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The similarities to The Maker's costume seems like misdirection to me to make us assume there's something sinister going on with him by borrowing the aesthetic of a villain Hickman is so closely associated with.
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Jul 24, 2019 21:42
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I think it's very telling that the mutants to act as "ambassadors" to humanity were Magneto and Esme Cuckoo, The Evil Cuckoo.
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Jul 24, 2019 21:42
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I liked Magneto saying "Mutants have never fought a war for land" when there's an event called Magneto War where at the end he was given his own island nation.
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Jul 24, 2019 21:44
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Alaois posted:I think it's very telling that the mutants to act as "ambassadors" to humanity were Magneto and Esme Cuckoo, The Evil Cuckoo. I guess if the flowers are the carrot then bringing out Magneto as a reminder of what the stick looks like if anyone gets any bright ideas makes sense. btw the last two coded pages say NEXT: It's Not A Dream If It's Real and THEN: The Curios Case of Moira X - second one is a wee bit wonky and involves a single symbol for TH so that might be a bit off kustomkarkommando fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jul 24, 2019 |
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Jul 24, 2019 23:24
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I hate deadly genesis and would go full Hal Jordan on the whole thing if I had talent.
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Jul 24, 2019 23:36
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Also someone just brought this up in the main Marvel thread and it's something about House of X that stood out to me immediately, the lettering is done in proper-case instead of all-caps.
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Jul 25, 2019 00:28
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Alaois posted:Also someone just brought this up in the main Marvel thread and it's something about House of X that stood out to me immediately, the lettering is done in proper-case instead of all-caps. The only true safe haven for mutants: a dimension nobody else is writing for anymore.
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Jul 25, 2019 01:41
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xavier wearing a helmet all the time serves many overlapping roles. it's interesting.
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Jul 25, 2019 02:08
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Didn’t think we’d see Cyclops and Mister Fantastic interacting so early on. Wolverine is in like one panel, and he’s practically at Xavier’s feet, laughing while playing with kids.
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Jul 25, 2019 02:33
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Xavier created cerebro to improve mutant lives by also dramatically increasing his own power. It seems like he's finally going through one facet of the implied threat of an extremely powerful telepath albeit in a way that let's there be a chance at peace. My guess is that the opening scene occurs after another large scale death of x-men at the hands of humans, and cerebro has been upgraded to not only detect mutants but store their personalities/brain imprints and Xavier's message is that they've evolved beyond the hatred of humans being capable of ending mutant life. Krakoa's organic growth potential with sinister's cloning tech make mutantkind some kind of greater living organism or something outrageous. Maybe the bridge and/or the multiversal homing beacon are the tools that they were seeking out in the tech heist because Xaiver has decided that every mutant will have peace. kustomkarkommando posted:I guess if the flowers are the carrot then bringing out Magneto as a reminder of what the stick looks like if anyone gets any bright ideas makes sense. I definitely think omega level ambassador Magneto is meant to represent a nuke equivalent with the Krakoa gates being the delivery system, which is directly called out. He's murdered so many people it's impossible to view him as anything but, despite his words declaring humans as the real wolves. Mags is being purposely obtuse about the threat implications but clearly states that there is no room for negotiation
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Jul 25, 2019 06:20
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On the face of it, (it's been 24 hours, I'm hoping we can dispense with spoiler tags?) the Krakoa experiment is not all that different from the position of Wakanda in the Marvel universe: it's a secluded culture that just so happens to have a priceless natural resource, and it is willing to trade with these resources...under its own terms and no one else's. Which isn't all that unreasonable. But the uncomfortably sinister part of it all is coming from just how very dickishly antagonistic the mutants are being about all this. And they're obviously entitled to do so, but...the whole stuff about not wanting human names anymore, flaunting the fact that they're openly reading minds, Cyclops' [brilliant] parting shot to the Richardses after sending literal terrorists to attack people...like, there's such a thing as wanting your due, but then, again, there's also such a thing as intentionally acting like an rear end in a top hat and then blaming other people when they don't like it. And the other problem is that, unlike Wakanda, mutantkind has never been an ancient isolated nation. They've tried to build plenty of those, sure, but the very point of mutants is that they come from the nominal human culture. They're your brothers, sisters, teachers, students, grocers, uber drivers, etc. Make them too distinct from that and then they're just...ugh...then they're just Inhumans. [shudder] Yeah, I know, I know...the whole point right now is that we're supposed to be saying "What's going on? Why is it like this?" and that's the big ol' mystery of this book. I get it. The thing though is that I'm really trying to figure what is going on and why it is like this and, to be honest, I'm not coming up with any answers I like.
