Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #3
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
STORM AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS #3
“Sins of Sinister, part 9: The Song of the End”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Alessandro Vitti
Colour artist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. A symbolic image of a godlike Sorm with a hazy crowd looking up at her.
PAGE 2. Establishing shot of the World Farm.
It was on fire when Mr Sinister arrived at it in Immoral X-Men #3 – apparently, this is just its standard appearance.
The narration follows the 6-4-5 syllable pattern of Lodus Logos’s dialogue in X-Men Red – the “Great Lodus” referred to here.
The Storm System. In Immortal X-Men #3, Destiny’s vision of possible future timelines includes “the Storm System” as one possible end point, following “the Empire of the Red Diamond”.
PAGE 3. Jon Ironside and Khora.
“What Arakko once meant – what it’s come to mean again”. The inhabitants of the World Farm consider themselves the continuation of Arakki culture, since they’re based on the survivors of the original Arakko’s destruction. Prior to relocating to our dimension, Arakko spent centuries in eternal war in the dimension of Amenth; as this particular timeline has turned out, the society’s relatively peaceful time on Mars turned out to be a blip.
“The Queen in Red”. Emma Frost, now a red diamond being following an apparent merger with the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak, as seen in Immoral X-Men #3.
“The Diamond Jubilee disaster.” Presumably some sort of unfortunate incident involving Emma Frost and Jubilee (or their chimeras), though obviously it’s a pun on the anniversary celebration.
“Someone once asked me my deepest regret. I said I should have trusted the storm.” Ironfire is referring to his conversation with Mother Righteous in the previous issue. More specifically, she asked him if there was anything he would do differently if you could. He replies that in the Genesis War, “I made a mistake – took a life that haunts me still. My faith, it’s a penance. Because I didn’t have faith then. I didn’t trust the Storm.” So basically, he’s done something bad in the past because he didn’t place his faith in Storm, and he wanted to atone by giving her that trust now. What he’s wavering about is whether his desire to resurrect Storm, as per Sinister’s proposals, is a potentially disastrous misstep that he’s about to fall for due to his faith in her.
Khora turns out to be the surviving member of the regular X-Men Red cast, though plenty of Arakkii seem to be blessed with remarkably long lifespans.
PAGE 4. Ironfire heads to meet with the New Five.
X-Man. Cable, who was using that name last issue.
The Orphan-Madrox is presumably a chimera of Madrox and the Orphan-Maker, whose supposedly devastating powers remain a mystery.
The dog and its visor were with Ironfire last issue.
“We’re not afraid of a life that ends.” This is a mantra from X-Men Red, where the Arakkii consistently reject the notion of resurrection, and Storm and Magneto have to forgo the option in order to earn the Arakkii’s trust. As Khora points out, not only is it a bad idea on its own terms to play along with Sinister’s schemes, it’s contrary to the values of the society that Ironfire is meant to embody, and presumably contrary to Storm’s own wishes to boot.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGE 6. Emma Frost on the bridge of her ship.
The four identical crew members are Sage Advisors, per the data page on page 10. They’re chimeras of Sage (not especially visible), Artie Maddicks (hence the head shapes), Betsy Braddock (hence the psychic butterflies) and Madrox (with his symbol on their costume).
PAGES 7-9. The New Five resurrect Storm.
The New Five are, with the exception of Khora, new characters, filling the role of the regular Five in carrying out a wonky form of resurrection. Oda is taking Egg’s role; Khora (with the help of a blood sample from Hope) is doing Hope’s job; Bloodroot is roughly analogous to Exodus. Craana is apparently a reality warper standing in for Proteus. The main difference is Genas, a telepath who is drawing on Ironfire’s memories to reconstruct something of Storm’s history, in place of Tempus, the time-warper. The regular Five don’t include anyone responsible for the restoration of memories, which is done separately by any old telepath with security clearance who happens to be passing.
Ironfire is delighted by the return of his goddess, while Sinister seems more delighted that his plans are going smoothly.
There’s some ambiguity about whether this really is “true resurrection”, despite what the poetic narrator says. Sinister stresses that because this Storm lacks the original’s memories, “the Storm you knew remains dead”. This does seem to accord with the suggestion in other Krakoan stories that the process of restoring memories from backup somehow helps to draw the original soul back to the body.
