Powers of X [01] : The Last Dream of Xavier *spoilers*

I forgot to put spoilers in the thread title.
Sorry. Don't read.
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I'll skip the part in the previews.

Rasputin. Cylobel. Percival. Cardinal. A team of 4 that went on a mission to gather information. All but two die. Well we dont know if Cylobel died.

FYI Cylobel was created to be a hound. And we didnt get any info on Percival.

Cardinal is a pacifist? He literally watched as Rasputin tried to save Cylobel and did nothing. She was PISSED at him.

Cylobel and Percival gone too soon.

Back to the present: We see that whatever Mystique and Toad stole was brought to Xavier and Magneto. We get a peek at House of M. It was shown on the map of Genosha from HoX #1.

Mystique is like "I have demands" and Xavier is like they have "further demands as well".

Xavier puts that stolen data into a tree? Or organic something. Someone else can explain that but it doesnt really go anywhere in this issue yet.

Looks like the humans and machines are working together ish. With the humans on the lowest end of the pecking order.

This is actually something new that I dont think we've seen in the X-Men universe yet. Someone else can correct me if I am wrong.

The human / mutant / machine war.

Rasputin is super OP. But she was bred that way.

I believe she is an amalgamation of: Quire / Pryde / Bain (who's this) / Rasputin / Kinney

As many have guessed. Sinister was responsible for this. And also he betrays the mutants. Thats why we get a repeat of a failed mutant nation :( BETRAYAL !

Back to Cylobel: She is taken to Nimrod and Omega by the humans because she wont talk. Nimrod put her in a tank that will give him all the info he wants and basically make her a data mine for a mutant info. Someone can explain this better than me though. There's a lot more to it.

We see Green Magento / Wolverine / Zorn? / Tree Man ( Idk who this is)

All remaining mutants are on Asteroid K.

They have posts in Shiar Space.

Is that a transcended Xavier?

Ends with what looks like a mutant version of Adam and Steve ( I mean Eve)...

So not super detailed but hopefully gets you guys a little excited about the issue.

I thought it was good. A lot of world building which we know Hixman is excellent at doing.

But I liked HoX #1 better.

Oh I forgot about the Moira / Xavier scene. They are in a fair. He is happy because he had this dream of a changed world. He doesnt recognize her at first until she tells him to read her mind.
She says "it's not a dream if its real", I think there is more to this scene. But someone can explain why it's the most important page?

Yeah, Clyobel took a LONG bath!

Nice synopsis of the issue you have there.

[QUOTE=Punch Dimension.;4491107]Nice synopsis of the issue you have there.[/QUOTE]

Right? Very.....Succinct.

Quick review.

3/5
Not as good as HOX 1. I liked the art and the exchange between Xavier, Magneto, and Mystink. And Xaviers comments do clear some things up. Why is Brotherhood allowed on Krakoa or sent on mission? Xavier allows them to stay there , away from humans if they chose, long as they contribute something & fall in line. Mystink has more demands, and Xavier didn't outright reject it, so seems there's extra forms of payment or perks granted.

Otherwise, a I am not invested in the new characters. I'm more interested in seeing the lives of some existing characters who haven't been around much or haven't gotten much focus since bigger developments.Every issue Hickman writes will be important in the grand scheme of things. But I am indifferent to the new set of characters. Doesn't help Rasputin has been on so many covers I was tired of her before we got to this issue. lol

ugh. I'll just try to recall from my memory.

The book seems to be called Powers of X as it takes place in 4 time periods:
10^0 = 1 = the first year
10^1 = 10 = 10 years later = present day
10^2 = 100 = 100 years later
10^3 = 1000 = 1000 years later

The 1st year segment focuses on Charles Xavier at a time where he's able to walk. He meets Moira who mentions meeting the fortune teller who drew 3 tarot cards being the Magician, the Tower and I forgot the third one which are shown as references to Rasputin, Nimrod and Cardinal. The scene ends with Moira telling Charles why call his dream a dream when it's real and Charles reads her mind.

The present day segment focuses on Mystique returning from escaping from the F4. She gives the flash drive to Magneto and Xavier and tells them she has more demands which Charles responds "no problem I have more demands too".

