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about-faces · 1 year ago

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An absolutely excellent dive into the problems with how Waller has been handled. I think this all started with Justice League Unlimited, which (inadvertently, I assume, given the brilliance of the late Dwayne McDuffie) popularized the Gyrich-ization of Waller.

It’s bad enough to see Waller as The Man—the living embodiment of petty authoritarianism—in comics and movies. But it was especially galling to see what they did with her in the otherwise-incredible show, My Adventures With Superman, where she was shown to be willing to let a bunch of innocent civilians die for The Greater Good (“The Greater Good” /Hot Fuzz).

Contrast that with Ostrander’s original Waller, who isn’t even willing to throw away the lives of the worst scumbags on her team:

Waller was envisioned from the start as a character who was too damn complex to fit into an easy “the ends justify the means” antagonist. She was SO MUCH MORE than that. Now, she’s just another Tolliver.

But as you said in your opening paragraph, this is the problem with “regular” characters in DC/Marvel media. Everyone has to be bent, distorted, and/or flattened to serve the greater IP roles of supporting characters in superhero stories. It’s something I’ve been noticing a lot more since I started writing about Gilda Dent. No matter how well these characters were written (and usually, they’re women*: Waller is the rare civilian character who wasn’t a love interest but a leader), eventually some writer comes along to try to better fit them into a simple, easily-understandable box for the benefit of the heroes.

(*A rare male exception is Maxwell Lord, who—just like Waller—had been redefined as an authoritarian, hero-hating Gyrich-ian villain, at the cost of the great morally gray, complex character he used to be. That’s another rant, but it’s part of the same greater thesis.)

Anyway, great essay, everyone should read Ostrander’s Suicide Squad, including the writers/fans of My Adventures With Superman.

There's a trend people have pointed out in superhero stories over the past 20 or so years that is the death of "regular" supporting casts, an increasing absence of un-powered sidekicks or people involved who aren't in the thick of the action or in the hero's secret. Everyone who interacts with superheroes is a couple issues away from becoming one, every story involves a supervillain encounter or several dozen, every hero's gotta have a lunchbox-ready "superhero family" made from these characters, and every side character that doesn't join them is either going to die or become a supervillain.

The defining example people use for this is Spider-Man's supporting cast, with every Spider-Man cast member short of Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson getting some kind of powered upgrade or symbiote, and I'm gonna say Amanda Waller is an excellent case study of how this kind of thing happens, and I think it helps to explain why Amanda Waller has been, Like That, for the past 30 years.

She’s wearing a grey shirt underneath a blue blazer and it’s tucked into a similarly blue skirt that stops at mid calf. She reminds me of the neighbourhood aunties I used to see leaving for church every Sunday morning.

My mom used to say that you are the company you keep. So what kind of person does it take to keep a variety of bruised, battered, and dangerous personalities in check? - Amanda Waller: DC's Most Terrifying Woman

To those of you who haven't read John Ostrander and Kim Yale's Suicide Squad, there once was a time where Amanda Waller was something more than a powerful antagonistic force able to butt heads with the biggest superheroes, and something other than a heartless establishment face out to make superheroes miserable for ill-defined reasons. Structurally speaking, Suicide Squad is a comic about marginal DCU characters forced to deal with actual real life problems, and it's central character is a marginalized person forced to deal with DCU problems and characters. The members of the Squad are a rolling parade of costumed misfits and maniacs assigned to go around the globe to fight and kill and die on dirty missions to deal with dirty laundry and stop war zones from erupting, while Amanda Waller is forced to shuffle around her cadre of D-list supervillains and disgraced superheroes and get into stand-offs with secret spy societies, living nukes, voodoo cartels, and Batman.

Amanda Waller neither looks nor acts like the kind of character that stars in a superhero comic, and she is the central character throughout the 66 issues of the run and we follow her character arc from beginning to end as she's forced to spin plates to accomplish her goals and prevent bad situations from getting worse. She is the most fully realized character in the run and everything rests on her shoulders. We spend a lot of time inside her head, her team, her associates, she is the center holding together an extremely chaotic book with no two characters on the same page. She is, and has to be, an extremely powerful person, someone who stands her ground no matter what, an unbeatable force of will because that is the only way she's going to survive the situations she's in, the only way she can be "The Wall", the kind of person who can repel Batman, command a platoon of monsters, talk her way out of Deadshot's contract, someone who can stare at Darkseid and credibly threaten the President into letting her live.

That's the part that everyone is more or less familiar. But there is, or at least used to be, much more to Amanda Waller than just being The Wall, not in the least because being The Wall is also hampering her effectiveness as well as straight up killing her.

"Amanda's toughness has taken her a long way" "It's taken her as far as it can. But it can't take her no further. It's actually starting to drag her down. I'm scared for my baby sister, rev - scared that the anger in her is congealing into hate." - Suicide Squad #31

We get to know her backstory, her plans, her points of contention with the system, her relationships with people around her, and how deeply she cares about things and people even as she sends them to the meatgrinder. From the start we learn that Waller staffs her team with people she's prone to getting into disagreements with, like Simon LaGrieve and Rick Flag, specifically so they can cover her moral blind spots and pick up the slack in emotional intelligence she's lacking, be the heroes that she can't afford to be. It is unspeakably crucial that the Squad is led by Rick Flag as well as Bronze Tiger, a fallen hero who owes Waller for his recovery who eventually takes Flag's baton. Waller stands up for her team, gets into fights with her superiors when they decide to terminate them, and takes the fall for them when necessary. Waller is a person who does Bad Things - but she is not a Bad Person.

The book in no uncertain terms frames the Suicide Squad's existence as monstrous in a scale Waller doesn't understand until the very end, and it digs deep into the unethical things Waller has to allow for and perpetrate in order to keep it running no matter how many lives it saves, and she spends the first half of the book on a downward spiral. But then there's the 2nd half of the book:

In the first 39 issues, Amanda’s flaws are her undoing. As she pushes away the people she hired to act as a balance, she grasped tighter and tighter to her uncompromised vision of the Suicide Squad despite the constant changes and derailment. Her choices had consequences: the death of Rick Flag, her demotion, employees quitting, and finally, the disbandment of the team.

The last 27 issues have Amanda rising up from the ashes after a year in jail. She’s less in her own way – she communicates, her anger isn’t driving her, she’s more receptive of alternative perspective and recognizes when she’s wrong in real time – but she’s still just as scary.

Waller rebuilds her relationships with the people she drove away, takes a different tack to how the team works, and starts going out into the frontlines with the Squad. She brings Oracle (who actually made her debut in this comic) into the fold, saves her life and plays a big role in Barbara making progress in overcoming her Joker trauma. She genuinely puts in the work to improve as a person and do things a better way than before, even if there is an inescapable immorality to the very existence of the Squad and what they do. That immorality never goes away, and it only further horrifies her when learning how badly her project has gone. In fact, it's that very inescapable immorality that ends her arc.

She learns that the CIA has started using a new Suicide Squad to support a brutal regime in South America, and when faced with the full extent of her complicity in Western imperialism? She decides right then and there to end the Suicide Squad for good after they liberate the population of said regime from said Squad. She is the only person who gives a shit about the country enough to start the assignment for free once she knows about it, force the Squad along, lead the mission in field, and personally (and even gently) usher the villain to his death at the end, to end what began with her.

She does bad things, and she does good things. She cares about people, and she uses people. Her decisions ruin as well as save the world. She spins a million plates to match wills and wits with the strongest, wickedest, most cunning humans and superhumans alike, and she still has superiors to answer to and people close to her she hires to judge her for what she does. She endured racism and misogyny and poverty for decades and rode whatever she could to attain as much power over her own life as someone like her could possibly attain, and to have it, she must be a willing tool of the state and bend the knee to Ronald Reagan, the man she derides for what he did to her community, hating every minute of it.

She lost her family to sexual and racial violence, and now she wrangles a penal battalion comprised of some of the worst people on the planet to inflict violence on her orders. She has saved and redeemed people, and she's haunted by the corpses she's left in her wake. She is oppressed and oppressor, someone who could only escape the ravages of American imperialism by becoming one of it's chief enforcers, and still she rebuilds herself into a better person from it upon confronting and challenging her role in it. She is not a bad person, she is not a good person either, she is just afforded a degree of agency and complexity unpowered characters in superhero books simply don't get.

Okay cool, now what is she up to these days?

That, I guess. That is what a strong but unpowered person who does not allow themselves to be bossed around by superheroes or supervillains looks like now. Everytime there's a call for a military bad guy, Waller gets tagged in to be DC's Henry Gyrich. There was a point where Waller was made to contrast the likes of Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling, someone who butted heads with them because she was a well-meaning person working for and committing evil as often as she attempted to stop it. These days, the most consistent beat with her is that she is the most dangerous person alive and worse than the villains she wrangles into working for her. She is a thing to be overcome, a hypocrite to be exposed, a challenge to the natural order of the universe, and she is too terrific at it to be shuffled off quietly. She is a Bad Person and so everything she says and does is Bad (and thus can be ignored).

Integral to Suicide Squad's structure was the fact that Waller was the center holding everything together, the ultimate third party: spinning plates working with, for and against all of the others so she can bend rules and be bent by them. Bent, but never broken, because The Wall doesn't break, others break first. Waller was a one-of-a-kind character, and that broke her, because beating Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling at their own game means replacing Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling. Waller doesn't look like them, she doesn't look like the superheroes either, and so she can't be one of them. She can't even look like herself a lot of the time, they try to slim her up everytime they think they can get away with it.

Suicide Squad was preoccupied with exploring a perspective from a world outside the superhero worldview, but we no longer have her perspective or that of people around her, we only know her through the superheroes she inherently defies and has had an adversarial relationship against from day one. She is someone with a viewpoint that is charitable to neither superheroes nor institutions, and thus, the universe is increasingly less sympathetic to her, the less utility she has to the grander narrative where everyone has to pick between one of two options. If she wasn't powerful and assertive, she'd be another Leslie Thompkins, another Jiminy Cricket the heroes passively ignore. But because she is powerful and doing morally compromised things without asking Batman's permission, she must have a personal grudge. She must be a government monster. She must attack the superheroes for no reason, no ideology, no motive.

So now she's just The Wall 24/7, the mean icy establishment boot who is strong and clever and cruel and hates superheroes and wants to destroy superheroes and rule the world from the shadows. Everything she does is a fuck-up she refuses to take responsability for, everyone is right to hate and distrust mean old Waller, and now everyone gets to look good by dunking on her. They couldn't make her a superhero, so they made her a generic supervillain instead. And now that she's a bad guy, she no longer has to believe anything, she doesn't really have to mean anything, they don't have to write stories about something other than superheroes and supervillains, and they don't have to let a fat woman of color take up space and screentime they could be giving to Harley Quinn and Slade Wilson instead.

