Powers of X 02: We are together now, you and I *spoilers*

[JKtheMac]

I would add also that nothing forbids that in her 9th life too Sinister was used to make Chimeras.... Or that at the end of it the Phalanx arrived not to propose ascension, but rather to erase that messy planet. The Phalanx or some "universal predators" interested in Earth's "Celestial ressources". Moira would then be more conscious of the path to follow.

I would add that it is heavily implied by the long ongoing timeline for M9 that she would have lasted way into the future and encountered Phalanx. Otherwise her new plan would be very much guesswork.

Glad to see you chipping in with your always well considered perspective. It’s like old times, hashing out the rules for incursions and the inevitability of the end of the 616.

[JKtheMac]

It is shorthand for that, JDW has explained it a couple times in recent interviews, it's meant to be orders of magnitude. 0-10 is Year 1. 10-100 is year 10, 100-1000 is year 100, and 1000-10000 is year 1000. It's why it's called Powers of X as in Powers of 10.

I get why they did it, but it makes things super confusing.

Not confusing for anyone that is familiar with orders of magnitude. And for those that are not there’s always Wikipedia.

It also has a huge advantage in that it doesn’t pin down when the future events are happening. It avoids canonical arguments if other elements from alt-futures are brought in.

X^2 could be the year 100 or the year 867. It doesn’t matter.
X^3 could be the year 1000 or the year 7864.

Also it’s not the actual year. It’s all based on adding to a vague year about 10-15 years ago. It’s an alternative to the sliding timescale which has frankly always been a mess and mostly abandoned by Marvel as anything other than a vague hand wave to stop arguments.

So X^2 is just hundreds of years hence, and X^3 is just thousands of years hence.

It also conveys the vague nature of Moira’s plan. She effectively says ‘in a few hundred years there will be an important war with Nimrod and in a few thousand years there will be a choice we need to make about ascension.’

[Graphicisnovel]

It also has a huge advantage in that it doesn’t pin down when the future events are happening. It avoids canonical arguments if other elements from alt-futures are brought in.

If you think about it it's the perfect solution to wanting to pin events down in a timeline, while still working with the imprecise Marvel sliding timescale & and not mentioning actual numbers

[HomoSuperior]

If I’m reading this right, I think I get a kick out of the Technarchy’s role in the scheme of things. They don’t know it but they are the universe’s garbage collectors. Phalanx comes along, looks at the knowledge accumulated in a Worldmind and decides if it’s worth consuming. If it is, the knowledge is assimilated. If not, it’s flagged for deletion. Technarchy then makes the rounds and deletes it.

Very computer-sciencey w/philosophical implications. 1. We are living in a simulation. 2. We’re all driven to consume/create knowledge. 3. At the end, we’re judged by the quality of knowledge we amass. If it’s good, we will ascend (evolve?) in a manner that ensures we are remembered by the collective. If it’s not good, we’ll get picked up by a garbage collecting routine.

Everyone get out your best CBR posts, here comes the Phalanx! Wait... it’s Warlock.

CODA: How does Hickman explain Phoenix? The hardest of reboots?

[Frobisher]

Whenever futurist collective intelligence consciousness comes up as a theme in something, I often feel like the American cultural response is heavily flavoured with this very The Blob/Invasion Of The Body Snatchers/The Borg/Red Menace erasure-of-the-individual Cold War paranoia. But we’re not solitary creatures - the basic unit of humanity is the tribe. The fear must really be in that your tribe will be subsumed by a stronger one - the men killed and the women taken. This sort of concern makes sense, but is not helpful to understanding the goals of post-humanism.

I think when you’re dealing with crazy themes like post-humanism and sublimation, you’re always looking at societies that have achieved as much as they possibly can in the material world. The sum of that civilisation is information - vast, vast quantities of information. Information that will be lost when the civilisation fails, is destroyed from without, or its star dies. The civilisation wants to become eternal if it can, so sublimation means adding this information to a higher class of civilisation that is functionally something closer to eternal. Likewise, there’s no profit to the Phalanx of swallowing up a civilisation and destroying its individuality - that’s literally data loss. Unlike the TV Borg, who always turn victims into more of themselves, their goal is to actually increase their pool of knowledge by adding each acquisition’s individuality to the collective.