The 100 years segment starts with the preview. The dying mutant seems to called Percival. Cylobel is still captured by the Sentinels despite Rasputin's efforts. Cylobel is taken to Karima and Nimrod. The humans seem to have turned into a man-machine race. Karima wants to extract info from Cylobel and Nimrod reveals he created a system that breaks down mutants to data and they put Cylobel in it.

the 1000 years segment shows the Nimrod's citadel becomes a library which is in the hands of the mutants. A mutant that looks like a blue alien version of Charles and a mini-bot version of Nimrod are working on the mutant data device with Cylobel's pod seemingly trying to reverse the effects. Nimrod tells the blue mutant he's glad Homo sapiens are over and then the two head over to a preserve where it seems a male and a female humans are being kept in a zoo.

[QUOTE=Silver Fang;4491119]Quick review.

3/5
Not as good as HOX 1. I liked the art and the exchange between Xavier, Magneto, and Mystink. And Xaviers comments do clear some things up. Why is Brotherhood allowed on Krakoa or sent on mission? Xavier allows them to stay there , away from humans if they chose, long as they contribute something & fall in line. Mystique has more demands, and Xavier didn't outright reject it, so seems there's extra forms of payment or perks granted.

Otherwise, a I am not invested in the new characters. I'm more interested in seeing the lives of some existing characters who haven't been around much or haven't gotten much focus since bigger developments.Every issue Hickman writes will be important in the grand scheme of things. But I am indifferent to the new set of characters. Doesn't help Rasputin has been on so many covers I was tired of her before we got to this issue. lol[/QUOTE]

What existing X-Characters are from 100/1000 years from now that you know of?

Also, Mystink?

Ok! Detailed Review! Big spoilers ahead!


We open at a fair. One of those where you have strongmen and little people and tarot readers and such. Xavier is walking around, you get the sense he may be looking for mutants. This is [B]year one[/B], the year Xavier first conceived his dream of coexistence, and he is a happy man.

Enter Moira MacTaggert. This is, from Xavier perspective, the first time they ever met. They talk a bit about the fair, and it feels slightly meta. The fair is a distraction for what is really going on, as the fisticuffs and explosions of this comic will be window dressing for the ideas within it. That is my take anyway.

Moira, who knows about the future and will openly say she knew Xavier from before, asks him why he is so happy, and he tells her about this dream he recently had. Moira looks… sad, actually, even devastated. She knows the hardships the future will bring. And it is in that moment that she says “It is not a dream if its real”. When a weirded out Xavier asks who she is, she lets him into her mind. He acts surprised.

We change scene, but who Moira actually is, and even if she is the same Moira we always knew or some kind of doppelgänger is unresolved.

We move into the present, [B]ten years after Xavier had his dream[/B]. (Which by the way sets in continuity that less than than ten years go between the O5 and now.) Mystique and Toad are coming back from their mission. They seem to arrive to some part of Krakoa reserved for… animalistic mutants who vaguely resemble fairies also? A bit of a midsummer dream vibe going on there. Mystique goes to the House of M section, and gives Magnus the information she stole from Damage Control. But she wants more in exchange. Just when you thought that maybe there are several factions within Krakoa, Xavier shows up. X takes the stick with the info (using what looks like TK, by the way), and agrees to her terms, mostly because he needs another task done. He is still a bit militant-creepy.

We launch again into the future, and it is a [B]hundred years into the future[/B], where we get to the preview scene. At the end of it, Rasputin and the priest ("Priest of the last religion", as stated by Moira) flee and Cylobel is captured by the soldiers. Rasputin is shown to be a beast with several mutant powers, but the priest just does not fight. They are using a black seed of Krakoa to travel, as if the main plant had been took over at some point.

The charts between panels explain us how this world came to be.

It is essentially an evolution of the conflict we saw back in HoX. The humans allied themselves with the machines, we do not know to what extent, (Rasputin says “the human lost their souls”). At some point they created the HOUND program, with kennels where mutants were breed to infiltrate and fight another mutants. Cylabel was one of these hounds, a “black brain” immune to telepathy and breed for deception and betrayal. Unsurprisingly, the whole program failed and was scrapped because hounds tended to betray humanity.

The situation of the mutants had started to become critical, though, so they adapted the breeding program in one of the their outpost, in Mars. Sinister was the lead scientific. They started first cloning a single x-gene in each individual, but the escalation of the war led them further, to the chimera program, that included more and more X-genes. The second generation had two different x-genes. The third generation up to five. To this generation belongs Rasputin, and she wields the powers of Unus, Quentin Quire, Colossus, X-23 and Shadowcat. To note is that the chimera do not have the full extent of their every component: If Quire has omega telepathy (10), Rasputin has half his power (5).

In each generation there was a percentage of failure, which dos not mean necessarily a dead baby but a mutant born without aggression and with "peace time powers”. These anomalies were called “Cardinals”.

The third generation of breed mutants, however, was an effective tool against the man-machine alliance, and the war seemed close to a turning point, when they developed the fourth generation, using exclusively omega traits. These OP chimeras proved unstable, and they turned on mutantkind destroying Krakoa and the Mars outpost, along with forty percent of the mutant population.
This was no accident but a betrayal by Sinister, who was paid by the humans with a swift execution.

After that, most mutants relocated to the Shi’ar empire, where Empress Sandra (X and Lilandra’s daughter) plans to someday using them as a invasion force for the Sol system. Some of them sirve as Guardians for the Empire.

Back in Sol nine mutants were left, in Asteroid K, still fighting a fight that seems lost.

Back to the comic, the human machine soldiers deliver Cylobel to Nimrod and Karima, who live in a tower somewhere. It looks like humans have a subservient part in the human machine alliance. The machines have been doing some evolving, and the Nimrod seems… enthusiastic at points. He sort of apologizes for the hound program, but he has not evolved an empathy as of yet.
They put Cylo in a “bath” that will convert her into information, information an AI he developed can read. They want to know why the mutants infiltrated the Nexus, what they stole.

In Asteroid K, Rasputin and the cardinal arrive through a portal. the cardinal apologizes for being useless in the early battle: He literally cannot fight. They encounter the rest of the mutants: Green Magneto, Wolverine, Kuan Yin Xorn and Balk Tom Cassidy in full tree form. Or some people who look like them anyway. This is 100 years in the future, after all.

Notably, when they are communicated that Cylobel and Percival (The yellow mutant form the preview) are dead, they ask if Rasputin and the cardinal have the info. If it was "worth it”. The cardinal, pacifist that he is, does not answer. It is any of this “worth it”?

And off they go, to see “the old man” (Xavier?)

We move again, [B]a thousand years after Xavier had his dream[/B], and this is an epilogue. Someone who looks like a mutant, but could be an alien, is in the former Man Machine base. He is perusing the archives, the place where all the mutants turned into information are stored. He is with Nimrod, evolved to look like a futuristic drone, who apologizes. They are unable to bring mutants back to life. And it is not his fault, because the archives were created as an advantage in the war, a war over in a “surprising” way.

The ending is somewhat open to interpretation, and I will leave it open to discussion because I cannot write a word more at this points.

10/10. Someone build these people a monument.

As always sorry about my grammar issues. Not a native!

These new characters aren’t very interesting. Just a hodgepodge of classic X-Men.

The data pages reveal that:

- Krakoa was somehow destroyed due to a traitor between the 10 and 100 periods.
- constant fighting caused mutant pop. to decrease
- Mister Sinister was enlisted to create a mutant breeding program
- GUESS HOW THAT TURNED OUT
- Rapustin is a Chimera-type bred mutant. Her powers come from Quentin, x-23, Colossus and 2 names I didn't recognise.


Edit: the 5 mutants are Kitty, Colossus, X-23, Quire and Unus.

100 year Nimrod is the sassy robot we deserve.

[QUOTE=Vegan Daddy;4491132]These new characters aren’t very interesting. Just a hodgepodge of classic X-Men.[/QUOTE]

Agreed. But It was a given POX would focus heavily on them given the covers and the premise of the book where Hickman says it would deal with history & future repercussions. So I was always more interested in the HOX side of things where more present-day X-Men would show.

[QUOTE=Vegan Daddy;4491132]These new characters aren’t very interesting. Just a hodgepodge of classic X-Men.[/QUOTE]

That's kind of the whole point, no?

I'm willing to give them a few more issues to develop their personalities.

That Nimrod was the cutest murder machine I have ever seen
10/10

So apparently Rasputin does not have any DNA from Magik, but does carry her soul sword...I guess it makes sense since Magik's soul sword is not part of her mutant powers...but how the hell does Rasputin have it? :confused: