Immoral X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORAL X-MEN #2
“Sins of Sinister, part 6: Four-Letter Words”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Andrea Di Vito
Colourist: Jim Charalampidis
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Rasputin fights Mystiques.
PAGE 2. Hope and Exodus prepares to attack the Compact.
“+100, the Edge of the Pax.” The structure of the “Sins of Sinister” crossover is that the month 1 chapters all took place around 10 years after the save point, these chapters take place 100 years after, and next month will be 1000 years. Hope and Exodus are still around thanks to resurrection, as clarifies later on.
Presumably the Pax is the ironic name for the Sinisterised Earth empire, since the alliance of alien races is apparently “the Compact”.We saw in Nightcrawlers #2 that the Quiet Council had gone on the offensive against the rest of the galaxy, prompted (at least initially) by Hope’s concerns last issue that otherwise they would be wiped out themselves.
The Supreme Intelligence is the traditional ruler of the Kree.
“Can’t deploy the L-bombs and pop them until we’ve got eyes on the ground.” Hope explains this further on page 4.
Hope now has a partly metal face, a metal arm, and a metal leg. When we saw her last issue, she had just got a cybernetic hand, claiming that “Someone’s got to be Cable.”
The crew are probably generics, or at least chimeras not specifically based on any one character.
PAGE 3. Hope attacks.
Hope is apparently synching with Exodus’s powers; Exodus in turn is fuelled by belief, as mentioned back in Immortal X-Men #2 (though it had come up occasionally before).
The character fighting Hope appears to be a version of the Super-Skrull, holding four of Ronan the Accuser’s hammers.
PAGE 4. Hope destroys the planets.
The L-bomb is a chimera with the powers of Lila Cheney (teleporting supporting character from New Mutants), Firestar (from the X-Men), Harry Leland (formerly of the Hellfire Club, currently the Krakoan ambassador to the UN) and Micromax (very briefly a member of Excalibur, currently appearing in Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain).
“If he wasn’t just a big pile of worms.” Cable had bonded with the worm-like Xilo when we last saw him in Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #1.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits. The title, “Four-Letter Words”, seems to refer to the four letters used to describe DNA (G, T, C and A), given Mother Righteous’ comments on page 16.
PAGE 6. Data page: Hope’s log of the mission she’s just been on. The “Commander’s Log” thing is loosely a Star Trek reference.
Emperor Dorrek might be Hulkling, the current Skrull Emperor, but given the passage of time, it might just be someone else using this quite common Skrull name – Hulkling is apparently Dorrek VIII.
The Shi’ar have been wiped out by Professor X, according to Nightcrawlers #2, though Hope doesn’t mention that directly.
Storm is evidently still on the run after the fall of Arakko, and we’ll catch up with her in Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #2.
Mystique is mentioned only in passing by Hope, but she ought to be a significant character given her close links with Destiny. When we last saw her, in Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #1, she was with Destiny. Apparently she’s been back leading a version of Freedom Force, the name used by her version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants during the period when they worked for the US Government in the late 1980s.
The New Krakoan Calendar has named all the months after Quiet Council members, Roman Emperor style.
PAGES 7-8. The Reliquary Arbor.
The Reliquary Arbor is evidently the new version of Arbor Magna, the Krakoan resurrection location. Here, it’s a tank full of bits of Hope clones, which can’t be brought to life, but can be used to keep the resurrection production line going in her absence.
The name is interesting, since it obviously parallels the Reliquary Perilous being assembled by Mother Righteous over in Nightcrawlers – do all the Sinisters have one?
“Sinister said something about it being a similar problem with Jean.” Madelyne Pryor was created by Sinister as a clone of Jean Grey, but he wasn’t able to get her to wake up until she was charged up by the Phoenix Force, as covered in Uncanny X-Men #241. Hope doesn’t particularly like the comparison between her and Jean, because she doesn’t especially like people seeing her as a copy of a more established character.
