Sinister has replaced key members of Krakoa’s Quiet Council with genetically altered toadies, leading to a years-long experiment in Sinisterarchy in Sins of Sinister #1 is written by Kieron Gillen, with art by Lucas Werneck, colors by Bryan Valenza, letters by Clayton Cowles, with guest art by Geoffrey Shaw, Marco Checchetto, Juan José Ryp, David Baldeón, Travel Foreman, Carlos Gómez, Federico Vicentini, David Lopez, Joshua Cassara and Stefano Caselli.
Mark Turetsky: It’s been two months since these three particular books crossed over with each other, a boundless eternity. But while AXE: Judgment Day was a Marvel line-wide event spanning the course of a day or so of time, Sins of Sinister is a smaller crossover, covering a mere… thousand or so years. Where do you see yourself in a thousand years, Rasmus?
Rasmus Skov Lykke: Enjoying the fruits of my Machiavellian machinations, savoring the certainty that I’m better than everyone else who has ever lived, smug in the knowledge that I’ve planned for everything and that nothing could ever go wrong, because I am — in every single way — perfect.
But on a completely unrelated note, I wonder what Mr. Sinister is up to.
Powers of S
Mark: Sins of Sinister #1 starts out with a pastiche of the opening of House of X #1, which was a scene of Professor X in Arbor Magna greeting the X-Men as they were resurrected. Important to keep in mind that the House of X scene was presented completely out of context: a reader going into that issue wouldn’t have recognized Krakoa, wouldn’t know about Krakoan resurrection for several issues yet. Heck, might not even recognize the figure in a black one-piece wearing a Cerebro helmet as Professor X until he said his catchphrase. But not only is this scene a callback to the opening of House of X, it’s also a scene that was already called back to: Inferno #1 opened with a panel for panel homage to that scene, with Emma overseeing the resurrections of Professor X and Magneto. Again, the scene was presented without context.
But, as Karl Marx put it, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” And I think this definitely fits that bill. While Sinister is, well, completely evil and corrupt, in Gillen’s characterization, he’s grotesquely funny. And in this case, it’s not separate X-Men, it’s (at least) 4 different copies of Cyclops. The only hint about when this is happening is that it’s “+10 Years,” which is when Sins of Sinister #1 ends (and is the first “era” that we’ll visit during the event proper).
Rasmus: There’s a lot of wonderful lines in this issue (as is to be expected in a Sinister story written by Gillen), but “To me, my me’s.” is up there. Four words and three of them are about Sinister.
Following the opening scene, we get a short recap, letting everyone know that Sinister is a bad guy, but important for the Krakaon experiment to work. And we’re reminded of the big reveal from Immortal X-Men #10, that Xavier was tampered with by Sinister when he was last resurrected, after an entire issue of Xavier explaining just how powerful he is and how horrible it’d be if he decided to use his power for evil. This was the big thing we all knew going into the event, the thing that changed all our expectations of what awful thing Sinister was going to do, that would allow him to take over… well, everything. Having control of the most powerful telepath in the world. Oh no.
Then we’re returned to the present, +0, timeline, where it’s revealed that Xavier isn’t the only Quiet Council member with a shiny new diamond in his forehead. Exodus, Hope and Emma Frost all have one as well. The oh’est of noes!
Mark: In last week’s Immortal X-Men, I had assumed that it was just Professor X who had been taken over, since he always wears a helmet that can hide the diamond, but of course, I had neglected to take into account that Emma, Hope and Exodus are all powerful telepaths who can alter others’ perception of them (the example that comes to mind is Emma’s use of this power in Old Man Logan). And of course, with the most powerful telepaths on the island under Sinister’s control, it doesn’t take them long to expand their plans.
Remember earlier in this series when the council was considering extending Krakoan resurrection to heads of state and industry? Yeah, back then, I said it was a bad idea, but here Xavier presents a slightly different concept: total access to resurrection, for all humans. They manage to get the rest of the council onboard, with Mystique and Destiny having gotten out of Dodge in Immortal X-Men #10. My biggest quibble here is a minor one: how is it that Doug and Warlock weren’t spying on Xavier, Emma et al.’s secret meeting? It’s somewhat easily dismissed by pointing out that they’re a cabal of powerful telepaths, and if they don’t want you to see something, well, you won’t.
