Immortal X-Men #18 - Review/Spoilers

[JB]

As Gillen mentioned in his newsletter today this is a dense issue so this is a dumbed down recap. Hopefully this will be a team effort and others can fill in the important details lol.

Mother Righteous is narrating and we learn how she magically uses the "thank you's" in various ways. Elixir saves Destiny who says she's the only one who can do anything to stop MR. MR confirms that she messed with the mutants' connection to the gates, making all the mutants want to go "to the place mutants are all kind of connected to", the White Hot Room. She herself couldn't go because she's not a mutant so she used some of the "thank you" power to create a version of herself, an extension of herself, that was a mutant. This is the MR we see in the WHR with Jean, while the real MR is puppeteering it all from her sanctum.

Xavier and Sinister arrive at Muir Island and get to Sinister's lab after easily getting past Orchis special forces. The point of this trip is that Sinister wants to review the data from the Sins of Sinister timeline as he doesn't trust MR's highlight reels.

As MR is leading a chained Jean through the WHR, we learn that after a lot of research MR decided the mutants were the key for her to reach Dominion.

Xavier gets some cool moments as he's able to reconnect Sinister's computer using the mind of a Norwegian electrical engineer.





Xavier says Stasis' and Orbis' Dominion attempts are labeled in Sinister's timelines. Each reached out to Dominion but were consumed and then Sinister reset the timeline. Sinister can't see the data and Xavier says someone has been messing with him. Xavier confirms that there have been three Dominion attempts, his attempt during the Red Diamond empire, Orbis with a mysterium/M'kraanite crystal construct, and Stasis did something terrible to the sun. He says there hasn't been a fourth attempt yet. They realize it's Mother Righteous that's going to go for it and that she must be found and stopped.

Data page of MR's plan, super simplified:
Get to the WHR via manipulation of mutantkind.
Find dead Jean (she knew the plan was for her to killed at the Gala.)
All of the living mutants in the WHR will have Jean "messed in the head" and make her pliable.
Jean will want to go to the center of the WHR where it's most peaceful, leading MR there.
She'll then sacrifice Jean and bleed her out, using Jean's connection to the infinite power of the Phoenix to make herself a Dominion.

Exodus, Hope, and Destiny reach MR but are attacks by magical monsters she creates (using the rest of the thank you's.) I have to be honest that I was viscerally disturbed to see Jean stabbed again as I'm quite over it. MR stabs her and uses her dagger to write in the snow with Jean's blood. Exodus launches Destiny to her MR she has to stop. Too late as MR has already written in the snow that she has become a Dominion and lived happily ever after. "The flesh becomes the word. Ascension." She starts to float in the air but then comes across what appears to be a sheet of paper. Someone else wrote something and the words are on fire. "However, his mistress of stories should have known there's always a twist. Look behind you." MR turns around, quietly says "no" and implodes in a PLIF of blood. MR returns to the ground with a scream saying it should have been her, but it's him. Destiny kicks her in the face which is very satisfying and says, "this is what I've been trying to tell you. You've doomed us all."

A brand new narrator: Once upon a time. A cliche of children's fiction. As if the fact it's been repeated so often means anything. Stories are pathetic.

[JB]

I got chills reading this at midnight. Original Essex essentially created an AI that gathered all of the data collected by the four suit Sinister's and is now online after MR's attempt at Dominion. This is crazy.

[brightnessatmidnight]

Here's my current interpretation based on a reply I did elsewhere:

Marvel cosmology doesn't really work in "tiers" of power anymore, or at least not the normal one people use to gauge power levels.

It now deals with abstract and meta-concepts that allow the rules to be re-written for the sake of storytelling. This is what allows the writers to do whatever they want and why a lot of these abstract powers fluctuate in power so much.

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In this sense, meta-narrative threats are huge, which explains why it's threatening to the One-Above-All (stand in for Marvel Editorial).

Digital God, AI Enigma Essex is a stand-in for the threat of AI-Consumptive, re-gurgitation which in the past year as caused a lot of creative types from artists to writers in the past year a lot of angst.

The Phoenix Force is a natural enemy of this foe because, born of the void (read: nothingness) between states of being (read: existence/creation) and the sum total of psionic energy (read: thought), it is being used as a stand-in for organic creativity.

MR sacrificing the husk of a lifeless Jean (contrasting the passionate nature of her character) for her blood unwittingly empowering the Digital God, is a metaphor for the blood and passion of organic creativity being sacrificed to empower and be regurgitated by AI-generated content. It's also done in a way that desecrates the White Hot Room, which is being used as a metaphor for the sacred "white page" or "blank canvas" from which creativity springs.


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Also note the crucifix pose of Jean on the cover. And the fact that X-men Forever comes out after winter, around Spring/Easter. Jean has always been tied with Christ/resurrection imagery.

