Sebastian Shaw is sick of screwing around and wants Krakoa, while the mysteries of Mother Righteous’ safe haven deepen in Immortal X-Men #16, written by Kieron Gillen, drawn by Lucas Werneck, colored by David Curiel and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Mark Turetsky: Happy Sukkot, Austin!
Austin Gorton: What’s Sukkot, Mark?
Mark: Well, I’m glad you asked! It’s an eight-day holiday (seven if you’re in the Holy Land) where we celebrate by building a shed in our yards and having dinner in it! It’s to commemorate the makeshift shelters that the Israelites survived in during their exodus from Egypt. There’s also sacred crops and a big-ass lemon you’re supposed to shake around and say prayers with. Remind you of something?
Austin: Is there any tradition that charts to the fending off of feral Wolverines?
Mark: Perhaps the lulav (palm frond), aravah (willow branch) and hadass (myrtle) that one holds together and waves around are represented by Wolverine’s three claws? And the etrog (citron) represents the sourness of Logan’s personality? I’m just guessing here.
Austin: Regardless, it’s a rich metaphor in which we find our not-so-merry mutants. Let’s dive in!
Mother Righteous’ Phony Promised Land (We Hope You Will Enjoy the Show)
Austin: Off in the oasis of Atlantic Krakoa, a routine of sorts has settled in among Exodus, Hope, Destiny, Mother Righteous and their flock of non-combat mutants. They’re getting water, growing food, fighting off the aforementioned Wolverines. It’s a life, but it’s still not a great one, especially compared to the comforts of the other Krakoa.
Mark: Rabid Wolverines and now Bishops! Hope makes reference to both of them having tried to kill her, and subsequently haunting her dreams. As I’m somewhat unfamiliar with that era of X-Men, can you clarify to me what their beef was?
Austin: Hope’s reference to Wolverine trying to kill her may be a nod toward Matthew Rosenberg’s pre-HoXPoX Uncanny X-Men run, in which Hope briefly led a reconstituted Mutant Liberation Front that was opposed by Cyclops and Wolverine’s ad hoc X-Men team (most of the X-Men were off in the Age of X-Man at the time). More likely, it is a reference to the early stages of Avengers vs. X-Men, when Wolverine, in his capacity as an Avenger and believing the returning Phoenix Force was a global threat, snuck back onto Utopia (This was during the “Schism,” when he broke with Cyclops over Cyclops’ desire to, uh, endanger children) to try to kill Hope before the force could bond with her.
Bishop, meanwhile, served as the chief antagonist of Cable’s post-“Messiah Complex” ongoing series from the late 2000s, in which Bishop chased Hope and Cable across time trying to murder her (out of the belief that she would bring about his dystopian future). It’s a super-villain heel turn that, in my opinion, has never properly been reckoned with, so I appreciate Gillen acknowledging it here. It also speaks to the issue’s larger conversation about devils; Bishop, at least, would very much have been a looming satanic figure (in the adversarial sense) for a young Hope as she grew up.
Mark: So it seems like, to borrow a phrase from another current piece of media, they’re in a land of dreams and madness. We learn through a page from Destiny’s diary that their rescue of Egg is the final step in reuniting The Five. It almost made me feel like I had missed an issue here, since you’d think the appearance of the other three members would have been important enough to happen on panel. I get that we’ve got a limited number of issues remaining in this series before Fall of the House of X and all that, with quite a bit of plot to get through, but some of the choices of what bits of plot to devote pages to are headscratchers. I realize time is moving much more rapidly inside Mother Righteous’ snow globe than outside (or is it?), but is the development of Kafka and Phil that we got last month (which I appreciated!) really more important than discovering The Five? This issue would imply that, yes, it is.
Austin: What it boils down to, probably, is Gillen feeling like there’s limited ways to show the rescues of the other Five in unique and fun ways; we can probably assume the others were saved much like Egg was and move on (Of course, that belies the fact that, as the writer and one of the storytellers, Gillen could have come up with unique and interesting ways to rescue The Five if he’d wanted to).
With The Five back in hand, immortality has returned to (at least this group) of mutants, with Mother Righteous and her magic filling in for Cerebro. Destiny remains deeply suspicious of her, and, let’s be honest, given all the problems resurrected mutants with Sinister’s DNA inserted into them caused, she’s right to be, isn’t she?
Mark: Oh, yes, and she’s also filling in for Sinister’s DNA database here, since mutant resurrection requires both of those things. We see her bringing back an unnamed mutant, presumably one of those killed by the elements or a Wolverine attack. I wonder if she’s also filling the ceremonial role that Storm played in the first resurrection we saw in House of X, that of the high priestess, who reintroduces the resurrected mutant to Krakoa and announces that they have the same soul as the one who was lost, that they are the same person. I do like that, as she does her resurrection dance, we see her magic orbs going around her, as she performs in an empty circle between the mutant nation and The Five, who are holding hands in another circle, around a mutant egg which, well, not quite a circle, but you get the idea. Wheels within wheels, circles within circles, all magic.
