Immortal X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #3
“The New Testament of Irene Adler”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: Dijjo Lima
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Destiny, with most of the other Quiet Council members shown within her cloak.
PAGE 2. Flashback: Irene Adler’s powers emerge.
This is a more dramatic version of page 13 panel 4 of X-Treme X-Men vol 1 #1. As narrated by Sage in the original scene, “Irene Adler was a child of privilege, born to an age when science and romance walked hand in hand and into a society that felt its birthright was to rule the world. When she was 13, her mutant power became active. She gained the ability to perceive the future, in all its myriad permutations. It came upon her with a terrible rush and an irresistible force, like an avalanche threatening to overwhelm the girl.”
The original art shows Irene riding the horse shown here, in broadly this landscape, but doesn’t really contain anything to show that her powers are emerging. Immortal adds the horse rearing up, and the visions which she sees in the sky. From left to right, these appear to be:
- Logan and Kitty hiding from Sentinels in “Days of Future Past”
- Phoenix
- What appears to be a symbolic image of Krakoa.
- The other members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as they appeared in “Days of Future Past”, when they were trying to assassinate Robert Kelly.
- The Shadow King hovering over what looks to be Legion, presumably from the Muir Island Saga or thereabouts.
- The original X-Men.
PAGE 3. Flashback: Irene writes her diaries.
This is an expanded version of page 13 panels 5-6 of X-Treme X-Men vol 1 #1. Again, as per Sage in the original: “Somehow she managed to resist this onslaught. She sat down at her desk and began to write. Over the course of the next thirteen months, she transcribed the events she beheld in her mind’s eye, one volume for every month. She crafted a comprehensive records of the years to be – the future of the world, of humanity, of mutantkind! Her challenge, once she realised what she’d accomplished, was to determine which scenario was the true timeline, and which the most desirable. And if necessary, bring the two together. Unfortunately, her ‘gift’ had a price. She could ‘see’ the future, but she had become physically blind.”
This version spells out a little more clearly the point of the diaries and the reasons why they were written obscurely. Irene expected her initial precognitive vision to fade over time, and so she made a coded record of what she had seen so that she would have access to it in the future. This is slightly at odds with X-Treme X-Men #1, where Sage goes on to tell us that “Much of the entries in her diaries was written in languages unknown to her, in code and in pictograms, involving places she’d never heard of and scores of people yet unborn.” But it’s not an outright contradiction, because (1) Sage is relating hearsay, and (2) it’s perfectly possible that Irene both saw and recorded codes and obscurities that she didn’t yet understand and that she deliberately obscured the material that she did understand.
PAGES 4-5. Mystique and Emma talk about Irene.
Destiny collapsed at the end of the last issue, muttering “You’re a ghost.”
The visions in page 4 panel 3 are just a repeat of the art from page 2 – which might suggest that Destiny is re-experiencing the sort of precognitive vision that she had when her powers first emerged, though it has the odd result that she sees the Brotherhood from a story in the past. Maybe she’s also remembering how her powers emerged.
Emma Frost‘s nose job was established back in the Morrison era.
“Storm is off at another Arakii challenge.” We’ve seen in X-Men Red that the Arakii seem to be accepting Storm as a leader figure now, but she might just be attending at a significant challenge to someone else – such as Vulcan’s challenge to Tarn in X-Men Red #3.
“Never die again without warning me.” I think this is an original line, but she would have said it somewhere around Inferno #2.
PAGE 6. Flashback: Irene meets Raven.
Sexual inversion was a late 19th century theory regarding homosexuality. By the standards of its time it was a relatively progressive attitude, in as much as it sought to understand homosexuality as an innate disposition. Broadly, the theory regarded same-sex attraction as an aspect of transgenderism, or at least conflated the two concepts.