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Jul 25, 2019 08:55
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So some stuff from House of X: Xavier standing over those pods is pretty loving creepy. Also, the fact that it's a redhead and a brown haired guy with ruby laser eyes feels a bit too on the nose for those to be random extras, right? Plus, his look seems different enough that I wanna think this is still Fantomex-Xavier. Also the casual mention of the mansion being back in Westchester as opposed to Central Park from the most recent run seems a bit off, unlike everyone who seemed to get a casual resurrection (possibly from the same pods?) And some stuff from the Powers of X preview that was up a little while back: The book is described as containing the 'secret past' of mutantkind and the previewed pages show mutants being hunted down by Sentinels and mind-read, in some poo poo that seems pretty similar to Days of Future Past. House of X's director's cut shows the script and has a note that states Xavier's always to be shown with the mask on - but the cover of Powers of X, and the up-front part of the preview with "the most important scene in the history of the X-Men" both feature Xavier's regular look, and both have Moira in them. The most important scene has Xavier learning of whatever Moira knows, and seems like the spark of whatever sets the whole thing off. Lastly, some wild guess at the frame of the story so I can come back and laugh at how wrong I was: By the looks of it, it seems like there's a past - whether that's in an alternate reality, covered up in the main reality, or something else, that details a near extinction of mutants presumably done by humanity. Seemingly this involves Moira and some of the other unrecognized X-Men, like the fusion of Colossus and Ilyana (who may be their mother?) When Xavier learns that humanity is willing to go that far/may go that far soon, and that organizations like AIM, SHIELD, STRIKE, and the others mentioned in House of X are all culpable with this Orchis Protocol, that's when he decides to pull the trigger on the Krakoa idea. Offering MEGA DRUGS to the world and the potential threat of basically Omega level nuclear weapons, he tries to stalemate humanity by turning humans against humans if they ever enacted their Sentinel doomsday plan, and has the threat of these worldwide gateways where an Omega level mutant can just show up at any given time. The real question is whether whatever the 'secret history' was bad enough to make most mutants sign up immediately, or if Xavier's just influencing everyone himself with his new giant hat to help. Maybe some anti-mutant extermination poo poo has already happened in some capacity, tying in with what seems like a newly resurrected Cyclops and Jean in the beginning? Part of me hopes I'm wrong, and a bigger part of me realized I'm probably wrong as I typed this up.  But hey, it's pretty cool to be speculating on relevant X-Men poo poo that seems like it'll matter.
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Jul 25, 2019 09:34
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I love how smug and dickish Scott is
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Jul 25, 2019 09:38
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BrianWilly posted:Yeah, I know, I know...the whole point right now is that we're supposed to be saying "What's going on? Why is it like this?" and that's the big ol' mystery of this book. I get it. The thing though is that I'm really trying to figure what is going on and why it is like this and, to be honest, I'm not coming up with any answers I like. To my mind, the big question is how much of the book is Hickman being Hickman--dudes making big sweeping melodramatic proclamations to one another in secret rooms--and how much is a deliberate long game. There's a lot you can point out as far as deliberate framing choices, like how nobody seems to be on-panel at all unless they're wearing a mask.
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Jul 25, 2019 09:52
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Arent some of those acronym organizations defunct?
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Jul 25, 2019 12:41
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Skwirl posted:What are people's opinions on Deadly Genesis? I realized the only comics I've read with Vulcan was that War of Kings cosmic stuff by Abnett and Lanning. Figure I might study up on him since he's apparently gonna be part of this stuff moving forward.
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Jul 25, 2019 13:53
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Synthbuttrange posted:Arent some of those acronym organizations defunct? HAMMER definitely is, SHIELD was disbanded after Secret Empire, and I think SWORD was basically replaced by Alpha Flight. But then again, SHIELD never stays gone for long, and Hickman being Hickman, I would not bet against him bringing in some of his own S.H.I.E.L.D stuff.
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Jul 25, 2019 15:41
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Also remember, from Hickman's own Avengers run, A.I.M. was bought wholesale by Bobby DaCosta. Even in the interest of establishing a new status quo for mutants, would he really throw that away in order to make them the number 1 contributor to the secret cooperative project to potentially wipe out mutants?
