Having just conquered the world, Sinister is in a predicament: Someone has stolen his secret lab, and his toys have stopped obeying him. This simply will not do. Immoral X-Men #1 is written by Kieron Gillen, drawn by Paco Medina, inked by Walden Wong and Victor Olazaba, colored by Jay David Ramos and Chris Sotomayor, and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Mark Turetsky: Hail the House of Essex, my friend. What’s it been, 10 years since we witnessed the glory of Mister Sinister aggressively upgrading the Quiet Council?
Austin Gorton: Ten glorious years of Sinister-y conquest and world domination, and things couldn’t be finer. Absolutely. 10/10, no notes on the state of things for our lord and master Sinister. Everything is going great, 10 years on.
Absolutely great.
Just … great.
Children of the Gene
Mark: One of the nice surprises about this event mini is that it carries over a lot of the formal trappings of Immortal X-Men. We have a plot about, well, plotting among the Quiet Council, we have a point-of-view character and, as always, we have the ongoing Sinister plot. It’s also our first repeat point-of-view character, and while I think we were both lukewarm on Emma in Immortal #4, the Hellfire Gala issue, this is Emma’s characterization taken to the (Sinister) extreme.
Austin: I will admit, I was a little disappointed to see the double dip in spotlight characters. Somewhat because it ruins the pattern (and as a pedantic nerd, I like patterns), which is ameliorated somewhat by the fact that this isn’t a “regular” issue of Immortal X-Men. But it’s also disappointing because it doesn’t seem like this adds much to Emma’s characterization or requires Emma to be the POV character.
For the most part, parts of her characterization get highlighted that are already very familiar: She’s more ruthless than Xavier, but also pragmatic. She’s snarky and elitist, but not above getting her hands dirty. None of this is really new, or presented in a new way.
Mark: See, I had a different read on this. Since much of the plot here seemed like a retread of Immortal #9-10 (Sinister plots, attacks a council member, is brought to heel and punished), having Emma be our point of view for this all-new, all-Sinister era, rather than Kate and Xavier, she just seems like the natural choice to be our Virgil in this Hell on Earth. And she makes it fun, to a degree. The whole issue drips with BDSM imagery, with whips, chains, an X-shaped rack, not to mention the title, “The Bond Age.” It’s cruel, but it’s also a romp. And that’s Emma, or at least, this version of Emma.
Austin: That’s a good point: She is a more fitting POV character for this darker, more twisted world. Plus, it’s a little bit of a twist to have the Sinister-fied Emma be the one leading the charge against Sinister Prime, since the natural expectation is to have someone like Kate or Xavier undergo the “innate goodness overcoming Sinister’s DNA to lead the fight back” arc. Instead, we have Emma, already capable of ruthless pragmatism in the “regular” reality, be the one serving as the vehicle for Sinister’s comeuppance, not because of her goodness, but because the Sinister elements just augment her existing personality.
Mark: It seems like Xavier has become too much of a sadboy for this era. The issue starts with him sending a rebel squad jumping heroically out of a window. It’s an image we’ve seen in countless comics, but of course, here there’s no net, there’s no flight, they just splat on the ground. And while it makes Xavier cry, Emma finds it upsetting because he isn’t having any fun with the murder. His heart is just too pure for this kind of work. It’s, I suppose, a carnivalesque (Happy Mardi Gras, by the way!) callback to his tears and his “no more” in House of X #4. There, it was a sober reflection on the decades of mutant genocide he had witnessed; here, it’s the subject of mockery.
Austin: The Nick Fury (Jr.) rebel strike team opening is a fun little window into this world; it’s set up like every other “outmatched group of underdogs prepares to take the fight to the big bad guy” sequence, and even to the point where they begin to wonder if they should use the door or the window, it seemed like a setup for a badass “dive out the window and fly into action” moment. Instead, they just kersplat, thanks to Xavier making them think it was fine to just jump out a window. It’s a kind of mundane sadism that speaks to the Sinister-ness of the setting.
