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Feb 9

X Deaths of Wolverine #2 annotations

Posted on Wednesday, February 9, 2022 by Paul in Annotations

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #2
by Benjamin Percy, Federico Vicentini & Dijjo Lima

COVER / PAGE 1. Moira caught between the techno-organic Wolverine and Mystique. In the solicitations, Moira was shown as a blanked-out silhouette, to avoid spoiling the plot. Ironically, in the final version, she’s still got brown hair (which she dyed blonde last issue) in order to make her more recognisable.

PAGES 2-4. Moira robs a convenience store and calls Jane Foster.

Presumably Moira is picking up the things she needs for her home surgery later in the issue. (But if she’s relying on theft for everything, how did she get to America?)

Moira has special Krakoan cancer, interwoven with “floronic matter”. “Floronic” isn’t actually a real word – the DC villain Floronic Man was named after his home dimension – but apparently it means something to people in the Marvel Universe. Let’s assume it’s come to be understood as the sort of stuff Krakoan technology uses.

“The No-Place biome.” Moira concludes that she picked up the cancer from the hidden biome within Krakoa, where she was living throughout the Hickman era, and that “[t]hey” did this on purpose. This begs questions. Moira presumably isn’t suggesting that Xavier and Magneto were trying to poison her all along. Mystique and Destiny can’t have used the biome to do this. Is she suggesting that Cypher and Krakoa were always planning this, at least once they found out what she was up to? That doesn’t really make sense either, given that Cypher let her escape. But the idea that Krakoa was doing it makes a bit more sense.

PAGE 5. Recap and credits. Again, this is rather skewed in favour of Moira – it takes at face value her claim that precognitives had to be kept off Krakoa for her own sake, when Inferno made it pretty obvious that Moira had a particular animus to Destiny.

PAGE 6. Data page. Sage makes notes on the appearance of a duplicate Wolverine on Krakoa last issue.

Marvel Girl saw the second Wolverine last issue. The “physical and emotional toll of their current mission” refers to the plot of X Lives of Wolverine.

“Singing stones” are basically bugs made out of stone, used by X-Force to spy on people. They were first mentioned in Wolverine #8.

Black Tom Cassidy isn’t responding because the techno-organic Wolverine killed (or at least badly injured) him last issue. X-Force obviously figure that out soon enough, because on page 19 Professor X refers to “the pod Black Tom found”.

PAGES 7-10. The techno-organic Wolverine seizes a fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico.

He doesn’t say much, this guy. He does at least throw the crew over the side, instead of killing them – even though one of them has stabbed him – but how much good that’ll do them is debatable.

PAGE 11. Moira decides that Mystique is tailing her using the techno-organic arm.

This may well be true, but begs the question of why Cypher gave it to her in the first place. Did he just want Moira to be discreetly killed somewhere off Krakoa, where he wouldn’t have to think about it? Moira did actually raise this point in Inferno #4, asking Cypher “Is this your way to keep tabs on me, Douglas?” Cypher effectively denied it, though didn’t say so in terms. (“I don’t care where you go. I just figured, wherever you’re going, you’d probably do better with two hands.”

The two flashback panels show Moira on a bench with Professor X in House of X #2, and Mystique and Destiny confronting Moira in Inferno #4 (specifically, page 35 panel 1).

PAGE 12. Mystique shows up in pursuit.

It’s obviously Mystique, and that’s confirmed soon after.

PAGES 13-14. Moira cuts off her techno-organic arm.

Not much you can add to that, really.

PAGES 15-16. Mystique finds Moira’s room and gets blown up.

If the arm is indeed a tracking device then this is an ironic inversion of the way Moira’s severed arm was used as a decoy in Inferno (because of the tracking device inside). But… hold on. If it’s a tracking device, why did Mystique have to torture the guy at the front desk in order to find out what room Moira was in? Maybe Mystique’s tracking ability is pretty general… or maybe Moira just cut her arm off for nothing.