Even by the time of Waller's debut on the tail end of the 80s, her career opportunities were on their way to extinction

Days Of Future Past marks the triumph of the superhero comic that's pretty much concerned with no-one but superheroes. Where Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man featured a single costumed crimefighter in the context of a commonplace existence, the X-Men of the 80s focused on a huge cast of mutants who had little if any lasting involvement in the everyday world.

By the 21st century, the corporate superhero comic would largely - if not exclusively - concern itself with little beyond a large class of superhumans and their fantastical existence. I suspect there's a significant correlation between that and the continuing cultural peripherilisation of the superhero comic - Colin Smith

Amanda Waller is one of the strongest characters in all of comics, she was as powerful as an non-superpowered character given center stage could possibly be, a perfectly designed character from which an entire corner of a shared universe was developed out of with her as the center making it work, but as the room for civilian casts and unpowered protagonists got smaller and smaller, so did Waller's options. If she was a Spider-Man character and somehow didn't get killed or made into a villain, they would have slimmed her up and given her a symbiote, because you're nobody unless you're web-swinging. Characters didn't look or act like Amanda Waller, and unfortunately, they still don't. It's just instead of making more characters like her, they gutted Waller to be more like the rest. If she couldn't make it, who else even could.

Keep your eyes peeled for this summer when she'll team up with two meaningless robot baddies to burn down the Justice League and I guess the universe for the next reboot or something.

#other characters who come to mind for such a thesis include #Vanessa Kapatelis Nora Fries Liz Allan Betty Ross Mary Jane Waton Parker and Moira McTaggart #and that’s just off the top of my head

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mutantstudies101 · 6 months ago

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Lecture 1: Introduction to Krakoa -- Transcript

[Theme Music]

Dean: Hello everybody, and welcome to Mutant Studies 101, a podcast where we answer the question, does the world really need another "X-Men" Men podcast? my name is Dean.

Morgan: My name is Morgan.

Dean: And today we are talking about ultimately the topic that was kind of the genesis of this show idea and why we felt the need that we did need to record these conversations that me and Morgan have. Morgan, do you want to tell people what we're talking about today?

House of X is one of the hardest mainstream superhero comics to read

Morgan: Today we are talking about Jonathan Hickman, Peby Larraz and R.B. Silva's 2019 double comic series, "House of X and Powers of X" This is the series that kickstarts what is known as the Krakoan era. Starts off also what was publishing wise known as "Dawn of X." and might be the greatest X-Men story ever written.

Dean: It is. I'll go up. I'll go far enough out on a limb to just kind of flat out say it. As much as I love classic stuff from Claremont, you know, the "Dark Phoenix Saga," "Days of Future Past," these things are iconic. And of course I love Morrison and I know that you love Morrison. This book is something really, really special.

Morgan: yeah.

Dean: And we have to really get into it because it is a complicated book to read. It is one of the hardest comics, certainly one of the hardest mainstream superhero comics that I think has ever been published to read.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: But it's what makes it so immensely satisfying given what comes before it and what comes after it and also just in the process of reading it. So today we're mostly going to touch on the specific process of reading it. I think we're going to probably talk a little bit about things that happen after this, but I think keeping the conversation focused in on the book is probably a good idea.

Morgan: Yeah. And I think, I mean, yeah, you just have to.

What is HoX/PoX?

You have to talk about this because even though it sets up five years worth of comics, what's occurring within "HoX/PoX" as it is affectionately called, there's just so much there. Like my notes document has like, there's like six pages. Six or seven pages. And that's only not even all twelve issues.

Dean: Yeah. And it's. It's. This series is only 12 issues, if that puts it into perspective. yeah. So, yeah, the. The plot of "HoX/PoX" is kind of tricky. So obviously, as we stated, it's two series running simultaneously. these books were published in 2019. I believe it was a weekly series. So I believe it was from like July to October of, yeah, 2019. You know, a great time to be completely radically reinventing Anything about anything. given. Given what the future. held. So it's two series running simultaneously. The gist is "House of X" is a series about the establishment of Krakoa as a nation. Sort of introducing what Krakoa is about, the new ideas that we are now going to be playing with in the "X-Men" Men franchise and our new key setting up. Yeah. Who are our key players? And then setting up future conflicts. "Powers of X" is unbelievably high concept and I'm just gonna give the plot explanation now and then you will understand it by the. You'll understand it by the end of this. So "Powers of X" is a story about the. See, this is where I have to lose it. And it's like I reread this book today.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: "Powers of X" is about Moira McTaggart in her sixth and ninth lives, ostensibly going through the first year of the establishment of Krakoa ten years after the establishment of Krakoa a hundred years after, the establishment of Krakoa and a thousand years after the establishment of Krakoa But these are all taking place within completely separate timelines. So that's gonna get a little bit complicated. It goes from like, it goes from zero to space gods at the centers of black holes in, about two and a half seconds. So, yeah, page.

Morgan: Page turn. A page turn

Dean: Dr. Yeah. so it's complicated. But that is ostensibly the gist of both of those series.

Morgan: Yeah, those are the basic plot outlines like we kind of mentioned last episode. This is required reading. This is on the syllabus. So this is the part where I say, like, go to your library and read. like if you're listening to this and you're like, I have no idea what the F you're talking about. Pause. Go to your library. Go to your Marvel Unlimited app, go to a comic book store, find a way to read "House of X/Powers of X" and then come back because everything will make a lot more sense.

Dean: Or you can, once you, once you've read the book, or you can just.

Morgan: Move along with us.

Dean: Yeah, because again, we're kind of, we're going to work under the assumption that people have read it. We're not. We're going to definitely talk about some plot details, but we're gonna very specifically try to avoid just explaining what happens in the book becausee there's way more interesting stuff happening than just explain what happen.

Morgan: And there's also people who have done that. There are other people who have just like, sat down and explained to you what's happening in "HoX/PoX" And you're here for a literature analysis. You're here for class. We're not explaining it. You come to class with your readings done. yeah. So also if what. The plot that Dean just described doesn't sound like a superhero comic. Yes. It's because Don think I don't think that this is a superhero comic. And I think that's like kind of where we should jump in.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: It's both like how is this different from the typical genre in the medium? And also then what does that mean of how this is different for the "X-Men?"

So the first question, how do you read a superhero comic

So the first question, how do you read a superhero comic? Like what's a superhero comic?

Dean: Well, that's a great question. Well, for starters, if you are reading a traditional American superhero comic, it is traditionally read like you would read a book. left to right, u, top to bottom. The difference is instead of following individual words, you are likely following panels of comics and you are reading u, text in individual panels. Traditionally, left to right, top to bottom. And then you go to the next panel that is left, left to right, top to bottom. And then you read that. And then also obviously you're looking at the art.

Morgan: and you have to also read the art.

Dean: Yes, you do have to learn how to read art. Which traditionally, if you're a good artist and I should say off the jump, both Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva. This is some just truly, truly phenomenal artwork. U, that is very legible and is very easy to read. Even when there's a lot of stuff happening in an individual panel.

Morgan: It's of the densest artwork. And it's also like there are like we talk about in like film a lot, like every frame of painting. It's every panel of every panel of painting in this book. Like every single one. And especially the moments that we see over and over again the meeting between. The first meeting in life 10 between Xavier and Moira, which we first see from RB Silva and then we see from Pepe Larraz Raz. Like it's just, it's so magnificent to watch the way the two of them work in so many ways and they.

Dean: Feel in concert with one another but distinct enough that you know that you're reading a very different kind of comic when you're reading "House of X" versus when you're reading "Powers of X"

Morgan: Yes.

Dean: which is really amazing.

Morgan: Yeah. So that's kind of.

House of X1 creates a clear distinction between fantasy and science fiction

And the other thing that is like a hallmark I say of the superhero genre, especially on, Especially like in superhero comics, is that you're not really solving conflict via conversation or via narrative. Conflict is solved via action. Like that's the point of the superhero is kind of the fantasy of being able to fight your problems. And that's how you get beautiful B sequences. You get all of this stuff. You get normally fun dialogue and action effects and all that stuff in between. That's what like the best "X-Men" Men stories also feature that of like, "how do we, how do we fight this guy?" They're always fighting some guy.

Dean: Yeah, it's usually quite literally just always some guy. Yeah.

Morgan: they're always just fighting.

Dean: And there is a lot of action in these books, but it's a lot of conversation. It's a lot of talking.

Morgan: It. It's not until like "House of X" 4, you're reading six comics before anybody's fighting.

Dean: Yeah. Before there's any sort of like major action sequences or a, complete comic that is like just action sequences.

Morgan: Yeah.

Morgan: It's. It's so fucking Bananas described it, we've described it before that "House of X" is a fantasy comic with "Powers of X" as a science fiction comic.

Dean: Yeah. And, and I think one of the big things that this comic helps you do is create a clear distinction between fantasy and science fiction. Superhero comics traditionally do fall more into the genre A, fantasy as opposed to science fiction, but more so in the way that like "Star Wars" falls more into the genre of fantasy than it does science fiction. You don't really. You don't necessarily care how the X gene specifically like works. In a traditional "X-Men" Men comic, you're just kind of like, yeah, these people have a gene and it gives them superpowers. A science fiction comic would be likeessive.

Morgan: We don't care. We don't care about any that shit.

Dean: Yeah. A science fiction comic would care about that. A fantasy comic doesn't. A fantasy comic doesn't preoccupy itself with that. but I also think it's structurally a fantasy comic is much more about to take it back to a place of Joseph Campbell, which we said wasn't required reading, but actually in hindsight, I mean, you should just read it. But A, ah, fantasy story is traditionally about a journey and. Or a fantasy story is traditionally about a journey and a science fiction story is more so about a concept, an idea, thinking about a bigger notion of, you know, technology or other ideas.

Morgan: Yeah. And so essentially like everything that you know about. About what These comics are. Gets thrown out the fucking window soon as you. As soon as you open up the cover Which is like, yes, it's playing with different genres. But I think then the other thing that at least where I want to jump in because it is the first thing that you see when you read "House of X" 1 are.

Tom Mueller's design sets UP House of X1 apart from traditional X Men comics

Okay, two different things. The first thing I feel like I just have to shout out is depending on if you're reading this in a hardcover or in a trade or if you're reading this, digitally in the heart, you'll get glimpses of this digitally. If you're reading it on a hardcover trade, you will see this immediately. And that is the incredible design work of Tom Mueller.

Dean: Oh yeah.

Morgan: And like, that is another one of those things that just sets this book apart is this visual distinction that he creates with the way. With the Both like his redesign of the "X-Men" logo and also the way that the pages are laid out.

Dean: Mm I even, I even think the way, like, I have my hardcover, this is not a visual medium, but I have my hardcover just like in front of me and I don't have the dust jacket on. And it doesn't make it feel like it's a comic book. It almost makes it feel like it's, like a historical text or it does.

Morgan: It looks like these like college library books I have next to me.

