Rise of the Powers of X #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NOTE: This post has been revised now that the digital edition has been corrected to include the data pages at the right places.
RISE OF THE POWERS OF X #1
“Data Pages”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: R. B. Silva
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Associate editor: Lauren Amaro
Editor: Jordan D White
Editor-in-chief: C B Cebulski
THE RISE OF THE POWERS OF X is the companion series to The Fall of the House of X, mirroring the House of X / Power of X twin minis that launched the Krakoan era. And yes, according to the credits pages, the titles have a THE in them.
With the original books, the titles were supposed to be pronounced as “House of X” and “Powers of Ten”. Presumably the same goes for this, but you never know.
COVER / PAGE 1. The near-future X-Men team, of whom more later. They’re surrounded by foliage but in front of a mechanical portal showing what looks to be the sun.
PAGE 2. Recap and credits. The recap basically covers the plot of Immortal X-Men, and then explains that we’re ten years in the future, following the fall of Krakoa. The story title refers to the Krakoan era’s signature device of including text pages in the middle of the story rather than as back matter. It used to be a Jonathan Hickman signature device but it’s ours now.
PAGES 3-5. Nimrod celebrates victory over the mutants.
“The Tower of Nimrod the Lesser, the Human-Machine Monolith, Earth.” In Powers of X, Moira’s ninth life was a robot-dominated world ruled by “Nimrod the Lesser”, with Omega Sentinel at his side. The establishing shots for those scenes showed the same tower, captioned “The Tower of Nimrod the Lesser. The Human-Machine Monolith.” Evidently, ten years down the line, Nimrod and Omega Sentinel have steered history in a similar direction.
In that timeline, mutants were nearly wiped out, and humans were subordinate to machines. That timeline ends with the surviving X-Men recovering vital information that would supposedly help Moira to avert Nimrod’s creation, and then killing her to reset the timeline so that she can try again with that knowledge.
“They did where I came from. The mutants burned down the machine firmament with Phoenix fire.” Inferno vol 2 #3 revealed that Omega Sentinel is possessed by the mind of herself from an alternate future in which the mutants wiped out the Dominions using the Phoenix Force. She’s come back in time to prevent that from happening. It’s an inversion of Kitty Pryde’s role in “Days of Future Past”.
Specifically, here’s what Omega Sentinel claims in Inferno #3, because it sounds like it’s going to be important:
“Soon, the Children of the Vault – post-humanity – should emerge. They will appear to be dominant. A threat to supplant humanity and mutantdom alike. But fractured and warring on two fronts, they would eventually fall to Krakoa. [The art shows Apocalypse, Genesis and the original Horsemen.] Post-humanity – it was believed – had arrived too early and would have to wait its turn. You [Nimrod] were born in the year that followed. Lesser than you are now, but still a marvel of marvels. A great machine. But your emergence – the threat of you – did not go unnoticed by the mutant nation and your makers sent you back in time to fight mutantdom in its infancy. This Nimrod – this flawed you – failed.
“Earth – the entire Sol system – was lost to both human and machine. Mutants ruled. And all our machine hopes rested in the timeliness machine gods – Dominions – to save us… to take us in, so we could be. But the mutants captured the celestial powers – life and death – and, using the Phoenix blade, the child of the sun – who wielded it with vigour – destroyed Titan after Titan, Dominion after Dominion, and ended the machine future forever. Except for me. Omega at the end of the line.
“The trickster Titan – betrayer and coward of its brother and sister machines – downloaded my mind and pushed it through a black hole to infect and overwrite the me who lived in the past but had not yet awakened. I closed my eyes in mutant hell and opened them years ago – here, on earth. All my days of a future past.”
Omega Sentinel then goes on to explain that she created Orchis, apparently to prevent mutant domination, but ultimately in order to guarantee machine ascendance. It’s tempting to assume that the “trickster Titan” is Enigma, the Dominion based on the Nathaniel Essex AI from Immortal X-Men, but the closing data page doesn’t equate them.
“It’s as if the Terminator had a happy ending.” Nimrod sees this as a story where history has been successfully changed, although obviously his idea of a happy ending may differ from yours.
“Tomorrow, we meet our new god. Tomorrow, we become our god.” This calls back to Moira’s sixth life, in which she and Wolverine survived as prisoners into the distant future while post-humanity attempted to summon the Phalanx in order to ascend to godhood. The post-human Librarian specifically flagged the point that Moira couldn’t be allowed to die before the ascension occurred, because that would reboot the timeline – but he believed that once they had ascended, they would be beyond time and space and, by implication, escape the endless loop of Moira’s reboots. However, Wolverine then kills Moira before the ascension can happen.
Emma Frost is the hapless corpse that they’re standing over. Mystique refers in the next scene to her “sacrificial distraction.”
PAGES 6-7. Gambit and Mystique die heroically.
The Henry Gyrich Memorial Detention Center is the Orchis New York base seen extensively in X-Men.
As we establish over the course of the issue, Gambit and Mystique have stolen a file containing a copy of Feilong’s personality, including his knowledge of the whereabouts of Mr Sinister, who’s imprisoned on Phobos. Gambit sacrifices himself in order to buy Mystique time to relay that location to the X-Men.
“Irene. I’m coming.” Mystique is expecting to die and be reunited with Destiny.
PAGE 8. The X-Men receive the location from Mystique.
“The Broken Sword.” Apparently, whatever remains of the S.W.O.R.D. space station, the Peak.
The future X-Men are:
- The Professor. A future Synch, taking the Professor X role. That ties to his current role in X-Men. The idea that his powers cause him to age and wear out is another X-Men subplot.
- Iron Man. An AI copy of Tony Stark, animating the “final” Iron Man suit – i.e., the one he switched to immediately after the Hellfire Gala.
- Captain Krakoa. Ms Marvel, in the role of the teen hero who’s ascended to leadership. She’s wearing a version of the Captain Krakoa costume that Cyclops wore in X-Men to disguise his resurrection, though it also points to her embracing her role as a mutant symbol.
- Shadowtiger. A transformed version of Shadowkat, thanks to a “Death Seed” – a plot point from Rick Remender’s X-Force, where it was a sort of Celestial artefact that brought out a Death persona.
- Wolverine, because of course Wolverine’s still around.
PAGES 9-10. Moira, Nimrod and Omega Sentinel discuss the impending Dominion.
The graphics all reflect the design of Hickman data pages.
Worldmind. A term more often used in Nova stories, to describe the AI that preserves Xandarian culture. Basically, Omega Sentinel has come back in time with the information from the far future that will allow the machines to build a Worldmind AI and summon a Dominion to absorb them, a thousand years ahead of schedule.
“Finally safe.” Moira seems to see absorption into a dominion as something that will get her out of space and time and prevent her being stuck in her endless loops – though this ought to be her final life anyway, so perhaps she also sees this as her last chance to escape death.
Dr Stasis has gone back to wearing his helmet, which is interesting – he hasn’t worn it much in X-Men of late. We’ll come back to what he’s doing as an ally of Orchis at this point.
Feilong apparently did stand up to Nimrod once he figured out what was going on – he’s a post-humanity true believer, after all – and it didn’t go well for him.
PAGE 11. The X-Men arrive on Phobos.
Phobos is a moon of Mars, and has an Orchis base on it thanks to Feilong. In the mainstream timeline, it’s actually now under the control of Genesis and her remaining Horsemen, as seen in X-Men Red.
PAGE 12. Nimrod and co head to Phobos to fight the X-Men.
Fearing that the X-Men might be able to stop them after all, Nimrod tells Moira to activate the Worldmind early, risking rejection by the Dominion that he hopes to attract. Moira complies.
PAGE 13. Dr Stasis visits the Vault.
Stasis has apparently been biding his time waiting for an opportunity to move against Orchis, which makes sense – his whole thing is that he doesn’t like things changing. Quite why Orchis continue to trust him might be debatable, but presumably they buy his position that he’s making the best of the situation that presents itself.
