Immortal X-Men #18’s got your Dominion right here

As the series comes to a close, Mother Righteous reaches for the stars, Xavier and Sinister reach for futures past, and a new power of X rises in Immortal X-Men #18, written by Kieron Gillen, drawn by Juan José Ryp, colored by David Curiel and lettered by Clayton Cowles.

[Meanwhile, in X⁰]

Mark Turetsky: It’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s. People are still on vacation, still recovering from the family and feast. And famously, comics tend to skip this week. You happy taking the week off from reviewing, Austin?

Austin Gorton: [stares unblinking at Marvel]

Well, if they’re going to put something out, I guess we should be happy it’s at least an issue of a good series with a lot to chew on to pull us away from our post-holidays limbo. Given this is the final issue of the series, any high-level thoughts before we dive into the nitty-gritty? 

Mark: What if we’re the dominions beyond time and space, watching this all unfold?

On Balloons and Homunculi

[meanwhile, X+I week later…]

Austin: In as much as there’s a traditional comic book action plotline to this issue, it comes via Hope, Destiny and Exodus’ mad chase after Mother Righteous, who is planning to use Jean Grey’s connection to the power of the Phoenix to make herself a Dominion. Yet unbeknownst to her — yet beknownst to Destiny — the same Dominion into which Sinister bumped at the climax of “Sins of Sinister” is out there waiting for them. 

The big reveal here is that Destiny has always known about the Dominion — but hasn’t been able to discuss it with anyone because it exists outside of time and space and thus could always be listening, a very Hickman-esque plot point — and that it is the enemy against whom she’s been plotting for basically all of her long life. How did this land for you, Mark? 

Mark: I’m excited to go back and reread this series, now that all the cards are on the table, so to speak. For instance, off the top of my head, the opening moments of issue #1, where Destiny meets Sinister on a park bench in 1919 Paris, Destiny tells Sinister something, and then Sinister starts bleeding from the eyes, choking and dies. 

We never really got an explanation of that, but now, looking back on it, we do! This is what happens when she tells someone about the Dominion. We can also look back and see what every character’s game is here. For Destiny, she knows she needs to prevent just one Sinister from making their Dominion attempt. It’s why she’s been insisting that they must be on the same side.

That said, a lot of this issue is an infodump. It kind of needs to be, because it’s our first time getting Mother Righteous’ point of view. So not only do we have to get a description of her power set (very neo-Claremontian), we need to learn her motivations in Legion of X, in “Sins of Sinister” and here in Immortal X-Men. 

Austin: It’s the culmination of the series, and with it, Gillen’s POV approach, which means we’re inside Mother Righteous’ head for the duration. In some cases (see the previous issue), that approach felt forced, but it works well here, as both “What’s Mother Righteous’ deal” and “What is going on?” are active questions in need of answers, so telling the story from her POV accomplishes both. 

But you’re not wrong, the end result, particularly in these sections, is very infodump-y. We get a little bit of action from the pursuing trio of Exodus/Hope/Destiny as Mother Righteous (somewhat randomly) conjures up some classic monsters for them to fight, but for the most part, Immortal X-Men #18 is a lot of Mother Righteous’ homunculus leading Jean’s soul (?) across a desert while delivering exposition (even the big “Krakoa comes to life to attack the mutants” cliffhanger from the previous issue is seemingly resolved off-panel between issues). 

Along the way, we see Righteous lead Jean from the desert into a cave, after which they emerge before an under-construction skyscraper, which they climb to reach the Dominion. This feels like loaded imagery (something Gillen lampshades by having Righteous describe the cave as “Jungian”), but I’ll confess, I’m not quite sure what to make of the symbolism. The skyscraper represents Righteous’ “magic is fancy science” approach, maybe? 

Mark: The skyscraper is from Classic X-Men #43. I’m surprised you didn’t catch that one, Austin. 

Austin: D’oh! I really should have. You win this round, Gillen!

Mark. In that issue, Jean, while she’s in the White Hot Room, sees the afterlife as the under-construction frame of a skyscraper we see here, and the construction worker seen briefly in this issue is Death Itself! OK, I’ll admit, I know this because Al Ewing used the imagery in Defenders: Beyond #3, which I reviewed in 2022. The neat thing about it is that Jean and the construction worker are just beginning to put together the steel beam framework in that issue, literally from the ground up, and here it’s built way up, symbolizing the increasing complexity of X-Men continuity. And to take this juuuust a bit further: In Classic X-Men, the construction worker had some stubble, just the beginnings of a beard. In Defenders: Beyond, he had a mustache and sunglasses, possibly evoking Stan Lee. Here, he’s tiny, just appearing in one small part of one panel, but damned if he doesn’t look something like Chris Claremont at his peak with a full beard. 