Data Pages Galore

Dean: Exactly. and the design work of Tom Mueller gets us into the biggest form iteration that Jonathan Hickman does in basically every comic he writes. But I feel like it's taken to another level with Tom Muelller's collaboration, which is the Data Pages.

Morgan: The Data Pages. The very first thing that you read when you open up "House of X" 1 is an epigraph which is again, kind of cementing this book as a fantasy and not as a superhero story. And the very first thing that you see is you see just like it is the X logo and it says, oh, it's so beautiful. It says, "Humans of the planet Earth, while you slept, • the world changed."

Dean: And that's how this book opens.

Morgan: Let s thing you read.

Dean: And then you turn. I know, it's crazy. And then you literally, like, you turn the page and then it's just this gorgeous, atmospheric Pepe Larraz art of what you eventually learn to be the eggs that Krakoan mutants resurrect from. And you see Arbor Magna which is Arbor Magna, which is like where these eggs are sort of created and then hatched. And it is fully leaning into like, you might not necessarily know what you're getting yourself into when you read this. Cause it looks so different from a traditional "X-Men" Men comic. Professor X is walking. He's in this stunning little cat suit. He's got, like, a big thing on his head. You don't know what's going on.

Morgan: He's that slutty, slutty cat suit.

Dean: Yeah, we love. We love Professor X's catuits. But it opens with these beautiful, like. I mean, again, Babelra is just really, really stunning art that does kind of lean into the fantasy of it a little bit. And then you kind of keep reading the comics, and these data pages kind of keep showing up. And it's great both as a way of getting cross exposition that maybe wouldn't necessarily be gotten across in any normal conversation between characters. But also it makes the book feel like it's a real text almost that exists in the real world. It feels like you're reading historical documents as opposed to a comic book. And it's really, really amazing.

Morgan: Yeah. And these. So, like, these data pages also, like, will give you, like, strong exposition devices. But also I think what's really interesting is that, like, they carry on throughout the entirety of the line. So it's not just Hickman who is using these data pages as a rhetorical device, but some of the really moving ones that outside of the work that Hickman does here is in, Benjamin Percy's "X-Force" series. Benjamin Percy is a novelist primarily, and he's also writing comics. And so all of his data pages are these, like, beautiful, long pieces of prose that at various points serve as, like, the internal monologue for a character that we're reading or a large part of. one of the plot points of Ben Percy's "X-Force" series, are what's happening in Russia with this character called, Oh, fuck. What is that name of that character?

Dean: I'm also blanking on his name. It's something regarding Mikhail Rasputin, but it's not Mikhail Rasputin.

Morgan: O. The chronicle Chronicler. Chronicler.

Dean: The chronicler, yes. We'll say. We're gonna say the chronicler. I might, like, peek behind the curtain that a little bit and be like, hey, neither of us could remember what this character's name was, so we had.

Morgan: To look it up's fine. That's fine. I read this series and I don't like. It's a very vague name.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: But taking that back, Percy uses these data pages to kind of give us the internal monologues. There's a great data page that shows us, I guess, tells us, because it's a prose section, the alcoholism and recovery process for a character named Sage. There's the whole plot that's happening with Colossus, or Colossus, it's being controlled by his brother, Mikhail Rasputin, who is using the controls of this mutant named the Chronicler, who is, like, transcribing Colossus's mind as if it were this Russian novel. It's a really, like, great rhetorical device.

Dean: and also like incredible, incredible Hank McCoy diary entries.

Morgan: Oh, my God. Yeah.

Dean: Are like, Hank McCoy is completely despicable in that book, but incredible, diary entries that Ben Percy writes throughout, using the style of these data pages to really kind of both get across the point of, like, Hank is horrible, but also, like, really being able to delve into his mind and kind of understanding why he is the way that he is, which is great. The data pages are like a critical part of this entire line. And I think that it's one of the things that's really beautiful about it. One other little peek behind the curtain is I'm going to miss them a lot.

Morgan: I'm going to miss them a lot.

Dean: I'm assuming they're not coming with us in, "From the Ashes."

Morgan: Yeah, I just. I don't. Because "From the Ashes" is such a back to basics.

Dean: M.

Morgan: Which is like.

Dean: That'S a topic for another day.

Morgan: Yeah, it is a back to basics. And part of the back to basics means losing this rhetorical device that has really framed a lot of the way that this era has functioned and a lot of the way that "HoX/PoX" works. Because in addition to just being, like, a convenient way to get to display exposition, it's also like a very. Hickman and his team uses it as a really important visual element. So when we're first introduced to the various lives of Moira X, we see them in. In this graph that you could kind of pinpoint all of the different points that various parts of her life happen.

Dean: This is one data page that takes place over the course of six pages of book. And it's amazing.

Morgan: It's so stunning because it's also another great way. I think the other thing that we talk about when we talk about analyzing comics is the use of the page flip. Like Scott McCloud and his book about, like, how do you read comics? He, talks about this all the time of like, oh, a large part of being able to write and read comics is about understanding when you're turning the page when you're moving from panel to panel. And I mean, Hickman is a master at his craft. And so he understands that in such a deep way that he understands the way to use a page turn for these data pages and the ways that you use them to convey these high sci fi concepts. I think the data pages are. Are at their best in "Powers of X"

Dean: Yes.

Morgan: When you need them to explain what a chimera is. When you need to explain.

Dean: When you need what the Phalanx is. Which, honestly, I strug. I. That was. That was really. The Phalanx is really. Hickman just fully cooking, like, fully letting. Like no one was editing Hickman when he was coming up with the Phalanx. And it's really interesting. It's a really heady, fascinating science fiction concept. but it's also unbelievably, like, complicated and not really explored as much in this book as it can be later on as you're reading these series.

This is an interesting experimental graphic novel by Jonathan Hickman

I also want to say, just to kind of sidebar this. Have you ever read the "Nightly News?"

Morgan: I don't think so.

Dean: Okay. This is a. This is like early Jonathan Hickman. The thing that makes this book interesting is he is credited as the artist on this book because it's basically all, like, data pages. It's like him fully playing with this, interesting experiment of, It's an interesting experimental graphic novel. It's been a long time since I've read it. I probably should reread it. I probably should have reread it for this. But, it's really, really good. And I think as kind of early Jonathan Hickman's style is really fascinating.

Morgan: Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm gonna check this out.

Dean: That's. Yeah. Look at the art for it because it is really, really interesting.

Morgan: I can find it online. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Dean: Like, Hickman is credited as the artist on this book.

Morgan: Yeah. I. On the Wikipedia page that he's credited like that. But that's.

Dean: Well, but you can really see this sort of like.

Morgan: Yes, totally can see where he gets.

Dean: His own personal style. That is so fascinating. And I think what makes him such a good writer, because this is.

Morgan: Also so different from his other Marvel stuff. Like, they fully really. The thing that's like, we talked about this a little off, mic The thing that's, like, so revolutionary about "HoX/PoX" to me, outside of, like, what it sets up, is that they really just handed Hickman the keys to the kingdom and said, do what you will with it because, like, like, even as high concept as his "Fantastic Four" stuff and his "Avengers" stuff gets like, I'm notnna sit here and discredit how amazing Secret wars is and how amazing what he's like, what he did with "Secret Wars." It's not this.

Dean: Those are very.

Morgan: The level of free reign that he has with this.

Dean: Yeah, those are high concept superhero comics. This is not a superhero comic.

Morgan: This is not a superhero comic. And we're just going to keep saying that to kind of like, close out briefly my point about the data pages. The data pages are established as so much of a rhetorical device. And then what great writers do is that they have their motif, they have their way of conveying things, and then they take it away from you. And the no more sequence in "House of X" 4.

Dean: I cried.

Morgan: Yeah, yeah. And I think, like, I don't want to like a reader's theater too much becausee we're going to come back to this, but I think there's gon to.

Dean: Be two moments of reader'theater here. We're going to not have reader s theater for this, especially because it's not something you can do reader theater for.

Morgan: No, it's a really hard thing to kind of convey visually. But the moment that kind of leads up to this. I do want to quote this just because I don't even know how to convey what this looks like. But we've kind of built up in the data pages these documents of mutant genocide, which is really kind of adding to your point that these feel like historical documents more so than they feel like what Percy does of. Like, this is exposition. This is a monologue or whatever, where we have all of these kind of like infographics of, like, this is how many mutants lost to Genosha How many mutants lost to Bolivar Trask? How many mutants lost to Wanda Maximoff? Over and over and over and over and over again. And then you have the team that Scott assembles to go take down the Mother Mold All of them die, which will get.

Dean: Into that whole unbelievably harrowing, incredibly beautiful. it's extremely, extremely moving.

Morgan: And it is some of the best moments. Like, it has some of the best moments of the series, but they've all died. Xavier feels them all psychically break, and he delivers this monologue over a series of panels. "Look at what they've done, what they always do. Look at how this always ends with fire and death and the funerals of our children. Every victory, ash, every triumph, defeat. They've murdered so many of us. The world has grown used to it. This is just how things are for those people. For mutants no more." And then you turn the page and what are we greeted with?

Dean: It's a single white page with the. Just black letters, no more. And then you turn the page and it's the data page that this issue opens with. Just exploded outwards. see, you see news articles about the Genoshian genocide, You see news articles about the decimation. You see every image of every image of a mutant dying in this issue overlaid on top of it. It's unbelievable. It really can't be conveyed through an auditory medium. You just kind of have to look at it.

Morgan: Yeah. When this episode is posted [unreal,] like along with our citations, when this episode goes live, part of the citations will include these data pages. Because it's just, it's so powerful. Like when it is deconstructed, it is incredible because you feel the sacrifice and.

Dean: You, you're flipping through it. It's. I have the book in front of me. It is five. It's four pages of that. And then page turn black background overlaid with the image of Xavier crying. Big white letters, no more. And that's the end of the issue. That's how the issue.

Morgan: End of the issue.

Dean: Could you imagine if you were. Could you imagine if you like bought that issue in like August of 2019 and you're just like reading it in a coffee shop or something like that and you're just like having your mind completely blown by the like complete breakdown of the form of a comic book, like before your very eyes?

Morgan: Yeah, it's incredible.

Dean: Like, it's just amazing.

Morgan: It's just like a destroying and then rebuilding. What you think an "X-Men" comic is, that's what he's doing.

Dean: It's so good. O my God. I started tearing up when you were just like, I had the book-- cause I have the book in front of me. I just started like tearing up as you were like reading the monologue out loud. And then I was doing the page turns. I was like, oh, jeez Louise.

Morgan: It's so, it's so good.

Dean: And it's just, ugh, Johnathan Hickman is so good.

Morgan: Johnathan Hickman is so fucking good. Like how in ways, in so many ways, this is like not even the best that it gets, but also like it is kind of the best it gets.

Dean: It's the best. It's the best comics get. It's not even like outside of superhero or anything like that. Like, this is just a radical reinvention of the medium. This isn't just. This is like. It really does feel like you're seeing. I don't know, it feels like you're seeing like, Van Gogh work or something like that. Like a painter who, like, radically changed the medium.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: It feels like Shakespeare.

Morgan: Yeah. Yeah. Like you're witnessing everything that you know about how this medium works be rewritten in real time.

Morgan: And I think that also extends to, like, the form and the way that it was published and the whole Krakoan-- Like the whole Krakoan idea and like Institute and like Institute is like, we've kind of talked to. These are like two series as one. But like, you can't just read "House of X" and you can't just read "Powers of X."

Dean: They are intrinsically entwined, both in the sense of you're missing, like, literal plot beats, but I think as well thematically, neither one works without the other.

Morgan: Yes.

Dean: which--

Morgan: We talked like, last episode about, like, during the Claremont era.

Marvel's Trust in Hickman

It was like a team. He was working with Simonson, Nocenti and like, they were all publishing stuff. Whatever. That's not like, what this is. You know what I mean? Like, you could have, like, just read "Uncanny" and been fine.

Dean: These are two series that are one. And that was kind of how they were billed.

Morgan: Because they were published weekly. Like, but it's even like, you're missing, like, the trust that, like, the team and like, this goes all the way up to like, fucking not even like, editor in chief, like Marvel Corporate. The trust, to place in your readers that, like, they will come back next week, they will buy the second series.

Dean: And I think that's also just. So I think a. That's an indicator of how much trust they had in Hickman. Yeah. And be their sort of final willingness to be allowed to do something interesting with this franchise to not get too. And you know, neither of us work for Marvel and neither of us worked for Marvel in 2019, but a little thing happened in 2019, kind of in the outset of Marvel that was related to Marvel, which is the Disney Fox acquisition. Do I think that this is sort of like, oh, well, we finally have the rights to merchandise these characters again, so let's do something big, big and bold to get people to read the "X-Men" again. I think there's maybe a little bit of that, but I don't think it was that cynical of a business decision. I think it was a big creative decision motivated by the fact that they could finally, like, be free and open with this franchise again.

Morgan: Yeah. And I think you see that a little bit with the way that it was published like, not published in single issues, but in the way that it was eventually published in trades. Because once the full Krakoa lineup gets started, and this is going a little bit outside of "HoX/PoX" so I won't delve too deep into it. You could buy like a trade of "Marauders" or you could buy "Dawn of X" Volume 1.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: Which would collect like the first. The first issue of every single series and then you would buy and like that's much more similar to how manga is published, which is what Hickman like Hickman and Jordan White, who is s the editor of the X office at the time. Like that's what they said that they were inspired by, which is like, again, not something that happens us in US Comics. You don't publish comics like that.

Dean: Yeah, it's huge. It's really amazing. U yeah.

So we've been recording for like nearly 45 minutes talking about data pages

So we've been recording for like nearly 45 minutes.

Morgan: We've just been talking about data pages.

Dean: I know. I need to. I think we should take a quick little break and then come back and then we can talk a little bit more about like, themes and fun. The more fun stuff that is less like crunchy, analytical stuff.

Morgan: I can't believe we've just been spending 45 minutes talking about data pages.

Dean: That was inevitable. Morgan, you know us.

Morgan: I know. Okay, let's take a break and when we come back, can we start with Moira and then move into everything else?

Dean: Absolutely.

Morgan: Okay, cool. I'mnna move that to the top of. Let me final my Moira notes.

The reveal of Moira McTaggart as a mutant

Dean: so, yeah, let's get Into "House of X" 2, "The Uncanny Lives of Moira X." I think this is the issue. This is the issue that I think you can disagree with me, but I don't know, I don't think you will. Probably the. The single most important issue of, the series, like, certainly if you don't have this issue, you don't understand anything else happening.

Morgan: Yeah. And this is also the reveal of Moira McTaggart as a mutant is the most substantial thing to happen to "X-Men"

Dean: comics in 30 years, at least.

Morgan: Yeah, I wasnna say maybe even ever.

Dean: But like, yeah, in 30 years probably ever. It's probably. I mean, again, it really probably is like Charles and Eric being like old friends. Moira McTaggart. It completely recontextualizes. Yeah. Old friends in massive quotes u we. Yeah, the Moira Maaggrart reveal really does kind of completely recontextualize entire, sequences of old "X-Men" comics. all the way down to like. Yeah, like Moira being like one of the only humans that we know of that can get the Legacy virus. Surprise. That's not it. She's a mutant, baby.

Moira McTaggart, X Men's primary human ally, is a mutant

Dean: So yeah, the big spoiler for this is Moira McTaggart, Tagart, who's kind of established as the X Men's primary human ally, is actually a mutant.

Morgan: Yeah. She debuts in. What is it, "Uncanny" 95 or something of Clarmont'first issues.

Dean: The first issue Claremont wrote. So I think it's 96.

Morgan: Okay, 96. Yeah. Claremont shows up and he's immediately like, we have Scottish woman and she is concerned with close range machine gun fire.

Dean: Yes. Yeah. It's brilliant. It's wonderful.

Morgan: Moira shows up brandishing a machine gun, says that she's their housekeeper. Two issues later she's like, "Psych bitch. I've got a PhD in genetics and I'm ready to fuck your life up forever."

Dean: Little did we know how much she was gonna fuck up our lives.

Morgan: Did we know So, "House of X"-- So yeah, she's their primary like human ally. She's one time paramour of Charles Xavier Longime, paramour of Sean Cassidy, mother of Rahne Sinclair. What are other things more.

Dean: Adopted mother of. Yeah, adopted mother of Rahne Sinclair. Kind of. Yeah. Dies in the 90s and is founder.

Morgan: Of the "X-Men" I forgot. How did I forget about "Deadly Genesis."

Dean: Oh, of course, of course. "Deadly Genesis," A story that happened.

Morgan: I have a lot of thought's about Petra and Sway

Dean: You would. It's okay.

Morgan: sometimes played by Rose Byrne

Dean: is occasionally played by Rose. Byrne wild casting choice. They made her American

Morgan: and word for the CIA

Morgan: That's an entirely.

Dean: These are entire other topics for other days.

Morgan: Yeah.

Moira up until this issue was dead for 20 years

There's so much to talk about Moira in McTaggert that is also just like not in "House of X" We have to bring it back to "House of X"

Dean: But it's also notable that up until this issue, like well, technically "House of X" or technically powers of 10 number one. But really up until this issue was dead for like 20 some odd years. Like she dies in the late 90s and stays dead. Which of course if you know anything about comic book characters, you know that they never stay dead.

Dean: But like she stayed dead for a long time.

Morgan: Yeah. And that was. Was like very revelatory about Moira's death was that it was like, oh, this is something that matters.

Dean: Mmm. And now it matters in an entirely different way.

Morgan: Yeah. Yeah. yeah.

Talk about what Moira is in this sort of new reintroduction

So we really were first reintroduced to Moira. I think we do have to take it back to "Powers of X" 1 And this is when we have to do a little bit of like, here's the storyline to talk about, like what does Moira do in terms of shaking up the X cannon? And in terms of like, her is really the central character of this book.

Morgan: In so many ways.

Dean: Yeah. So I mean talk about Talk about what Moira is in this sort of new reintroduction.

Whenever Moira dies, the entire timeline restarts

Morgan: Yeah. So we, we're reintroduced. So we first we're reintroduced Moira in "Powers of X" 1 where she's meets Xavier in Scotland. but we're re reintroduced to Moira in "House of X" 2 where we discover that "though she did not know it, • • Moira was a mutant." And she is a mutant with the power of the seemingly power of resurrection. And this is not resurrection just for Moira. Whenever Moira dies, the entire timeline restarts.

Morgan: And Moira retains all memory of life as she knows it of her previous lives. So when Moira so the line is Moira's second life began in utero. And this whole issue is narrated. Both is narrated with kind of the omniscient third person narrator that most superhero comics and really most "X-Men" Men comics are narrated with. But we also get a large chunk of this story by Moira looking directly at the reader and delivering the story herself.

The lives of Moira X

Dean: Yes. I actually, I want to talk about something very. Before we kind of get really deep into the issue, I want to talk about the epigraph that this issue opens with.

Morgan: Okay. Yes, let's do it.

Dean: This issue is opened with an epigraph from Apocalypse. if you don't know who Apocalypse is, you will. Apocalypse opens the issue with the epigraph. "If you can find it in you to survive, if you are worthy, then I will make you into something more than them. Something eternal." Which when you learn about Moira's power, she is kind of ostensibly Apocalypse's dream.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: Which eventually maybe becomes his nightmare.

Morgan: Which is. I'm m very fascinated by like Mora's ninth life in which she allies with Apocalypse.

Dean: Yeah, we'we'll talk about that. So, Moira X's lives first life. She lives a completely pedestrian normal life in Scotland. She gets married, she has a couple kids, she dies.

Dean: That's Life one, her second life. She's you know, in your in utero and is like, what's all this?

Morgan: What's all I said?

Dean: Yeah, what's. What's this business? so then she is born and is like, oh, I have this entire life that I live, but I don't know anything about it. So she, you know, a just like a doctor, like psychology, biology. Because of course, like if you're a baby, but you have all the knowledge of your past life, you're like a super genius.

Morgan: Mmmm.

Dean: You sounded like you had a revelation.

Morgan: Yes. Well, comes. It's coming back to me. I read this today and I'm like, what? What? Life is life. What's interesting about this is that Moira doesn't. This is the life. This is life. One, in life two are the only two lives where Moira does not meet Charles Xavier.

Morgan: Which I think is really important because she, has heard of Xavier. Xavier and Moira attend Oxford together. But she is one day watching TV and she sees Xavier's proclamation that he is a mutant. Which if you have read Grant Morrison's New "X-Men" Men run, you know that that is Cassandra Nova's proclamation in Xavier's body that he is a mutant

Dean: Which is so fascinating because you're like given Moira's power. Is this Cassandra Nova? Is this just Charles declaring it like.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: You don't know. It's like. Does Cassandra Nova even exist in life too? Because Butterfly effects.

Morgan: Yeah. Which we know is like a super, like not even Adam, but like a super re like relevant thing to Moira's life.

Dean: Yes.

Morgan: and then Moira dies.

Dean: Yeah. She gets on a plane. The plane, the plane crashes, she dies. so in her third life, she basically declares that like her mutation is a curse to quote her in this issue. first off, she meets Charles and she is just completely turned off by Charles. Which Real m. Yeah. Which. Understandable. Butm the quote is "Charles Xavier, Moira decided wasn't a solution to anything. He like her, was suffering from a disease." Mutation, you see, is a cancer. And she decided to devote her life to curing the world of it. So in life three, Moira makes a cure for mutation.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: Then a thing happens.

Morgan: I want to hang on this line for a little bit and then m. We can get to the thing that happens as I'm trying to find my page because I pulled the exact same part.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: because I think what is.

