Dead X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DEAD X-MEN #3
“An Echo, a Stain”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artists: Lynne Yoshii, Bernard Chang, Javier Pina & David Baldéon
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men confront an alternate Psylocke.
PAGES 2-3. The X-Men arrive in Moira’s 9th life.
The previous issue ended with the X-Men in Moira’s seventh life, where they learned that the cyborg Moira from issue #1 was visiting Moira’s earlier lives, and decided that they had to pursue her through those timelines in order to stop her from causing damage to the timeline. They’ve apparently come directly from that timeline, but although they tell us that Rachel sent them here, it’s not altogether clear why, since they spend much of the rest of the issue trying to persuade Rachel to keep sending them back through Moira’s past lives. Presumably Rachel just assumes that they’re still just randomly visiting past timelines to see if anything interesting turns up, which is pretty much how Prodigy pitched matters to her last issue.
Moira’s ninth life. House of X #2 only shows us two pages of this timeline, in which Moira aligns herself with Apocalypse. We see her in a temple alongside the Horsemen, looking like a smaller female version of Apocalypse himself (much as she appears here, though the colouring on her face was more prominent in the original story). Powers of X then shows this version of Moira in the future, ending with the X-Men getting information to her and killing her in order to reset the timeline.
Frenzy did start off as a follower of Apocalypse, as a member of the Alliance of Evil in her earliest appearances – though she was a hired gun rather than a true believer.
The Host appear to be a horde of clones of Archangel. They’re wearing the same skull mask that the main Archangel wore as a Horseman of Apocalypse in his earliest appearances in that role.
PAGE 4. Recap and credits. I should have mentioned this before, but for whatever reason, the story titles in this series are all “Bjork” songs. Issue #1 is titled after her 2007 single “Earth Intruders”, issue #2 was “Army of Me” (an actual hit, from 1995) and “An Echo, a Stain” is a track from her 2001 album “Vespertine”.
PAGES 5-6. The X-Men regroup in the White Hot Room.
Prodigy seems to be saying here that he was trying to learn about Dominions from Moira herself. But that doesn’t make any sense, because he already copied the cyborg Moira’s memories in issue #1, which surely include anything that this Moira learned about Dominions.
Rachel tells us that she’s very busy right now due to “Hunter-Killers” attacking No-Place X in Rise of the Powers of X #3. That issue isn’t out for another two weeks but since it seems to be basically a continuation of the attack shown in Rise #2, this is hardly a spoiler.
PAGE 7. Cyborg Moira visits her tenth and third lives.
Moira’s tenth life is the mainstream timeline; for some reason, cyborg Moira is watching Cyclops arrive for his trial in Fall of the House of X #1.
Moira’s third life is the one where she develops a cure for mutant powers, and gets burned to death by Mystique, Destiny and Pyro. The moment shown here appears to be page 10 panel 4 of House of X #2, viewed from a different angle; cyborg Moira would have been behind the “camera” in the original scene.
PAGES 8-9. The X-Men continue to talk to Rachel.
Cyborg Moira got the mysterium, and Prodigy got the rock (a shard of the M’Kraan Crystal), in issue #1. The rest of the recap is from issue #2. Professor X speaking to young Moira must happen in Rise of the Powers of X #3. Again, that issue isn’t out yet, but the previous issues were clearly setting up such a meeting, so it’s barely a spoiler. As Rise #2 and Dead X-Men #2 have shown, Rachel believes that Professor X wants to speak to Moira, but Professor X has told Rasputin that he intends to kill her.
PAGE 10. Cyborg Moira visits her second and fourth lives.
Moira’s second life is shown on pages 8 and 9 of House of X #2. She sees Charles Xavier on television announcing himself as a mutant, decides to fly to America to meet him, and dies in a plane crash without achieving anything at all. Obviously, cyborg Moira is watching the plane take off.
