{"id":8544,"date":"2022-12-07T22:10:59","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T22:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8544"},"modified":"2022-12-07T22:10:59","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T22:10:59","slug":"immortal-x-men-9-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8544","title":{"rendered":"Immortal X-Men #9 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>IMMORTAL X-MEN #9<\/strong>
\n“The X Lives of Moira VI”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Kieron Gillen<\/strong>
\nArtist: Lucas Werneck<\/strong>
\nColourist: Davie Curiel<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong>\u00a0Kate Pryde, with swords, confronts a gun-toting Mr Sinister.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Tribute to Stan Lee. He was born on 28 December 1922, so presumably we’re getting this page throughout the month of December.<\/p>\n

PAGES 3-5.<\/strong>\u00a0Kate Pryde attends a Quiet Council meeting.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kate Pryde<\/strong> is principally a\u00a0Marauders<\/em> character, but the format of\u00a0Immortal X-Men<\/em> is to do an issue from the standpoint of each member of the Quiet Council. This is another issue where that format gets stretched a bit in deference to the wider plot, since this is mainly about Mr Sinister’s storyline and his abuse of clones of Moira MacTaggert.<\/p>\n

Kate’s main role here is to be the one who can see the appeal of the new Phoenix Foundation (from the epilogue of A.X.E.:\u00a0<\/em>Judgment Day<\/em>)\u00a0from almost everyone’s different perspective, whether that’s compassionate, pragmatic or merely cynical. Exodus – the dogmatist – is the one that she can’t really identify with, and it’s Hope who identifies that the correct angle in his case is to appeal to his religious values. Which is interesting in itself, since Hope seems to understand him increasingly as the series goes on. Anyway, Kate clearly values the idea of all different perspectives of mutantdom being able to unite around something.<\/p>\n

Judgment Day.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Most of the recent events being discussed here come from the\u00a0A.X.E: Judgment Day<\/em> crossover – the death of Magneto, the attack on Arakko, the treaty with the Eternals, the “Reykjavik near disaster” (i.e., the attempt to blow up the Progenitor that nearly took out a chunk of the Northern hemisphere), Orchis acting as heroes, and the creation of a programme to make resurrection available to a small number of the poor.<\/p>\n

“No one had any idea about why Kurt had grown horns…”<\/strong> This is the current arc in\u00a0Legion of X<\/em>, where it hasn’t yet been explained either.<\/p>\n

“I preferred Exodus when he was strong and silent. I mean, I do have a type.”<\/strong> Kate is referring to Colossus; I’m not sure it really applies very much to any of her other love interests, though. Pete Wisdom? Anyway, Kate is right – Exodus is getting rather more chatty. He used to say almost nothing in Council meetings, but under Hope’s influence (and Gillen’s writing, let’s be honest) he’s contributing a lot more.<\/p>\n

“Everyone laughed. Well, everyone except Mystique and Destiny…”<\/strong> Apparently that includes Exodus himself, or at the very least Kate seems to think Exodus is intentionally making a joke at his own expense. By his standards this really is lightening up. Mystique and Destiny don’t laugh because they know what’s coming and their attention is elsewhere.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-7.<\/strong>\u00a0Sinister tries to kill Hope.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sinister doubtless expects Destiny to intervene – see below.<\/p>\n

Doctor Stasis<\/strong> is the apparent duplicate of Mr Sinister with a club instead of a diamond, from Gerry Duggan’s\u00a0X-Men<\/em>. Stasis and Sinister both maintain that they’re the original. The previous issue strongly implies that both were created simultaneously (as well as spade and heart versions).<\/p>\n

The closing caption – “Moira VI.1 death” – is explained shortly.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.<\/strong> Recap and trailers. The title, “The X Lives of Moira VI”, refers back to the title of\u00a0House of X<\/em> #2, “The Uncanny Lives of Moira X”.<\/p>\n

