Powers of X #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. This is the final issue of Powers of X, and an actual review of both series will follow later.
COVER (PAGE 1): Moira standing over a pile of dead mutants on Krakoa. This includes characters from the “Year 100” timeline, so it’s evidently symbolic. The flowers resemble cherry blossom, traditionally a symbol of life’s ephemeral nature.
PAGE 2: The epigraph quotes Professor X: “And now we build.”
PAGE 3: The credits. The title is “House of X”; the small print reads “When they learn the truth.”
PAGES 4-10: “Year One”. This is an outright repeat of the opening scene from issue #1, where Xavier meets Moira at the fair and she lets him read her mind. There’s an additional opening page of Xavier walking through the forest on his way to the fair. Repeated here, the dialogue can be read as fair representing Krakoa’s apparent new dawn for mutants, seen as both a distraction and something that’s being embraced despite a nagging awareness that all is not well. (“So, are you enjoying the fair?” “I am. It seems like the kind of thing I should not enjoy, and yet…”) That, of course, could apply both to the mutants and to the readers.
PAGES 11-23: Breaking with the usual format of advancing through time over the course of an issue, we jump directly to the “Year 1000”. This is the information that Xavier picks up from Moira’s mind at the fair, so it’s effectively a flashback interposed in the Year One segment.
The Year 1000 sequences have always been bannered as “The X-Men, Year One Thousand”, and now we see why: the “Preserve” which we saw in issue #1 is in fact a Preserve for mutants, specifically Wolverine and Moira, who have been futilely working on a rebellion scheme all this time. The Librarian reveals that the world will end tomorrow when the post-human race is assimilated into the Phalanx. He’s considering whether to send Moira off world so as to prevent her death from rebooting history, or to kill her so that she can go back and alter the course of history. Before he gets to make his decision, the Librarian is killed by Wolverine, who then kills Moira in turn, ending what turns out to have been her sixth life.
The Preserve: We saw this place briefly in issue #1, when Moira and Wolverine were indeed seen briefly in shadow. They appeared to be naked in that issue, but perhaps that was just the lighting – they’re fully clothed here. In issue #1, the Librarian seemed to be suggesting that the Preserve was a remnant of the human race, but he actually said that its purpose was “to keep a record of the great sins of history … to preserve a remnant, something to point at, and hope to God they never have dominion again.” Apparently there was a period in this timeline where the mutants dominated – or, perhaps, being posthuman, the Librarian just lumps mutants and regular humans in together.
The inhabitants of the Preserve, other than Wolverine and Moira, appear to be mutants, but they don’t speak, and the Librarian treats them like farm animals. He doesn’t regard them as imprisoned, but rather seems to think the concept is inapplicable since they’re in their natural environment. Logan gives the expected inspirational speech about the inevitability of revolution – and appears to believe it – but of course he’s wrong. This is the end of the world, and no revolution came.
Logan and Moira’s age: Logan and Moira both seem relatively young, so something must be suppressing their ageing. Logan ages slowly, but he does get visibly older within a few decades, as seen in Old Man Logan. And Moira’s first life ended when she died of old age, according to House of X #2. Quite what’s going on here isn’t clearly explained, but the Librarian refers to them “hav[ing] the same blood type” and “depending on one another to survive” over a millennium.
The reboot: The Librarian is the first character to directly address the question of what happens to the previous timeline when Moira dies, sending her mind back in time to start a new life with the knowledge of the one before. The Librarian clearly believes that the process doesn’t just create a new timeline, but “annihilate[s]” the existing one. Moira seems to think the same thing later in the issue. This raises an awkward question of how anything she does can have meaning, and how she would be able to lock a desirable timeline in place if she finally found one (perhaps by killing herself in a way that was somehow permanent – and Destiny told us in House of X #2 that this can be done).
The Librarian plans to avoid this endless cycle of reboots by sending Moira off world before the Phalanx can kill her. Moreover, he believes that as long as Moira remains alive, posthumanity can break the cycle by being assimilated by a Dominion (and the first step towards that is being assimilated by the Phalanx). A Dominion transcends space and time, so if posthumanity can get to that level before Moira dies and reboots the universe, it will be unaffected by the reboot. On the other hand, the Librarian is not entirely convinced that being copied into the Phalanx while his physical body is destroyed really counts as surviving – indirectly querying the legitimacy of the revived mutants over in House of X. So he’s open to persuasion that killing Moira and giving her a chance to alter history might be the better way to go. Unfortunately, from the Librarian’s perspective, Moira has no useful ideas about how to do that.
Posthumanity: According to the Librarian, Moira and the X-Men in general have missed a crucial point. Though mutants are indeed the inevitable next step in evolution, there comes a point of technological advancement where evolution just doesn’t matter any more, because the control over the body offered by science is far more profound and useful. So the robots hold the mutants at bay for a bit, and then humanity ascends to machine-blended posthumanity, and the mutants are just a footnote. (The Librarian seems to imply that the robots are indeed unleashed by humanity rather than just arising spontaneously, since otherwise it’s not clear why the mutants don’t get to join in the posthuman ascension.)
Moira’s sixth life: This timeline, it turns out, is Moira’s mystery sixth life, which was skipped over in House of X #2. This revelation from the Librarian is what spurs Moira into a series of anti-machine schemes over her following lives. When we first saw this timeline, in issue #1, it appeared to be a continuation of the Year 100 timeline – complete with poor Cylobel still floating in the containment tank where Nimrod put her. But we now know that the Year 100 timeline is Moira’s ninth life, so apparently these similarities are more of an indication of how little impact Moira has really had on the course of history in the long run.