PAGE 10. Data page, maintaining the degraded VHS tape look of the data pages in the previous two issues. As well as explaining the chimera components of Sage Advisor, this page identifies the chimeras we’ll see on the next page:
- “High Summers” combines Cyclops, Havok, Vulcan and Living Monolith, all of whom draw on the same energy sources for their powers; this apparently leads to some sort of perpetual energy loop. On the next page, they have elements of the signature headgear of all three of Cyclops, Havok and Monolith (Vulcan doesn’t really have anything equivalent).
- “Loud Hailer” combines the vocal powers of Lodus Logos and Siryn with the flexibility of Random and the brute force of Frenzy. On the next page, they had Logus’s face maskings, and Siryn’s black and yellow stripes costume element.
- “Hot Claw” is the feline sisters Feral and Thornn combined with the liquid metal of Mercury (from New X-Men) and the “hot knives” power of Pete Wisdom. “Hot claws” was also the name for the mercifully short-lived gimmick of giving Wolverine the power to heat his claws up, which was introduced with much fanfare in Return of Wolverine and almost never mentioned again. I think we’re all politely assuming it went away during a resurrection somewhere along the line.
PAGE 11. The chimeras fight the Arakki.
Straightforward enough.
PAGES 12-15. Emma Frost decides to wrap things up personally by piloting a giant robot.
All a bit Power Rangers, isn’t it? She calls it the Mistress Mold, in reference to the Master Mold, but fitting her BDSM theming.
“A fool who thought himself clever infected me with a love of puns…” Sinister, of course – hence him doing wordplay with Ironfire earlier in the issue. But note that Emma doesn’t even deem him worthy of identification to her underlings.
PAGE 16. Sinister tries to get into the vault.
This is the vault containing the stolen Moira clones that Sinister wants to use to reset the timeline. An obvious question is why he doesn’t just let Emma Frost get on with it. Two likely answers spring to mind. First, he isn’t confident that she’ll actually destroy the lab – she’s not going to reduce the planet to dust, after all. On the scale that we’re dealing with here, the lab isn’t that big. Second, he wants to be able to download his memories into the Moira so that the whole thing doesn’t just repeat on the next time around.
Moira has indeed gone missing since last issue, which is terribly suspicious.
PAGES 17-24. Storm and co fight Emma’s forces.
“There’s a trick we’ve done before that I’d like to do again…” Apparently referring to Khora boosting Storm’s power just before her death in issue #2.
Once again, this turns out to be a last throw of the dice, which allows Storm to pull off a last major stunt before dying again. Storm reiterates the “not afraid of a life that ends” mantra in her dying words. Sinister, of course, takes it a little differently.
PAGE 25. Trailers. The story continues in Nightcrawlers #3.
Paul > It was on fire when Mr Sinister arrived at it in Immoral X-Men #3 – apparently, this is just its standard appearance.
It looks like the Last Castle of Arakko is actually built around the Center-Sun of the World Farm. So it’s a basically Dyson Engine, which sort of explains the fire.
Paul > The Storm System. In Immortal X-Men #3, Destiny’s vision of possible future timelines includes “the Storm System” as one possible end point, following “the Empire of the Red Diamond”.
Yes, it looks like the Sins of Sinister timeline is [NOW > Judgment Day > The Empire of the Red Diamond > The Storm System]. At the end of Sins of Sinister, this timeline most likely reboots back to just after Judgment Day.
After Sinister is taken out of Krakoa in the rebooted timeline, Fall of X begins at Hellfire Gala 2023 and we will appear to be headed in the direction of [NOW > Judgment Day > Nimrod Extinction Event]. However, where I suspect we’ll really end up at the end of Fall of X is [NOW > Judgment Day > A New Krakoa].
Paul > “Hot claws” was also the name for the mercifully short-lived gimmick of giving Wolverine the power to heat his claws up…
I actually think Ewing is fond of this idea. Besides mentioning it here, doesn’t Jon Ironfire’s abilities of using his molten iron blood to create hot metal protrusions on his body seem inspired by Hot Claws?
Paul > He replies that in the Genesis War, “I made a mistake – took a life that haunts me still.”
I theorize that the life he took during the Genesis War is that of Craig Marshall, the astronaut from X-Men Red. S&TBOM 1 says Loolo Marshall hides ‘a past filled with loss’ and Craig is the only one we know she’s close to, given she seems to have been adopted by him.
X-Men Red seems to be exploring the ‘main timeline’ version of the Genesis War during Fall of X, so we’ll if this version of Jon Ironfire makes the same mistake.
Of note: Emma Frost’s other minions in this issue appear to be clones of Dummy, the gas-based mutant who was part of the Special Class in New X-Men who was killed during Quire’s riot. As far as I know, he hasn’t been resurrected in modern Krakoa stuff yet.