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Jul 25, 2019 17:53
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AIM (or at least a good percentage of it) turned on him during Secret Empire though, I don't think he has it any more. Or if he does, he needs to get call Jen Walters (or some other super-lawyer) to help retain his brand since at least one group calling themselves AIM just showed up in Wasp.
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Jul 25, 2019 18:05
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TwoPair posted:AIM (or at least a good percentage of it) turned on him during Secret Empire though, I don't think he has it any more. Or if he does, he needs to get call Jen Walters (or some other super-lawyer) to help retain his brand since at least one group calling themselves AIM just showed up in Wasp. I would love a She-Hulk story where AIM has become the Kleenex of evil super-science.
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Jul 25, 2019 18:14
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At the end of U.S. Avengers he walked away from AIM (and the US government, to which he'd turned over AIM previously) and left Toni Ho in charge; presumably they told her to piss off.
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Jul 25, 2019 18:14
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A fortress nation for a persecuted people that offers technology to the world but also threatens mass destruction if they're ever attacked. That combined with the prominence of Jerusalem in this issue makes me wonder just how far Hickman's going to go with the Israel parallels.
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Jul 25, 2019 18:38
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Oh good, one Fables just wasn't enough.
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Jul 25, 2019 18:42
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Archyduchess posted:Oh good, one Fables just wasn't enough. I mean, with how sinister everyone was acting in this issue I wouldn't count on it being as hilariously pro-Israel as Fables was. "You have new gods now" isn't exactly the speech of a sympathetic figure.
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Jul 25, 2019 18:59
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As people have said, so far, House of X feels VERY Hickman. To the point where I almost expect Xavier to have come in contact with the Maker at some point...or a "slice" of the Maker somewhere else...what Xavier's doing feels a LOT like what the Maker was doing in the Ultimate Universe, and what Ex Nihlo was doing in the Avengers books pre-SW.
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Jul 25, 2019 19:01
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TomWaitsForNoMan posted:A fortress nation for a persecuted people that offers technology to the world but also threatens mass destruction if they're ever attacked. That combined with the prominence of Jerusalem in this issue makes me wonder just how far Hickman's going to go with the Israel parallels. Don't forget the creation of a cultural and linguistic centre for an oppressed people. The talk of a mutant language and refocus on the creation of a mutant culture does I think explicitly make X's endeavour much more Mutant Zionism than the whole Utopia setup
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Jul 25, 2019 19:16
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Yeah def, I wonder where he's gonna go with it
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Jul 25, 2019 19:31
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TomWaitsForNoMan posted:I mean, with how sinister everyone was acting in this issue I wouldn't count on it being as hilariously pro-Israel as Fables was. "You have new gods now" isn't exactly the speech of a sympathetic figure. Oh for sure I think he's not on that level, and is a more sophisticated writer, but I also think his Avengers stuff in particular was brought down a little by a certain uncritical orientation towards power, even if he was pretty sharp on writing about power's effects. I guess I'm cautious but planning on keeping reading. The stuff about the new mutant language made me roll my eyes a bit because, yes, almost every culture has, at least, a linguistic niche carved out within the space of an existing language, but a new alphabet illegible to human eyes seems like a weird direction to take the basic allegorical premise of mutant comics. I don't write in gay runes, although god, I wish I did, I just have, at best, a handful of slang words or shibboleths that might signify differently to people within and without that community. Even something like Polari, you know, was designed to be fairly easily picked up by English speakers who cared to learn it.
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Jul 25, 2019 19:55
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i’m guessing its supposed to be hard to learn to make it difficult for humans to learn it, thus having it implanted into everyone mutant’s brain psychically
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Jul 25, 2019 20:05
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Looks like Xavier has Xorn and Zorn on his side too. Don’t know their previous status in the 616 because they’re a loving mess.
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Jul 25, 2019 20:10
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Archyduchess posted:Oh for sure I think he's not on that level, and is a more sophisticated writer, but I also think his Avengers stuff in particular was brought down a little by a certain uncritical orientation towards power, even if he was pretty sharp on writing about power's effects. Sure, but I think that's down to X-Men having historically been an allegory to many different groups depending on the era and writer. African-Americans during civil rights, Jews, queer people, all have distinct histories, have suffered distinct persecutions and, have developed distinct means of resistance. One of the strengths (and frankly one of the weaknesses in the wrong hands) of X-Men is that it can serve as allegories to all of these with different stories. I think in this case with it going so hard in the direction of Zionism/post-colonial nationalism creating a distinct language makes sense. Modern Hebrew and Hindi were both to an extent artificially created to serve nation-building projects. Even standard French was imposed on people that spoke myriad different dialects and laguages (e.g. Breton, Occitan, Basque) in order to build the modern French nation. If he's telling a story about nation-building then I think language is a p smart aspect to build into it TomWaitsForNoMan fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Jul 25, 2019 |
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Jul 25, 2019 20:15
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This is the first X-book I've read in a long rear end time and it certainly did a decent job of setting up the mystery. The blatant allusions to Maker, the not-even-trying-to-hide-it threatening tone that literally every character who interacts with non-mutants has (even Cyclops), and then we see a Master Mold being built around the sun to remind us that, as paranoid or over-sensitive as mutants might seem, they 100% are justified in feeling that way.
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Jul 25, 2019 20:41
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:At the end of U.S. Avengers he walked away from AIM (and the US government, to which he'd turned over AIM previously) and left Toni Ho in charge; presumably they told her to piss off. AIM officially broke away from Toni and the others during Avengers: No Surrender, which also ended with Roberto rejoining the X-Men. Since then they've been back to their evil scientist ways in Unstoppable Wasp. Toni created her own organization called RESCUE which has yet to appear out of Ewing-written books.
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Jul 25, 2019 20:52
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OnimaruXLR posted:This is the first X-book I've read in a long rear end time and it certainly did a decent job of setting up the mystery. The blatant allusions to Maker, the not-even-trying-to-hide-it threatening tone that literally every character who interacts with non-mutants has (even Cyclops), and then we see a Master Mold being built around the sun to remind us that, as paranoid or over-sensitive as mutants might seem, they 100% are justified in feeling that way. The MotherMold is being built inside Sols Hammer. A dyson sphere that the Illuminati built during the incursions. It annihilated a Shi’ar fleet with a fraction of a percent of its power. It’s also what Mystique and crew were stealing info on.
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Jul 25, 2019 22:23
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Esme and Sophie are the dead Cuckoos from way back on Grant Morrison's run. And there's also Xorn. I mean, it's great Hickman's ignoring all the deaths from Rosenberg's lovely run, but he seems to have made everyone come back? X's plan also seems to be basically Matt Fraction's Utopia idea, but way more creepy. I guess it will be interesting to see where this goes, but new status quo-wise, I don't think this has much on New X-Men. And, yeah, I can't imagine all normal mutants are into this, especially when even the villains are along for the ride as well, but I imagine that will be explained later. Open Marriage Night posted:The MotherMold is being built inside Sols Hammer. A dyson sphere that the Illuminati built during the incursions. It annihilated a Shi’ar fleet with a fraction of a percent of its power. It’s also what Mystique and crew were stealing info on. That stuff went all over my head since I haven't followed any of the Avengers/SHIELD/Illuminati stuff or other crossovers. Thanks for explaining what the hell that was about. Saoshyant fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jul 25, 2019 |
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Jul 25, 2019 22:44
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That rumor looking to be increasingly legit.
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Jul 25, 2019 22:51
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Oh, and the panel where it shows Armor planting a seed on Mars, the garden behind her is from when Ex-Nihilo terraformed part of the planet in the opening arc of Hickman’s Avengers.
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Jul 25, 2019 23:02
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For some reason its taken it till now for it to click with me that the three headed sentinel looking thing in the Power of X previews is a Tri-Sentinel
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Jul 25, 2019 23:36
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https://twitter.com/JHickman/status/1154517862008049665
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Jul 25, 2019 23:37
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Blockhouse posted:That rumor looking to be increasingly legit. Which rumor? Anyway, upon further reflection... this is a strong issue, no doubt, but it has a distinct whiff of the familiar about it that keeps me from being quite as blown away by it as some are. We've seen "mutants are going to displace humans as the dominant species on Earth" before, in Morrison's run; we've seen mutants establishing their own nation with Magneto to intimidate humans before with Genosha, and much more recently in the Utopia era; we've seen mutants becoming gods and drastically reshaping the world before during AvX (a story Hickman co-wrote). Of course, this is only the first of twelve issues, so it's very likely that a lot of this will be upended or subverted by the end. Looking forward to seeing where Hickman goes with it. and yeah, the Zionism implications are concerning, though at least the analogy doesn't seem to be an uncritical one given the sinister undercurrent here
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Jul 26, 2019 00:52
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