The Complete Moira, Part 7
For previous chapters, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.
In our penultimate post, we’ll cover Moira’s time in Excalibur under Warren Ellis and Ben Raab.
Excalibur vol 1 #86 by Warren Ellis, Ken Lashley & Tom Wegrzyn (“Back to Life”, February 1995). This is the first issue of the Ellis run proper, although it’s almost immediately interrupted for four months by the Age of Apocalypse crossover. Moira fits quite nicely into Ellis’s style, and instantly starts to become stroppier and grumpier. Ellis also introduces a running joke about her awful coffee. Be advised, though, that Moira doesn’t actually do all that much in the Ellis run, aside from providing colour while the team are at home on Muir Isle. In this issue, Pete Wisdom joins the cast. Nightcrawler works out that Moira has the Legacy Virus, but she insists that they go on their important mission anyway.
X-Men Prime by various creators (“Racing the Night”, July 1995). This is the one-shot that sets up the resuming X-Men titles after the “Age of Apocalypse”. In the bit that’s relevant to Moira, Trish Tilby reveals to the public that the Legacy Virus has spread to the human race, with Moira as the first human victim; Moira and Rory watch on TV. This is meant to lead in to a storyline about who leaked the data, but as we’ll see it all peters out quite quickly. I’m not sure it was ever resolved, but it certainly doesn’t happen in any of Moira’s stories.
Cable #21 by Jeph Loeb, Arnie Jorgensen & Mark Pennington (“…Our Regularly Scheduled Program…”, July 1995). In the epilogue, Moira and Rory discuss who leaked the news of her infection, and Moira reveals that the Muir Isle computers were hacked. She suggests it has something to do with Cable, but that’s a subplot that goes nowhere.
Excalibur vol 1 #87 by Warren Ellis, Ken Lashley & Tom Wegrzyn (“Back to Reality”, July 1995). Excalibur themselves are off in Genosha, but in a subplot, Moira continues to discuss how the Muir Isle computers got hacked. Since this is a Warren Ellis comic in 1995, there is dialogue about modems.
Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #326 by Scott Lobdell, Joe Madureira & Tim Townsend (“The Nature of Evil”, November 1995). Professor X stages a public argument with the Beast in order to “prove” to scientists that the Legacy Virus is actually quite a trivial problem and nothing to worry about. Moira and Excalibur are shown watching on TV.
Excalibur vol 1 #88-90 by Warren Ellis and various artists (“Dream Nails”, August to October 1995). “Dream Nails” is principally a Kitty Pryde & Pete Wisdom story; once again, Moira only appears in subplots. She’s now figured out how the computer got hacked – there’s some technobabble to the effect that Muir Isle has a secure connection to the X-Men’s Mansion, which was compromised when Banshee blew some stuff up during the “Phalanx Covenant”. Even though Moira has taken a dislike to Pete Wisdom, she does defend him against suggestions that, as the newcomer and cynical outsider, he’s the most likely person to blame.
There’s also some bio-babble about the Legacy Virus, setting up the strange idea that it lacks any rational pattern because it was created by Stryfe, and Stryfe likes chaos.
Moira also gets some more character-driven moments – there’s a scene of her tormenting herself by looking at pictures of the people who have died from the Legacy Virus so far. By this point, Ellis seems to be subscribing to the “survivor’s guilt” interpretation of Moira, which is a perfectly workable one. At the end, Moira is cheered up when Rahne arrives for a visit (which leads to her joining the team).
Wolverine: Knight of Terra by Ian Edginton, John Ostrander, Jan Duursema & Rick Magyar (August 1995). Rahne swaps places with her counterpart from the magical world of Geshem. While Rahne has her adventure, Moira helps to deal with the Geshem counterpart on Muir Isle. In the end, of course, Wolverine sorts it all out.
Moira doesn’t appear in Wolverine vol 2 #93, but the story reports her turning Cyber over to the Scottish authorities. (He’s been on Muir Isle as a prisoner since Excalibur and Wolverine captured him; we covered that last time.)
Generation X ’95 by Scott Lobdell, Jeph Loeb, Ashley Wood, Shawn McManus and others (“Leather and Lace”, 1995). Sean contacts Moira for advice on treating the sickly Penance. Since Sean is reluctant to talk about Moira’s Legacy Virus infection, they have a rather awkward exchange, until Moira pushes him into talking more freely about his feelings. Almost immediately, she switches back to talking business, but signs off telling him that she loves him.
Excalibur vol 1 #91 by Warren Ellis, David Williams et al (“Baby I Love You”, November 1995). This is the issue where they all go to the pub. Moira gets completely blitzed and dances on the tables with Rahne, Meggan and Amanda, before finally getting cut off by the bar staff. Rahne is a little disappointed by all this; Moira tells Rahne that she just wanted to escape from her problems for a while. (There’s also some talk in this issue about Moira’s youth, but I covered that in part 1.)
Excalibur vol 1 #92 by Warren Ellis, Casey Jones et al (“I Want You”, December 1995). On return to Muir Isle, Colossus shows up and gets into a fight with Pete Wisdom, and Moira sobers herself up (with injections) to deal with the injuries.
Excalibur vol 1 #93 by Warren Ellis, Casey Jones and Tom Simmons (“The Spire”, January 1996). Moira is still feuding with Pete Wisdom in mid-90s Ellis style, complete with threats to use refrigerated probes on him.
