X-Men #6 pulls the focus in on Mystique, and reveals that there is always more to her than meets the eye. Jonathan Hickman, Matteo Buffagni, and Sunny Gho craft the tale of a mutant raging for what they are owed. Mystique is not the lap dog seen earlier in the run, she has her own agenda. A love mixed with rage that threatens to burn Krakoa to the ground.
Chris Eddleman: I donât know what it is, Rob, but, Iâm starting to really fall in love with the structure of the flagship. The sails, the mast, the errâwell Iâm really talking about the somewhat singlicate nature of the title as a whole. I keep thinking Iâll want a more ongoing narrative but, it seems clearer and clearer that it might be awhile before we get that. However, the last few issues have kept things pretty fresh, so itâs honestly hard to complain. Plus, we finally get our first singular perspective singlicate in the form of a Mystique issue.
Robert Secundus: Iâm with you. Weâre still getting one-shots, but these past three issues have felt like a different sort of energy than the first three. Then it felt like merely putting pieces on the board, but now each issue moves a different piece forward. X-Men #3 had begun to feel languid, but this feels frenetic.
Orchis Blooms Twice
CE: Well, when last we saw our villains, the mutantphobic group Orchis, they were resetting after the intense beating they received in House of X, and also the removal of all of their Earth-based bases in X-Men #1. And just like the cockroaches that they are, weâre seeing some extreme rebuilding. I really liked the initial victory of the X-Men but, I suppose it was really only a matter of time before Orchis returned. Is this supposed to hint at the inevitable nature of mankind and transhumanism?
RS: Maybe. We know from Moiraâs lives that the rise of AIs and the rise of Sentinels are inevitable. This seems to confirm that so is Nimrod. I say seems because, honestly, the X-Men didnât take the threat of Orchis very seriously post-HoXPoX. Every time weâve seen them encounter or discuss the threat, theyâve dismissed it. Theyâve left a city of Venutian sentinels, a collective of scientists responsible for the Mother Moldâs creation, and The Forge itself all in Orchisâ hands. Meanwhile, their Murder Squad [Ed. note: X-Force] has been dealing with mercenaries and burglaries. And now, finally following up on the first mission, after Xavier explicitly says he canât trust Mystique, he still sends only her to take care of the problem. Maybe Nimrod was completely evitable, were it not for Xavierâs hubris.
CE: I think the movement away from Earth also shows the human (as in not mutant) ability to grow via innovation away from their home planet. It seems clear that Earth is fast becoming the domain of the mutant, so humanity (or at least the bigoted scientists) are moving to the less hospitable domains of inner space. This seems a bit like the tendency for the very rich to immediately want to colonize Mars when we have a perfectly good Earth to take care of.
RS: I think youâre onto something– the cold, metallic space station and alien Sentinel city held in contrast to Krakoa, a living island necessarily tied to Earth. But donât forget, weâve already seen Krakoa-on-the-Moon and just a glimpse of Krakoa-on-Mars itself. I expect that that parallel youâve found will continue, but it will become more complicated as we get more Mutants-in-Space stories.
The Tragedy Of Destiny & Mystique
CE: I shed actual tears at this issue Rob, specifically over the moments between Mystique and Destiny, and later Mystiqueâs fury and frustration at Xavier and Magneto for not bringing back Destiny. This seems to be reflective of the real frustration of individuals and groups being constantly told that if theyâre patient, theyâll be given what they want after they provide those in charge with what they need. People in power absolutely love to do this with useful underlings, throughout real and Marvel history. Mystique is being Charlie Brown with the football over and over, and itâs frankly pretty gross of Xavier and Magneto.
RS: I canât help but see this reflect a meta-narrative too. It was just last August that these characters, after being written as spouses for decades, were made explicitly a queer couple, in History of the Marvel Universe #2. And now, the only X-Women recognized by Marvel as a couple are not allowed to be a couple on the page. Elsewhere there have been winky hints at representation of the kind that allows the Disney Corporation plausible deniability when and if that representation might hurt their profit margins (hell, the blink-and-youâll-miss-it Harley Quinn moment in the Birds of Prey movie was more explicit than Magikâs moment in New Mutants #5). Rictor is starring in Excalibur (without his partner) and soon multiple queer men will be returning in X-Factor, but it seems woman-loving-woman relationships will, until this plotline is resolved at least, continue to be absent from the X-Line.
CE: It seems as though weâre finally getting subtext clarified, at least in pretty big ways. Itâs a well known fact that Chris Claremont intended Destiny and Mystique to be a couple basically as long as heâs been writing them and the fact that itâs taken over 30 years to see it fulfilled is not my favorite thing.[Ed. note: Claremont did not write Mystique conforming to a gender binary, and many readers have embraced that interpretation of the character.] Iâm glad we got a literal panel of Mystique saying Destiny was her wife though. While they are not on panel (at least in the current day) together, readers are going to feel pretty good about that line.
