{"id":10099,"date":"2024-05-15T21:23:44","date_gmt":"2024-05-15T20:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10099"},"modified":"2024-05-15T21:23:44","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T20:23:44","slug":"x-men-forever-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10099","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Forever #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN: FOREVER #4<\/strong>
\n“No Hope”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Kieron Gillen<\/strong>
\nArtist: Luca Maresca<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Federico Blee<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller, Jay Bowen & Kat Gregorowicz<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Hope enters a glowing portal, casting the shadow of the Phoenix behind her. This is the final issue of X-Men: Forever<\/em>, which in turn is an extension of Immortal X-Men<\/em> – although the story continues into Rise of the Powers of X <\/em>#5.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong> Destiny and Mr Sinister talk.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the former Quiet Council meeting chamber, in somewhat dilapidated condition. Even through Krakoa (the persona) is back on the island, it hasn’t taken its established position in the room. Unusually, Destiny has removed her blank face mask – dropping both her normal role and her usual distanced persona.<\/p>\n

As in the previous issue, Destiny is in despair: all the timelines that she can see involve Enigma winning and her beloved Mystique dying. Sinister has two counter-arguments to reassure Destiny. First, as I pointed out last time, the Phoenix plan involves altering the timeline from the outside – so Destiny wouldn’t be able to see it until it happens. Second, Sinister claims that his own exploration of the future using his “Moira Engine” shows that Destiny vastly overestimates the chances of Mystique dying. He theorises that Destiny’s concern for Mystique causes her to pay disproportionate attention to those timelines.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If Sinister is right, then it tends to suggest that all Destiny’s longer-range predictions are potentially susceptible to the same flaw. She’s seeing genuine possible futures, but not necessarily representative ones, as she’s previously thought. This is very useful for people who want to use Destiny in future without breaking the plot.<\/p>\n

Although Sinister isn’t breaking character as visibly as Destiny in this scene, he’s still acting somewhat unusually here, and seems to be trying to offer actual support to someone. When asked about it directly, he claims to be trying to form alliances in an anticipation of a post-Krakoan future, but you could easily read that as a distancing device on his part.<\/p>\n

“Once, I constructed a model that could predict all the actions of mutantkind. It did pretty well, until the Phoenix arrived and burned. my lovely city to the ground.”<\/strong> Sinister is presumably referring to Sinister London from Kieron Gillen’s first X-Men run, which was destroyed by the Phoenix Five in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 2 #17.<\/p>\n

“This is why love is a weakness. I know a man who can do something about that, but he’s a big, blue arsehole and I wouldn’t recommend it.”<\/strong> Sinister is referring to his – or rather, the original Nathaniel Essex’s – transformation into Mr Sinister by Apocalypse, following Essex’s rejection by his wife Rebecca.<\/p>\n

“We must be on the…”<\/strong> Sinister references the “We must be on the same side” line that Destiny has directed at him throughout the series.<\/p>\n

“I remember something a canny old broad once said… ‘There is no destiny.'”<\/strong> In Immortal X-Men<\/em> #1, after Selene conjures up a monster to attack Krakoa, Sinister asks Destiny why she didn’t give a warning. Destiny replies: “I don’t know anything… I don’t see the<\/em> future. There is no the<\/em> future. There is no destiny.”<\/p>\n

PAGE 4. <\/strong>Mystique and Destiny are reconciled.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I don’t trust you.” “If every part of this world succumbed to dust, the last thing remaining would be my trust in you. What we have is immortal.”<\/strong> Destiny is referencing an exchange between her and Mystique in the flashback that opens Immortal X-Men<\/em> #1. In that scene, Destiny asks “Do you trust me?”, and Mystique gives the response that Destiny quotes back to her here.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5. <\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-7. <\/strong>Hope and Legion hunt the Phoenix.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jean confirms on page 9 that Hope is trying to kill the Phoenix, presumably in order to clear the way for its rebirth. It’s all a bit arbitrary, but that seems to be the idea.<\/p>\n

Legion references his own dysfunctional relationship with his absent father Professor X, a recurring theme of Legion of X<\/em> and other Si Spurrier stories. In her mind, Hope has no such issues about her father, because she regards Cable as her father, and her biological father as an irrelevance.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-10. <\/strong>Enigma tries to alter history to become Hope’s father.<\/em><\/p>\n

The mechanics of all this are a little hazy, but hey, that’s time travel stories for you. Basically, as we established last issue, Enigma is trying to stop Hope from rekindling the Phoenix, but he can’t attack her directly while she’s in the White Hot Room (and thus outside normal time). So instead he’s going back to her personal back story and trying to alter it so that he becomes her father. As Hope’s mother toys with the idea, history is briefly altered and Enigma’s crown logo appears on Hope’s forehead, just as Sinister’s diamond logo appeared on the affected characters during Sins of Sinister<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Of course, quite how Enigma can alter Hope’s parentage without turning her into a different person entirely is unclear. But we’ll find out later in the issue that Hope doesn’t have<\/em> a biological father, which may make a difference. And you might ask why he doesn’t just kill Hope, or her mother. But the whole logic of Enigma’s attack on Hope tends to confirm the theory that he too is potentially vulnerable to attempts to alter his back story and prevent him coming into being in the first place. So the idea seems to be that Enigma sees Hope’s father as something that can be safely altered because it’s been completely irrelevant until now; there would be no potentially unpredictable knock-on effects.<\/p>\n

