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  1. #301
    Incredible Member Mutant X's Avatar
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    The meeting we see in POX #2 happens in year 43, I curious about the schism in year 47.

  2. #302
    New Mutant TOTALITY's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mutant X View Post
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    The meeting we see in POX #2 happens in year 43, I curious about the schism in year 47.
    That would seem to be X-Men 1991 1-3

  3. #303
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    After one reading of Powers of X 2 and reading this whole thread...

    I really don't think that any of the X^0 - X^3 time periods are other lives of Moira. I believe that the X in their titles refers cheekily to the tenth life of Moira in particular. I think that Life 9 was Moira's playground to live a long long long life as Apocalypse's horseman to see where Apocalypse could lead mutantdom and to see future threats such as Nimrod and maybe even the Phalanx coming. Perhaps the reason we didn't see the end of Life 9 is not because she is still living there, but because her life got extended hundreds or thousands of years and that doesn't fit on the graph and will be revealed in another issue. I would be very surprised if there was any sort of trickery in what we've been shown not being part of our normal timeline.

    I believe Moira has certainly conspired not only with Charles and Magneto but also Apocalypse and perhaps Sinister individually or collectively. There are eras in which certain people play the most significant roles for Moira and company's plans. It is clear now what threats existed but we still don't know any of the ultimate objectives.

    It's clear in X^0 Moira was behind the scenes getting pieces in play.
    In X^1, both Charles and Xavier are essential in bringing Krakoa's independence to the fore and to hold off the impending orchis/nimrod/mother mold led extinction.
    X^2 seemingly has a mission deemed more appropriate for Apocalypse. Krakoa still exists but so does Nimrod. I guess Moira knows from Life 9 that there's a little window in the trajectory of machine development where they can finally win their freedom but it's not until this era, and Krakoa is largely about surviving until then.
    X^3 who knows what's going on, really. It will be really interesting to see what the ultimate goal is but to "ascend" and join the phalanx... I'm not really into that goal. I'm not sure Magneto or Xavier would be either. At that point a LOT of tinkering has gone on. Mutants are no longer really mutants, we've presumably invited a heck of a lot of genetic tampering with Sinister and/or his technology as seen in these hounds and chimeric individuals that make up the mutants we've seen in X^2. I wonder if something else is going on. If endgame for mutants is to evolve into some sort of phalanx or to take over existing phalanx, I.... have no interest in this series.

    To me, I do not like X stories where evolution is seen as progress or fate. X comics have always had evolution and genetics laughably wrong which is not the issue I have. I accept the X gene thing, secondary mutations, whatever. The issue is when some writers get mixed up thematically in murky waters. Evolution does not have a set direction. It is not fated. Mutants are not superior to humans, they are just a new form of humanity that emerged and proliferated. This is why Magneto is wrong. Manipulating evolution for your ends is an Apocalypse plot, it's a Sinister plot... It's not a Xavier plot. I have faith and am really enjoying these issues. But some things like the chart of the hierarchy of less complex to more complex forms of civilizations give me the willies because it's stuff like that - the inevitability of evolutionary progress, the implicit superiority of one form of life over another that the X-Men should be fighting against. Would I accept that I must be eaten by the Phalanx or give in and assimilate? I know I'm being reductive and don't fully understand the phalanx, but heck no.

    Structurally, this issue was good. Beautiful art. Good Cyclops and Magneto and Charles and Moira stuff. Excited to see Cyclops' team wreck Mother Mold. Even starting to care about the X^2 people. Charles in the Krakoa era helmet still is not a Charles I recognize but the X^0 Charles meeting with Magneto IS, so there's something up - it's not just Hickman failing to capture Charles' voice. I agree with some that while the inclusion of phalanx junk is cool, ending on the infographics and long discussions of hierarchies of galactic civilizations kind of took the air out of the issue for me.