Raven. Irene doesn’t actually tell us here why she sought out Raven, and there may simply be a logical loop here – she can see so many futures where they’re happy together that that becomes the motivation for her to seek Raven out. In X-Treme X-Men #1, Sage claims that Irene wanted to try and understand her visions and shape the destiny of humanity, and enlisted Raven to help with that. Raven, at that point, is said to be working as “a consulting detective” – an allusion to the fact that Irene is named after a Sherlock Holmes character, and was originally implied to be that character. Sage claims Raven and Irene were easily able to manipulate events for “personal success”, but found “social engineering … next to impossible” and failed with it repeatedly.
Note that Raven is doing nothing to conceal her mutant appearance despite the fact that she’s a shapechanger and could do so very easily. Whenever Raven appears in public like this, it’s a choice.
Queen Victoria. There is a long standing urban legend that Queen Victoria did not believe that lesbians existed, which is why the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 only dealt with male homosexuality. In fact, there had been criminal laws against male (but not female) homosexuality dating back to the 16th century.
PAGE 7. Flashback: Destiny explains nexuses.
The first panel is another image of the Brotherhood during “Days of Futures Past”. Beyond that, Gillen is trying to define (or redefine) the idea of a nexus point to explain how Destiny tries to understand the myriad futures that she can see. Essentially these are the events with the greatest influence on the overall outcome. Since she gives climate change as an example, she clearly doesn’t mean events in the sense of things that happen at a specific point in time, but in a rather broader sense. Irene’s focus is on trying to identify the key events to be favoured or avoided, and then figuring out how best to influence the direction of history to get the world where it wants to be (which, of course, is the harder bit).
PAGE 8. Flashback: Destiny dies.
Destiny was murdered in Uncanny X-Men #255 by Legion, who was under the influence of the Shadow King at the time. She seemed to allow this to happen, and she explains here that this was because she knew that it would enable Krakoa to happen – but not why. Apparently, it’s because she would at some point have killed Moira, presumably because (as established in House of X #2) Moira’s powers screw with Destiny’s predictions of the future and so Destiny wouldn’t have appreciated all the consequences of doing so. Perhaps Destiny also failed to appreciate the consequences of killing Moira back in House of X #2.
Importantly, Destiny also tells us here that “Krakoa was the limit of my vision.” In other words, everything in Destiny’s Diaries covers the period up to Krakoa. This might explain why she’s having another wave of precognitive visions now (and why the story is called “The New Testament of Irene Adler”).
PAGES 9-11. Hope is briefed by the Quiet Council.
As their newest member, Hope is learning what Emma shared with the rest of the Council at the end of Inferno #4, i.e. Moira’s hidden role in founding Krakoa.
Hope received her Cerebro helmet from Mystique, posing as Professor X, in flashback in Inferno #2. That’s also where Sinister was visited by Mystique, though it seems pretty clear that he always realised who he was dealing with.
“Burning all this down was my other option.” During the Hickman run, Mystique repeatedly told us that Destiny had told her to destroy the island if she couldn’t be brought back.
PAGE 12. Destiny’s new visions.
This mirrors the layout of her first visions at the start of the issue. Form left to right…
- A burning island, presumably Krakoa.
- Some sort of building with a statue of Magneto, Apocalypse and a third figure at the top. Somewhat reminiscent of the giant statue from Genosha.
- The upcoming Avengers / X-Men / Eternals crossover Judgment Day.
- Mr Sinister with an X-Men team wearing his diamond logo.
- Exodus being worshipped by a mutant crowd (we only see their hands but they’re clearly not all human hands). Hope told us last issue that Exodus gets more powerful from having followers.
- Magik, in demonic form, standing over the bodies of the defeated X-Men.
- Is that Phoenix?
PAGE 13. Recap and credits (!).
PAGE 14. A diagram of Destiny’s vision.
The reason why there is “less future” is because, as we established in issue #1, Mr Sinister has created a bunch of clones of Moira MacTaggert, and keeps killing them in order to reset time to the point of their creation. He also uses them to send back knowledge of the abandoned timeline. In issue #1, Sinister said that there had been twenty five deleted timelines already. Twenty-one are shown here. But since Destiny sees the future, presumably these are the potential futures from here, all of which end with Sinister resetting the universe. This either ends the timeline or at least prevents Destiny from seeing further. (If time literally does end at these points then it creates problems for the continued existence of characters like Kang, though arguably they come from potential futures that have already diverged from the timeline.)