Anyway, Stasis approaches the top tier post-humanity option of the Children of the Vault, who have evidently been biding their time making plans within their time-distortion vault.
PAGES 14-16. The X-Men fight Nimrod and co.
The Dominion duly arrives ahead of schedule.
PAGES 17-19. Dr Stasis and Cadena.
Since they’re in a time bubble, they’re in no particular hurry. Stasis basically tells us that the AI are ultimately just a giant ChatGPT who can only recycle existing elements. Stasis, in contrast, has created a “Supreme Intelligence” of geniuses, similar to the Kree, who can create new ideas. It doesn’t exactly look as if they’re in prime thinking mood, but apparently they have indeed created a weapon to destroy the Dominion. We’ll see in a bit how that works.
As Cadena points out, if you interpret the concept broadly enough, post-humanity can never lose. (In the X-books, though, it normally means humans enhanced by technology rather than natural mutation.)
PAGES 20-23. The X-Men rescue Mr Sinister.
Sinister has been kept alive because “They couldn’t risk me having a failsafe.” But Sinister can’t resist bragging about his failsafe, and having had its existence confirmed, Wolverine kills him. As we see later on, the failsafe is that it triggers a Moira reboot once Sinister is detected as dead.
PAGES 24-26. Dr Stasis tries to hijack the Dominion.
The weapon is designed to erase the Dominion’s intelligences so that something else can be uploaded in its place. Since they’re destroying the sun in the process, the Children of the Vault presumably expected that to be them. But of course, Dr Stasis has his own plans and uses a back door to shut the Children down. Stasis then tries to ascend to Dominion status himself, but it doesn’t work because another Dominion – Enigma – comes along to consume the first one.
“Helped a lot with Bella’s early work making you.” Bella Pagan, the scientist credited with creating the Children of the Vault in X-Men #191. Stasis is suggesting that his back door has been there all along.
Rasputin IV is evidently from outside the timeline, since there wouldn’t be much point in her trying to “get out of there” otherwise. More of this in a bit.
PAGES 27-28. Enigma destroys Nimrod and Omega Sentinel, and reality ends.
This is not the Dominion that Nimrod wanted – he wanted a superhuman AI, and he’s got a single human who has turned himself into an AI. Enigma repeats the “new gods” motif from House of X #1, where the mutants were asserting their untouchability.
As per the last issue of Immortal X-Men, Enigma’s forehead symbol is a crown, which also appears in his captions. Page 28 recaps the “Moira engine” which Sinister used to test timelines and reboot them, and which was a central plot point of Immortal X-Men.
PAGE 29. Data page, attempting to explain the confusing mess of repeated lives and timelines. It’s mostly recap. The world where Stasis succeeded in ascending is the one we saw in the first part of the issue. Orbis Stellaris’ ascension remains a mystery. We’re also told that Mother Righteous’ attempt at ascension has “mortally injured” the White Hot Room, whatever that might mean where Phoenix-related dimensions are concerned.
PAGES 30-31. Professor X, Rasputin and Cypher.
Apparently, this is what Professor X called Rasputin away to deal with in The Fall of the House of X #1. As we learn on the following data pageNo-Place X is Moira’s No-Place, developed by Cypher and Krakoa so as to exist outside time and space. In other words, they’ve created a pocket where they can’t be monitored by a Dominion.
Cypher hasn’t been seen since he was spirited away by Krakoa in Immortal X-Men #13. Presumably this is where Krakoa took him. (He certainly wasn’t in the Pit when we saw it in other books.)
“The X-Men’s attacks against Orchis.” The fight-back shown in Fall.
PAGE 32. Data page on No-Place X. Other than confirming the nature of No-Place X itself, this is mostly recap, but it does indicate that when Cypher said “I’ll let the rest know the bad news” on the previous page, there were two people in mind – identities as yet redacted.
PAGES 33-34. Professor X explains his plan to Rasputin.