PAGE 9.\u00a0<\/strong>Flashback: Sinister and Destiny.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Our scheme didn’t work as we’d hoped…”<\/strong> Sinister and Destiny manipulated the rest of the Quiet Council into attacking the Progenitor directly by concealing the fact that it risked a devastating explosion.<\/p>\n

“We must be on the same side”\u00a0<\/strong>is a point that Destiny has made to Sinister repeatedly in this series.<\/p>\n

“Did you get<\/strong> judged?”\u00a0<\/strong>Sinister mentioned twice in\u00a0A.X.E.: Judgment Day<\/em> #6 that the Progenitor hadn’t got around to judging him. Obviously, he suspects that it might be because Dr Stasis is right and he’s just a copy. Destiny is deliberately playing into that fear – but why? Presumably she has a reasonable idea of what she’s likely to prompt. Sinister claims in the next scene that being ignored by the Progenitor also offends his sense that he’s the most important person in all existence, and he\u00a0might<\/em> mean that too, but it’s probably just persona – which he keeps up even in private.<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-12.<\/strong> Flashback: Sinister decides to kill the Quiet Council.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sinister goes from claiming that “This Stasis problem needs a permanent solution” at the start of the scene to deciding that he’s going to kill the Quiet Council. How exactly that addresses anything to do with Stasis is less than clear – is he hoping to seize control of Krakoa as the last Council member standing? Is the aim to get rid of Hope and put a stop to resurrection? His second data page in this issue very strongly implies that Hope is the very top priority.<\/p>\n

Sinister also helpfully explains the limits of his Moira Engine. For reasons connected with her unusual powers, he can only clone Moira a limited number of times, and each clone can only reset the timeline ten times. That tallies with Destiny’s claim in\u00a0House of X<\/em> #2 that Moira was unlikely to have more than ten lives. Sinister has multiple Moiras because each one acts as a different “save point” (he sees everything as a game), and he hasn’t yet exhausted the resets available from earlier clones. As we saw in issue #1, he downloads his memories into Moira before killing her each time, meaning that the data is available to be read in her memories in the rebooted timeline. Since this new Moira has no memories, he knows he’s dealing with her first iteration.<\/p>\n

This time, Sinister is apparently relaying his memories directly to the Moira clone, and has her set up to die if he dies. In other words, he seems to be deliberately anticipating his own death and working through various iterations in an attempt to figure out how he can outwit Destiny and achieve his goals.<\/p>\n

Cy-Cat<\/strong> and\u00a0Professor Plod<\/strong> have been seen wandering around in the background throughout this series, but this is the first time we’ve seen them talk, or given names.<\/p>\n

Velocidad<\/strong>\u00a0was an apparent speedster who actually had time-warping powers, from Gillen’s\u00a0Generation Hope<\/em> book.<\/p>\n

PAGE 13.<\/strong> Data page: Sinister’s list of priorities. For the most part he’s rated the Council members in terms of their capacity to defeat him in combat, though Destiny understandably merits a high priority. Interestingly, Kate – whose issue this notionally is – is one of his lowest priorities, suggesting that he doesn’t see her (or the equally-ranked Mystique) as particularly significant.<\/p>\n

PAGE 14.<\/strong>\u00a0Moira VI’s second life.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sinister tries blowing up the Quiet Council with a bomb based on\u00a0the powers of Boom-Boom from the New Mutants. Destiny sees it coming, and Exodus kills Sinister. As before, Kate asks “What’s going on?”, and her narration of the page reset to “Everything was normal” (more or less her opening line in the issue).<\/p>\n

PAGE 15.<\/strong>\u00a0Moira VI’s third life.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kate’s narration once again resets, and ends with “What the hell is going on?” This time, Sinister effectively commits suicide by rigging himself to die if the telepaths try reading his mind. Note that it’s Hope who insists on reading his mind by force; Professor X disapproves and Emma apparently isn’t minded to try it either. Maybe she thinks it’s a bad precedent to set with another Council member, or maybe she’s just worried about traps.<\/p>\n