Needless to say, most of these are cryptic references for now:
- Limbic Infernality could be anything.
- The Spark Inquisition sounds like Nightcrawler’s philosophy/religion from Legion of X going off the rails.
- Judgment Day is the upcoming crossover.
- Nimrod Extinction Event sounds like Nimrod getting his way. There are three of them on the list.
- The Empire of the Red Diamond sounds like Sinister and his red diamond X-Men from the previous splash, in which case we can probably expect to hear more.
- The Storm System could be anything involving Storm.
- The Broken Sword could be anything.
- A New Krakoa and Krakoa Dissolution are self-explanatory.
- Cassandra Supernova will be Cassandra Nova from Marauders getting out of control.
- The Reign of [Apocalyse] presumably involves him coming back to claim the throne.
- Legion-XII will be something to do with Legion, but otherwise could be anything.
- Canticle for Talia is odd. A canticle is a hymn. This sounds like a reference to Walter Miller’s novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) about a monastic order preserving knowledge in the centuries after a nuclear war until humanity is ready for it again. The only obvious Talia in the X-books is Nocturne from the Exiles, but who knows what she has to do with that. Talia was a descendent of Mystique in her home timeline, though.
- AvX VI seems to be yet another retreat of Avengers vs X-Men (a crossover which was billed as AvX at the time).
- The Dominion of Orchis is straightforward.
- The Immolation of Judases sounds alarmingly like Exodus getting out of hand. He refers to Sinister as “Judas-Prime” in the next scene.
- The Gene-Corsairs show up in the next scene.
- Unity could be anything.
- The Expanse, also spelled eXpanse, is explained in the next scene as an interstellar mutant church-empire.
PAGES 15-17. Flash forward: a god-powered Exodus kills Sinister and inadvertently reboots the timeline.
Straightforward enough, though an indication of how powerful Exodus would be if he had a serious religion behind him.
PAGES 18-20. The Quiet Council meeting continues.
Mystique is completely correct that Xavier lied about promising to bring Destiny back.
“Professor Xavier is a jerk” is the title of Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #168, and Kate’s pose resembles her appearance on the splash page.
Destiny’s entrance down the stairs echoes her coming down the stairs for her dramatic entrance in Inferno #1.
PAGES 21-23. Destiny and Mystique.
We couldn’t really have noticed that none of the futures involved Mystique – we didn’t see enough of them, and they didn’t exactly feature Destiny prominently either – but evidently she can tell that. The obvious question is how Mystique can be absent from these futures. Does something happen to put an end to resurrection? Does she get excluded from resurrection for some reason? Or does she simply get separated from Destiny in such a way that she ceases to play an important part in Destiny’s life and therefore doesn’t register in her visions of the future?
PAGE 24. Trailers.
Paul, would it be fair to say this is the first issue in X-Men history to be narrated by Irene herself? Has she ever been a focalizer before?
“Destiny was murdered in Uncanny X-Men #255 by Legion, who was under the influence of the Shadow King at the time.”
Not quite- Malice took over Lorna, and when Zaladane tried to use a machine to steal Lorna’s powers, it freed Lorna but caused anyone around her (like Legion) to act evil. The Shadow King didn’t take over Legion until issue 259.
“Limbic Infernality”
Probably something have to do with Limbo, which is a demonic realm.
“Does something happen to put an end to resurrection? Does she get excluded from resurrection for some reason? Or does she simply get separated from Destiny in such a way that she ceases to play an important part in Destiny’s life and therefore doesn’t register in her visions of the future?”
One possibility is that Mystique dies in Limbo or Otherworld, where resurrections don’t work, although it would be a bit weird if that happened in EVERY possible timeline.
Perhaps in the futures Irene sees, Mystique is banished to the pit?
Paul> In issue #1, Sinister said that there had been twenty five deleted timelines already. Twenty-one are shown here.
I read this data page slightly differently – I read it ‘mind-map’ style, which means I see only 15 different futures here.