[hawkeyefan]

Whenever futurist collective intelligence consciousness comes up as a theme in something, I often feel like the American cultural response is heavily flavoured with this very The Blob/Invasion Of The Body Snatchers/The Borg/Red Menace erasure-of-the-individual Cold War paranoia. But we’re not solitary creatures - the basic unit of humanity is the tribe. The fear must really be in that your tribe will be subsumed by a stronger one - the men killed and the women taken. This sort of concern makes sense, but is not helpful to understanding the goals of post-humanism.

I think when you’re dealing with crazy themes like post-humanism and sublimation, you’re always looking at societies that have achieved as much as they possibly can in the material world. The sum of that civilisation is information - vast, vast quantities of information. Information that will be lost when the civilisation fails, is destroyed from without, or its star dies. The civilisation wants to become eternal if it can, so sublimation means adding this information to a higher class of civilisation that is functionally something closer to eternal. Likewise, there’s no profit to the Phalanx of swallowing up a civilisation and destroying its individuality - that’s literally data loss. Unlike the TV Borg, who always turn victims into more of themselves, their goal is to actually increase their pool of knowledge by adding each acquisition’s individuality to the collective.

That’s an interesting breakdown. Although it’s too early to tell, that’s not the vibe I got from the Phalanx. I didn’t get the sense that the Ascension they offer would be a good thing. Now, that may be because of the associated tropes you point out; I’m sure that’s at least part of it. But I think there was more to it. The minimal interaction seemed adversarial in some way.

We’ll see how it plays out.

Either way, I think that the inclusion of societal evolution and the idea that the end result would be a collective consciousness on a galactic scale is a creative angle to take, and is potentially rife with allegory.

[HomoSuperior]

I think when you’re dealing with crazy themes like post-humanism and sublimation, you’re always looking at societies that have achieved as much as they possibly can in the material world. The sum of that civilisation is information - vast, vast quantities of information. Information that will be lost when the civilisation fails, is destroyed from without, or its star dies. The civilisation wants to become eternal if it can, so sublimation means adding this information to a higher class of civilisation that is functionally something closer to eternal. Likewise, there’s no profit to the Phalanx of swallowing up a civilisation and destroying its individuality - that’s literally data loss. Unlike the TV Borg, who always turn victims into more of themselves, their goal is to actually increase their pool of knowledge by adding each acquisition’s individuality to the collective.

Agreed. Calls to mind some biological evidence. I believe I’ve read DNA is capable of storing information which raises SO many questions. First, why? The implication aligns w/Hickman’s story. We live, gathering as much information as possible and, folklore, writing and recording methods aside, pass it on through the lowest level storage possible. All while traveling through space on an ship called Earth headed toward?

I haven’t read too much on the subject but do inheritors possess means to access prior generation’s information stored in DNA? The closest info I’ve found proposes trauma is encoded and passed between generations. If true, little wonder I am the end of my family’s line.

Interesting stuff...

[JKtheMac]

That’s an interesting breakdown. Although it’s too early to tell, that’s not the vibe I got from the Phalanx. I didn’t get the sense that the Ascension they offer would be a good thing. Now, that may be because of the associated tropes you point out; I’m sure that’s at least part of it. But I think there was more to it. The minimal interaction seemed adversarial in some way.

We’ll see how it plays out.

Either way, I think that the inclusion of societal evolution and the idea that the end result would be a collective consciousness on a galactic scale is a creative angle to take, and is potentially rife with allegory.

Indeed, I suspect Hickman wanted the reader to be somewhat shocked that they would actively seek to become assimilated by Phalanx. Everything is telling us these are not the good guys. Which suggests two possible twists. They actually offer more than it appears, or more likely from my perspective the post-humans have a plan and have no intention of playing by Phalanx’s rules.

[JKtheMac]

Agreed. Calls to mind some biological evidence. I believe I’ve read DNA is capable of storing information which raises SO many questions. First, why? The implication aligns w/Hickman’s story. We live, gathering as much information as possible and, folklore, writing and recording methods aside, pass it on through the lowest level storage possible. All while traveling through space on an ship called Earth headed toward?

