Powers Of X #1 (Marvel Comics)
In two pages, Jonathan Hickman changes everything for the X-Men.
Breaking down five months in eight panels, these two pages in House Of X (HOX)
#1 show characters planting flowers across the Earth, the Moon, and Mars, setting up a network of mutant-friendly habitats and gateways to the X-Men’s living island base. This is the first step in completely changing how mutants interact with the human world. As this debut issue unfolds, the creative team reintroduces the X-Men as a political, economic, and cultural force ushering in a new future. It’s the kind of audacious, forward-thinking concept you’d expect from a creator like Hickman, who comes to the X-Men with a long-term plan that begins by throwing readers directly into a period of rapid, wild change.
Make that four periods of rapid, wild change. In Powers Of X (POX) #1, we see how the human/mutant conflict destroys Earth and spreads throughout the cosmos over centuries, with plot threads set in the past, present, and future. The X here is the Roman numeral, and the title is intended to be read as Powers Of Ten. There are four timelines, each represented by a power corresponding to a year: X⁰ (year one), X¹ (year 10), X² (year 100), and X³ (year 1000). X⁰ is the beginning of Charles Xavier’s dream, showing his younger self as he meets Moira MacTaggert for the first time. X¹ continues on the present-day timeline of House Of X #1, giving us more ominous teasing of Charles’ current mission. X² jumps 100 years in the future to reveal the dystopian landscape of the Man-Machine Supremacy, and X³ goes 1,000 years forward, ending all the conflict with a calm visit to The Mutant Library and The Preserve.
If this all sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. Hickman comes to the X-Men with tons of ideas, and he’s not wasting any time implementing them. HOX and POX are six-issue miniseries that alternate shipping every week, and their double-sized first issues are packed with new information, much of which is presented in sharply designed data pages that have become a signature of Hickman’s work. You don’t need to know a lot about the X-Men to jump into this story. The data pages allow Hickman to give newcomers the information they need to know without having to fold exposition into the interactions between characters, which makes the scenes between data pages very active.
In an interview with SKTCHD’s Off-Panel podcast (full disclosure: I write a quarterly column for SKTCHD), designer Tom Muller speaks in depth about the design process for the new X-titles and how he collaborated with Jonathan Hickman to develop a cohesive visual identity for the line. Muller has been elevating comic book design with his work on creator-owned Image series like Zero, Drifter, and Motor Crush, and for the X-Men relaunch, he created a tool kit of different design elements for Hickman to use on the data pages. The result is a fusion of both their styles that plays a big part in distinguishing these books from other superhero titles.
The data pages serve multiple purposes: They provide information, introducing new ideas and providing necessary background knowledge. This information is tied to the scene that comes before it, turning the data pages into bookends that expand on the story with a very different blend of text and visual elements. This makes for a longer read, but it also switches up the pace, providing a space for Hickman to situate the audience and cleanse the palate before jumping into the next scene. After one reads Powers Of X #1, the data pages gain a new dimension in the context of a millennium-spanning narrative, which ends with a librarian overseeing a giant hub of information. I’m now wondering if these pages are pulled from the archives of The Mutant Library, which would be a very clever way of putting the reader deeper inside the world of the story.
That world is beautifully illustrated by Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva, two artists who channel Stuart Immonen, one of the greatest superhero artists of all time. But they channel different Immonen styles. In House Of X, Larraz delivers more textured, heavily shaded linework that evokes Immonen’s art on All-New X-Men and Amazing Spider-Man. The art for Powers Of X recalls the flatter animated style Immonen used for Ultimate Spider-Man and Nextwave, with Silva and Adriano Di Benedetto depicting the different timelines with remarkably clean, confident lines. There’s clear overlap between the main artists of these two titles, which is very smart given that HOX and POX are one big 12-issue story, and the visuals gain even more consistency by sharing a colorist.