1. NOW >> The Spark Inquisition >> Limbic Infernality
2. NOW >> Judgment Day >> Nimrod Extinction Event
3. NOW >> Judgment Day >> The Empire of the Red Diamond >> The Storm System
4. NOW >> Judgment Day >> The Broken Sword
5. NOW >> Judgment Day >> A New Krakoa
6. NOW >> Krakoa Dissolution
7. NOW >> Nimrod Extinction Event
8. NOW >> Cassandra Supernova
9. NOW >> The Reign of Apocalypse
10. NOW >> Legion-XII
11. NOW >> Canticle for Talia >> AvX XI >> Nimrod Extinction Event
12. NOW >> Canticle for Talia >> AvX XI >> The Gene-Corsairs >> The Expanse
13. NOW >> Canticle for Talia >> AvX XI >> The Gene-Corsairs >> Unity
14. NOW >> Canticle for Talia >> AvX XI >> The Immolation of Judases
15. NOW >> Canticle for Talia >> AvX XI >> The Dominion of ORCHIS
Future 12 is the one we see Exodus chasing after Sinister.
Since unlike Destiny, we know Marvel’s publishing plans, we know Judgment Day is a certainty, so we can drop futures 1 and 6 to 15 as a possibility.
Between futures 2 to 5, we saw Sinister’s Red Diamond X-Men in the previous page so I’m fairly certain future 3 is where we are actually going with this book.
Paul> Destiny’s new visions.
Most of these seem to foreshadow Gillen’s Judgment Day event.
1. Avengers vs Eternals vs X-Men > The initial conflict of Judgment Day
2. Krakoa burning > Krakoa under attack by the Hex in Judgment Day
3. Exodus and his worshippers > Exodus preparing to fight the Eternals in Immortal X-Men 5
4. Jean Grey as the Phoenix > Jean Grey’s connection to the Phoenix Force is revealed in A.X.E. X-Men 1
As for the others:
5. Sinister and his X-Men > the Empire of the Red Diamond, possibly the post-Judgment Day direction for Immortal X-Men
6. Darkchilde vs the X-Men > possible fallout from the ‘Labors of Magik’ arc from New Mutants?
7. Genosha statue > this is the hardest one, but I suspect this relates to something Al Ewing is doing (on the account that Magneto is currently in X-Men Red)
That cluster of five prematurely ended timelines in the middle sure reads like a bunch of What-Ifs.
And Marvel publishes What-Ifs in sets of five nowadays…
“Unity could be anything.”
True, but my first thoughts were 1) the Phalanx/Technarch/AI merge and conquer the Earth and beyond, or 2) the warring factions of mutants, post-humanity, & AI come together, for better or worse.
Another great issue, and I look forward to seeing how Destiny tries to outmaneuver Sinister while not alerting him to her actions. Also, I realize Destiny didn’t see Mystique in the possible futures she observed, but Mystique can look like anyone. This is probably a stretch, but maybe Mystique was there in a form Destiny didn’t recognize. I don’t know how deep or far Destiny sees in the new visions.
I’d been certain Charles and Erik had known full-well that Mystique had resurrected Destiny, and that they’d allowed it to happen because they didn’t trust Moira. We saw in Inferno that Destiny showing up at the Council didn’t happen until four weeks after she’d been rezzed. Did they really not notice that one of the most important items in Krakoa disappeared from Magneto’s house and and has been with Hope for four weeks plus however long it’s been since Inferno?
What’s the timeline with Inferno and The Trial of Magneto? Erik having his Cerebro was a plot point in Trial, but the Waiting Room would have factored into Destiny’s resurrection. Did the resurrection happen in the brief time between Wanda’s resurrection and creating the Waiting Room?
In the very least, had Xavier really not figured out yet how Mystique got Destiny back? Even if he hadn’t known she was alive until she showed up at the Council vote, it wouldn’t have been hard for him to check on.
Another strong issue, this is definitely the successor to Hickman’s X-Men, for good and I’ll.
Lots of ideas being shot out, but with some actual interconnected story this time.