Moira’s voluntary death at the hands of Wolverine mirrors the end of her ninth life, in issue #3, where he also killed her so that she could go back and try again. This is presumably why Moira said “this is what you do” as her last words in that issue.
PAGE 24: A data page on the branching of humanity and the reasons why post-humanity – homo novissima – overtakes both humans and mutants. It’s all fairly self explanatory. The Krakoan letters are M for mutant, H for human, and PH for posthuman.
PAGES 25-29: A continuation of the fair scene. Xavier is horrified by what he sees in Moira’s mind, and reluctant to accept that the mutants always lose. Moira insists that this time round she’s going to make sure that they’re all together. At the same time, though, Moira makes clear that Xavier never changed in any of the worlds where she met him, and that she expects both him and Magneto to resist her plans – which raises the question of how successful she really has been at changing him, a theme that continues into the text pages that follow.. Still, they walk off into the sunset together.
PAGES 30-32: Text pages, headed “Moira’s journal.” For some reason entries 12 and 35 are blacked out, even though we only get entries 5, 12, 14, 17, 22, 29, 35, 48, 52 and 57 in the first place. These cover a wide span of X-Men history, so evidently Moira isn’t diarising very regularly.
Entry 5. Moira says that she recruited Xavier to her cause after allowing him to read her mind, though it’s taken months and he remains unacceptably hopeful, idealistic and generally Xavier-like. She’s reluctant to let him read her mind again, and notes that he’s dependent on her interpretation of past-life events, but seems to be planning to tell him the truth – since she knows he’ll end up reading her again at some point. Still, there’s a strong hint here that she’s spinning the history.
Entry 12. Redacted.
Entry 14. Moira writes about having become romantic with Charles Xavier (as established in Xavier’s back story under Chris Claremont) and worries about fracturing his psyche and breaking him. It’s not clear if she’s concerned about a break-up, or about the consequences of them being together. Her concern that fracturing his psyche will “eventually unleash something unexpected on the world” may refer to Onslaught, the psychic creature which was meant to be in part the dark side of Xavier’s personality.
Entry 17. Xavier has “stopped trying to fight me on what humanity is”, which is not quite the same thing as him actually agreeing with Moira – it could easily mean he’s stopped arguing with her and started treating her as a resource. Xavier has had an idea of several mutants working in tandem, with one of them needing reality-manipulating powers. This obviously refers to the Five, the mutants who create the new clone bodies on Krakoa, and specifically the reality-warper Proteus – who is Moira’s son.
Moira says that she has found potential matches for both Charles and herself to produce such a mutant. The implication seems to be that Moira married Joe MacTaggert in this timeline (and only this timeline) because he was thought to be likely to father a reality-warping mutant with her. The suggestion that Moira also found a potential match for Charles may imply that his relationship with Gabrielle Haller was also instigated by this agenda, leading to the birth of Xavier’s son Legion. Legion and Proteus have in common the traits of being vastly powerful and hugely unstable.
Entry 22. Charles and Moira recruit Magneto, and Moira gets the idea of a mutant stronghold into this mind (which she sees as a good development). We saw this scene in issue #2.
Entry 29. “Apocalypse has made himself known to the world.” Apocalypse debuted in a cameo in X-Factor #5 (1986), and had his first fight against X-Factor in the following issue. Note that this comes before later entries which were pinned in earlier issues as “Year One.” This seems to confirm that Hickman is using “Year One” figuratively to mean anything from the past.
Moira describes this rather ranty, evolution-obsessed version of Apocalypse as being in a “raw, primal state”, and is particularly concerned about “the prevention of certain Omega-level mutants falling under his sway” – it’s not immediately clear who she has in mind.
Entry 35. Redacted.
Entry 48. Moira describes Xavier and Magneto’s approach to Mr Sinister, as seen in issue #4. Xavier and Magneto are acting without Moira’s approval and she’s not happy about it. Moira seems to see this as Xavier getting carried away, but there’s a definite implication that Moira has less control over Xavier and Magneto than she’d like to think, and that maybe they’re not being manipulated as much as her diary tries to suggest. Moira laments Xavier’s foolish belief that he can shape the world to his liking; either she’s being ironic, or her lack of self-awareness is remarkable..
Moira says that Sinister has produced his first chimera decades early, in the form of the mutant-gene version of Sinister himself. This refers to the mutants that Sinister was cloning in Moira’s ninth life (and perhaps others). Note that this version of Sinister already existed before Xavier and Magneto showed up, so something else has happened to alter the course of Sinister’s history – though admittedly, the overall history of the world differs massively between Moira’s ninth and tenth lives.
Entry 52. A cryptic reference to the split with Magneto, previously mentioned in House of X #2.
Entry 57. Moira explains that she’s been too active (as a supporting character in the X-Men, presumably) and needs to go back to the shadows to pursue her plan. To that end, she has decided to fake her own death using “a Shi’ar golem – a living husk” to test their theory that a mutant could be restored from back-up in the way that’s now being done on Krakoa. Where the Shi’ar fit into this isn’t immediately clear, but they keep getting namedropped throughout Hickman’s run. Note that what Moira is describing here seems to be very close to the clone mutants being created on Krakoa; if Moira considers them to be “golems” then that’s rather at odds with all the ceremonial stuff about how they’re definitely, definitely the real deal.
All of this still fits very oddly with Xavier’s thoughts in the stories where Moira died – perhaps this was one of the occasions when he restored his mind from back-up, to remove his knowledge of the plan.
PAGES 33-36: “Yesterday” – a rare example of a time frame not expressed in powers of ten. Magneto and Professor X visit Moira in her No-Space and talk about the upcoming meeting of the Quiet Council. (We saw that first meeting in House of X #6. While this issue is structured so that this scene appears to go directly into the firework display, in fact that display follows from the Council meeting, as we saw in House #6.)