Moira McTaggart has died twice, which is fascinating

So in the years since this has come out and the five years kind of since this, there has been something really interesting that has occurred which is, I think a lot of people kind of pathologizing Moira and trying to understand Moira as a villain and Hickman really gives us, to us really immediately is this understanding of Moira as a villain. And also Moira's unique perspective on her own mutation. Because the word curse, like, she routinely, when she's looking at herself in, when she's directing, like talking to the audience, she calls her mutation a curse. And I think, because we've never seen a mutation like this. Yeah, it is a curse. I think the only thing that's kind of akin to what Moira's life is is the life of, like, of two characters that we will get into, mystique and destiny. But also like Logan, I think is a very parallel character. Like a character that lives forever.

Dean: The curse of immortality as a concept. Yes, is fascinating.

Morgan: Yeah. On the reread that I did this, I wasn't turned off by Moira's need to remove herself from the equation.

Morgan: Because, yeah, if this is the third.

Dean: Time she's done it, which to keep in context, that means she's died twice. Like, I'm sorry, one of those times was in a plane crash, a tragic plane crash.

Morgan: And the other thing that I think is also just like, it piques my interest is that Moira and her second life doesn't. She meets her first husband, she meets. I don't even remember the guy's name, but she meets Kenneth. She meets him and she's immediately like, I know the life that I will live with you, and I know all of the ways that it will be unsatisfying, which is like just such a big metaphysical concept of just like. And the reason she doesn't choose him, it's because she's like, I know all of his flaws. I know the things that are going to be wrong.

Morgan: And so I cannot live that life again. I don't know.

Dean: I think that Moira is a character that is, like, worthy of pathologizing, but not necessarily as a villain.

Morgan: Yeah. I think Moira is a character worth sympathizing, at least in this text. I think once we get out of.

Morgan: House, House of Acts,

Dean: things get a little more complicated,

Morgan: less so.

Morgan: But I think in this text, Moira, ah. Is still supposed to be our friend Moira McTaggart.

Dean: So in life three, she finds a cure for mutation. She debuts it well, but she never got a chance to use it. She wasn't allowed to because our favorite lesbian terrorists, decide we can't have that.

Morgan: We can't have that.

Dean: This is probably, I mean, the most important scene in this entire. Among the most important scenes in this entire series. This is. We're going to Reader Theater. This a little bit.

Morgan: We'renn Reader'theater This. This is our favorite. Lesbian terrorists. For context, this is, of course, Mystique and Destiny.

Dean: Yes.

Morgan: And the other thing that kind of makes this interesting is Destiny is another character that had been dead since she'd been dead for at least 40 years. Like.

Dean: Yes.

Morgan: Destiny's dead. Dead.

Dean: Yeah. So having these two characters that we haven't really interacted with in, like, nearly 30 years suddenly being thrust into the center of a narrative is another just kind of amazing thing that, Jonathan Hickman does.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: Oay. So a little bit of Reader's Theater.

Morgan: Get ready. "It's interesting. I can't see her at all. I can see the world bending around her, the eddies of change rippling out. But she is just an absence, A hole where there shouldn't be one. A, ah, mutant who is invisible to other mutants. Its a defense mechanism of a sort, I suppose, but not much good once you know what youre re looking for. Is she looking at me now, Raven?"

Dean: "She is. And she doesnt look happy."

Morgan: "Yes, well, I suppose we've given her a good reason. Then again, we were acting with cause. Listen to me, child. My mutant name is Destiny, and I have the power to see the future. Which is tricky with someone like you, since your mutant power is reincarnation. One might think that would be impossible, seeing the future of someone who potentially has a limitless, unending one. But here I am, child. See? Me."

Dean: "You. You killed all my friends. Everyone. So if you're going to kill me, then just kill me and get it over with." "Oh, we're going to do that. But it doesn't do much good if we just have to do it all over again next time. Now, listen closely. Destiny has a word for you."

Morgan: "Such a gift. Knowledge. And yet here you are, using it to betray your own kind."

Dean: "It's a disease, what we are. But I'm not trying to force it on anyone. I'm only trying to cure people who want it."

Morgan: "You think this stops at want? You think they'll let you keep this thing you've made? Do you have any idea how much they hate us? The humans will come for you. They'll break you, chain you, and make you their own. Then mankind will use what you've done here to eliminate our entire race. I have seen the potential of your good works, and I do not care for them."

Dean: "How exactly is it that you think you can stop me?"

Morgan: "I am much older than you are. My powers will have manifested full of the knowledge of what we have done. If you once again try to do this evil work against our people, like today, I will see the potential outcome of it and find you again. And if you try to kill me before I kill you, I will see my end coming and prevent it. You see, Moira, we are joined together now, you and I. You will know that I am out there waiting for this version of you. And you knowing that have a choice. Change or die. Help your people. Or I will annihilate you in all your lives to come."

Dean: "I think she's still on the fence and needs a bit more encouragement."

Morgan: "Very well. Here it is. You're a smart woman who is beginning to understand the potential of your power. You're starting to believe that you are in an eternal loop of some kind. That your powers give you a version of immortality. I want you to know that they do not. I see 10 lives, Moira. Maybe 11 if you make the right choice at the end. But that is all."

Dean: "How is, how is that possible?"

Morgan: "You are born each time with the knowledge of your previous lives. But if you die as a child before your mutant powers manifest, then you will not reincarnate. You simply end like everyone else."

Dean: "And what if I don't believe you? Or that what you've said is true? Or that what you want is right?"

Morgan: "My dear, you're a scientist. You tell me how, one would go about proving something like that."

Dean: "I test it. Experience it for myself in my next life."

Morgan: "The question is, will you, Will you embrace what you are and help your people instead of hurt them?"

Dean: "I, I, I don't know."

Morgan: "Let's find out."

Dean: "I dont t want to die like this."

Morgan: "Dying like this is what life poorly lived gets you. Pyro?"

Dean: "Yes, Mother."

Morgan: "Burn her. And slowly. So she doesn't forget how dying like this feels."

Dean: And then she screams as Pyro immolates her Seenene of all time.

Morgan: Johnathan Hickman and Pepe Larraz Like, what the fuck are you guys? Like, what are you guys drinking? What is your tap water?

Dean: So, for really important context, Destiny. the character that Morgan was playing wearsars a gold mask that covers her entire face, so she's almost completely expressionless. And yet Pepe Larazz is drawing her at so many different angles that it fully does feel like she is expressing outward throughout this scene exactly what she's feeling, even though her facial expression is never changing. It's unreal.

Morgan: Yeah. It's also not lost to me that the eggs in Arbor Magna look a lot like Destiny's Mask.

Dean: Well, yeah, I think that like, certainly feels intentional now.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: But.

Morgan: But it's just. Oh God, it is. To do a little close analysis of this scene. Cause this scene is like really what motivates Moira's everything for the rest of her lives. The routine motif of seeing of like, my dear, can't you see? Is she looking at me? Because Destiny is also blind. Destiny is kind of playing into this trope of the blind seer. She sees the future, but she can't see in front of her.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: And so this routine idea, like, of seeing as as literally looking and then seeing as understanding and seeing as perceiving. Like when she says, like, "but I am here, child. See me." Destiny's grabbing Moira's face and forcing her close to her.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: it is just setting up this like, continued duality and fight between a character that sees every single future and an effective immortal character. And then having this character and then having Destiny be the one to tell Moira that her life is not endless.

Dean: Yeah. These characters have been dead for 30 years. Like, these characters were dead for so long.

Morgan: Are dead. These characters. If you started reading "X-Men" men in like 2010, you've never met these women.

Dean: You've never met these women. And yet they feel. They feel so essential. They, like, it's, Oh my God, it's incredible. It's like genuinely like the m. Like Jonathan Hickman does some big brain stuff in this series. This is the most big brained thing he does.

Morgan: Yeah. And even like going back to Larraz's artwork, you get all these moments of you seeing Moira reflected in Destiny's mask.

Dean: Unreal.

Morgan: What the fuck. What?

Dean: Yeah, it's.

Morgan: Oh my God.

Dean: It's. It's completely unreal. So the. The series, we have to move on.

Morgan: So we could do another hour just talking about this scene.

Dean: We could. U. We can't.

So the comic continues. We get Moir's seventh life and artificial intelligence

So the comic continues.

Dean: so after she is immolated, we go to life four. side.

Morgan: Imagine you're just a scientist. You're a scientist and all of a sudden Sherlock Holmes and Gertrude Stein bust into your house to tell you. To tell you that your life ain't shit. And then Oscar Wilde burns you alive.

Dean: And if you're wondering what that's. And if you're like, what in the world are they talking about? That's a future episode. Babbe.

Morgan: That's a future episode. But that'happy.

Dean: Pride. March. Happy Pride in March.

Morgan: We have to do that for pride. We have to do.

Dean: We should. We do. We have to.

Morgan: That pride.

Dean: So her, so her, her fourth life is, you know, she kind of fully throws herself into what she kind of calls this human mutant dilemma. She meets Charles Xavier, falls in love, and then ostensibly like the "X-Men" as we know it play out pretty much exactly like, if you had read any previous "X-Men" pretty much exactly like you had read previously, then.

Morgan: Which we get fun moments of eras, which is interesting. You get the gifted years, the time of hate and fear. We get a canon referring of the 20 times as the lost decade, which is just funny'crazy. That's just what we call it amongst fandom.

Dean: And that's because it's a rough time to be an "X-Men" fan. she is killed by Sentinels, at the end of this. her fifth life is sort of her first attempt at kind of mutant utopia. They. They sort of her and Charles meet, they build a sort of, a sort of other place, like a place specifically for mutants. I, believe they refer to it as far away. It's like what they call it. I don't think they actually say I'm holding the issue like in my hand.

Morgan: Yeah, I don't see it in here on this page.

Dean: So. But her fifth life is basically, they establish kind of this large mutant settlement and then Sentinels attack and kill them all. Because'this is a recurring theme. Yes.

Morgan: Uh. 13 year old Moira's overalls. Very cute. Just a cute little fashion choice from Pepe.

Dean: Thank you, Pepe.

Morgan: She's so cute.

Dean: Yeah. So, we skip her sixth life because we're gonna get back to that.

Morgan: Her seventh life covered in power by "Power of X"

Dean: Yeah. So in her seventh life, she just goes full like Lefem Nikita assassin. She's just like, I'm going to assassinate every member of this bloodline that is kind of doomed to create the Sentinels.

Morgan: U.

Dean: which are the robots that. Yeah, that. The "X-Men" that want to kill all mutants that are like kind of this metaphor for subjugation of minority groups, from, you know, governments. So she, she basically sets out on ultimate assassinte mission.

Morgan: The Sentinel show up in the Fox movies. Right?

Dean: Yeah. "Days of Future Past"

Morgan: Right.

Dean: Oh, they cool.

