Rise of the Powers of X #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
RISE OF THE POWERS OF X #5
“Now and Forever”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Jean Grey as the reborn Phoenix.
PAGE 2. Phoenix is reborn in the White Hot Room.
Or the “Once-White Once-Hot Room”, as the narrator has it. Issue #4 ended with Jean on her funeral pyre as it was set alight, and the other Dominions telling Enigma that if the Phoenix returned then they would answer his call for help. That plot thread then gets picked up in X-Men: Forever #2-4. In Forever #2, we see Hope lighting the pyre, and Jean being restored, but a confused Phoenix Force resisting its rebirth. In Forever #3-4, Hope and Legion destroy the Phoenix, apparently freeing up Hope to be reborn as the infant Phoenix (the small bird seen here), and completing the Phoenix’s personal time-loop. Meanwhile, Jean prevents Enigma from interfering with Hope’s origin story, and turns out to be responsible for Hope’s mother’s pregnancy.
We’re more or less picking up directly from that issue, although there’s no obvious reason why Jean is emerging again from her pyre again. At any rate, whatever the reason, she’s back in the classic green Phoenix costume from the 1970s.
The Krakoan words in the embers are LIFE and FIRE.
PAGES 3-4. Phoenix explains its connection to mutantkind.
“You want to feed. I won’t let you.” This refers to Phoenix’s last line of dialogue in X-Men: Forever #4, which was obviously teasing some sort of destruction. However, Phoenix apparently means that it restores itself to full power by merging with the souls of the mutant dead.
These are the souls from the Waiting Room, who were shown to have vanished in Resurrection of Magneto #1. That story implied that these deceased mutants had simply given up waiting in light of the fall of Krakoa, but the suggestion here is that they’ve been drawn to the White Hot Room to become part of the Phoenix. Whether they continue to exist as individual spirits within the Phoenix is ambiguous, but there’s no obvious reason why they can’t be both.
At any rate, Phoenix is essentially claiming the White Hot Room as a mutant afterlife, and claiming that Phoenix itself is a collective entity formed by all of mutantkind. Assorted explanations have been given over the years of what the Phoenix is or represents, usually in terms of a more general creative force – but attempting to reconcile all the different explanations of Phoenix has always been a hopeless exercise. Immortal X-Men has previously referred to the White Hot Room being specifically tied to mutants, and this explains why.
There are other obvious attractions to this interpetation of Phoenix. It ties to resurrection as a theme of Krakoan life and justifies the White Hot Room as effectively a mutant heaven, where the many background mutants get to live in eternity. It also makes Phoenix into a collective entity, and thus a Dominion of sorts, on Jonathan Hickman’s original definitions (though the scale would be a bit small for that).
“Now and forever.” Also the title of the story, and referencing the line with which Phoenix introduces herself in X-Men #101 (“Now and forever, I am Phoenix”). Here, it becomes a reference to Phoenix transcending time in the same way that Dominions do.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGE 6. The mutants on Earth celebrate their victory over Orchis.
Basically bringing this book’s readers up to speed on what happened at the end of Fall of the House of X.
PAGES 7-9. The other Dominions refuse to help Enigma.
Enigma’s theory was that since Phoenix had destroyed Dominions in at least one timelines, the other Dominions would be bound to help him dispose of her. This turns out to be a red herring, since the Dominions show up simply to confirm that they have no interest in this whatsoever. This scene also resolves the outstanding plot question of why Enigma becoming a Dominion is such a unique threat, when there are supposed to be loads of Dominions. Why would he be an effective god when the others haven’t been? The answer is simply that proper Dominions, who have truly formed collective minds and freed themselves from time and space, have better things to do than go back and worry about the worlds they left behind. Enigma would only be able to act as a god – and only has any interest in acting as a god – because he hasn’t truly achieved a Dominion state of mind, he’s only taken on Dominion power levels. The same goes for all of the other Dominions who were killed by Phoenix in other timelines.
You might question why the other Dominions even bother showing up to give this explanation, but the answer seems to be that they regard Phoenix as an entity powerful enough to be worth acknowledging, though entirely separate from them. They regard the timestream (which they’re outside) as her domain.
PAGES 10-11. Professor X and Moira talk.
We saw Moira last issue, watching Professor X as a prisoner of Orchis, but not approaching him. Since that issue, Orchis have been defeated in Fall of the House of X #5.
