Welcome back to Mutantversity, a class offered at the Stately Xavier Mansion. This isn’t a place to find big reviews of X-books, but it’s a great way to keep up with one of the most complicated superhero series around. We’ll learn, we’ll laugh, maybe we’ll make some new friends, maybe die, come back, die again, come back again, die again, and come back again until we can’t even remember all of the lives we’ve led. Most of all, we’re going to dive into the deep end as we try to parse all the secrets of new era of “X-Men” comics. As your designated X-Pert, I will do my best to help you work through everything Marvel’s Merry Mutants have to offer!
First we’re going to recap the last month of the ongoing superhero soap opera that is “X-Men.” Next, I’ll tell you which X-Men books I looked at this month, and whether I thought they were worth reading. Then, we’re going to spotlight a creator who brought a rare level of X-cellence to the line. Finally, we’re going to award our Monthly Mutantversity Medals of Merit. Stick with me true believers, and maybe we’ll survive this experience!
This Month In X-Men
Moira was born in Scotland. She became a schoolteacher, started a family, and died at the age of 74. Then she was born again. Moira MacTaggert, the stalwart human scientist who has aided the X-Men since she first appeared in 1975’s “Uncanny X-Men” #96, is not a human at all. She’s a mutant. To many X-Men readers, that may feel like a big “so what?” But to aspiring X-perts, we are shaken to our cores. Let’s dive into the many lives of Moira.
Moira, we have learned, is a mutant Ouroboran. Her powers work almost identically to the titular character in the novel The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, one of my favorite books of the decade (more on that below). Moira, like Harry August, doesn’t quite die. Instead, she returns to the moment of her birth with all of her memories intact. Think about the implications. If she became a doctor in one life and a ninja in the next, she’d carry both skills on with her. She knows how to invest, so she’s got all the powers of Biff in Back to the Future 2. She can speak many languages. And more than anything else, she can change history. Can and has. Nine previous times.
In life number two, Moira studied biology. There she became familiar with the work of Professor Charles Xavier, and later discovered that Xavier was also a mutant. Professor X’s coming out actually mirrors a similar scene in Grant Morrison’s “New X-Men” #116. In that version though, it was Xavier’s evil twin impersonating him. Interesting that the speech plays out similarly whether it is Xavier or his sister Cassandra. When Moira went to confront Charles about it, her plane crashed into the ocean and she died.
Life number three! Moira became a collaborator of Charles Xavier, and the two of them became the world’s foremost experts in genetic mutation. But Moira became disgusted by her mutation, and decided to invent a cure. She intended for it to be voluntarily administered, but the very idea offends the Brotherhood of Mutants, and Moira was attacked by a character we haven’t seen in years– Irene Adler, aka Destiny.
Destiny is a member of the Brotherhood of (Evil) Mutants, and Mystique’s wife. Comics in the 70s and 80s weren’t allowed to call them wives, but Chris Claremont made it as explicit as he could. Destiny was killed in “Uncanny X-Men” #255, which came out in 1989. And she’s stayed dead since then although as someone who can see the future, she’s left cryptic clues and hints in stories that followed her death. In the life of Moira III, Destiny explains that Moira is not immortal. Her mutant powers don’t manifest until she turns 13. If Destiny tracks her down before then and kills her, that’s it. Not only that, Destiny says that Moira will get a total of 10 lives, 11 if she plays her cards right. Then, to make sure that Moira takes her seriously, she has Pyro roast her to death- slowly. Ouch.
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Which brings us to life number four. This time, Moira seduced Charles Xavier and co-led the X-Men with him. The story runs pretty close to the one we’re familiar with. Scott, Jean, Bobby, Warren, and Hank are their first five students, and they are later joined by Logan, Ororo, Kurt, and Piotr. The Phoenix Five still happen, and the first initials of their names still spells out P-E-N-I-S (Piotr, Emma, Namor, Ilyana, and Scott). Moira and Charles are killed by sentinels.
So now we are on life number five. This time, Moira radicalized Charles, and together they became mutant separatists. They founded a city-state called Faraway, and built a mutant army to defend it. Again the sentinels came for them, and again she was killed. So naturally, next would come life number… seven!? That’s right X-pals, life number six is conspicuously missing. Make of that what you will, but be sure to make a lot of it, because it is going to be very important, this I promise.