The concepts introduced in these two debut issues significantly alter the course of the Marvel Universe, situating mutants as the ultimate disruptors of human society. This isn’t a new idea. Grant Morrison had it back with his New X-Men run in the early ’00s, and he was committed to exploring how mutant culture diverges from humans. Marvel did a lot of backtracking after Morrison’s run, and by severely reducing the mutant population, Marvel put an end to the cultural evolution Morrison had started. Hickman recognizes how revolutionary Morrison’s take was, and after spending far too long being hunted, persecuted, and killed, the mutants are claiming their dominion over humanity.
Morrison’s New X-Men debuted at a time when Marvel was keeping its main superhero lines separate, giving creators the opportunity to tell stories that weren’t restricted by larger events. That distance from the rest of the Marvel Universe is a big part of why New X-Men is such a distinct chapter in X-history, but that also keeps the series from taking advantage of the benefits of a shared universe. Morrison’s story has a huge scope, but it always feels like the stakes apply only to a select group of characters that Morrison specifically wants to use.
Hickman makes it clear from the start that his new status quo affects not only every mutant, but also the entire Marvel Universe. The Flowers Of Krakoa create habitats and gateways for mutants, but there are also three that have been turned into drugs that specifically benefit humans: one extends human life by five years; one cures diseases of the mind; and one is an adaptive, universal antibiotic. The X-Men are taking a chunk of that Big Pharma pie, and Krakoa has given them an economy that they can use to leverage amnesty for mutants with other countries. The implications of this are huge, but that’s pretty much the case with everything in these two issues, which has inspired passionate fan speculation the likes of which I haven’t seen in years.
There are many mysteries unfolding here, but one of the biggest is Charles Xavier, who now dresses all in black and wears a helmet that covers his eyes with a giant X. Hickman leans into Xavier’s shady mutant mastermind qualities. This X-Men run begins with Xavier in an underground cavern where he watches adult mutants hatch from pods in the ground. These slimy naked figures reach up to their god, who utters four words that have never been creepier: “To me, my X-Men.” Larraz’s character acting enhances Xavier’s menace, and as the hatchlings reach for him, Xavier turns his hands up and grins. He keeps his brood at a distance, and Hickman keeps the audience at a distance, giving them no insight into how Xavier has made all this happen and why his character acts like this now. Marvel touts a Moira/Xavier interaction in POX #1 as the most important event in X-Men history, but what Xavier sees when he searches Moira’s mind is kept hidden from readers.
As serious as this story gets, Hickman understands the value of humor in drawing readers in and increasing tension. Hickman brings Cyclops and the Fantastic Four together for a generally pleasant interaction that highlights Cyclops’ respect for the family. Instead of giving them a fight, Cyclops approaches them as an ally and is willing to compromise. This scene offers something more familiar, with Hickman returning to the team that defined his early Marvel career. It’s a breather that helps the reader regain their bearings after an intense ride, but then Hickman throws in one last twist, ending the conversation on a foreboding note by reminding the Fantastic Four of their stake in mutant survival.
POX #1 goes to darker places than its companion issue, but the humor is even more pronounced. It also comes from an unexpected source: Nimrod, a mutant-killing, world-dominating machine. Hickman writes Nimrod as deeply apologetic for all of the atrocities committed by previous models, but it hasn’t actually gained empathy for those who have suffered. It feels shame about ideas that were poorly executed, and it has new ways of wiping out mutants that are more beneficial to its goals. Silva has a lot of fun with Nimrod’s expressions when he gets excited about the prospect of cataloging a new mutant, and giving this machine a personality makes him a significantly more engaging antagonist.
At the end of HOX #1, Magneto comments on how much humans love symbolism and religion, and Hickman uses both to enrich his X-Men narrative. Magneto’s ominous final line in HOX #1, “You have new gods now,” ties directly to the ending of POX #1, in which The Librarian looks down at The Preserve and the two new humans they have bred inside as a reminder of past mistakes. The final panel of HOX #1 is a proclamation of mutant godhood while the final panel of POX #1 reveals the Adam and Eve of a new creation myth, tightly connecting the two titles on a thematic level.
