{"id":8779,"date":"2023-02-22T23:01:13","date_gmt":"2023-02-22T23:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8779"},"modified":"2023-02-22T23:01:13","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T23:01:13","slug":"immoral-x-men-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8779","title":{"rendered":"Immoral X-Men #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>IMMORAL X-MEN #1<\/strong>
\n“Sins of Sinister, part 4: The Bond Age”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Kieron Gillen<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Paco Medina<\/strong>
\nInkers: Walden Wong & Victor Olazaba<\/strong>
\nColour artists: Jay David Ramos & Chris Sotomayor<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

IMMORAL X-MEN\u00a0<\/strong>is the temporary\u00a0Sins of Sinister<\/em> re-branding of\u00a0Immortal X-Men<\/em>, obviously. The previous chapter of the story was in\u00a0Nightcrawlers<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong>\u00a0Sinister-ised Emma Frost subdues the original Mr Sinister.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-3.\u00a0<\/strong>Professor X wipes out a rebel cell before they can actually achieve anything.<\/em><\/p>\n

He’s not actually named, but that’s the current\u00a0Nick Fury<\/strong> leading the group.<\/p>\n

New Essex<\/strong> is obviously a re-named New York (Essex also being an English location, just in case any American readers didn’t know that). We saw it in\u00a0Sins of Sinister<\/em> #1, but it wasn’t named there.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“…since Orchis were taken off the board…” <\/strong>The X-Men and the Avengers defeated Orchis years ago in Sins of Sinister\u00a0<\/em>#1, after they were framed for the Sinisters’ own attack on Krakoa. However,\u00a0according to Hope towards the end of\u00a0Sins of Sinister<\/em> #1, “Remains of Orchis are out there, agitating.”<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.\u00a0<\/strong>Professor X laments the deaths.<\/em><\/p>\n

We already established in\u00a0Sins of Sinister<\/em> #1 that the Sinister-ised Quiet Council members still retain key features of their own personalities. Professor X, in particular insists that “I still believe in the dream. If everyone thought like me, there would be no war. Assimilation to the dream is essential.” Apparently, squaring this with his Sinister-imposed agenda has led to a Professor X who perceives all of this as a tragic necessity – though not to the point of him showing any resistance.<\/p>\n

Emma, in contrast, framed her motivation as being to “protect the children… and compared to us, they’re all toddlers”. This is one of the reasons why she keeps framing herself as a mother figure in her dialogue, albeit through a fairly blatant BDSM prism. Note, also, that this version of Emma seems much more inclined to take pleasure in destroying the rebels – she was originally a supervillain, after all.<\/p>\n

“After the warning, do you think Sinister will submit?”<\/strong> Referring to the scene in\u00a0Sins of Sinister\u00a0<\/em>#1 where the Quiet Council confronted him about having their own agenda. It was more of a veiled warning, in which the Council members demanded to be treated as equal. In fact, Sinister did\u00a0not<\/em> submit, but his immediate reaction was to try and reset the timeline – only to discover he’d lost access to his Moira clones. Emma doesn’t know that.<\/p>\n

“We are his betters. He admitted as much when he subverted us to conquer this world. He’s oh-so vanilla.”<\/strong>\u00a0Leaving aside the BDSM overtone, Emma has pointed out the fundamental defect in Sinister’s plan. Sinister intended to create a Quiet Council who were under his control. What he actually created was a bunch of Sinisters who were not under his control and who had the powers and some of the qualities of the Council members on top of that. In other words, they’re all Sinister Plus. And he’s just… Sinister.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits. The title is another reference to Emma’s BDSM overtone; the strapline (“No Brotherhood, Just Evil Mutants”) refers to Magneto’s old Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.\u00a0<\/strong>Emma convenes a Quiet Council meeting.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I wish Erik was still with us.”\u00a0<\/strong>Magneto died in\u00a0A.X.E.: Judgment Day\u00a0<\/em>#4 and\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em> #7. Obviously it’s a gag about undercutting Professor X’s superficial niceness – but might there be another reason for mentioning Magneto? Could Sinister potentially engineer his resurrection via the Waiting Room as an ally?<\/p>\n

Exodus<\/strong>‘s enthusiasm for Hope remains undimmed; he’s painting her in the style of Jesus.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7.\u00a0<\/strong>The Council meeting begins.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Council are now meeting in a psychic projection rather than in front of the corpse of Krakoa. Per\u00a0Sins of Sinister<\/em> #1, the Council at this point are Professor X, Hope, Magik, the Beast, Exodus, Namor, Kate Pryde, Emma Frost, Sebastian Shaw, Colossus and Mr Sinister. The twelfth seat was shown occupied by Nightcrawler, but we know from\u00a0Nightcrawlers<\/em> #1 that that must have been one of Sinister’s puppets. His seat (between Colossus and Shaw) is empty here.<\/p>\n

Shaw is on fire because he’s become a Hell lord, as shown in\u00a0Sins of Sinister<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

“Dad’s gone buggy…”<\/strong> Cable has bonded with the insectoid Xilo, as seen in\u00a0Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants<\/em> #1. Apparently Hope feels some compulsion to fulfil her destiny as Cable’s heir.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page: Hope sets out her theory that the Krakoans are going to get wiped out by alien races before they grow strong enough to confront them. She was worried about this in\u00a0Sins of Sinister<\/em> #1 too.<\/p>\n

The Shi’ar, Kree and the Skrulls are stock Marvel Universe galactic empires. The Rigellians are less often seen in these parts, but they’re a colonial empire that’s been around in Thor\u00a0<\/i>since the Silver Age.<\/p>\n

Emma’s narration continues below. As she says, Sinister was indeed somewhat dismissive about Hope’s fears when she raised them in\u00a0Sins<\/em> #1, though it’s not really clear from that scene that anyone else felt differently.<\/p>\n

PAGE 9.\u00a0<\/strong>Mr Sinister laments the quality of American tea.<\/em><\/p>\n

PAGES 10-12.\u00a0<\/strong>Mr Sinister discusses the plot with a hapless clone.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Talk to the Duck.”<\/strong> This is, apparently, a technique used by some programmers to help with debugging by making themselves articulate the problem in spoken English<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“My most secret lab has been stolen.”<\/strong>\u00a0Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants<\/em> #1. Orbis Stellaris has it. (Note, by the way, that the other Sinisters – who are very prominent in this arc – don’t appear in this issue at all.)<\/p>\n

Dark Beast<\/strong>‘s severed head was seen in Sinister’s lab, kept in a floatation tank, in\u00a0Immortal X-Men<\/em> #9. In that issue, he didn’t seem terribly inclined to help Sinister.<\/p>\n

PAGES 13-14.\u00a0<\/strong>Sinister fails to kill Emma.<\/em><\/p>\n

The “power patches” get mentioned here because they’re going to come up later, but presumably they’re also another way of either corrupting humans, or at least suckering them in to Sinister’s gene-tinkering.<\/p>\n

Chimeras.<\/strong> Emma describes them as “living statues”, which is interesting. She doesn’t seem to regard them as sentient, and the ones we’ve seen in this timeline do generally seem to be more like monsters than the blended characters from\u00a0Powers of X<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been sleeping in diamond for a long time.”<\/strong> She was already doing it in\u00a0Immortal X-Men<\/em> #4. In this future, she’s taken to keeping B-list illusionist Mastermind around to disguise the fact, so as to sucker in the likes of Sinister. As she says, Mastermind is a specialist at this sort of thing – but, since he doesn’t have wider telepathic powers, no actual threat to her. Apparently there’s a little button on her bedpost that reveals him, though the art kind of struggles to get that across in one panel.<\/p>\n

PAGE 15.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page: the hunt for Mr Sinister. It’s not clear who’s writing this, but it’s apparently not Emma – who tells us in the next scene that she already knew where he had gone, by reading his mind as he fled her room.<\/p>\n

The locations listed are:<\/p>\n