Alright, then. \u00a0Not a review, just thoughts as we go through the issue to … well, work out what’s going on. \u00a0As before, I’m using the page numbers from the Comixology edition, which count double page spreads as a single page.<\/p>\n
COVER (PAGE 1):<\/strong>\u00a0These are mostly new characters from the future timelines that we’ll be seeing later in the story. \u00a0Behind them are the faces of Charles Xavier, Moira MacTaggert (presumably) and Nimrod, all of whom we’ll come to.<\/p>\n PAGE 2:<\/strong> An opening data page, with a quote from Moira MacTaggert in a scene we’ll reach on page 8. \u00a0Obviously, the “dream” references Charles Xavier’s dream of peaceful co-existence between humans and mutants, which the X-Men used to talk about all the time. \u00a0His separatist tendencies in\u00a0House of X<\/em> and\u00a0Powers of X<\/em> – assuming it’s really him – are arguably closer to Magneto’s vision than his traditional dream, although having said that, his actual strategy always boiled down to separating mutants away from the world until things got better of their own accord. \u00a0As I’ve pointed out before, this is now a rather unfashionable approach.<\/p>\n PAGE 3:<\/strong> Four panels representing the four time frames which\u00a0Powers of X<\/em> takes place in. \u00a0The title is pronounced Powers of Ten<\/em>,\u00a0and this page identifies the time frames as year 1 (“the Dream”), year 10 (“the World”), year 100 (“the War”) and year 1000 (“Ascension”). \u00a0All of them are labelled in terms of “the X-Men”, rather than mutants more generally. \u00a0Year One is represented by Charles Xavier; Year 10 by\u00a0House of X\u00a0<\/em>Professor X; Year 100 by Nimrod The Lesser (who we’ll meet later); and Year 1000 by the Librarian (ditto).<\/p>\n PAGES 4-9:<\/strong> The Year One sequence. \u00a0Charles Xavier<\/strong> meets a mystery woman at a local fair. \u00a0She’s not actually named within the scene, but page 2 quotes from this scene and identifies her as Moira MacTaggert<\/strong>. \u00a0Technically, it’s\u00a0possible<\/em> that she could be somebody else, and that Moira said this on some other occasion, but we’re clearly meant to take it that this is Moira.<\/p>\n Which is… odd, because she doesn’t act much like Moira at all. \u00a0Aside from the fact that she’s lost her phonetic Scottish accent, which could just be a stylistic choice, the original Moira was mainly used as the X-Men’s feisty Scottish scientist friend until she died in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #108. \u00a0She did have more of a mystery air when she first appeared, initially as the X-Men’s suspiciously-competent housekeeper, but that had pretty much dissipated by the end of the 70s. \u00a0In this story, though, she talks about the fair as a distraction; she talks about some tarot cards which seem to predict the Ascension timeline from later in the issue; and she’s weirdly keen to stress Xavier as a “strong man”. \u00a0She seems to want to push him into pursuing his dream, and she already knows Xavier, saying that “we go back quite a ways” (which Xavier verifies telepathically, and finds surprising). \u00a0Previously, Charles has said that he and Moira met as fellow students at Oxford University (the fullest version is\u00a0Uncanny X-Men\u00a0<\/em>#389), so if this is indeed Moira, something’s up. \u00a0Also, she doesn’t marry Joe MacTaggert until later, so the quote should really be attributed to Moira Kinross.<\/p>\n The clothes seem to place this scene much further back than nine years ago, so presumably the Year 1, Year 10 etc thing isn’t to be taken literally. \u00a0Besides, if this is Xavier’s first meeting with Moira MacTaggert, a nine year timeline wouldn’t work without some ginormous retcons: for example, it doesn’t leave anything like enough time for Legion to reach adulthood.<\/p>\n Moira describes three tarot cards which she claims to have seen at a stall. \u00a0All three show images connected with the War timeline – not just loosely, but almost exactly. \u00a0Is she a time traveller, or a precognitive? \u00a0The first card is “The Magician” and shows a\u00a0character who seems to be a mix of Magik and (based on her powers) Kitty Pryde. \u00a0Moira – or\u00a0presumably<\/em> Moira, since the captions change to inverse colour at this point – describes her as “the metal metamorph, the great sword, \u00a0and the girl with one foot in two worlds.” \u00a0She’s named later on as Rasputin<\/strong>.