X-Man #11-12 & Excalibur vol 1 #95 by various creators (January to March 1996). This is a crossover story where Nate Grey, newly arrived in the mainstream Marvel Universe and deeply paranoid about Professor X, is pointed in the direction of Muir Isle as a possible source of help with his powers. Moira duly runs some tests on him, and is troubled not only by Nate’s resemblance to Cable and Stryfe, but also because his power levels remind her of Proteus.
Nate’s paranoia leads to the obligatory fight with Excalibur, but Moira talks him down by telling him how childish he’s being. Rather unhelpfully for the Hickman retcon, she also proves herself to him by letting him read her mind. According to the narrator, Nate sees “images of lost loves, dear lovers, genes and viruses”. But presumably he doesn’t pick up anything about her Hickman-era past lives, since you’d think he’d have mentioned it. I suppose we have to imagine that Moira has some sort of telepathic shields, and correctly gambles that, despite his power, Nate will be too inexperienced to see past them. There is some support for this in the story – she points out that her plan only worked because of Nate’s lack of life experience.
Cable vol 1 #29 by Jeph Loeb, Ian Churchill & Scott Hanna (“Man in the Mirror”, March 1996). Moira attends a meeting to discuss what to do about Nate Grey. At the end, Blaquesmith wipes everyone’s memories of the conversation.
Excalibur vol 1 #97 by Warren Ellis, Casey Jones & Tom Simmons (“Counterfire”, May 1996). With most of the team off on a mission, Moira and Douglock talk about how he’s working towards integrating his machine and human sides into a single personality.
We haven’t mentioned much about Douglock so far, but he’s present throughout Moira’s tenure in the cast of Excalibur. This raises some issues for the Hickman retcon. Given what she learned in her previous life, techno-organic beings such as the Phalanx ought to be quite a big deal for her, but there’s never really any sign of that on the page. The same problem comes up with the introduction of Warlock, but she really does spend a very long time around Douglock at this period. Presumably she’s either focussing her attention on the Legacy Virus, or glad of the chance to study Douglock at length, or a bit of both. If anything, she seems quite pleased and encouraged by the fact that a human personality is coming to the fore in Douglock – perhaps she sees that as an encouraging signal. But this is one area where, post-Hickman, we really do have to imagine Moira routinely keeping a poker face about something that she ought to care about much more.
Excalibur vol 1 #98 by Warren Ellis, Carlos Pacheco & Bob Wiacek (“Fireflies”, June 1996). Moira attends a mission briefing and offers some words of encouragement.
Excalibur vol 1 #100 by Warren Ellis, Casey Jones et al (“London’s Burning”, August 1996). Excalibur are off fighting Black Air in their anniversary storyline, but Moira appears in a subplot which is ties in to the “Onslaught” crossover. (There’s a scene in Uncanny X-Men #335 which is meant to set this up, but it doesn’t work, because it features Excalibur when they ought to be away in the Black Air storyline throughout “Onslaught.”)
The X-Men tell Moira that Professor X has gone mad, and turned into Onslaught. In response, Moira shows them a hidden vault in the foundations of the Muir Isle research centre, where the Professor kept his secrets. The computers inside turn out to hold the Xavier Protocols, which give advice on how to kill not only him, but any of the other X-Men, should it be necessary.
Excalibur vol 1 #101 by Warren Ellis, Casey Jones & Tom Simmons (“Quiet”, September 1996). After the X-Men leave, Moira watches a recorded message that Professor Xavier left for her. It tells her that, if she’s watching the message, then he must have died or gone mad. On that basis, Muir Isle is now “the sole repository of all the mutant-related data I have gathered”, and she is “the last outpost of the dream”.
These comments actually make more sense post-Hickman, since at the time they were open to the obvious objection that the rest of the X-Men could easily still be around. Now, Xavier and Moira have a side project in which the X-Men are not involved – so the idea of Moira stepping into his shoes to steer mutant history more directly works rather more smoothly. As we’ll see, Moira starts taking a slightly more active role in directing the team now that Xavier is out of the way, which mirrors her behaviour during the Claremont run (where she starts making suggestions when Xavier is in a coma).
When Excalibur arrive back home, Moira persuades them to stay out of the “Onslaught” crossover, so that someone will be left to keep the dream alive if everyone else gets killed. She’s also delighted to see that Douglock’s humanisation is continuing apace.
Excalibur vol 1 #102 by Warren Ellis, Casey Jones et al (“After the Bomb”, October 1996). This is Ellis’s penultimate issue, but it’s the last to feature Moira. She continues to push the new angle that Excalibur are now the last outpost of the dream, and were right to stay out of the Onslaught affair. Also in this issue, the prisoners on Muir Isle are handed over to the UK government, presumably destined for wherever other superhuman prisoners go in Marvel Universe Britain. This returns Muir Isle to being simply as a Legacy Virus research centre and superhero base.
Excalibur vol 1 #104-105 by various creators (“Buried Secret” / “Hard Truths”, December 1996 & January 1997). Moira is still working on the Legacy Virus. She’s also still disappointed to learn of the Xavier Protocols, but at the same time she’s reluctant to simply delete them. And she’s arguing that Excalibur should steer clear of post-Onslaught America – though half the team go anyway. While they’re away, the island is attacked by the Mutant Liberation Front, who get repelled.