My enjoyment of Hickman’s X-books is significantly informed by recently reading Ed Piskor’s X-Men: Grand Design, an astounding breakdown of the first 280 issues of X-Men comics. I’ve read maybe half of these comics (mostly the Claremont ones), and nearly all of them when I was a teenager, so it was a delight to refresh my memory while also filling in the blanks with Piskor’s chronological retelling. There are so many characters and plot lines developed in those three decades, and you see how the X-Men franchise evolves over time as the overarching narrative expands across galaxies, timelines, and dimensions.
Maybe it’s the recent passing of Marvel icons like Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, but the publisher is very interested in exploring its past right now, with Mark Waid and Javier Rodriguez currently telling The History Of The Marvel Universe and Tom Scioli launching Fantastic Four: Grand Design in October. House Of X #1 came out on the same day as Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross’ Marvels Epilogue, a poignant short story about honoring the past while taking joy in the new, and it’s fitting that this nostalgic one-shot featuring the X-Men was released alongside a debut that redefines the status of mutants in the Marvel Universe. Hickman restores a spirit of innovation and discovery to the X-Men, elevating mutants to a position of power that opens up a world of creative opportunities.
86 Comments
I don’t think I’ve been more genuinely excited for Wednesdays to roll around since Secret Wars. What a surprise. Marvels: Epilogue was also a lil slice of perfection that I hope people enjoyed as much as I did – few things are as wildly powerful as Ross/Busiek running together at full steam.Also, just going to hype Motor Crush again for a sec – it’s kinda flown under the radar, especially during its current hiatus, but if you like great characters, great art, motorcycles, and fun, it’s a hell of a great ride that I highly recommend.
Ignore
I was excited about this until Powers of X brought in the extremely overused alternate futures trope. The mutants must avoid a nightmarish future! Again! And again! And yet again! It worked okay for Days of Future Past, but the twenty other times just made the X-Men continuity more and more incomprehensible.
And, if I may make an unrelated and petty point, there are too damn many characters in the MU named Nate/Nathan/Nathaniel.
I’d love to see an editor go, “Okay, comic creators, pitch me your X-Men run. Caveats: No time travel, no Phoenix, no traitors, no alternate realities, no here’s-the-REAL-evolutionary-replacement-for-humanity stories. What have you got?”
A: Cancellation
Astonishing X-Men?
The mutants must avoid a nightmarish future! Only Year 100. By Year 1000, mutants are the dominant life on Earth and humans are only part of “the Preserve.” This makes things vastly different from previous bad futures.Also: Hickman has said that there won’t be any time travel in these books, so…this future might just be THE future and nothing can change that.
Oh, vastly different from every other story that’s exactly the same! *gestures at umpteenth issue aimed at adult nerds afraid of change* So vast!!
It’s almost like you didn’t actually read what I wrote or the actual issue and are instead complaining simply to complain.
If mutants actually appeared on Earth with the powers shown in X-Men, they *would* be in charge of the world within 5 years.
This comment didn’t age well. 🙂
Counter-argument: it’s such an integral part of x-men that it fits nicely to have it show up here. There’s always a bad future, always a sentinel deploying human populace, but this posits two important differences: first, that 900 years after, humanity has fully lost to mutantkind and second, that it seems like this war may have resulted form Xavier overplaying his hand with a mutant state.
I was personally super disappointed when I realixed POX was retreading Age of Apocalypse/DOFP material until I actually read it at which point I realized I’ve almost never seen so many new ideas injected into that template.
It seems like this is more about showing long-lasting effects of the major events in the present, we will see if it actually involves time travel or is just Hickman playing out his ideas to an endpoint. That strikes me as a smart thing to do, as this review mentions about Morrison’s run, Marvel has a tendency to reel back any big or crazy changes pretty quickly.
They’re kind of out of X-Men stories
I’v got my fingers crossed he’s going to “fix” DOFP, because ever since that story, the X-comics have treated it like this giant, immovable boulder that must always be written around.
Can you elaborate. I’m pretty up on my modern continuity, but I’ve never read DOFP. What have they done to write around it?
Pretty much everything. Before, the mutant struggle was more abstract. Then DOFP came along and basically made the point that humans will pretty much always try and render mutants extinct and/or servile.
Which is fine by and of itself. But instead of treating it like just one of many possible futures (and storytelling opportunities), we spent the next few decades with it being treated like prophecy. Almost every big event since then has been predicated on someone trying to either pre-empt, kickstart, or react to the idea that mutants are doomed to die in Sentinel slave pens.
There is no time travel. Hickman is building a facet of the Marvel universe as it pertains to the X-Men, same way that Jason Aaron is for the Avengers and Donny Cates is for the cosmic titles. I get it: the better of 2 decades have been trash. I believe Hickman is ushering a new era of the X-Men (no doubt benefiting the MCU).
True.And though I usually like Hickman as a writer when he has free reign over new areas, I really have no desire to see Magneto & Mystique as heroes again, or Xavier as a bad guy; or whatever combination of that sort of dumb shit which appears to be going on there. Yawn…what a twist.
You may be bored by that, but the duplicity of Magneto, Mystique and Charles Xavier has *always* been a part of their character.So it may seem unimaginative to make them cross from bad to good and viceversa, but it just writing them in character.
The run is meant to be a foundation building exercise for a cleaner series of stories. If you’re going to do that and give a clean definition of who the mutants are and why they matter, having a DOFP type of storyline seems the logical way to do it. You’re not going to define X-Men based on planar travel or something. To me this is a reset button and jumping off point for new fans. Honestly I like this far better than the nonsense that was X-Men red where all humans are tiki torch racists and all that.
You know that they’ve been doing this X-men reset button thing every few years since 1991? (I was one of the fanboys dumb enough to buy multiple copies of X-Men #1 that year.) That was a big damn deal, but within two years everything had gone to shit again.Perhaps this will be the reset that really makes a permanent change, but past performance indicates the Circle of Lameness shall continue.
Why do you think it’s an alternate future? Everything that’s been stated publicly by Hickman says that’s it’s The Future, not alternate. So obviously Marvel may change that in the future, but right now it’s not alternate, not intended to be alternate. Also, there is no time travel in the story so far.
Ummm, this didn’t seem like a time travel story. It utilizes flash forward narrative but it didn’t feel like there was a time travel component.
I don’t get the sense that these futures are reversible or meant to be seen as such by Hickman. The reader is meant to see the saga unfold knowing something of the eventual fate of the mutants, humans and AI locked in a battle for dominance.
I don’t like it. They’re ditching the entire co-existance thing for separatism (and superiority). Especially when Magneto, of all people, plays the “Mutants have never committed genocide” card. Not for lack of trying, you jackass. It’s not moral superiority that did it, it’s because people stopped it. Specifically, people stopped MAGNETO HIMSELF from pulling it off.
Also, Professor X now looks like the Evil Reed Richards from the Ultimate universe.
I haven’t read X-Men since Morrison but I picked up House of X and it felt like I was starting in the middle of a story. Was any of this built up to in the main comics or did it just come out of nowhere? I looked up Krakoa and didn’t see anything about it having flowers or anything. And apparently Prof X is back alive again but has he been wearing the helmet for a while?
Krakoa has been a “character” in the series for a while now, since Aaron’s run I think, but the flowers are new. Xavier’s return is fairly recent, he’s only appeared a handful of times since.
Krakoa goes all the way back to Giant Size X-Men #1 – but recently has been part of the grounds at the Institute.
Assume when reading a superhero comic book today that the intended audience is a compulsive buyer of related products, regardless of quality, and has been for some time. That’s pretty much all the genre has left in its audience.
It’s definitely intentionally confusing and doesn’t build off of the previous run so far. The only thing you’re missing is that Xavier came back to life young using Fantomex’s body.
That is the joy of comics. No beginning, no end
Yeah as a teen in the 90s I pretty obsessively read my brother’s back issues of the main Claremont run (genuinely most of it from ‘75 or whenever through most of the stuff with Jim Lee) as well as some spin-offs like New Mutants. But aside from the occasional issue I didn’t read much of the 90s stuff or get back into them until the Morrison run. And after that I did check out the Joss Whedon stuff. I get that those runs were pretty self contained, but….Reading these two first issues, I felt mostly lost and I question people like the critic here who seem to think it’s an easy place to jump in for newbies. Granted, I’ve not been a heavy superhero comic reader in years and may just be slow to get into the new style. Also, I was not a fan of the data pages… And maybe I’m simply too nostalgic for the era of X-Men I know best, but…
Very fitting that the Fantastic Four make a cameo in this X-Men story since both teams have been outcasts in Marvel since they haven’t been able to show up in the MCU. Of course, that’s about to change.
“Changes everything for the X-men”…. unlike the 28 other times before it that seem to happen like clockwork every. friggin. year. in which ALL THE THINGS change so completely and utterly they’re totally different at least until sales tank enough they have to go back and make’em the same again…. like that you mean? ‘Cause color me blase but… I ain’t holdin’ my breath here.
Sava talks a lot about the data pages here and I understand it’s a Hickman signature at this point, but I could really do without them. I’d prefer that information folded organically into the narrative, and reading House of X (I haven’t gotten to Powers yet) I eventually got a little annoyed having to stop in the middle of the story for exposition couched in typographical experimentation (again, I get that it’s A Hickman Thing). That said, I’m liking it and I’m excited to see where it all goes, having been pleasantly discombobulated by the X-Men for the first time since Morrison.
Hey, while I agree completely, realize that this comic book is probably perfectly aimed at today’s target market for superhero books.Today’s superhero fans would rather be skimming summaries of “the lore” on Wikipedia than reading a story told through images, so… just cut out the middleman!
Or, y’know, it’s something that the writer has been doing as his hallmark style since literally his first comics work and has a decade of using them in creative ways.And to add to that: in that first work, there was an overlying idea that the text pieces weren’t exactly the most reliable narrator. So maybe Wikipedia isn’t and is the best comparison.
East of West is an unbelievable masterpiece.I try to avoid books that tie into larger universes because I don’t have the patience to keep up with all the extra crap and constant retcons.If this is fairly self contained ( I won’t need to but 40 titles just to get the story) then I will check it out.
Wait… Jonathan Hickman (The Black Monday Murders, East Of West)That’s a Troy McClure intro right there.
I am totally shocked by the fact that the art is **NOT** by Stuart Immonen. That is a pretty remarkable mimicry of his style, and I absolutely mean that as a compliment.
Huh, always forget how much this commenting crew dislikes Hickman.
Add to that the fact that X-Men fans are never happy, ever.
I mean, that’s sort of my surprise I guess. I read some Marvel but I’m not specifically an X-men fan and really enjoyed this. Thought it was a nice mix of accessible and continuity based and really curious where it goes. Then I come in here and people just, I dunno, hate is too strong a word. They’re apathetic tinged with bitterness.
Somewhat true. Though I don’t think it’s actual X-Men fans. It’s casual comic fans who haven’t actually picked up an issue in a decade and need to tell everyone why for some unexplained reason. Everyone I’ve seen talking about this series on reddit is super psyched.
I don’t think it’s really about Hickman. It’s a mixture of people who’ve read too many X-Men comics (so they suspect that all ‘events’ will turn out to be meaningless in the end, because dead characters always return and future apocalypses never arrive), and people who’ve read very few (so have no idea if they’re even supposed to know who these characters are).
This sounds like it might be the first time I pick up an X-book since Aaron’s Wolverine and the X-Men run. I’m still gonna wait til these two series hit trades, though, because I want to see how many books spin out of it and what the general quality level is. If we go right back to 5 X-titles with annual crossovers and shifting creative teams then I will pass.Also, the ideas in this remind me a bit of Imperium, the Valiant book where Harbinger antagonist Toyo Harada tries to make his own sovereign nation and make the world/future a better place by force. Still bummed out that series kind of sputtered out and the writer (Joshua Dysart) left Valiant, but thanks to this reminder I googled and apparently he finally came back to do a wrap-up miniseries. Now I just need to wait til October to get my hands on the collection for The Life and Death of Toyo Harada!