But yeah, life number seven. Moira became an assassin and wiped out the entire Trask family. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, Bolivar Trask is the scientist who invented the sentinels. His nephew Donald Trask is a hapless dentist who was manipulated into starting the Genoshan genocide. Simon Trask is the brother of Bolivar and a racist scumbag politician. Gwyneth Trask is… a bit of a mystery. There is a Tanya Trask, who is the daughter of Bolivar and an unnamed mother. Is Gwyneth Bolivar’s wife? Is Tanya somehow a nickname for Gwyneth? Either way, Moira kills ’em all. But it doesn’t help, and Hickman explains why in some writing that I found as beautiful as it was mind-blowing. “With blood on her hands and blood in her mouth, Moira learned the darkest truth of all her many lives regarding man’s nightmare machines. Artificial intelligence is like fire. It’s a discovery, not an invention. All she succeeded in doing was stopping Trask from being the first human to burn their hand.” Moira VII was killed by a new breed of sentinels, and it is said that this death, she was fully radicalized.
So in life number eight, Moira did what any of us would do if we were trying to trigger a mutant revolution. She sought out Magneto, the Master of Magnetism, at the height of his evil Silver Age villainy. This is Magneto when he ruled over a secret Lovecraftian island that the podcast Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men has dubbed Octopusheim. That name may or may not be canon, but I’m planning on using it. Moira and Magneto conquered America, but were ultimately killed by the X-Men and Avengers.
Life number nine! OK, you wanna strike out against the world, but Magneto is too tame. Who do you turn to? En Sabah Nur, baby! Apocalypse! Moira let Apocalypse alter her using his celestial machines, and by his side murdered the heroes of Earth. The machines still came, but Moira went down fighting. (Or so it would seem. More on this in a bit). Destiny promised she had ten chances to live, eleven if she played her cards right. So this is it, her final life, the life of… Moira the 10th. Or if you prefer, Moira X. Dun dun DUN!
If all of this has your head spinning, well that’s very reasonable. But all signs indicate that the Moira we have always known is Moira X. We never knew she was a mutant before… but she’s also the one who would run the tests to tell you if someone was X-gene positive. It seems Xavier has always known about her many lives… but he has always kept her secret. But most of all, we know that Moira X is our Moira because it’s the only lifetime that matches up with what we know about her history.
In this familiar timeline, Moira marries a conservative creep named Joseph MacTaggert, which is how she gets that last name. She founds a research center off the coast of Scotland on Muir Island. There, she helps mutants like Multiple Man, Polaris, and Strong Guy. She also imprisons her son Kevin, aka Proteus, an evil Omega level mutant with the power to warp reality. That seems to be the key to her plans. Joseph MacTaggert is a dead end and a waste of time… but he does father Proteus, who is currently a resident of Krakoa. I’d venture that Proteus is key to Moira’s plans.
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Back in the day, on Magneto’s secret island base of Octopusheim, Moira and Xavier paid him a visit. Assuming this is the Moira X/Marvel 616 timeline, what we learn is pretty shocking. Not only has Professor X known about Moira’s secret this entire time, the two of them also let Magneto in on the secret. With the gift of 10 lifetimes of wisdom, what did Magneto choose to do? Basically, everything we’ve known him to do. Magneto is a big believer in the marketplace of ideas, and thinks that everything can be settled through debate. It’s his ideas versus Charles’, wisdom be damned. If Charles and Moira are truly smart he believes, their ideas will win the day. This is extremely Magneto.
Oh also, Hickman may be as good at writing Magneto as he was at writing Doctor Doom. There’s something about the pompous Shakespearean grandeur of old-school Marvel villains that Hickman really gets. This is probably because he himself is a criminal mastermind. “It really all comes down to one thing, Magneto,” Moira says, “…in this world, who determines what is truly good and what is truly evil?”
“I do,” Magneto says. “I decide.” Chills you guys.