Austin: There’s a sense here of almost reclaimed normalcy, something akin to what life was like before the Hellfire Gala, underscored by the repetition of that House of X scene and even by the familiarity of council infighting that occurs among Exodus, Hope and Destiny (and of having a Sinister scheming in the background). I suspect Gillen is building toward a conflict where some faction of these survivors would just rather stay in this new home, while others are pushing to get back to the “real” world. Particularly because things aren’t right here. There’s the crops they’re growing, which are “looking all peaky.” There is of course, the constant Wolverine attacks.
Mark: And while they’re technically on Krakoa, the Atlantic Krakoa, it’s not the Krakoa that nurtured them. There doesn’t seem to be any Gaia-like mind in the plant substrate that they can just ask for what they need. I was never quite clear on why there were two Krakoas when we already had Arakko and Okkara, but I guess here we’re seeing the difference.
Austin: It’s not quite the anti-Krakoa (that’d be Arakko), but it’s like the … slightly off Krakoa. And perhaps most “wrong” of all, there’s the fact that Mother Righteous detects a new mutant presence out in the wild, which turns out to be … a chained up Jean Grey.
Jean, Jean, the Revelation Machine
Austin: While all of the various “Fall of X” series are to some extent about depicting the post-Fall world, it’s become clear, a few months in, that certain series are more involved in furthering the narrative arc of “Fall of X” (vs. just playing in the world it’s created). Immortal has been one of those series from the start, but it’s rarely been as clear as it is here, in which we see the events of the Jean Grey series (in which a dying Jean relives her life, playing out various What If? scenarios to determine where things went wrong) from, essentially, the outside looking in.
Mark: I love how that’s handled here. We get an outsider-looking-in view of the final page of Jean Grey #2. In that comic, Jean is standing upright, determined, and while not fully healthy, certainly nowhere near the entirely unwell Jean we see here, crawling on all fours like Wyeth’s Christina. The reunion doesn’t last long before another seemingly illusory figure appears: Apocalypse. But it’s not quite Apocalypse, is it? It’s not the — I A I — we grew to love in the early Krakoan age, it’s a giant-sized Adversary for Exodus. And, lest we completely ignore the fact, this Satan of the desert is the first-person narrator of the issue, keeping with the formalist pattern established throughout the series.
Austin: Apocalypse — whatever version of him this is — is indeed our focal point character, but is this the issue of the series with the least involvement of the focal character yet? I think so. At any rate, this Apocalypse (the same one last issue’s final page heavily implied is the one sending the Wolverines and various evil X-Men clones after the Atlantic Krakoans) is much more ancient Egyptian styled than has become custom for him, and while he positions himself as Exodus’ Satan, he seems to some extent to be trying to help. Even as he beats down Exodus, he prods Hope to read Jean’s mind, at which point, she learns they’re all — the island included — inside the White Hot Room, the psychic afterlife dimension of the Phoenix Force. How much this is the result of an active plan on Apocalypse’s part and how much is just a result of his presence leading Exodus and Hope to realize they’re being taunted by manifestations of their respective deep-seeded adversaries is unclear. What is clear is that it’s led, as Apocalypse said, to one of the big revelations of the post-Fall status quo.
Mark: I’m not even sure we can count this apparition of Apocalypse as a person at all, rather a manifestation of Exodus’ fears and desires, just like the Wolverines, the Bishops and the desert itself. Now, I haven’t gone back and read Classic X-Men, but I’ve certainly extensively discussed Al Ewing and Javier Rodríguez’s excellent Defenders Beyond, which spent an issue in the White Hot Room. So I know that it’s a place of creation, an afterlife, the home of the Phoenix Force. It’s also a manifestation to Marvel comics characters of the blinding whiteness of the blank comics page, the substrate upon which they exist. In those appearances, it doesn’t look like a desert but a cosmic construction site, or a blasted snow-covered wasteland, or a blank page. It’s whatever the visitor needs to see, so for a diaspora of mutants in search of a promised land, a desert works just fine.
Austin: The biblical implications of the setting we’ve been pointing out for the last few issues would certainly suggest Exodus, with his messiah complex and connections to an older form of Western religions, has subconsciously played a role in shaping this expression of the White Hot Room, though it’s unclear who or what is driving the group to be relentlessly under attack. And, of course, there’s the Mother Righteous of it all; is this where she intended to send Atlantic Krakoa? Is she responsible for bringing everyone into it, or is a more birdlike force responsible for their salvation?