\u00a0 The second, “The Tower”, shows Nimrod The Lesser’s tower: “the axis, the pillar of collapse and rebirth, the monolith of ascension”. \u00a0The card shows it in its War version, but we’ll see later that it survives into the Ascension era. \u00a0The third, “The Devil”, shows a red Nightcrawler, who’ll “the red god and the lost cardinal of the last religion.” \u00a0(Why the last religion? \u00a0Does religion die out during the War period?) \u00a0He’s named later as\u00a0Cardinal<\/strong> (more accurately, a Cardinal, since he comes in batches).<\/p>\n If this isn’t Moira – or if she’s going to turn out to have been somebody else all along – then there are two obvious possibilities here. \u00a0One is Mr Sinister, since he’s a scientist and a shapeshifter, he has an interest in steering the direction of mutantkind, he’s responsible for making the hybrid mutants shown in the tarot cards (as we find out later), and thus he seems to be playing a major role in the series somewhere. \u00a0The other is Cassandra Nova, Xavier’s long-lost twin from the Grant Morrison run, which would explain why she and Xavier look so similar on the last page, and the “go back quite a ways” line. \u00a0(Also, Cassandra debuted in\u00a0New X-Men<\/em> #114, six issues after Moira died.)<\/p>\n PAGE 10:<\/strong> The title page. \u00a0The Krakoa graphics read “Powers of X” and “One”. \u00a0The issue title is “The Last Dream of Professor X”, but it’s not clear yet where the “last” comes in. \u00a0Note the small print in the bottom right hand corner, which reads “The world of Xavier and the woman named Moira” – a rather roundabout way of referring to her, if she is who seems to be.<\/p>\n PAGES 11-14:<\/strong>\u00a0This is the Year 10 sequence, which follows on from\u00a0House of X<\/em> #1. \u00a0Mystique<\/strong> and the Toad<\/strong> arrive back on Krakoa with the data that they stole from Damage Control in that issue. \u00a0She takes the data stick to the House of M, which we saw mentioned in a map in\u00a0House of X<\/em>. \u00a0As you might expect, it’s Magneto’s<\/strong> home.<\/p>\n Magneto immediately starts talking about “the effect this place is having”, Krakoa becoming “a wellspring of hope” and “a home of dreamers and true believers”, and how even he “find[s] myself infected with the idea of it.” \u00a0It’s a pretty heavy hint that there’s some sort of mind control going on here, and that everyone on Krakoa is being at least nudged in the direction of the grand new plan. \u00a0Professor X<\/strong> evidently\u00a0is<\/em> aware of Mystique’s mission and talks about helping your fellow mutant and building a better world. \u00a0Interestingly, Mystique is still angling to get personal advantage and trying to hold out for more rewards – so if the island\u00a0is<\/em> inspiring everyone to get with the programme, then perhaps it isn’t taking with her.<\/p>\n What’s going on at the top of page 14? \u00a0The data stick flies into Xavier’s outstretched hand. \u00a0Magneto\u00a0could<\/em> be doing this, but the body language makes it look like it’s Xavier.<\/p>\n PAGE 15:<\/strong> The Stan Lee page (used as a scene break).<\/p>\n PAGES 16-23:<\/strong> This is the first part of the Year 100 sequence, “The War.” \u00a0This future obviously echoes the Days of Future Past timeline – the Sentinels<\/strong>‘ traditional purple colouring survives. \u00a0But there are clear differences, aside from the fact that we’re further into the future. \u00a0The original DoFP timeline is a classic “dumb-AI” storyline in which killer robots are told to protect humanity and decide that the best way to do it is to take over the world; it’s an apocalypse for everyone, because if you tell machines to do something stupid, they’ll blindly follow it to its logical conclusion. \u00a0In the War world, the AI is much smarter, and the robots are in alliance with the humans, even though they seem to be the dominant partner. \u00a0We do see one traditional Sentinel, but mostly it’s soldiers and smaller robots. \u00a0A later data page calls this group\u00a0the Man-Machine Supremacy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This scene shows four X-Men on a mission to “the Nexus” in “the Northern Territory” (Canada?), which has clearly gone wrong. \u00a0One gets killed in the first two panels – he’s named later as Percival.<\/strong>\u00a0His dying words are “There was a dream. \u00a0Our dreams are the same. \u00a0While you slept, the world changed.” \u00a0The last sentence appeared in\u00a0House of X\u00a0<\/em>#1 as a quote from Professor X’s speech to the world, so presumably this is a longer quote from the same speech. \u00a0But in what sense are “our dreams … the same”…?