I haven’t read too much on the subject but do inheritors possess means to access prior generation’s information stored in DNA? The closest info I’ve found proposes trauma is encoded and passed between generations. If true, little wonder I am the end of my family’s line.

Interesting stuff...

There has been speculation throughout the history of genetics but very little evidence, that DNA is actively written back to by life forms. Most geneticists would just say evolution doesn’t work like that. As with all science, it is very hard to prove something doesn’t happen, but we are not aware of any mechanism and indeed any reason that life would even need to do this. It’s not how the evolutionary game seems to have been played.

On the other hand this is speculative fiction. I mentioned Greg Egan’s Teranesia in another post. In that genes are altered by an adaptive biological quantum process, which instantly adapts any organism to its immediate situation. Karaoka could be doing something similar with some of the mutants. Rewriting them.

[Celestialbodies]

let me lay out my thoughts In semi-Hickman infographic fashion

Year 1) I adore Hickman’s magneto. The art was particularly gorgeous here too. Wish we got to learn more about their plan but I get it, long game

Year 10) can’t wait to see who cyclops pulls together to take on Orchis/Mother Mold, hopefully next week. No Emma/Mystique? Reaaally wanted to see how that would play out

Year 100) again, more excited about what this issue set up for the next one than the issue itself: apocalypse leading this ragtag xmen to Nimrod is gonna be a blast. Glad we got to see some personalities in play but I wish there was more ... still no clue why Black Tom Cassidy is a tree but I can vibe with it

Year 1000) Wow. I feel so much better knowing that this was a deep cut in terms of continuity because I was beyond lost. Can not wait to see how this plays out and what it means for the rest of the players in the past.

we saw a wheelchair-bound Magneto react to the sentinels arrival. he was shocked.

This plus, didn't Wolverine severe his spine, he was in no shape to take on the wild sentinels that destroyed Genosha!

[Havok83]

Well, it certainly explains the questions of "How did Magneto let giant metal robots sneak up on him & his country?" that have been asked throughout the years.

Who asked that? As noted, Magneto was injured at the time of the attack and recovering from Wolverine nearly killing him in Eve of Destruction. He was powerless to stop any attacks

[Rivka]

I think it’s odd Xavier was walking with Moira in the park, and in a wheelchair on Island M.

It's not odd, I don't think, but again, I also don't think Moira Life 10 is the 616 timeline. Or at least, there's still the possibility it isn't. In POWERS OF X #1, year X-0 is plus or minus 10 years before the establishment of HOUSE OF X on Krakoa and Moira is 17 years old when she meets Xavier in that park, according to her own life's yearly markers (I call them birthday markers). Between that age, and Krakoastan is way more than 10 years. It just doesn't fit the "powers of X" however you want to fudge it.

I still say (and as I've indicated many times, I could be wrong, I'm not insisting on anything, because I have no idea what Hickman is really up to) that the meeting between Moira, Xavier, and Mangeto in POWERS OF X #2 in year X-0 is before Cape Citadel. Life 10 timeline does not necessarily have to be 616 continuity.

As to the wheelchair, in 616, Xavier and Moira go through a lot before he founds the X-Men. They have a love affair, he goes off to fight in a secret Asian war, Moira dumps him after he visits her on leave; he serves one tour of duty at least, which is 1 year. Moira for some reason (I think she was already pregnant) marries MacTaggert and they go to New York almost at once where she wants to visit Xavier and Joe MacTaggert freaks out, beats her almost to death, rapes her for one week while she's held prisoner in a hotel room in NYC. Meanwhile Xavier--after his Dear John--tours the world looking for other mutants. He finds Amahl Farouk, then meets "Magnus" (later Erik) in Israel, impregnates Gabrielle Haller, travels to the Himalayas and is beaten severely by Lucifer, where he's crippled. He meets Amelia Voght who travels back with him to his Westchester mansion, and she's with him as he plans the X-Men. Amelia leaves him because of his X-Men obsession, and that's when Xavier gets back in touch with Moira. She, meanwhile, has given birth to Kevin, finished her degrees, including a medical degree, founded the Muir Island Research center on ancestral land (must be her mother's side of the family), and won a Noble Prize all the while raising Kevin until he was still very young (I forget the age exactly, 6 or 7?) and his immense omega powers kicked in and Moira had to dedicate a lot of her life to keeping him in stasis, fed, and supported. Xavier contacts Moira again at this time. She'd be anywhere from her mid to late 30s to early 40s.

The Proteus Saga happens 20 years after the rape by Joe MacTaggert; this is stated on panel.

So anyway, in whatever timeline or timelines we're witnessing in the POWERS OF X books, some years have passed between the moment when Moira first meets Xavier and gives him all the info about her past lives, and when they go to visit Magneto.

The problem I have is, as I said, this doesn't quite fit the 616 timeline or how the characters are portrayed and behaved. Was the rape by Joe MacTaggert something new and unexpected Moira wasn't prepared for? Was Kevin's birth an event she didn't expect? I do not support Hickman saying Moira welcomed the rape again; that would be unacceptable. But in Life #10, if it's NOT 616, Moira anticipates Joe MacTaggert's violence, manipulates him, stays in a "normal" marriage with him, gets pregnant with Proteus, and gives birth later. That's why it's only 13 years until the Proteus Saga, instead of 616's 20.

Anyway, whether or not Moira Life #10 is 616, Xavier fought Lucifer and was crippled by the time he started creating the School for Gifted Youngsters. He's already met Magneto (hence "old friend.") The problem I have with all this is, why would he let himself be crippled if he knows ahead of time everything that's going to happen? If Life #10 is really 616, there are an awful lot of unexpected, unanticipated, spontaneous events and variables and it makes one wonder how effective Moira's plans could ever be.

[TOTALITY]

Who asked that? As noted, Magneto was injured at the time of the attack and recovering from Wolverine nearly killing him in Eve of Destruction. He was powerless to stop any attacks

I mean... do we even know Magneto ruled Genosha in any of Moira’s previous lives for her to warn him of the attack? Could what Magneto attempted there not have been informed by Moira and Charles recruiting him, like a less advanced iteration of what they’re doing now with Krakoa?

[Rivka]

It has to be deliberate since nothing about this has been careless (save the one timeline gaffe Hickman tweeted about) and it seems extremely likely to be because the Island M meeting is in fact meant to be much later, despite them both being labeled “year 1.” The year 1 designation must be loose or relative, because as much as that doesn’t seem to fit, those two meetings occurring in the same year fits even less.

For an extremely thorough breakdown that I think makes it hard to argue that the Island M meeting is any other time but circa UXM #150, check out the latest of the great annotations from House to Astonish: https://www.housetoastonish.com/?p=4686#more-4686 ... the sections on page 3-7, “the timeline” and “Island M”

If the powers of 10 designations are so loose and modifiable, why the heck use them? If Hickman is so perfect and everything is deliberate, then why try to fudge what is clear to fit your theory? This is the opposite of the scientific method, trying to twist theories to fit preconceived notions. So first, powers of 10 are variable by a few years either way (this from JDW, the editor). Then when the timelines don't fit, now it's "Oh, the designations go from 1 to 10 years, and 10 to 100 years, etc...." This without any supporting evidence from the writer or editor, and with the byproduct of throwing the entire timeline system into unnecessary confusion. Why even use "powers of X" except because it's cute and analogous to all the use of the "X" Hickman seems to love. Now, it seems that because POWERS OF X #1 shows a time span way beyond 10 years between the scene from X-0 and the scene from X-1, now some of you are trying to fudge it even further--oh, well, it's all vague and only means something like "early years of the X-Men" and is some mysterious step-child of logarhythms, the sliding Marvel timeline, and Moira's past lives. (Which of course only a few of you are intelligent enough to understand because Hickman's genius speaks only to those who understand how brilliant and perfect he is.)

I just think it's more simple than that. And, Hickman could be making a few continuity mistakes because he did a lot of research and X-Men continuity is massive and complex. But of course, Mr. Hickman never makes any mistakes.

[Rivka]

Whenever futurist collective intelligence consciousness comes up as a theme in something, I often feel like the American cultural response is heavily flavoured with this very The Blob/Invasion Of The Body Snatchers/The Borg/Red Menace erasure-of-the-individual Cold War paranoia. But we’re not solitary creatures - the basic unit of humanity is the tribe. The fear must really be in that your tribe will be subsumed by a stronger one - the men killed and the women taken. This sort of concern makes sense, but is not helpful to understanding the goals of post-humanism.