Morgan: They've got cool. It's a cool animation in the "Days of Future Past"

Dean: Yeah. we're gonna get back to this topic. But also in her seventh life, there's a really important line in that section about artificial intelligence.

Morgan: Yes, I have that bookmarked.

Dean: Yeah, we'll get back to this topic.

Morgan: Yeah. Moir's seventh life and the role that the Sentinels and artificial intelligence play in this whole series is. We'll circle back to that.

Dean: Yeah. so her eighth life, she just goes, okay, I've tried with Xavier twice. didn't work.

Morgan: Let's see, his husband's up too.

Dean: Yeah. What's his husband doing? And then she just goes full radical. She just is like, I. Which I'GOING to fil. Magneto's mind with. Sorry, go ahead.

Morgan: Yeah, well, just like the panel before we, like, get to what she does to Magneto. The panel of Moira kneeling before Magneto is one of my favorite panels in this book.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: It's just for all of, like, everything that has happened to Eric and everything that, like, he has gone through, we very rarely see Magneto on a throne.

Morgan: Like, that's a very specific design choice is to have.

Dean: I think when you do, when you do, it's calling back to a very specific image of Magneto.

Morgan: Yes.

Dean: That I findus, I think, fascinating.

Morgan: I think the last time that I can think of seeing Magneto on a throne is help them.

Morgan: Which is an interesting time. Like, it's just an interesting point to call back to. And Moira is kneeling before him like the way that you would kneel before a king.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Morgan: So, you know, in this, in this book is a topic, honestly, for an entirety separate podcast work that Hickman does with Magneto.

Dean: Yeah, but it's just, yeah, they, they basically go full. They go full mutant radical. They are stopped by the combined forces of the X-Men the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four. U "betrayed by his own kind, fools who believed in a greater human good" rough ro with her ninth life, which bear in mind, we're at nine of ten. She goes, okay, Xavier didn't work twice. Magneto's radicalism didn't work. Let's go to a more ancient view of mutant dumb. Apocalypse. "Survival of the fittest. A war without end."

Morgan: "Some thought him a monster. Some called him evil. But to Moira, Apocalypse was simply the only solution she had not tried."

Dean: "And if the humans wanted a war, if their machines did, then they would give them one without end," which is explored in, of course, "Powers of X" This sort of implied U. "Powers of X" is structured. I mean, you've read "Powers of X" Required reading.

Morgan: required reading.

Dean: The structure of X to the zero, X to the first, X to the second, X to the third. X. X squared is implied to be moira's. Ninth life and X Cubed is implied to be her sixth life, where she lives for a thousand years. And we will get into all the Phalanx stuff at some point.

Morgan: So things that are interesting to me about her ninth life briefly is like if we move off of Moira just a, tad bit because there's a lot to talk about with her ninth life, but just a little bit. There's something really interesting to me about how the two. There's eight. I want. The text refers to them as pure blood mutants. A very loaded concep. that the text is dealing with and like we can get into. But two of the eight are Wolverine, Logan and Magneto.

Morgan: And it is very interesting and this is, this is super intentional on Hickman's part. Hickman is a child of these comics. He's a student of these comics. But it is very interesting to me that the two mutants that remain alive in the doomsday scenarios, which is Days, the future past and Moira's ninth life are Magneto and Wolverine.

Dean: Yeah, the.

Morgan: The oldest living mutants that are cursed to watch their lives fall apart.

Dean: which is so, I mean it's so unbelievably loaded. As with Magneto, I think with Wolverine, you're obviously exploring the concept of the immortal soldier, the soldier of the war without end. When you're talking about Magneto, you're having to get into topics that I like, genuinely will not be able to talk about without just like bursting into sobs on this podcast.

Morgan: It's, it's just, it's something interesting. It's something that I think is important that Hickman flags that the two of them are one of the eight remaining.

Morgan: As. As a callback to "Day's of Future Past" And that I think there are other comics writers and other "X-Men" Men writers right now that are really good at references. Hickman is very good about an intentional reference. He's very good.

Dean: Hickman took mutant studies 101.

Morgan: Hickman did take mutant studies 101. So, that's my side note about.

Dean: No, I think that's an important side note. so that is Moira X. There is another scene that is deeply important because this scene is referenced over and over again in the book. And of course you have read this book because it's required reading. It is implied that this specific scene happens in her sixth and her tenth lives in kind of two separate ways. This scene takes place in. You first see the scene in "Powers of X" number one. And then you see it later in "House of X" number 6.

Morgan: No, it's earlier in that. It's in.

Dean: Okay, it's "Powers of X" 6 So it's's. It's bookending "Powers of X" which of course the ending of "Powers of X" is also kind of the ending of this series which ends with, you know, scenes that make me cry. And we'll talk about them later.

Morgan: And we'll talk about them later.

Dean: Becausee it's o. Yeah, it's screenshhotting.

Morgan: Every panel type deal, but y. I feel like close out our Moira discussion on this.

Dean: Yeah. So this is a scene at a fair, in Scotland. There's a castle in the background, so it's kind of implied. wait, Charles. Sorry, go ahead.

Morgan: Well, before we do reader theater, I have, like, literary analysis, but set the stage. And I'm going to do some literary analysis before we do reader theedater off. So it's Charles little fair. Right. Like you were saying. And actually I can input this in between our readers theater because I've got stuff about the tarot cards that Moira seesk. Where do you want to start?

Dean: Let's just start. So, Charles is at a fair and sitting on a park bench, and he looks pleased with himself. And a woman in a green dress and a page boy hat approaches,

Morgan: says "good afternoon"

Dean: and the same to you. Are you enjoying the fair?

Morgan: "It seems like the kind of thing I should enjoy. And yet I look around at all of these people and know it's just a show for those who need one. A distraction from what's really going on. If you will. Mind if I sit?"

Dean: "Please."

Morgan: "So are you enjoying the fair?"

Dean: "I, am. It seems like the kind of thing I should not enjoy. And yet a little parting of the clouds, a little shining of the sun, and suddenly everything seems right in the world."

Morgan: "Having a good day, are we?"

Dean: "Is it that obvious?"

Morgan: "You'd have to be blind not to notice. In my case, I was just walking through the fair, past the cage beasts and the games of chance passst the fortune color selling his wares. See the magician, the metal metaphorph, the great sword and the girl with one foot in two worlds. See the tower, the axis, the pillar of collapse and rebirth, the monolith of ascension. See the devil, the red God and the lost cardinal of the last religion. Then at the far end of the." Oh, wait. Yeah, we can stop here.

Dean: Go ahead and. Go ahead and talk about your tarot card analysis.

The magician, the tower, the devil.

Morgan: Okay, so these Are So as we is saying, the magician, the tower, the devil. We're seeing the three tarot cards and I was like, Hickman is choosing these for a reason. I'm doing some analysis. So yeah, the magician, I'm not a tarot card person. This will be. These sources will be the works cited. but the magician on the broad level, the magician is interpreted with energy potential and the manifestation of one's desires. The card symbolizes the mean meeting of the physical and spiritual worlds as above, so below. And the conduit converting spiritual energy into real world action."

Morgan: Which as we get into it, very interesting. "The tower is commonly interpreted as meaning danger, crisis, destruction and liberation. It is associated with sudden unforeseen change. And then the devil." And this is the one that really like I was like, there's so much happening with the devil. "The devil represents the fool's involvement in economic materialism and complacency."

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: So there'just with the future of Krakoa the fact the starts "Powers of X" the fact that we're getting all of these power whole symbols of destruction.

Morgan: In so many ways it feels like we are setting up Krakoa to fail. And it's just the pull of that. And these are three characters that'be pivotal in whereas ninth life like it's for sixth life.

Dean: It's fascinating.

Moira is the catalyst of this entire book. Yeah. The most fascinating character in this book

so we'll start back up our readers theater again a little bit. So Moira is continuing to talk to Charles.

Morgan: "Then at the far end of the fair, I saw you sitting there and I thought to myself, there he is. What I've been looking for. The strong man."

Dean: "I'm not really that strong."

Morgan: "And I wondered why sitting there under parted skies and brilliant sun, was this strong man smiling."

Dean: "So I was, wasn't I?"

Morgan: "Yes."

Dean: "Do you want to know why?"

Morgan: "I do, very much so."

Dean: "I was smiling because I have recently had the most wonderful dream of a better world and my place in it."

Morgan: "Well, here's the thing, Charles. It's not a dream if it s real."

Dean: "I'm sorry, do we know one another?"

Morgan: "Oh, yes. We go back quite a ways."

Dean: "Who are you?"

Morgan: "Why don't you read my mind, Charles? Read my mind and see."

Dean: Ah. And then he experiences all of Moira's lives up to that point.

Morgan: and to bring it back to like the page turn really quick, you flip the page in the hardcover and you get the name of the chapter which is called "The Last Dream of Professor X."

Dean: Insane.

Morgan: And I just. "The Last [Dream] of Professor X." I just needed to Highlight that. That's so crazy to me.

Dean: Yeah. So again, this scene is kind of iterated on at the end of the book. And it's basically, you know, this is kind of Moira meeting Charles in her 10th life and he has to basically live through, you know, every terrible tragic thing that ever happened to her. And then I'm not going toa reader's theater this part. But it's very much about like she's, she's very much talking about like you know, it cuts at everything you believe. Hard truths are what's called for when dealing with radical realignments to old ways of thinking. This establishment of they always lose at the end of the story and Moira knows that they always lose is so distressing. And I mean it's even more distressing now as we sort of near the end of this era. Knowing that they lose is. Yeah, yeah. That's a thing that we're reckoning with at the. At the moment. A great time to be starting an "X-Men" podcast.

Morgan: A great time to be starting an "X-Men" podcast.

Dean: So that's Moira. yeah. The catalyst of this entire book. The most fascinating character in this book. Even though she is not on like she's not on panel for really a lot outside of u those two scenes and "House of X" Number Two.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: her presence is kind of constantly felt.

Morgan: Which is really how it feels throughout the rest of the era.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: Is that you always know that Moira's there.

Dean: It'S really, really amazing. Yeah. That was just again the most radical thing Hickman did. Like.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: And it's, it's just amazing. Like it's just really, really amazing what.

Morgan: He does with Moira and then what he does with Destiny is. Are the two best things that he does.

Dean: Yeah. I mean he revived those characters. Yeah.

Morgan: Both liter. Both like literally and into the consciousnessmm.

Dean: U this is going toa conclude our section about Moira. Cause I think if we sit here for another we can sit here for another four hours and psychoanalyze Moira mctagart just in this one book. U yeah.

Resurrection

So we can kind of maybe talk about some of the other themes that are happening in this story because there's a lot of them.

Morgan: There's so much going on in this story.

Dean: Yeah. So one of the big things that is kind of established in this story is of course mutants can't die. The way that mutants win is by becoming unexterminable you know, you can't exterminate a race that can't die anymore.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: And which plays into Moira's sort of ideas of resurrection and rebirth.