I don’t know about annual crossovers, but they’ve already announced the first batch of books that follow this. Hickman is writing X-Men and New Mutants (passing off the latter after the first arc), and the other books are Marauders, X-Force, Excalibur, and Fallen Angels, with a second wave of stuff coming somewhere down the line.Hickman is being positioned as a long-term line-wide “showrunner” (he supposedly hand-picked the creative teams and gave them their set ups), but it remains to be seen which of those, if any, will be required reading — if past history is anything to go buy, probably few to none, but I can’t remember the last time a whole line was supposedly being built around a single creative vision like this.
They’re relaunching the books out of this series with six new ongoings, so…
“their double-sized first issues are packed with new information,”Oh. Just what I’m looking for in the first issue of a sci-fi comic book: a pre-packaged update to a Wikipedia page.Really, though, among today’s superhero fans, that’s probably just about right…
I haven’t read it, but it sounds interesting. “Interesting” being something most cape books have been missing for a long time since the producing a Hollywood proof-of-concept script writing style came to the fore. However…
Marvel did a lot of backtracking after Morrison’s run…And this is why I’m not on board. The 1960s status quo is king in cape comics and I find the status quo boring. I expect the same thing to happen after this since, well, all of Hickman’s other works also reverted once he left the title.
Hey, I have a question. What are all the other superheroes doing during all these X-Men bad futures? Like, I feel like Steve Rogers and company wouldn’t just sit back and twiddle their thumbs while the government or whatever sends out armies of genocide robots to commit genocide on people. It’s part of why I’d be good with the X-Men never becoming part of the MCU, they always seem like they’re off in their own thing.
in Age of Apocalypse, the other heroes were dead and know that in DOFP, a grown Franklin Richards died aiding kitty pryde, i assume his parents are dead
Ah okay, so that kind of supports how I feel if the only way to make it work is to remove everyone else by killing them all off.
Not all the other heroes were dead in Age of Apocalypse but most were unpowered. There was a two-issue miniseries at the time that followed a resistance movement comprised of Tony Stark, Gwen Stacy, Ben Grimm and I don’t remember who else. It might’ve been Carlos Pacheco’s first work for Marvel, but I’m not sure. It seems like the first time I remember seeing his stuff, anyhow.
I gotta admit, Helmet Head Xavier looks kinda pervy and I’m digging it.
Question from a guy who hasn’t read an X-Men comic in a while: Who’s the blue lady with the big sword?
Shiela
“Rasputin”. Unknown as of yet if that’s a first name, last, or something else. Her parts of the story are set in a future where a desperate mutant leadership approved Mister Sinister’s breeding programs to create mutant “chimeras” with multiple high-level power sets.The infographics indicate she’s bred from a mix of Quentin Quire, Colossus, Unus the Untouchable, Shadowcat, and X-23. Her metal skin and force fields are recorded as being at the same level as Colossus and Unus, but her telepathy, phasing, and healing factor are listed as being half the strength of her ancestors.
Aw… comics.
That’s 100% Magik’s sword, too.
We don’t have a ton of info on her yet, but she is called Rasputin and seems to have a combination of Colossus, Magik, and Kitty’s powers.
The one they call Rasputin? I think that’s the future daughter of Colossus or his sister Magik.
Best girl
I really dug this.As an X-men fan of nearly 30 years who has been disappointed in the line for more than a decade now, this was breath of fresh air.House of M famously derailed the X-line and since late 2005 it’s struggled to figure out what it was about – How many different directions and writers have we seen come and go?Whedon’s run was great and finished well before being almost entirely ignored.Brubaker’s was pretty good overall, though it was a shame he didn’t stick around after setting up the whole San Francisco reboot.The Utopia/Schism thing,The Bendis run with the original five coming back and hanging around.The terrible Inhumans periodThe Gold/Blue relaunch and finally the past year.
Yeah. It’s the first time I’ve been excited about the X-Men since the whole Dark Reign/Utopia storyline that unfortunately wasn’t as good as I hoped. I’m really excited to see how this goes into Hickman’s past work (which probably will as Franklin is an Omega). And I’m digging the whole Xavier/Maker vibe.
Utopia had such potential and came as such a surprise after all the build up to the new San Francisco status quo, but it felt like once they go there, they didn’t really know what to do next. There was Second Coming which went nowhere and didn’t end up changing much of anything, then schism, and then finally AVX to knee-cap it at long last.
Yeah. Utopia felt aimless. I quit right before Schism. At that point I had grown tired of the direction the X-books were going. AVX was terrible.
They pretty much to ignore Whedon’s Astonishing when it ended up being so damned late. (And what did they ignore? Scott and Emma’s relationship got stronger, Kitty remained in the bullet for a while, Kavita Rao joined the science team (Club X?), Colossus is still around, S.W.O.R.D. is still around. The various things he did were established longer than Morrison’s, that’s for sure.
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I knew Hickman would blow people away with his X-Men run. They feel interesting again after so many years. He fully acknowledges the mutants are fundamentally different from everyone in the Marvel Universe and he sets up his signature tropes. Graphs to display data, letting the timelines influence decisions, it’s all Hickman. I wonder what passions he’ll give to DC once everything with the X-Men is over: https://gutternaut.net/2019/04/jonathan-hickman-on-ensemble-epics/.
I like HOX and POX as shorthand for these books, but now we know what X means, guess now they’re Ho10 and Po10?
House of X is still just the letter x, but in Powers of X the x is for ten. So… HOX and Po10!
Great article. I really enjoyed the books (House of X more so as it’s about characters I care about), but hope the text pages are used to a minimum going forward. They read a bit like a D&D manual or Wikipedia page, and that’s not really how I like my stories told.Looking forward to the next issues!
I’m finding HOX the more accessible (therefore enjoyable, I think?) of the two.
Both led me to pick up Black Monday Murders (I think the last time I red Hickman was before that series came out), which I am loving. However, it really shows how much Hickman relies on/enjoys using data pages and sort of semi-recycling glyphs-as-language. I found myself wondering whther I needed to be translating the dialog in the X titles, but I’m letting it go…for now.ETA: “find” not “finding,” I suppose, as there’s only been 1 of each!
It’s picky but that giant X helmet Xavier is wearing reminds me too much of the helmet Ultimate Marvel Reed Richards wore and in the end Richards turned into an egomaniacal monster.
A few stray observations:Wolverine smiling, with children is chilling.Prof X is telekinetic now? That thumb drive just floated on over to his grasp.Moira is wearing clothing almost identical to the Claremont run, which is a nice nod.
As long at it doesn’t impact the last issues of East of West.
How’s the Ed Piskor book? I was vaguely aware that Piskor was involved with the X-Men somehow but didn’t know the details until just now. X-Men Grand Design looks really interesting.I’m otherwise a fan of Piskor…
House of X #1 had me confused and weirded out so much. I was thrilled and couldn’t wait for the next issue. I’m finally excited about the X-Men again for the first time since Morrison’s run ended.
“That world is beautifully illustrated by Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva, two artists who channel Stuart Immonen, one of the greatest superhero artists of all time.”
Well, I don’t know if he’s one of the G.O.A.T.s but this is exactly why I’m here for these series.
I haven’t read current superhero comics in a long while but this got me hooked right away.
I’ve been off the X-men bandwagon for a long time. Morrison’s run was the last time I was truly into ‘em. It’s felt like a whole lot of petty squabbling between the core mutants for a while now, but I picked up House of X because I like Hickman…and like, two pages into it I realized that I was so in. Picked up Power of X and still in. The art’s gorgeous, of course. (I love the artist’s take on Moira.) But it feels like Hickman’s filling in the more nebulous parts of Mutant existence: the Omega classification, giving them their own language and culture, etc. that’s really, really going to pay off down the line. It’s one of those runs that feels like it’s adding to the tool box for future creators rather than taking any away, and that’s exciting.
I’ll never go back to Hickman books after the absolutely unreadable, convoluted mess that was Hickman’s Avengers and New Avengers Marvel Now run. Most Marvel Now titles were cash grab garbage but Hickmans multiple Avengers tie-in titles were especially egregious nonesense.