Powers of X #6 - "House of X"

[laughing_tree]

I have some general philosophies on what kind of work you should do at Marvel, that I try and adhere to. I think the stories should be big. Any time you can mine your continuity and the existing continuity of the company in a way that evokes a response from audience and not confusion, that’s powerful, and you’re crazy not to utilize it when you’re writing these books. The cardinal rule beyond that is at the end of the day, after you’ve torn up the playroom and scattered all the toys, you put everything all back on the shelf. Don’t be an a—hole and leave a mess. You want to tell stories that matter, but the way you write things that matter in Marvel is that you’re not destructive, you’re additive. -- Jonathan Hickman

Comments

[shakalooloo]

So, if everyone's all one big, happy family now, why does Magneto still wear a helmet designed to keep people from reading his mind?

[lordultimus]

Going by strict continuity, that was only brought in after the movie. It's original purpose was like his cape: purely aesthetic.

[bruinsfan]

No, it used to have mind control circuitry in it back in his early villain days. Here's a story from 1986.

[deathcrist2000]

Aesthetics.

[silverhammerman]

Magneto is highly conscious of his brand.

I'm really curious about the possibility that his helmet not only prevents telepathy, but up until now, has prevented Xavier from backing up his mind.

[nyadnar17]

I honestly think he has worn it so long its part of his identity now.

Its actually one of the things I find frustrating about Superpowered/Supernatural communities. Super strength? fine. Complete controls of one of the fundamental forces of human nature? fine. Outfit that includes a mind control immunity helmet, razor sharp tassels, or a completely sensor suite? fine.

My 9mm? Oh thats a problem. How dare you bring a weapon here you unenlightened hUmOn?!

[locuatico]

To keep his sanity:
https://waitingforthet.tumblr.com/post/182001611509/this-would-be-post-utopia-he-probably-sleeps-in

[agharta75]

He's a dork?

[mindsweeper]

Hickman said that Mutants should wear Mutant clothes. I think their uniforms are who they are now.

[silverhammerman]

Sinister machine intelligences existing outside of space and time!

That's a big reveal about Legion and Proteus in Entry 17 up there, and one with some potentially massive implications. At minimum it makes Age of X and Age of Apocalypse both directly, if unintentionally, the result of Xavier and Moira's machinations. It also changes the optics of their relationships hugely, not only did Xavier have a relationship with a patient he was counseling, he did so not out of misguided love but as part of a eugenics project. Moira's relationship is even more messed up, as at best, her eugenics project trapped her in an abusive marriage.

I'm also extremely into the reveal, not included here, that Moira refuses to allow Mystique to bring Destiny back from the dead, despite Xavier and Magneto promising it as a part of her recruitment. We saw something similar at the end of the Wolverines team series, and that certainly suggested Mystique won't react well.

There's a lot of interesting stuff set up here that I'm looking forward to seeing.

[scorntx]

The Proteus retcon also makes Moira look like a total bastard of a parent.
Well, more so.

(And this whole thing raises questions about her relationship with Rahne. Was that planned? Was Reverend Craig? Did she know about that from her previous lives?
... though it's looking pretty unlikely Hickman's going to acknowledge Moira and Rahne's relationship.)

[shadowkat]

Well, there is some back story on Moira not being, ahem, the best. Remember the Fatal Attractions Storyline? Where it is revealed that Moira tinkered with Magneto's DNA to make him a better person -- which is referenced here? (And that back-fired so badly, that Magneto ended up stripping Wolverine of his adamantine and almost killing him -- resulting in Xavier doing what he did to Magneto?) Moira apparently moved into the shadows after that and faked her death -- because she'd crossed some serious lines? There's also a hint in there that Moira's machinations regarding Xavier did break him -- resulting possibly in Onslaught? And she had to pull back? (Hmmm...did they ret-con the whole Onslaught storyline and make that Moira's fault?)

[lordultimus]

So, it was originally implied that Proteus was the result of Moira being raped by Joseph Mactaggart. Um... Yeah, I don't know if I want to touch on this.

I should note that this was a Moira entry so we don't know how much Xavier knew. For all we know Moira pointed Xavier in her direction because she knew he would take a liking to her and Xavier had no idea. So need more information, at least on the Xavier end of things.

But that said i wouldn't be suprised if Charles did.

[leahandillyana]

I honestly enjoy the symbolism of the cover, very fitting the author's interpretation of X-Men, even if unsubtle.

[locuatico]

"The cardinal rule beyond that is at the end of the day, after you’ve torn up the playroom and scattered all the toys, you put everything all back on the shelf. Don’t be an a—hole and leave a mess. You want to tell stories that matter, but the way you write things that matter in Marvel is that you’re not destructive, you’re additive."

that's a good rule.

[scorntx]

So... your stories should be "big" and change things dramatically, but should revert back to the way they were once they're done?
Sounds a little contradictory there.
But would explain most of his Avengers run.

(And as for "mining continuity"...)

-"You really want them to know... that we always lose?"-
Don't really see why that'd be so demoralizing to the X-Men.
Pretty much every future they've seen has been crappy, starting from DOFP.
At this point, it'd be like being told it's going to rain later.

[arilou_skiff]

Wasnt' there a decent future where Jubilee was president or some such?

I only clicked on this because I thought that was Jubilee on the cover, so might I ask...

[deh_tommy]

Jubilee as President? Where? When!?

[kirayoshi]

Not to mention Claremont's "X-Men: The End", which ended with President Kitty Pryde.

[locuatico]

It's more like, don't make such a mess that future writers have a hard time doing their work.
I would point to Civil War as an example.
On the one hand, Mark Millar made such a mess with Tony's character that the writers who had to deal with the aftermath were left with the difficult task of having to reconcile Tony Stark, the superhero, with Tony Stark, the...... villain of Civil War. It was destructive.