“I know where blindly following someone leads you.” In her home timeline, “Sins of Sinister”, Rasputin IV blindly followed her creator Mr Sinister for most of her life before being betrayed.
Professor X’s plan is to go back in time, kill Moira before her powers emerge at puberty, and invalidate everything to do with Moira. The Krakoan nation will then be retroactively removed from continuity (presumably, along with all other stories depending on the existence of Moira MacTaggert), and the opportunity for ascension will not arise. As data page 35 makes clear, Enigma needs all four component Sinister clones to succeed in their ascensions, at which point he “harvests” them and diverts their success to himself. Without Krakoa and Moira, Sinister and Mother Righteous would never have managed it.
I don’t think we’re actually doing a partial reboot of Marvel continuity at the end of the Krakoan era, but that’s certainly what this is teasing.
PAGE 35. Trailers. The Krakoan reads FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X.
As so many others have said before , the very idea of a single individual who can reset an entire timeline is 100% nonsense that breaks all possible suspension of disbelief. Its just so stupid that eventually it shall be retconned-revealed that its entirely the delusions of UnReliable Narrator egomaniacs/narcissists/solipsists , and that the timeline does still continue anyway , the dead person’s consciousness merely returns to an earlier point in time in their own personal timeline , best non-X example is the Re:Zero anime episode 37
As far as Moira, if the person who travels back in time to neutralize Moira’s power shows her that her actions with Xavier and Magneto lead to the futures she is trying to avoid (mutant supremacy in 10A, Essex triumphant in the current timeline), it could change her entire stance. She could decide she is no longer a mutant and it is time to accept the inevitable (whatever happens, happens) and we get the Moira we remember pre-Hickman.
As far as No Place X, I think it’s related to the “Trickster Titan”, that Krakoa is evolving into a World Mind, hence how it is somehow able to exist outside of time and space. I think Doug somehow has knowledge of Life 10A and the “Trickster Titan” being the evolved Krakoa/Warlock merger, who wants to erase everything which has occurred because of Krakoa.
As far as Moira’s power, I’m sure eventually Marvel will return to Moira’s past lives and reveal they are alternate timelines for big crossover events, but for now it is what Hickman put on the page.
[…] OF THE POWERS OF X #1. (Annotations here – revised now that the data pages in the digital edition have been fixed.) While Fall of the House of X is clearly meant to be the straightforward action book, Rise of the […]
Surely Hickman had a better plan for Moira, and probably for returning the toys to the sandbox at the end of the Krakoa story. It’s a real shame he wouldn’t or couldn’t stick around to write the ending.
JDSM24 > As so many others have said before , the very idea of a single individual who can reset an entire timeline is 100% nonsense that breaks all possible suspension of disbelief.
Hickman has been very clear, both within the story he wrote and whenever he talks about it outside, on how Moira X’s powers work. She’s born, and then her mutant powers manifest at age 13. Should she die post-manifestation, the entire timeline rewinds like a loaded spring to the moment of her birth, and her life begins again. Should she die before the age of 13, there will be no reincarnation, and the timeline continues as usual. There’s no alternate universes or branching realities involved here. It’s all Earth-616. Moira’s past lives are the ‘previous versions’ of Earth-616 that no longer exist except in Moira’s memories.
If you really think about it, this is Hickman formalizing the Days of Future Past framing device so that it can be used to tell stories of consequence without getting into the weeds of the Gruenwald branching timelines that the original DoFP unfortunately got mired in.
(Obviously, Xavier has found a way to insert Rasputin IV into the past lives of the Moira Engine, but I’m sure we’ll learn more about how this was done in future issues.)
As to the plausibility of the powers, I don’t see any problem with it. Proteus is an Omega-level mutant that can warp reality on a psionic scale. Is it too much of a stretch that his mother can reincarnate temporally?
Luis Dantas > If Moira can create and destroy universes, she is more powerful than Phoenix, Galactus and the like. We would have to expect the Shiar and many more to want to kill her ASAP once they found out. Biological mutation giving a human power over the whole of existence – several times?!?
If the Shi’ar and many more found out about the nature of her powers, then sure, I can see them trying to do something about it. Which is why it was kept a secret. The Librarian said in PoX 6 that if the Dominions learn about the scale of her powers, they would not tolerate it.
Besides, it was a reveal in Nicieza’s X-Men Forever that the X-gene was, in the long term, turning humans into gods, and this frightened the fundamental forces of the Universe. Now we have Gillen’s X-Men Forever coming up soon, where this idea might be explored further.
What do we actually know about the Trickster Dominion?
1. It was once a Titan, now a Dominion.
2. It was a betrayer and coward of its brother and sister machines.
3. It sent Omega Sentinel 10A back in time to oppose Krakoan ascendancy.
The Titan>Dominion thing can be easily explained. The Trickster was a Titan when it sent Omega back in time. Since then, it’s worked its way up to Dominion, so it’s retroactively always been a Dominion.
To me, the most likely answer is that the Trickster Dominion is the Enigma in disguise, planting the seeds for its own creation.
Think about it. Omega Sentinel goes back in time to establish Orchis early in Moira Life 10B. The cycles of escalation between Orchis and Krakoa lead to the events of Inferno, where Moira X is depowered and the secret of Moira’s mutant powers is revealed to the Quiet Council. Mr Sinister then exploits Moira’s mutant gene to create the Moira Engine, to accelerate his own (failed) path to Dominion. The Moira Engine enables multiple Essex clones to attempt for Dominionhood without the others becoming aware, which all but assured the creation of Enigma.
But I’m open to other possibilities.
Chris V > I think Marvel Editorial called an audible on the Titan/Stronghold/Dominion distinction from Hickman. Perhaps they considered it too confusing.
I’m not sure editorial would care that much, I think Gillen simplified things for story expediency.
The setup in PoX is that the Worldmind is bait that summons a Phalanx, the Phalanx consumes the Worldmind and then its machine creators, the Phalanx travels to the nearest black hole where it plugs into a Titan, the Titan plugs into a Dominion outside of spacetime. Gillen cut to the chase and had the Worldmind summon a Dominion, a creative choice that makes sense to me because the story is about Stasis attempting to lobotomize a Dominion and upload himself into it. Having all the intermediary steps play out on page slows the narrative down.
My headcanon is that the Mars Worldmind was more impressive than the Nibiru Worldmind so a Dominion personally made an appearance this time.
Let’s take a look at the overall plan:
1. Orbis Stellaris Dominion Attempt
Mysterium-M’Kraanite crystal construct.
Moira Life 10B + Moira Engine II.4
NOW > ? > END
2. Doctor Stasis Dominion Attempt
Rise of the Powers of X 1
Deletion and possession of existing machine Dominion with the energy of the Sun.
Moira Life 10B + Moira Engine IV.8
NOW > Judgment Day > Fall of X > The Broken Sword > END
3. Mister Sinister Dominion Attempt
Sins of Sinister: Dominion 1
The Inferno. Psychic sacrifice of 8,662,221,825,196,190 mutants corrupted with Sinister gene.
Moira Life 10B + Moira Engine VII.1
NOW > Judgment Day > The Empire of the Red Diamond > The Storm System > END
4. Mother Righteous Dominion Attempt
Immortal X-Men 18
Auto-deification magic ritual in the White Hot Room using Jean Grey’s blood.
Moira Life 10B + Moira Engine VII.2
NOW > Judgment Day > Fall of X > Fall of the House of X (PRESENT)
There’s two interesting things to note here:
1. Orbis Stellaris’ Dominion attempt is the only one we have not seen depicted yet. The details of it are redacted in the data page. So there’s a reveal yet to come, probably in X-Men Forever.
2. Mysterium, the M’Kraan Crystal, the Sun, Inferno, the White Hot Room, Jean Grey.
What do all these things have in common?
They are elements either directly or indirectly related to the Phoenix.
