Inferno #1

[laughing_tree]

I think one of the interesting things about taking all the mutants and making a culture out of it is that a lot of the pre-culture roles that were defined by external forces have to be revisited when the whole thing gets rejected, or replaced, by new ones. Some people who the world called monsters would reveal themselves not to be, and some who were angels would turn out to eventually do the devil's bidding. -- Jonathan Hickman

Comments

[beyondthefringe]

Let's face it: there is no way Moira is coming across in a good light in this series.
And her hatred/fear of Destiny has royally come back to bite her in the ass.

[nyadnar17]

Maybe not good but it is understandable.....and also Destiny/Mystique's fault.

You wanted her scared and traumatized? Well she is scared, traumatized, and had a 1000 years of pain to compound the issue.

The fatal flaw of mutants has always been that for all their power its still a human psyche holding it all together. Destiny/Mystique knew that and she did it anyway. Time for them, all three of them, to pay up.

[stubbleupdate]

I've had half an eye on Hickman's X-Men since HoxPox and this is the most interesting it has been.

[numeronone]

Y'know...if someone wanted to "cure" Mutants once and for all but do it in secret, a logical first step would be to get them all in the same place at once...

[tinygaylaura]

If that's Moira's plan that will make me hate her even more than I already do

[scorntx]

Why, it's almost as if keeping your entire species' population in one place was... a bad idea.

(And given one of Moira's past lives had this exact problem already, you'd think she'd have learnt, but apparently, naw.)

[sabertoothlotus]

"You fellows enjoy yourselves for the next two hours and be sure not to leave the island uh, for at least two hours. I'm going out to pick up some smokes. Really good smokes. Two hours."

[deh_tommy]

Man, this era’s approach to culture and society really, really, really ticks me off, and that interview quote kind of compounds that.

[silverhammerman]

I'd love to see you expand on that a bit, if you'd like, since I've been thinking about it a lot recently.

Personally I find my own annoyance coming from the fact that, as far as I'm concerned, this "new" Krakoan culture seems to entail replicating a lot of old systems of power, rather than developing anything passing new, and that for all the big game Hickman talks from his position as superhero comics' resident "Heady Scifi Writer" his actual engagement with any of these ideas seems pretty superficial.

[angelophile]

Burn it all down, Raven. Burn it all down.

[tinygaylaura]

Go forth and kick ass

That quote pretty much all but confirms the theory that Moira is the villain doesn't it? "People who were angels are actually doing the devils bidding" obviously refers to Xavier and Magneto taking orders from Moira on what to do while "Some people who the world called monsters would reveal themselves not to be" is obviously Mystique and Destiny

[tinygaylaura]

In the summer

I like going

to the countryside

Where I burn a forest down

Watch it burn with pride

Isn't nature wonderful? It makes everything so dry

Burn it burn it burn it burn it

Burn the countryside!

[tinygaylaura]

I love that ending scene so much

The sheer glee on Mystique's face, that "Go fuck yourself" smile she's got as she reveals just how badly they've underestimated her

Love it love it love it

Destiny wins the vote to sit on the Council FYI

Because Mystique had planned for that as well

The way she convinces those who need to be convinced ranges from brilliant to hilarious. She gets Sinister to vote yes literally just by telling him "The grown ups will tell you not to do it" and since the clone Sinister is basically an insane petulant child of course he votes yes

"Fuck you Xavier, you're not my dad you can't tell me what to do"

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Now I want to see how that all shakes out.

[petermilley]

I feel that if Xavier and Magneto had any sense they'd have gone behind Moira's back long ago, approached Mystique and conspired to have Destiny resurrected so she could advise the council in secret.

Why wouldn't you try to get the precog on your side, in this "clean slate" era, instead of continually pissing off one of the most petty and vengeful (and effective) mutants on the island?

And how on earth was "no precogs" ever going to be enforceable anyway? Aside from having no explanation ready for when Legion/Nightcrawler/whoever else started asking the obvious questions like "where's Blindfold", what happens when another mutant precog is born?

Moira's reasons were bad and it was a bad plan.

[blues32]

Pre-cogs are the go to weapon for dealing with possible futures. Moria just seems to think she knows better than people who actually SEE futures. Not just one future, but the possible ones to come. Her excuse of not wanting everyone to know how screwed they were is just moronic and I want there to be a panel where every mutant lines up to smack her for it. Yes, even the ones with lethal touches. They can wear gloves.

[numeronone]

Wait. Legion is also a precog. How'd they let him come back?

[donnblake]

Hmm. Looks like the Technarch/Phalanx plot might be picking up again. Black Tom's tied to the island's ecosystem, and it sounds an awful lot like there's a spreading technoorganic infection. Is Warlock contributing to that or trying to get it under control?

I think Shaw looks better in the jacket or turtleneck combo than the suit and tie, but both I and the cover artist seem to be confused about whether he's meant to have his eye back.

[tinygaylaura]

From the covers it appears that the Technarch/Phalanx plot will be addressed in the X Lives/X Deaths of Wolverine story

Which is a bit of a letdown because I think Benjamin Percy is without a doubt the worst writer on the X-books and his stuff has been the weakest/least interesting

But maybe it'll be better than what he's done before

[blues32]

Oh, this is gonna be good. I'm SO looking forward to Moria getting what's coming to her. She's full of it. That bit in The Hellions series where Havok befriends the machines that came with Cameron Hodge (or the robot that thought it was Cameron Hodge) shows that Nimrod could be made an ally. He was one before, after all...before unfortunately merging with a Master Mold unit to form Bastion. Of course, Psylocke screwed that possibility up, didn't she? Killed those machines with their last broadcasted thought being "Mutant/Friends = False" or something to that effect.