5 year plan of &%@%ing around.
Mark: With Sinister’s cabal in control of the Quiet Council, we get our first time jump: it’s one year later and Krakoa has been offering humans a limited X-Gene implant in order to allow them to be resurrected. Ben Urich confides in J. Jonah Jameson that it’s a Trojan horse; the gene contains a Sinister personality override and the Krakoans are using this to take over the world.
Personally, this scene makes me feel uncomfortable, and not in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers way. From the start of the Krakoan era, there have been comparisons between Krakoa and the State of Israel, for good or ill. Here, we have Krakoans secretly pulling the puppet strings of the governments of the world as well as The Media. I realize that at a certain point the mutant metaphor breaks down, but this scene gives me serious pause. Couple that with the similarity to current antivax conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines rewriting your DNA, and those conspiracy theories’ ties to a litany of antisemitic beliefs, and it’s all a bit much.
Look, I don’t think in the least that anyone involved is advocating for those beliefs, and this is very much being presented as an alternative “worst” timeline in-book, perpetrated by a clear villain, but it’s playing off of and with some dangerous ideas.
Rasmus: The anti-vax angle is definitely unfortunate and in many ways an unnecessary foul, as the machine used to check could’ve just as easily been a scanner of some sort, instead of an injection. But like you say, I don’t think there was any ill will behind it, just a simple oversight.
Just as we’re shown how much Sinister has his paws in humanity already, we see how much control he has over the mutants. On Krakoa, Forge is rigging up a machine to effectively kill Krakoa, leaving it a “drooling vegetable” under the Sinister council’s control. We’re only at +1 and already the mutants are betraying the central ideals of their new home: “Respect this sacred land.”
I can only dread how far they’ll fall in a thousand years.
Mark: It’s brutal, but effective. It’s the monstrous promise of living under fascism: look at how much can be accomplished if not for those pesky others/outsiders/political opponents. Of course, the metaphor breaks down somewhat here because this isn’t just a political system taking over the world, it’s a biological assimilation. And of course, while the lobotomizing of Krakoa and the assassination of Doug Ramsey works in Sinister’s favor, it’s also an opportunity to use the other favorite of the conspiracy set: the false flag operation. The Krakoans exploit the attack as a rallying cry, blaming Orchis and killing off Nimrod and (presumably) Moira, and further solidifying their conspiracy by recruiting Captain America.
Now that Krakoa is no longer sentient, Sinister’s Krakoan council cronies extract him from the Pit and we learn the full extent of Sinister’s plan, such as it is, answering quite a few of the questions I had at the end of last week’s Immortal X-Men. Xavier and the others were essentially a red herring; the real trick was taking Hope out of the equation. Sinister had been embedding his secret DNA from the start, but somehow Hope was subconsciously removing those bits during resurrection. With Hope dead, all future resurrected mutants would have the active Sinister DNA, including the resurrected Hope. But all of this is just a means to an end: Sinister wants to become A Dominion, an all-powerful megamind with the powers of a god. And here’s the thing: he’s not looking to do that here and now, this entire Moira life is merely a fact-finding mission toward that longterm greater goal.
Rasmus: It’s an interesting wrinkle, because I think we all assumed everything would be reset at the end of this event. We know it’s not an alternate timeline, because this is really happening and will have ramifications afterwards. But just what that would mean, we didn’t know. Now we do. Everything that’s going to happen is just Sinister running a fact-finding mission, so he can become a god. Even if he fails, he wins, because knowledge is literally power.
Mark: He could still succeed even if this timeline gets reset: a Dominion transcends space and time, after all!
Age of Essex
Rasmus: As much as he might disagree, Sinister isn’t perfect. While much of his plan comes together, as we see him take out Thanos, the Avengers, Fantastic Four and more, there are certain things he hasn’t planned for. The mutants of Arakko aren’t part of the resurrection protocols, which means Omega level mutant Storm isn’t under his control. (Even if it somehow takes her FIVE YEARS to feel bad about what’s been going on…) Bad news for Sinister. I hope she doesn’t form a Brotherhood of some kind and decide to wreck his plans.