This two-parter, which appeared between the Ellis and Raab runs, is an incoherent mess. The random assemblage of creators (which improbably includes John Arcudi, Keith Giffen and Bryan Hitch) seem not to have been properly briefed either on the characters they were using, or on what was happening in the other chapter. At least one character teleports between the end of part 1 and the start of part 2, and the latter issue also features random MLF footsoldiers who don’t appear anywhere else.
Cable #39-40 by various creators (“All Things Great and Small” / “Into the Dark”, January & February 1997.) Moira advances the plot by encouraging Cable to investigate the missing Renée Majcomb. You could read this as another example of Moira taking a more direct role in X-affairs now that Xavier and Magneto are unavailable to her as intermediaries. But mainly, it’s another glitchy story which seems to have changed direction thanks to a change of writer – issue #39 is the final Jeph Loeb issue, while issue #40 is a fill-in by Todd Dezago.
Excalibur vol 1 #106 by Ben Raab, Randy Green et al (“A Portrait of the Artist”, February 1997). This is the first issue of the Ben Raab run, which will see us through to the end of the book. Moira writes an email to Xavier, who is currently in prison following “Onslaught”. In it, she writes about her survivor’s guilt over the deaths of Joe and Proteus, and is upset about the pressure of having to deal with Xavier’s dream (and her own Legacy Virus infection, which you’ll note has barely come up as a plot point in quite some time) alone. Again, her feelings of personal responsibility arguably work better in the light of the Hickman retcon, since it helps to explain why she doesn’t feel she can look to Excalibur for that support. Of course, the original intention is that Moira is taking everything on herself and not taking full advantage of the support that’s available to her
Naturally, the email bounces.
Excalibur vol 1 #107 by Ben Raab, Salvador Larroca & Scott Koblish (“Focus”, March 1997). Moira is working obsessively on the cure to the Legacy Virus.
X-Man #26 by Terry Kavanagh, Pascual Ferry, Jamie Mendoza & Hack Shack (“Down to Earth”, April 1997). Nate Grey is having trouble with his telekinesis, so he visits Moira again. She tells him it’s psychosomatic. For whatever reason, this time she’s not just waiting for him, she has a special telepathy-proof helmet to hand. Since it’s the 90s, she also tries to break his mental blocks by shooting at him. It doesn’t work, but by this point Nate has spent long enough in the 90s X-books to regard such behaviour as relatively normal, and he wanders off again to his next storyline.
Excalibur vol 1 #109 by Ben Raab, Salvador Larroca & Scott Koblish (“Dragon Moon Rising”, May 1997). Kurt tries to offer Moira some emotional support over the Legacy Virus, but she feels as though she is dealing with everything alone.
X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #16 by Ben Raab, Meluin Rubi & Rob Hunter (“Primal”, September 1997). Moira appears briefly on a video link, to offer a few words of encouragement to Sean Cassidy.
Excalibur vol 1 #112 by Ben Raab, Pete Woods & Scott Koblish (“Survival”, September 1997). After a few months off panel, Moira is getting noticeably sicker, as her death at the hands of the Legacy Virus draws near. Or that’s the idea. As it turns out, she’s got another three years to go, but that’s comics for you. There’s also a weird joke about Moira being so out of touch that she calls milkshakes “malted milk”, which seems more appropriate to an American granny.
Anyway, Moira takes Rahne and Douglock to the mainland for a milkshake in an uncommon display of maternal affection, as she tries to put on a show of normality. While some earlier writers have simply asserted Moira and Rahne’s mother-daughter relationship, or cast doubt on its underlying substance, Raab takes it at face value and actually shows it on the page for more than brief glimpses.
Excalibur vol 1 #113 by Ben Raab, Pete Woods & Scott Koblish (“Faith”). Moira is torn between spending her remaining time with her daughter Rahne, and working on the Legacy Virus. In the short term, the problem resolves itself, as Rahne sets off to America to attend a New Mutants reunion (which is a set-up for a New Mutants miniseres, “Truth or Death”). Moira’s post-Onslaught paranoia about visiting the US seems to have vanished, which is a bit weird, since we’re now in the run-up to Operation: Zero Tolerance.
Excalibur vol 1 #114 by Ben Raab, Pete Woods & Scott Koblish (“For the One I Love”, November 1997). A brief cameo in which Moira passes on an email from SHIELD to Kitty Pryde.
Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #348 by Scott Lobdell, Joe Madureira et al (“Because, I Said So”, October 1997). Another cameo – Moira is on TV being interviewed about Operation: Zero Tolerance. She’s against it.
Generation X vol 1 #32 by Tom DeFalco, Mark Buckingham et al (“A Day at the Circus!”, November 1997). Sean visits Muir Island to ask for Moira’s input on the St Croix twins. The story dutifully follows Excalibur by having Sean worry that she’s obsessing about her work; Moira, for her part, seems to be worried that Sean will pair up with Emma Frost. They have a picnic and renew their long-distance relationship, which then gets immediately shoved back on the back-burner.
Generation X vol 1 #33 by Larry Hama, Steve Harris & Scott Hanna (“Thieves in the Night”, December 1997). Moira pops up briefly to explain the Legacy Virus.