For their conversation, Professor X recreates the bench from House of X #2 where he met her, and she told him about her previous lives. The roles here are reversed.
The panel in silhouette on page 11 is a flashback to Xavier nearly killing Moira in issue #3, before being talked out of it.
PAGE 12. Phoenix fights Enigma through the timestream.
All you really need to know about this scene is that Enigma is entering various points in X-Men history and trying to alter them so as to change Jean’s history and undermine her; she keeps changing everything back before it can make a difference. Most of the scenes show a character with a small red Enigma logo on them, indicating who’s being interfered with. None of these are technically flashbacks, since they’re versions of events that didn’t happen. But the individual panels are as follows:
- Jean’s parents (John and Elaine Grey) decide not to send young Jean to the X-Men’s school. This would be somewhere before X-Men #1 from 1963.
- Cyclops leaves his wife Madelyne Pryor, on learning of Jean’s return from the dead. The panel is based on page 17 panel 5 of X-Factor #1 from 1986.
- Jean discovers Scott and Emma Frost in bed. This is based on the opening page of New X-Men #139, from 2003.
- Below that, a small panel of Jean in a tattered black dress. This is from X-Men #100, immediately before she becomes Phoenix.
- The Progenitor judges Jean during the A.X.E.: Judgment Day crossover.
- A generic panel of time-travelling Silver Age Jean Grey from the Brian Bendis All-New X-Men period.
- On the right, Silver Age Jean and Angel fight a Sentinel.
PAGE 13. Professor X continues to explain his plan to Professor X.
In issue #3, after being talked out of killing Moira, Professor X did something to her telepathically (on page 20 panel 1). He explains here that he was planting something in her mind that would allow her to act as a beacon for Phoenix. The basic idea is that Moira can sacrifice herself so as to make her link with Enigma accessible to Phoenix, thus allowing Phoenix to locate Enigma and defeat him. And hence, Moira gets to redeem herself.
PAGE 14. Phoenix continues to fight Enigma.
More scattered images, the point here mainly being that Jean is being overwhelmed by dealing with Enigma. There are still Enigma logos in most of these panels, but they’re increasingly subtle – for example, Magneto’s is on the back of his neck.
Top tier, left to right:
- What looks to be Krakoan-era Jean, Wolverine and Cyclops, sharing a happy moment together.
- Jean Grey fighting Cassandra Nova, which I think would be from the first X-Men Red series.
- Jean/Phoenix as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, alongside Donald Pierce, Mastermind and Harry Leland; this is from page 17 panel 1 of X-Men #132 (1980).
- What seems to be Jean with her time-travelling younger self, though I’m not sure quite what it’s referencing.
- Below that, a generic panel of 1990s Jean.
On the left, below the panel of the trio:
- A generic Jean in a long coat – I think this is a New X-Men image, but I can’t immediately place it.
- The Silver Age X-Men fight Magneto from the cover of X-Men #1 (1963).
- The Phoenix Five, from the Avengers vs X-Men crossover.
- Wolverine stabs Jean Grey, from page 19 panel 4 of New X-Men #148 (2003).
- To the bottom right, Cyclops and Jean/Phoenix at the conclusion of the Dark Phoenix Saga in X-Men #137 (1980).
- To the right of that, Bendis-era Cyclops on a slab, with Emma standing over him.
- To the right of that, Jean fighting Sabretooth.
On the right, below the Hellfire Club panel:
- A generic image of Onslaught.
- Cyclops holds the dead Phoenix in his arms, from X-Men #137.
- Jean being voted onto the X-Men at the first X-Men: Hellfire Gala.
Surrounding the Enigma crown logo in the middle (clockwise from top):
- Jean meets Rachel Grey for the first time, which I think happens during “Inferno”.
- The X-Men in action – I think this is the Krakoan era, since that seems to be Laura as Wolverine in the bottom right.
- A generic image of Wolverine.
- Jean with the infant Phoenix, watching all this.
- Jean standing over the dead body of Madelyne Pryor at the end of “Inferno”.
- Young Cyclops and Jean kiss.
- Jean, Beast and Professor X mourn the apparent deaths of the other X-Men on the cover of X-Men #114 (1978).
- Jean’s wedding to Scott Summers from X-Men #30 (1994).
- Jean in Silver Age costume fighting someone too blurry to identify.
PAGES 15-16. Professor X persuades Moira to sacrifice herself.
