X Deaths of Wolverine #1 Is... A Secret Moira Book?

Witness Moira X on the run and a strange clawed individual covered in techno organics in X Deaths of Wolverine #1 by Benjamin Percy, Federico Vincentini, Frank Martin, Dijjo Lima, and Cory Petit.

Chris Eddleman: Liz, while House of X and Powers of X made sense to me as far as which one was “ecks” and which one was “ten,” I keep forgetting whether there supposed to be ten actual deaths of the very-hard-to-kill character Wolverine or if these deaths of his are simply X-Men themed. Oh, what’s that? He doesn’t actually really appear in this issue anyway, thus making the naming even more confusing for me. Oh okay, never mind. This issue is largely about my favorite new character of the past few years, Moira X! I’m excited to dig into this with you as we support not only women’s rights, but more importantly women’s wrongs.

Liz Large: Chris, I also support women’s rights [to murder, specifically to murder Moira to avenge their formerly-dead wife]. I’ll be honest, this title was a real misdirect for me, but mislabeling Inferno #5 as X Deaths of Wolverine is a bold choice by the X-Office.

The Moira Identity

Chris: I don’t know about you Liz but if this is Inferno #5, then we’ve had a bit of a tonal shift on our hands. I think we’ve gone from a kind of pseudo-techno-thriller to more of a Jason Bourne and I’m interested in the change. Since her resurgence as a mutant disguised as a human, a retcon which frankly did us all in, Moira has kind of seemed like a centuries-trawling science hero (or villain if you want to be current). This shift to more of a spy thriller kind of Moira is a bit of a wild one. Is this just maybe just the consequences of a new creative team? Is Moira just this adaptable? We’ve gone from her living on a secret asteroid to dying her hair in a bathroom. Wild.

Liz: Moira is going to live through every possible action movie if it kills her. Honestly, it all seems exhausting! When she first flees Krakoa the gate spits her out in Scotland, and it’s an interesting, deliberate choice by Doug and Krakoa to send her there. This is where it all starts for her– in every life, she is born and raised here. Sending her here is an interesting choice, tactically. Yes, she knows the terrain and likely has some resources available to her or human friends she could potentially hide with. But she’s in the middle of nowhere, and the resources don’t include anything that would be particularly powerful in a fight with Mystique. Does Doug want the best for her? He knows everything that’s been happening, or at least the outlines of it, and I’m honestly not sure where he sits beyond “no murdering humans on my best island buddy”.

Chris: Yeah, this is one of those times where I wonder if the hand-off between creative teams was quite so clean… but I’m probably looking into this a little too much. But yeah, in general, I think Doug was wanting more of an island where no one is murdered. It’s hard to know with these single-issue reviews since, for all we know, Doug could show up with a plan in the near future. On a slightly related subject, I’m curious about the recent (deserved) demonization of Moira as someone who is definitely ready for a kinder gentler genocide compared to this issue in which we’re kind of…on her side? And not only is she stripped of her mutant ability, but she’s on the run, and as we talk about a little later, things get even MORE dire.

Liz: It’s complicated because while I’m on team Mystique, I am also anti-anyone getting captured by the American intelligence community. Moira definitely leans into the action hero thing here, and I like the scene of her changing her look in a public bathroom. This isn’t how going from brunette to blonde works in our universe, but the 616 has holograms and floating bases, so I’m assuming their hair dye technology has also advanced. It’s fun to see Moira kick some ass here because while I know that she spent some of her lives doing more fighting and less science, in this timeline we’ve mostly seen the research and scheming side of her. It was a nice surprise!

A New Kind of Wolverine, Rarer Than the Rest

Chris: So, interspersed with the Moira travelogue (read: fleeing for her life) we have some mysterious happenings on the homefront of Krakoa as a tumor-egg sort of thing suddenly peaks through the island. Our good pal Black Tom notices this in the “veg” and goes to investigate, only to be brutally struck out by even more techno-organics in the form of a clawed Wolverine figure. Omega Wolverine was teased a bit in solicits but, I daresay we don’t know much more about him here than we really did before. So, in X Lives #1, we have a very “Days of Future Past” type story of Wolverine shifting through time to prevent Omega Red from killing Charles Xavier, which I suppose would cause some pretty heinous ramifications for the island itself. I’m wondering if our Omega Wolverine (who later tells Jean that he’s nobody and nothing) is supposed to be doing something somewhat similar from the future. The Destiny of X teasers seem to hint at a possible technological future. Maybe unlike in Inferno, we have a timeline where machines are teaming up with mutants? Have we finally reached yet another combination in the Humans-Machines-Mutants triangle?

Liz: There’s another parallel here between Moira and Krakoa as well. One of Black Tom’s assumptions when he sees weird happenings on the island is that it’s a tumor, and, well, it’s ominous! As soon as Moira leaves the island, she finds herself coughing up blood in what is a visual medium’s shorthand for “sick, and it’s bad”. Fortunately, Moira’s made some connections in her day, and is able to get an appointment with Dr. Jane Foster. Now, I’m not a doctor, but there are visible growths on her lungs and what looks like slime on her blood cells. The prognosis is bad, and the only cure would be Krakoan medicine if there wasn’t a major waiting list for it. Moira seems to think that there’s no way she could get access to these, but I wonder how true that is. Surely she considers her relationships with some of the mutants to be neutral, if not positive– are you telling me that this alleged mastermind can’t call Rahne and make something up to get her and her team to help? Or even Proteus?

Chris: Oh that’s honestly a really good point! Like, what is stopping her from blowing this up a little more? Does she maybe think that her children are a little bit too into Krakoa these days? It was slightly hard for me to believe that Jane Foster was definitely her lifeline in these trying times but, I guess when you need a cancer doctor for a story you find someone who is both a doctor and definitely had a major superhero story involving cancer. I love that Moira is doing her superspy thing and is spotted almost immediately by the CIA, shifting the book into full-gear high-octane blonde short-haired Moira on a motorcycle. Most of this very large issue is spent with Moira on the run from both the CIA and cancer. Also, Liz, I can’t help but notice that Mystique is very willing to kill Moira even though she’s a human. She’s kind of got this strange mutant but also human status going on. She’s effectively an M-Day victim at this point. And then there’s the matter of her new arm.

Liz: Moira is single-handedly hitting all points of the Humans-Machines-Mutants triangle right now. Despite her consistent claim that an alliance or peace between these factions is impossible, she’s incorporating everything within herself. I can really see this being a way for her to work with all three sides of this conflict if she can accept the idea. Moira obviously has a lot of baggage and trauma from her past lives that makes her unwillingness to entertain the idea of a compromise make sense, even if it’s not the actual best tactical decision. She can’t see past what she’s seen, even though those things haven’t technically been done by these versions of the people and machines. Of course, the human and machine forces have done tons of awful stuff to mutants, but there needs to be an option for the mutants to move forward that isn’t killing them all. For one, it never works (even Moira agrees with this). I hope this side of the Lives and Deaths stays focused on Moira. I want to see where she ends up.

Chris: I agree. I was waiting for Moira to show up in the story for several years, and after Inferno, a comic that I was sure would sideline her for a while, I’m hungry for more. I know that Wolverine is on the title but I’m pretty delighted at this non-Wolverine surprise. The shift in tones is honestly throwing me for a loop a little bit, and while this event is not really a “big ideas” book like the last double miniseries we read were, I think it’s doing its own thing in a way I’m into for now.

X-Traneous Thoughts

Wow, can’t believe Jane Foster is anti-mutant.
I hope that truck driver got his sheep back okay!
We have finally figured out that Truck Beats Gateway
I wish Moira had reached out to her old bartender friend Jack Crossan while she was at the old homestead. (For what may be Jack’s only appearance, see Excalibur #91).