Excalibur vol 1 #115 by Ben Raab, Mel Rubi & Scott Koblish (“Missionaries”, December 1997). Having discovered that the Legacy Virus is airborne, and that any mutant could potentially be a victim, Moira (belatedly!) decides to quarantine herself until she finds a cure. Even though this is an obviously sensible and overdue step, the story treats it as a suicidal decision. The idea is that Moira is meant to be punishing herself and/or retreating for some sort of last stand. Improbably, the vault is set to unlock only when a cure is found. You might think this storyline is not ideally suited for Excalibur, whose regular cast includes a teleporter and a girl who can walk through walls, but you’re not a 90s X-Men editor. Anyway, ignore the logic for a moment and focus on the emotional beats: Rahne refuses to abandon her mother, and insists on remaining in the lab as the door locks behind them.
Excalibur vol 1 #117 by Ben Raab, Mel Rubi & Rob Hunter (“Amendments”, February 1998). Moira is angry with Rahne about disrupting her isolation and risking exposure. But they hug and make up, as you’d expect from Raab’s straight-bat approach to their relationship.
Excalibur vol 1 #118 by Ben Raab, Mel Rubi & Scott Koblish (“New Year’s Evil”, March 1998). Moira appears briefly over a video link from her quarantine, while Excalibur deal with a Bamf infestation.
Excalibur vol 1 #120 by Ben Raab, Mel Rubi & Scott Koblish (“Current Events”, May 1998). Remember the impenetrable vault door that won’t open until the Legacy Virus is cured? Douglock hacks his way in, in order to save Rahne. The whole quarantine idea is then dropped. The story only really works if you’re prepared to run with the highly dubious premise that there was no scientific need for the quarantine in the first place. But if you are prepared to go with that, then the idea seems to be that five issues in the vault have led Moira to realise that she was just doing it to punish herself, and she’s quietly relieved that Douglock has given her an excuse to drop the whole thing. On its own terms, it makes a certain degree of sense. Rahne seems much more angry about it than Moira does, and Moira is mostly amused by Douglock and Wolfsbane’s flirtation.
Excalibur vol 1 #121 by Ben Raab, Trevor Scott & Andrew Pepoy (“With Friends Like These”, June 1998). In a complete U-turn from the quarantine plan (played up as such), Moira decides to take a sabbatical from the Legacy Virus. The failure of the quarantine scheme has been a turning point leading Moira to back off on her self-destructive tendencies and take more care of herself.
Excalibur vol 1 #122-123 by Ben Raab, Dale Eaglesham, Trevor Scott et al (“The Search”, July & August 1998). Moira ponders some ideas about what to do on her sabbatical, but we don’t get to any of them, because the book is about to get cancelled. So the focus shifts to Brian and Meggan’s wedding, which doesn’t really affect Moira at all. Moira tags along on Meggan’s trip to buy a wedding dress, and offers some advice on relationship stuff.
Excalibur vol 1 #124-125 by Ben Raab, Dale Eaglesham & Scott Hanna (“Someone” / “Tying the Knot”, September & October 1998). Excalibur wraps up with Meggan’s hen night in issue #124, and her wedding in issue #125. Moira attends both but doesn’t really have much to do in either.
Here ends Moira’s time as a regular character in any title. But we’ve another couple of years to go before she dies…
Moira seemed like such a nice person during Ellis’ Excalibur run. Who knew she was such a manipulative mastermind?
Plus, the trick of making so much about her not being able to make quality coffee, nice attempt at humanizing herself, to fool everyone about her master plan.
“Ah, another morning. The future needs to be changed. Xavier needs to give up on his dream. First, time to make the coffee!”.
To get a No-Prize, I say that Moira discovering she had the Legacy Virus made her believe that Life Ten was another wasted life, and she was about to start on Destiny’s hypothetical eleventh life, so she decided to just let things go and try to enjoy herself.
Late-90s Excalibur is one of those prime examples of an X-book continuing by virtue of momentum.
I remember Paul’s post-Ellis era reviews of it from the time and there was a really palpable sense of disinterest in it.
Then again, about the only X-book which felt like it was doing anything terribly interest was X-force.
“Since it’s the 90s, she also tries to break his mental blocks by shooting at him. It doesn’t work, but by this point Nate has spent long enough in the 90s X-books to regard such behaviour as relatively normal, and he wanders off again to his next storyline.”
That gave me a nice laugh. Thanks.
This was definitely a funny one. Always a pleasure to see one of these recaps pop up.
I’m really interested in Moira’s relationship with the techno-organic folks in her life. And I wonder, with what they know now, why Moira and Charles are trusting Cypher to set up and maintain the relationship with Krakoa.
There probably aren’t many other mutants with his skill set, but he is partly TO. Which means that Moira and Charles probably have some complicated feelings about him.
“You might think this storyline is not ideally suited for Excalibur, whose regular cast includes a teleporter and a girl who can walk through walls, but you’re not a 90s X-Men editor.”
Bless you, sir. Unlike most of the 90s X-Men, this joke went somewhere.
The first thing I ever read by Warren Ellis was X-Calibre #1 from Age of Apocalypse, where John Proudstar points at Nightcrawler, saying “don’t avoid the point!” and Nightcrawler teleports his finger off.
