Un-Ring

“Alien Plants Vs. Mutant Zombies,” “Growing Strong,” “Staff Infection,” “Un-ring” 
Empyre X-Men #1-4
Written by Jonathan Hickman with Tini Howard, Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Leah Williams, Ed Brisson, Vita Ayala, and Zeb Wells
Art by Matteo Buffagni, Lucas Wernick, Andrea Broccardo, and Jorge Molina
Color art by Nolan Woodard with Rachelle Rosenberg

Empyre X-Men is two things – a loose tie-in with a Fantastic Four/Avengers event and a formal experiment in publishing a mini-series as an “exquisite corpse” exercise in which each of the current X-book writers get to write a segment of the story – but is more importantly third thing, which is Jonathan Hickman setting his Scarlet Witch story in motion after teasing it in both House of X and X-Men #7.  The jam elements of this miniseries are fun, especially the aspect of it that’s basically watching each writer do their best to introduce a wild plot beat before handing it off, but it’s ultimately all a bunch of enjoyable filler between the Hickman portions at the beginning and end of the series. 

Since so much of what Hickman has been doing at this stage of things has been moving characters and plot points into place for bigger things later on, it’s encouraged a way of looking at the stories in terms of what’s been established or advanced. In this case, there’s some small but notable beats – we finally get to see what Angel and Monet have been up to since House of X since they don’t appear in any of the spinoff series, and we see Beast steal some science stuff from Hordeculture, the evil botanists/Golden Girls pastiche characters from X-Men #3. 

Angel – who is apparently free of his menacing Archangel persona for the moment – is heading up some business operations for Xavier with the assistance of Monet, and his main plot beats amount to him being like “put me in the game, coach” to Xavier and then just bumbling around as a beautiful himbo who is objectified by most of the women in the story for the remainder of the issues. It’s all very cute and a nice change of pace from the usual angst-ridden Angel/Archangel stories, but it’s still not giving this fairly central X-Men character much to do. When notable characters aren’t in any spin-offs I assume they’re part of Hickman’s larger plan – certainly the case for Monet and Nightcrawler – but with Angel I just wonder if the writers don’t have any particular ideas of what to do with him that isn’t just going back over the Archangel/Apocalypse beats yet again.

The Scarlet Witch plot goes like this: Wanda Maximoff, overcome with the guilt of stripping millions of mutants of their powers in House of M, has tried to make up for this by attempting to resurrect the 16 million mutants killed in the Genosha genocide from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. She screws up the magic and brings them all back as zombies, and the middle section of the story is a melee with the mutant zombies, the Cotati aliens from the Empyre story, Hordeculture, and demons from Limbo. She goes to Doctor Strange to fix this and after harshly criticizing both her shoddy magic and misguided intentions, he fixes the situation on the zombie/magic end of things. 

The Wanda plot is interesting to me for a lot of reasons. For one, it’s sort of amazing that in all the time since House of M was published in 2005, there’s never been a proper X-Men story that has truly engaged with her effectively destroying mutantdom for many years. This has come up in some Avengers stories, but it’s not really the same thing. Given that House of M was a thing that deliberately hobbled the X-Men as a franchise at Marvel in favor of the Avengers for many years, the anguish of mutants about “M Day” is mirrored by the people (like me!) who frustratedly read X-Men books in the aftermath of it. From an X-Men fan perspective, setting her up as “the pretender Wanda Maximoff” and having her villified by Krakoan culture feels correct both in the text and on a meta level. Wanda is a made-up character, but she represents an editorial decision a lot of readers resent. 

But despite all this, Wanda Maximoff is still basically a heroic figure in Marvel lore. Even if her actions in this story create a huge mess, she’s still presented as a sympathetic figure who desperately wants to make up for what she’s done in the past. Doctor Strange’s dialogue with her in the fourth issue is blunt to the point of brutality, but he’s not wrong about her: She’s a reckless person who creates chaos and other people always have to deal with the mess she makes. She’s always trying to erase her sins rather than “eclipse them with greater deeds,” as Strange puts it. Hickman’s dynamic between these two characters is intriguing to me – he wrote Doctor Strange extensively in New Avengers and Secret Wars, but Wanda didn’t appear in any of his Avengers work. Strange is presented as very intelligent, but condescending and dismissive, particularly towards women. Wanda comes off as dim and impulsive, but very sensitive and decent at heart. Even if Strange is absolutely correct about her, Hickman pushes the reader to feel empathy for her. It’s going to be rough when she eventually has to confront who she is the mutants of Krakoa somewhere down the line. 