This is Professor X’s idealist side, but also an attempt to redeem Moira – at least in part because it redeems in turn her motives in creating Krakoa.
PAGES 17-20. Phoenix, channelling all the mutants, kills Enigma.
I’m not going to try and list every single mutant in a Phoenix-ified costume who appears on these panels – suffice to say it’s an eclectic mix of the big names and less obvious candidates. Presumably Phoenix also has access to the spirits of mutants who aren’t dead because she’s outside conventoinal time and space.
A couple of characters from alternate timelines appear in here, suggesting that Phoenix is channelling mutants from all timelines – something which is confirmed on the next data page. Specifically, there’s a female Nightcrawler on page 18 who looks to be Wagnerine from the Sins of Sinister timeline. And the character partly visible on the left edge of page 18 who looks a little bit like a young Ororo seems to be Mei from the current Ultimate X-Men.
PAGE 21. Data page – essentially, Enigma still exists at all points in time, but he’s dying in all of them. It’s a mixture of X-Men references and genuine points from history. “[T]he moment when Galan opened his eyes in a new universe” is the dawn of time – Galan is the real name of Galactus, sole survivor of the previous universe.
PAGES 22-23. Jean returns to Krakoa.
Sinister has, of course, taken the opportunity to escape.
PAGE 24. Professor X surrenders himself to the authorities.
This is a week later, and Professor X implies that he’s done something in the interim. The obvious implication is that he’s the Prisoner X from the Free Comic Book Day story, but surely that’s too obvious?
PAGE 25. Data page. Essentially, this is telling us that the timeline has returned to its normal state, but that the non-combatant mutants and Krakoa remain in the White Hot Room, inaccessible. Mostly these are background characters, but the likes of Jumbo Carnation are also out of circulation. Krakoa has not been destroyed but has Gone To A Better Place, so that readers who are so inclined can hope that it may one day return. Meanwhile, the combatant X-Men apparently find themselves back on Earth after being left out of heaven; and while there are still plenty of background mutants around (Orchis have been merrily persecuting them for months now), they’re presumably heavy on mutants who never bought in to Krakoa in the first place. Of course, new mutants continue to emerge.
The Tiger is one of the various cosmic entities which has been positioned as an anti-Phoenix from time to time; Al Ewing used it in that role in Mighty Avengers.
Phoenix has apparently created one stray new timeline, which is explained on the next page…
PAGE 26. Moira gets her own timeline.
A world where she is reborn as usual, but on the day when her powers ought to emerge, nothing happens. Moira gets to live a normal and final life, apparently as a reward for defeating Enigma. And the X-books similarly emerge from the other side of her manipulations.
PAGE 27. Trailers – though limited to the last few Krakoan era X-books. This means there’s no promotion given to X-Men: The Wedding Special (which is a post-Krakoan epilogue, though very coy about the status quo) or Hellverine #1 (which is effectively Wolverine #51). But I do like the impact of the Krakoan era, week by week, running out of books to promote.
The Krakoan reads FAREWELL KRAKOA.
The image of Jean in the New X Men coat is from the issue where Lillandra attempts to assasinate Xavier and she intercepts the bullet
Well, if the Krakoan-era had to end now, it could have done a lot worse than this finale (I assume the one comic remaining, #700, will be an epilogue type book).
I liked what Gillen did with the Dominions here.
I am thinking this presentation (along with Moira having her eleventh life) is getting to the heart of where Hickman’s Krakoa would have ended up too, namely with acceptance. Moira would learn to accept that everything dies and that attempting to control reality isn’t possible. The mutants would, similarly, accept that there is an inevitable end point. The importance is the life you led while you were alive, trying to make the world a better place for tomorrow, even if there might not be a “tomorrow” for you one hundred or one thousand years in the future.
Yeah, this whole Phoenix-mutant-heaven thing is…. not good. Just… wut.
I’m satisfied with the ending. A weird thing popped into my head; I didn’t read it; when did they take the Phoenix away from Echo?
I didn’t read it either, but apparently Echo ‘burned out’ back in the finale of Aaron’s Avengers, fighting Multiversal Mephistos or something like that.
I liked this issue. I’m not going to think too hard on it, but it was good.