<\/p>\n Next is\u00a0Cylobel<\/strong>, a mutant bred as a Hound in – ahem – “the Khennil”, who apparently defected to the X-Men and was named by them. \u00a0She looks a bit like Mindblast from the Femme Fatales, with her brain visible through a transparent skull – only hers is black. \u00a0We’re told she was bred with a tendency to betrayal, which merely led her to turn on the Supremacy and join the X-Men. \u00a0Hickman goes out of his way to have other characters denounce the whole “bred for betrayal” concept as stupid. \u00a0She gets captured and carted off to advance the plot.<\/p>\n Rasputin is a warrior type, and calls Cylobel “sister”. \u00a0Her obvious visible elements seem to be Magik (including a version of the Soulsword), Kitty Pryde (she’s phasing in the tarot card), Colossus (metal skin) and Dani Moonstar (um… hairstyle). \u00a0The non-combatant Cardinal is a priest, and seems to be simply a red Nightcrawler. \u00a0He uses “the black seed of Krakoa” to create an escape portal;\u00a0House of X<\/em> #1 established that these lead to hidden parts of Krakoa that are outside the island’s collective consciousness.. \u00a0He and Rasputin make it back to the X-Men, and as we’ll see, they\u00a0did<\/em> get whatever it was that they were trying to retrieve – which is evidently tremendously important, though we don’t find out what it is, beyond a suggestion that it was data. \u00a0This whole “mysterious raiding party steals some data and escapes through a portal leaving someone behind” set-up conspicuously parallels Mystique’s raid.<\/p>\n PAGES 24-26:<\/strong> Data pages about the “Sinister Line”, a mutant breeding programme carried out by Mister Sinister<\/strong>\u00a0on Mars in alliance with the surviving mutant leadership. \u00a0(We saw the X-Men colonising Mars in House of X\u00a0<\/em>#1.)\u00a0 Sinister is described here as “chief mutant geneticist” and as mirroring the Hound program to create military mutants from a chimera of classic X-Men traits. \u00a0The pages very, very strongly indicate that Sinister engineered all this to make the remaining X-Men dependent on him – or at least that the in-story author thinks so.<\/p>\n The first generation of Sinister mutants are simply clones. \u00a0The others are chimeras combining powers from many mutants, which was apparently successful. \u00a0Mostly – some of them became Cardinals, refusing to participate in war and all adopting the same identity. \u00a0We’re shown a sample “Rasputin” chimera, but the five elements listed don’t seem to match the character we saw in the preceding scene – this “Rasputin IV” is said to combine elements from Kid Omega, Colossus, Unus, Kitty Pryde and X-23. \u00a0The fourth generation of chimeras go spectacularly wrong – probably on purpose – and wind up as a hive mind that wipe out most of the remaining mutants before committing mass suicide, leading to the fall of Krakoa and Mars. \u00a0The author casually tells us that Sinister defected to the Man-Machine Supremacy, only to be publicly executed.<\/p>\n PAGES 27-33:<\/strong> Back to the War, as Cylobel is brought to “the Tower of Nimrod the Lesser, the Human-Machine Monolith” – the tower we saw in the tarot card. \u00a0Unlike the Nexus, which was a traditional post-apocalyptic wasteland, the Tower sits at the heart of what looks like a thriving futuristic city. \u00a0Nonetheless, it seems to be an autocracy ruled by\u00a0Nimrod<\/strong> the Lesser<\/strong> – only the narrator calls him that, the other characters just call him Nimrod. \u00a0The original Nimrod was a super-advanced Sentinel from the Days of Future Past timeline who came back to the present day and turned out to be advanced enough to transcend his programming (again, moving beyond the “dumb AI” trope). \u00a0This Nimrod looks very similar, but plays as an adorable child-like king, delighted by the spirited efforts of humans and mutants alike. \u00a0He doesn’t seem to be murderous or sadistic, but he’s decidedly condescending without seeming to realise it, and his ethical tendencies are easily overwhelmed by scientific curiosity. \u00a0As we find out later, he was created with the task of creating a living database of mutants in the hope that it would “provide a tactical advantage in a war”, so perhaps he is another case of a simple remit gone out of control after all. \u00a0He calls humans “equals of a kind”, but the bottom line is that he’s the only one with a throne, and Omega<\/strong> – who seems to be the human representative – is standing next to him. \u00a0Still, he does ask for her approval, and she does seem to have real authority.