  4. #304
    New Mutant TOTALITY's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by hawkeyefan View Post
    I do agree that there must be more to the future in year 1000 than what we're seeing. Can it be averted? Maybe. The story seems kind of bleak if it can't be. I mean, I look at that year 1000 stuff as kind of the death of what mutants are meant to be. Variety and individuality replaced with uniformity. So to me, the idea of Ascension as it's presented here seems a horrible fate for these characters. So even if that future is set, I expect new light to be shed on that scene so that it plays differently than it appears so far.
    Quote Originally Posted by JKtheMac View Post
    It is perhaps worth considering that Hickman is pulling a Theodore Sturgeon and taking inspiration from the seminal science fiction story "The Cosmic Rape / To Marry Medusa". The idea being that a galaxy spanning hive mind consuming humanity actually results in a kind of reverse takeover, in which individualism is given a cosmic playground to work with.

    Another possibility, which I am less keen on, is that he is taking inspiration from Interstellar and once they ascend they can tinker with the timeline more directly. That would be problematic for serial fiction though. It would result in a solution and we wouldn't need the comics.
    I don’t really see ascendance as a particularly bleak outcome personally even with the death of individuality. As I don’t have any personal faith in life beyond death in the supernatural sense, the main comfort I can take in the finite nature of my life is that it will always exist as part of this never ending tapestry, and the notion of ascending into this greater collective consciousness is like a more literal version of that, one that almost feels like becoming immortal, in perhaps even a more meaningful way than as an individual. It’s almost as if the post-humans of year 1000 feel as though they’ve exhausted the potential of the individual, perhaps rightfully.

    It sort of speaks to an important lesson that we could all stand to take to heart in real life, which is that we’re individuals but, just as we’re made up of living cells, we are also part of the living organism that is our planet, and it really has no chance of surviving and operating on a galactic scale if it can’t figure out how to be a functional, healthy collective. The internet seems like the earliest inevitable whisper of higher collective consciousness, but greed+capitalism may be what makes Earth as we know it die an early death, the larger-scale equivalent of a strain of early land creature that failed to develop proper lungs and went extinct long before evolving opposable thumbs and greater sentience.

    ANYWAY to bring it back to HOX/POX, if this kind of thinking is what Hickman is getting at on the scale of year 1000, then year 10 is the thematic equivalent of that on the much more relatable, personal scale. The mutants have realized that they need to learn to work together if they are to have a future, period. And the fun of that will probably be that they’re very much the same individuals we’ve always known, with their own personal motivations (see Mystique’s negotiations in POX1) and even if they know what Moira knows, it can only feel so relevant to their present lives and not just an abstract, far off concept. “Work together or die” has kind of always been the underlying imperative of the X-Men but Hickman has given it an urgency and scale with endless exciting possibilities for the work it takes to actually live it.

    ———

    But all that said, I still wouldn’t be surprised if the future shown in POX ends up not being the one we’re definitely headed towards, because even if readers got on board with the importance of the collective on a thematic level, I think they would have more trouble with a fixed end point on a narrative level. Even if that end point was in a far off future that the contemporary narrative will never reach.

  5. #305
    New Mutant TOTALITY's Avatar
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    Oh, it occurred to me that in all my waxing philosophical about the nobility of the collective over the individual, I should clarify that I think the missing ingredient that would seem to make the difference between early extinction and long term progress is NOT a willingness to sacrifice individuality, but an empathy and goodwill for others and the ability to actualize that on a systemic level. Important to note here because the diverse individuality of the X-Men is and always should be key, as should lifting the disenfranchised and struggling against structural imbalance. When I imagine a version of humanity functioning as a healthy collective and able to pool our brain power to operate on higher level, I’m not picturing a bunch of mindless drones. Everyone has awesome Dave Cockrum costumes and engages in lively discussions about art, lol.