Hickman also has a gift for Cyclops’ voice. We find out what Mystique delivered to the mutant leaders- information about Orchis and their plans to build Mother Mold. Which is evidently a Master Master Mold. OK, you know the sentinels, those purple genocidal deathbots? Master Mold was a giant sentinel that could essentially poop regular sentinels out of a chute in its tummy. It was pretty weird. Mother Mold is an even bigger Master Mold that can build regular Master Molds. It’s a deathbot arms race!
Xavier and Magneto give Slim the skinny. It’s a bold and dangerous plan, maybe a suicide mission.
“Can such a thing even be done?” Magneto wonders aloud.
“Does it need doing?” Cyclops asks. “Then it will be done.”
I sincerely hope that Hickman talks this way around the house. “Get me a beer?” his friend asks him. “Does it need doing” Hickman asks. “Uh, I want a beer?” his friend replies. “Then it will be done!”
Meanwhile, a hundred years in the (well, a) future, we learn who is leading the remains of the X-Men… it’s none other than the typically-very-evil Apocalypse! Those last four X-Men are his Horsemen! Uh-oh! Wolverine is immediately identified as War, and the other three horseman won’t be explicitly identified until the next issue. Mysterious Tree Guy drops a big hint though. “This body once belonged to a mutant who could communicate with anything,” he says. That will soon be confirmed to be Cypher, who has the mutant power to understand any language. As he’s mastered his powers, the concept of “language” has gotten more and more esoteric, extending to computer code, body language, and dance. Is “plants” a language? Did Cypher merge with the island of Krakoa? That would make a lot of sense, Cypher is usually desperate to merge with any weird beings he can.
Then, we get a decent sized story from the X^3 timeline, the far future time of the blue-skinned Librarian. We know the Librarian is looking to ascend, but it is in this series of charts and conversations that we finally learn how. Bear with me, because this explanation is going to take us to some pretty far-off corners of the Marvel universe.
Apparently, a species intelligence can be quantified on something called the SI scale. SI: 1 refers to a machine with the rough intelligence of a biological individual. There are lots of characters like this around the Marvel U, from Vision to Jocasta to Machine Man. SI: 10 is a Hive, which can pool processing power to accomplish a higher level of intelligence. It’s not made explicit, but this is something we’ve seen Ultron do in the comics.
SI: 100-10,000 is called an Intelligence (which seems needlessly confusing). The Kree Supreme Intelligence (who movie fans recently met in Captain Marvel) is such a being. The Supreme Intelligence was created by combining the knowledge and experience of the greatest thinkers in the Empire to form one super-smart being.
Continued belowNext comes SI: 10,000, also called a Technarch, and this is where a really specific Marvel knowledge comes in handy. Warlock, the cool robot buddy of the New Mutants, is a Technarch offshoot. Actually though, a Technarch is a huge society of machines (called a Kvch) (I told you this was gonna get really specific) presided over by a Magus. Wow, that sentence was truly nonsense. OK, basically there are these huge intelligent spaceship dudes who rule over societies of baby robots, which are extensions of the main one’s will. Classic “New Mutants” has some good stories about the Technarchs, but I recommend reading “Annihilation: Conquest,” which introduced the Guardians of the Galaxy and gets deeply into how Technarch society is organized.
When you reach SI: 100,000, you get a Worldmind. This can only refer to the Xandarian Worldmind, which is the power source of the Nova Corp. Practically, this refers to a brain the size of a planet, but we got to know the Xandarian Worldmind well in the “Nova” series that ran from 2007-2010. When the physical planet housing the Worldmind was destroyed, it came to inhabit the human Richard Rider and nearly destroyed him with its power. But the two of them learned to co-exist, and Rider became the most powerful Nova ever. That series was rad.
The highest charted intelligence, an SI of 1,000,000 is a Phalanx. That’s a word that has a very particular meaning to “X-Men” fans. ‘The Phalanx Covenant’ was a crossover story in the mid-90s featuring The Phalanx as a villain. But here we learn that a Phalanx is like the Borg, a vast machine intelligence seeking to assimilate whole planets and species into its self. They do this by building Babel Spires, huge towers that can summon Technarchs to begin the assimilation process. You can watch that whole prcoess in the aforementioned “Annihilation: Conquest.”