This scene gives some further explanation about the make-up of the Quiet Council. The “Red King” space is vacant because Emma hasn’t nominated one yet; the “winter” group has “all” the “problem mutants” (which implies that Magneto doesn’t consider Apocalypse to be one); and the Hellfire faction are assumed to be controllable because Emma is loyal.
Mystique. Mystique would only agree to join if they promised to bring back her lover Destiny. This is going to be a problem. It’s very, very important to Moira that nobody on Krakoa should have the power to see the future. She seems to have two reasons for this – first, a precog could sense her in the same way that Destiny did in House of X #2; and second, a precog would apparently learn something which is being kept secret from the Krakoans. It’s possible, though, that Moira is merely anticipating the inevitable failure of Krakoa rather than having anything more concrete in mind – Xavier and Magneto seem a lot more confident than her that Krakoa could work. There’s a sense here that Moira sees Krakoa as a means to some unspecified end, while Magneto and Xavier want to make it work if they can.
Not explained here is why it was so important to get Mystique on side in the first place – clearly there’s a plot there. At any rate, the plan is to string Mystique along. The fact that they think they can get away with that might suggest that they don’t see this lasting all that long. On the other hand, since the stated plan is to revive everyone, you’d have thought Mystique must have been stipulating for a high place in the queue.
Destiny died way back in the 80s, so Xavier’s been keeping his backups for quite some time.
PAGES 37-41. A repeat of the celebration from the end of House of X #6, though with different voice over captions. This time, either Magneto or Xavier (it’s impossible to tell which) tell Moira that she’s built something wonderful and important in Krakoa but that it’s time to step aside now. There’s also a new coda in which Magneto states his determination to protect Krakoa, and Xavier is more quietly determined.
PAGE 42. The closing quote is Magneto: “I am not ashamed of what I am.” It’s from the previous scene, which strikes more of a defiant tone than the celebratory one we saw in House of X version. And that’s it – that’s the set up for the X-Men going forward.
PAGES 43-50. The “reading order” page and the trailers. (And the Stan Lee page). The reading order page now lists the first issues of the Dawn of X titles: X-Men #1, Marauders #1, Excalibur #1, X-Force #1, New Mutants #1 and Fallen Angels #1. Note the small print, which refers to “Dawn of X 19” and “Arakko 20”, perhaps suggesting that Krakoa’s estranged sister island will be coming to the fore next year. The Krakoan text on each page simply reads “NEXT” followed by the name of the title.
So this just spelled out the ending that Hickman is building towards, didn’t it?
Things will get really bad, even worse than the bad endings of the past lives, so bad it looks like there’s no way out. And at that point Destiny will tell everyone what Moira can do, and mobs will start to form, demanding to hit the Moira reset button. Maybe even Moira herself will be convinced.
But against all odds, someone pulls through and stops the crisis in such a convincing way that Moira realizes the inevitable bad ending has finally been avoided. (Hopefully it’s not Xavier or Magneto because they’re clearly being set up for a hubristic fall here.)
With that, Moira finds a way to die without triggering her powers, because now there is something about this timeline that makes it worth keeping. Mutants step into a new uncertain future, masters of their own fate once more.
I’m really glad you did both this and the House of X annotations. Frankly, I found both series extremely confusing/annoying to read, so having someone actually point out what the hell is going on, has been rather nice.
Re-reading the whole thing something that jumped out in this issue was the “idea of stronghold” Moira plants in Magneto. It means the names of the super advanced post-Phalanx machine intelligences have all cropped up elsewhere in the story – Mother Mold calls the X-Men Titans; Moira plants the idea of stronghold; the Librarian prays mutants never have dominion again. (There May be other instances).
So the ascending power levels of the phalanx are being implicitly paralleled in the levels of mutant organisation. Titans – teams of mutants or individuals. Stronghold – societies of mutants (Genosha, Utopia, Krakoa). Dominion – a mutant world I guess?
(Sorry if this has come up before – haven’t read all the v long threads here!)
It seems like life six is in the wrong place.
It would make more sense to have life six as life nine.
Life five and life seven seem to carry over from each other.
Moira says that she realizes in life six that Sentinels and Nimrods aren’t the biggest problem.
So, she basically wasted two of her lives (seven and nine).
It was so important that she stops the Nimrod from coming online, but she should have known from life six that stopping the Nimrod isn’t going to solve anything.
Do we know if Moira has shown Xavier the truth about all her lives, or just Life 6?
“Novissima” means “last / final” (literally, “most new” in Latin), echoing what The Librarian said about being in the end-state of humanity.
“Prevention of certain Omega-levels following under Apocalypse’s sway”: presumably these are the First Horsemen, that Moira knows about from Life 9.
I assumed Moira VI was kept alive by Wolverine’s blood via healing factor, but Wolverine does look a lot younger than I thought he’d be after 1000 years.
Last week I wanted to see the very scene between Xavier and Moira right after the mind-scan. Very good.
I have been wondering the whole time why there are no time-travelers since they would have knowledge of the future–well, some futures. Bishop and Rachel and Cable probably aren’t a problem since they are from different universe. But Destiny (and Blindfold?) are. Now I see that such knowledge is actually a threat. Very cool.
I was definitely thrown off by Cylobel being in Life 6 and Life 9–drives home the “ominous inevitability” angle.
I wonder if the Librarian is supposed to be anyone, will show up again, or it was just a character for the Year 1,000 time-line.
I was thinking that the Librarian might be Cassandra Nova.
Oh, also, it seems that the Marvel Girl thing was just a red herring, and there is no wider purpose.
