{"id":4800,"date":"2019-10-10T21:35:04","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T20:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4800"},"modified":"2019-10-11T00:08:15","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T23:08:15","slug":"powers-of-x-6-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4800","title":{"rendered":"Powers of X #6 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. This is the final issue of Powers of X, and an actual review of both series will follow later.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER (PAGE 1):<\/strong> Moira standing over a pile of dead mutants on Krakoa. This includes characters from the “Year 100” timeline, so it’s evidently symbolic. The flowers resemble cherry blossom, traditionally a symbol of life’s ephemeral nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2: <\/strong>The epigraph quotes Professor X: “And now we build.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 3:<\/strong> The credits. The title is “House of X”; the small print reads “When they learn the truth.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-10:<\/strong> “Year One”. This is an outright repeat of the opening scene from issue #1, where Xavier meets Moira at the fair and she lets him read her mind. There’s an additional opening page of Xavier walking through the forest on his way to the fair. Repeated here, the dialogue can be read as fair representing Krakoa’s apparent new dawn for mutants, seen as both a distraction and something that’s being embraced despite a nagging awareness that all is not well. (“So, are you enjoying the fair?” “I am. It seems like the kind of thing I should not enjoy, and yet…”) That, of course, could apply both to the mutants and to the readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 11-23:<\/strong> Breaking with the usual format of advancing through time over the course of an issue, we jump directly to the “Year 1000”. This is the information that Xavier picks up from Moira’s mind at the fair, so it’s effectively a flashback interposed in the Year One segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Year 1000 sequences have always been bannered as “The X-Men, Year One Thousand”, and now we see why: the “Preserve” which we saw in issue #1 is in fact a Preserve for mutants, specifically Wolverine and Moira, who have been futilely working on a rebellion scheme all this time. The Librarian reveals that the world will end tomorrow when the post-human race is assimilated into the Phalanx. He’s considering whether to send Moira off world so as to prevent her death from rebooting history, or to kill her so that she can go back and alter the course of history. Before he gets to make his decision, the Librarian is killed by Wolverine, who then kills Moira in turn, ending what turns out to have been her sixth<\/em> life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Preserve:<\/strong> We saw this place briefly in issue #1, when Moira and Wolverine were indeed seen briefly in shadow. They appeared to be naked in that issue, but perhaps that was just the lighting – they’re fully clothed here. In issue #1, the Librarian seemed to be suggesting that the Preserve was a remnant of the human race, but he actually said that its purpose was “to keep a record of the great sins of history … to preserve a remnant, something to point at, and hope to God they never have dominion again.” Apparently there was a period in this timeline where the mutants dominated – or, perhaps, being posthuman, the Librarian just lumps mutants and regular humans in together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The inhabitants of the Preserve, other than Wolverine and Moira, appear to be mutants, but they don’t speak, and the Librarian treats them like farm animals. He doesn’t regard them as imprisoned, but rather seems to think the concept is inapplicable since they’re in their natural environment. Logan gives the expected inspirational speech about the inevitability of revolution – and appears to believe it – but of course he’s wrong. This is the end of the world, and no revolution came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Logan and Moira’s age: <\/strong>Logan and Moira both seem relatively young, so something must be suppressing their ageing. Logan ages slowly, but he does get visibly older within a few decades, as seen in Old Man Logan<\/em>. And Moira’s first life ended when she died of old age, according to House of X <\/em>#2. Quite what’s going on here isn’t clearly explained, but the Librarian refers to them “hav[ing] the same blood type” and “depending on one another to survive” over a millennium. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reboot:<\/strong> The Librarian is the first character to directly address the question of what happens to the previous timeline when Moira dies, sending her mind back in time to start a new life with the knowledge of the one before. The Librarian clearly believes that the process doesn’t just create a new timeline, but “annihilate[s]” the existing one. Moira seems to think the same thing later in the issue. This raises an awkward question of how anything she does can have meaning, and how she would be able to lock a desirable timeline in place if she finally found one (perhaps by killing herself in a way that was somehow permanent – and Destiny told us in House of X <\/em>#2 that this can be done).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Librarian plans to avoid this endless cycle of reboots by sending Moira off world before the Phalanx can kill her. Moreover, he believes that as long as Moira remains alive, posthumanity can break the cycle by being assimilated by a Dominion (and the first step towards that is being assimilated by the Phalanx). A Dominion transcends space and time, so if posthumanity can get to that level before Moira dies and reboots the universe, it will be unaffected by the reboot. On the other hand, the Librarian is not entirely convinced that being copied into the Phalanx while his physical body is destroyed really counts as surviving – indirectly querying the legitimacy of the revived mutants over in House of X<\/em>. So he’s open to persuasion that killing Moira and giving her a chance to alter history might be the better way to go. Unfortunately, from the Librarian’s perspective, Moira has no useful ideas about how to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Posthumanity:<\/strong> According to the Librarian, Moira and the X-Men in general have missed a crucial point. Though mutants are indeed the inevitable next step in evolution, there comes a point of technological advancement where evolution just doesn’t matter any more, because the control over the body offered by science is far more profound and useful. So the robots hold the mutants at bay for a bit, and then humanity ascends to machine-blended posthumanity, and the mutants are just a footnote. (The Librarian seems to imply that the robots are indeed unleashed by humanity rather than just arising spontaneously, since otherwise it’s not clear why the mutants don’t get to join in the posthuman ascension.