I think when you’re dealing with crazy themes like post-humanism and sublimation, you’re always looking at societies that have achieved as much as they possibly can in the material world. The sum of that civilisation is information - vast, vast quantities of information. Information that will be lost when the civilisation fails, is destroyed from without, or its star dies. The civilisation wants to become eternal if it can, so sublimation means adding this information to a higher class of civilisation that is functionally something closer to eternal. Likewise, there’s no profit to the Phalanx of swallowing up a civilisation and destroying its individuality - that’s literally data loss. Unlike the TV Borg, who always turn victims into more of themselves, their goal is to actually increase their pool of knowledge by adding each acquisition’s individuality to the collective.

I disagree, but I appreciate your analytical and intelligent approach.

Assimilation, conformity, the erasure of identity, independent thought, and self-will, has always been seen as evil by those who oppose oppression and tyranny. The INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS arose from the McCarthy Hearings, from the Cold War witch-hunts. The idea that most people are content to be sheep, to conform, to follow orders and give up their identity is considered an evil thing, a bad thing. There is nothing positive about subsuming ones will, ones dreams, to the needs of the powerful few--except for the powerful few who want to maintain their power and control over the resources of the world. The idea that conformity, sameness, assimilation is positive comes from the far right, the alt-right, and the white nationalists. In fact, it's a part of their rhetoric. They want everybody to either be white or be subsumed in the "melting pot" and support white America 100%. The idiot from Iowa, Rep. King, said recently: “Assimilation has become a dirty word to the multiculturalist Left. Assimilation, not diversity, is our American strength.” It's one of those code concepts from the far right. And I hope Mr. Hickman is going to show us that it's evil and wrong.

In fact, the history of the universe, the galaxy, and life, tends toward diversity, not assimilation. There is accretion, conglomeration but always destruction that creates new independent states. Life has always tended toward diversity. It's how life survives! Homogeneous groups without new genetic material are much more likely to die out.

Mr. Hickman believes AI is the future of humanity, and he's in the company of many scientists who agree with him, but who is to say that AI in the far future will chose assimilation, conformity? Is Mr. Hickman applying his own belief system to the greater concept? You talk about how our culture influences our thinking, about cultural motifs, but the films you cite are all different from one another and can be used as examples of different issues. For one, Gene Roddenberry was a staunch individualist, and STAR TREK supported diversity, individuality, and thus the Borg were indeed used as a symbol but not unintentionally or as a cultural artifact. STAR TREK creators did it deliberately!

The monster movies of the 1950s exploited are fear of the "Red Menace" at the time, like THE BLOB, but there were also monster films that begin to subtly question the mass hysteria that led to the McCarthyist attacks across the country, like INVADERS FROM MARS which terrified me as a kid. A child witnesses the saucer landing, and suddenly all the adults around him begin changing, becoming monsters themselves. I grew up in the 50s--conformity, assimilation is horrible. Having to be like everyone else in thought, word, and deed is simply soul-killing. If the "everybody else" also means white and Christian with patriarchal values, it leads to literal people killing. If you want to use historical reference, you could say Vietnam and all the US's little wars up to now have been about conformity and assimilation of people who don't look like white people from South Carolina. And it's evil, it will always be evil.

The X-Men have been from the start a statement about the "other," the outcast, the one who isn't 'one of us' -- by their very existence they challenge the notion of assimilation and conformity. That's why generations of fans love this comic book. Is Mr. Hickman trying to turn the X-Men into some alt-right statement of assimilation and conformity is happiness?

Again, it's you and Mr. Hickman who are exhibiting the unconscious effects of our culture by assuming that the ultimate aim of the most advanced civilizations, including AI, is assimilation and a lack of diversity--has he watched too many STAR TREK episodes, but to you-all the Borg are the heroes. I think the evidence is significant for the opposite -- intelligent life, the ultimate intelligent life even AI based will achieve the ultimate in diversity and individuality and will achieve ultimate tolerance, and thus peace, so billions of individuals can work together on solving the challenges of life in our galaxy, in our universe.