Sins of Sinister #1 - Review/Spoilers

[yogaflame]

Hope was always stated to be unique and integral to the Resurrection process. Synch and other were mentioned as possible standins for the Five members except for Hope. Gillen just reinforced that in this story and showed us why that was the case. That data page that Beast wrote expounded on it too. It make sense. If her omega power is power manipulation than no one should be able to capable of the unique feats that she can do, including synchronizing the powers to make the resurrections perfect

That's not how Synch's power has worked, classically. He replicates the donor aura exactly, often using the abilities better than the original. He is also a potential Omega. When he replicates Jean's powers, he replicates her powers, not a stepped down version of them. He might need to consciously learn the nuances of powers, but he gets the full package. I think this is just Gillen's way of trying to make Hope special. She wasn't even consciously fixing the Sinister bugs, she was doing it subconsciously, somehow.

This book was decent, but I have already had my fill of Gillen's Sinister(a looooooonnng time ago). I look forward to Ewing's issues with Storm's Brotherhood, as he has already proven a few times he's great at weaving crossovers into his main story. It was nice seeing her stomp the entire QC instantly, but there are some nitpicks to the whole scene. It reminds me of the episode of House of the Dragon, when the Greens were crowning that boy king in the Dragon Pit, and that lady burst up out of the floor, killing thousands of little people, but didn't actually kill the real threat(the Greens), only to run away after a sassy pose. Like, at one level its a cool scene, but in terms of strategy and tactics, why not just finish off the main antagonists right then and there(we already saw her smite Sinister a few times in that Immortal issue where he kept on resetting)? Instead we have to stretch this out over 1000 years and a dozen issues or so? Okay, a little plot induced stupidity, and off we go!


Anyways, so how many of the QC did Storm actually kill there? We see Emma being carted off, but what about Xavier, Namor, Magik, and Nighty? Obviously they can just respawn them, but it looked like only 6 were still standing at end. I just love the idea of Storm being like, oh Goddess, they are all Sinsters, no time to hold back!

Anyways, this whole "the RP was a trojan horse for Sinister to corrupt everyone's genes" is just wayyyy tooo close to these mRNA shots! It's wild to see Marvel put out a book like this at this time. I guess Gillen gets a tiny bit of respect from me for that. Between the reporter scene, the random protestor calling out the people in line, and the false flag attack to get everyone on earth on board, this is basically ripped from the real world!

[Lukmendes]

You are such a tease. No more treats for you.



I’m ready and nervous to find out. ���� Frankly, it’s logical to assume Jean has been taken over by Sinister, considering the fact that she’s been resurrected a few times. However, there is also a chance that she is somehow able to transcend his control. Incidentally, a few weeks ago, I noted that Sinister’s appearance in Jean’s mind in Dark Web: X-Men #2 was indicative of something. We’ll see!

Yeah the Sinister in those pages was suspicious, I assumed it was actually Madelyne doing it as some weird representation of how Sinister manipulated her life, but who knows now...

Either way, while Jean did die a few times in early stories, Hope was around to resurrect her, and Sinister makes it clear that Hope cleanses whatever tampering that he does, so I don't see how he could have done something to Jean back then, and the way Sins of Sinister is done, I really doubt the "false Hope" is gonna be a thing, since it looks like Sinister only managed to have more control over the Quiet Council only after Hope herself was killed.

Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like a blunt force way to give Hope any kind of meaning after she has long served her original purpose, hence the decline into bits parts ever since AvX.

Also raises some interesting problem any kind of adaptations will have with her. She was entirely created around the Decimination status quo which is so theme breaking bad for the X-men Franchise that i'm highly doubtfull it will ever make it to cartoons or movies. As result Hope will never have her original purpose in those, meaning if anyone wants to introduce her to a wider audience it will have to happen under a quite different context.

But without said context her "messiah" role will never have the same meaning, impact or even point.

It gets even worse to try to "messiah" role with the context of why she was created to begin with, that Quesada wanted Jean to stay dead and Hope is another-nother replacement, to the point that Hope is the one chosen to be the Phoenix host, and considering that for the greater audience, the Phoenix is for Jean to use, making a Phoenix story without Jean would be questionable for them.

Hell, it's telling that when Yost mentioned his plans for Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes' season 3, which would have the X-Men, the plot details he mentioned was gonna make the story be basically Avengers vs X-Men, but Jean was going to have Hope's role.