From there, we get a debriefing from Hope about her concerns for the future of their empire, specifically from external galactic threats that will strike back at Earth’s mutant ascendancy. While this is mostly there to set up Sinister Prime’s later get-out-of-jail card, I do like how this continues to showcase the, again, mundanity of Sinister’s utopia (and his dissatisfaction with it). Even in this world completely remade in his image, it’s still council meetings and votes and plans of action to be debated. It’s just that the participants are a little more jagged-edged, a little more sadistic, and have diamonds on their heads. This is the world Sinister created, and arguably, no one is having a tougher time of it than Sinister himself, which is a fun inversion of the trope.
Mark: Hope’s data page gives us a good setup of what the stakes actually are here, that Sinister Earth is still vulnerable to attack by the many interstellar powers at play in the Marvel galaxy, and possibly provides a setup for what to expect when we revisit this world in 100 years’ time. But it also establishes what I think is an issue in this comic: In a world where everyone is Sinister, character voices can start to feel a bit same-y. The report comes from Hope and is written in her voice, but it could just as easily have been written by Kate or Shaw. Still, it’s not a huge problem for me, since this is a fun sandbox we’re playing in for the time being.
Austin: You’re not wrong. And for now, I think the story gets away with it because it’s moving fast enough (through issues/chapters of story as well as time). If this was an “Age of Apocalypse”-level event with dozens upon dozens of tie-in issues stretched across four full months, the same-ness would get tiring, but the relatively restrained issue count combined with the wider scope of setting will hopefully keep the sameness of it all from being overwhelming.
Dude, Where’s My Lab?
Austin: One person in this story who definitely is overwhelmed at the moment is Sinister. Despite creating what is seemingly a utopia (for himself, at least), he finds himself in a similar situation as before: running second string on the council, with even his Sinister-influenced teammates undermining him and thinking for themselves. The only problem is, his lab with the Moira clones is missing, so he can’t do a reset to his save point.
Mark: Stop the world, he wants to get off (no, not like that). It’s funny, I can feel some sympathy for his situation. When I was younger, I had this notion that if I went somewhere else, I could reinvent myself as a different person, but that doesn’t really work, as Sinister comes to realize here. He’s literally programmed these people to be more like him, and they still, if not hate and fear, at least dislike and distrust him. No matter where you go, there you are, am I right?
With his main lab missing, he instead goes to one of his backup labs, where he has a conversation with a one-time Sinister clone to bounce his ideas off of. It’s kind of a necessity of the format here: This is Emma’s issue, so the captions need to be from her point of view. And while the Sinister sequence starts out with him speaking his thoughts aloud, it would break the formal structure if the captions shifted over to his thoughts. Hence the single-use clone, which is both funny and gives Sinister someone to speak to aloud.
Austin: It’s a clever bit of smuggling on Gillen’s part, giving us a peek inside another character’s head without breaking the “main” peek inside of the issue. This sequence is basically just Sinister reasoning out his next move in the absence of his reset button, raising and dismissing various courses of actions before ultimately settling on a “manual reinsertion of the control protocol” which I assume roughly translates to “strengthen the bit in the DNA I infected everyone with that makes the host more subservient to me.”
The manual part is key, I think, because aside from setting up the last third of the issue, it also marks a change in Sinister’s approach: Usually, he’s the behind-the-scenes schemer. The initial insertion of Sinister DNA into the council upon resurrection was a multistep long game that wasn’t apparent until it came to fruition. Conversely, his plan here is, basically, “stick Emma with a needle.” It underscores just how unmoored he is without his most secret lab, and how lost he’s become in his own world.
Brought to Heel
Mark: Covert ops against one of the world’s greatest telepaths is definitely a bad idea. And we get a callback to the Hellfire Gala tie-in issue: Emma is still sleeping in her diamond form, both for protection and out of vanity (She believes it will slow the aging process). There’s also a funny bit of wordplay in her narration. She says, “I hope Sinister will come around,” which at first blush would seem to mean “change his mind,” but alas, Emma is a tricksy one, and she means it in the sense of “stop in,” because she’s set a trap for him. Still, you have to wonder why he chose Emma to attack. Hope would seem a bad idea, if only because Exodus probably watches her while she sleeps, but why not one of the non-telepaths, like Kate, Magik, Beast or Namor? Beast would seem like a great ally to have if you’re up for plotting. Instead, he goes for Emma as she seems to be the de facto leader of the council. And Emma wants him to make a move against her so she can finally have an excuse to get rid of him.
