As always, this post contains spoilers.<\/p>\n
COVER (PAGE 1):<\/strong>\u00a0The X-Men and the Mother Mold (apparently coming to life, given the light in her eye), and the sun behind. All pretty straightforward, though note that Mystique is absent from the team on the cover.<\/p>\n PAGE 2:<\/strong> This issue’s epigraph is Professor X praising Cyclops on page 4. The common theme with the closing quote (from Magneto) seems to be the X-Men’s symbolic value to Professor X’s project. They may think they’re the heroes but they’re not the ones driving the plot here – after all, this is the sixth Hickman issue and the first time we’ve actually seen an X-Men team.<\/p>\n PAGE 3:<\/strong> The credits page. The text in the bottom right reads: “The house of Xavier and the eternal war of man.” The other Krakoan text just reads “House of X” and “Three”.<\/p>\n PAGE 4:<\/strong> Professor X and Magneto’s final pep talk for Cyclops, which is decidedly paternalistic in tone. Even though they’re sending Cyclops on an apparent suicide mission, Professor X sounds like he’s talking to a small child (“Such a brave face you’re wearing for me…”), and it’s not the first time we’ve seen this sort of “there, there” tone from him – see issue #1 where he’s talking to Jean. The less than reassuring message is that Cyclops and his team won’t die, in the sense that they’ll be remembered for ever as the founders of a nation. In other words, they’re going to die, but boy, it’s really going to help Professor X and Magneto’s political project. In fact, when we get to the attack at the end of the issue, Orchis turn out to be rather underprepared for the most part.<\/p>\n Cyclops describes his team as “good mutants all”, which is unsurprising until we actually see them and find out that Mystique is there. We already know that Mystique is allied with Xavier in some sense, since she was on a mission for him in issue #1, but this isn’t the sort of language that Cyclops would normally use to discuss her (nor does he seem to be on particularly good terms with her when he actually speaks to her later in the issue). Cyclops doesn’t refer to his team as the X-Men, but the narrator does (on page 9).<\/p>\n PAGES 5-7:<\/strong> Cyclops briefs his team before they set out on their mission, and off they set. There’s a fair amount of recap here, but more notably, this is the first time we’ve seen any sort of X-Men team in this series.<\/p>\n The X-Men:<\/strong>\u00a0Aside from Mystique, this is a fairly conventional X-Men team. Cyclops, Wolverine, Jean Grey and Nightcrawler are mainstays. Archangel is the Angel as transformed (and powered-up) by Apocalypse back in the 1980s, when he was Death of the Four Horsemen. Since Apocalypse and the Horsemen seem to be significant elsewhere, his presence here might matter. Archangel’s mental state varies from story to story but he seems fairly normal here. M is an all-round powerhouse and a sensible choice. The blonde woman with the marks on her face isn’t named, but it’s Husk – a less obvious choice, since her powers are useful but not overwhelmingly so, and she’s generally been a bit of a second-tier character. Everyone is in familiar costumes (in Husk’s case, the one she wore in\u00a0Spider-Man\/Deadpool<\/em>, where she was a supporting character).<\/p>\n It’s not so obvious what Mystique is doing here, either in terms of her willingness to help, or her potential usefulness to an attack – Cyclops doesn’t seem to get on with her very well. But Mystique is clearly an important character in Hickman’s overall scheme.<\/p>\n Plants:<\/strong> Krakoa’s seeds could be used to create a gateway back home, but the X-Men aren’t taking any with them. At first glance, the reason for this is that if the mission goes wrong, then they don’t want the Mother Mold to get a chance to analyse the seeds. But M’s explanation is slightly different: “If the Mother Mold AI gets a good hard look at what we’re doing here on Krakoa – how all of this works … Who knows, maybe they find something we haven’t.” And Cyclops agrees with this explanation. The surface reading is that the X-Men don’t know\u00a0<\/em>of any useful information that the Mother Mold could get from examining a gateway seed, but they’re not willing to take the risk. But on reflection, this is weird – the X-Men have been using gateways all around the world, and there was nothing to stop people coming along to examine the plants afterwards. Does it actually suit Professor X better for them to die a heroic death?<\/p>\n The moon:<\/strong> We saw the X-Men colonising the moon in issue #1, and the habitat there now seems to be based around a giant flower.<\/p>\n The ship:<\/strong> It looks a bit like the X-Men’s signature Blackbird at first, but we’re told on page 19 that it’s “a modified Shi’ar class scout.” The alien Shi’ar are long-established allies of the X-Men, and we’ve seen plenty of references to them working with the X-Men in the future. They’ve been in the margins of Hickman’s stories, but consistently so.<\/p>\n PAGE 8:\u00a0<\/strong>A data page headed “Machines”, and explaining how technology progresses from the initial Sentinels, through the Master Mold and Mother Mold, up to Omega Sentinels and Nimrods.<\/p>\n Sentinels:<\/strong> They’re called “Alpha” here, presumably to show them as the other end of the spectrum from Omega. The “Mark I – Mark VIII” terms are previously established for the older, dumb Sentinels. Conventionally, Mark I is the original Sentinels from the early Silver Age; Mark II is Larry Trask’s version from the late Silver Age; Mark III is Steven Lang’s version from the very early Claremont run; and the subsequent versions are US government-sponsored versions. The Mark VIII Sentinels were actually the human-operated versions briefly used by O*N*E – the number was attached to them in\u00a0All-New X-Factor\u00a0<\/em>#16.<\/p>\n For completeness: there was a nanotech Sentinel called Alpha in Marc Guggenheim’s\u00a0X-Men Gold<\/em>, but it seems unlikely that Hickman is intending to reference him, since he comes closer to meeting Hickman’s definition of Nimrod. Alpha is actually a bit of a problem for Hickman’s plot, since he ought to be a really obvious Nimrod candidate, but we can probably assume that either the X-Men are keeping an eye on him separately, or that they still believe they successfully contained him in\u00a0X-Men Gold<\/em> #29.<\/p>\n Master Mold:<\/strong> The original Master Mold, seen in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #15, was really just a giant Sentinel-shaped Sentinel factory. It later wound up believing that it was its own creator Steven Lang, which is the sort of man\/machine hybrid that Hickman’s quite interested in, but that probably doesn’t matter.<\/p>\n Mother Mold:<\/strong> This term seems to have originated with Hickman. The distinction seems to be that the Mother Mold has the capacity to improve itself and its Sentinels, while the Master Mold just churns them out to order<\/p>\n Omega Sentinel:<\/strong> The concept of humans infected with nanites and transformed into Sentinels originates from the 90s crossover “Operation: Zero Tolerance.” In fact, the humans in that story were called “Prime Sentinels”; the term “Omega Sentinels” seems to have been introduced by Chris Claremont when he created Karima Shapandar in\u00a0X-Men Unlimited<\/em> #27, and then added her to the cast of\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> vol 2 (the Genosha-based series). Dialogue in\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> #6 suggests that he intended “Omega” and “Prime” to be interchangeable.\u00a0The term “Omega Cycle” seems to be new, but Excalibur<\/em> #4 did refer to a “Sentinel imprinting cycle” (which Xavier and Magneto interrupted in Karima’s case, thus restoring her normal personality). These are obscure issues, but they’re key to Karima’s origin, so it’s unsurprising that Hickman’s been reading them.<\/p>\n Again, for completeness: the term “Omega” was first used in relation to Sentinels in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #202, where Rachel Summers used it to describe the Sentinels from the Days of Future Past timeline. But those were standard Sentinels, and Hickman’s clearly not referring to that.<\/p>\n PAGE 9:<\/strong> The plot is explained to us rather directly, but with snazzy graphic design to liven up the exposition. This is largely an expansion on\u00a0Powers of X<\/em> #2-3, making clear that there is indeed something which is causing AI to manifest in a specifically anti-mutant way. We’re told that the data which Moira 9 recovered was incomplete, and that it shows that Nimrods generally result from a technology shift and a Mother Mold, but note that we’re not told that this is\u00a0everything<\/em> she learned.\u00a0The small print at the top of the page seems to list Moiras 9 and 10, and then skip forward several lines to show “Nimrod”. But maybe that’s just reading too much into it. It’s also worth noting that although we still haven’t seen the present-day Professor X without his helmet, this page refers to him unambiguously as “Charles Xavier”.<\/p>\n “Sleeping Giant”:<\/strong> Referring to the line\u00a0“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve”, supposedly said by the Japanese admiral Isoruku Yamamoto (1884-1943) in reference to the Pearl Harbour attack, but actually attributed to him in the film Tora! Tora! Tora!<\/em> (1970). As so often with these things, there’s little evidence that he actually said it, but he would probably have agreed with the general sentiment. It’s ambiguous whether the Sleeping Giant in this context is the mutants or the machines that they’re looking out for.<\/p>\n