I actually like how Hickman repurposed Hope's "Messiah" role for the Five, and how Gillen is now following up on that, following her sidelining post-AvX.

The X-office spent A LOT of time building up Hope's character only for it to all go down the drain the moment the Phoenix storyline concluded, so I appreciate this new lease to life and importance beside (not) being a Phoenix host.

While it is cool the way she got repurposed (And Gillen did point out in her issue that she kinda lost her edge, which's a way to remind us that she was raised in a dystopian future), her role there runs into the same issue of being "exclusive" to that very specific setting lol.

Basically Hope before was just to be a vaguely defined messiah, which was eventually revealed that she'll be the Phoenix host, and that can only happen if Jean isn't around.

Now her role is to be an "unifier" of different powers to make the largely convoluted resurrection/cloning method, and that can only happen in a setting like Krakoa, or at least one where mutants die regularly.

Compromised since House of X?! That explains why Hank has been so out of character! It explains EVERYTHING!

Hank: Y-yeah! Yeah! Everything...

Beast got compromised so bad it affected his pre-HoX self too.

Makes perfect sense.

[Steroid]

I'm not trying to be mean here, but I'm really bemused by how many people keep trying to make 'the X-Men have been compromised since House of X' work when this issue couldn't have been more explicit - with Sinister himself saying it - that he needed to compromise Hope before any of the others could actually be corrupted/tampered with during resurrection. Any resurrections pre-Hope's death have no trace of Sinister's genetic tampering - not even something Sinister could hack into later - b/c Sinister said in no uncertain terms that Hope's power wiped away his tampering during each of the resurrections and cleansed the DNA they were using, purging his potential influence.

Any and all tampering Sinister did to the DNA in his database was rendered irrelevant UNTIL Hope had been resurrected without that part of her powerset, the X-factor of it, being part of the resurrection process to cleanse any genetic tampering. No death or resurrection before that point left anyone Sinisterized. Only the deaths and resurrections that came afterwards.

Furthest thing from mean and I absolutely agree.

[dragon1440]

That's not how Synch's power has worked, classically. He replicates the donor aura exactly, often using the abilities better than the original. He is also a potential Omega. When he replicates Jean's powers, he replicates her powers, not a stepped down version of them. He might need to consciously learn the nuances of powers, but he gets the full package. I think this is just Gillen's way of trying to make Hope special. She wasn't even consciously fixing the Sinister bugs, she was doing it subconsciously, somehow.

This book was decent, but I have already had my fill of Gillen's Sinister(a looooooonnng time ago). I look forward to Ewing's issues with Storm's Brotherhood, as he has already proven a few times he's great at weaving crossovers into his main story. It was nice seeing her stomp the entire QC instantly, but there are some nitpicks to the whole scene. It reminds me of the episode of House of the Dragon, when the Greens were crowning that boy king in the Dragon Pit, and that lady burst up out of the floor, killing thousands of little people, but didn't actually kill the real threat(the Greens), only to run away after a sassy pose. Like, at one level its a cool scene, but in terms of strategy and tactics, why not just finish off the main antagonists right then and there(we already saw her smite Sinister a few times in that Immortal issue where he kept on resetting)? Instead we have to stretch this out over 1000 years and a dozen issues or so? Okay, a little plot induced stupidity, and off we go!


Anyways, so how many of the QC did Storm actually kill there? We see Emma being carted off, but what about Xavier, Namor, Magik, and Nighty? Obviously they can just respawn them, but it looked like only 6 were still standing at end. I just love the idea of Storm being like, oh Goddess, they are all Sinsters, no time to hold back!

Anyways, this whole "the RP was a trojan horse for Sinister to corrupt everyone's genes" is just wayyyy tooo close to these mRNA shots! It's wild to see Marvel put out a book like this at this time. I guess Gillen gets a tiny bit of respect from me for that. Between the reporter scene, the random protestor calling out the people in line, and the false flag attack to get everyone on earth on board, this is basically ripped from the real world!

It could be something else in Hope's dna that fixed the sinister "virus". That could be a way to explain Synch's not being a exact replica of hope. Maybe it is something in her genes that are not related to her powers, since Synch copies powers not dna.