I still hate them shuffling off Krakoa and roughly 200k mutants to a waiting room offstage. But I guess we can look at it in comic book terms: anyone not specifically depicted as, or mentioned to be in the White Hot Disco Room, might be on Earth. Some are specifically removed, like Jumbo, most of the Five, a bunch of named crowd-fillers… but there’s tons left up in the air. Morlocks, Nasty Boys, Hellions, MLF, Marauders, all sorts of people who might have slipped through the cracks during/after Fall of X. Lots of wiggle room for writers to use appropriate characters in the future even with so many sidelined.
More importantly, even with Hope gone, there’s nothing saying that resurrection in Krakoa isn’t entirely off the table so A) anyone we currently know to be dead might turn up there through… *shrug* and B) anyone who dies on Earth afterwards might still be revived there. For reasons. Nevertheless, those remaining on Earth can now assume death is final and thus we have actual stakes again.
I guess as a way to wrap up Krakoa, eliminate some of the most game-breaking elements, and otherwise change up the status quo, this works as well as anything.
I’m not sure how I feel about the Waiting Room being a mutant afterlife, especaily since the current storyline has an unread Daken who seems to be serving Mephisto.
So I guess that it WAS possible to reach an accord with the machines all along and it was only Moira’s own corruption which prevented her from seeing it.
Enigma altering the past seems inconsistent with the idea that it was afraid to alter anything before it came online lest it prevent its own existence. Then again, it WAS desperate.
I wonder if anything will come from the idea that Enigma implanted Jean’s personality into Maddie and Jean deleted it.
I’m calling shenanigans on Charles’s plan. His plan required that (a) Enigma would absorb Moira BEFORE running off to confront Jean and (b) Enigma would try to defeat Jean by hiding in the time stream and that Jean would be unable to find him. There’s no way Xavier could have known that would happen, especially since Destiny couldn’t use her powers in the White Hot Room.
Note that Enigma explains that when it visited the dying Nathaniel Essex. Essex saw it screaming.
I find it hilarious that Sinister escaped while everyone was watching Jean and Scott kiss.
Note that iceman is on Krakoa. So I guess that WAS him in X-Men Forever 3.
Re:Xavier- I think the one week gap before he surrenders is meant to explain his appearance with the Original Five in Marvel Voices 100.
It’s odd that everyone is so forgiving of Destiny. She helped convince Xavier to go along with a plan that ended with him killing innocent humans and having to turn himself in to the authorities. Yet no one seems angry at her at all. Yes, Charles is a big boy but you’d think there’d be SOME resentment at her for her role. But of course, we can’t have logic getting in the way of the big Wedding Special.
At first I thought the Tiger was another name for the Shadow King. It’s odd that the Tiger was mentioned when it didn’t partifcipate in this story at all and the Shadow King, who actually DID, was ignored.
The Krakoans in the White Hot Room are described as “a New Krakoa”. This was the title of one of Destiny’s visions in Immortal X-Men 3.
I’m not sure how I feel about Moira’s happy ending. It was predicted by Destiny if she made the right choice and it’s probably the best ending to her Character Assassination possible. It just seems a little odd when Xavier goes to prison and hundreds of thousands of mutants, including her son, get stuck in the White Hot Ghetto partly because of her.
So it sounds like the Dominions showed up just to tell Enigma, “You are total ****.” Pretty much exactly like the Celestials did to Machine Man in Nextwave?
Sorry, that should be “UNDEAD Daken”/.
You can actually see Sinister taking the opportunity to escape–look at the very bottom right corner of pg. 22! TEENY-TINY.
Also, I am delighted to see that Jean’s victory is in the form of the ultimate mutant circuit!
All in all, I liked this issue. Making Enigma a Dominion that other Dominions saw as lesser worked, as the character hasn’t done much of consequence. I like that Charles and Moira had a final conversation, instead of a stupid fight. I still think the Phoenix is an ill-defined concept, but its fight with Enigma made a degree of sense.
The last issue of X-Men Forever felt like a downer ending and the last issue FotHoX was dumb, so I’m glad this issue serves as the climax of the Krakoa era. It wasn’t flawless (everything involving Dominions and Phoenix was at least somewhat headache-inducing, the art wasn’t great), but it worked.
There may be a mistake in your brief description of page 13, Paul. Who is explaining to whom?
“Alexander Hamilton shot Alexander Hamilton…”
— Drunk History
I’m glad Moira got her happy ending. While she doesn’t deserve it in-universe, the character— on a meta level— does, in my opinion, since writing her as a complete one-dimensional villain was a bad take and a disservice to the central figure of HoxPox who kicked off this entire era. Plus, she’s suffered thousands of years of trauma. I think it’s fair to give her one more normal life.