Okay, lesson over, what’s that mean for the story? Well, this is the path of ascension. At some point between X^2 and X^3, a hundred post-humans were combined to form a super-mega-giga machine called Nimbus, which grew bigger and bigger hoping to become a Phalanx. It ate a bunch of moons to grow large enough to house its intelligence, and drew the attention of the Celestials, the most powerful beings in the Marvel universe. And, it is implied, the Celestials have an SI of greater than 1,000,000. In fact, it seems that the war between the naturally evolving mutants and the artificially evolving cyborg humans is all just a step on the path to becoming a Phalanx.
Is that where all of this is going? It’s a whole lot. I hope Wolverine comes back soon. That dude is badass.
The X-Men/Horsemen of X^2, the year one-hundred, begin their assault. And I am pleased to report that Wolverine is among them. We learn a little bit more about this world, and the relationship between man and machine. Humans built machines as a demonstration of their hatred of mutants. The machines grew more sophisticated though, and now humans are reassessing their relationships with… everything. “Reject your humanity!” a crazy cyborg yells in front of the Church of Ascendancy, before zapping robot parts onto a baby.
Cardinal (the red Nightcrawler-looking dude) used the powers of his master Apocalypse to overcome his genetic predisposition towards pacifism, and the X-Men bring the fight to the Tower of Nimrod. And who is on this team? Let’s do a quick roll call!
En Sabah Nur leads the X-Men. He likes to call himself Apocalypse. The related chart also points out that he’s an External. Put as simply as possible, Externals are immortal mutants who are connected to some extremely mystical prophecy nonsense. Whether or not Apocalypse is an External has been debated in comics for years, but this chart confirms he is, right there in black and white.
Wolverine aka James Howlett is indeed War. This chart further identifies him as a pureblood mutant, and all but confirms that this is the genuine Cannucklehead. Next up is Xorn, the Horseman of Death. There are two mutants named Xorn, and they are twins: Shen Xorn and Kuan-Yin Xorn. One (Shen) has a head that is made out of a star, the other (Kuan-Yin) has a head made out of a black hole. Xorn famously impersonated Magneto impersonating him (or something to that effect), and the twins have famously impersonated each other. But this seems to be the original Kuan-Yin though, and his head is very much a black hole.
Continued belowPestilence is not Magneto at all, but a 2nd generation chimera mutant named North. He has a combination of the powers of Polaris and Emma Frost, hence the green Magneto getup. We also get confirmation that Famine, the tree guy, is a symbiotic combination of Cypher and Krakoa. This is the most exciting reveal of all. Cypher is a character who writers have always struggled to make as compelling as he should be. Knowing he has a quasi-mythic destiny to merge with the island home of the X-Men cements his importance to the “X-Men” story. Hopefully, it’ll be as interesting as it should be.
The other X-Men are also on this chart. Cylobel and Percival were both killed in an earlier issue. Cardinal and Rasputin are the two we’ve been spending the most time with. There’s also a mysterious woman, codenamed Mother Akkaba. Let’s hold off on discussing her for just a moment.
One by one the X-Men give everything for the mission. Wolverine is blasted by Nimrod. Xorn pulls off his helmet, destroying himself, Rasputin and a whole bunch of sentinels in the process. (You know what happens to a robot sucked into a black hole? The same as everything else.) Apocalypse is brought to his knees by multiple Nimrods. But then we learn the two mission objectives and everything changes.
The first is that the X-Men are stealing Nimrod’s treasured knowledge. The second is that they are recovering Mother Akkaba… and it’s Moira IX! Holy crap! Akkaba was the village that Apocalypse is from, back in ancient Egypt. The Akkaba Clan is a millennia-old cult dedicated to worshiping him. And Moira IX became their leader. This also means that presumably, everything we’ve seen in the X^3 timeline… hasn’t been in the future at all, but rather, one of Moira’s past lives. That’s where the present day X-Men got their intel, and why Scott is attacking the Nimrod project when he is. It’s all part of Moira’s master plan.