Mystique dies in the explosion (as seen on page 21), but of course she’ll just be resurrected.

PAGE 17. Destiny reflects on events.

“I warned her that this would likely come to pass.” In Inferno #4, Destiny simply said that if they allowed Moira to leave, “Her future branches wildly. She has hard choices to make. Until then, there will be no clarity.” If Destiny has started giving Mystique more useful guidance about Moira, then presumably Moira’s choices have started to narrow things down.

PAGE 18. Data page: Sage analyses the singing stone records.

Apparently, the techno-organic Wolverine is one of the Phalanx. That’s seemingly confirmed on page 20, when we get a shot from Wolverine’s point of view that also has the word “Phalanx” in shot.

The Phalanx are a techno-organic hivemind race, linked to Warlock’s Technarch species, who were major villains back in the 1990s. In Hickman’s cosmology – if we’re still doing that – the Phalanx are a key example of post-humanity, the evolutionary direction that outcompetes mutants. But note that this particular Phalanx is a Wolverine, and thus post-mutant.

PAGE 19. Forge investigates the pod.

This is the pod that the techno-organic Wolverine emerged from last issue. The obvious implication is that he’s a time traveller from a thousand years in the future, or something of that sort.

In which case, this looks a lot like Terminator, and the obvious parallel would be that X Lives is Wolverine going to the past to preserve the timelines, and X Deaths is future Wolverine coming to the present to… preserve it? Alter it?

PAGES 20-24. Future Wolverine shows up at the motel.

He apparently is following a signal from the techno-organic arm – which registers as Warlock – but it’s unclear whether that’s because he’s interested in the arm or in Moira. The next bit is difficult to follow – he seems to be connecting to the motel’s router (physically) in order to run a search for Arnab Chakladar of Epiphany, the post-human tech mogul who was mentioned last issue. I wondered at first if the guy’s supposed to have something to do with the motel, and this is something to do with security footage, but it seems like future Wolverine just needs to physically connect to a modem in order to access the internet. So… maybe he’s from the far future but, in a very real sense, he’s also from 1992.

PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: BLOOD IN THE WATER.

Bring on the comments

  1. Daibhid C says:

    Look, it’s not his fault nobody told him the motel’s Wifi password.

  2. Si says:

    Floronic, symbiote, hard light, I don’t know whether to love or hate these kinds of terms. They’re the same kitsch as when Iron Man could do literally anything with transistors, silly but real enough for a throwaway story that requires an instant super-magnet. But on the other hand, they terms are real-sounding enough to confuse people, which leads down the same path as horse wormer for people.

    Anyway, Phalanx time-travel Wolverine and T-O spy limbs makes me once again hopeful for the unlikely chance that they’re revisiting the dark future where Cypher conquered the world.

  3. Chris V says:

    Wait. Isn’t it canon that the Phalanx cannot assimilate mutants? In “Phalanx Covenant”, they just replaced mutants with simulacra.
    Also, from Powers of X, we know that the Phalanx don’t want mutants. They want technology. Everything physical will be wiped away after the Phalanx take what they need for the Dominions.
    Maybe further in the future the Phalanx evolve in to something else, or maybe Marvel decided to undo the Hickman ret-con already.

  4. Chris V says:

    Si-I’m not sure that is where they are going, but it seems that Hickman was hinting at something similar, if the “trickster” Titan is the merger of Krakoa and Warlock. The “trickster” Titan sent Omega Sentinel back in time to stop mutant ascension, and Doug would be intimately involved with Krakoa’s evolution in to a Titan.
    I didn’t expect anyone to revisit any of those ideas after Hickman left, but maybe that is why the mystery of a “trickster” Titan was never given any explanation. Maybe Percy wanted to use the idea.

  5. Mathias X says:

    I don’t think it was ever that mutants couldn’t be infected with TO as much as it was that the Phalanx had a really, really hard time doing it.