[donnblake]

Yes, although one baby robot did survive and was, I believe, last seen being nurtured by Nanny.

[reveen]

Man, I'm not an x-scholar so the only things I know about Moira McTaggart is that she dated Chuck and is often ambivalent about going Anti-Mutant Hitler. Is there any actual compelling canon reason why she's a part of this mutant government or is it just decades-long supporting character nepotism?

[donnblake]

There's a compelling canon reason, but it's entirely based on new retroactive continuity established in this run.

So the thing that this run newly established about Moira is that A) She's a mutant and B) Her mutant power is some bespoke form of Peggy Sue time travel wherein whenever she dies, her consciousness returns to an earlier point in her timeline (I don't recall offhand if that's her birth, or a later 'power awakening' moment). From Moira's point of view, she's lived through a number of timelines, all of which have resulted in disaster from some combination of Nimrod, superhuman machine intelligences, or general conflict between humans and mutants.

Moira's overriding goal is to find a timeline that avoids these disasters- she's tried both the development of a mutant cure (that's the one that seems to have led to her conflict with Destiny, and therefore with Mystique) and, I believe, outright mutant conquest of Earth allied with Apocalypse in the past. Her current efforts are centered around Krakoa, though it seems likely she has cards she hasn't played yet.

As part of her efforts this go round, she onboarded both Xavier and Magneto fairly early on in all their respective careers, kind of suggesting that much of their decades long conflict was in some sense playacting to set the stage for Krakoa.

[scorntx]

-"You're basically asking if you can befriend death"-

Well, she has feelings, Moira.
Just thinking of Mutant examples, Rachel had a chat with her one time, and Logan's had a few encounters.
... she didn't like him very much, but who does?
So in that case, your example falls on its arse.
Because yes, yes you can.
(Especially since your little mass resurrection plan nearly caused her to die of despair, ye insensitive jerk.)


Though I note, Magneto doesn't ask about befriending the people making the Sentinels, but the Sentinels themselves.
Big difference there.
And that Moira doesn't answer him, but instead goes on a strunt.
But from the looks of it, the answer is a pretty obvious "didn't even bother".

It might not have worked, but at least then you'd have a data point proving it doesn't.
Okay, yes, there's a line of logic of "well, I don't need to be stabbed to know I'm not going to enjoy it", but it was a plot point in one of Moira's past lives that even some of the Sentinels weren't terribly up on the "kill all Mutants" plan.

Then, it is a common theme with Hickman character that they tend to make the most stupidly counterproductive options available in any situation.
(See: New Avengers and the Illuminati)

[icon_uk]

I mean Kitty and Doug both have track records with reprogramming Sentinels.

Kitty got the ones in the Days of Future Past to defend mutants instead of attacking them (One suspects that that might go horribly wrong as so often happens wih Sentinel Programming)

And Doug basically hacked another future's Master Mold and destroyed more super-advanced super-duper-powerful Sentinels than the rest of the X-Men combined, cuimulatively.

[lordultimus]

Honest question: have we actually seen any examples of "some who were angels would turn out to eventually do the devil's bidding"? The closest examples I can think of are either being gaslit, not all that on the up and up from the beginning, or are under mind control.

[mindsweeper]

In the books? Not really. A lot of villains are more likable and heroic than they were before, but most of the heroes have remained the same level of hero as they were prior to Krakoa. To your point, the Colossus types are mind controlled.

One option is Beast. Former O5 and Avenger good guy on a descent into madness. Although you could argue that's been going on for a long, long time, I think he's undeniably a villain now.

Rictor, maybe? He killed some Externals, if they can be killed.

I don't know enough about Wiz Kid, yet.

Without more thought or looking back, I can't think of anyone else.

[mastermahan]

RAVEN: You should have seen the looks on your faces when Destiny walked out! The great Magneto and Professor X, completely outmaneuvered.

ERIK: I certainly was surprised. Weren't you surprised, Charles?

CHARLES: I certainly was. I thought Mystique would have revived her wife much sooner than she actually did.

ERIK: Yes, Raven, what took you so long?

RAVEN: ...This is not the reaction I expected.

CHARLES: Raven, do you really think anyone is surprised by you betraying them anymore? Why do you think we put one of the most untrustworthy mutants in existence into a leadership position, ensuring you knew exactly how to go about resurrecting someone?

ERIK: I left my version of Cerebro just sitting on a table. Not even a bike lock.

CHARLES: And you didn't even return it! Didn't you really think we wouldn't notice when Hope suddenly had Erik's Cerebro and said "I" gave it to her?

RAVEN: You wanted Destiny resurrected? Why all the games then?

ERIK: We, ah, promised someone we wouldn't resurrect her. We don't especially trust them, so we want her back to counter them, but for now, we can't be seen as responsible for Irene's return.

CHARLES: Sorry, Mystique. You're just not as unpredictable as you think.

RAVEN: Oh, I'm pretty sure I can still surprise you, Charles.

CHARLES: You're welcome to try.

RAVEN: I had your baby.

CHARLES: ...WHAT.

ERIK: Charles, you cheating slut!

[rfmcdonald]

I love it.

[shadowpsykie]

i'd LOVE to see the reactions.

and honestly. never have i wanted Raven to take revenge as much as i do now. and i want Rogue, Kurt, Jean, Emma (both of whom would HATE being manipulated like this) and Scott to join them.

[tinygaylaura]

Emma is already extremely pissed at Charles, Erik and Moira for their lies so you could get your wish!