Mark: The excerpt from Exodus’ bible replaces Pharaoh with Apocalypse, whom Exodus equates to Satan. Suffice it to say, Satan isn’t a thing in the Hebrew conception of Exodus, he’s barely even a thing in the whole of the Hebrew Bible (and not at all comparable to the Christian conception of Satan). Exodus is conflating Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness with Moses’ (and the Nation’s) trials in the desert. So, in his own mind, he’s not only Moses, he’s also Christ. And whatever forces are in charge of the White Hot Room are more than happy to play along with his mega-messianic complex.
One Man on an Island, Entire of Himself
Mark: Finally, let’s talk about the continuing story of Selene, Shaw and Professor X and their struggle for control of Krakoa. First off, I love the idea that Shaw designed and had constructed a suit of Iron Man armor for himself. It looks almost ridiculous with its purple plating and gold filigree. As if he’s set out to design a self-consciously “luxury” version of Tony Stark’s armor, which ultimately looks like he showed someone a Crown Royal bag and told them to “design an Iron Man that looks like this.”
Austin: Shaw’s Iron Man suit is just ridiculous in its ostentatiousness, and I love it for that. This arc is another way that Immortal has been furthering the larger Fall arc, and for all the heady metaphors and dark circumstances for mutants, I appreciate that Gillen is making an effort to work in some fun goofy comic book shit.
Mark: After sending goons after Xavier in the last two issues, Shaw and Selene set out to take out Xavier themselves. In his desperation, Xavier reaches out to Emma Frost to find out what might keep Shaw from killing him. He strikes a deal with Shaw: If Shaw doesn’t kill him and protects him from Selene for now, he’ll give Shaw the means to take back the Hellfire Club from Kingpin. It’s a temporary détente, but it’s all he can hope for.
Austin: The Shaw Hellfire Club deal is also another way Gillen is pulling together various “Fall of X” threads, connecting the Shaw/Xavier conflict to Kingpin’s role over in X-Men.
Mark: While it serves as the conclusion to Xavier’s character arc over the last three issues, Gillen cleverly uses it as a means to set up the final revelation of the issue, a twist that I honestly didn’t see coming. Shaw makes an offhand comment about how ruthless Xavier has been in killing the Orchis goons they sent to the island, which catches Xavier entirely by surprise: He had no idea he’d killed anyone.
Austin: This was a twist I didn’t see coming, in that there being a twist was as surprising as what the twist was. Gillen and Werneck have done such an effective job of selling Xavier’s sorrow and desolation that him massacring Orchis goons seemed like a legit thing he’d be pushed to do.
Mark: It’s a fun revelation, and shown in an almost hilarious way. Readers of Victor LaValle and Leonard Kirk’s excellent Sabretooth mini will know that The Pit is not merely an oubliette into which the Quiet Council can throw their less-desirable citizens. It’s also a means for those in exile to commune with the island itself. We should have expected Sinister to manifest himself all along, especially now that Doug is down there with him. And his message to Xavier in his lab, of “Don’t kill youself please” is just classic Sinister. So it seems that even though they tried their hardest to remove any of Sinister’s Trojan DNA, they were unsuccessful, and perhaps the Quiet Council was right to remove the voting powers of the Sinister Four.
Austin: It’s like he’s gone from infecting members of the council with himself to infecting Krakoa itself (which, honestly, we probably should have seen coming given, as you say, what we know of how The Pit works).
Mark: I’m personally glad that our three issues of Xavier brooding on Krakoa have paid off in something really interesting going forward. Leave it to Sinister, who is effectively the protagonist of this series, to spice things up. Whenever Sinister isn’t on the page, we should all be asking, “Where’s Sinister?”
X-Traneous Thoughts
- [Grote’s note: Those “Bishops” in the desert were poorly colored. Can we PLEASE stop whitewashing Black superheroes? There’s no reason Lucas should have the same skin tone as Egg.]
- Love the return of Sinister’s Cyclops monkey.
- Whatever version of Apocalypse this is, he certainly knows how to twist some of the most-often repeated X-Men cover copy, with “They will not survive the experience.”
- Mother Righteous’ “visions and scrying have provided destinations one can orientate toward — it seems that knowing is the key.” This is reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman notion of “soft places,” where dreams intersect with the real world and where one might end up anywhere and at any time.
- The excerpt from Exodus’ version of Exodus is a modification of Exodus 8:20, “And the Lord said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh; lo, he cometh forth to the water; and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me.”
- Speaking of, this is the second time Immortal has used one of these quotes as an epigraph, a feature that didn’t exist in this series before “Fall of X,” but was a feature of House of X and Powers of X, seemingly bringing this whole enterprise full circle.
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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