Moira’s fourth life is shown on pages 16 and 17 of House of X #2. It’s a timeline where she allies herself with Professor X from the outset and is a loyal ally of the X-Men throughout, until getting killed by Sentinels at some point after the equivalent of Avengers vs X-Men. Cyborg Moira is shown here watching what seems to be the original X-Men’s first outing against Magneto – the line “You haven’t defeated me yet!” is from the last page of X-Men #1.
PAGES 8-12. Prodigy continue to argue for visiting earlier timelines.
Mother Righteous is being used as a communications link between the No-Place and the White Room, as explained in Rise of the Powers of X #2.
Cannonball suggests that the cyborg Moira is being drawn to points near the end of her previous lives… which doesn’t really fit with the points they visit in either her fourth or her ninth lives.
“[W]e got there not long before an assassination attempt hurt Moira so bad that she put herself in stasis.” This is part of the back story of Powers of X.
“According to Xavier, Moira’s first go was pretty uneventful. Didn’t exactly stretch on for a thousand years.” Moira’s first life is completely normal; she marries, has a family and dies at 74. She only becomes aware that she’s a mutant in her second life. The “thousand years” timeline is her sixth life, where she and Wolverine wind up as the last surviving mutants in a distant future where post-humanity is about to try and ascend to Dominion status.
PAGE 13. Cyborg Moira appears in the Preserve.
This timeline was shown in the Powers of X miniseries, though this is apparently a year earlier.
It’s not at all clear why cyborg Moira is cutting through the timelines in this random order in order to get back to life 1, but that’s time travel for you, I guess.
PAGES 14-15. Rachel tries to send the X-Men back to Moira’s first life.
And we get some more trailers for Rise of the Powers of X.
PAGES 16-20. The X-Men arrive in Moira’s fifth life.
Moira’s fifth life is shown on page 18 of House of X #2. Moira seeks out Charles Xavier while still physically a teenager, and radicalises him. They build a mutant city, which gets wiped out by Sentinels. The data page at the end of that issue says that Moira is placed in a coma by the Sentinel attack, and dies a year later following something described as “Genocide at Faraway”. Faraway is the name of the mutant nation, according to the same data page. We’re told that Moira has been in a coma for a week.
The caption here places Faraway on the Moon. The art in House of X #2 does show the domed city in a crater against a mostly mountainous and grey-coloured landscape, but there are trees in the foreground – as there are here, to be fair. I had always assumed it was meant to be in a dormant volcano or something. (Also, the narrator mentions the “outside world of man”.)
The Beast and Cecilia Reyes are playing their usual role as the X-Men’s doctors.
The life 5 X-Men are Cyclops, Psylocke (taking Jean’s place, including as Scott’s partner), Banshee, Sway and Wolfsbane. The only particularly obscure one is Sway, who was a member of the abortive X-Men team from X-Men: Deadly Genesis. Either Banshee isn’t familiar with Dazzler’s powers, or he simply doesn’t recognise this version. For some reason, Psylocke is the one team member not to wear team colours.
PAGE 21. Trailers. The Krakoan reads TIME’S UP.
Betsy being married to Scott in life 5 is a reference to the flirtation between them in the early 90s. Betsy also slept with Cable, and kissed Havok while she was mind controlling him in Uncanny X-Men 251. One wonders what Rachel thinks of all this.
Everything that Orchis has done to try and eviscerate the Krakoan era pales in comparison to the brutal and unexpectedly vicious posthuman circuit of Duggan and Brevoort with this 1-2 punch of Fall of X and today’s SXSW announcement that we’ll be returning to the status quo. Couldn’t even finish these annotations because I’m so bummed out.
It wasn’t hard to guess that the Krakoa era will be going out with a whimper after seeing the cover of (Uncanny) X-Men #700, with everyone looking happy as they walk off the stage.
Even though Rise of the Powers of X has done an admirable job in attempting to fulfill some of Hickman’s promise, the fact that the actual Krakoa finale is an anthology title featuring Duggan, Gillen, Ewing, and Claremont made me realize that Rise won’t end with any universe shattering major event to end Krakoa. Whatever happens, everything will be wrapped up in a nice, tight bow at the end of Rise before the three architects of post-Hickman Krakoa (along with Claremont) say their goodbyes with a feel good coda paving the way for back to basics.