I don’t know why the X-Men would want to attract the attention of the Phalanx with the revelations about life six.
So, there’s no reason why they’d be interested in stopping the Phoenix.
Longtime lurker here.
I just wanted to thank Paul for taking the time to do these annotations. I’ve enjoyed reading them almost as much as the books themselves. I still miss the issue-by-issue X-Axis and this endeavor was a welcome surprise.
From my point of view, these comics created more fan enthusiasm for the X-franchise than anything else in well over a decade. (since Morrison? Whedon?)
And I think that enthusiasm is reflected by the very existence of Paul’s annotations and the number of comments they generated.
Well done, sir.
Of course, on the “precog” front, Tempus, Rachel & Cable both have time travel in their powersets (Rachel moreso – her first appearance was as a plot device to send Old Lady Pryde back in DOFP! Cable’s is more obscure, only being used a couple of times with help, and then only adult Cable), and both Bishop & Kid Cable have had functioning time machines recently. And all four are on Krakoa – Tempus is one of “The Five”, Rachel & Kid Cable are in X-Men #1-2, Bishop is one of the “Great Captains”. What is the functional difference there?
[Also, how can there even be futures to travel to beyond Moira’s death, if she really resets time and destroys the timelines? Not to mention… no-one else in the whole universe has this power, only Moira?]
As for how Moira locks a timeline in place? That’s pretty simple: she already invented a mutant cure in one life, she may recreate it – we already know if she dies without her powers, there’s no reset (indeed, would a damping collar like Rogue used in Mr & Mrs X work?). Hell, there would be a minor irony if she was DeciMated and is no longer a mutant *anyway*, but that’s unlikely.
One more thing. I don’t understand why Moira is worried about Destiny.
Yes, I understand that she doesn’t want anyone else to know she is alive.
However, it was Mystique and Destiny which sent her down this path.
Sure, it was a different time-line.
I realize that Mystique did try to kill Moira in the current reality.
It seems like Moira would want to make use of Destiny though.
She is sure that everything is always going to end badly for mutants.
She’s down to her last life, most likely.
Wouldn’t it help to have Destiny telling her that, “The Nimrod is going to come anyway”, or whatever.
I mean, her whole plan was based around Xavier and Magneto surviving.
Yet, both of them did die in the past.
Wouldn’t it have come in handy to have Destiny telling Moira that Xavier was about to die, or that Xavier was going to come back?
What did Moira do during the period when Xavier was supposed to be dead?
Entry 52 seems like it’s right after X-Men (1991) #1-3. Magneto splits with Moira and Xavier after he learns that she had tried to manipulate him into being a “better man”, by meddling with his DNA when he was de-aged into a child. It also fits the chronology – after Apocalypse and Sinister debut, before Moira fakes her death.
SanityOrMadness-Moira’s powers only effect her Earth-616 reality.
There are futures that can exist in the Marvel Universe due to the nature of the Marvel Multiverse.
The Earth-616 future is never set in stone. It can be changed.
Otherwise, how could there be time travelers from multiple different futures?
As far as someone like Cable, who was supposed to be traveling back from the actual future of Earth-616 to our time in order to stop Apocalypse’s rise…yeah, that’s going to be left unexplained, I’m sure.
Cable’s future didn’t become an alternate universe until the point when Cable traveled back in time.
Then, it branched off, and was no longer the actual future of Earth-616.
I’m just disappointed that, if there are to be no mutant precogs on Krakoa, this means we may not get Blindfold back. And she really deserves to be resurrected after the crappy way Rosenberg wrote her off in Uncanny.
(Frankly, now that I think about it, Rosenberg’s slaughter-happy run in Uncanny pisses me off all the more, simply because we suffered through months of seeing characters die, only for Hickman to immediately start bringing them back. What was the point of killing so many characters off when this was around the corner anyway? Ugh.)
I think it works. It’s a good breaking point, which a lot of readers were asking for with Xavier deciding to “abandon his dream”.
Rosenberg’s run was the perfect darkest hour.
After that monstrosity of a run, the X-Men deciding that their own nation is the best way forward makes perfect sense.
It even seems to line up with what Hickman is doing, because all these dead characters get cloned and brought back.
Although, yeah, Blindfold also being dead probably worked out to Hickman’s advantage.
I wonder if Rosenberg asked Hickman if there were any characters he’d like him to kill off, and Hickman said Blindfold.
I just want to reiterate that all this discussion isn’t necessarily a credit to the story. It’s a credit to the decades of work of others who came before and a function of the grand, sweeping nature of the launch. When you seriously muck with something people love, expect it to cause a stir.
Obviously it’s sold like crazy and a lot of people love it, but the “event” is now over and as a launch pad for an entire line of comics, this could absolutely be an ill-concieved failure. I don’t personally envision the excitement translating into gangbuster sales for the titles in perpetuity now that the mystery is mostly revealed and the X-Men are a supremacist cult of pod people who use torture and prioritize identity over matters of good/evil and not a single voice of dissent is whispered by anyone.
I’ll add: Setting aside my disdain for all of it, I would have more confidence in this having staying power if the story occupied the first 12 issues of the X-Men monthly. Events tend to sell even when nobody seems to like them.
Re: Moira’s tampering with Magneto, I was thinking the same thing Allan wrote above. Which also makes me think that maybe she’s done the same to Xavier at some point? She is trying to keep them both in line and aimed at her ultimate goal.
I read the “idea of stronghold” thing as Moira nudging Magneto into trying to gather mutants together in one place, and specifically an island. Like the one from Uncanny #150 or Asteroid M or Genosha. It’s a nice way to tie together all of Magneto’s various fortresses/bases.
Really looking forward to finding out what Moira’s actual plan is (if it isn’t just to set up Krakoa). And to Paul continuing his fabulous write-ups. Thanks!
It seems like Xavier and Magneto might be putting on a show for some of the (for lack of a better term) X-villains.
They mention that they saw certain mutants posing a problem, and needing to be watched, which is why they’re on the Council.
Sinister, who is self-explanatory.
Exodus-Who seems like he’s someone who couldn’t be bribed.
Mystique-Well, whatever her issue is with everything. Maybe just to placate her so she doesn’t require Destiny to join Krakoa.
Was the Sabretooth scene something that is meant to send a message to the X-villains? Sabreooth won’t really be tortured forever, but Xavier and Magneto needed to make it look like they’ve become amoral.
Also, I’m guessing that they want to keep a close watch on Apocalypse too, although he seems to be someone they absolutely need for Moira’s plan.
I’m guessing that the bribe of immortality is what attracted some of the other X-villains, like Shaw.
So, it does seem like there is some grand design greater than Krakoa.
Why would they need every mutant to be gathered on one island?
Why not just most mutants? Why not just all the X-Men?
If Krakoa was the end stage, then why wouldn’t the X-Men play nice?
Just offer up an island-nation for any mutant who wants to come, and leave it at that.
So, I think there are more mysteries.
So as usual nobody remembered Psylocke is supposed to be precognitive?
I thought it was weird that Moira talked about the Five and said they needed a reality warping mutant in reference to Proteus, but Proteus is the oldest mutant involved in the resurrection of mutants. Goldballs (who seems the most integral since his powers are so specific) is the one I think they would be most worried about finding. Honestly, I’m not sure how they came to their current plan without Goldballs. Also, Hope was actually born latest (she could be older because time-travel) and that plan couldn’t have been fully formed until then, a long time after Proteus is conceived.
Also, if they have a list of powers they are keen on finding, one of those powers is time manipulation. In Deadly Genesis, Moira had a mutant under her care (Sway) with said power. And Charles sent that mutant to her death. That doesn’t add up.
Another possible explanation would be Charles and Moira genetically planned all the mutants involved in the resurrection process. But again Hope is a total anomaly. Not sure they could have planned that.
On another note, I’m still having trouble buying that this is our timeline (I know it’s supposed to be). I’ve been willing to give Hickman the benefit of the doubt, but this seems to clearly spell out that Charles, Moira and Magneto have had this plan in some shape throughout X-Men history. His main drive and motivation in every other comic, basically ever, has been to have harmony between mutants and humans. But if he knows that can’t happen why does he form the X-Men? If Professor X gives up on the dream before he’s even Professor X how does that even work? How do we read and understand basically any other comic he’s ever been a part of? I’m guessing this will be explained, but this issue worried me that it will not be.
@Brent: obviously none of it makes sense or fits with anything we’ve seen.
I wouldn’t think through the Proteus thing too greatly either, because it makes no sense.
It makes Moira out to be so cold and calculating.
She never cared about losing her son, as he was just a mans to an end, and she was just acting.
It means she knew he’d be coming back again eventually too.
@Brent
The key of this issue was actually smoothing out those very inconsistencies.
Moira failed to convince Xavier to give up on his dream. He’s just that stubborn and they ended up debating the point for years.
Namor sensed that Xavier was not sincere in abandoning his dream, and Namor was right.
So anything about Xavier’s dream from over the years can be read as sincere. This is much more realistic than “Moira flipped Xavier ideologically from day one.”
Also, there is no reason to think they had the exact requirements for the resurrection protocols figured out right away. They couldn’t even test if it worked in theory until Moira’s “death”!
@Chris V
Sure, there are alternate universes too, but most of the X-Men’s future contingent come from what were still possible futures, not parallel universes, at the time they debuted.
@Taibak
Psylocke was *once* precognitive. Since then, she’s switched bodies multiple times, been killed, been resurrected and been through multiple powersets (she still has the telekinesis she picked up from that bizarre backstory powerswap with Jean in Claremont’s second run!). I have no trouble believing that she’s lost that along the way.
You might as well ask about Rogue and Ms Marvel’s “seventh sense”.
That’s not exactly what the issue said though.
Moira was worried that Xavier and Magneto had become too big of believers in her vision.
Something along those lines.
She was concerned about them making the deal with Sinister, when she didn’t trust Sinister.
I don’t think that’s what Namor’s dialogue to Xavier meant exactly either.
Namor said something along the lines, “Come back when you truly believe you are superior to the humans.”
I think Namor sees through the ruse that Xavier and Magneto are putting on.
Their goal is something far bigger than Krakoa, and isn’t based in mutant supremacy, but a way to ensure survival for both humans and mutants.
I don’t know that Xavier believes in his dream anymore. He does still believe in a better future.
SanityOrMadness-I think you can still make sense of it, for the most part, with how Marvel’s Multiverse is set up, with the future forever in flux.
Like, when Galactus came to Earth, there was immediately a future where Galactus devoured the Earth.
This split off from the Earth-616 time-line almost immediately, when the Silver Surfer betrayed Galactus.
The future has never been set in stone with Moira.
At one point, the Days of Future Past was certainly the future of the Marvel Universe.
However, as events changed, that future was no longer the most likely future for Earth-616.
So, it split off and became an alternate time-line.
Then, it was outside of Moira’s power to effect.
“Note that what Moira is describing here seems to be very close to the clone mutants being created on Krakoa; if Moira considers them to be “golems” then that’s rather at odds with all the ceremonial stuff about how they’re definitely, definitely the real deal.”
Except the ‘golem’ may be some kind of ‘blank’, not having any donor DNA (though it needs something to make it look like Moira). Its only purpose is to die, so it doesn’t need to be a proper clone. In fact, if it were a proper clone it should have Moira’s power, and then there’s a big problem.
I think it could easily be different enough to not be at odds with the X-Men clones being (more) real.
Right before Wolverine killed the Librarian, I had the strong feeling we were about to get a big reveal about his identity, with an explanation of the cerebro power-signature face marking, and maybe something about ‘the surprising end of the machine/mutant war’.
Is this something to come up later? Do we just take it that the surprising end was something post-human conquering both the machines and mutants? Why was Cylobel in that saved state again, rather than being in the preserve? (That WAS a strong indicator that the preserve was for humans and not mutants).
@Chris V
The whole point of them recruiting Sinister was that they were defying her advice! She knew from life 9 that Sinister screws up everything – Xavier and Magneto ignore this and go get Sinister anyway.
Her goal was to “break” Xavier and she never actually accomplishes that, he just stops “fighting” her on certain issues. That doesn’t mean he capitulated, that just means he figured out how to talk around their disagreements!
I can certainly buy that Xavier’s dream has changed, but I think at best it’s a twist that doesn’t change his fundamental beliefs.
K-I think we’re mostly in agreement.
You’re right that Xavier goes against Moira’s vision by recruiting Sinister.
However, recruiting Sinister hardly works with Xavier’s dream of “a world where humans and mutants coexist in peace”.
It shows that Xavier’s dream has changed.
It’s been influenced by Moira’s vision in to something else.
Moira has come to believe that mutants are doomed, no matter what, by life ten.
She pretty much admits that.
Xavier won’t give in to the pessimism, and still believes there is the possibility of a better future.
So, in some ways, yes, Xavier and Magneto agree with Moira’s vision more than Moira does now.
@K
Woah. I get it now. I feel like an idiot. I think I was reading all her journal entries as taking place over a shorter amount of time. I’m going to have to reread it now. That would make sense, that Xavier doesn’t really believe her until pretty recently and then something happened to make him come over to her side (and basically what Magneto’s been saying since day one). Thanks for clearing that up.
On that other note, I just think it seems pretty specific that they single out the need for Proteus if they don’t have a plan in place yet (and can’t test it for years as you point out). Seems like a plot point that made sense on paper, but wasn’t completely thought out in the wider sense. But it does make sense as to why Xavier and Moira both had mutant children with insane power levels so much so that they both ended up going off the rails. I always thought that was an odd coincidence (and the Ultimate books cleaned it up by making them one and the same if I remember correctly).
And finally, K, on your guess as to how the whole thing will end… sounds like a great wrap up, and makes a lot of sense. Seems so obvious now. Well done!
@Dazzler
“the X-Men are a supremacist cult of pod people who use torture and prioritize identity over matters of good/evil and not a single voice of dissent is whispered by anyone.”
You forgot to throw the words “immortal” in there. They’re immortal, expendable pod people manipulated by Moira Ex Machina.
And it only cost $72 to find out.
This issue was a bit more low key than I was expecting. No big revelation that turns everything on its head, just a reinforcement of the fact that mutants have always lost in Moira’s other lives.
HoxPoX reminds me of E is for Extinction. Both stories have an event that would normally spell doom and gloom for mutants (the Genoshan genocide, the revelation that mutants always lose), yet both stories are filled with a sense of optimism for mutantkind going forward. It feels like the X-Men are going somewhere after getting the vague impression that the line’s been spinning it’s wheels for a good while now
I’d be interested in rereading this (and probably will when I pick up the hardcover to have a nice version to go in my collection). It doesn’t feel like it would hang together particularly well as a story in itself, but then it’s not really trying to be that. It’s an extended setting up of a new status quo. Is it perfect? No, far from that. But I have found it an enthralling read. After years of avoiding the X-Men as they go through various iterations of ‘mutants are dying out’ (and even worse, ‘mutants are a team book being written by Bendis’), I’m fully invested in them again.
I’ll be dropping down to tradewaiting again now, but I’m planning on picking up X-Men, Excalibur (mainly, it has to be said, because of Apocalypse) and Marauders. I’ll be keeping an eye on the others to see if they’re worth a punt as well.
The thing I find weird is that hoxpox doesn’t actually set up any of the Dawn of X books apart from Marauders (and even that one – you need to already know what’s solicited to connect the dots). I don’t quite get why this issue reprints so many pages from previous issues instead of, well, doing that.
Loved this all. Can’t help but feel we are definitely going to see the Bad Guys screw thud up. (Witness Apocalypse and Sinister lurking with intent in a few scenes, Mystique harbouring a grudge as Destiny won’t be ressurected…).
I just hope the spin off books can keep the “tone” and show the same amount of forward planning as HOXPOX. I’m doubtful but hope to be proved wrong! 🙂
I assume that HoXPoX took a considerably long time to write and draw, and therefore was meant to be fairly open-ended, allowing for adjustments on the follow up until fairly late on the game.
This double series strikes me as a big setting up of a specific scenario. Not a very welcoming one for new readers, mind you. It is an ambitious project, and one that might easily double as a trial project about knowledge of the X-Men’s history. Accessibility was definitely not a goal.
Then again, in this day and age there was probably not much of a reason to worry about accessibility anyway. The X-Men have a valuable brand name and a significant share of loyal readers. It is perhaps foolish not to capitalize on that.
Just checking my understanding… The journal entries = life 10 = current 616?
I agree with Chris V that life 6 feels like it’s in the wrong place. Now that most of the pieces are visible, it should be possible to track Moira’s lives from 1 to 10 from her own perspective and identify (1) what her goals are at the beginning of each, and (2) what she learned by the end of each. And what she learned at the end of 6 doesn’t feel like it matches her goals for 7+.
