Let's Talk About Powers Of X #6- SPOILERS

Hi, I’m David Harth and we’re meeting for our normal thing- talking about House Of X or Powers Of X. This will be the time we’ll meet like this… or will it? Stay tuned to the very end.

So, Powers Of X is over. I’m going, to be honest- of the two books, Powers Of X has always been the lesser book for me. In my review of the book, I call it supplementary and that’s probably the best way to describe it. It expanded upon things introduced in House Of X. That said, it did have some of its own things going on (the parts taking place in X-Men Year One Hundred and Year One Thousand), but for the most part, it felt like it was just there to give some shine to some of the concepts from House Of X.

This issue does a bit of rehashing, showing readers Charles and Moira’s first meeting again and the ending scenes from the last issue of House Of X, but it also greatly expands on X-Men Year One Thousand. First off, while it has appeared that the future society was controlled by mutants, but it isn’t. Instead, it’s controlled by the posthuman race, Homo Novissima. Homo Novissima is humanity enhanced by machines. They are literally posthuman. Throughout both books, there has been this idea of the symbiosis of man and machine, working together to fight against mutant-kind. The Librarian illustrates this perfectly when he’s talking to Moira and Wolverine- humans used machines to buy them time against mutants until they could find a way to evolve themselves.

The Preserve, which in the first issue seemed like it was only used to keep humans as a relic of ancient times, holds mutants. Homo Novissima keeps them both around possibly to remember their past and lord their superiority over them. They also keep Wolverine and Moira, which at least in Wolverine’s case, seems kind of short-sighted. Wolverine has been teaching the mutants in the Preserve to rebel, to strive for freedom. Freedom is a concept they don’t even have anymore because all they know is the Preserve. Wolverine has always been the type to mentor others, to help them fight against the tyranny of their lives. Moira is being kept for an even simpler reason- if they kill her or let her die, she can make sure the future never comes true.

Wolverine still being around makes a lot of sense, of course- his healing factor makes him practically immortal. Moira being alive makes less sense. Her powers just resurrect her at the time of her birth. How she survived that long doesn’t make much sense and it seems narratively convenient. It’s also not something that we’re going to get explained either because Wolverine kills her at the end of the sequence, after he proves that he’s much faster than the Librarian’s enhanced brain can deal with (there’s a scene earlier when the Librarian dispatches an attacking mutant and remarks that the mutant would have to be much faster to actually be able to touch him), ending this timeline.

And that’s where the big secret of the issue is revealed- this is Moira’s sixth life. Earlier in this little series of articles, I posited that X-Men Year One Thousand wouldn’t be part of Moira’s ninth life like Year One Hundred was. I thought that it meant that there would be a new Nimrod at some point in her tenth life and that Nimrod would join with the Phalanx in the future and bring them back in time to take revenge on mutants.

Well, I was wrong.

The Year One Thousand takes place in Moira’s sixth life, the life that readers know nothing about. We actually still know nothing about it, but we know enough- mutants failed somewhere along the way but survived in numbers enough to be preserved. I feel like at some point, Hickman will come back to this. It also makes more sense with the Phalanx and why they’ve come to Earth. The Phalanx search out advanced machines and Homo Novissima are a combination of man and machine. Maybe I just wasn’t picking up on something throughout the book, but I never guessed that Librarian and the rest of the planet Earth wasn’t a mutant society enhanced by machines. It didn’t really make any sense for that society to want to become part of the Phalanx. With Homo Novissima being a combination of man and machine, an artificially evolved race, becoming a part of the Phalanx is a natural step.

Think of it like this- you’ve been faced with a superior race, the one that is going to supplant you and you’ve won the day by changing yourself, bonding with the machines which you’ve made to help you deal with this new race (there’s a scene from X-Men Year One Hundred that shows a group of humans worshipping machines and modifying their babies- making it seem like the paradigm of X-Men Year One Thousand is inevitable). You would be afraid of what could come at you and want to survive no matter what. The Phalanx would offer the best way to keep you and yours safe. Your people would still survive, especially with the way that Homo Novissima has modified themselves so that the Phalanx could absorb their culture. Joining with them is the smartest thing you could do. It offers both survival and power.