These are shots fired by Mister Hickman. Now, every scene that we see has potential to be a previous story in one of Moira’s previous lives. We can’t believe our lying eyes. Why, for example, did we see the same scene play out twice with Moira and Charles on that park bench? Was it for dramatic emphasis, or was it because the scene played out twice, in two of her lives? Could she have tried a similar move in the mysterious and missing life VI? Stay frosty team, Hickman is laying a trap for us.
Meanwhile, in the present, Cyclops is ready to lead his team into certain doom. Must be Wednesday! Let’s do a quick rundown of his team. Mystique you know, she’s blue, she can shapeshift, and she’s been doing wetwork for Xavier and Magneto. Nightcrawler is her son, he’s a blue elf dude, can teleport, and looks sexy as hell in a sweater. Marvel Girl is the reborn Jean Grey, now wearing the groovy costume of her youth. She’s arguably the most powerful psychic in the world. Archangel is Warren Kenneth Worthington III, he used to be a handsome guy with feathery wings, then Apocalypse turned him into an angry blue monster with razor sharp metal wings. Wolverine is the best there is at what he does, and what he does is appear in more Marvel issues than any other single character.
The last two may not be as well known. First up is Monet aka M. She’s got a a metric buttload of powers- she’s strong, can fly, is invulnerable, can read minds. She’s also got a bad (read: good) case of Emma Frost’s rich bitch attitude, exacerbated by the fact that Emma was her mentor. Monet’s complicated backstory is the heart of the original “Generation X” series, and she later went on to be one of the stars of Peter David’s tremendous “X-Factor” run. Finally we’ve got Husk, aka Paige Guthrie, of the legendary Guthrie clan of mutants. The Guthries are a big Kentucky coal-mining family, and every one of the kids is a mutant. Husk can tear off her skin- gross- but underneath is a new skin that can be made out of pretty much whatever she wants. Metal, stone, runner, lava, glass, more skin, you name it. Also, Paige is a rare breed among superheroes: she’s an English major. In the world of all these science geniuses, I’m happy Paige is around making a case for studying comparative lit or whatever.
Continued belowAfter so much confusing timeline stuff, this plan is simple. This team of X-Men will take a space plane to a secret base and blow it up before it has the chance to invent Nimrod. Moira has determined that though artificial intelligence is an inevitability, Nimrod is not. This gets to the only deep complexity in “House of X” #3.
Sentinels as you know, are purple killer robots. They like to say “destroy all mutants,” to trip over themselves, and to occasionally kill mutants. Also, they are a good character pick in Marvel vs. Capcom. A Master Mold, as discussed earlier, is a giant sentinel that can produce the regular kind. Mother Mold is what the X-Men are trying to avert, and that’s an even bigger sentinel that makes Master Molds. Then we’ve got the Omega Sentinel “a human infected with Nano-Sentinel technology.”
Now, there is one “X-Men” character named Omega Sentinel. That’s Karima Shapandar. She was a cop living in India who was made into a cyborg prototype for a generation of human/sentinel hybrids. When Nightcrawler encounters her, it’s clear that this is Karima; they know each other. But interestingly, Kurt calls her “an Omega Sentinel,” implying that there are a whole lot more. The charts in this issue mention that Omega Sentinel is critical in bridging the gap between Mother Mold and Nimrod. Oh and then there are the Nano-Sentinels.
If you’ve read any sort of sci-fi stories with nanomachines, you kind of get the idea of Nano-Sentinels, but they have been a big part of “X-Men” stories in the past. The Nano-Sentinels were a weapon used by Professor X’s evil twin sister Cassandra Nova, and slowly killed the X-Men by shutting down their immune systems. Later, Magneto took control of the Nano-Sentinels and used them to simulate healing powers, having them restore Professor X’s ability to walk and so on. The Nano-Sentinel infection process described in “House of X” #3 also sounds a whole lot like assimilation into the Phalanx. All the weird “X-Men” sci-fi and robot threads are coming together, unifying into one more coherent story. Thanks Hickman!
B-Plot! We jump over to something called Project Achilles, described as the ultimate super villain prison, meant for the “worst of the worst,” the 30 most dangerous prisoners in the world. It’s mentioned, somewhat chillingly, that each prisoner is only afforded one visitation day a year and that no one has ever requested a visit. There have been a bunch of super-prisons in the history of Marvel comics (the Raft, the Cube, the Kyln), but this one seems brand new. Interesting but probably unimportant connection: the Canadian Government also had something called Project Achilles, used to track down the Wolverine villain Wendigo.