Gail Simone is an interesting choice for a lead writer. I am on the fence about giving her first issue a try. I was convinced I was dropping X-Men…something I haven’t done in 30 years. I had been convinced I was done with the X-books until Hickman was announced as the new writer. I was considering dropping all the X-titles after Hickman left, but Gillen convinced me to last through Krakoa. Will I finally follow through, or will Simone make me keep reading, even though I’m not really interested in the X-Men anymore? I became interested in the science fiction story Hickman was writing using familiar characters.
I am laughing about Jed McKay also getting the nod. He’s the new Fabian Nicieza, as it seems as if he is writing half the Marvel line. He must work cheap. I don’t have a problem with McKay’s writing (he seems very average), but I haven’t read anything from him that gives me any reason to consider him as a suitable replacement for Hickman, Gillen, or Ewing. At least he’s better than Duggan, but I still have no interest in reading any X-title by him.
I don’t mind, to be honest. I’ve been resigned for a while now. The Krakoa era had so much lost potential. It was more interesting than anything in X-Men since Morrison, but after House/Powers, it never seemed to fully gel. It could have been better, but I’m sure most of us will look back upon it fondly as at least trying something different.
I’ll probably read Dead X-Men when it hits Unlimited, I do like Cannonball stories. But this really doesn’t seem like a very interesting comic. Is it just people going around looking at stuff?
What a waste of an interesting premise and cast. Give the individual personalities *something to do!!*
Also a waste of the potential interesting stories in the many lives of Moira, and once again that character is shafted. I don’t see how it can end with redemption with what, an issue to go?
The whole premise just seems confused issue to issue which speaks to poor editorial oversight.
Oh and just seen new line ups too… How uninspired. They are certainly banking on nineties nostalgia for Uncanny. I do like Simone but she must know she’s inheriting a poison chalice. The other two books look so average. Kitty with more brand new students? We know they’ll be gone or murdered in next relaunch. Why not push existing characters? And the Mackay book just looks a dull generic anyteam.
I think it’s the waste of Krakoa premise that I won’t get over! After all that excellent set up and world building.
Evilgus: I think you have it backwards. Simone’s team is about as generic an X-Men team as you can get… at least McKay’s team has a few wild cards like Idie, Quentin, and Cain on it.
But I trust them both as writers so hopefully they can keep things interesting. And Eve Ewing’s not bad either. I’m just hoping we don’t get any more Benjamin Percy or Matthew Rosenberg or worse.
@Chris V.
It’s funny, I just finished re-reading Jed MacKay’s Black Cat run, and the last volume of the current Moon Knight run, and I was casually thinking that I’d gladly give him a chance on most titles (I’m only reading Moon Knight on the strength of Black Cat, for example).
Obviously, everyone’s opinion is valid when it comes to personal tastes, but I’ll probably give the new run a shot, at least for some of the titles. On the other hand, I dropped Avengers a few months after Hickman took over, and I did the same with entire X-line after the dreary, character-free crapfest that I found HoX/PoX to be.
Again, I don’t hold my opinion to be a universal truth; I just found it interesting how differently we things. Here’s hoping the future produces plenty of comics we both enjoy!
I’ve been reading MacKay’s Avengers on the strength of his great Moon Knight run and Wanda being in the lineup (whose character I’m interested in again thanks to Steve Orlando’s stellar take), and it’s been…mid? At best? Definitely uninspiring. He’s somehow blackmailed C.F. Villa into designing him not one but two groups of galactic jobbers in the Ashen Combine and the Twilight Court in the span of 10 issues, so I’m not particularly psyched for whatever “brand new” villain might be in store for us.
Also, is he seriously going to be writing both adjectiveless and Avengers? Are he and Brevoort setting us up for another radical, totally tubular throwback to AvX to renew licensing rights? (Please let me be wrong.)
