House of X #2

[laughing_tree]

House of X #2 - "The Uncanny Life of Moira X"

I grew up primarily a DC Comics guy; the only book I read of Marvel growing up was the X-Men. All the books I've done at Marvel up to this point, those were fantastic jobs - but they were jobs. This is the first book I've loved before I started doing. -- Jonathan Hickman

Comments

[lencannon]

So I've been thinking about HoxPox alot and I noticed that Moira's first life was peaceful, happy, ended well. Which is of course well and good. But then it becomes apparent she lived into her 70s without any type of machine uprising ruining the world and making it a nightmare.

I'm concerned that Moira participating in the mutant struggle is the prime factor that makes everything go bad.

[aperturedreams]

That's...a really good point. Never thought of that.

[silicondream]

Unless the mutant purge happened in that timeline too, and it just didn't affect her quality of life much because she was living somewhere isolated and passing as human? Maybe that was a timeline where the human supremacists were particularly successful at exterminating mutants without the average baseline human having to notice or care.

[broblawsky]

Moira is apparently invisible to normal mutant detection. Destiny was able to sense her thanks to her weird relationship with time, but it seems likely that the Sentinels just left her alone.

[icon_uk]

Yes, but we've yet to see a future (Other than one in Alan Davis Excalibur run where they were repurposed) where a world with Sentinels in it doesn't descend into dystopian nightmare for EVERYONE!

[lordultimus]

But.. Reed Richards is your favorite superhero. You've said so multiple times. You wrote an epilogue about love in your ending to your FF run.

[icon_uk]

I can imagine he learned to love writing Mr Fantastic (who us always smarter than everyone else in the room, except emotionally), but that doesn't mean he grew up loving him.

[mistersandman]

So assuming that the 10th life is the 616 timeline, which is a big assumption at this point, how does that timeline reconcile with X-Men history as we know it? Year 43 seems to happen around the time of Uncanny #150, because Magneto's on his weird fish island base.

[obsidianwolf]

I really don't think any of the past x-men comics matter anymore. One of the reasons I've never been a Hickman fan is his story ideas will be written the way he wants without any regard for past canon or characterization that he has to change on the way.

[icon_uk]

I'll give Hickman credit for a more creative way of changing things than Morrison's "Polaris was ALWAYS Magneto's daughter of course" because he seemed to forget the twist in the original story, or "Talia raped Batman" because he couldn't be bothered to read "Son of the Demon"

[icon_uk]

"Octopusheim" (as Jay and Miles dubbed it)

[mistersandman]

I love that. I keep meaning to get into that podcast but the hour+ episodes feel like too much of a commitment.

[silicondream]

If Moira wanted to try something new in later iterations, she should expand her operations outside the X-verse. Why not work with Tony Stark or Reed Richards or even Hank Pym to avert an AI uprising? Or try to get her hands on a Cosmic Cube or an Infinity Whatsit? Someone on Marvel Earth gains godlike powers every couple of months; with a few lives' foreknowledge Moira should be able to exploit one of those opportunities.

[obsidianwolf]

But that wouldn't follow Hickman's "epic" script.

[scorntx]

Asking Hank Pym to avert an AI uprising?
Isn't that like trying to put out a fire with a flamethrower?

[silicondream]

Hey, if enough AIs are busy competing with each other to take over the world, maybe none of them will be successful.

[lordnorj]

He is considered a god by many in the AI community.

[beyondthefringe]

So first Moira needs to earn herself a second set of regeneratio-er, reboo-um, recycles? so she can move away from the mutant-centric tactics of the first set...

In her 16th life, Moira accompanied the Richards family on their fateful trip into space, where the cosmic rays augmented her mutant gene, imbuing her with great power. As Phoenix (a name chosen from memories of lives past), she joined the Fantastic Five, fell in love with Reed Richards, and bore him a mutant child who would grow up to become the most powerful Earthling to ever live, who would exist until the end of time and even have Galactus as a Herald at some point...
After living to a rip old age of many centuries, having outlived everyone and everything she loved, Moira would finally ascend to a higher station, allowing herself to discorporate back into the universe.

And then she woke up in her 17th life, and went "Oh for fuck's sake." This time around, she went and seduced Bolivar Trask himself, inspiring him to create mutant -protecting Sentinels. Naturally, this didn't work.

In her 18th life, she joined Thanos' crusade, figuring that she could have him use the Infinity Gauntlet to wipe out the Sentinels and all anti-mutant prejudice.

In her 19th life, she became Galactus' Herald...

In her 20th, she manipulated the Scarlet Witch. "No more Sentinels..."

In her 21st, she found a way to cross over to Earth-Prime, and burned Marvel Comics to the ground, hoping that if there were no X-Men comics for us to read, they'd be safe.

And so ended the many lives of Moira X.

[erikred]

In 16.5 she pushes a teenager out the way and is bitten by a radioactive spider.

In 16.5.1-16.5.29910, an energy-vampiric Moira hunts down and devours the totemic spider energy of the Moirachnoverse. Rather fortunately, this is a closed loop, and no one ever hears about it.

[silicondream]

I don't really see how she can have a limited number of lives anyway. If time keeps looping for her, how does her mutation "remember" how many reincarnations she has left? Is she born with a slightly different mutation in each timeline?

Or is it just that she's destined to eventually live a life where she somehow cures her own mutation and dies as a normal human? But in that case, she should have stopped with life number three...

[silicondream]

Also, what does it mean to be a "mutant" with an undetectable, unaffectable X-gene? Doesn't that just make Moira...a generic human with a random reincarnation curse attached?

[icon_uk]

No, it means that's she one of a few mutants whose power is actually useful to continuing the species.

A mutant who is undetectable as a mutant is more likely to have children and thus mutation continues.

[beyondthefringe]

In Rising Stars, JMS wrote it so that every one of the "specials" was somehow important to the functioning of the whole, with powers that would theoretically work in unison if they'd ever gotten their shit together.

I'd like to see someone try that with mutants, to explain how so many mutant power-sets might actually be beneficial to the species as a whole... and how some are just freaking useless shots in the dark.

[doodleboy]

Homumoira

... I’ll see myself out.

[theflames]

Rewatched Madoka last week and thought the same damn thing. Wonder if Hickman's a fan lol.