Morgan: Because when, when Moira and Xavier go to Magneto to broach the idea, of Krakoa Because the other kind of thing that happens is that we get this revealed that like, oh, Moira has been a behind the scenes player this whole time and everything they've been doing is building to Krakoa So early, I think we're supposed to understand because of Xavier s still in the wheelchair, which Xavier and disability, it is s a different topic. But he's in a very kind of classic wheelchair. I think we're supposed to understand that this is 60s 70s era.

Dean: It's a big indicator that we're. This is like probably pre Claremont.

Morgan: Yes. Early.

Dean: Early.

Morgan: Because even though Magneto kind of wears his like purple and red costume for most of the series, like he's wearing it. He and Xavier are separated. They're in their first divorce era. And so in the first issue when Moira goes to, she says, like Xavier says, I'm not interested in survival. And Moira says, I'DONE survival. I'm interested in thriving.

Dean: And this is resurrection. This. Yeah. Let's talk about, let's talk about Is it "House of X" 4

Morgan: Yes.

Dean: "House of X" 4 into "House of X" 5

Morgan: Yeah. Cause this is the.

Dean: Is when we kind of. Yeah, yeah.

Morgan: This is bad bitch link up.

Dean: Yes. it is, the, There's a strike team on an ORCHIS base. We haven't even talked about ORCHIS but you've read the book.

Morgan: yeah, Orc. We talk about ORCHIS so much. We're gonna get to ORCHIS

Dean: Yeah. So ORCHIS you know, the strike team on ORCHIS which leads to the death of, I think very specifically, like big name, recognizable characters of the "X-Men" These are not like D listers.

Morgan: Well, there's also Husk.

Dean: There is Husk. Hickman cannot help himself because Jonathan Hickman loves Gen X. Yeah. Jonathan Hickman. Me loving Gen X. Yeah. Monet and Husk are there.

Morgan: Which Monet I feel like at this point has become like a B lister at least.

Dean: Yeah. Husk is a D lister.

Morgan: Husk is still a D list,

Dean: but it's like. But also it's like Scott and Logan and Kurt and Warren. These are like big name characters.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: So when they die in issue 4 of "House of X" and you obviously it ends with no more, which we had previously Talked about as the single greatest moment maybe ever.

Morgan: Yeah. But we do open "House of X" 1. The first thing that we opened with is their resurrection at Arbor Magna. And you know that it's Scott's resurrection because you see his eyes.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: So you know that there's something that we're coming back to. But yeah, their death hits you.

Morgan: In a really significant way.

Dean: Yeah. "House of X" number five does a lot. But the big thing that it does is kind of the opening sequence is the establishment of the Five, which is the group of mutants that can. That when they combine their powers along with Sinister DNA can resurrect dead mutants. You introduce the Five. You have Lorna looking really wonderful in that sort of classic green look. sort of. Go ahead.

Morgan: Way that Pepe Larraz draws hair. I just have to. This is just a side note. Lorna and Jean's hair look so fucking good in this comic in ways that it never looks outside of when Pepe is drawing them. I just have to put that out there. It looks so good.

Dean: It's the inks. It's his like very distinctive like thick ink lines.

Morgan: It's so. It's beautiful. And also he's a really unique way of color. I don't know. Let me check the color rest.

Dean: Ah, Marte. Gracia.

Morgan: Yeah. Marte Gracia's colors. The way that they color Jean's hair. Specifically that like bright candy color. Red.

Dean: Which she does the same thing for Hope. Topic for another time.

Morgan: Topic for another time. I will talk about Hope Summers. I love Hope Summers so much.

Dean: it's. So we established the Five and it's. It is this genuine moving moment of this sort of establishment that like, you know, the declarations of Mutant. Mutant. Lots can be said about like names in this story as well. People talk a lot about like mutant names.

Morgan: Yeah. It's a really interesting concept that it's.

Dean: The, the sort of like naming ceremony. Obviously you have the, the moments that matter so much to you and me of, you know, Storm asking what is your name? which we're goingna get into a little later.

Morgan: I want to talk about when we talk about family.

Dean: Yeah. "I learned it watching you" is.

Morgan: I have a lot to say about that panel and about the lettering. When I get to talk about the lettering.

Dean: Form and content. Baby form and Content. Content. Yeah. I think the rebirth themes are just so good. and additionally it's like the birth of a new nation.

Morgan: Yes.

Dean: in Krakoa which obviously I think can kind of segue into What Hickman is playing with politically, in both overt and less overt ways.

Morgan: Yeah.

The Politics

So when we le in "House of X" one, when we leave Arbor Magna the next place that we go to is Jerusalem.

Dean: Yeah. Let's unpack this a little bit.

Morgan: Yeah. Like you have to is it's not just we're at Jerusalem, it's we're in Jerusalem. We're in Jerusalem with Magneto.

Dean: And it's specifically a meeting place of representatives of like various world superpowers. And so having Jerusalem as both a, you know, Jerusalem, obviously as a religious center of the world.

Dean: And also the somewhat loaded politics of having Magneto introducing this nation in Israel is. I mean, certainly, certainly nowadays, right now, it's.

Morgan: Certainly right now it's a lot. It feels different reading it now.

Dean: It hits really different. And it hits really powerfully, I think, especially, towards the end of issue one. Sort of the, the last kind of final confrontation Magneto has with the world leaders is like not even, not even talking about the, the new gods now.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: Which is.

Morgan: But it is the final confrontation he has is with Israel, which is. Was with the representative from, From Jerusalem.

Dean: I mean, I mean, he specifically says, you know, "I know how you humans love your symbolism almost as much as you love your religion." And it's like there's a level of symbolism in having Magneto doing this scene in Jerusalem.

Morgan: And because he also same in that same. I don't know, the panel in front of me, in that same confrontation, he talks about how, mutants as a species have always fought back. They've never been a reactionary. They've never. "There have been no mutant wars" is what Magneto says. And he talks about how they've never conquered land. They've never done any of that.

Dean: Right. As a Krakoa as a non colonialist state. Specifically talking. Specifically having that scene being delivered in Jerusalem, in Israel is really, really powerful, I think.

Dean: The discussions around. And certainly once you get into other lore surrounding Krakoa and the origins of Krakoa when you get into like "X of Swords" and the Arakki which is a whole other topic, it hits in a really, in this really fascinating way that I appreciate. And it's again, it's just clearly like Hickman is thinking about this. This is not. This is not Hickman. Hickman is doing everything intentionally with this.

Morgan: Yeah. I don't think, I don't think Hickman wants. I think we are supposed to think of the parallels of Krakoa to Israel. I think we are also supposed to think of the parallels of Krakoa to Palestine and I think that that is why it is Jerusalem.

Morgan: And we are supposed to think of Krakoa as a space of. Because the other thing is that like Krakoa is sentient. Which is I. Which is really interesting in terms of. And especially in terms of when we talk about the allegories of the "X-Men" Is that like. Because this is fantasy. Like a superhero big broad is fantasy. You can never have one to one.

Morgan: The "X-Men" will never be a race metaphor or never be perfect race metaphor. A perfect queer metaphor. A perfect Judaism metaphor.

Dean: Like it'll always be the only time I. The only time I think they can do it well. And even then it's kind of loaded. Is disability and M. But again even then that comes with another level of kind of loading on top of that.

Morgan: M. Which just is because of the genre. Like that's.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: It's just the way that these stories kind of have to operate is that you can't do a one to one.

Morgan: But you are still supposed to ask those questions. So Krakoa is a sentient land that invites the people onto it.

Dean: Right.

Morgan: There is from. Yeah.

Dean: There is no settler colonialism. Yeah. It's. It's not a refugee camp. It's not a setttler colonialist state. It is. It is a. A place "Krakoa Is for all mutants." A. You know, which when you read these in In single issues, the sort of like data page of like this is the next issue that you read has the line "Krakoa is for all mutants" under it. Which I think is, you know, fascinating as asking the question about like Krakoa as a minority state but without having to deal with say settler colonialism in the way that like Israel, which tries to establish itself as a ethno state has to.

Morgan: Because Krakoa is an ethnostate in all of the complications that that arises.

Dean: But it is also able to do that through a. Through a fantastical lens and.

Morgan: Yes.

Dean: Which is like it's. You know, we can't. We can't just have the metaphor end there in real life. Like it doesn't just end there in real life. But the nice part about reading about it is like you can kind of have it end there in the text without it. And you can still be asking the questions about it, but ostensibly still agree that Krakoa is a good thing.

Morgan: Yes. Because I think the story then justifies the need for. And I feel like we keep coming back to these data pages of genocide, but they'the most moving parts of the story in my opinion of showing the legitimate percentages. There's anotherh Let me find it in my notes. Part of. And this is part of the. I think this is either Moira's references or this is ORCHIS's references. where essentially it's saying like if Genosha didn't happen, Genosha s is the full scale genocide of 16 million meanses.

Dean: Yeah. So I know what you're talking about. It's like 10 years. Within 10 years mutants would

Morgan: Yeah, I'got right here. "If not for Genosha mutants would have become the dominant species on Earth within 10 years due to cascading biological and cultural mutant positive variables. What Genosha bought mankind was time they didn't know they didn't have." And so they have all these data points of saying like mutantdom is less than 1% of the population. And yet you also have these complications of. These are incredibly powerful individuals.

Dean: They. You know the metaphors of omega level mutants as ostensibly our nuclear arsenal is You know when you read the omega level data point it's like they kind of establish that like yeah, Krakoa does have like these people can theoretically be. It's so easy to deem these people as dangerous.

Morgan: There's five people that can manipulate reality on a level that no other being capable can.

Dean: But. But you're then. But the book is trying to say it's not a. You can. It's not a good thing to say. But this person can be dangerous. So we must immediately assume that they are dangerous. And. And this book saying we can recogn. We recognize that these are incredibly powerful beings and yet they should not be persecuted against simply because of this biological difference.

The X Men are transhumanist.

And then of course this kind of gets into a big topic of the "X-Men" which is kind of always there. Which is the "X-Men" as kind of a transhumanist allegory or like a transhumanist story. Which is meas. I have it in front of me. But I'm not gonna like read every Omega but nouse.

Morgan: Isn't there somebody that's like a crazy. I'm just trying to think of kind of a ridiculous example of an omega level mutant.

Dean: Like Jamie Braddock is an omega level.

Morgan: Mutant, but Jamie Bradock has the ability to manipulate worlds. Like isn't there somebody on them? It's like an omega Level like I feel like Bobby is kind of the stupidest example. But Bobby also like terraforms a planet.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: Like you know, like they're all crazy powerful.

Dean: What does omega level telepathy look like in a question of like with regards to like Jean crazy.

Morgan: That Jean is an omega level telepath. And her first mutation was telekinesis.

Dean: Well what? Well, the origins of Jean Grey.