    No real evidence for it, but I suspect Moira’s cancer might be somewhat similar to when X-Force/Elixir gave the Vanisher an X-shaped brain tumor. It could be healed, but only if he did what they wanted. By the same token, maybe Krakoa literally gave her a cancer as an insurance policy, since Krakoa could remove the teleflorglobules or whatever.

  6. Mathias X says:

    Trying to wrack my memories — I’m not sure if Doug was ever infected with the virus back in the day (obviously he willingly is using TO now), but I do distinctly remember Paige contracting the Phalanx goop on her skin during the GENERATION NEXT books of Phalanx Covenant, and Sabertooth ripping her skin off to remove it.

    Also the Necrosha resurrections used Phalanx T/O to bring them back, and Cable used a baby Phalanx to replace his arm in Cable & Deadpool. It might be more along the lines that they can’t be brought into the hivemind or something maybe?

  7. Michael says:

    Am I the only person that suspects that the version of Inferno that the editors told Percy about when he wrote this story was different than the one that saw print? There’s no other way to explain the recaps.

  8. Si says:

    Doug’s been infected twice. Way back in the original New Mutants it was shown he had the beginnings of an infection. Whether this was Phalanx (the concept didn’t exist at that time), or turning into a true Technarch because of merging with Warlock so many times, we don’t know. The plot never made it past that one issue. Then he was fully infected in Necrosha, with some kind of hybrid not-quite Phalanx stuff. It was then that he was shown to be able to control and reverse his own infection.

  9. Chris V says:

    I remember Doug being infected in New Mutants. The Technarch and Phalanx were different though. Originally, it was explained that the Phalanx were created by the Technarcy, perhaps hinting that the Phalanx were not as powerful as the Technarcy, hence the limitation. Hickman ret-conned that though, saying that the Technarchy were (unknowingly) created by the Phalanx to serve as their janitors. If the Phalanx judges a civilization inferior to the needs to the Dominions, they call upon the Technarchy to eliminate all lifeforms on the planet.
    I would guess that would play in to Hickman’s plans to merge Warlock with Krakoa, since Krakoa is a mutant. Warlock is a Technarch, not Phalanx.

    Mathias’ idea is probably accurate. Maybe the Phalanx can infect mutants, but mutants were unable to be assimilated in to the hive mind.

  10. Si says:

    There are no absolutes when you’re talking about the Phalanx. There’s basically five different versions based on the five major times they’ve been used. And a -1.

    -1) Originally there was only the Technarchy. When a Technarch ate, it turned another creature into a second Technarch, and sucked out its juice. Magus infected at least one mutant (Rogue, she got better).

    1) The Phalanx, in their original appearance, were an artificial creation of Cameron Hodge, using Warlock’s remains. They could not infect mutants.

    2) In The Phalanx Covenant event, they started building a Babel Spire, to call the Technarchy as allies. They also revived Warlock, in a corrupted, Phalanx form.

    3) “Pure” Phalanx, a lifeform that had nothing to do with Hodge and his runaway superweapons, but knew about the Earth Phalanx, and looked completely different. They menaced the Shiar. Magus ate the remaining Phalanx at the end, the first sign of their prey status. He also lamented Warlock’s debasement. I believe at this time the idea was Phalanx were just escaped food, not a species on its own.

    4) The Phalanx resurfaced for Annihilation Conquest. I’m pretty sure this is the first time it was stated that the Phalanx and their Babel Spires weren’t an escaped side effect of the Technarch feeding process, but a deliberate part of the cycle.

    5) Hickman flipped the power dynamic, presumably because he needed a hivemind lifeform to achieve Singularity.

    On top of this, you have techno-organic viruses in various forms, such as Cable’s parts and the Necrosha stuff. These don’t seem to be sentient or able to reproduce beyond their host. They may or may not be related to the Technarchy and Phalanx.

