House of X & Powers of 10 discussion

[ZeroBG82]

Wait I haven't finished ranting. X3 would have worked as Life IX. Just say Nimrod smashed Apoc and followed Logan back through the No Place hub, then pull Moira back from the jaws of death. (The caption "So ended the 9th life" can be attributed without shame to an unreliable narrator... it would have been foreshadowed by the two black panels both captioned "And then..." in HOX2.) Nimrod the Lesser then dunks her and Logan into femto tubes next to Cylobel until say Year 990, when they're woken by Nimrod the Greater and introduced into the Zoo. (And we can forget how impossible it is that Logan could look only slightly older after 1000 years and that his blood can give others his healing factor...)

Placing X3 in Life VI falls in many ways. Having lived 1000 years to learn that Mutants lose to Post Humans shouldn't lead Moira to learn under the RAF (there's no BAF...) how to kill Trasks over a span of I forget how many years. At the very least she should have recruited Logan to do the job within a couple of days.

This shouldn't segue into Life VIII, the Magneto option. Why would Moira spend 1000 years with Logan only to fight him with Erik two lives later. Same with Life IX where Moira helps Apoc kill all Earth's heroes including Charles, Erik and the rest of the X-Men.

I don't necessarily want to wade into the larger issues being debated back and forth here, but I don't agree with this portion of your post. I don't think the X^3 works as life 9 nearly as well as it works as life 6. Precisely because each of the lives that come after it are clearly her attempts to resolve the problem once she has truly identified it. Turning to murder, Magneto, and ultimately Apocalypse don't fit Moira until she's learned just how truly dark the truth of the matter is. And each, increasingly radical, strategy she employs is tailored strictly to resolving the problem that she identifies during the events of life 6. Her taking those paths before she learns the true underpinnings of the problem, when she has exclusively pursued Xavier's course prior to her realization, doesn't fit.

As to your second point, that it doesn't make sense that she'd just abandon old allies, I think that speaks to the person Moira has become. She appears coldly manipulative, able to turn on anybody, use anybody to achieve her ends. She appears capable of still caring for people, of empathizing with them. But she can discard any attachment, abandon any personal loyalty. Her goal is what matters. She has been radicalized, as the story explicitly tells us. Her mission is what matters to her, people are tools to accomplish it or obstacles that must be overcome.

It does give her a rather more sinister aura, if one chooses to see her in that light. And makes Xavier and Magneto following her feel almost alarming at times. All of which I think is rather the point. It feels like we're SUPPOSED to be just a little bit hesitant with these new developments. Yes, mutants get a big win in House of X. But Powers of X makes it seem like everything is hanging by a few very delicate threads that not everyone involved can truly trace to their origin points. And that Moira herself may almost certainly be an unreliable narrator. I feel like we, the audience, have been placed in the role of Xavier and Magneto. We've seen exactly as much as Moira (or Hickman, if we want to be meta) wants us to, and through the lens that she has chosen to view it. And left to wonder just how much we perhaps haven't seen, or how much context we may be missing. But we must move forward, either in suspicion or faith. The drama moving forward will be how the players play out Moira's game, and how Moira herself perhaps reacts to the movements they make.

[spirit2011]

That’s your interpretation and it contradicts the book so not many will share it. Hickman is clearly indicating this isn’t the case and that Moira spent a long while trying to convince him to change his dream. I mean did you just not read the text pages?

It doesn't contradicts the book, we see Xavier on a very earlier stage doing preparations for Krakoa.
Saying that is it was recently that isn't supported by the book.

[JKtheMac]

It doesn't contradicts the book, we see Xavier on a very earlier stage doing preparations for Krakoa.
Saying that is it was recently that isn't supported by the book.

No we don’t. We see him ally with Moira (established canon) we see them travel to see Magneto (ties into canon and his switch to being an ally for a while) we see them ask a favour of Sinister (which ties into recent canon about the database) and we see him chatting to Forge about making recordings. None of these things demonstrate that Xavier has given up on his dream of coexistence just that he is taking advice from Moira over a long term plan she is suggesting.

Moira’s journal clearly demonstrates that she didn’t convince him straight away and that he was having doubts.

The actual Krakoan scene was very recent and The Five are an innovation of Xavier which introduces his own agenda. Charles and Erik are now shown as not following her plan in a ‘we can take it from here’ way that again suggests they don’t necessarily see eye to eye, which again is consistent with canon generally.

It is just untrue to suggest that Moira comes along and recruits Charles and Erik and that from that point they are sold on everything and changed considerably. The change is nowhere near as radical as you seem to fear.

[Theleviathan]

It doesn't contradicts the book, we see Xavier on a very earlier stage doing preparations for Krakoa.
Saying that is it was recently that isn't supported by the book.

Perhaps his embrace was only partial for a long time? That seems to be what Moira is indicating....he understood the stakes, but needed a lot of convincing to make the radical changes necessary for a full embracing.

[Yistaan]

Couldn't Xavier resurrect Cable at a younger age and without the techno-organic virus? Why hasn't he done so already? A mutant at Cable's power level would be very helpful to Krakoa's cause, although Cable might refuse to work with Apocalypse on the council.

[gambitxremy]

Couldn't Xavier resurrect Cable at a younger age and without the techno-organic virus? Why hasn't he done so already? A mutant at Cable's power level would be very helpful to Krakoa's cause, although Cable might refuse to work with Apocalypse on the council.