But we’re concerned with another Wolverine foe: freaking Sabretooth! He’s being prosecuted after his earlier capture in “House of X” #1. And he doesn’t seem too worried. Oh man, and there’s another maybe-a-reference-maybe-a-coincidence. In the courtroom, the A.G. (I’m assuming Attorney General?) is a woman named Tolliver. There was a fairly prominent villain in the 90s named Mister Tolliver, an arms dealer who was later revealed to be Cable’s son Tyler. (Wait, Tyler Tolliver? No wonder he turned evil). Don’t know if that’ll matter, but keep it in your back pocket.
Sabretooth doesn’t ever get prosecuted though, because the trial is interrupted. By someone fabulous. Someone who smells like jasmine. Someone who’s breathtaking wardrobe redefines the meaning and purpose of clothes. I’m talking about Ms. Emma Grace Frost, the White Queen. She’s here, she’s feared, she’s got a letter from the American Secretary of State granting Sabretooth immunity. She has a chance to use her powers, but she doesn’t even have to. She just talks down the whole courtroom with her stone cold attitude, and everyone obeys her anyway. Emma is the freaking coolest.
Meanwhile in space… the X-Men arrive at Project Orchis. Both sides immediately figure out the game, and play it pretty smart. An Orchis scientist, Erasmus, realizes that the only way for his side to win is to do something desperate and unpredictable. He detonates a bomb, killing himself and blowing the X-Wing off the base. He’s really done it now, the X-Men are gonna… wait hold on. That’s it?
Continued belowThat’s it for this month. To be continued! As if that wasn’t enough. Less than half as many X-issues as I usually read in a month, but I have twice as much to say about them. Join me next month when literally anything can happen. I think we’re well beyond predicting the future. That’s a game for Destiny.
This Month’s Books:
“House of X” #2 – I screamed on every page turn. This issue messed me up. 11/10. XI/X.
“Powers of X” #2 – Wha-huh? Too smart for me, but I enjoyed it like I enjoy a walk through the rain.
“Powers of X” #3 – I knew a twist like this was coming, but not what or how or when. I’m blown away.
“House of X” #3 – Was this a traditional superhero issue? Kind of? I liked it!
Special Spotlight: Claire North
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts: Imaginary Worlds with Eric Molinsky (do check it out, it’s great!) when I first learned of her. I am very familiar with the subjects of most of Molinsky’s episodes, but I had never heard of Catherine Webb, or Claire North, or Kate Griffin (all the same person). But I was immediately charmed by her witty and pragmatic approach to genre fiction, and I decided to give her novel The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August a go. And it’s been one of my favorite books that I’ve read in the last few years.
The titular Harry August is an Ouroboran. When he dies, he is reborn at the moment of his birth, but retains his memories and thus all the skills and wisdom he’s absorbed throughout his lives. X-readers may notice the similarities to the powers we now know are possessed by Moira Kinross MacTaggert. And that’s awesome. It’s such a cool idea, that it makes sense for more than one author to want to explore it, especially authors who are as different from one another as Hickman and North. After all, Claremont used to do this kind of thing all the time. The Hellfire Club? That’s just based on an episode of the British spy series The Avengers (no, not those Avengers). The Brood. I hate to alarm you, but that idea came out as Claremont was leaving a screen of Ridley Scott’s Alien in 1979.
Hickman definitely read Harry August. He talked about it in an interview about his last series “Black Monday Murders.” And the connection has been brought to North’s attention, who seemed completely sanguine about it. That’s because she’s a cool person as well as a cool author. Any animosity seems to be a product of Twitter mobs and unscrupulous comics journalists. These are two cool writers riffing on similar ideas and telling vastly different stories.