Note that the recap page describes Storm as outmaneuvering Destiny while Gillen’s chapters make it clear that Irene let Storm kill her so that Sinister would make it to the Storm System, kill Ironfire and have a clear shot at the Moiras. I think that Gillen intended for Storm’s scheme to outwit Destiny to fail while Ewing intended for it for succeed. That’s the difference between Ewing’s and Gillen’s writing styles- Ewing likes to have his heroes (Storm, Sunspot) save the day through clever schemes while Gillen has clever schemes backfire, whether villainous (Sinister, Destiny) or heroic (Tony and the Eternals creating the Celestial during Judgment Day) because NO ONE is smart enough to make them work.
Re: Emma and the Moiras- Emma didn’t WANT to kill the Moiras- she was trying to capture them so that Sinister and Ironfire couldn’t use them against her. As for how she knew where they were so she wouldn’t kill them by accident- telepathy?
I wonder what’s going on with Moira- we know that Sinister and Mother Righteous don’t succeed in becoming Dominions but maybe Moira does?
Paul> Moira has indeed gone missing since last issue, which is terribly suspicious.
Michael> I wonder what’s going on with Moira- we know that Sinister and Mother Righteous don’t succeed in becoming Dominions but maybe Moira does?
Moira XI has no doubt gone to look for the Moira Engine.
Regarding the Dominion, I was thinking along the same lines as Michael, but why do you believe we know for certain that Mother Righteous won’t reach Dominion?
Doctor Stasis is dead.
Orbis Stellaris is most likely dead.
Mister Sinister won’t reach Dominion (as foreseen by Destiny, though she could have been lying).
Mother Righteous can still reach Dominion, though I agree it’s unlikely.
I was rereading Defenders Beyond recently, which Ewing claims contains clues to his upcoming stories.
In DB5, the Defenders get a glimpse of a non-linear cosmic outsider invading the Multiverse in the form of a giant crown. This is almost certainly meant to be a Dominion.
Loki: “So whatever we saw, we know it’s not a sword, cup, coin or staff… or any of the other suits. So where there are four–look for the fifth business.”
‘Sword, cup, coin or staff’ is an ancestor to ‘spades, hearts, diamonds or clubs’. The ‘fifth business’ is the crown, which inexplicably showed up on a tarot card in DB1. If this is indeed foreshadowing Sins of Sinister, who represents the wild card Suit of Crowns that ascends to Dominion?
Could it be Moira? If it is, I feel like we could get a story where the some of the circumstances in Moira’s lives (her specific mutation, the number of life cycles, etc.) were engineered by an omniscient, atemporal version of Moira herself. This is basically the plot of Ewing’s Venom, so it’s not too wild of an idea.
There is also a small chance that the SoS timeline resets before anyone reaches Dominion, and while this is possible, I feel like it’s a less dramatic choice.
Well, we know that the Dominions exist and that they exist outside of space and time, so the Dominions must be created at some point. We also know that all the Dominions which we know of existing from Hickman are Machine Intelligences. Moira is now a machine. It would certainly be interesting if Moira was involved in the creation of the Dominion. Once a Dominion is created or exists, it will then exist in all times. How ironic would it be if Moira’s failure in each of her lifetimes was being brought about by Moira, who achieved the status of a Dominion in this far future timeline?
Remember the Librarian’s words to Moira in Life Six. “If we achieve Ascension, we will remember you. If we are aware of you, so will the Dominion. I don’t think the Dominion will allow something like you to exist in order to stop the rise of post-humanity.” (paraphrase). Maybe the Librarian was completely correct, except the Dominion already knew of Moira because the Dominion is Moira. It would certainly allow Moira to exist as Moira needed to exist to eventually become the Dominion. It needed to prevent Moira from succeeding in stopping the rise of post-humanity so that Moira could reach the point where she was of The Machine in order to create the Dominion.
The idea would then into certain ideas Hickman was using from the philosophy of Pierre Teilhard De Chardin. God doesn’t exist yet as it is our destiny that we must eventually create God, yet God must always exist/have always existed, so God created us in order to bring about His creation.
Nah, the stuff in Defenders Beyond is more linked to the Kabbalah stuff in Immortal Hulk than anything X-Men related; it’s actually appearing right now a bit in Ewing’s Venom.