Austin: There’s definitely a bit of “he’s targeting Emma because she’s the POV of this issue” plotting going on, but like you said, there are ways to squint and make it work in-universe (One could argue even that the opening scene, in addition to setting up the differences between Emma and Xavier, establishes why Sinister would target her of all the telepaths: She’s the one most likely to use her power to enforce Sinister’s will, once Sinister has bent her to that will.
But yes, Emma is once more lying in wait and springs her trap on Sinister, and this is where the bondage imagery starts to really come into play. First, it’s revealed Emma has Mastermind chained to her bedroom wall (to cast the illusion that she’s NOT sleeping in diamond form) and honestly, there’s a part of me that isn’t sure this isn’t something “regular” Emma would do.
Mark: Yeah, there’s definitely a frisson of sexual violence going on here. Sinister attacking a sleeping woman with a syringe, the imagery is there. It’s also got an element of Dracula attacking Lucy Westenra, the pallid man coming through the window for the sleeping woman, looking to subvert her to his will, body and soul. Furthermore, Emma’s attack on Sinister at his lab in Westchester takes on the same tone of sexual dominance and conquest. It’s … incredibly faithful to Claremont’s depiction of the character.
Austin: Indeed. Emma (who, it should be noted, is wearing a uniform very much in the style of her original White Queen duds when in action throughout the issue) even hauls the dominated Sinister before the council with a chain around his neck. I’m not entirely sure what Gillen is going for here (if anything more than some colorful window dressing). The idea that Sinister’s influence is tapping into the darker bits of Emma seems … too simplistic an explanation.
But much in the same way Sinister was consistently granted reprieves by the original council due to his utility, so too is he ultimately spared here by his council of Sinisters because he can offer them the weapons they need to defeat Hope’s expected extraterrestrial foes: super chimeras, capable of wielding up to five powers in one body.
Mark: Emma won’t simply accept his proposal regarding the next generation of chimeras without having him submit to her completely. She knows they’re screwed without his help, but she doesn’t care to have the world survive if she’s not the one in charge. I’m not sure Sinister will get another chance at acting independently after this, maybe ever. I’ll also point out that the chimera diagram he shows Emma seems to be modeled on Hope, including her right hand being highlighted, possibly indicating he’ll be building these chimeras with her severed hand as a basis.
Austin: Nice catch on the hand! I was too busy trying to decide if that was supposed to be Rasputin from Powers of X or not.
While the chimeras — which have been a bit of a Chekhov’s gun throughout the HoXPoX era — buy Sinister another stay of execution, it’s hard to miss how far he’s fallen: Even in this, the world he’s built, surrounded by mutant leaders resurrected with his own DNA inside them, he’s been brought low, literally on his knees and chained before them. Even in the world he built, he can’t quite catch a break.
Mark: He’s got the opposite problem of that other famous Marvel duck, Howard. He’s trapped in a world that he actually made.
Selected Sinister Sentiments
- Exodus painting messianic, Renaissance-style portraits of Hope seems on point, regardless of the reality.
- Sinister’s second most secret lab is in Westchester, so presumably under/around the former X-Mansion.
- At least some of Sinister’s Cyclops DNA-infused Nasty Boys are wearing ruby quartz visors, and as both a pedant and a Cyclops fan, I must once again reiterate that Scott’s inability to control his optic blast is specific to him and not a feature/bug of his power that would be translated to others using it through whatever means.
- Xavier is now rocking a diamond on his Cerebro helmet!
- “Sinister Ducks” is the name of Alan Moore’s band from the 1980s, with whom he recorded “March of the Sinister Ducks,” which appears in Moore’s Swamp Thing #25. The Sinister Ducks – The March Of The Sinister Ducks
- “Are you done moping over your dead boyfriend?” Hope says aloud what we’ve all been thinking.
Mark Turetsky
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton