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moira’s sixth life:<\/strong> This timeline, it turns out, is Moira’s mystery sixth life, which was skipped over in House of X <\/em>#2. This revelation from the Librarian is what spurs Moira into a series of anti-machine schemes over her following lives. When we first saw this timeline, in issue #1, it appeared to be a continuation of the Year 100 timeline – complete with poor Cylobel still floating in the containment tank where Nimrod put her. But we now know that the Year 100 timeline is Moira’s ninth <\/em>life, so apparently these similarities are more of an indication of how little impact Moira has really had on the course of history in the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moira’s voluntary death at the hands of Wolverine mirrors the end of her ninth life, in issue #3, where he also killed her so that she could go back and try again. This is presumably why Moira said “this is what you do” as her last words in that issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 24:<\/strong> A data page on the branching of humanity and the reasons why post-humanity – homo novissima<\/em> – overtakes both humans and mutants. It’s all fairly self explanatory. The Krakoan letters are M for mutant, H for human, and PH for posthuman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 25-29:<\/strong> A continuation of the fair scene. Xavier is horrified by what he sees in Moira’s mind, and reluctant to accept that the mutants always lose. Moira insists that this time round she’s going to make sure that they’re all together. At the same time, though, Moira makes clear that Xavier never changed in any of the worlds where she met him, and that she expects both him and Magneto to resist her plans – which raises the question of how successful she really has been at changing him, a theme that continues into the text pages that follow.. Still, they walk off into the sunset together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 30-32: <\/strong>Text pages, headed “Moira’s journal.” For some reason entries 12 and 35 are blacked out, even though we only get entries 5, 12, 14, 17, 22, 29, 35, 48, 52 and 57 in the first place. These cover a wide span of X-Men history, so evidently Moira isn’t diarising very regularly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry 5.<\/strong> Moira says that she recruited Xavier to her cause after allowing him to read her mind, though it’s taken months and he remains unacceptably hopeful, idealistic and generally Xavier-like. She’s reluctant to let him read her mind again, and notes that he’s dependent on her interpretation of past-life events, but seems to be planning to tell him the truth – since she knows he’ll end up reading her again at some point. Still, there’s a strong hint here that she’s spinning the history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry 12.<\/strong> Redacted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry 14.<\/strong> Moira writes about having become romantic with Charles Xavier (as established in Xavier’s back story under Chris Claremont) and worries about fracturing his psyche and breaking him. It’s not clear if she’s concerned about a break-up, or about the consequences of them being together. Her concern that fracturing his psyche will “eventually unleash something unexpected on the world” may refer to Onslaught, the psychic creature which was meant to be in part the dark side of Xavier’s personality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry 17.<\/strong> Xavier has “stopped trying to fight me on what humanity is”, which is not quite the same thing as him actually agreeing with Moira – it could easily mean he’s stopped arguing with her and started treating her as a resource. Xavier has had an idea of several mutants working in tandem, with one of them needing reality-manipulating powers. This obviously refers to the Five, the mutants who create the new clone bodies on Krakoa, and specifically the reality-warper Proteus – who is Moira’s son. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moira says that she has found potential matches for both Charles and herself to produce such a mutant. The implication seems to be that Moira married Joe MacTaggert in this timeline (and only this timeline) because he was thought to be likely to father a reality-warping mutant with her. The suggestion that Moira also found a potential match for Charles may imply that his relationship with Gabrielle Haller was also instigated by this agenda, leading to the birth of Xavier’s son Legion. Legion and Proteus have in common the traits of being vastly powerful and hugely unstable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry 22.<\/strong> Charles and Moira recruit Magneto, and Moira gets the idea of a mutant stronghold into this mind (which she sees as a good development). We saw this scene in issue #2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry 29.<\/strong> “Apocalypse has made himself known to the world.” Apocalypse debuted in a cameo in X-Factor <\/em>#5 (1986), and had his first fight against X-Factor in the following issue. Note that this comes before later entries which were pinned in earlier issues as “Year One.” This seems to confirm that Hickman is using “Year One” figuratively to mean anything from the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moira describes this rather ranty, evolution-obsessed version of Apocalypse as being in a “raw, primal state”, and is particularly concerned about “the prevention of certain Omega-level mutants falling under his sway” – it’s not immediately clear who she has in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry 35.<\/strong> Redacted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry 48.<\/strong> Moira describes Xavier and Magneto’s approach to Mr Sinister, as seen in issue #4. Xavier and Magneto are acting without Moira’s approval and she’s not happy about it. Moira seems to see this as Xavier getting carried away, but there’s a definite implication that Moira has less control over Xavier and Magneto than she’d like to think, and that maybe they’re not being manipulated as much as her diary tries to suggest. Moira laments Xavier’s foolish belief that he can shape the world to his liking; either she’s being ironic, or her lack of self-awareness is remarkable..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moira says that Sinister has produced his first chimera decades early, in the form of the mutant-gene version of Sinister himself. This refers to the mutants that Sinister was cloning in Moira’s ninth life (and perhaps others). Note that this version of Sinister already existed before Xavier and Magneto showed up, so something else has happened to alter the course of Sinister’s history – though admittedly, the overall history of the world differs massively between Moira’s ninth and tenth lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry 52.<\/strong> A cryptic reference to the split with Magneto, previously mentioned in House of X <\/em>#2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entry 57.<\/strong> Moira explains that she’s been too active (as a supporting character in the X-Men, presumably) and needs to go back to the shadows to pursue her plan. To that end, she has decided to fake her own death using “a Shi’ar golem – a living husk” to test their theory that a mutant could be restored from back-up in the way that’s now being done on Krakoa. Where the Shi’ar fit into this isn’t immediately clear, but they keep getting namedropped throughout Hickman’s run. Note that what Moira is describing here seems to be very close to the clone mutants being created on Krakoa; if Moira considers them to be “golems” then that’s rather at odds with all the ceremonial stuff about how they’re definitely, definitely the real deal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this still fits very oddly with Xavier’s thoughts in the stories where Moira died – perhaps this was one of the occasions when he restored his mind from back-up, to remove his knowledge of the plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 33-36:<\/strong> “Yesterday” – a rare example of a time frame not expressed in powers of ten. Magneto and Professor X visit Moira in her No-Space and talk about the upcoming meeting of the Quiet Council. (We saw that first meeting in House of X <\/em>#6. While this issue is structured so that this scene appears to go directly into the firework display, in fact that display follows from the Council meeting, as we saw in House <\/em>#6.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This scene gives some further explanation about the make-up of the Quiet Council. The “Red King” space is vacant because Emma hasn’t nominated one yet; the “winter” group has “all” the “problem mutants” (which implies that Magneto doesn’t consider Apocalypse <\/em>to be <\/em>one); and the Hellfire faction are assumed to be controllable because Emma is loyal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mystique.<\/strong> Mystique would only agree to join if they promised to bring back her lover Destiny. This is going to be a problem. It’s very, very important to Moira that nobody on Krakoa should have the power to see the future. She seems to have two reasons for this – first, a precog could sense her in the same way that Destiny did in House of X <\/em>#2; and second, a precog would apparently learn something which is being kept secret from the Krakoans. It’s possible, though, that Moira is merely anticipating the inevitable failure of Krakoa rather than having anything more concrete in mind – Xavier and Magneto seem a lot more confident than her that Krakoa could work. There’s a sense here that Moira sees Krakoa as a means to some unspecified end, while Magneto and Xavier want to make it work if they can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not explained here is why it was so important to get Mystique on side in the first place – clearly there’s a plot there. At any rate, the plan is to string Mystique along. The fact that they think they can get away with that might suggest that they don’t see this lasting all that long. On the other hand, since the stated plan is to revive everyone, you’d have thought Mystique must have been stipulating for a high place in the queue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Destiny died way back in the 80s, so Xavier’s been keeping his backups for quite some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 37-41.<\/strong> A repeat of the celebration from the end of House of X <\/em>#6, though with different voice over captions. This time, either Magneto or Xavier (it’s impossible to tell which) tell Moira that she’s built something wonderful and important in Krakoa but that it’s time to step aside now. There’s also a new coda in which Magneto states his determination to protect Krakoa, and Xavier is more quietly determined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 42.<\/strong> The closing quote is Magneto: “I am not ashamed of what I am.” It’s from the previous scene, which strikes more of a defiant tone than the celebratory one we saw in House of X <\/em>version. And that’s it – that’s the set up for the X-Men going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 43-50.<\/strong> The “reading order” page and the trailers. (And the Stan Lee page). The reading order page now lists the first issues of the Dawn of X titles: X-Men<\/em> #1, Marauders <\/em>#1, Excalibur<\/em> #1, X-Force<\/em> #1, New Mutants<\/em> #1 and Fallen Angels<\/em> #1. Note the small print, which refers to “Dawn of X 19” and “Arakko 20”, perhaps suggesting that Krakoa’s estranged sister island will be coming to the fore next year. The Krakoan text on each page simply reads “NEXT” followed by the name of the title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. This is the final issue of Powers of X, and an actual review of both series will follow later. COVER (PAGE 1): Moira standing over a pile of dead mutants on Krakoa. This includes characters from the “Year 100” timeline, so […]<\/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-4800","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\/4800","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=4800"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4804,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4800\/revisions\/4804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}