[captain Qball]

I find it fascinating that Sinister knows about dominions, and that his endgame is to reach that state and transcend space-time. I think that's how we will have ramifications for the main universe - something is going to become a Dominion. Maybe this is the creation of that trickster Dominion.

[gambitxremy]

Wow somehow when reading the issue I didn't notice the knuckle blasts. Pretty cool Chimera I would have to say.

Cyclops and wolverines love child lol

[Hulkout42]

Ok, it started out well enough, now it needs to keep going that way and not screw up.

[Agent Grayson]

I hope that this event leads to the end of the Resurrection Protocols somehow. I'm ready for that plot device to be gone and it would make Fall of X more engaging, knowing that there is actual jeopardy again.

[Uncanny X-Man]

I hope that this event leads to the end of the Resurrection Protocols somehow. I'm ready for that plot device to be gone and it would make Fall of X more engaging, knowing that there is actual jeopardy again.

I mean it's all really fake jeopardy though? Because what happens in reality is a litany of "Death of character X" followed by a "Return of character X" a few years later. I'm glad Hickman got rid of that cheap narrative trick and the endless, improbable resurrections and replaced them with actual credible resurrections.

[ExodusCloak]

I hope that this event leads to the end of the Resurrection Protocols somehow. I'm ready for that plot device to be gone and it would make Fall of X more engaging, knowing that there is actual jeopardy again.

How would you go about getting rid of them? It's innate to those 5 mutants powers. And Selene had other methods of doing it.

Anyway Latuca offering psychic protection in that instant to protect Storm and give her the time to strike is a masterful way to take telepaths off the board

[PyroFN]

Have Jean and Scott been confirmed to still have their connection after their respective resurrections?

Not certain, but I would be very surprised if they didn’t after this moment. (INB4 Jott fans fanboy at the adorableness)



Yeah, Jean is normally capable of basic telepathic sensing of thoughts and is sensitive to Scott’s call, but the point is that Madelyne has regressed Jean too before she got her powers. So, I am only presuming that they had their link still and it was what helped Scott contact Jean when she couldn’t access her powers.

[PyroFN]

Fall of X is gonna have to be more than Orchis vs. X-Men cause this event just proves how easy it’d be to take them down. And no I don’t buy that those couple of Avengers made all the difference.

Glad someone at the X-Office had the sense to realize how outpowered Orchis is, even with Nimord. I am of the opinion that Hickman does not know how to power scale properly. (Or just does not like overpowered characters, in which I don’t believe he should head an entire franchise with a mythos filled with characters who are supposed to be the next step in evolution with their destiny to replace the cosmic entities.

[PyroFN]

Not really. Jean was one of the first characters that died in the new era in HoX/PoX together with Scott and whoever else was on that team. I bet she was compromised back then and no one really suspected Sinister of doing something so grand as to mess up with the DNA of the mutants or at least there was false hope put on it.



Honestly, I didn't even realise that Charles was compromised, I started raising my eyebrow when we started reading about his internal thoughts how he can change everyone's mind and so on, and I was like... huh? What? There is something going on here for sure.

Gillen so far has followed all the build-ups throughout all the other books to this exact point, why Storm was never resurrected, why everyone was dying left and right, and so on. I believe he has done an amazing job! Well done.

I think you misunderstood how the compromising works.

Everyone is only compromised after Hope was turned. Jean can’t be compromised in Hox/Pox because Hope was subconsciously clearing Sinister’s genetic tampering.

[PyroFN]

I actually like how Hickman repurposed Hope's "Messiah" role for the Five, and how Gillen is now following up on that, following her sidelining post-AvX.

The X-office spent A LOT of time building up Hope's character only for it to all go down the drain the moment the Phoenix storyline concluded, so I appreciate this new lease to life and importance beside (not) being a Phoenix host.

That is one of many things I can say Hickman did right about his writing. Hope’s powers being mimicry, while flexible and interesting, still did not explain her capability to cure diseases, control the X-Gene, and her ability to bypass Scarlet Witch’s Decimation Spell.

While “power manipulation” is still not the complete explanation of her Messianic powerset, because that is basically what it is always alluding to when she steers away from mimicry, it at least gives a broader umbrella for Hope to work with lore-wise for as far as how she works.

[PyroFN]

I wonder just what happened to Madelyne after Limbo’s takeover. Did they execute her? Or was she compromised? Was that red-head in front of Shaw Maddie? I’m intrigued by this new alternate future.