At the same time, Civil War also lead to an interesting change in the Status Quo that some writers were able to use to tell good stories. in that sense, it was additive.

I think, in short, what Hickman is saying is that you CAN make huge changes and tell big stories, but you should be aware that someone else will take over after you are done and they will not be happy if half their cast is dead, the other half is de-powered and you have to explain that no, this character did not actually have sex with an underage character.

[deh_tommy]

I blame other writers for wrecking Tony Stark’s character more than I blame Mark Miller. He was fairly tame in the main book, but most of the tie-ins made him out to be the next Mussolini.

[lordultimus]

There's also something to be said for putting the toys back in the box so some other writer won't break them. Part of the reason Batman Incorporated ended the way it did.

[lordultimus]

That quote seems... interesting, considering the vast changes to Moira's character.

[agharta75]

Hmm. So how would the next writer back out of that?

Is there any proof for the multiple-lives story "Moira" tells? (I use quotes because she'd have to be some villain's Deceptive and Evil Plot and not Real Moira)

[zachbeacon]

Even if it is true, who says this timeline ceases to exist without her? The next writer could kill her off and we could just keep following this "doomed timeline". Comic time being what its is, we've only seen 10-15 years of the Marvel universe since the Silver Age started so whatever bad future mutants get will always be in the future.

Most MU futures are "bad futures" anyway so what does any of this really change?

[shadowkat]

Well, it's not like Moira is an essential character to the series prior to these books. I don't think we've seen her since she was killed in the Legacy Virus Arc, and they did that to redeem her after what she did during Fatal Attractions.

[lordultimus]

She actually returned from the dead in Chaos War. Guess this is kind of like the time Grim Reaper resurrected Mockingbird only for Secret Invasion to reveal it was a skrull this whole time.

Part of me wonders if, especially given Moira's speech about breaking Charles' goodness, if part of the point is to redeem Charles better points by pinning it on Moira's manipulations. If this is true, this has rather unfortunate implications given that Moira's an implied rape victim.

[shadowkat]

"Moira's an implied rape victim?"

How? I'm not following.

Eh, then again, maybe I'm better off not knowing?

[lordultimus]

When Proteus was originally introduced, it's heavily implied that Proteus was conceived through rape by Joseph Mactaggart (aka the douche that beat her so bad she ended up in a coma for a week).

The "nicest" interpretation you can have here. is that she married him for his genes without realizing what kind of person he actually was.

[shadowkat]

I completely forgot about all of that. (I may have blanked it out or suppressed it.)

It's interesting that Moira's best life is the first, human one, which she discards upon rebirth as too predictable, boring and irritating. (Not quite sure what Hickman is trying to say there...exactly.)

[wizardru]

I'm not sure I'd read too much into that as some sort of statement about anything, but rather as a story element to get Hickman where he wanted to go. If anything, it's that possibly you shouldn't try and go backwards? Moira had lived and loved to an old age, but the young woman who fell in love with her husband in the first timeline no longer existed. People evolve and it sounds like she had a 'been there, done that' take on things. The man she loved when he was old was still decades off and maybe older Moira just wasn't into the young man who she married previously. That Moira might not be the best person exists as a possibility in this, too.

Especially if you'd lived through several eras and saw how society changed...and realized you didn't have to let it restrict you. It's almost like playing an RPG like Fallout or Skyrim on a second-playthrough: you already know how things end up, so you're rushing through to get to stuff you didn't the first time through and maybe seeing how things could go differently based on your choices (which Moira literally does).

[shadowkat]

Agree. Also people (human or mutant) tend to be somewhat selfishly motivated by design. Moira does what interests or furthers Moira's cause, not really looking past Moira. It doesn't matter to Moira if the children she had in the previous life make it into the next one. It doesn't matter if she had helped anyone as a teacher. Her ego wants more than that. She wants to either save or eradicate the mutant race. When she tries to "cure" or "eradicate" it --- Destiny intervenes and pushes her on the opposite path. But Moira's motivations are all in her own self-interest. She accuses both Magneto and Xavier of being arrogant, but truly she is -- because of her past lives, she thinks she knows everything and how to stop it. It's an interesting take on the savior complex.

[dr_archeville]

So have they ever touched on the whole "he worked for the Nazis" part of Sinister's history, and why Magneto is having... anything to do with him?

[obsidianwolf]

No they haven't and probably never will since Hickman seems to be rewriting Sinister completely. (For example he's only focused on mutants now as a result of a coup caused by Charles and Magneto's visit.)

[dr_archeville]

... what? So he was never obsessed with the Summers & Grey bloodlines?

[laughing_tree]

Or he did and lost interest, only for it to be rekindled by Xavier and Magneto.

[lordultimus]

Technically, this isn't the real Sinister, this is a clone with the mutant gene that runs a gossip column.

[locuatico]

to quote Linkara: Only in comicbooks does that explanation make ANY sense.

[silverhammerman]

It occurs to me, thinking it over a little note, what exactly is the distinction between the mutant chimera of Moira IX’s life and engineered post-humanity? I think I’m the life we see up above, Moira VI, mutants didn’t tinker with their DNA and do the chimera thing, but once they do, what meaningful difference remains between them and post-humanity? The whole thing has me a lot more curious about Sinister’s final generation of chimeras, the hive mind who imploded and took part of Mars with them (if I’m remembering correctly) and wanting to know/see more of them.

[mistersandman]

If they imploded into a singularity, and we know singularities are intelligences that exist outside of time, it seems likely that they will return in some form or fashion.