HOXPOX has caused me to learn about many things I wouldn’t have otherwise. My google search history is full of questions about the bible, linguistics, and the Kardashev scale. So don’t turn this cool connection into a boring spat. Take this opportunity to read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, or The Sudden Appearance of Hope, or 84K. Jonathan Hickman is expanding his horizons to write this gonzo comic for us. We should go out there and expand our horizons, read things we may not have otherwise. Add Claire North to your pull lists!
The Mutantversity Monthly Medals of Merit:
The Cable’s Pouch of X-Treme Grittiness Award
Given to a mutant for demonstrating badassitude and commitment to the 90s aesthetic
Moira VII
Gee, Moira MacTaggert has gotten really cool, but has she gotten 90s cool? I guess we need a life where she becomes an armored sniper assassin taking out a single human bloodline. That’d be rad. Moira VII should team up with Cable. I hope one day we get a miniseries spinoff called “Moira VII,” and the whole world is just 90s remixes of different eras of Marvel. The original “X-Men?” Boom, 90s remix. “Giant Sized X-Men?” That’s 90s too! “Mutant Massacre?” “Inferno?” The same, but with extra pouches. The actual 90s? Somehow, more 90s. The life of Moira VII is like “X-Men ’92” but played completely straight.
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“Call Me Alex” Award
Given to a mutant filled with self-loathing about their identity
Moira III
Mutant self loathing often manifests as a desire for a cure. That was the conclusion reached by Moira III. And as with many seeking to end mutation, she pissed off the wrong gang of Evil Mutants, who burned her to death, slowly and painfully. It seems that Moira really internalized the lesson. She never tried to go down this path again. I don’t think it was just because of the threat of harm, I think she genuinely changed her mind on how she felt about mutation.
“Professor Xavier is a Jerk” Award
Given to a mutant who acted like a real jerk
Moira VIII
I got nothing against making a radical stand, but Moira VIII and Magneto brought out the worst in each other. Genocidal terrorism isn’t a pragmatic approach to political change, and it’s you know, a real jerk move. She helps Magneto bomb DC, and then gets into a fight with all the good guys? Double jerk! You leave Spider-Man alone Moira VIII!
Merriest Mutant Award
Given to a mutant who found a rare moment of happiness
Moira I
They say ignorance is bliss, and Moira I is great evidence of that. After a brief childhood illness (and a visit from a doctor who is not NOT Mister Sinister), Moira led a regular, mundane life. And she seemed happy and fulfilled by it. She had a job, a family, and she died of natural causes. She wasn’t afflicted with the madness, the drive, and the exhaustion that would make so many of her lives so miserable.
Fastball Special Award
Given to a duo who exhibited great friendship, collaboration, and teamwork
Moira V and Professor X
If any of Moira’s lives were entirely successful, she wouldn’t have to change them each time they recur. But she created something that looked truly beautiful with Professor X in her fifth life. The mutant nation of Faraway preceded Krakoa, Genosha, Utopia, and every other similar attempt we know about. And from what we can see, it looks idyllic. Peaceful, protected by powerful mutants, a shining and clean city-state. While the surprise development of the Sentinels destroyed paradise, Moira V proved that she and Charles Xavier can accomplish great things together.
Let’s Talk About X Baby Award
Given to the sweetest, sexiest, bestest romantic couple
Moira IX and Apocalypse
We all know that Apocalypse likes to get down. We thought the Age of X-Man awakened something in him, but now I think it was always there. He longs for an equal partner, that he wants to turn blue and grey and sexy. And let’s be real, seeing those two side by side was sexy AF. I know you’re wondering what En Sabah can do with those ear-to-ear mouth (his Apoca-lips). And if you weren’t you sure are now.
MVX: Most Valuable X-Man
Given to an X-Man who embodied the values of the team and showed all around X-cellence
Moira X
Unless something changes (and something always changes, such is the mutant condition), it appears that Moira X is the one we’ve always known in the main Marvel 616 continuity. And once you keep all of this in mind (and it is a lot) that makes this brilliant girl from Scotland the architect of the entire Marvel universe. I don’t know how much micro-managing she is doing, but ten lives in I am confident that nothing happens without her permission. Magneto claimed that mutants are the new gods of Earth, and Moira X is evidence of that fact. Her power, her wisdom? There are only X-Men because Moira allows them to be. That makes Moira X our MVX.