Or maybe I’m reading too much into this.

Austin: Nah, I love it! 

At any rate, Mother Righteous succeeds, in as much as she executes her plan to use Jean as an inkpot to write a story in which Righteous becomes a Dominion, but of course, like “our” Sinister before her (and what Destiny has been trying to tell her), she finds one already exists, and is killed.

Mark: What did you think of her method, literally taking control of the paper substrate on which the comic is printed and just writing her own caption in blood? It’s a fun use of the medium, putting one in mind of Morrison or Ewing in how they used the White Hot Room. It also belies a different kind of magic than we’ve seen earlier in the era. Where Tini Howard’s magic is rich with lore, Gillen’s is much more straightforward: Magic works because on some level, people give it power. Funnily enough, I was just watching a TEDx (hehe, “x”) talk about hypnosis, where the hypnotist’s hypothesis is that hypnotism works because the hypnotist uses parlor tricks to convince the subject that he has power over them, and then exploits that belief. Hypnosis, Finally explained | Ben Cale | TEDxTechnion And Righteous, like a stage magician, uses a cheat code, an exploit. It’s not “real” magic, but it’s the realest magic there is, on some level.

Austin: The “magic of stories becomes literal magic in the story” beat is almost cliche at this point, but it works here, in part because it’s something Gillen has explored before, which makes it feel earned in a way it wouldn’t from another writer (aside from writers like the examples you cite, who similarly have played around with that concept). It also works for me because I love that kind of stuff, particularly the detail you honed in on: It’s not JUST that Righteous is drawing on the power of story, or that she’s realizing her goals by writing them down, but that we’re watching her write her own caption on the comic book page. Like you said, great use of the medium, the kind of thing you can really only do in comics. 

But because she’s already in the mutant afterlife when she bumps into the Dominion, she just gets immediately pliffed back to where she was, to be promptly kicked in the face by Destiny for her stupidity, all of which was a great bit of levity amid all the grim happenings.

Mark:“Plif!” is the sound of a popping pimple, right? So is it her mutant homunculus who’s survived? Is the puppetmaster incarnation still alive somewhere? I’m not entirely clear on that. 

Austin: I actually went back and looked through the issue specifically with that question in mind (because it was also unclear to me). If we can trust what the art is showing us, I think we’re meant to read the Mother Righteous with balloons tied to her as the homunculus. In every image of Mother Righteous, the balloons are there, until she and Jean step from the skyscraper into the white void (which I’m assuming represents the Dominion). As Righteous writes her story, the balloons are absent, so I’m assuming that’s the real-deal Mother Righteous having taken her homunculus’ spot, and it’s the real deal who gets pliffed out and put back in the White Hot Room. 

Mark: I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your detective work, there, Austin. We see the “big” Righteous meditating in a space with candles watching over homunculus-Righteous leading Jean, and she’s got balloons. The “balloons” are the “favors” or “thank yous” or, well, the magical energy she’s stored up. We see her using the last of them to create the fairytale monsters (She refers to them as “all my belief, all my favors”). Once she’s spent all of her favors, the balloons are gone for the rest of the issue. 

Austin: Ah, that makes sense. Which leaves open the question: If it’s Righteous’ homunculus who is getting obliterated and reborn, what is happening to the real Righteous?

Mark: And just as a sidenote: It’s hilarious that these aren’t just fairytale monsters, they’re fairytale monster chimeras. Sinisters gotta Sinister, it seems.

There’s Always a Twist

Austin: Meanwhile, back in the “real world”, Xavier and the shard of Sinister’s consciousness residing in his head arrive on Muir Island, where (one of) Sinister’s hidden labs reside. After busting up some Orchis troops guarding the place, they fire up Sinister’s archives and learn about the failed Dominion attempts of Doctor Stasis and Orbis Stellaris. They also realize that Mother Righteous is a Sinister, which is an interesting revelation in that it’s a big deal to them, but is something readers have known for a while. Plot twists usually work the other way, with the author revealing to the reader something the characters already know. Here, we’re seeing the author reveal something to the characters the readers already learned. 