This retcon of Moira with weird powers sounds like something he would be in to, for sure.
I wonder if Moira’s relationship with Sean Cassidy will feature in her upcoming series. At the time, I remember reading the end of Generation X #32 thinking they were back together. Then a few years later she died. Then a few years later he died too.
She was so drawn to Sean…the lure and pull of settling down to a simpler life, forgetting that she’s secretly a mutant with a plan…but, she knew that she must found the isle of Krakoa and change everything.
So, she kept avoiding the relationship.
Maybe there will be time for love after the master plan is completed. One can only hope.
I do remember something from Ellis’ Excalibur which may be pertinent, although not directly involving Moira.
I remember that part of Ellis’ conspiracy about Black Air was that they discovered that Black Air had knowledge of the Phalanx before the X-Men.
Well, now we know that Moira had knowledge of the Phalanx long before anyone else, and she must have shared the existence of the Phalanx with Xavier, when she showed him her past lives.
“Wolverine: Knight of Terra by Ian Edginton, John Ostrander, Jan Duursema & Rick Magyar”
Ostrander and Duursema created my favourite Star Wars comics, Legacy. Always nice to find something else from them. Good stuff.
Man Excalibur had some ugly title headers (or whatever they’re called). The original one was so good a Vegas casino stole it, so I suppose later designers just gave up even trying.
Enjoyed the shade thrown at 90s X-Men comics. Gave me a nice chuckle for a Monday morning.
@CJ
“This retcon of Moira with weird powers sounds like something he would be in to, for sure.”
Post-retcon Moira seems like a character begging for Warren Ellis to write them. She even already has a reason to be interested in nanotechnology.
Didn’t Hickman say he wanted a very specific writer to work on Moira’s still unannounced series?
(Given his obvious interest in Carey’s run that’s who I was betting on at the time, but as Paul shows, after Claremont Ellis was basically the only person to write Moira for a considerable amount of time).
And it’s funny, Looking at it here, Ellis only stuck around for about 18 months in total.
For whatever reason his run seemed like it was a lot longer, but then again when you’re a teenager and collecting at a time when the internet was barely a thing, everything felt longer.
There’s one thing that’s persistently bugged me about the HoX setup, and this seems like as good a place as any to ask:
Why now? Why did Chuck and Moira wait until now to implement the Krakoa plan?
I’m not trying to stir up trouble or nitpick plot holes – I liked HoXPoX a lot and I think the story mostly adhered to its own consistent internal logic, which is all I really ask wrt/continuity. But as far as I can tell, all of the necessary pieces for the Krakoa plot to work we’re in place for a while, while mutants have spent years on the brink of extinction and in desperate need of a sanctuary.
So my question is – why Krakoa now? Did I overlook some necessary piece of the plan that only just came together in-story? Or was there some inciting event that convinced the conspirators that, after years of hardship, yes, this is finally the moment to act?
Like, with New X-Men, Genosha was a massive tragedy that forced the characters to rethink their methods and long-term goals, which justified the change in direction. Krakoa is vastly more radical than anything in New X-Men, but there doesn’t seem to be any catalyst beyond Chuck waking up one morning and deciding to become Psychic Helmet Jesus.
Has the whole resurrection crew been around at any point at which Xavier has been alive for a long enough period to set everything up? Or maybe Krakoa just now got back from its adventure in space.
It could be as simple as they only figured out how to make it all work recently. They would have already had the idea of Krakoa from Moira’s previous lives, but not necessarily the part about the medicines that could be used for leverage on the international stage, which is the crucial bit surely.l
I think ASV is right in that we haven’t had the full resurrection crew around and Xavier alive at the same time for very long. The pivot is Goldballs, who doesn’t get his powers until after AvX, at which point Xavier is dead.
Xavier isn’t back until fairly recently (Astonishing X-Men #5 in December 2017, which leads immediately into another arc until #12) so he’s not able to do anything until mid-2018. Of note, his last line in that issue is “I have a new dream.” Which has to be deliberate Hickman setup. So you can pretty credibly theorize that he and Moira are setting up for Krakoa as soon as he’s back.
At a stretch, the apparent deaths of most of the X-Men during Age of X-Man, as well as Apocalypse, egged Xavier/Moira further into getting resurrection going ASAP considering how important Apocalypse seems to be to the Krakoan project.
@Andrew: 18 issues was in fact a respectable length of stability for the time.
Compare, for instance, with Malibu’s Ultraforce, that had two regular series with 27 issues in all while still facing several reboots and major changes of setup. By my account those two series added up to _at the very least_ four “regular” writers, and I am definitely being conservative in this accounting. Interestingly, Warren Ellis makes that short list.
Or compare with the controversial time when Tony Stark was Iron Boy. It lasted a whopping _eight issues_ in his own book, ten if you include the cameos late in the Heroes Reborn books that were specifically set up to remove him for good.
Mid-late 1990s sensitivies wanted everything to be QUICK CHANGING, EXTREME!!! and significant FOREVER. Every month. I guess Nancy Reagan wasn’t convincing.
Oh absolutely and particularly of the time the X-books were engaged in an absolute omnishambles
Remember when Mark Waid got brought in as the new Uncanny X-men writer only to last about five months and exit halfway through Onslaught?