“You will be murdered along with everyone in the hospital out of fear of your child.”<\/strong> X-Men: Messiah Complex<\/em> #1 (2007).<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-13. <\/strong>Professor X restores Destiny’s memory.<\/em><\/p>\n

Professor X removed Destiny and (up to a point) Mystique’s memories of Nightcrawler in a flashback in X-Men Blue: Origins<\/em>. He unlocks the memories here. He also confirms that he has no memory of what he did, by which he presumably means that he removed his own memories of the event; it would have caused some awkward continuity problems if he had known all along about Nightcrawler’s connection with Mystique and Destiny. Professor X is clearly satisfied to be doing something useful in the midst of his current relucant alliance with Orchis.<\/p>\n

Destiny’s mask has been broken somewhere during the fight to reach Professor X, and it remains broken for the rest of the issue, as we continue to get more direct access to her feelings.<\/p>\n

PAGES 14-16. <\/strong>Jean persuades Louise to reject Enigma.<\/em><\/p>\n

According to Jean – and confirmed later in the story – Hope was fathered by the Phoenix Force itself. Part of Hope’s role is to then participate in the Phoenix’s birth (which, thanks to the White Hot Room being outside time, can take place out of sequence). That’s essentially what’s currently happening: as a result of Mother Righteous’ interference, the Phoenix is dying, and Hope’s role is to help it die and restart the cycle all over again.<\/p>\n

All this presents Hope as a very messianic figure indeed, complete with immaculate conception. There’s a recurring ironic theme in Immortal X-Men<\/em> that even though Exodus comes across as a religious lunatic, he actually seems to have the most accurate understanding of who and what Hope is.<\/p>\n

Enigma dismisses Krakoa as a mutant supremacist project, which isn’t exactly untrue. However, he doesn’t see that as a bad thing as such; he sees it as understandable self-preservation by the mutants, and simply rejects the idea that they’re better than anyone else. His reading of Krakoan values is not that far removed from Professor X’s.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-19. <\/strong>Hope is restored and rekindles the Phoenix.<\/em><\/p>\n

With Enigma’s intervention thwarted, Hope duly kills the Phoenix, clearing the way for it to be reborn. The art is ambiguous as to whether the Phoenix rises from Hope’s body, or actually is<\/em> a transformed Hope; this may be intentional, since Exodus essentially offers the second interpretation in the next scene.<\/p>\n

Legion vanishes when Hope dies; more of that in the next scene.<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-21. <\/strong>Destiny and Mystique are reunited with Nightcrawler.<\/em><\/p>\n

Destiny now has the emotional reunion with Nightcrawler that he had been expecting in the previous issue.<\/p>\n

The Hopesword – which in this story, at least, is Legion – reappears in Nightcrawler’s hands. Everyone basically agrees that this means Hope is dead, but Exodus interprets it as a sign that Hope has fulfilled her role as a messiah. He also seems to be hinting at his own post-Krakoa status: he’ll be waiting for the Second Coming.<\/p>\n

PAGES 21-22. <\/strong>The Krakoans left behind discuss what to do.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kafka, the voice of the ordinary Krakoan throughout this arc, takes the lead in telling everyone that the Quiet Council are gone and that they’ll have to take control of their own lives now. The paradise is over, the hard work of building their mutant society begins now.<\/p>\n

In Rise of the Powers of X<\/em> #4, Hope said that “everyone with X-training or any damn combat training has been resurrected and is ready to get back into the fray”. Despite that, there are recognisable characters still here – aside from background character Chlorophil, there’s Jumbo Carnation (admittedly a non-combatant), and the other four members of the Five. Perhaps they get rescued at the end of Rise.<\/em> Or perhaps the idea is to preserve Krakoa-in-Exile as a way of taking it off the board without destroying it, in which case it needs the Five so that it can be the Krakoa that people remember.<\/p>\n

I have no idea why Rockslide is there, though – he does<\/em> have combat training. Let’s say something about his powers didn’t work with the technique they used to return to Earth?<\/p>\n

PAGE 23.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads RISE OF THE POWERS OF X, where the storyline continues. Only five future Krakoan-era X-books remain on the list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN: FOREVER #4 “No Hope” Writer: Kieron Gillen Artist: Luca Maresca Colour artist: Federico Blee Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller, Jay Bowen & Kat Gregorowicz Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1: Hope enters a glowing portal, casting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10101,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10099\/revisions\/10101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}