I’d be a lot more interested in the direction of From the Ashes if Simone was actually being tasked with architect duties, but the fact that MacKay is leading the charge with his issue of adjectiveless dropping first and setting the tone gives me pause. And I don’t know anything about Eve Ewing except for her Black Panther run that I have yet to catch up on after 2 issues.
I’m interested in what Gail might do, but I’m not a devotee of her work the way some are (shout out to Joe and Todd).
None of them make me want to read or buy the book, so I’ll just continue to do what I’ve done since HOX/POX: keep up by reading the threads here.
I’ve actually pretty much given up on the current era of X-men — I think the only thing I’ve read in the last year was the Uncanny Spiderman — and the announced new teams have me thinking I’ll give all three books a try for a couple of issues.
Here is hoping that the next phase of X-books becomes readable again. I had high hopes for Immortal X-Men and X-Men:Red, but I definitely felt that Gillen and particularly Al Ewing let me down.
I never had much hope for Benjamin Percy’s books and I am not about to revise that expectation. Gerry Duggan has proven very forgettable indeed except perhaps when writing Iron Man. It is only logical to expect Jed MacKay and Gail Simone to do better. Eve Ewing seems to be promising enough on her own merits. And Tom Brevoort has earned my good will.
Looks like Fall and Rise can’t finish soon enough far as I am concerned. I wish Simon Spurrier had signed in; I would very much like to see him write some more Nightcrawler.
As for Dead X-Men – wow, was this a completely unnecessary issue. I don’t mind talkative comic books – some of my favourite issues are that on the basis of dialogue alone. But this was a whole lot of words to convey nothing of any importance.
As for the announcement – well what do you know, Gail Simone is writing one of the ongoings. I like the cast – Rogue, Gambit and Nightcrawler are some of my favourites. But it is very 90s and it just doesn’t seem like there could be any fresh takes here. Maybe Jubilee, if the rumours are true and she’s actually going to be the leader. That would be a new take on the character, at least a little bit.
Jed MacKay I was not expecting and I’d be very happy to see here… If not for the fact that his Avengers are a much less interesting book than his Black Cat or Moon Knight. Now, does that mean he’s not good on team titles? Moon Knight basically was a team book after the first few issues, so hopefully not. Maybe it’s just that Avengers are inherently boring. Who knows?
So, while I’d love to see him on a solo x-book, I’m still optimistic. (And I’m still betting on this being Lorna in the Magneto get-up).
I’ve read very little of Eve Ewing’s work and what I’ve read hasn’t made an impression, so I don’t have a take.
The other six titles – well, with no creatives or teasers of any kind, there’s not much to say. NYX is a baffling callback. It would suggest a young mutants book, but there’s already new characters in Ewing’s book. So maybe that’s where they’ll stick Kamala in? I mean, they’ve made her a mutant for some reason, right?
And I’m always interested to see what they’ll stick under the X-Factor brand. Would love for Leah Williams to get another chance, but that’s probably not happening.
My early takes/predictions on the promos for “From the Ashes”:
* The 90s-friendly aesthetics and the throwback branding — “From the Ashes” calls back to a high point of the Claremont era — mean that this is being marketed not only as “back to basics,” but as something people can jump into after watching the animated series stuff on Disney+
* The statement that the “brokered peace” with the villains in the Krakoa era will fall apart means that a lot of villains are going to go right back to their standard characterization
* We’re going to get some kind of event within the first year where two or more of these teams get into a fight with each other
* The Otherworld/”mutant magic” stuff is going to be even more forgotten and back-burnered than it already is, and Arakko/Mars is either gone or will be used as a villain’s power base
* Uncanny is being set up as the “classic team dynamics with a twist” book, and adjectiveless as the “epic fare” book; they’ll have cross-through plots more closely than the other titles and I’d bet on these being the teams that have friction building up to a conflict
* Regardless of its quality, Exceptional X-Men will struggle in sales terms. It’s got a clunky title and a cast of unknowns. And this kind of stinks, since Eve Ewing would be an interesting voice as a main creator in the X-books
* The promos are trying to cultivate mystery about Professor X’s fate by his conspicuous omission; the obvious thing would be that the Prisoner X seen in some of the promo shots seems like Professor X, but maybe they’ll swerve us and make it Moira instead
@Krzysiek Ceran- the consensus is that NYX features Laura Kinney, since that’s the name of the series where she debuted.