I know Destiny can basically still “see” in her way, but the sequence where she meets Mystique was kind of odd. She doesn’t seem blind at all.
“The Broken Sword could be anything.”
Sounds like it’d be related to the Ilyanna Soul Sword issues in New Mutant although I suppose something with Excalibur or the Cerebro Sword are possible as well
“Unity” was the first (and best) crossover event of 1990s publisher Valiant. This may be an easter egg towards that.
For what it is worth, Unity was about a mad all-powerful villainess attempting to reboot the universe itself. Valiant heroes from various time periods are recruited by portals across time and space in order to confront Mothergod and her troops. Because Solar is among those heroes, the odds are very much in their favor, but things soon take a terrible turn for the worse. The conflict becomes incredibly difficult and convoluted, and lasts almost half a year from the perspective of those directly involved. Various long-lasting repercussions occur.
In some ways it resembles what could happen in Krakoa… or in one of Moira’s timelines.
Just thinking that something with that name might conceivably be in the X-Men’s future raises my interest already.
MasterMahan> What’s the timeline with Inferno and The Trial of Magneto?
Mystique resurrected Destiny weeks before the first Hellfire Gala. She stole the Cerebro from Island M (the least securely guarded of the five cradles), impersonated Xavier to get Hope to do the resurrection and left the Cerebro with her.
Mystique hid Destiny in her home on Krakoa (I suspect Destiny’s mask can block telepathic intrusions) and went to the Gala. Wanda and Magneto hatched a scheme during the Gala and Wanda deliberately killed herself. The Trial of Magneto happens the week after the Gala. Hope resurrects Wanda with the stolen Cerebro. Wanda creates the Waiting Room.
Inferno happens sometime after that (Magneto is wearing his black suit from the Trial). Mystique reveals Destiny just as Xavier and Erik were trying to oust Raven (a move which Destiny probably foresaw). Destiny is elected to the QC. Xavier and Erik counter this move by electing Colossus to the QC.
Immortal X-Men takes place many months after the ending of Inferno, much closer to the second Hellfire Gala. Magneto finds out that Anya will not be resurrected and leaves for Arakko. Xavier probably suspects how Mystique brought back Destiny but doesn’t bring it up due to the Moira stuff. Hope broaching the subject publicly allowed Xavier to make a move against Mystique.
My reading of it is that Mystique resurrected Destiny immediately after the Gala–in Trial of Magneto #2, we see Rachel’s vision of “Magneto” retrieving the Cerebro helmet the afternoon before the Gala, but Inferno shows that that was actually Mystique-as-Magneto.
Relatedly, in this issue Sinister says “Magneto came to me, asking for all the Destiny DNA”… but in Inferno we see that it’s Mystique in Xavier form, rather than Magneto form!
“Unity” reminds me of the Unity Squad from Uncanny Avengers.
Honestly, we can guess at the context if we figure out the timemap.
‘Unity’ comes after ‘AvX VI’ and ‘The Gene-Corsairs’. So in this timeline, there was a war between the Avengers and the X-Men (which at their current resource levels, probably devastated both sides) and then Sinister stole and appropriated a bunch of mutant genes and ran off.
The two paths mutants have after this is either ‘Unity’ or the ‘eXpanse’ (join Exodus’ interstellar mutant empire and go on crusades against Sinister). So ‘Unity’ must be the opposite – the mutants consolidate with the remaining Avengers / humans / post-humans / machines.
Douglas> Relatedly, in this issue Sinister says “Magneto came to me, asking for all the Destiny DNA”… but in Inferno we see that it’s Mystique in Xavier form, rather than Magneto form!
Gillen got this one wrong. I understand where he got the notion – Magneto is the one who responds to Moira’s request but you’re right, she takes Xavier’s form when meeting Sinister. Gillen should have checked Inferno properly during the lettering stage.
I suspect this issue was done in a rush since I noticed quite a number of art mistakes too – Storm is at the QC meeting despite also being at a challenge on Arakko, Destiny is at the QC meeting early on despite also being in bed at home, there’s a panel where Destiny appears to be reading an evidence board despite being blind, …
Michele Bandini is filling-in for the next couple of issues, so I hope Werneck had time to recharge for issue 6.