PAGES 16-17.\u00a0<\/strong>Moira VII’s fourth to ninth lives.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sinister figures out that Destiny must know what he’s going to do long before she actually gives the warning, which means she’s deliberately holding back until the last minute – most likely because if she makes the claim earlier, the very act of doing so will alter the timeline and her credibility will be undermined. This is the window of opportunity that Sinister is trying to exploit.<\/p>\n

Sinister’s comment that “When this is all over, I’ll come for you, Irene” is curious. Isn’t “this” meant to include killing her?<\/p>\n

Kate’s oblivious (though perfectly accurate) narration continues to reset to the same structure. Not much is changing from life to life. Sinister isn’t making much headway. Life 8 sees Sinister rig his mind so that a telepath’s head blows up if they try to read it, which seems… a risky precedent? I suspect it’s one of those things that’ll never come up again.<\/p>\n

In life 9, Sinister appears to have turned himself into a squid monster, given the diamond on its forehead – though of course his cat and tortoise have that too.<\/p>\n

PAGE 18.<\/strong>\u00a0A repeated version of the earlier data page with Sinister’s scribblings. Note the importance to him of killing Hope, but apparently not just her (“No Hope without Hope – her + 3+ others”). His priorities have changed somewhat too. Colossus and Nightcrawler have been downgraded to the lowest priority, as has Shaw, who Sinister figures he can maybe use. This might be an error, but Destiny’s\u00a0printed<\/em> priority rating has changed from 9 to 6. Sinister also figures that he can’t been Storm, and the solution is to “distract her” – possibly alluding the point that often comes up in\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em> about Storm’s worst failures coming because she’s simply in the wrong place and not there when she’s needed.<\/p>\n

PAGE 19.\u00a0<\/strong>Sinister schemes.<\/em><\/p>\n

He apparently has the little chess-piece figures so beloved of classic villains.<\/p>\n

The Dark Beast<\/strong> turns out to be trapped in a tube in Sinister’s lab. As Sinister points out, given the storylines in\u00a0X-Force<\/em>, the real Beast is actually much worse these days. Dark Beast is just a floating head because Magik decapitated him in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 5 #20 (part of the Rosenberg run). This is the first time we’ve seen him since then, and perhaps explains why he hasn’t been resurrected along with all Rosenberg’s other slaughter victims.<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-24.<\/strong> Moira VI’s last life.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Shaw had gotten a crate of cocktails…”<\/strong> As per his data page, Sinister has tried to engineer things to his advantage by getting everyone drunk and diverting Storm.<\/p>\n

“I am nothing like Stasis…”<\/strong> Having finally succeeded in killing four of the Quiet Council, Shaw goes on to a rant about how he feels threatened by Stasis – and also throws in a suggestion that once Moira got driven out of the utopia that she sort-of created, he figures it was only a matter of time before they came for him. He is, of course, somewhat correct that Utopia – and in particular its resurrection systems – couldn’t have been created without his DNA reserves.<\/p>\n

“There’re the contingencies…”<\/strong> It seems odd that this far into the Krakoan era, nobody has thought to test whether somebody other than Hope can take her place in an emergency (such as Synch, for example). You’d have thought that was worth knowing. Presumably there’s some reason why it\u00a0hasn’t<\/em> been tested – a fear of resurrecting someone in broken form, maybe, or a worry about undermining the cult of worship deliberately created around the Five for cultural reasons.<\/p>\n

Kate.\u00a0<\/strong>Note that after ending all previous scenes by wondering what was happening, Kate’s position changes upon Sinister’s success to “I know what’s going on” – and with Xavier, Hope, Emma and Exodus all dead, and Storm absent, it’s Kate who takes the lead. Perhaps Sinister’s failure to register her throughout this issue will pay off next time.<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. IMMORTAL X-MEN #9 “The X Lives of Moira VI” Writer: Kieron Gillen Artist: Lucas Werneck Colourist: Davie Curiel Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1:\u00a0Kate Pryde, with swords, confronts a gun-toting […]<\/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-8544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8544","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=8544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8546,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8544\/revisions\/8546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}