@Evilgus
It sounds like Hickman will be keeping an eye on the other books to make sure they’re singing from the same hymn sheet. It will be interesting to see how this will play when the X-Men show up in other books; they’re already going to be in that Incoming! book at the end of the year.
@Luis Dantas
I do pity anyone who chooses this as their first X-Men comic. It’s not really interested in recapping or reintroducing anything. I’d have thought you could muddle through it with knowledge from the films, but things like the Moira retcon (or the fact that it’s a retcon at least) would be utterly lost on you.
Regarding life 6 not really making sense in terms of Moira’s other lives, it seems clear that the purpose of pretty much every choice Hickman made was for the story to unfold as dramatically as possible, not to have it make sense or really hang together in the big picture. In fact, that’s one of the characteristics of this launch that has me doubting the staying power of what’s to come.
Any time you ask the question “Why?” about this story, the answer is invariably “Because it’s more dramatic that way.”
Also, this is I think my fourth comment on this thread, and it’s still under 40 total. One would think if this was truly successfully electrifying readers this issue would have among the most discussion. But rather I think most of the discussion was about mysteries and possibilities and I don’t think the payoff is any good considering that what we saw in the very first issue was straight up the new status quo and the only thing that’s happened since then is filling in the background information. Mysteries can’t go on forever, and event books sell, and I don’t see readers supporting an entire line based on this premise.
I’m not convinced that new readers want everything explained to them. I’ve jumped into the deep end with some pretty dense comics before and loved figuring out how everything worked for myself.
I’ve certainly heard lots of current readers complain about comics not being “new reader friendly,” but I bet there are other people out there who enjoy piecing together context and character on their own.
I may be in the minority, but I found the Life 6 mystery interesting, and I want to check out the #1s of the ongoings. I also hope that the other characters made here (Cardinal, Rasputin, Evil Manbaby Nimrod the Lesser) show up in those stories too.
Since I’m cynical though, I’m just waiting for either 1) the books not to sell well, or 2) a new X-Men movie to come out that demands the classic takes of the characters to hasten a deck-clearing to get things back to “normal” ASAP. For now though, I’m happy while it lasts and can’t wait to see how it all goes right and all goes wrong (in-universe and out).
As far as this issue is concerned, I enjoyed seeing that while Charles is very different, he’s not completely broken, and Moira’s concern about Destiny didn’t seem to be purely due to caring about mutants. In this world of hypercompetent heroes, I was glad to see Xavier, Magneto, and Moira all be unsure of what was going to happen. The Xavier/Magneto “we’re different now” shot was pretty awesome.
I think the mysteries were the most important part to Hickman’s House/Powers.
Obviously, there are still a few mysteries that Hickman hasn’t revealed yet.
I’m expecting that Hickman does have some big event planned, like Infinity when he was writing Avengers, that will clear up the remaining mysteries (or the ones that will ever be explained, anyway).
However, I’m more interested in this as the new status quo for the X-Men going forward.
I really do expect that mutants having their own island-nation and not being on the verge of extinction will be the new direction for years to come.
(Yes, the movies are always a threat though.)
I actually think this comic wouldn’t be as bad as you’d first assume coming in with just knowledge of the movies or the cartoon even. In some ways it’s a more traditional take on the X-Men than we’ve had in years (at least as far the set of characters, their drive and what they’re fighting). And there is a somewhat limited central cast (basically Moira, Xavier and Magneto) and those you wouldn’t know from other media are fleshed out enough for you to understand who they are for the scene or two they are involved in. For example all you need to know about Mr. Sinister is… well his name is Sinister and he looks like a vampire. Don’t trust the guy.
Yes, there are all the retcons and extended histories and futures and all the Moira stuff. But Hickman goes into a lot of detail with those plot points and literally writes paragraphs explaining them. The central story is the attack on the Mother Mold which is basically just Xavier sending the X-Men off to die and feeling bad about it, which is the most classic X-Men story you can tell. This time Xavier actually does something about it though. Again, which is very spelled out to every last detail.
It’s at least a better jumping on point than say something like Bendis’ run where you needed to understand the fall out of AvX, Schism and Utopia to really get what was going on. Probably my biggest issue with Hickman’s story so far is that it doesn’t connect much with anything that’s happened in at least 15 years. But that is a positive for someone who hasn’t read those 15 years of comics.
I’d almost say a deep, prior knowledge of X-Men history would make this even harder to understand and enjoy. Because the whole time you are trying to figure out where this part fits in and where that character is and assuming that some plot point from a Claremont issue in 1986 is going to affect this scene.
I’m just saying, as complicated as the story is, it’s not as wrapped up in X-Men minutia as other recent runs have been and at least when it does get wrapped up in the history it somewhat explains itself (maybe overly so).
@Dazzler
I’ll concede that this could easily drag on and end rather poorly, as Hickman’s Avengers did. I loved his FF run though. Time will tell.
As someone who hated the X-Books under Bendis, Rosenberg and Soule, I thought this was incredible, comparatively, and very good overall.
Would you rather read this, or Inhumans vs X-Men?
I think that is why I feel there is more enthusiasm when I look around the internet and see discussion of these books. The last few years years have been pretty rough, quality-wise. Just my perspective.
@Alex Hill
An example of a new fan reading experience: my brother asked me about this book completely out of the blue. He read about it on the video game site IGN. He seemed to really enjoy it even more than me. His knowledge starts and ends with the X-men movies and a vague recollection of the animated series. So maybe that baseline was enough?
I’m guessing a part of it might be because he doesn’t know (or care) about how everything fits (or doesn’t) with past continuity. I certainly wish I didn’t know the last 10 years of X-continuity. But, that is our curse.