I’ve always wondered what the point of the Year One Thousand stuff was. It didn’t seem like it fit into anything and even with this reveal, it still doesn’t make a lot of sense. It shows an endpoint of the war between humans and mutants, sure, but is it needed? It’s established that Wolverine and Moira have been waiting to find out about how to prevent this future, but we’ve already seen that same kind of scene earlier in this book, in Year One Hundred. Elsewhere in the book, Hickman has shown the way humans, machines, and mutants were trapped in a death spiral elsewhere in this book. These plot threads, even seeing their fruition, feel a little redundant. That said, I still like it and the reveal of this issue, but it’s just repeating something that has already been said.

Before I stop talking about this part of the book, I just want to talk about the actual panel where Wolverine kills Moira. I get into it in my review, but God, do I love this panel. I think it’s a microcosm of the whole series. The foreground is entirely black- Wolverine, Moira, the foliage surrounding them. Wolverine and Moira are locked in an embrace of death. Behind, the sun shines, highlighting the sacrifice being made and representing the hope that this act represents. The hope of change, that things don’t have to be this way. House Of X and Powers Of X have both been about mutants fighting against all the things that have held them down, trying to change the world to make it more suitable for them to thrive and survive. Moira’s powers are that in a nutshell- a reset button that offers hope. The present is always dark, but the future can always offer some kind of hope.

I feel like I didn’t articulate that very well, but look at the page again and think about these series that are one. Maybe you’ll get the same vibe I did.

I like the fact that this book showed Xavier after reading Moira’s mind for the first time and how it affected him. Can you imagine seeing all that she went through, seeing your dream, one you just had, being destroyed over and over again? It would be a traumatic experience. Xavier, though, stays optimistic throughout. He’s still trying to figure out a way to make it all work according to his dream. Moira’s stated purpose is to break that optimism of his. There’s a whole section of her journals about it. It looks like at some point she succeeded, especially after the reveal of Xavier’s message to humanity that was revealed in the last issue of House Of X. There are some redacted parts of her journals and I think Hickman will play with those at some point in the future.

We find out that Mystique is only serving on the Quiet Council to get Destiny back- something Moira doesn’t want because Destiny can see her in ways no one else can. Moira is scared that Destiny will tell everyone the truth- that mutants always lose, but Magneto and Xavier aren’t scared of that at all. In fact, they think that eventually, all mutants should know that, just like they do.

That’s really all that’s new for this issue. I don’t really know where I think Hickman is going to take things in the future. There’s something about Moira I don’t entirely trust and I know that Apocalypse is going to be trouble at some point. All I can do is reiterate something I’ve said in this column a million times- I am so excited by what Hickman has in store. He’s revitalized the X-Men. The X-Men are what brought me to the dance with comics. I think they are easily the most important concept in comics. For too many years lately, Marvel has been marginalizing them and this whole Dawn Of X thing, led by Hickman, is a perfect first step into bringing them back to prominence. I hope it excites you just as much as it has excited me and that you’ve enjoyed this series of articles.

Speaking of this series of articles, I’m going to keep the Let’s Talk About thing going, but it’s probably not going to be about new books. Next week, I might do one on X-Men #1, but the ongoing plan is that this series is going to be me talking about some of the great comics of the past I’ve read and my impressions of them. I really hope you stick around for that. I’ll miss our little chats if you don’t. What am I without you, the audience?

My favorite comic writer is Grant Morrison, so when this article returns in its new guise (barring my continuing to do it this current way for Hickman’s X-Men), I’m going to talk about his work in-depth and we’re going to start with Animal Man. I won’t be covering everything he’s done, but I’ll get into the whys of that when I start the new series of articles.

You’re going to get so tired of me when I do The Invisibles. I have so much to say about that book. That article is going to be so long.

So, please come back next week. It will be fun, I promise.