Genghis Khan is described as a redhead by the 13th century historian Rashid-al-Din, though there’s some dispute about whether that’s really right, not least because al-Din describes it as a feature of Genghis Khan’s entire people; another suggested translation of the text has it referring to Khan’s skin tone.
PAGE 9. The Quiet Council launch the Marauder.
Referencing Marauders, of course – perhaps a hangover from the early draft where this was going to be a line-wide crossover. Again, Hope’s description references Star Trek (and ET).
Emma is still heavily bondage-themed, 90 years on.
Sinister has been serving the Council under duress since the last issue, when he persuaded Emma that his value to them lay in his ability to create more powerful chimeras.
PAGES 10-12. Sinister introduces Rasputin IV.
This is Sinister’s first five-power chimera, with the powers of Colossus, Kate Pryde, Unus, Laura Kinney and Quentin Quire – she also has a version of Magik’s Soulsword, but the narration suggests that she doesn’t actually have Magik’s powers. Despite that, she seems to be teleporting off the head of one of the Mystiques that she’s given as sparring partners.
This is a version of the same chimera – also called Rasputin IV – who appeared prominently in Powers of X back in the day. Sinister has deliberately bred her to be a hero, but we’ll come to that.
At any rate, by outright saying that this is as far as his chimera technology can go, Sinister is effectively telling the Quiet Council that they’ve got all the use out of him that they’re going to get – which they immediately pick up on. Sinister clearly realises this, though it’s not obvious where he sees the advantage in being so candid about it.
PAGES 13-14. Mother Righteous visits Sinister.
Interestingly, after all this time, Sinister apparently doesn’t recognise Mother Righteous.
“I invented that game.” Referring to Sinister’s initial role in late 1980s comics of hanging around dropping mysterious hints about his wider agenda.
As in Legion of X, Mother Righteous wants seemingly innocuous shows of appreciation, which appear to give her some kind of hold over people. Sinister doesn’t seem to realise this, but then again, it’s also quite out of character for him to acquiesce as quickly as he does – perhaps 90 years of this have just ground him down.
PAGE 15. Data page. Presumably an abbreviated version of what Sinister learns in the book – broadly speaking, something we already learned in Immortal X-Men #8 coupled with the eventual confirmation that Orbis Stellaris, Dr Stasis and Mother Righteous are the other three Mr Sinister clones. Basically, they were created to explore different routes to creating a “dominion” before mankind can be destroyed by Chat-GPT. (“Essex Factors” means specifically mutants, not just science in general.) Mother Righteous makes clear here that she still intends to achieve ascent to a dominion, but the obvious question is how?
PAGE 16. Mother Righteous leaves Sinister.
Sinister is correct that Nathaniel Essex got the diamond symbol when first turned into Mr Sinister in Further Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix. But he’s not the original Nathaniel Essex. That said, of the four clones created in Immortal X-Men #8, he is the closest to the original.
Sinister seems convinced that this information is useful to him if only he can access his Moiras – presumably meaning that it’s information he intends to pass on to his next incarnation after rebooting the timeline.
“He was the first villain I shot when I was an X-Man.” In Gillen’s Uncanny X-Men vol 2 #2.
PAGES 17-19. Exodus dumps Hope.
The Chitauri are another standard Marvel alien race (originally the Ultimate Universe version of the Skrulls).
Exodus basically concludes that Hope’s messianic role is only possible when she is a symbol, which she can’t be while she’s inconveniently alive. The wider question is whether this is a general Quiet Council view or Exodus just taking the chance to get rid of her. She is potentially resurrectable – Hope told us directly at the start of the issue that there could only be one of her at a time, and the Reliquary Arbor allows resurrection to continue without her.
PAGES 20-21. Sinister frees Rasputin.
Sinister is in fact telling Rasputin the truth here, and the only question is whether he’s sincerely repentant or just telling the saintly chimera what she needs to hear. Note that he doesn’t tell Rasputin exactly what he intends to do – he doesn’t say anything about rebooting the timeline, but rather just mentions “a device”, implying some sort of time travel agenda.
PAGES 22-24. Sinister and Rasputin steal the Marauder and leave.
The crew are apparently loyal to Rasputin – that’ll teach Emma Frost to make them so obedient. Maybe Sinister can free them too, in due course.
Sinister foresees a Star Trek-style five year mission, but of course we know it’s going to be 900 years before the next issue. Rasputin has Laura Kinney’s powers, so presumably she can survive.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
The Marauder is probably named after Sinister’s original team of Marauders, not the current team of Marauders. I don’t think it was an artifact from an early draft.
So Destiny had a prophecy about Mystique’s death, betrayed the Krakoans to Stellaris to try to prevent it and wound up causing Destiny’s death. You’d think an experienced precognition would know better. Even Lord Voldemort has to be going “Did you ever hear of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”
I wonder why Destiny didn’t use the gizmo in Sinister’s lab to get rid of the Sinisterized X-Men before it got to this point? Did she not know it was there or was there some other reason? Maybe we’ll find out in Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants
It’s nice to have confrimation that Stasis’s alliance with Moira, Nimrod and Omega Sentinel is an alliance of convenience and he’s actually planning on stopping the machines from taking over. But it would have been better to actually get this information from Stasis himself instead of a data page. in the ’80s we’d either have a thought balloon or a monologue about how Stasis views machines as an equal threat to humanity as mutants.
Sinister doesn’t seem to have heard of Orbis Stellaris.That’s odd- I suppose Cable never realized that Stellaris was another Sinister, or passed that information on to the council if he did realize it, but Stellaris was an intergalactic arms dealer who’d fought the X-Men before Judgement Day. You’d expect the Quiet Council to be aware of him as a potential threat.
Re Sinister thanking Mother Righteous- he seems to be aware she’s trying something magical but doesn’t think it will work or thinks he has a way to counter it.
Re:Exodus killing Hope- Sinister said last issue that the Quiet Council will turn on one another until there is only one left.
After a surprising good run on Immortal X-Men after I wrote off the majority of Krakoa stuff when Hickman was forced off and one of the better event crossovers from Marvel in recent memory, Gillen, who is someone I’ve always ranged from being ambivalent about to actively disliking his work (his Young Avengers run despite its popularity is a comic I cannot stand), I was finally coming around on him. So unfortunately this event is him doubling down on all the worst aspects of his writings.
Two of the more prominent ones in this issue are him doing the whole Moore Swamp Thing, Morrison Doom Patrol, Delano Hellblazer style thing I call the “Vertigo apocalypse page”: a narrator describing the events happening to individuals in a big destruction scene, which Gillen, despite doing them okay in Judgment Day, is not nearly as good at doing as he thinks he is. But even more than that, his work has a very post-Warren Ellis style of dialogue that is one of my least favorite things in comics: where characters, no matter the situation, will make quips or snide remarks. Even at the top of his game it was unbearable when Ellis would do it, and its even worse here. Another recent example of Gillen doing this is in Eternals where the Machine would interrupt random scenes and bring up crap like Geostorm or Fortnite, and while he hasn’t quite gone this far, I truly cannot stand shit like Hope doing a winky smiley face in a text page. Worst of all is that, admittedly less so in this issue, but Sinister comes across as a clown rather than like a real villain, which like, say what you will about Age of Apocalypse but it did try to make Apocalypse feel like a genuine threat. If this is what this past year has been leading up to it’s managed to really sour me on Krakoa. Again.
And, you know, in the interest of fairness, I will say that the stuff at the end with Rasputin is actually fairly good. But that’s about as willing as I am to praise this.
Emperor Dorrek’s “I told you so” was from +33 or so, thus I assume it’s meant to be Hulkling.
Nothing about Emma’s outfit screams bondage to me. Maybe the collar, but honestly it’s pretty generic, her costume is similar to Jessica Jones Jewel persona with a slightly deeper (but still conservative, for Emma) neckline.
@ Michael. I believe Cable is allied with Storm, and thus not in communication with the Quiet Council. He bonded with Xilo and the remaining Arakki’s are lead by Storm.
I’m certainly more of a fan of Gillen than Jenny (I enjoyed his YA run a good deal, I think his run on Journey into Mystery was excellent, as were his creator owned books like WicDev, Phonogram, and Die), but I agree Immoral hasn’t landed as well as Immortal. I’m not actively annoyed, but am finding it pretty mid. That said, Gillen is the kind of writer whose work rewards re-reading, so I’ll reserve ultimate judgment for the end of the run.
‘The title, “Four-Letter Words”, seems to refer to the four letters used to describe DNA (G, T, C and A), given Mother Righteous’ comments on page 16.’
Also, Hope. Calling back to the title of Gillen’s first Gen Hope arc, “Hope Is a Four Letter Word.”
Anyone remember the X-Men 2099 ad Marvel ran that had the tagline “In the year 2099, ‘mutant’ is still a four-letter word?” I remember me and my friends being so confused by that, being too young to understand what a four-letter word implied. We were all “but mutants is six letters??”
Anyway, this issue was a hoot.
I’m really enjoying this crossover, myself. This storyline’s got me as interested as I’ve been since Hickman. No doubt that’s in part because it’s finally making good on a lot of what got teased in HOX/POX, but which got seemingly left by the wayside because the writers and editors wanted to stick with the Krakoa setup.
And I never would have thought Sinister might become a favorite X-villain, but hey, here we are.
So far I’m liking the second issues more than the first. Sinister proper is outmatched all over the place, but I don’t mind that for two reasons. First this is a good payoff for the Sinister Secrets from Immortal #1 devolving into everything going completely wrong for him at this point.
Second… Sinister himself is usually second in danger to the things he created. He’s powerful, but it’s the things he makes that are the primary danger. His first effects in the comics were the Mutant Massacre and his indirect contribution to Inferno, and his first actual fight with our heroes ended pretty decisively against him. Yeah, he smacked people around for a bit, then got blown away.
(Side note — did they ever confirm that he was just throwing the fight to fake his death? That was always my head-canon when I first read the end of Inferno back then, that he just wanted to go back underground after having been outed and so set up a dramatic fight.)
So in that sense, having Sinister’s ultimate victory immediately get away from him is something I like. He’s finally made the thing that he can’t control and everything’s coming up Sinister.. and that’s destroying him. I like this aspect a lot. What it does need is more looking at Sinister’s current POV, but with the Immortal/Immoral POV focus style I’m guessing we don’t get that until the tie-up oneshot. That’s where it’ll come together or fail, to me.
I liked this. Hope is rather secondary here, but Exodus’s betrayal is a fun little twist.
And Sinister manipulating Rasputin IV (I have zero doubts his regrets about betraying Krakoa are 100% fake) is a surprisingly novel approach for him. At the very least it’s novel for the Krakoan Sinister – I don’t remember all his plots and schemes from the 90s.
It does remind me of AoA Sinister manipulating Nate Grey.
“(Side note — did they ever confirm that he was just throwing the fight to fake his death? That was always my head-canon when I first read the end of Inferno back then, that he just wanted to go back underground after having been outed and so set up a dramatic fight.)”
I was musing a bit on his convoluted backstory recently (as Paul is unlikely to do an Incomplete Sinister any time soon), and as with most things Sinister it’s more implied than concrete.
When Peter David brings him back in X-Factor, characters discuss how odd it is for Cyclops’ beams to explode someone rather than just knock them around, and Sinister is shown to have shapeshifting powers and an ability to ignore seemingly fatal wounds, so I always took it as read that he faked his death… but given the Gillen and Hickman revelations that “Sinister” has always been a series of clones (on top of the whole situation with the other Suits of Sinister) it may well be that Inferno Sinister did die and X-Factor Sinister is a different iteration entirely. Sinister basically has his own version of Doombots now.
I liked this issue, and the event in general has been entertaining. I still don’t feel like I can make a judgement on this story until it’s done. AXE was (to me) great from jump, and an ending weaker than the rest of the crossover didn’t change my opinion. I think SoS will succeed or fail on how well it sticks the landing, however.
@Joe I – In an issue of Immortal X-Men, Sinister mentioned his new body, cloned with Thunderbird DNA, is not invulnerable. He added something about people being less guarded around someone less powerful, and (IIRC) that remaining invulnerable was like cheating.
@ Jenny – to each their own, but I really like Gillen’s comics because he is good with character development and interactions, as well as emotional content in general. I agree, however, that excess quipping can get annoying. Gillen doesn’t cross that line for me (unlike the majority of Deadpool & Harley Quinn comics of the past 20 years), but I can see that getting on someone’s nerves.
“Basically, they were created to explore different routes to creating a “dominion” before mankind can be destroyed by Chat-GPT.”
I see you, Paul–I loled.
@Jenny: I checked out of Big 2 comics after Morrison and only came back intermittently to check out some critically-renowned runs until HoXPoX dropped. One of those was Gillen’s Journey into Mystery run, which I was frankly blown away by. I also really enjoyed Phonograph, and those were my only two forays into his work before Eternals/Immortal/AXE. (I will admit, however, that I quit Eternals by issue #3 because they are so terminally boring.)
Although I don’t have your same animus or vitriol, I occasionally find some of his choice of dialogue perhaps a little try-hard. But on a macro level many Spider books (including recent Silk and Spider-Gwen minis), Deadpool/Harley books (as Mike Loughlin mentioned), even Shang-Chi books elicit way more eye-rolling from me for their quantity of quipping and how poorly executed they are. Gillen, by contrast, has been much more entertaining to me.
And it’s a little thing, but Hope is basically GenZ to me so I buy her being into emoji culture, especially Sinisterized, ultra-narcissist Hope. (Ayala and Williams’ text message data pages in New Mutants, X-Factor, and X-Terminators are still the best at this, though.)
Really good run of #2s so far.
@YLu, that Gen Hope arc was actually called “The Future’s A Four-Letter Word,” which is even more thematic for this arc.
I’ve never had any issues with Gillen’s quips. Mainly because they often feel like they’re going for silly more than funny, if that distinction makes any sense.
@Rob
Ooh, good catch. That’s even better!
I will entirely admit that from like, a structural point of view, Gillen is definitely one of the stronger modern comic writers. It’s just that I have a sort of allergy to comics that aren’t outright comedy books doing comedy bits, especially this sort of quipy stuff. Spider-Man is a good example because all my favorite storylines that he’s in are ones that either are limited in his usage of quips or just straight up have next to none: The Sin-Eater stuff from Peter David’s early work or Kraven’s Last Hunt.
The only times comedy in comics works for me (aside from stuff that is just straight up a comedy book like say, Captain Carrot) is Grant Morrison doing it, and specifically because they do it in the same way David Lynch incorporates humor into his works; it’s done in a weird sort of inflection that’s very much the opposite of the “naturalistic” tone that Gillen, Ellis, and others try to go for.
And to this issues credit, I will say it is a much lesser issue and mostly confined to the data pages than the first issue where Sinister just comes across as a clown.
Gillen’s books are hit-or-miss for me — I enjoyed Eternals, but since I don’t care for Sinister or Hope I’m less enthusiastic about his x-books. Oh well, can’t have everything
I enjoy reading the annotations and comments here. Thank you.
Peter Milligan recently introduced a mutant teleporter named “Toodle Pip” in “X-Cellent”. Is it a coincidence that Mother Righteous apparently uses the exact same ability and triggering words in this issue?
Is the X-Statix/X-Cellent reality even considered to be Marvel-616? The Sliding TimeScale apparently doesn’t work there as the it appears that the characters have indeed aged In Real Time.
I think it’s a bit like Squirrel-Girl or Power Pack, or some of the jokes Bendis played off the time displaced O5. It’s canon, it’s 616, but it’s meta, playing to the reader, so best not to pick at the details. Suspension of disbelief and that.