#hoxpox doxroxdeox foxfothoxrotpox

[racefortheironthrone]

Any characters you feel got a big upgrade in the krakoan era? I just finished x men red and Ive really been impressed in Apocalypse aka Revelation’s story all across

So many characters.

Post-Hickman and Howard and Ewing Apocalypse is a fundamentally different (and more interesting) character than the one who's existed for almost fourty years. It's like pre- and post-Claremont Magneto.

Cypher has become a scheming political twink with a robot arm and a large wife enforcer.

Hope, Goldballs, Elixir, Tempus, and Proteus got a huge glow-up. Not only are they collective messiahs of their people in a power-boosted polycule, but Proteus is now a philosophical club kid with a manageable chronic illness and a therapist rather than a Nosferatu.

Jean is Phoenix again, that's a big shift. Also, the whole Summers polycule Brady Bunch thing really changed the whole Jean/Scott/Logan dynamic.

Mystique is Nightcrawler's dad and Destiny is his mom. Also Mystique is way more powerful now, quasi-omega level.

Moira is now an ex-mutant who's become a genocidal robot.

Kate Pryde is now canonically bi and incredibly violent and traumatized.

Storm is now a Main Character again, and arguably the most powerful mutant in the galaxy.

And so on.

[racefortheironthrone]

I like the name - to be honest, if you're going to bring the Krakoan Era to an end, you're going to be compared with the beginning anyway so you might as well bite the bullet and commit to the whole paired miniseries with different timelines bit. (Also the acronym tongue-twister amuses me.)

I agree that the dialogue isn't Duggan's best work, but I do like the plotting. (Also, Nimrod wasn't taken out, just slowed down enough for Krakoa to make a run for it.) I also have faith in Gillen's ability to pick up any slack when it comes to dialogue.

Some Thoughts On Fall Of The House Of X #1

To be frank, I’m bored, I’m on break from school, and I want to write something but I have nothing that I’m particularly inspired to write about. So to sate my hunger to write I’ve decided to give some of my thoughts on this week’s only new X-Men title, the ridiculously and ill advisedly named Fall Of The House Of X #1 by Gerry Duggan and Lucas Werneck. 

I think before I cover the issue itself I have to talk about that title for a second and why I find it to be so ill advised. The title draws instant comparisons between this book and Johnathan Hickman and Pepe Larraz’s House Of X. In fact the book positions it as the conclusion of the story started by that very book. This was frankly a icarian folly. House Of X — alongside Hickman and R. B. Silva’s Powers Of X — is one of the best X-Men stories ever told, by naming the title Fall Of The House Of X you're setting up an impossible standard to reach. 

Gerry Duggan is a talented writer, he’s great at doing character driven stuff and big superheroic bombast, but frankly I don’t know if he’s equipped to go toe to toe with Hickman so to speak. Even judging the writing of this book in isolation from any comparisons I don’t think this is Duggan at his best. 

On the art front Lucas Werneck just isn’t Pepe Larraz, I like Werneck just fine and think he’s a rising star but frankly it feels like he’s still evolving as an artist and isn’t quite suited for an event book such as this. It really is a shame that Larraz didn’t return for this book because honestly, it would elevate it quite a bit in my estimation. Back onto Werneck’s work, the pencils feel oddly rushed in some places which feels odd for a event book such as this, part of the advantage of a event book as I understand it is that artists have more time to work on the art without having to worry so much about reaching a monthly deadline. All that being said the art is by no means terrible, it’s quite good in fact. But it just doesn’t feel like the right fit for the bombast this book is clearly going for. Werneck excels at character interactions as he showed time and time again in Immortal X-Men, but I’m unconvinced of his ability to do sustained bombast beyond a striking pose. 

To ramble a bit about some individual aspects of the issue, I'm not a fan of some of the costume choices, in particular Cyclops's and Wolverine's. It's pretty frustrating to see the characters put back into their Cockrum era outfits for seemingly no reason at all? don't get me wrong I love these older costumes but I wish they were finishing off Krakoa in their Krakoan costumes.

Another aspect of the issue that I have a nitpick with is Nimrod being taken out so easily. In the issue he goes to fight the island of Krakoa itself but he's taken out by some amber spit? Isn't Nimrod supposed to be this huge extensional threat to Mutantkind? It diminishes his threat when you have him taken out by tree spit.

In terms of positives I thought Polaris's new design is really great, so there is that. Like I said earlier, Werneck really excels at breathtaking poses.

[racefortheironthrone]

At first, I thought the mission at the outset of the Krakoa saga to take out the base by the sun was plot-driven, to create heroic deaths for a bunch of favs and then show off the resurrection system. Now I'm certain. A couple of OMEGA LEVEL mutants who can control magnetic fields & atmosphere would be a LOT more useful inside Mercury than wings or a guy who makes holes in train stations (which is why he didn't go on Asteroid M raid), but the Doylist point of the mission really was their death.

You're certainly right from a Doylist perspective, and it might even be true from a Watsonian perspective - is Xavier enough of a bastard to send his X-Men to die just to give a Big Reveal for the Five at the founding of Krakoa?