    So maybe “pure” Phalanx can infect mutants while Hodge’s Frankenstein Phalanx couldn’t because plot. Maybe it’s like vegetarians, they say they can’t eat mutants but can if they’re hungry enough. Or maybe it’s a rewriting of the mythos. Or maybe this Phalanx never was Wolverine and just uses that shape.

    (note that there’s probably other Phalanx appearances that I don’t know about. I’m no Paul O’Brien).

  11. Uncanny X-Ben says:

    Please tell me he plugged into a modem using a claw.

    I just prefer to think of Phalanx as aliens and ignore all that other junk.

  12. Chris V says:

    I had forgotten that the Phalanx were supposedly created by Lang and Hofge in their first appearance. Most likely because I was never a fan of “The Phalanx Covenant” and haven’t read those comics since they were first published.

    I can’t think of many other appearances of the Phalanx.
    There was the interesting sympathetic portrayal of a Phalanx in an issue of Kieron Gillen’s Uncanny X-Men.

    The Phalanx ended up featuring prominently in the 2099 timeline, but that was an alternate future.

  13. Josie says:

    ““Pure” Phalanx”

    Oh right . . . and Lobdell wrote both that story and the Phalanx Covenant. Ugh.

    I liked Annihilation Conquest. You didn’t have to know anything about who the Phalanx are (or aren’t?), just that they’re techno-organic aliens that want to conquer and assimilate everything. And they’re led by Ultron. Sucks to be anyone else.

  14. Jon R says:

    I think I remember the no-place being called a ‘tumor’ in relation to Krakoa. I wondered if Moira’s infection isn’t anyone deliberately doing anything to her so much as just oops, it’s a side effect of spending too much time in there, breathing in flakes of it and having them start growing in her.

    I’m guessing/preferring that the arm wasn’t tracking her at all for Mystique. Mystique’s perfectly capable of doing that on her own, and as Paul said, her having to torture the front desk guy didn’t fit her having a tracker. Wolverlanx (Phalogan? Patchlanx? A Bubnarch?) was using it to track her, but Doug never expected a Phalanx to show up.

    Although man, was Mystique bad at hitting the front desk up for information. That act was seriously beneath her skill and I call foul.

  15. Peter says:

    Phalverine?

  16. Omar Karindu says:

    DC changed Jason Woodrue’s supervillain name from “Plant-Master” to “Floronic Man” in 1976, probably as a riff on the TV show The Bionic woman and its parent show, The Six Million-Dollar Man. Instead of a bionic man, he was a “floronic man.”

    So perhaps we can read “floronic” as a comic-book portmanteau of “floral” and “bionic.” Thta may actually sort of connect to he idea of Krakoan plant-matter implants and, perhaps, to the T/O-Krakoa thing.

    But this is probably giving too much credit.

  17. Taibak says:

    It’s been a while and I wasn’t reading anything other than Excalibur at the time, so just to be clear: the corrupted version of Warlock was Douglock, right?

  18. Evilgus says:

    All that build up with Moira over HOXPOX, for what is now an extended chase sequence? I suspect they don’t know what to do with her now.

    Frankly, Moira needs on panel ‘quiet’ development time, so we know who this woman is. What does she think about Banshee, Wolfsbane, Proteus… if at all?

  19. Si says:

    “the corrupted version of Warlock was Douglock, right?”

    Yes. I don’t know if this was the cause of him acting like a human fusion or if that was the attempted mind control when he was resurrected, or he was just doing it by choice though. Honestly I think it depended on who was writing or editing a given story.

    I think Magus was given the corrupted virus and he accidentally spread it to the rest of the Technarchy, destroying their civilisation. But I’m not at all clear on any of this part of the story.

  20. Mathias X says:

    The TO virus used in Necrosha was extracted by the Human Council from Magus’s corpse and then stolen and used by Selene, so it’s either Phalanx/Technarch

  21. Dave says:

    I took it that techno-Wolverine was checking data that had passed through the router to see what Moira had been looking at online.