I respectfully but completely reject the notion that the bar should be set at “this is better or more competently written than the X-Men have been in years” because they’ve been deliberately neglected. Also, all of the main characters haven’t all been alive and together since, what, 2004? You can’t expect the X-Men to be great when all of the major characters have spent the last 15 years taking turns being dead and Marvel has deliberately refused to write X-Men stories that were good and accessible enough for Fox to adapt. It’s not a reasonable standard.
What Bendis breaks, Hickman fixes…
OK, I know Bendis didn’t mess up the Fantastic Four.
I don’t think the issue is particularly related to the X-franchise though.
It’s the nature of serial corporate properties.
I did enjoy Hickman/s run on the Avengers.
It was the “world’s greatest heroes” fighting cosmic threats “too great for other heroes”.
That’s what I want to see in an Avengers comic.
Before Hickman took over Avengers, Bendis had been writing the Avengers books for years.
I couldn’t read that.
All of Marvel’s comics go through periods when they are mediocre to outright poor, and then a creator comes along with a vision for the character(s), and we get a few years of the character(s) being interesting again.
Then, the books go right back to what they were before.
Before Al Ewing’s Immortal Hulk, I hadn’t care about the Hulk in a very long time.
Now, the Immortal Hulk is the best book Marvel is publishing, for mine.
When was the last time that Iron Man was an interesting comic book?
Yes, it may be unfair to say that “Hickman’s run is better than the crap they gave us for years”, but the fact remains that Hickman’s run is the most interesting that the X-Men have been since Morrison.
I don’t think it was necessarily the case that Marvel editorial told writers, “Write really bad X-Men comics to screw with FOX.”, I think it’s simply that the writers had no compelling directions to take the X-Men.
Bendis’ House of M became the defining story for the X-franchise over Grant Morrison.
thanks for all the annotations. very much looking forward to your review
“Yes, it may be unfair to say that “Hickman’s run is better than the crap they gave us for years”, but the fact remains that Hickman’s run is the most interesting that the X-Men have been since Morrison.”
That’s the exact same thing. Morrison killed off Jean (by having Magneto, uh, touch her. How exciting. How visionary.) at the very end of his run and the books have generally suffered ever since, for various reasons. And those reasons include the tonal shifts both when Morrison came on board and when he left. This story is the first time we’ve seen all the major core characters together in one place since Morrison.
“I don’t think it was necessarily the case that Marvel editorial told writers, ‘Write really bad X-Men comics to screw with FOX.’, I think it’s simply that the writers had no compelling directions to take the X-Men.”
Very, very obviously Marvel editorial did not say that, but it’s not as simple as you put it either. Clearly the books were neglected, and almost as clearly they were specifically telling stories that couldn’t be adapted into movies. They have also suffered in general from a lot of bad art and bad writing. My point is that the concept was always fine and if they took an honest stab at Classic X-Men Redux and that didn’t work, I’d be more open to throwing away the baby with the bathwater like they did.
Also, I think HOXPOX may have really shat the bed in terms of promoting the line. Look through the Dawn of X solicits and you’ll see very little of anything contained in the event aside from just the premise. So if you’re not absolutely head over heels in love with the Big Idea, what has this series offered to tempt you to pick up, say, New Mutants or Fallen Angels? Honestly I don’t think you can really even guess what X-Men is going to be like because Hickman still has yet to write an X-Men story, he’s just given us individual scenes and a lot of data pages that tell you what the story is. So, I could really see this not working out. Maybe it does, but this launch can’t be a good barometer for how the line is going to perform.
How life 6 fits is interesting. I think it DOES. First, you need to remember that before Year 1000, there’d been something quite similar to Year 100, with mutants vs Nimrod and machines, so it’s still part of the run of lives (4-6) where Moira is killed or defeated by Sentinels, setting up her life mission in 7 of taking out the Trasks. The odd part, though, is Moira staying alive so long in 6. You’d think that after a couple of CENTURIES she might just decide that mutants lost again, might as well move on to the next life. I guess she was trying to learn about the post-humans? Also, why did the blue guys keep Moira around? We know that near the end, they knew they had to, but what about earlier?
How many times can they trot out poor man’s Chris Claremont?
They’ve been milking the Claremont run on X-Men for years, and it had been getting diminishing returns.
It’s the same problem that has plagued Daredevil since Frank Miller.
No one knows how to do anything interesting with Daredevil anymore, because the book has been stuck in attempting to homage Miller.
How many people are talking about Daredevil comics?
How was the last big relaunch of Daredevil, that is going to take him back to his grim ‘n’ gritty roots, just like you remember reading in those better Frank Miller comics?
I’d like to see Marvel move forward with the X-Men in to some new direction with promise.
I’ve read all of the Chris Claremont X-Men comics.
They were amazing. It was also the 1980s.
Dave-The problem with life six’s placement is that in Powers of X #6, Moira says that by living so long during life six, she learned that the biggest problem wasn’t Sentinels or Nimrods.
Then, she goes on to spend her next life trying to stop the creation of the Sentinels.
Next, with life nine, she feels it is of the utmost importance to stop the Nimrod from coming online.
The whole point of life nine is to find the moment when there is a paradigm shift leading to the creation of a Nimrod.
She carries that information over to life ten.
The big revelation is that they must stop the Mother Mold from becoming functional….something I’m sure the X-Men would have done anyway.
Yet, based on life six’ knowledge, Moira already knows that stopping the creation of the Sentinels or the Nimrod won’t actually change anything.
So, she wasted life seven and life nine trying to stop something which she already knew (per life 6) wasn’t the real issue.