  6. #306
    Mighty Member hawkeyefan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TOTALITY View Post
    I don’t really see ascendance as a particularly bleak outcome personally even with the death of individuality. As I don’t have any personal faith in life beyond death in the supernatural sense, the main comfort I can take in the finite nature of my life is that it will always exist as part of this never ending tapestry, and the notion of ascending into this greater collective consciousness is like a more literal version of that, one that almost feels like becoming immortal, in perhaps even a more meaningful way than as an individual. It’s almost as if the post-humans of year 1000 feel as though they’ve exhausted the potential of the individual, perhaps rightfully.

    It sort of speaks to an important lesson that we could all stand to take to heart in real life, which is that we’re individuals but, just as we’re made up of living cells, we are also part of the living organism that is our planet, and it really has no chance of surviving and operating on a galactic scale if it can’t figure out how to be a functional, healthy collective. The internet seems like the earliest inevitable whisper of higher collective consciousness, but greed+capitalism may be what makes Earth as we know it die an early death, the larger-scale equivalent of a strain of early land creature that failed to develop proper lungs and went extinct long before evolving opposable thumbs and greater sentience.
    Yeah, he's definitely commenting on societies, in that regard. And I think your idea of the Ascension being a positive may be likely. I think it certainly could be viewed that way, especially if the idea was presented in another story.

    But for the X-Men, to take the idea of diversity and then make the end result be total assimilation....just seems like a negative to me. Especially since it involves the Phalanx, who've been villains to the X-Men. Obviously, too soon to tell.....and like I said, I expect some kind of swerve, whether it's along the lines of what JKtheMac says where the post-human mutants subvert the collective in some way, or something else entirely. We'll see.


    Quote Originally Posted by TOTALITY View Post
    ANYWAY to bring it back to HOX/POX, if this kind of thinking is what Hickman is getting at on the scale of year 1000, then year 10 is the thematic equivalent of that on the much more relatable, personal scale. The mutants have realized that they need to learn to work together if they are to have a future, period. And the fun of that will probably be that they’re very much the same individuals we’ve always known, with their own personal motivations (see Mystique’s negotiations in POX1) and even if they know what Moira knows, it can only feel so relevant to their present lives and not just an abstract, far off concept. “Work together or die” has kind of always been the underlying imperative of the X-Men but Hickman has given it an urgency and scale with endless exciting possibilities for the work it takes to actually live it.
    Yeah, I think the idea of working together despite differences is a theme present in each era we've seen, albeit in different ways. Just one of the parallels that are present throughout.

    Quote Originally Posted by TOTALITY View Post
    But all that said, I still wouldn’t be surprised if the future shown in POX ends up not being the one we’re definitely headed towards, because even if readers got on board with the importance of the collective on a thematic level, I think they would have more trouble with a fixed end point on a narrative level. Even if that end point was in a far off future that the contemporary narrative will never reach.
    Possibly. In a way, I feel like the X-Men more than any other superhero franchise is haunted by its own future. I mean, DoFP was great and was very interesting, and it helped give the X-Men a lot of the thematic heft that it has today, but I think it's also become problematic in a way because it seems like no matter what the X-Men may achieve, that's always the way things work out. No matter whose minds they change, or who they save, or who travels back in time to redirect history......it's always the camps and the Sentinels.

    So in a way, I'd love the see the future somehow become unwritten. Become an unknown again. That's not to say that I don't like what Hickman is doing here, or what others have done with these concepts, but for the X-Men to ever win in some way, all of that needs to go away. I know it won't happen, but it's kind of what's necessary, in a way.

  7. #307
    Incredible Member Mutant X's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TOTALITY View Post
    That would seem to be X-Men 1991 1-3
    IMO, Life 10 is not our timeline.

  8. #308
    Sarveśām Svastir Bhavatu Devaishwarya's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mutant X View Post
    IMO, Life 10 is not our timeline.
    But...HoX which is happening now, in our 616 timeline is part of Life 10.
    So....?

  9. #309
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    two more points...