    “it takes at face value her claim that precognitives had to be kept off Krakoa for her own sake, when Inferno made it pretty obvious that Moira had a particular animus to Destiny” – Life 3 was a good example, though, that A precog could mess up any plan for the future.

    Floronic just means technology based on plants, no? Flora (obviously) + technologic(al).

    Moira getting the Warlock arm only to remove it 2 issues later seems pointless from a story-telling POV, as if Percy just decided it was part of the set-up he was dropping immediately. More evidence to me that Hickman’s expectation was that Moira would be left unused for some time, certainly not returning straight away.

  22. Mathias X says:

    I’m not convinced you CAN remove a TO arm with a knife — it’s a virus, after all, so I doubt that every last scrap of technovirus stopped before the point Moira cut.

  23. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    I only hope that this arm business becomes a running joke – every other issue Moira will gain a new one (a symbiote arm! Masque gives her a bundle of tentacles! She gains telekinesis and uses Hellion’s old Rayman glove prothesis!), only to keep finding ever more absurd reasons to immediately get rid of them.

    In other words, I think the XLoW/XDoW miniseries are very poor so far, but I find my own fun.

  24. Mike Loughlin says:

    If nothing else, “The Floronic Man” sounds better than “The Floral Man.” The word “bionic” is a mash-up of “biological” and “electronic,” so “floronic” should mean the guy is an android who’s merged with flowers or something. Thinking about it, “floronic” makes more sense when applied to Krakoa’s plant-tech than to a guy who is also a plant.

  25. Matt says:

    I feel like Percy has used the word “floronic” to refer to the bio-technology being used by his made up south american country (costa verde, I think?) over in X-Force. Is the implication that it might be them behind Moira’s infection?

  26. Chris V says:

    Percy specifically referred to Terra Verde’s use of bio-technology as “telefloronics”. I’d guess it’s probably not the intent.

  27. The Other Michael says:

    And in what is one of the Krakoan era’s greatest running flaws… Mystique dies WAY TOO FUCKING EASILY. A bomb? You’re telling me she dies to a BOMB? Back before they made resurrection easy, Mystique was a champion of escaping certain death by any number of methods. She was cautious, prepared, paranoid, had 56 backup plans. She could, I dunno, move all her vitals into her skull or her thigh to protect them from shooting or stabbing. And yet Moira takes her out with a bomb?

    Ugh. Just because you CAN resurrect mutants doesn’t mean you have to kill them off constantly. It’s like as soon as this new system was introduced, their plot armor was absolutely worthless and now everyone gets a 6-pack like it’s Paranoia.

  28. Thom H. says:

    During HoX/PoX, I remember thinking that something really creepy was happening with the resurrections. And that there was a reason Xavier/Moira would want specific mutants to be resurrected at least once, allowing X/M to control their bodies and minds, which is why they put them on the strike team.

    I thought it would explain Scott’s sudden change in demeanor and Jean’s bizarre interest in wearing her costume from the ’60s.

    But no, it’s just another aspect of the setup that seemed menacing at first but turned out to be a great new feature of the Krakoan lifestyle.

    Someday we’re going to get the behind-the-scenes story of how Hickman’s plans for the X-Men fell apart, and it will be so satisfying to know we were right all along. The whole thing *was* supposed to be creepy and then it got derailed.

  29. Chris V says:

    Jean was acting strange before she was resurrected after the Orchis Forge mission.

    It was/and it wasn’t.
    Krakoa was supposed to be creepy because it was a trap for mutants. As the mutants waste their lives away, Moira uses Krakoa to “cure” mutantcy and put an end to the mutant race.
    Moira brainwashed Xavier to accept the lie that mutants are superior to humans and he began to preach a new dream of “mutant supremacy” in order to appeal to the world’s mutant population.
    Resurrection had a far more subtle sinister purpose. The idea is that the existence of immortality makes a society decadent. It was pointed to countless times during the Krakoan-era with readers thinking it had something to do with Krakoa, itself, pacifying the population. Instead, it was the existence of the resurrection process. The biggest hint was the mutant babies being thrown in the trash. Now that mutants were immortal, they no longer cared about responsibility or the future. That was Moira’s trap.