RS: Absolutely. Itâs an important line and it will be an iconic panel. It could be more; for example, the most central X-Woman intentionally written by one Christopher Claremont as attracted to women, Kate Pryde, could be confirmed as such on panel. Oh, but sheâs dead, I guess, at least for several months. Thatâs not ideal. [Ed. note: Marvel is bringing that cheap heel heat to their promos and Robert is working himself into a shoot.]
Anyway, Iâm finding this plotline extremely moving and extremely compelling. Mystique is such a fascinating character; I think her core stories are always both deceit and devotion, and thatâs such a strange and interesting combination. Not just her appearance, but her personality, her morality, and her goals always seem to be constantly shifting and yet she will always, always at her core be motivated by her passionate love. In all that, sheâs also proof positive that you can tell compelling stories about people in long-term relationships, even relationships across decades, without defaulting to the âwill they/wonât theyâ banality of multi-cam sitcoms on network tv that your great-grandmother and no one else you know still watches.
CE: Look, Iâm fully and completely sick of comics (and TV, etc) not being able to tell stories about long term relationships when they are pretty common in reality. Itâs funny how the focus on Mystiqueâs relationships with others can be so different. She is doing whatever she can to get Destiny to come back, without fully understanding why the men in charge (emphasis on men) are not holding up their end of the bargain. I like this focus on this relationship after itâs been gal-palled and buried for so long. Also though, I really want Destiny back too.
RS: Remember, âthe oracleâ isnât the prophet, itâs the prophecy. So if that last page is showing us âthe Oracleâ, well Chris, you and Mystique are going to get your wish soon.
Then, Now, Later
CE: The nonlinear storytelling of this issue is my favorite aspect of it, and it plays several tricks with the reader. We get a minor revelation of what Mystique was doing aboard the Mother Mold station (something that discerning readers caught during that issue), followed by a Moira-esque flashback to a moment that now colors a ton more history.
RS: I kind of love this, because itâs so rare in comics that we get this kind of unreliable narrator, because, well, we donât think of the panels typically as having a narrator. And itâs not as if the art is unreliable– everything we saw in House Of X #4 is accurate. The deceit lies in the gutters. There is no explicit indication in HoX #4 that weâre skipping over important information between panels, just the sense that something is odd about Mystiqueâs scene. Itâs a trick used elsewhere in HoX #2âs depiction of the life of Moira IX. I wonder what other secrets lie between panels in those 12 issues. Anyway, all of this deception is, of course, extremely appropriate for the Mystique-centric issue.
CE: Absolutely. I particularly love the panels of Mystique post resurrection reflected in Charleâs Cerebro helmet. Xavier has that guy with sunglasses thing going on, you donât really know how heâs looking at. We also get the day-to-day of Orchis with an inconspicuous grunt in the background, and then later a cool decolored redraw of those panels highlighting who it really was in the background. It made me wonder, other than finding out about Nimrodâs inevitability, why are Xavier and Magneto spying rather than doing something like destroying the station?
RS: You know, maybe the hubris, the incompetence I mentioned earlier, maybe all of that is deceiving us (and Mystique) too. Maybe thereâs a reason theyâve allowed the station to continue. They asked her to âplant a seed,â which results in a gateway, but what if thatâs not all they hope to grow there? After this issue, we should be doubting what we see, asking what might have been left out.
CE: Also, clearly, the ones doing the most deceiving are Xavier and Charles (and Moira). Xavier is a very unique man in this new paradigm in that Iâm absolutely positive that he is working as hard as he can towards keeping mutantkind alive and thriving but, he still seems so untrustworthy all of the time. Heâs keeping Moira a secret from the island at large, keeping his âstagedâ death a secret, and now this secret gateway. I think heâs willing to sacrifice a lot to keep mutants safe, including possibly individual mutants. But as we can see by the ending of this issue, thatâs likely going to cost him. What did you think of the Destiny reveal that she foresaw all of this, and has actionable advice?
RS: I feel just like I did at the end of last issue. This is a huge last page, and I canât wait to see how it resolves, but I donât expect anything in the immediate future. Hickman is lighting fuses and we have no idea how long we have until the bombs explode.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Mystiqueâs little skull on top of her skull is already there when she gets out of the pod. Is that part of her mutation?
- The coloring in this issue is really cool, especially the pages showing Mystique as the Orchis grunt.
- There wasnât a Krakoan cypher at the end of the review copy. Let us know what yours says.
- I canât unsee the big Mystique rage panel, but with her saying it like Borat.
Chris Eddleman is a biologist and co-host of Chrises On Infinite Earths.
Robert Secundus is an amateur-angelologist-for-hire.
Chris Eddleman is a biologist and co-host of Chrises On Infinite Earths.
Robert Secundus is an amateur-angelologist-for-hire.