    I think it is interesting if what we are seeing in X^3 is part of Moira's plan as well (maybe she's one of the blue people or maybe her brain lives on in a chimera of her and Apocalypse?)... It's interesting to note that Nimrod or some form of Nimrod exists as the Librarian here, so in the long plan we seem to bringing bigger and bigger villains into the fold. First we take Charles, then Magneto, then Apocalypse, then Sinister, then Nimrod. As necessary to defeat some greater threat. I'm not sure what that means, but I'm a bit perplexed (as Apocalypse comments) about why are these threats ALWAYS after mutants, why is the suffering of mutantkind inevitable, that they must join with one villain to always defeat or fend off another. It's pretty bleak.

    Also, I noticed I've lost sight also of how generally creepy the Krakoa preserve kind of is in the first place. This Charles Xavier is weird and a bit menacing and a bit out of character. Wondering to what extent Moira is still on the radicalization path that she's been on since at least life 7. But we just haven't seen it yet. I wonder if she's more of a villain in this series than is let on. Although it's odd the narration in the first book states that she and Charles had to break all the rules this time. As if ultimately it boils down to the two of them. Re: the last reply... I agree/hope there's something along the lines of them subverting the phalanx. That perhaps the younger swirl cheeked blue person is some incarnation of Xavier and the older blue person in the hood asking for ascension is some incarnation of Moira. I would guess since we're not picking up the story of X^3 in the dawn of X that there will be some sort of negation of X^2/X^3 events through this phalanx baiting. Otherwise why do we care what happens 1000 years in the future which the X books will never get to?

  10. #310
    Incredible Member Mutant X's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Devaishwarya View Post
    But...HoX which is happening now, in our 616 timeline is part of Life 10.
    So....?
    It's not confirmed.
    But think about Times Run Out. It all happened in reality 616, but it was irrelevant after Secret Wars.
    Hickman said he likes to play his game but he puts the pieces back to their places in the end.

  11. #311
    Ultimate Member Tycon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mutant X View Post
    It's not confirmed.
    But think about Times Run Out. It all happened in reality 616, but it was irrelevant after Secret Wars.
    Hickman said he likes to play his game but he puts the pieces back to their places in the end.
    Why would it need to be confirmed? Stories, especially ones that are supposed to be big changes for a certain sect of Marvel, are usually assumed to be in the Prime Universe unless otherwise stated.

  12. #312
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tycon View Post
    Why would it need to be confirmed? Stories, especially ones that are supposed to be big changes for a certain sect of Marvel, are usually assumed to be in the Prime Universe unless otherwise stated.
    So, a story that is talking about how Moira has been living life over and over, with the premonition that she will live 10 or 11 lives, but appears to be making it look like she and everything we know is in life 10, could not have a twist where it turns out life 11 is the actual continuity we already know?

  13. #313
    Sarveśām Svastir Bhavatu Devaishwarya's Avatar
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    It's possible...I guess. But...
    Since Life 11 is a future potentiality, (in that there's nothing to suggest that it already exists/existed) it's safe to assume that Life 10 is in the here and now...especially if it's right there on the page.
    Some of you just want to make this much more complicated than it already is.

  14. #314
    Ultimate Member Wiccan's Avatar
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    I think it's possible that we're in life 10, but that the scenes being shown in POX are actually from a previous life.

  15. #315
    New Mutant TOTALITY's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cranger View Post
    So, a story that is talking about how Moira has been living life over and over, with the premonition that she will live 10 or 11 lives, but appears to be making it look like she and everything we know is in life 10, could not have a twist where it turns out life 11 is the actual continuity we already know?
    There’s nothing that would preclude such a twist; I just don’t think Hickman is telling a story where *all* of the action will ultimately just be the memory of one character. I think all of those past lives were introduced to impact the prime timeline, not as a place to which Hickman can retroactively relegate any/all of these storylines. Like, is there some story potential you see in such a twist? Something about the idea of HOX/POX’s “present” being the familiar timeline that you think needs to be fixed? Or do you just favor a general “anything is possible and thus anything could be a lie” outlook? Genuinely curious; sorry if you’ve already explained. It’s hard to keep up with who favors which theories and why.

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