@GN- We’ve seen Mother Righteous in the solicits and preview images for the Before the Fall: Sons of X one-shot and she’s still scheming to ensnare Legion. It’s possible there’s going to be a Dominion Mother Righteous and a non-Dominion Mother Righteous but I doubt it.
Michael-There could be in that the timeline is getting reset at the end. The Dominions exist outside of time and space. No matter how many times Moira reset the timeline, the Dominion continued to exist. Hence, the Librarian’s threat to Moira in Life Six. If someone becomes a Dominion at the end of this event and the timeline gets reset, the Dominion will still exist, while the being which became the Dominion will still exist in their pre-Dominion status in the reset timeline. So, it’s possible but I doubt Mother Righteous will become a Dominion. If anyone, I would expect Moira.
@Jenny: That would fit there also for the crown image. It’s not any of the four suited Sinisters who end up becoming a Dominion, but Venom or Meridius as the King in Black. That does require Defenders Beyond referencing both the X-titles and Venom in the image-play which isn’t something I’d normally expect, but I could see coming from Ewing.
I’m not feeling too confident in that actually being where either is going, but it would fit. Using all the symbiotes as processing power to become a Dominion *would* be a reasonable path…
OTOH, making Moira a Dominion does draw a line under all of the time shenanigans from her. Reveal that the only reason her mutant powers managed to reset the universe is that they were being super-charged by her Dominion-self in order to lead to the path in which it was created. Even though it exists out of time and doesn’t need to do anything to ensure it exists, it likes to keep things neat or whatever time hand-waviness you want.
Now that she becomes a Dominion “on-camera” and that’s played out, Moira-Dominion is done playing time games. Any Moiras cloned from here on out either have no powers at all or have some much more minor non-supercharged time powers that don’t break normal MU time rules. Everything there goes back in the box, except for killer robo-Moira still running around as things reset this one last time.
I noticed that halfway through Defenders Beyond, Ewing stops calling it the Dominion and from then on consistently refers to it as the Enigma.
It makes me wonder if it actually has nothing to do with X-book Dominions and he changed the name specifically because he realized the possible confusion.
[…] & THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS #3. (Annotations here.) The risk with “Sins of Sinister” and its vast timescales is that everything becomes a […]
With the “sing to me, oh poets” and the narrative captioning in general, Ewing seems to be referencing the Iliad (or possibly the Odyssey, but the war vibe of the Iliad feels closer to this story); it’s an interesting switch from the Star Wars Rebels approach he took to the other issues.
I’m not sure why anyone would be becoming a Dominion, to be honest — we were introduced to the concept of Dominions as ultra-dense T/O collapsing into a black hole. I can vaguely see the Worldfarm creating an artificial one, but all these other “ways to create a Dominion” really go against how they were described as part of the Phalanx lifecycle.
One thing I’d be interested by, though, would be if Robo-Moira could find a way to stick her own brain from her robot to human body, then resurrecting in Sinister’s lab in the present as Moira X again.
Mathias-They weren’t created as part of the Phalanx lifecycle. The Titans were responsible for the creation of the Phalanx as a hivemind servant race for the Titans which would search out knowledge in the universe that was worth preserving, to make such part of the Dominion. The eventual goal is the assimilation of all knowledge in the universe, so that the only thing which exists is the Dominion(s).
You are correct that the only example of a Dominion we have seen are the result of advanced Machine Intelligence. Knowledge/Intelligence growing so advanced and dense that it collapses spacetime into a black hole. I don’t understand how Sinister or Mother Righteous plan to create their own Dominion either. This hasn’t been explained.
The one outlier was from Moira’s Life Nine, where it was stated that Sinister’s Omega-class chimeras formed a hivemind which collapsed Mars into a “self-singularity”. This gives the idea that a sufficiently advanced number of Omega-level mutants could perform the same function as highly-advanced AI to create a non-mechanical Dominion.
I’m not sure if Gillen, Ewing, and Spurrier misunderstood Hickman’s definition of Titans/Stronghold/Dominions or not. They seem to be ignoring the evolutionary scale of Titans/Dominions. Sinister’s original goal seemed to make sense, that if he could create a hivemind throughout the universe of nothing except Sinister, such knowledge would grow so advanced/dense that it could collapse space-time into a Singularity, similar to a sufficiently advanced Omega mutants-hivemind.
However, Moira is now a machine. If someone could be responsible for the point of the Singularity which will lead to the creation of a Dominion, it would most likely be Moira.
“Bloodroot is roughly analogous to Exodus.”
Did you mean Elixir? Exodus isn’t part of the Five.