On page 18 Destiny is drawn sitting next to Hope in the two panels showing the entire council, but she doesn’t enter until the last panel. There are also 13 chairs around the table.
Anyway, fun issue. But I’m still annoyed by how Moira’s supposed destruction of timelines messes with decades of time travel stories and how the x-office continues to double down on it at every opportunity.
…you know, I didn’t even notice the art mistakes. Page 17 has sitting at the Council the panel before she dramatically speaks from off-panel and shows up.
Maybe Destiny didn’t see Mystique in her visions because the artist forgot to draw her.
Bengt-Moira’s power doesn’t actually interfere with any canonical time travel stories. Any time travel stories we’ve read about in Marvel Comics have occurred in Moira’s tenth life. Any timelines which Moira’s powers wiped out, we never read any time travel stories from those timelines anyway. Everything that has occurred in the current-616 Marvel Universe has taken place/takes place/will take place during Moira’s Life Ten.
Another really strong issue. Gorgeous art and I found the cliffhanger devastating. I’m not getting wrapped around the axle on timeline nonsense, life’s too short 🙂 but I’m liking how we’ve moved from Destiny Vs Moira to Destiny Vs Sinister.
I think this is the first time we’ve moved to Destiny’s POV for an issue? But this is why I’m enjoying the HOX era, as we’re gaining insight into so many secondary characters. The universe feels so much richer for that (when the issues actually allow it!).
I also like the respect that Gillen has given to X-Treme X-Men. Starting from just a few panels, he’s fleshed out so much about Destiny. I like the fact the art is consistent too (Destiny and Moira are in the same outfits as X-Treme).
It’s a good idea that all of Destiny’s visions led up to Krakoa as a nexus. Who knows what’s next.
This book seems to be choosing to spotlight a different character every issue. Sinister, then Hope, now Destiny. All of them Council members so far.
On the other hand, it has become clear since the ending of #1 that, beyond having focus on the Quiet Council members, this book also wants to develop the alternate timelines theme that was introduced in HoXPoX yet never really explored since.
This book has been making _great_ use of Sinister and now Destiny. The character work may be stronger than even Si Spurrier’s.
I don’t think the scene of the first meeting with Mystique was to be taken literally. It is presumably a reconstruction of Destiny’s memories, which are themselves built not from visual perception but instead from deductions sustained by perception of the near future. Hence the subtly attenuated backgrounds and Mystique being shown in her default appearance despite more than likely being in disguise at the time.
Odds are that Mystique has already began to worry that Destiny may be writing because she has a new influx of insights, and therefore may be about to lose her sight again (presumably in a few months).
It is now clear that the Sinister Secrets of #1 are very direct commentaries to the same issue numbers of this very series. Strong plot hints for up to #12.
All in all, it looks like Kieron Gillen has taken the (largely unused) opportunity of dealing with alternate timelines that Hickman introduced yet largely neglected.
Negative reactions to the resurrection protocols because the mutants choose to back up only mutants makes a ton of sense. Honestly, though, they could probably avoid it if they instead framed it as “Charles Xavier personally has been mentally violating every single mutant in existence weekly for the last ten years and copying them over to a clone body,” but framing it as a method of healing as they do just makes them come off as a bunch of super-rich assholes withholding lifesaving care from the genetically unfit.
@Ceries: wouldn’t that be a deeply dishonest tactic, though?
Particularly when both writers and characters clearly consider the later description accurate, but not the former?
I think a large part of the problem stems from Hickman’s original plans being aborted and him leaving the books so early. Hickman’s intentions for resurrection didn’t seem positive, but instead as a way to pacify mutants. I think Hickman’s resolution was to realize that immortality is a curse, not a grand achievement of mutantkind.
Now, the idea that mutants can only resurrect other mutants is the best solution. It would breed resentment by humanity when revealed, but not in the same way as, “Sure. We could have made everyone immortal like us, but we chose to only care about our fellow mutants.” That seems like an incredibly inadvisable direction.