I think not.

As we see in Hickman's X-Men, and Inferno, the Orchis Forge is Krakoa's own bridge too far. They destroy the Mother Mold, but Nimrod comes online anyway, thanks to the time travel/multiverse meddling of Omega Sentinel. After the mission in HOXPOX, Krakoa sends its biggest guns again and again - they send X-Force, they send Mystique, they send Magneto, they send assassins, they send the Brood, and no matter what they try they fail.

Rather, I think the point has to do with Hickman's existential themes about defying inevitability, fate versus free will, and the necessity of resistance.

While I'm throwing down bets, I will put $20 that, in FOTHOXROTPOX, Krakoa will rally to defeat ORCHIS once and for all - only to find that ORCHIS and their secret machine masters were merely pawns meant to distract and delay Krakoa, in order to buy time for the real existential threat: the Dominion.

[racefortheironthrone]

Do you worry Marvel will do a reboot of some sorts to the X-Men to align it more with whatever the X-Men will look like in the MCU in the coming years? Make the Krakoan Age meaningless?

Not really, no. For one thing, coordination between the comics and the MCU is pretty loose, especially these days - yes, they might line up as with Ms. Marvel becoming a mutant, but that's much more the exception to the rule.

For another, I don't think that's the direction they're going with the post-Krakoa relaunch. Yes, to a certain extent they have to put the toys back in the toybox for the next team, but there are ways to do that without rendering a critically and commercially successful run "meaningless," and I trust that the creative team handling FOTHOXROTPOX will nail the dismount.

Moreover, the choice of the name is telling to me. "From the Ashes" is rightfully a legendary arc of the Claremont run - it's got Paul Smith doing some of the best art in the history of the X-Men, it's got Claremont introducing Callisto and the Morlocks, Punk Storm, Wolverine's Japanese wedding, Rogue becoming a member of the X-Men, the love story of Madelyne Pryor and Scott Summers, some epic Jason Wyngarde gaslighting, it's got everything!

But you know what else is significant about "From the Ashes"? For the most part, it's not really a Westchester X-mansion set up. So whatever this relaunch is going to be, I don't think it's going to be a retread of UXM #273.

[racefortheironthrone]

Hi Steven, I too am intriugued by the ROTPOX and kinda blown away. I noticed one little thing: the first issue is all in +10 years, will this number rise with upcoming issues? And in the end it will go back to minus years to (almost?) kill young Moita? I would be glad to read your extended thoughts.

It is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more complicated than just +10 years.

As I understand it, and I am very much still in the process of trying to wrap my head around Kieron Gillen's dizzyingly complicated ideas, we have a whole bunch of timelines going on at once:

The main events of the comic are happening in Timeline D, which is the Stasis Dominion scenario in which Dr. Stasis hacks the Vault, turns off the sun, and guzumps the Sentinel's Dominion project. This is "harvested" by Enigma from outside of time and space, and thus never technically happens.

The events of Sins of Sinister took place in Timeline E, where Mr. Sinister wiped out the galaxy to ascend to Dominion. This is also "harvested by Enigma."

The events of most of Immortal X-Men and Fall of X/FOTHOX are happening in Timeline C. However, Timeline C is influenced by escaping elements of Timeline E, such as Mother Righteous' library, the Moira Engine message, and Rasputin IV.

We haven't seen Timeline F, just that it was the one in which Orbis Stellaris ascended and was then "harvested" by Enigma.

Most of the events of HOXPOX and the rest of the pre-Fall Krakoan Era took place in Timeline A and B. However, once Mister Sinister created the Moira Engine, the main timeline diverged into multiple timelines thanks to the influence of Enigma.

The events of Inferno (2021) happen in both Timeline C and Timeline H, where the Trickster Dominion manages to avert the total victory of Krakoa (which, critically involved the use of the Phoenix to defeat the Dominions, something that the mutants of Timeline C don't have access to atm) by sending the consciousness of Omega Sentinel to accelerate the Nimrod project. Thus, Timeline H never happened.

The events of the last few issues of Immortal X-Men and all of Jean Grey take place in Timeline G, where Mother Righteous manages to manipulate a mortally-wounded and timeline-hallucinating Jean Grey as a human sacrifice to give her control of the White Hot Room and ascend to Dominion. This timeline is also "harvested" by Enigma, bringing it into reflexive existence in I (which is technically not a timeline, since Enigma exists outside of time and space). Unusually Mother Righteous isn't destroyed in the process, merely dropping out of ascension back into the White Hot Room (which also exists outside of time and space).

Then there is Professor X's non-timeline K, in which he endeavors to prevent the ascension of Enigma but ultimately reverts back to a contingency plan of killing Moira before her powers manifest, thus averting all the above timelines.

[racefortheironthrone]

Wait Mystique is borderline omega-level? How do her powers allow for something like that?

Read X-Men Blue: Origins, it explains in detail:

[racefortheironthrone]

Seems like the Atomic Age inspired every second superhero to get his or her powers through radiation. The radioactive spider bite is probably the most well known example, but I saw some pretty wacky ones. Wondering if you know any other crazy or interesting ones too?

A lot of the Silver Age superheroes were radioactive, in no small part because Stan Lee was a nut on the subject and didn't particularly care about the actual science. So in addition to Spider-Man (and many of his rogues' gallery), you have the gamma bomb test that created the Hulk and many of his rogues' gallery (although Al Ewing invented a fascinating Kabbalistic mythology on top of the whole gamma radiation thing), the radioactive ooze that blinded Matt Murdock (and created the Ninja Turtles), and on and on...

The one you're probably less familiar with is the first origin story for mutants in the X-Men:

While the nuclear origin of Professor X and the 05 were eventually superseded by Chris Claremont's decision to shift from atomic radiation to genetic mutation, which would be formalized as the X-Gene, X-comics didn't completely abandon the Silver Age origin story for mutants. Building on Xavier's backstory of being the children of government scientists working at a top-secret project at Alamagordo, New Mexico (a clear allusion to the Trinity Test conducted at Los Alamos as part of the Manhattan Project), Fabien Nicieza, Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, and especially Mike Carey invented the Black Womb Project.

In a feat of paranoid conspiracy rarely seen outside of a game of Illuminati, the Black Womb Project was a secret genetic mutation research group using nuclear research as a cover story. Led by "Dr. Nathan Milbury" (aka Mister Sinister aka Nathaniel Essex) and the almost-as-evil Amanda Mueller (aka "the Black Womb Killer"), the Black Womb Project hired Dr. Brian Xavier (Charles' father), Dr. Kurt Marko (Cain Marko's father), and Irene Adler (working undercover to foil Sinister's bid for Dominion).

This project involved wildly unethical experimentation on thousands of children abducted by FBI agents Fred Duncan (who would become Professor X's FBI liason) and Carl Denti (the future anti-mutant villain "X-Cutioner"), including many of the Silver Age villains like Fred Dukes (the Blob) and Mortimer Toynbee (Toad), as well as experiments conducted by Drs. Xavier and Marko on their own children Charles and Cain. Supposedly, the Black Womb Project was designed to test a number of different methods of activating latent X-Genes...

But secretly, Nathaniel Essex/Mister Sinister was intending to use the Project as a springboard for his goals for immortality and ultimate dominion through something called the Cronus Device. This involved the implantation of Sinister's DNA into Xavier and Marko so that if Sinister ever died, a failsafe would activate that would wipe the minds of Charles, Marko, and their descendants and implant Sinister's mind and abilities into them.

While Sinister's plans were foiled by Irene Adler's precognition and Amanda Mueller's attempt to usurp the Cronus Device and replace Sinister's backup with her own (Mueller's mutant power gave her immortality but not eternal youth, so she wanted to use Sinister's backdoor to clone herself into youthful bodies), it did succeed in installing a Sinister backdoor into Charles Xavier and Cain Marko that Sinister would eventually infiltrate into the mutant DNA database at the heart of Krakoan resurrection. Sinister then used his backdoors to attempt to seize control of the Quiet Council and create an intergalatic mutant empire, which he would then sacrifice to fuel his ascension into Dominion.

Unfortunately, he didn't know that Enigma had gotten there first...

[racefortheironthrone]

I don't get it. That report in the picture doesn't support the premise at all. It says Mystique is NOT omega level, and sets out the conditions that would make her omega level, which seems, in the vernacular, to be imitating other mutants' powers, which AFAIK she doesn't do. And that's a huge jump up from what she does do, so it's less of a border and more of a buffer state, or at least a DMZ, between her level and omega level.

Re-read the end of the report. Dr. Nemesis says that:

"...she has, thus far, appeared incapable of mimicking the X-Gene of other mutants, nor of manipulating her own. Could she? Would she?...it is perhaps just as well she has so very little interest in science."

Do you not see how this is clearly opening the door that Mystique might actually be capable of doing so, and could pull it off in the future - if she applied herself to improving her conscious control over her power and her knowledge of science?

I'm going to lay down a $20 bet that Mystique will, in fact, demonstrate this power feat at some point during the climax of FOXFOTHOXROTPOX.

[racefortheironthrone]

Is there a reading for the Krakoan Age anywhere? Is going HoX/PoX, then in volume release order okay?

That works just fine. But if you want to get more granular, @alfietalksaboutcomics has some very thorough reading orders written up.

[racefortheironthrone]

Incoherent Rambling About Rise of the Powers of X #1

So I had talked about FOTHOX #1 with @alfietalksaboutcomics, and generally liked the plotting and character work even if the dialogue didn’t always work for me.

I have no such reservations about ROTPOX #1. Kieron Gillen comes in with astonishing bravura, throwing a million ideas at us at once, turning all of our many fan theories over the years into his Lego pieces, and producing a deeply satisfying evocation of what made us fall in love with HOXPOX in the first place. This is exactly what I hoped for as a conclusion to Krakoa and I look forwards to trying to understand all the timeline and scheme shenanigans.