@Omar Karindu- well, we know that Greycrow is going to be on the side of the angels in Blood Hunt. And Foxe promises that Heirs of Apocalypse won’t be as simple as Apocalypse becoming a villain again.
Speaking of Apocalypse.the summaries seem to promise that Apocalypse will be absent from Earth because he’ll be leading Arakko to its new destiny. So presumably Apocalypse takes Arakko and disappears somewhere.
The Eve Ewing title DOES have Kate and Emma but yeah, it seems the weakest.
Re:Prisoner X- the solicits make it sound like Moira DOES get some sort of redemption in the end, and the Fall of the House of X data pages seem to be written by her. OTOH, she basically sold out the human race TWICE- once to Orchis and once to Enigma, so I imagine the humans might not be so forgiving. Since the FCBD story where Prisoner X first appears involves Jubilee, I’m wondering if it’s someone important to Jubilee.
I wish Gail Simone wasn’t saddled with such a 1990s team. Odds are that hers will be the weakest book of the bunch after one considers X-Force, Storm and Wolverine.
Nyx and Phoenix are potentially very welcome, as is X-Factor; I still miss the previous interaction of that team, and the Lauras ought to resume their identity development plots (assuming Talon survives somehow, that is).
Right now Exceptional looks like the most promising of the nine, with adjectiveless being the next choice.
I saw the promo image and felt a combination of disappointment and resignation. I’ll probably get the first issue of each title, I don’t want to write off anyone’s efforts without reading them, but… it looks so boring.
On the positive side, I like Eve L. Ewing’s work on Black Panther and the other two writers have decent track records (although I keep thinking Avengers will get better, and it mostly doesn’t). David Marquez is a good artist (don’t remember the other two names). The comics will probably be decent. I’ll check them out.
I’m just not interested in old-school X-men anymore. It’s too bad there aren’t more Al Ewings & Kieron Gillens out there, or exceptional artists who can and will draw extended runs (not that I blame anyone who can get more money elsewhere for limiting their work in comics).
Ugh — the ’90s is when I stopped reading the X-Men. And basing those blah teams in Alaska, New Orleans, and Chicago does not make them any more interesting.
I didn’t like much of the Krakoa era — it was about 50/50 in my opinion — but there were usually a couple of mini/series that lived up to its original promise.
It’s possible the Phoenix series could redeem the terrible use of that character over the past 20 years. Or that Ewing will write a good Kate/Emma dynamic in his book. I won’t completely write off the rebrand until we know more. Maybe it’ll be 50/50 again.
@Mike Loughlin: I think this is the big dilemma for the X-Books, which keep vacillating between “do it like they did in one of the peak sales eras” and “rebuild or recontextualize the sci-fi high concept” since at least the Morrison run.
There’s an argument to be made that this really dates all the way back to Claremont’s long run, which switches at various points from superhero social allegory to space fantasy to dark fantasy. John Byrne has stated it as a criticism, but it isn’t necessarily true or negative-if-true.
Even if we go with Claremont, I’m not sure there’s a particularly consistent sense of “old school X-Men” except as a kind of reductive nostalgia that wants the tones, characters, and concepts from a set of specific, fondly remembered arcs.
A lot of titles or characters bounce between “classic style” and “refreshing the high concept,” but that’s not the same as the X-books, where there’s a split in the fanbase about whether the title should prioritize superhero genre elements or speculative fiction genre elements.