From memory it was because he and Scott Lobdell didn’t get along and Waid found the X-office internal politics to be painful (as well as getting sacked from Captain America and Avengers in favour of Liefeld).
Lobdell left over a disagreement with the editors halfway through Uncanny 350, Seagle/Kelly barely got off the ground before things fell apart and finally, Alan Davis by way of committee.
“Psychic Helmet Jesus”
Lol.
Arrowhead-There’s also the issue of Xavier not wanting to give up his dream.
Xavier, Magneto, and Moira haven’t been colluding this entire time in secret.
Moira was trying to break Xavier.
Magneto believed that he could accomplish everything himself, without needing help.
Remember, there was a schism between Xavier and Magneto mentioned by Moira.
This led to the clash of ideologies between the X-Men and Magneto that lasted for years.
Xavier dying and the events of “Age of X-Man”, where humans thought that all mutants were going to die and decided to celebrate, was probably a breaking point.
I would probably give up on my dream by that point too, and agree with Moira.
His dream is not working, and things are continually getting worse.
It does play well with how dark and depressing the X-Men books had been getting post-Morrison.
Mutants seemed to be their own worst enemies, and humans were continually finding reasons to hate mutants “more than ever before”.
———————————-
Also, thank heavens that the Teen Tony story only lasted for eight issues.
Those were the worst comics I have ever read.
I think I’d even consider them worse than Austen’s Uncanny X-Men.
The sales on Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and FF were in the toilet at that time. Marvel had just filed for bankruptcy.
They felt they had to do something drastic to encourage fans to give those titles another chance, and so they reached out to the Image creators to fix their books for them.
O’Brien: In the bit that’s relevant to Moira, Trish Tilby reveals to the public that the Legacy Virus has spread to the human race, with Moira as the first human victim; Moira and Rory watch on TV. This is meant to lead in to a storyline about who leaked the data, but as we’ll see it all peters out quite quickly. I’m not sure it was ever resolved, but it certainly doesn’t happen in any of Moira’s stories.
IIRC, it turned out to be Sebastian Shaw behind the leak. Perhaps with help from Black Air? ISTR a meeting between him and Black Air operative Scratch where the subject came up.
Granted, it’s been many years since I read these stories…
Chris V: Xavier dying and the events of “Age of X-Man”, where humans thought that all mutants were going to die and decided to celebrate, was probably a breaking point.
Yeah, this is one of things bugging me about Hickman’s set-up.
Xavier cites Cassandra Nova’s genocide in Genosha as the tipping point that changed his mind. Hickman’s retconned the timeline such that, in-universe, that event only occurred 3ish years ago. But, that’s still not immediately before HoX/PoX, and idealistic Xavier continued to be a prominent character all the way up through AvX. So, the Genoshan genocide doesn’t make sense to me as Xavier’s breaking point. Your “Age of X-Man” explanation would fit better even though it contradicts what Xavier’s said on-panel.
On that note, there’ve been remarkably few (if any?) references in Dawn of X-era stories to the immediately preceding period–“Age of X-Man”, Rosenberg’s run, etc. As such, to me, it doesn’t seem intended as a direct continuation. And, given the extent of Hickman’s retcons, I question how much of that preceding period is even still canon.
I didn’t realize Xavier used Genosha as his breaking point in Hickman’s story.
I just remembered him using that as propaganda.
You know, about his parasitic twin entity, which isn’t even human, deciding to destroy Genosha…
It doesn’t fit with Morrison’s run, in the least.
Xavier had every reason to feel more positive, because his dream (after he made the changes which were actually prompted by Genosha) actually seemed to be working now.
Humans were growing to accept mutants more.
The future looked positive.
Then, there was “No More Mutants”, and things went off the rails.
re: FUBAR007
Off the top of my head, Wolfsbane was resurrected in New Mutants, referring to her death in Rosenberg’s Uncanny. Shinobi Shaw was resurrected in Marauders, referring to his death in Rosenberg’s Uncanny.
I’m sure there’s more, but there you go.
The question of “why now?” is very fair, is a major complaint I have about this direction, and all of the explanations people try to make I hope you guys realize sound really silly and far fetched. All of this would be much better and stronger and with fewer holes if they chose to use a new character as their convenient plot device instead of Moira (but of course that would give it less artificial, unearned weight).
Most of my reading experience with Moira was during this run. I learned to love and appreciate the character, largely because she more than held her own while being in no way a mutant. And my memories of this run are my default for why HOXPOX makes no sense and is ridiculous. Her entire character history is basically destroyed in service of this story, because the character in these books– where she got most of her development– is in no way congruous with anything we’ve seen in HOXPOX.
There is absolutely no way to reconcile any of this with the character who’s on a mission to save mutantkind from the Rise of the Machines. She’s just a strong, likable character who holds this little family together and commands the respect of characters infinitely more powerful than herself.
Ok here’s another way to put it, and I imagine this will be Paul’s final analysis: There’s nothing about anything Paul is recapping that one would ever imagine HOXPOX grew organically from.
To me personally, as a Moira fan, and someone who really grew to appreciate her BECAUSE she was a baseline human, this is what bothers me. I feel like they destroyed her character and ruined her appearances in books like this for no reason and turned her into a plot device that’s actually a worse and more problematic plot device than if they’d used a brand new mutant.