Plus, giving the villains a chance to start anew was always one of the ideas behind Krakoa. Apocalypse got be to treated as a hero in this era after all. I’m good to let Moira be. Eventually another writer will come around and pick her up from the Phoenix timeline.
Granted, Moira’s motivation post-Hickman has been written all over the place and doesn’t really track. If all she wanted was to be free of the trap her power placed her into, well, she was already cured before she chose to become a cyborg. We have to accept that her motivations changed gradually, which doesn’t work when her dialogue keeps having her claim that all she ever wanted was this or that. Anyway, this is as satisfactory an ending I can come up with at this point.
So… this happened.
My hopes that we would not have a Phoenix Ex Machina were always in vain, but I am still disappointed. IMO it hurts the stories to rely so heavily on the appearance that Hope, Jean and Xavier know what the heck they are doing when the Phoenix’ strings to the people in black moving the figurines are so evident.
Worse still, this locks the tale with pretenses of cosmic significance that ill suit the genre or the ability to tell stories going forward. This is classic “and they were never seen again” material. But it is also what I should expect from the X-Books these days. I really wonder if Tom Brevoort will surprise me and manage to make the X-world more relatable and manageable. I hope so.
All the same, I don’t see how the existence of two hundred thousand in another dimension can be a stable status quo. I give it two years, tops, until some sort of storyline centered on returning them to Earth takes place. Come to think of it, it would be the perfect opportunity to allow the Phoenix to sacrifice itself to open the way to less story-breaking entities.
I truly wish this whole event happened off-panel.
You know, I kind of like that the meat of the issue is Moira and Charles on the park bench again. That may be my lasting image from the Krakoan era and I think it’s a good one. I really wish RB was around for this issue but I kind of the RotPoX on its own is a good end for the era.
I am not a completist, in fact I kind of like mixing and matching the best runs of an era and making that my own “canon” Now that this era is over I think if I had a “personal canon” it would be HoX/PoX, Hickman’s X-men, Inferno, Immortal and RotPox. I think that gets you a really sold storyline overall. And honestly, this era is up there with Claremont and Morrison for me.
I can’t wait to see what’s next.
I would have looved Silva on this issue too.. especially to draw that park bench scene. It would have been a wonderful way to close this era. Oh well.
Tried posting this before but it must not have gone through. I can help identify some of those references:
>>What looks to be Krakoan-era Jean, Wolverine and Cyclops, sharing a happy moment together.
In House of X #6, I believe.
>>Below that, a generic panel of 1990s Jean.
That appears to be Jean on the cover of X-Men Vol 2 #1 (1991)
>>To the right of that, Bendis-era Cyclops on a slab, with Emma standing over him.
No, I think this from Death of X.
>>To the right of that, Jean fighting Sabretooth.
Cover of X-Men Vol 2 #28
>>A generic image of Onslaught.
Perhaps a Weapon X-Men reference?
>>Jean meets Rachel Grey for the first time, which I think happens during “Inferno”.
This is actually from Days of Future Present, X-Factor Annual #5
>>The X-Men in action – I think this is the Krakoan era, since that seems to be Laura as Wolverine in the bottom right.
Cover of X-Men Vol 6 #1 (2021)
>>A generic image of Wolverine.
Cover of Uncanny X-Men #207
>>Young Cyclops and Jean kiss.
I can’t place this but it does feel like something specific…
>>Jean in Silver Age costume fighting someone too blurry to identify.
I think this is an Imperial Guard member from the climax of Dark Phoenix Saga, but I might be wrong.
One other thing I appreciated as a reference in the conclusion is Moira got her 11th life after all, because she made the correct decision, as Destiny suggested she could way back in House of X #2.
@Rinoa,
“I’m glad Moira got her happy ending. While she doesn’t deserve it in-universe, the character— on a meta level— does, in my opinion, since writing her as a complete one-dimensional villain was a bad take and a disservice to the central figure of HoxPox who kicked off this entire era”
I 100% agree with this sentiment! The full Moira story is the great missed opportunity of Krakoa imho. I loved how compelling she was as a third figure to Xavier and Magneto. Shame that got junked. Can we get Ewing or Gillen to give her the full rehab & interiority she deserved?
Good send off. But we never got the on panel Moira and Rahne, Moira and Proteus interactions we needed 🙂
One other thing- remember those Fall of the House of X data pages in Sons of X, Sinister Four and Dark X-Men 2? Who was writing them? I have a feeling the writer was originally supposed to be Moira and her redemption was supposed to be a bit different.
@Evilgus: “Good send off. But we never got the on panel Moira and Rahne, Moira and Proteus interactions we needed ”
With the exception of Magik and Cypher, the New Mutants characters got dropped from Krakoa comics as soon as the New Mutants comic was canceled. (OK, “Realm of X” had Dani, but it sucked). While I don’t think any of them were essential to the meta-narrative, I wish we’d gotten at least one scene of Rahne confronting Moira. I can picture Moira trying to twist her story to fit what she professes to believe and Rahne having none of it. Maybe Moira says that Orchis can revive Rahne’s son, where the Krakoans wouldn’t… Anyway, the rush to the end of the era did several characters a disservice. At least Duggan didn’t get to bungle a Rahne-Moira scene.
“With the exception of Magik and Cypher, the New Mutants characters got dropped from Krakoa comics as soon as the New Mutants comic was canceled.”
Agreed, which is a shame. Hickman seems to have a real fondness for the New Mutants — putting Sam and Bobby in the Avengers, making Doug and Warlock central to the Krakoa era, writing the opening arc of their series — but once he left, they definitely got back-burnered.
Other than Magik, they don’t look to have much of a presence in the upcoming era, at least initially, which might partially explain my general antipathy toward it. (Though Gail Simone did tweet yesterday that she considers Dani one of Marvel’s best female characters of all time, so maybe there’s hope on that front.)
Indeed. If Hickman didn’t leave Marvel, we could have gotten a much more New Mutants centered line— Sunspot in space, Cypher with a much more important role at the end of Krakoa like he had in the beginning, etc.
or Hellverine #1 (which is effectively Wolverine #51).
the most depressing thing I read this week.
I liked that Hickman reunited most of the original New Mutants team, and I love that he put some of them in positions of power vis-a-vis Krakoa. His arc on their book was during the “everyone’s manic” phase, though, which was a definite turn-off. Too bad the initial momentum was squandered so quickly.
If writers are going to use the NM characters individually, I wish they’d stop focusing so much on Illyana. Dani, Amara, and Xuân also offer great visuals, and any one of them would be an asset on a team. I’d much rather see them in one of the new X-books than Jubilee.
If the alternate future in Inferno where Omega Sentinel was from was Hickman’s original plans then:
-Sunspot was probably suppose to be the one that killed all the Dominions with the Phoenix Blade and that it was probably intended for the Shi’ar Book that Hickman talked about in interiews that never happened
-Warlock possibly was the Trickster Titan that sent Omega Sentinel back
“-Warlock possibly was the Trickster Titan that sent Omega Sentinel back”
Jordan White said Hickman’s original villain was someone we would never have guessed, then everyone online guessed it was Doug and Warlock, which makes sense, given his sinister undertones in Inferno.
@Mike Loughlin – 100% agreed, re: Rahne and Moira.
I think it sums up the Krakoan era, that the last few years have been both a joy for an X-Men completist in the vast range of mutants that have featured, but also lacking the detail and nuance of how the characters would behave in specific settings – case in point, completely leaving Rahne out of any context of revelations about Moira – so I’m hoping in the future this will be addressed and what Rahne’s reaction will be especially with Doug knowing about Moira and not telling her.
But overall, I’ve very much enjoyed the Krakoan era for getting me interested in the X-Men again, and I think that tone has helped in shaping X-Men 97 to be both fan-service but also grapple with real world situations.
It looks like the Phoenix created TWO new timelines. There’s the one that Moira is in, and there’s another, labeled “E”, that just has a Phoenix symbol and for which the Legend merely says “Unknown”. What do we think might be up with that?
Moira’s timeline is the Phoenix-labelled timeline. There’s a caption at the top of the last page.
On the subject of how plans changed over the course of the Krakoa Era, I have to admire the chutzpah of suddenly saying “No, of course Enigma doesn’t actually fit Hickman’s definition of a Dominion. That’s the problem.”
“I’m hoping in the future this will be addressed and what Rahne’s reaction will be especially with Doug knowing about Moira and not telling her.”
I’m struggling to remember if Doug and Rahne have shared ANY significant panel time since he returned from the dead. Like, they were kinda sorta dating right beforehand, and he died saving her. His death haunted her for years (real world time), whether it was hesitating to pursue a relationship with Rictor or being teammates with Douglock. But then she was off in X-Factor when Doug returned and I can’t remember them having any meaningful interactions since. It’s a shame we never got that reunion on panel.
(Come to think of it, it’s kinda nuts that so many characters CONNECTED with Rahne have had prominent roles in the Krakoa era — Moira, Doug, Legion — without anyone trying to involve her in any of their plotlines.)
@Drew: I think the problem with involving Rahne in these epic stories is that she has a basic, uninteresting power. What’s a werewolf going to do against societal or cosmic threats? Legion and Moira can affect the cosmos, while Cypher is needed to communicate with Krakoa and any unfamiliar intelligence.
As much as we want to see it, I can picture writers who don’t care about the interpersonal dynamics and/or weren’t fans of Wolfsbane ignoring her connections completely. Rahne isn’t popular or seemingly interesting enough on her own to be a main member of the X-Men or Quiet Council, so she’s shuffled off to the side. I think she should have been involved in the Moira plots, at least, but that’s one of many “should haves” that can be applied to the Krakoa era.
[…] OF THE POWERS OF X #5. (Annotations here.) Right, the main event. And Kieron Gillen and Luciano Vecchio give us a rather more satisfying […]
So…Kitty and the gates was a story that had a beginning, and a twist, then…?
(Posting again now that I’ve properly read everything)
“The basic idea is that Moira can sacrifice herself so as to make her link with Enigma accessible to Phoenix”
This issue could have done with explaining this a lot more. The connection is that…Sinister used Moira clones in his attempts to become a dominion? I don’t understand at all how that gives Moira any kind of power over Enigma. Or where/when that allows Phoenix to locate him. Or what the sacrifice is.
Then we have Phoenix…creating an entire new timeline? It could have kind of worked if it was saying Moira 10 died and moved on to life 11, with Phoenix somehow making it so that timeline 10 carried on without her, except that robot Moira didn’t have her power anyway. And there’s no actual reason that Moira 11 doesn’t have her power any more, other than ‘Destiny said that might happen’. It’s all, again, arbitrary.
One more thing: Enigma was said to possibly still be vulnerable to things changing time before he came to be (it’s the entire basis of Xavier’s actions in this series). Issue 1 of this has Enigma finally coming into being 10 years in the future, as Nimrod and Moira await a Dominion appearing. Nimrod dies ‘now’ in Fall #5, and it has no effect on Enigma’s existence. Maybe we can take it that Enigma having effect(s) on the now actually changed things enough that Nimrod was defeated in Fall but wouldn’t have been otherwise? Or it’s just another example of lots of this making no sense.
BTW, the quote I used from this annotation was in a bit headed with “Professor X continues to explain his plan to Professor X.” .
@Dave- the idea is that since Enigma made Moira part of him in Rise of the Powers of X 3, if Phoenix locates her, she can locate Enigma. When Enigma found out, of course, he killed Moira.
Issue 1 took place in an alternate timeline- Enigma needed to harvest the Sinister clones’ ascension attempts in four different timelines in order to come into being.
Well that’s another thing – why did he need that? Because he just did.
Also, has being a a Phoenix host given anybody the ability to both travel through and monitor all of time before? I guess there’s something about it being the ‘just created’ Phoenix going on (although even that is fast into doubt within the story by Phoenix needing to feed), but it’s another thing where the main reason for it happening is that that’s what this story decided was going to happen.
Phoenix should have been done with for good at the end of AvX, where “No more” just meant ‘but only for a very short time’.
Coming in quite late here, but I had to nitpick one thing, in the montage on page 14:
>>On the right, below the Hellfire Club panel:
>> Cyclops holds the dead Phoenix in his arms, from X-Men #137.
This is specifically the cover image to X-Men #136, which doesn’t appear exactly in the story. (And if you look really closely, you can see the Enigma logo in red on Jean’s mother silhouetted in the background.)
I think it’s also worth mentioning that on page 17, Enigma is holding four weapons that correspond to the suits of the Tarot, which in turn correspond to the card suits on his shoulders: spades / a sword; hearts / a cup of fire; clubs / a club; diamonds / a pentacle-like burst of energy.
The generic image of Wolverine on page 14 is the cover for Uncanny X-Men 207. The generic image of Jean in a leather coat is from New X-Men 134 I think?