The only way the writers could make it worse is for mutants to grant it selectively to certain elite humans. Sure, Krakoa will offer immortality to Tony Stark but they don’t care about “Joe Sixpack” on the street. That would be the worst possible decision.
Now that Moira K has been proven to be a Liar , I personal disbelieve her claim that she resets the entire timeline whenever she dies , thats nonsense , she resets her own personal timeline back to Marvel-616 , but the rest of that timeline still continues anyway*
, albeit not anymore as Marvel-616, but as another Marvel-AU , in exactly the same way that the OG AOA continued on as Marvel-295 from the point of divergence in Legion Quest. For another example of this phenomenon, there’s Japan’s DragonBall and Re:Zero IP franchises
Immortal X-Men seems to invalidate your belief @JDSM24.
Yes, Moira isn’t a liar. She is a manipulator who is now completely psychotic (due to poor writing). Destiny was the one who revealed exactly how Moira’s powers worked. That was how Moira knew. Yes, readers have questioned how Destiny knew this fact, but it was basically Hickman speaking through the character. Hickman wanted the reader to know that this was his intent and to put it on the page. Marvel Comics currently defines Moira’s past lives as “temporary universes”, not alternate universes.
It’s true that somewhere down the line, a writer could easily decide to revisit Moira’s past lives and show that they still exist after her death and are now alternate universes. The same thing occurred with “Age of Apocalypse”. It was originally not an alternate universe, but the rewriting of Earth-616’s history due to events surrounding the M’Kraan Crystal. However, Marvel wanted to revisit the AOA again, so AOA became just another alternate universe. That wasn’t the original intent.
I don’t think that HoXPoX left a lot of room for Moira’s power not being that of rewriting reality as a whole. It had, after all, quite the omniscient narrator.
Then again, I don’t think that it makes any sense for Moira to have quite that power either, so there is that.
I don’t think that HoXPoX left a lot of room for Moira’s power not being that of rewriting reality as a whole. It had, after all, quite the omniscient narrator.
IIRC, Moira was the narrator. So how would she know if her previous lives were erased or continued on without her? From her perspective, obviously they were erased. But she really has no idea.
Seems to me there as a stable of multiversal entities and characters that would have been agitated by Moira rebooting the universe. That none of them have made an appearance to confirm that she wipes out a whole reality, suggests maybe she’s not as important as she thinks she is.
Of course, out-of-universe Hickman confirmed the reboot theory. So there’s that. But until it’s on panel, as far as I’m concerned, Moira’s just a self-obsessed ass, who thinks the whole universe revolves around her.
Destiny was murdered in Uncanny X-Men #255 by Legion, who was under the influence of the Shadow King at the time. She seemed to allow this to happen, and she explains here that this was because she knew that it would enable Krakoa to happen
That’s a pretty notable retcon, since it undercuts a pretty sizable chunk of admittedly not very good stories from the nineties. It was either explicitly said or strongly implied that Destiny allowed Legion to kill her as a necessary push to bring Mystique and Forge together. What Claremont planned to do with that I’m not sure. But his successors loaded a lot of baggage onto that pairing, none of which was really all that interesting, to me, anyhow.
“Temporary Universe” – Hah! What a joke, when has there ever been such a thing anywhere , Marvel or otherwise , aside from Legion’s pocket reality of Age of X ?
@JDSM24: Age of Apocalypse was originally conceived to be just that. And Nate Grey’s whole thing right before Krakoa.
You just forgot one detail.
There’s a Phoenix-like figure (Hope?) sitting on Exodus’s shoulders on page 15.
We both forgot to mention the OG Heroes Reborn, but you’re right about Age of X-Man
Calling AoA as such though would be a misnomer, since that timelines can continue indefinitely (until their natural ends) independently of any creator , since its existence was not maintained by anyone’s sheer force of will, as it didnt exist in anyone’s mind or blue-ball, since AoA was actually 616 altered 25 or so years ago from the ever-present by the time-travelling Legion