Mark: I love that here, as well as in Immortal X-Men #9, Storm remains undefeated. Sinister had to send her off to Arakko as a distraction during his attack on the council. It’s entirely within her characterization in X-Men Red (and of course, sets up her tie-in series here). She’s prepared for just about anything, as she has the paranoia/alertness that comes with her former status as Queen of Arakko. The means by which she avoids the psychic attack is brilliant, too: Lactuca of Arakko’s Omega-level power is the knowledge of the location of everything in the universe. With their minds linked, that’s… something of an overload for any telepaths trying to get into her brain. “One cannot hold the ocean between their fingers,” indeed.
Still, I do share your befuddlement that she somehow put up with this for five whole years. Maybe it’s that myth about boiling a frog. This also leads us to the sole appearance of our favorite lesbian terrorist power couple, Mystique and Destiny. With Storm and them forming the resistance, err… Brotherhood, I’ve got some hope for the future of this timeline.
We also see a sight that’s all-too-familiar: with Sinister joining the council, the Overton Window has moved ever further towards utter depravity. It’s an echo of covert bigotries becoming more and more overt when the bigots in power become more and more comfortable and accepted. When Sinister can show his face in public, the public relations war is over. Common decency has lost.
Rasmus: As such, we reach the “present” timeline for the next batch of issues, +10. Sinister is walking the streets of New York in disguise. The final dredges of humanity lining up to be mind-controlled, as a smug Sinister smugly looks on, remarking that, “How can I not think that I’m better than everyone?” One of the ‘best’ things about Gillen’s version of Sinister is just how openly colonial he is. There’s no hiding it behind destiny, religion or country. It’s all about him.
Which is why it’s so delightful seeing everyone turn against him, even as they’ve been turned into him.
Because, as we’ve seen throughout Sins of Sinister #1, even as Sinister has turned basically the entire world into a mirror of himself, there are still parts of themselves in there. J. Jonah Jameson still offered to buy Urich’s story for a single dollar. Xavier still wants to achieve his dream. Frost still wants to protect her children, and so on. They’ve all just been infected with Sinister’s steadfast belief that they and only they know the right way to do things, that everyone else is beneath them. Even Sinister.
Mark: That’s the thing: Sinister is his own worst enemy. He’s nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is. Let’s not forget that his introduction in Powers of X #4 has “our” Sinister shooting the previous Sinister prime in the head. It’s not like Sinisters aren’t going to connive against other Sinisters, right?
The real stroke of brilliance here is this: while I was reading the scene of Sinister returning to his Muir Island lab to reset the timeline and finding the lab missing, I realized that I’m now rooting for him (only insofar as I want him to reset the timeline). It’s a trick that Hitchcock uses in Psycho, where he gets the audience to start siding with Norman Bates. Here, Gillen has made things so bad that we now want Sinister to succeed!
Selected Sinister Sentiments
- Emma going “Oh, I’m sure Charles and I can change their minds” is wonderfully chilling.
- The opening page of the +1 timeline, with all the X-Mas signage, has a bunch of “hidden” diamonds in the design, subtly warming people to the idea of Sinister. Such a wonderful little touch.
- The final issue of this crossover is titled “Sins of Sinister: Dominion.” Will Sinister achieve his plans after all?
- One of the many guest splash pages features the empty throne of Hell, a callback to Gillen’s first real Marvel masterpiece, Journey Into Mystery.
- All of the splash pages by the guest artists were wonderful, really. Every one a huge moment that deserved a splash, as it showed just how ruthless Sinister was in taking over.
- “No More Wanda.” Reader, I laughed.
- Night Legion appears to be a chimera of Nightcrawler and Spider-Man, though the name suggests that it’s Nightcrawler and Legion. Perhaps we’ll find out more in the Nightcrawlers mini.
- Where are the other Nathaniel Essex card suits in all this?
- The full wraparound cover to Immortal X-Men #1 features Lactuca standing behind Storm. A nod to the events here?
Rasmus Skov Lykke
Rasmus Skov Lykke will write for food (or, in a pinch, money). When not writing, he spends his time with his wife, their daughter and their cats, usually thinking about writing.