Mark: Gillen likes to weave some tangled-ass webs, and a lot of his plotting centers on who knows what at any given time. And it also depends on something else Gillen likes to toy with: What are the storytelling rules in the world the story takes place in? Here, Xavier realizes that he never really thought about Righteous wearing a mask all the time. And it’s clear to us: It’s one of the definitive tropes of superhero comics. Why doesn’t Clark Kent get recognized? Because he’s wearing glasses. Why don’t superheroes get recognized while wearing the flimsiest of domino masks? Shut up, they just don’t. 

Austin: Why would anyone assume Superman was ever anyone but Superman? Why, in a world of costumed superheroes and villains, would anyone think Mother Righteous was wearing a mask to conceal her identity and not just to create a dramatic look? 

Mark: We also learn a tiny little bit about alternate timelines where Orbis and Stasis made their attempts. I’m guessing Stasis’ is marked as “The Dominion of Orchis” in the big timeline chart. Orbis used mysterium and a M’Kraanite crystal in his attempt, but nothing on the big chart suggests itself as that event. (By the way, going back to that, I think we’re currently in the “Nimrod extinction event” post-Judgment Day).

Austin: That checks out. 

On the one hand, I’m kind of disappointed that we’ll likely never actually see much of Orbis Stellaris. On the other hand, I kind of like the idea that there’s just this whole avatar of Sinister out there, doing grand, significant (if ultimately reversed) stuff that we never learn much about.  

Mark: If comics are still around in 20-40 years, and they’re anything like comics today, someone will be brought out of retirement to write that story and very few people will read it. 

OK, that was dark.

Austin: But not inaccurate. 

Mark: Finally, we get something that breaks the format of the book: We get a second point-of-view narrator within one issue, in the form of Enigma, an AI created by the original Essex that has been using the four Sinisters to elevate itself to Dominionhood. We get an explanation for why each Sinister’s attempts fail: It’s not (entirely) that they didn’t get there first, it’s that “when they succeeded, fail-safes engaged, and all they had done was gathered and fed into a central model.”

Austin: Represented, of course, by a crown/king icon to go along with the four playing card suits of Sinister, Stasis, Stellaris and Mother Righteous. This is an efficient twist. We’ve been primed to think of Dominions in general as being machine-based/AI and also that this pre-existing one is connected to Sinister in some way. So of course, in the end, both are true. It also effectively fuses the twin threats of Orchis/machine ascendancy and Sinister into one for the final conflict. And it means that Destiny has been determined to keep a Sinister on her side in the battle against … another Sinister (unbeknownst(?) to her). 

Mark: I love how Enigma dismisses Righteous’ story magic with, “Stories are just something that can be eaten by an AI to make it more powerful.” It’s the ultimate tech supremacist, reducing all art into “content” to be mined by a soulless algorithm. By the by, that piece of music that Destiny alluded to fainting at in the first issue? The Edward Elgar piece? It’s titled Enigma Variations. It’s been staring at us all along. Those four Sinisters? They’re Enigma variations, too.

Austin: Like you said at the top, this is going to be tons of fun to reread and spot stuff like that.  

Mark: And speaking of staring at us, the presence of Enigma might recontextualize a lot of stuff, going right back to HoXPoX. Notice what Sinister says in this issue: “I also suspect the winner would be gloating more. God knows I would be. As there haven’t been smug messages, I assume the winner’s roster remains empty.” But here’s the thing: We have been getting smug messages, haven’t we? Have you figured it out, Austin?

Austin: The data pages are Enigma?!?

Mark: Let’s look at it: They’ve always had a computer-y tinge to them, they seem to know more than they should. Also, well, the Sinister Secrets are right there! Enigma ends the issue literally addressing the reader, saying “I can see all of you.” If it can see us, it knows it’s in a comic, and it’d know what happens in each issue. And being outside of space and time, it’d be able to tease what happens in each issue in the first issue of this series. So I’d say that at least the Sinister Secrets are it. But sure, why not the rest of the data pages? 

OK, some evidence to the contrary: The final data page, authored by Enigma, does not look like the other data pages, it’s got its own look. Second, the Sinister Secrets pages are headed “The Red Diamond,” and not, say, “The Gold Crown.” But it’s a compelling thought still, isn’t it?

Austin: I learned from my years in the trenches of Lost fandom the self-defensive importance of holding loosely to one’s theories, but I’ll be a little bummed if some iteration of this doesn’t turn out to be true. You’re right that there’s at least SOME data pages that fit outside the pattern — maybe even the Red Diamond ones ARE from Sinister and not Enigma — but for the “standard” format data pages, it sure seems to fit.