[SugarMan]

This is all very interesting, and it's funny how Mother Righteous knows more about mutants and their connections to the WHR than previously thought. She states Jean is out of whack because of the presence of so many living people in the WHR, which isn't for the living. She may not be aware of Jean and Phoenix's current state of affairs.

The part about Jean and the Phoenix, sort of a chicken and egg situation, is interesting. Can't wait to see the actual details of that when Jean eventually "returns".

[Uncanny X-Man]

This was such a carefully-created, cleverly-narrated issue. Gillen delivered one of his best ones yet, using every caption box and line of dialogue very deliberately as he built up the big final reveal.

And it works very well with what he himself established at the beginning of Immortal and, I suspect, will in the future function as a sort of housecleaning for all the Sinisters as the original Nathaniel Essex gets reestablished as a character more in line with his original version.

All the pages with Charles and Sinister were also great as was the build-up to the immensely satisfactory kick in the teeth to Mother Righteous.

I simply cannot wait to read what happens next and also to read more of Kieron Gillen's Jean while she's actually awake.

[JB]

All I’ll say is that Defenders Beyond #5 is a must-read after this issue.

Pulling this from the preview thread, here's part of what H-E-D may be alluding to. Posted by another reader elsewhere: "In Defenders: Beyond, Blue Marvel, America Chavez, Loki, Taaia, and Tigra all venture outside the multiverse to discover a secret threat to Eternity.
They even venture through the White Hot Room. And in the House of Ideas, they finally get a glimpse of their enemy (which has been referred to as having "dominion"):"

It's cool how Destiny knew and has known for a very long time. From Immortal #8.

[JB]

This was an interesting exchange as well.



"Is it her? Really?" Hmm.

[Frontier]

Not the first Marvel work to bring up the Ship of Theseus .

[mugen]

This was an interesting exchange as well.



"Is it her? Really?" Hmm.

Gillen who will fix Moira's character assassination? if he could do the same thing for abigail... in any case immortal confirms with this last issue that it is indeed the best x-book of the krakoa era eager to see what will happen with essex and above all x-men forever and rise of power of x.

[Viteh]

Gillen who will fix Moira's character assassination? if he could do the same thing for abigail... in any case immortal confirms with this last issue that it is indeed the best x-book of the krakoa era eager to see what will happen with essex and above all x-men forever and rise of power of x.

He did say Moira would play a big role in RotPoX. So maybe he will fix her.

[BobbysWorld]

Considering that original Nathaniel Essex looked just like the Diamond Sinister clone, I wonder if Irene got them mixed up originally, before she realized the four clones existed. After all, she originally went to Original Reciple Nathaniel and was insistent that they needed to be on the same side, in order to win/avert what was coming - but he WAS the enemy/threat that was coming. But if she'd originally had visions of DIAMOND CLONE Sinister, her future colleague on the Quiet Council of Krakoa, an island nation she foresaw long before it actually came into being even if we don't know precisely when she first knew about Krakoa - if she'd ever definitively been able to get Diamond Sinister on her side, then Enigma could have been stopped. By convincing Diamond Sinister not to make his own attempt at Dominion, they could have prevented Enigma from hijacking that attempt and coming fully online.

But because the one clone Irene was going to end up closely positioned enough to that she saw possibilities via getting him on her side....was ironically the one clone who was practically physically indistinguishable from the original Essex, down to the same diamond marking the original got from Apocalypse's alterations.....she originally mistook them for one and the same.

And thus she ended up playing her hand too early by going to original Nathaniel and attempting to build an alliance with him against a future enemy.....the enemy that was him. And in doing so, she drew the attention of his timeless/unbound-from-reality self, Enigma the Dominion, who intervened directly to preserve the causality that led to him Ascension, afflicting his earlier self with visions & putting a stop to his conversation with Irene.....

With Irene now unable to risk acting too directly because Enigma was on to her and aware she knew enough to possibly threaten his not-quite-inevitable Ascension.

[yogaflame]

So Gillen's big play was.... yet another Sinister.

[king81992]

This is all very interesting, and it's funny how Mother Righteous knows more about mutants and their connections to the WHR than previously thought. She states Jean is out of whack because of the presence of so many living people in the WHR, which isn't for the living. She may not be aware of Jean and Phoenix's current state of affairs.

The part about Jean and the Phoenix, sort of a chicken and egg situation, is interesting. Can't wait to see the actual details of that when Jean eventually "returns".

Mother Righteous's plan was doomed to fail even without the Dominion interfering, its so half assed.

[king81992]

So Gillen's big play was.... yet another Sinister.

Another Sinister was the only option since the revelation the OG Sinister split himself into four.

[CGAR]

what Gillen did with mutant magic in two pages.