I also take what they’ve done to the X-Men personally, in case you guys hadn’t noticed. That’s why I type passionately here. We all love the same thing, many of you just love it much more casually I guess.
@Dazzler
To be perfectly honest, I always thought you were just being a contrarian – explaining your personal investment with this franchise provides a lot of useful context.
Because while our reactions are diametrically opposed, we’re coming from a similar place. I remember feeling personally, irrationally angry during the Decimation/Disney takeover/Inhumans era. The corporate politics and editorial agenda were so transparently, condescendingly obvious that I gave up on Marvel. So many of us identity with the X-Men as freaks or outsiders – watching them get shoved aside by a billion dollar entertainment monopoly, to promote their alpha male jock blockbusters, was like getting punched in the gut.
That’s why HoX resonated with me. Charles Xavier flipping humanity the middle finger and building a terrifying horny dys-utopia on Xenomorph Island and mutants all combining their abilities to become debauched immortal demigods… that was incredibly cathartic, even though I knew this new direction was just as driven by corporate IP concerns as everything that came before… and even though they followed this radical change with 8 months of perfectly okay, above-average decompressed superhero stories.
Being a fan of a corporate entertainment property sucks. You get sucked into a narrative and get emotionally invested in the fictional characters and their struggles, because that’s how stories work. But it’s not actually a story. It’s a decades-long game of telephone where half of the storytellers are genre hacks, and it’s a branded product that exists to monetize your emotional engagement. We fall in love with something cheap and fake, and you eventually realize it’s cheap and fake, but it’s too late to let go.
“Comics will break your heart.” – Jack Kirby
“all of the explanations people try to make I hope you guys realize sound really silly and far fetched.”
Almost as silly sounding and farfetched as your criticisms.
Dazzler, as they say, all those stories you loved still exist.
You just have to go back and read the back-issues anytime you feel like it.
I guess the bigger question to ask is, if you hate this story so much, why are you following it?
I understand that you strongly dislike it. I accept that, and that’s perfectly fine.
I’m not going to try to make you enjoy it.
A lot of other people seem to really enjoy it. That’s also their prerogative.
At first, you seemed to want to understand why people were enjoying this new direction, and that makes sense.
More and more, it seems like anytime someone posts something about why they are enjoying Hickman’s run, you refuse to accept their opinion.
If you are trying to change peoples’ mind, then you are simply wasting your time.
Better to move on and forget about it.
Pull out the X-Men comics you love and read them. Maybe someday you’ll find the X-Men more to your liking and come back, or maybe you’ll move on and find other comic series to love instead.
I have given up on the X-Men comics quite a number of times in my life.
There are other times when I should have given up (Chuck Austen, the Inhumans debacle, to name just two), where I mindlessly kept reading, just out of habit.
The comics didn’t actively upset me. I just found it stupid and badly written, and was reading other comic books that I did enjoy, so I sort of ignored how the X-books had become horrible.
You aren’t being forced to read any comics, it’s a choice.
I am reading Hickman’s run in the way I would read a science fiction novel.
I am hoping that this is going somewhere interesting, and am willing to give it my time, for now.
I don’t even really bother to think about this as being the X-Men.
I haven’t truly loved the X-Men since Claremont left Uncanny X-Men.
There have been times I have enjoyed the book again (Morrison, Mike Carey), but it hasn’t been the same since Claremont.
Anytime I want to rediscover those feelings again, I pull out some of my back-issues and read them.
There are a number of great comic series on the market. There’s no reason to waste your time with a comic that is actively making you feel negative emotions.
Just accept that some people do like this comic, for one reason or another.
Let me also add that I also like Moira (mainly because of Ellis’ Excalibur run too).
She was killed off years ago.
Now, Moira is back, and she appeared in one of the most interesting comics I read last year (the issue of House of X which revealed her mutant power).
That made Moira an interesting character to me again.
As I pointed out, in a sarcastic manner, no, Hickman’s ret-con doesn’t make sense when you read most of Moira’s prior appearances (especially this run on Excalibur by Ellis).
However, as I said above, those stories still all exist.
If I want to revisit the feelings I had reading Ellis’ Excalibur (one of the only X-books I was actually enjoying during this time-period), I can always pull out some of those issues and re-read them.
Dazzler: I also take what they’ve done to the X-Men personally, in case you guys hadn’t noticed. That’s why I type passionately here. We all love the same thing, many of you just love it much more casually I guess.
I’ve been where you are. What Morrison did to Scott and Jean pissed me off so much, I stopped buying the entire X-Men line after 13 years of readership. Except for Claremont’s X-Men Forever series, I didn’t come back until last year when Marvel resurrected Jean. Even then, I’ve only been buying at most 2-3 titles per month. It’s a bit like casually dating an ex who cheated on you long ago; the attraction and “muscle memory” are still there, but the trust will never grow back, and a permanent relationship is out of the question.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of X-Men fans: those who get emotionally invested in the characters, and those who are more in it for the ideas, artistic craft, and cleverness of the plot. You and, historically, I* are in the former category; most of the prominent commenters here, including O’Brien himself, are in the latter one. Claremont, and his 90s successors and imitators, wrote for us; Morrison wrote, and now Hickman writes, for them.
*The current versions of the characters are so different from the ones I used to know, I’m completely dissociated from them and find myself in the strange position of only reading the titles for Hickman’s long-term plot. Indeed, IMO, Xavier and the core cast have turned into smug, self-righteous, punchable asshats. For the time being, though, I’m willing to give Hickman & co. the benefit of the doubt and presume that’s all part of the plot. If that turns out not to be the case, I’ll once again drop the franchise post-haste.
@FUBAR
“Broadly speaking, there are two types of X-Men fans: those who get emotionally invested in the characters, and those who are more in it for the ideas, artistic craft, and cleverness of the plot.”
There’s more overlap than you might think. I would have gladly bought 100 issues of Carey’s Supernova team, or if Remender had kept going with Uncanny X-Force instead of cannibslizing the story in his Avengers books.
Arrowhead, I appreciate the comment and the clarity. It’s clear we have a lot of the same tastes and opinions. Your perspective is interesting, and you are the first person here who’s actually made me understand an angle by which someone who’s passionate about the books could like this. I see it as having nothing at all to do with anything X-Men, but while I can’t grasp quite how you feel like these are the same characters you fell in love with, I actually understand why you feel the way you do.
Chris V, I tried to explain why I’m still around, and it’s because I love the franchise. I’m passionate about these characters and I don’t like seeing them get abused or mistreated. The same way Arrowhead felt they were abused on a corporate level and are now getting their day in the sun, I feel they are being abused. It’s art, it’s open to interpretation, and I’m more invested than any adult should be in this property. It’s just what it is. I still hold out hope that I will be able to actually buy these comics again some day instead of reading bits and pieces and following the story. Truly I don’t even think the books would have to be especially good, just respectable and respectful of the characters.
As for whether these stories still exist or not, canon matters to comic book readers. There’s an ongoing history that’s being created that I’ve followed for decades, and it shouldn’t matter but it does to me. That’s fandom for you. Yes, continuity and stories are mutable and flawed no matter what, but if this is what the X-Men are now and this is what Moira “always was,” then virtually none of her appearances make sense. Canonically, the Moira I came to love is completely incompatible with this new character they’ve assigned her name to.
Oh and wwk5d, thanks as always for contributing.
@Dazzler
You’re welcome. You can now resume your variation of “This sucks this stinks this is stupid and you are idiots for liking it”. Or better yet, do us all a favor and don’t. It gets very boring very quickly.
“Broadly speaking, there are two types of X-Men fans: those who get emotionally invested in the characters, and those who are more in it for the ideas, artistic craft, and cleverness of the plot.”
These is a third group of us fit both categories…
Dazzler-That’s just because you are still following a comic book that you seem to hate.
If you dropped all the X-titles and didn’t follow what was happening, you wouldn’t even realize there were any changes.
Imagine if Disney, for whatever reason, decided that they no longer wanted to publish X-Men comics, and banned Marvel from ever publishing any X-books ever again.
The line would be at an end.
There would be no more continuity.
We, as readers, can make the same decision with our reading habits.
If we no longer enjoy X-Men comics, we can stop reading, and pretend that the continuity ended.
Yes, this is currently canonical, as per Marvel Comics.
Canon is only important to those who are currently involved with the titles though.
Remember, DC published a series called Crisis on Infinite Earths which wiped out the entire continuity of everything that happened in the DCU.
Comic book continuity is really that fragile and fluid.
Why no, DC never published any staggeringly mediocre Watchmen prequels. Nor a self-satisfied crossover that declared Moore’s characters responsible in-story for the worst parts of the New52, while championing DC’s mainstream IP as icons of hope and optimism!
…The Tumblr kids call it “Headcanon,” and it’s a dumb name, but it’s also the only way to maintain your sanity in the age of corporate franchise media.
Don’t let Jim Lee or Joe Quesada tell you which stories are “real” and which ones “don’t count,” especially when they change their minds every six months anyway.
This is the dirty secret of superhero comics: all of them, from Chuck Austen to All-Star Superman, are just corporate-commissioned illustrated fanfiction. Don’t reward a company just because they happen to posess the trademark required to legally sell you fanfic.
Cherish the stories you love, forget the ones you don’t.
“It’s an imaginary story, but then again… aren’t they all?”
+1 to what Arrowhead wrote immediately above.
You are proposing logical solutions to a problem rooted entirely in emotion. If the attachment didn’t exist, why even read the comics in the first place? I’m just using some of my free time to speak my truth about something I care about. I’m well aware that fandom is not logical.
Best example I can think of is I had a friend who was struggling with heroin and I kept tabs on her to know what was going on and felt good when she was trying to be sober and felt awful when she relapsed and died. I cared about the outcome even though I didn’t like what happened. And the X-Men have always been a much bigger part of my life than this friend.
@wwk5d: [Their] is a third group of us fit both categories…
>raises hand<
Probably not important four years later, but I came across another Moira appearance that probably goes around Excalibur #123.
In Dark X-Men: The Beginning #1, Mimic gives his backstory, and there’s a panel of Moira helping him control his powers by giving him drugs.
It’s not hugely important, but given that we’ve recently established that Mimic was a potential Hope replacement in the Five, this scene can be read as Moira protecting an important asset for her (initial) plan.