<\/p>\n Since they don’t have the technology to read Cylobel’s mind, Nimrod’s great idea is to chuck her in “the bath”, which he describes as “a repository of sorts, a monument to understanding the mutant anomaly.” \u00a0Basically he plans to capture a bunch of mutants, stick them in capsules and “distil [them] down to nothing but data curated by an AI of my own making.” \u00a0The timescale of this experimental treatment is unknown. \u00a0As we’ll see, poor Cylobel is still there in the Ascension, 900 years later…<\/p>\n If Omega is meant to be the human leader, it’s odd that she’s bright red. \u00a0Is there some connection with Cardinal, the other very, very red character?<\/p>\n PAGE 34:<\/strong> A data page on the SalCen Khennil, where the Man-Machine Ascendancy (not Supremacy, not yet) bred Hounds until the place was destroyed ten years ago. \u00a0The idea of brainwashing mutants to hunt other mutants comes from the DoFP timeline, and specifically Rachel Summers. \u00a0The data page author essentially tells us that they tried it in this timeline too, and it never really worked.<\/p>\n It’s not immediately obvious what SalCen stands for.<\/p>\n PAGES 35-36:<\/strong> Cardinal and Rasputin make it back through their black portal to “the No-Place Hub”. \u00a0Rasputin is very annoyed that Cardinal’s pacifism prevented him helping to rescue Cylobel. \u00a0The caption identifies “the No-Place Hub” as Krakoa, but it looks very grey and murky. \u00a0The four X-Men waiting appear to be\u00a0Magneto<\/strong>, wearing a green version of his costume (has he been rejuvenated again?),\u00a0Xorn<\/strong> (or one of them, anyway),\u00a0Wolverine<\/strong> (visibly greying), but still wearing a version of his classic costume, and\u00a0a plant man who’s presumably the manifestation of\u00a0Krakoa<\/strong> itself – Krakoa had a personality in Jason Aaron’s stories too, but this is the first time Hickman’s suggested that it’s a person.<\/p>\n PAGES 37-38:<\/strong> More data pages, about the state of the mutant population under the Man-Machine Supremacy. \u00a0This refer to “the recent deaths” of Cylobel and Percival, which establishes that the data pages are written by people in the War timeline. \u00a0They seem to be written from the mutants’ point of view, and now that they’re clearly positioned as in-universe, there’s a question about whether they’re 100% reliable.<\/p>\n According to these pages, there are now about 10,000 surviving mutants, most living on colonies in the Shi’ar Empire. \u00a0The main one is called Benevolence and it’s on the fringes of Brood territory; the other is on the Shi’ar throneworld and provides soldiers for the Imperial Guard. \u00a0It’s implied that the Shi’ar may have designs on invading Earth, and that the mutants might be okay with that. \u00a0The Shi’ar Empress is named as Xandra, presumably the same person we saw as a child in\u00a0Mr & Mrs X<\/em>.<\/p>\n The only mutants left on Earth itself live on Asteroid K (K for Krakoa, presumably), which now has a population of eight. Assuming Krakoa counts, that leaves two inhabitants who we’ve yet to meet.<\/p>\n PAGES 39-42:<\/strong> Finally, our first look at the Ascension, Year 1,000. \u00a0We’re back in Nimrod’s tower, but it’s now dwarfed by the city around it, and it’s billed as “The Archive of Nimrod the Greater”, and a “mutant library.” \u00a0A woman called\u00a0the Librarian<\/strong> is trying to save the people in the bath, including poor old Cylobel. \u00a0She’s accompanied by a little flying thing which is apparently the remains of a more sober, reflective Nimrod. \u00a0Humans survive as cavemen inside a little Preserve, kept as a warning from history. \u00a0The war is long since over – it ended “surprising[ly]” – and the mutants and the machines seem to have won.<\/p>\n PAGES 43-46:\u00a0<\/strong>The closing quote (from Rasputin earlier in the issue), the reading order, and two teasers in Krakoan. \u00a0One reads, “NEXT: THE CURIOUS CASE OF MOIRA X.” \u00a0The other, “THEN: HELLO OLD FRIEND”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alright, then. \u00a0Not a review, just thoughts as we go through the issue to … well, work out what’s going on. \u00a0As before, I’m using the page numbers from the Comixology edition, which count double page spreads as a single page. COVER (PAGE 1):\u00a0These are mostly new characters from the future timelines that we’ll be […]<\/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,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hoxpox","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4660","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=4660"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4662,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4660\/revisions\/4662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}