiwi Black – or too non-human ex. Abyss) because CW’s stable baseline human genes stabilized Azazel’s own unstable mutant-Killcrop genes , and their genes could be naturally combined only in the way they were by Mystique
**** so did AoA Nightcrawler get sired/conceived in the exaxt same way as 616 Nightcrawler ? Or was he the result of different parentage and process ? Its been stated there by AoA Mystique that she impliedly gestated AoA NC herself AND that AoA Sabretooth! was actually her babydaddy/AoA NC’s biodaddy , along with AoA Azazel
Without having paid attention to what the new X-titles will be, I can say that I’d really like a book along the lines of “The Darkholmes”. Mystique, Destiny, Nightcrawler, Rogue, and Gambit can give the X-titles their equivalent of the Fantastic Four, only centering around heists/Mission: Impossible-style events.
And since I mentioned the Fantastic Four, I would point to that as a book that has hit cosmic highs while also “regular” super stories like fighting the latest version of the Frightful Four under the same writer. For whatever reason, Gillen’s stuff has never struck me as being able to navigate between the two as elegantly.
I’m really irritated that Kate seems to be reverting to Kitty, perhaps they’ll find her a new boyfriend too, while they are at it.
I wonder if Gillen is going to be able to crowbar some explanation into the remaining time about why the this was called ‘Immortal X-Men’. Maybe it was just to set up when it became ‘Immoral X-Men’ and nothing more.
@Loz: My guesses about the title?
1) They’re immortal because of the resurrection protocols, and Sinister’s tampering with those protocols is a big part of the plot.
2) Al Ewing made “immortal” Marvel’s latest sales-friendly title adjective to plaster on various books, replacing the likes of “Superior” and “All-New.”
@Loz- The point is that after Kitty took the name Kate and started being friends with Emma, she became a different person- she killed a dozen Orchis goons who were no threat to her in order to keep a secret and nearly killed Firestar when she was undercover because she couldn’t take five minutes to ask Tony Stark if she was undercover.So Kitty is trying to distance herself from everything she associates with becoming that person- the name Kate, her friendship with Emma.
>Without having paid attention to what the new X-titles will be, I can say that I’d really like a book along the lines of “The Darkholmes”.
I would love that book. Destiny getting real characterization, and Mystique having a motivation that’s not just chaos, has been a highlight of the Krakoa era. Getting to see Mystique and Destiny be parents to Nightcrawler and Rogue (and son-in-law Gambit, plus whichever of Kurt’s girlfriends shows up (I’m hoping for Rachel)) would be a great read.
And it’s so close to the Uncanny that’s been announced – just add Mystique and Destiny to the team and you’re there!
@John- Yes, but the problem is that I can’t see anyone listening to Destiny right now after she helped convince Xavier to nuke humans for the greater good.