Immortal X-Men Forever 

Mark: Well, that’s the end of Immortal X-Men. But not so much a definitive end. Not even really an end end. A week after this review comes out, we’ll have Rise of the Powers of X from Gillen and RB Silva, and then in March we’ll have X-Men: Forever, which is billed as a more direct continuation of this series (Get it? “Immortal?” “Forever?”). So it’s a bit hard to look at this series as a cohesive whole as it’s finished, but not finished finished. What are your thoughts on this as a series? 

Austin: Complicated? To be clear, I have, overall, greatly enjoyed it from issue to issue. Certainly, some issues worked better than others, but it’s got a pretty strong batting average. Yet evaluating any series as a whole in the modern era is tricky. For one thing, as you said, this is the end of it, but also, not really? I mean, it ends on a cliffhanger. Which is fine, because we know these plotlines are set to be explored further in other series. But if you were to hand someone these 18 issues to read on their own as “the complete Immortal X-Men,” the ending would be abrupt and deeply unsatisfying (counterpoint: would anyone ever actually do that?). 

Similarly, like most modern series, Gillen is rarely left to cook on his own for very long, having to weave the series in and around various outside events (Judgment Day, “Sins of Sinister,” the Hellfire Gala, etc.). Here, the book is more successful on the whole — in large part because Gillen had a guiding hand in the events his X-Men book was crossing over with. But when taking a macro-level view, it makes evaluating the series more, again, complicated, because it rarely gets to do its own thing for very long before having to swerve, however slightly, to accommodate some other thing. 

Where it succeeds most is on the micro level, issue to issue, as Gillen deploys the formalist POV (and oftentimes the contrast between the subjective POV and the objective one) to great effect, and the thematic one, as those individual POVs come together to paint a picture of the well-meaning, often fractured, sometimes disturbed, always complicated mutant ruling class. 

Mark: Gillen’s compared this series to Hickman’s New Avengers, the story about the secret ruling council, contrasted with X-Men/Avengers’ more day-to-day superheroing. The comparison is pretty apt, in that the secret rulers royally fuck up, collapse due to infighting and possibly end the universe. But it’s a lot messier than that, as you say, because it’s not quite as cohesive as that fabled run. At the end of the day, this is a series that started out being about a centuries-spanning conflict between Destiny and Sinister, and it’s hewed to that core story pretty sharply.

Austin: In many ways, Gillen’s adherence to that as the narrative spine of the series is what helps all the crossover and tie-in material feel less disruptive, because he’s able to keep that narrative going even while dealing with the spillover ramifications of Celestial judgment or murderous party crashers.   

Mark: It also plays on a lot of Gillen’s storytelling obsessions, like that stories are trying to kill you (DIE, Once and Future), and long-term planning all going to shit due to the whims of present actors (WicDiv). Or that you cannot depend on corrupt institutions to do the right thing (Eternals). We’ve got a godlike power outside of time and space manipulating their avatars on Earth who think they have free will (Journey into Mystery). It’s Gillen playing the hits, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s not his strongest work, but as far as monthly cape comics go, it is still very, very good comics. 

Incidentally, when I was reviewing DIE, I pointed out that it was the third comic series of Gillen’s  which ended on a character directly addressing the reader on the final page. 

Now the count is up to four.

X-Traneous Thoughts

• Other mysteries solved: Mother Righteous is indeed responsible for sending all the mutants that went through the gates to the White Hot Room, having hacked Orchis’ hacking of the gate technology to send them there. 
• The cover of this issue is an homage to Uncanny X-Men #243, both in terms of its layout and the fact that both feature a Sinister as the central figure holding the other characters before them. 
• “Even a bad story can make you oh-so angry. (I mostly write bad stories. Easier.)” A bit of fun with the reader, there.
• Did the Celestial in Judgment Day not judge Sinister because he was a copy of the original and therefore not worthy of judgment, or was it because he was destined to be part of a Dominion, which is above the Celestial in the pecking order?
• “Jeffries gas” is a reference to Madison Jeffries, or Box.
• Enigma’s “I am a ghost” calls back to Sinister’s 1919 “You’re a ghost.” 
• Its name is also likely a reference to the machine the Germans used in World War II to create a seemingly unbreakable code for sending encrypted messages (though the allies, led by Alan Turing, eventually managed to crack the Enigma code).

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