    So, yes, Hickman’s revelations for Krakoa were going to be dark. He never intended for Krakoa to be a true mutant utopia. The revelations were probably not as plainly creepy as people were expecting though.

  30. wwk5d says:

    “Moira brainwashed Xavier”

    How so?

  31. Chris V says:

    It’s in House of X. She said she was attempting to “break him”. She wrote about it in her journals. She showed him her past lives and wrote in her journal that she was only showing Xavier what she wanted him to see in order to influence him. She was trying to convince him that humans were beyond redemption and that mutants were superior to humans. After “Inferno”, we know that Moira secretly felt that humans are superior to mutants and that humans deserve to inherit the future.
    It’s also pointed out that Xavier didn’t want to believe what Moira had been telling him and that he erased his memories on two occasions so he didn’t have to deal with Moira’s propaganda.
    This is unlike Magneto, who Xavier and Moira were simply telling him what he already wanted to hear.
    It’s also shown in “Inferno” that Moira’s brainwashing worked too well, as Xavier had come to believe too strongly in his “new dream”, as Xavier and Magneto had decided to take Krakoa in their own direction instead of listening to Moira. They never questioned Moira unlike Emma and Mystique who realized they shouldn’t trust Moira.

  32. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    We were not given the reason why Xavier erased his memories, just the information that he has used an earlier backup of himself on two occasions.

  33. Chris V says:

    Oh, right. That was internet fan speculation. Regardless.

    One of those times must have something to do with the death of the Moira golem. It would seem that Hickman would want to explain why it seemed as if Xavier believed that Moira was dead.

  34. wwk5d says:

    That sounds more like manipulation that outright brainwashing.

    “Xavier and Magneto had decided to take Krakoa in their own direction instead of listening to Moira.”

    And he original plan was…what?

    “That was internet fan speculation”

    Which is like 95% of what has been said in these comments sections.

  35. Chris V says:

    It radically changed Xavier’s entire belief system. That goes beyond mere manipulation. She manipulated Magneto, but she seems to have brainwashed Xavier.
    He went from preaching tolerance and coexistence between humans and mutants to espousing mutant nationalism and promoting mutants as the dominant species.

    As far as Xavier and Magneto deviating from the original goals…yeah, not sure. Moira wanted Mystique better kept under their thumbs and didn’t understand why Xavier and Magneto didn’t outright make sure that Destiny could never be resurrected. Otherwise, it isn’t at all apparent how Xavier and Magneto weren’t following Moira’s plan.

    Some things are speculation, other aspects can be gleaned by reading between the lines of details Hickman did include in House/Powers.

  36. Si says:

    It’s the question everyone’s been asking since the first issue. Is all this radical departure from normal character behaviour a clue or Mr Hickman’s well-known weakness in writing on the personal scale?

  37. Chris V says:

    We now know that, outside of Xavier, it was all just poor characterization. “Cyclops sounds like a member of a cult? Well, Cyclops is a mutant and for the sake of this story, all mutants think and act exactly the same because that is what is needed to make my grand plot work. Storm sounds like a member of a cult? See above. Etc., etc., etc….”

  38. wwk5d says:

    “she seems to have brainwashed Xavier”

    Yeah, still not seeing the brainwashing part. Unless she grabbed him off-panel sometime before Hox/PoX and did something to him to get him to change his views, I still don’t see it as more than Moira manipulating him to do…stuff.

    “other aspects can be gleaned by reading between the lines of details Hickman did include in House/Powers”

    Which is still speculation and not fact. Anything can be read and then bent to our viewpoint.

  39. neutrino says:

    Moira’s plan wouldn’t have ended mutants. She said her cure was only for mutants who haven’t manifested their powers. Presumably, that would have meant affecting the baseline human population. Mutants would have become like the Eternals, existing with almost no reproduction, removing the baseline fears of being replaced.

  40. Chris V says:

    wwk5d-She said she was trying to “break Xavier” in her journals. She wrote that Xavier remained optimistic and didn’t want to change his views, so she had to continue to chip away. OK, instead of “brainwashing Xavier” she nagged him until he finally gave up his lifelong dream in order to embrace the opposite.
    “Brainwashing” is a loaded term anyway. It’s not an actual psychological diagnosis. “Brainwashing” and “manipulation” are related terms. Usually, one uses “brainwashing” if it is in regards to an attempt to modify the way that an individual thinks and believes.
    It’s arguing pointless semantics.

    Yes, someone can read Romeo and Juliet and conclude that its theme is a Jewish conspiracy to overthrow the aristocracy, but that doesn’t mean that it applies to anything that is actually able to be interpreted from the story. Hickman’s story may be poorly plotted, but it’s not indecipherable.

    Neutrino-It is the end of the mutant race if their population doesn’t continue to grow. They’d be the last of their kind, while humanity continued to reproduce and see population growth.
    It’s like having the last specimens of a critically endangered species living in a zoo. Technically, the species isn’t extinct, but it’s the end of the line for that species, even if they are kept alive, for perpetuity, in captivity.
    Moira’s plan would still be considered a “genocide”

  41. wwk5d says:

    “It’s arguing pointless semantics.”

    Nope. Manipulating someone versus brainwashing them aren’t the same thing.

    And in this very series Moira mentions how she and Charles shared the same dream. She might have manipulated him here and there, but she didn’t outright brainwash him to her cause.

    “Hickman’s story may be poorly plotted, but it’s not indecipherable.”

    But it does leave itself open to various interpretations and conclusions.

  42. neutrino says:

    @Chris V
    The mutants would be as extant as the Inhumans and the Eternals. All they’d lose is becoming the dominant species.

  43. Omar Karindu says:

    The mutants would be as extant as the Inhumans and the Eternals. All they’d lose is becoming the dominant species.

    But then the hive mind/singularity thing in all the futures comes along, and being a marginal subgroup of humanity means essentially ceasing to exist. Moira’s implied plan would eventually require mutants to be subsumed, not simply isolated.

    I think part of the problem with Hickman’s ideas is that the time-scale makes it hard for the present-day stories to “matter.” Either there’s going to be a lot of time-travel, stuff is going to happen on an absurdly compressed timescale that conflicts with the setup, or it’s all speculative foreboding.

    Any of those options make me think a reset button — or a big walking-back — was inevitable. It just happened while Hickman was still around, not afterwards.

    Par for the course, really, with Hickman at Marvel. Are any of Hickman’s SHIELD, Fantastic Four, or Avengers plots central to something going on in a later run? I guess Jason Aaron has been playing with the whole “Death Celestials” thing, but that seems to be about it.

  44. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    Hickman’s Avengers run is resolved in Secret Wars to… never having happened, I think.

    I mean, he ends on a scene with Black Panther meeting some Wakandan kids, which is a repeat from the very beginning of New Avengers, so that’s three years’ worth of two (and a half, if you include Avengers World) ongoings becoming irrelevant the moment the run has finished.

    Half of the Fantastic Four (and the kids) remain missing for several years afterwards, that’s basically the only fallout that impacts anything.

  45. neutrino says:

    “But then the hive mind/singularity thing in all the futures comes along, and being a marginal subgroup of humanity means essentially ceasing to exist. Moira’s implied plan would eventually require mutants to be subsumed, not simply isolated.”

    They’re not in all futures, just one, and they were summoned by the Homo novissimus. Without the pressure of being replaced, humanity wouldn’t create them.

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