So I think the post-1990s X-books tend to swing pretty widely between approaches depending on the editorial vision (and, in more recent decades, petty IP-focused decisions by corporate management). And that also helps explain the number of abortive directions over the years.
I’m more than ready to be done with the endless Krakoan era assassination of the characters, and will happily try all the new titles after dropping even the books by writers I usually enjoy like Ewing and Gillen.
I think it’s amusing that this discussion is more about the relaunch than Dead X-Men #3 (since it was kind of filler and not much to say). I’m all in, ha.
@Evilgus I wanted a Moira redemption too but I don’t see how we’ll get there in 1 issue. The team will simply defeat axe Moira and then defer the rest of the storyline to Rise and Forever.
@Omar I agree that Exceptional will struggle with sales despite having a strong writer. There are plenty of young mutants around… why not just use them? Sure, they won’t be introduced for the first time but there are some that would essentially need a re-introduction.
I loved Krakoa. My heart, it pains. I’d like to give the STORM book a try, in honor of Al Ewings work. I’m sure the writer wants to take that great 3+? years of great characterization and run with it!
I have been trying to understand the premise of this series for week and I still don’t….
There were more mutants than Wolverine and Moira in life six’s preserve. You can see some with the Librarian after one attacks him.
The previous issue ended with the X-Men in Moira’s seventh life, where they learned that the cyborg Moira from issue #1 was visiting Moira’s earlier lives, and decided that they had to pursue her through those timelines in order to stop her from causing damage to the timeline. They’ve apparently come directly from that timeline, but although they tell us that Rachel sent them here, it’s not altogether clear why, since they spend much of the rest of the issue trying to persuade Rachel to keep sending them back through Moira’s past lives.
This is the first time I’ve checked in on the X-Men in several months. Remember when everyone was adamant that Moira’s powers don’t create new timelines? Rather, the entire universe was rebooted to the moment of her conception.
I knew that wouldn’t last.
They’re still saying that, just having Rachel send them to previous lives before they vanish. That’s why they’re trying to reach yet another version of Moira before she goes back to her first life.
@neutrino: But as your phrasing — “They’re still saying that” — suggests, as a plot it’s functionally not much different than standard timeline-hopping.
I suppose the idea that Cyborg Moira is headed back to Life 1 adds some urgency to it, but that’s not so different than, say, the Avengers having to race through the timelines in a race for the McGuffin before Immortus or Kang or Doctor Doom or whoever can use it erases them all or the like.
@Omar Karindu: Rachel tells them they only have about half an hour in the lives before they disappear.
The reboot theory never really worked for me. First of all, would the cosmic entities like Eternity or the Watchers really allow a single mutated human to erase the entire universe not just once, but ten times?
Second, how could Moira possibly know whether the universe where she died ceased to exist? No in-universe mortal, with the exception perhaps of a handful of mystics or precogs, would have any way to figure out whether the other universes persisted after she died. I think we were supposed to accept that Destiny could see the end of the timeline, but (a) she’s not a reliable narrator, and (b) she could be wrong.
Moira’s plan to use trial and error was always based on this assumption that whatever disaster she left behind in one life, it would just cease to exist when she moved on. But that was just a terrible assumption. For all she knew, all ten lives left ongoing universes in the multiverse, and many of them were unmitigated hellscapes.
That certainly makes more sense given Marvel’s usual approach to the multiverse.
Alternately, Hickman (or someone) could have changed the rules so only people/places/events that Moira touched directly got changed in each timeline. In that case, diverging events would largely be contained to Earth which most cosmic beings wouldn’t be bothered about. Only once someone like Sinister starts using Moira engines to form a Dominion would other galactic entities (e.g., the Shi’ar) and cosmic beings (e.g., Phoenix(es), Watcher(s), etc.) become concerned.
But Hickman put all of the toys on the table at once, so while the scale of the Krakoan Era grew over time, its full scale was circumscribed from almost the very beginning. And making it as big as the universe without addressing the absence of Eternity, et al., was a mistake given what we know about how the Marvel universe works.