Stasis says the A.I. don’t have original ideas, which is true. But the Gillen take on Sinister (and now Essex) has always been that they don’t have original ideas either. Essex always exploits someone, usually a powerful woman, in order to get his plans to work. We saw this with the Madelyne Clones in Sinister London and the Moira Engine in IXM.
So it’s interesting that the Essex Clones went off in such different directions (post-humans, aliens, magic) but in the end they had to knock on the Phoenix’s door to get in.
The Trickster Titan could be Professor X with Sinister in his head. Prof. X acts as a Trojan Horse hiding Sinister.
I just want to chime in to say that these annotations suggest that this story is utterly impenetrable to any reader who hasn’t been entirely immersed in the Krakoan books since their inception. I read HoX/PoX, but followed up on that only with occasional issues and Paul’s annotations. I can’t understand the column above at all.
I understand the appeal of being immersed in dense lore. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense for a story that is a serial in perpetuity. At some point you have to circle back around and let people hop back on. Not for me, necessarily, since I’m unlikely to rejoin the ranks of regular readers.
Which I guess is what they’re in the process of doing.
Yes , Hickman’s lore is indeed still 616-canon … FOR NOW. But it can always be genuinely retconned later the moment it becomes either too profitable for Marvel to do otherwise or too costly for Marvel NOT to do otherwise (I.e. Retain his lore so it will remain in continuity) , after all , Hickman’s whole run on the XBooks to begin with in the very first place is fundamentally based on genuine retcons of the lore of most of the other past X-writers especially Claremont’s lore LOL
@Nu-D: Fully agree. I appreciate Paul’s annotations and other commenters’ summaries (Thanks, @GN!) because the extremely long-form story of Krakoa’s rise and fall has required too much time and money to follow closely.
I’ll be interested to see if anyone compiles an “essential Krakoa” reading list at some point. For instance, what is the minimum I have to read to understand the Sinister (et al.) thread of the current storyline?
At the moment, I’m just enjoying the pyrotechnics as the entire thing blows up.
@Nu-D: That’s a wild overstatement – all you really need for this story is to have read Inferno and Gillen’s Immortal X-Men (including Sins of Sinister), and you’d be up to speed. That’s a pretty minimal requirement for a story being marketed as the end of an era.
Yeah, the Orchis/Dominions “main plotline” thread of the Krakoan era is surprisingly slim; you can skip almost directly from HoX/PoX to Inferno, and from Inferno to Immortal/Immoral X-Men and this year’s Hellfire Gala. That’s not to say you won’t miss some details or entertaining stories (pour one out for Hellions), but the actual ongoing plot developments are surprisingly localized to a handful of books… which has actually been a criticism of the Krakoan era. I seem to recall someone complaining in the comments pretty recently about Hickman’s run on X-Men not really going anywhere.
For what it’s worth, I’ve read all the Krakoa era stuff that’s been printed (not the digital-only stuff), and I still don’t follow what’s going on. Or more accurately, I don’t care enough about what’s going on to try to understand it. I’m increasingly realizing that Hickman-style Big Idea comics are Not For Me. I’m ready for all of this to end.
I’ll probably re-post this when issue 2 comes out, but here goes (I can just copy/paste this anyway)…
Why was Mother Righteous in the White Hot Room the thing that actually brought Enigma into existence? I (think I) know how it’s being presented: Her attempt was the one that happened earliest in its relevant timeline. BUT, the information from at least one other attempt, in Sins of Sinister, was already in the main/current timeline before that. Was that not enough? You can’t say that it needed information from all four attempts (though that’s what the end of Immortal X-Men seemed to suggest) because Sins of Sinister showed that classic/diamond Sinister had succeeded by himself, if not for the fact that Enigma blocked him. So either Enigma needs all 4 attempts, meaning classic Sinister should have failed without being blocked, or it only needs a ‘first’ attempt…which should still be classic Sinister…unless the data from Stasis or Stellaris got to the Moira engine first.