The X-Men don’t know Wanda is responsible for the zombie mutant situation, but Wanda doesn’t know about the Krakoan resurrection rituals. This is addressed in a subplot with a mutant called Explodey Boy who first appears as a zombie and then later as his resurrected self. There’s an extended sequence in the last issue illustrated by Lucas Wernick in which the two Explodey Boys meet and talk through their odd existential situation. This very Brian Michael Bendis-y sequence is very sweet and makes good use of the possibilities of resurrection as a major feature of Krakoan life, but it grates on me that Hickman and Wernick portray Explodey Boy as a cute blonde white boy with an “aw shucks” demeanor when they had the option to make him… so many things besides a cute blonde white boy! For one thing, he looks and talks just like Cypher, so there’s a matter of redundancy. But when the entire point of Explodey Boy in the story is that he’s a wholesome normal kid, making him a blonde white boy is basically equating that with the utmost of sweet normalcy. It just seems to me that an X-Men comic in 2020 should avoid a lazy trope like that. 

Crucible

“Lifedeath”
X-Men #7
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu
Color art by Sunny Gho

Let’s start with audacity of the title. Given that this is an issue about an event called Crucible that is mentioned by name many times over, it would be sensible to simply call the issue “Crucible” or similar. But no, Jonathan Hickman can’t quite ever be bold enough, so he named it “Lifedeath,” after one of the most famous and acclaimed Chris Claremont stories in which Storm struggles with life after losing her powers. It makes sense: This is an issue about what becomes of the million mutants who lost their powers to the Scarlet Witch’s “no more mutants” spell in House of M, and how to be reborn with their powers they must first die. It’s the core dilemma of the original Storm arc taken to a new extreme, with Nightcrawler and Cyclops on the margins of the story pondering the spiritual implications of the Krakoan resurrection protocols. 

Hickman takes his time doling out hints of what Crucible is through the first half of the issue, indicating the solemn intensity of the occasion and how heavily it weighs on the other characters. The context is revealed as we see Exodus explain the reason for the event to a group of mutant children around a fire in the forest, emphasizing the great evils of the Scarlet Witch and the horrors she inflicted on mutantdom with just three words. The children repeat language from the text pages referring to the Scarlet Witch and M Day in House of X #4 – “the pretender,” “NO MORE” – and suggest that an emerging part of Krakoan culture is the vilification of Wanda Maximoff and, by extension, the Avengers. This indoctrination makes sense, particularly given the extreme lengths the Krakoans must go to rectify her deeds, but the reader is aware that Scarlet Witch is still written as a heroic figure in Avengers comics. It now seems inevitable that she will enter this story at some point and have to reckon with a mutant nation indoctrinated to think of her as a Hitler figure. 

This scene is the first indication of what Hickman is planning for Exodus, a somewhat underdeveloped villain created in the 1990s that he’s placed on the Quiet Council. The main thing about Exodus is that he’s from the distant past – he was raised in the 12th century but held in stasis by Apocalypse for centuries – and that he’s a zealot who aligned with Magneto’s most extreme beliefs but was more harsh and unyielding. It would seem that Exodus’ zealotry is being positioned as a parallel to Nightcrawler’s spirituality here, as we see Nightcrawler wrestle with moral questions and decide that he must start a mutant religion for those questioning their faith in the context of Krakoan culture and the implications of endless rebirth. If the pure and heroic Nightcrawler is offering a theology based on kindness, forgiveness, and pursuit of peace, Exodus is clearly fostering a more violent and unforgiving fundamentalism in his young followers.

In the final third of the issue we see that Crucible isn’t merely about a depowered mutant dying to be “made whole” in resurrection, but rather a sacrement informed by Apocalypse’s “survival of the fittest” ethos. Melody Guthrie, the younger sister of Cannonball and Husk, must face the hulking and enormously powerful Apocalypse in a duel in which he taunts and tests her. The mutants of Krakoa don’t want to deal with mass suicide of depowered mutants – they want a show of dedication to fight for their people. They must be found worthy. 

This makes sense, but is also sort of troubling. The ritualistic nature of this speaks to both Apocalypse and Exodus’ roots in the distant past, and shows how their taste for bloody sacrifice and symbolism is shaping the emerging culture of Krakoa. This is another contrast with Nightcrawler’s sensibilities as a Catholic – he’s a very New Testament sort of guy, after all. It will be interesting to see how his hippie-ish brand of Christianity informs a new religion based upon many ideas that his culture has disproven, or at least called into question. 

Some notes:

• Hickman continues to tease the details of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, and Emma Frost’s apparently bisexual polycule situation. I realize some would love for this to all be spelled out and made full canon, but I actually prefer him sketching this out in ways that suggest something as filthy and overtly queer as the reader wants it to be. Don’t get hung up on the plausible deniability, get excited by how far he’s willing to go to suggest that Wolverine and Cyclops are regularly fucking each other. 

• I love that Cannonball, always an incredibly normal and down-to-earth dude, is just getting used to raising a family in the alien Shi’ar culture and comes home to discover that everyone he knows has created a new culture that’s maybe twice as strange. But hey, his dead siblings are alive, so he’s he to complain? 

• We finally see Warlock separated from Cypher’s arm and it’s very odd and creepy. It’s hard to tell whether this is hinting at something bad, or just showing us that Cypher is just a really weird guy with very unusual friends.