Older cable knows Moira’s truth. In Cable minus -1 issue he read Moira’s mind

[Omega Alpha]

You can say it over and over but it doesn’t make it any more logical than when you first said it. This is the story. The story can’t be compared to a nonexistent one that resides unwritten in your head.

Not only that, Moira wouldn't have had the experience of seeing Xavier's dream fail over and over again.

[Devaishwarya]

Ahhhh!
A lot of the back and forth of certain discussions seems to stem from a serious misunderstanding (not interpretation) of what is actually written on the page.
And posters refusing to admit that they might have misconstrued certain details.

Well and so.

[Yistaan]

Older cable knows Moira’s truth. In Cable minus -1 issue he read Moira’s mind

And yet Cable comes from a future without Phalanx or Nimrod or any of that. His universe didn't reset and Moira wasn't around. Maybe he thought in the end Moira wasn't that important? Why didn't he say what he learned from Moira?

Also, Moira has had over a thousand years to perfect resisting telepathy, including time as a Horseman. It's possible Cable only read what Moira wanted him to read.

Also, I can't believe Archangel would just happily let Apocalypse on the council honestly.

[RachelGrey]

And yet Cable comes from a future without Phalanx or Nimrod or any of that. His universe didn't reset and Moira wasn't around. Maybe he thought in the end Moira wasn't that important? Why didn't he say what he learned from Moira?

Also, Moira has had over a thousand years to perfect resisting telepathy, including time as a Horseman. It's possible Cable only read what Moira wanted him to read.

Also, I can't believe Archangel would just happily let Apocalypse on the council honestly.

Marvel lists the Askani timeline as it's own universe. I guess it makes sense because Rachel arrived in that time after being lost in the timestream so there is nothing to say that it's 616 Earth, she just always assumed it was. They were sending their consciousnesses back into the past to influence the course of the 616 and to ensure Nathan survival after being infected with the transmode virus.

I am not sure what would happen if you cured the transmode virus and restored Cable's body back, would it have massive impact on the timeline?

[Yistaan]

Marvel lists the Askani timeline as it's own universe. I guess it makes sense because Rachel arrived in that time after being lost in the timestream so there is nothing to say that it's 616 Earth, she just always assumed it was. They were sending their consciousnesses back into the past to influence the course of the 616 and to ensure Nathan survival after being infected with the transmode virus.

I am not sure what would happen if you cured the transmode virus and restored Cable's body back, would it have massive impact on the timeline?

The fact that Cable and Stryfe were jumping back and forth from their time to now via time travel (as recently as a few months ago in the young Stryfe/young Cable issues) indicates the Askani timeline is still a possible future.

[Omega Alpha]

Also, Moira has had over a thousand years to perfect resisting telepathy, including time as a Horseman. It's possible Cable only read what Moira wanted him to read.

Yes, since even your ordinary X-man is trained to be resistant to telepaths.

[Veitha]

Couldn't Xavier resurrect Cable at a younger age and without the techno-organic virus? Why hasn't he done so already? A mutant at Cable's power level would be very helpful to Krakoa's cause, although Cable might refuse to work with Apocalypse on the council.

That kind of stuff such as Cyclops still needing the visor, Chamber with a missing jaw and I guess Cable too will apparently get explored in a future title.

[Devaishwarya]

I can see how for some...those details are important and pressing but...
Personally, it's not at all high on my list of plot-points that "must be explained".
From the interview, I gathered they could have "fixed" their physical issues (it was an option they considered) but chose/decided not to.

[JKtheMac]

Ahhhh!
A lot of the back and forth of certain discussions seems to stem from a serious misunderstanding (not interpretation) of what is actually written on the page.
And posters refusing to admit that they might have misconstrued certain details.

Well and so.

A misunderstanding is itself an interpretation, but I am pretty sure those arguing this is a terrible retcon with major repercussions to canon are being genuine. Obviously I don’t think the text supports that but even I have to acknowledge that this is partly based upon how I see canon working, and by extension my interpretation of how Hickman sees canon working.

He wrote two whole mini-series (S.H.I.E.L.D.—Yes he did finish it and publish it) laying out his perspective on canon, which he couched in an analogy over how the future of the Marvel Universe will play out. In that he positioned at least two, and arguably more, perspectives upon how comic book canon works.

The perspective that everything should be rigid and driven by what has come before, a cause and effect canon represented by Issac Newton, and the perspective that all canon should be mutable and open to novel interpretation in the form of Michelangelo. Ultimately a compromise is forced upon then by the protagonist Leonid. He proposes that time (the analogy for canon) should constantly loop around and rewrite itself to suit a universal truth. An evolving but unified history.

So I interpret this to suggest that Hickman believes the most important thing is the meaning of continuity. That the universal essence of the stories, their very meaning to us as readers and indeed writers, should remain true, but that the details and the symbols should be allowed to change to suit our times. That’s kind of how Marvel have always approached things on one level, by always insisting that retellings are set in contemporary times, but Hickman clearly believes that even the necessary and continual reflection upon continuity that every story contains should also follow this process of recontextualisation.

This is not an easy concept for readers to grasp and even when it is grasped not everyone will get behind that idea. But Marvel editorial do seem to be doing more and more of this kind of thing. And, I wholly support them in that.