Morgan: Yeah. her TK is the first thing we see. Telepathy doesn't happen until the Phoenix force like that's why her and Quentin Quire are on there.

Dean: Yeah. And that's also why you doing the same thing. And the problem is like you can't establish Jean as an omega level telepath and then also establish Kid Omega as the an omega level ploath. But then be like. But there can only be one of both.

Morgan: Yeah. It's cause different.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: Quentin couldn't handle the Phoenix Force. Like that's fine.

Dean: Yeah.

Dean: So transhumanism.

Morgan: Yes.

Dean: Yeah. The "X-Men" is. The "X-Men" is transhumanist. storytelling obviously by nature of the "X-Men" as a. You know, because the. The X gene is genetic. The primary fear of mutants generally speaking is like mutantom will replace us and Like us being like Homo sapiens. Like Homo superior will replace us Homo sapiens. And how do we fight back from that? Well, we try. We perform you know, as much like transhumanist ideology as possible of like. Well, we have to get the technological advantage because they have the biological advantage.

Morgan: Ye.

Dean: So book. Yeah. That's where the Sentinels come in. That's where AI comes in. And so the going back to Moira's seventh life, this revelation that not dissimilar to the X gene and natural evolution. AI is not an invention, it is a discovery. AI is always going to happen in every single one of her lives. Which is so big brained. So crazy. Yeah.

Morgan: Like just such a crazy idea of like the technology as like the thing that will outlast everythingmm.

Dean: I think which gets into the phalanx of it all.

Morgan: Yeah.

House of X4 is a story about natural evolution versus technological evolution

Well before that I want to just briefly touch on Karima Shapandar the Omega Sentinel.

Dean: Oh of course.

Morgan: Well, because I think that she sometimes in "X-Men" comics you just say things and you're like yeah, of course. Karima Shapandar

Dean: Karima Shapandar

Dean: The Omega Sentinal

Morgan: the Omega Sentinel who appears in pretty much every single issue. We see her working with ORCHIS We see her and then we see her in "Powers of X" and she is like, just represents this really interesting. Well, it's like basically Karima Shapandar because if you've just read "House of X" you're gonna have no idea who she is, and why she is the Omega Sentinel. And she is essentially, she's a sentinel with an X gene. That's like granted her humanity. Right. That's Karima's deal.

Dean: Yeah, that's Karima's deal.

Morgan: And Karima's been around for a while. Hickman is a child of the 90s. Like she's big during that time and she constantly is like flip flopping whether or not she's like I am a machine or whether or not she's like I am man. It's like it's the classic cyborg problem. She and Alicia Vikander in "Ex Machina."

Dean: Yes,

Morgan: almost exactly.

Dean: Actually, no, I think that. I actually think that's a very apt, comparison between the two.

Morgan: And I think she really just like kind of embodies this theme of transhumanism and like what it means to be her.

Dean: And so someonese, yes, sort of this hybrid of man, machine and mutant as a concept of like really playing into this idea of natural evolution versus technological evolution. and the books kind of coming down on, well, if humanity continues to evolve technologically. You do get Terminator. You get, you know, eventually AI decides, wait, any human can theoretically be born with an X gene. So why don't we just kill all the humans? Because then that'll get rid of the mutant problem forever. And then it's just AI.

Morgan: Yeah, we get this really interesting quote in "House of X" 4. I think it's "House of X" 4. because my issue numbers are a little skewed. where while Logan is dismantling the Mother Mold. Is it the Mother Mold? Yes, the Mother Mold that will create other Master Molds. The Mother Mold speaks and it says, "if man. If man made me, then they are God and you are Titans." You meaning Mutants "and you mutants are Titans. Theyre spoiled lineage. But while you war, we children sit in judgment of those above us. We judge and find you both wanting. Do you hear us, Olympus? We have stolen your fire, and with it we will burn you all."

Dean: Yeah, it's well, you know, thinking Prometheus as the, the sort of genesis of technology. and the dangers of the genesis of technology. You can obviously look at, everything from like "Oppenheimer", you know, J. Robert Oppenheimer being called an American. Prometheus, obviously. the epigraph of "Frankenstein" or the subtitle of "Frankenstein" is like "the Modern Prometheus."

Dean: In a very real way. This is another Prometheus story.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: Oh, we neither of us caught that like specifically this story as a Prometheus story. That this is fascinating. At least I didn't catch it.

Morgan: No, I didn't either until you said that like. Yeah, it's totally.

Dean: This is absolutely like a. A Prometheus story. totally is.

Morgan: It's about taking the fire back before it is given to the God. Before it is given to humans. Like m. That's the mission in "House of X" 4.

Dean: Yeah. And it's. I also think that there's this element of And this is established a little bit later like during the actual like runs of comics that come after this, but like u. humanity, ah, having kind of this inherently individualistic view of their evolution as opposed to mutantdom having a sort of community evolution or community view on. On evolution. in a variety of ways. You know, mutant community. Mutant family as an idea.

Mutant Family

Morgan: Mutant family as an idea. TM O. I feel like that like this is our last point of the episode. We just have to talk about Mutantdom and family.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: and I kind of, I kind of want toa go a little bit chronologically, but also like our favorite baby boy is Cyclops. And so I think we're go going toa spend a lot of time talking about him.

Dean: Well, he is. I mean if you are a child of the 90s and are like Cyclops is boring, I feel like I can hand you this book and this book will sell you on Cyclops even minus his one bad thing. Minus the one bad thing he does.

Morgan: Which we're going to start with that because I think I mentioned in the last episode that the scene where Scott confronts the Fantastic Four is the scene that turned me off from the series for a while.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: And I think it's really. I think it's really important and interesting that the first conflict that Mutant Dumb really has with other superp powered individuals is with the Fantastic Four. And the Fantastic Four are Marvel's first family. That's what they're called. They're the royal family. And so we. And they're a nuclear family. I think for all the arguments that you can make about the Fantastic Four being a story of found family, they're a nuclear family structure.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: And that's what the stories are about. That's what those classic Lee Kirby stories are about. And so the "X-Men" are really the Found family gesture. I think because. And at least especially in this book because Scott has a repeated motif of. He refers to his family, he says he is talking about his family all like just repeatedly throughout throut. Throughout. Throughout. Oh, well, we're gonna circle back. So I think I have notes about Jean and the children. We're gonna circle back to that.

Dean: Yeah. Well be sort of one of the first scenes of Jean and the children entering Krakoa for the first time is. I mean, you know. Whoa. Yeah, that does about cover it.

Morgan: "Welcome home, Jean You're safe here. We all are."

Dean: Yeah. You want to start crying because.

Morgan: Oh God, there's something. I just have this note that's like, It's just very interesting to me. The children that Jean brings to Krakoa Call her Mrs. Gray.

Dean: Yeahh. Interesting, huh?

Morgan: Just I don't have much to say about that, but I'm just like, oh, I hadn't caught that before. And that's interesting.

Dean: That's fascinating. I think it's also noteworthy. I think this is, this is a little bit like plate of corn, but it's like. I do think it's notable that like all of the children she brings with her are visible mutants.

Morgan: Yes, yes. No, I think that's very, I think that's very important.

Dean: Yeah. because obviously, I think visible mutants are obviously targeted and persecuted more than necessarily like non visible mutants. So I think, you know, mutant community as a concept is, is really powerful. You. We're going to go a little bit chronologically after the Scott moment. I'm curious like what your next so of idea is going from there.

Morgan: So just circling back to the Scott moment. my only other anecdote moment is that the kids, once they enter, once they enter Krakoa they immediately see Logan and they run to him and they like tackle him to the ground. And it's like the only moment we see Logan like smiling is when he's with all these kids. So anyway, I feel fine and normal.

Dean: Yeah, the, you know, mutant dumb as found family, mutant dumb as community. Like even Logan, the world's grumpiest loner can find solace in a mutant child is. Well, that's a recurring theme of his entire character.

Morgan: I will crowar crying over that actually. Yeah, I could write 50 pages about Logan on Krakoa I think the work he does. Anyway, we have this moment with, with the Fantastic Four which. The Fantastic Four drawn by Pepe Larraz look so fucking good. Jesus Christ.

Dean: Hey, Reed Richards.

Morgan: Hey, Reed Richards. Hey, Reed Richards.

Dean: What's up like, he has never looked hotter. And like, Re r looks hot. Hot. Reed Richards is hot. Sorry, I had to be gay for real. Quick second. Reed Richards is so hot in this book.

Morgan: So he's on page, like maybe.

Dean: Yeah, he's in like two pages of this book. And my God, he just is so hot.

Morgan: It's the best Fantastic Four uniform. like the dark, like the dark navy, almost black with the black. It's the best version of their uniforms. They all look fantastic. They're briefly being written by Jonathan Hickman again.

Dean: It's real nice. It's. You know, you're a bigger Fantastic Four fan than I am, but I imagine for you this was like, oh, this was. Was nice. And then Scott is like. And then Scott is called Sue Storm a bad mom.

Morgan: But this. I also do just have a note that the conversation between Scott and Reed is also so interesting because they have this whole conversation about Amnesty, which we didn't really talk about with Saberooth because that's a whole other episode that we could talk about is Sabertooth And I think we will talk about at some point. But they have this whole conversation about Amnesty, which is really interesting because we have essentially these two ideological and icons of Marvel having this conversation about what they want their lives to look like, just very briefly. And also I have in my notes Autistic Kings.

Dean: Because yes, the two autistic kings of.

Morgan: Marvel, or not maximizing are not maximizing their joint slate at all.

Dean: No, no, unfortunately not.

Morgan: Unfortunately, not. Unfortunately not. But Scott as is trying to take Sabertooth back because he's like, this is my guy. Can you let me take my guy back?

Dean: I don't like him, but he is ours.

Morgan: This is like my feral guy who terrorizes my boyfriend. I'm responsible for him.

Morgan: So that he doesn't terrorize my boyfriend anymore. And Reed is like, sorry, we can't have that happen. Sorry we can't have that happen. We did capture him doing crimes.

Dean: So does we. I'm adding. I'm adding a Sabertooth episode to our big master document because like, mostly I just want an excuse to reread the Victim LaValle Sabertooth stuff. But also I think it's a. It's a topic we can't get into in this episode because we are like, already. We've been recording for so long.

Morgan: So Scott can't. Scott's like, fine, you keep Sabretooth. And Saetooth says, what the fuck? On page. Yeah, he's like, Why'd you do that? And then Scott and Sue have this conversation that Hickman doesn't play about my boy Scott Summers is the end of the day. He says to Sue "my family has--" actually. Do you want to take this? Do you want to take this because it's your boy?

Dean: Yeah, I'll take it because it is my boy forever.

Morgan: Yeah. Read this line. Read this line.

Dean: "My family has spent our entire lives being hunted and hated. The world has told me that I was less when I knew I was more. Did you honestly think that we were going to sit around forever and just take it?"

Morgan: My God. did you honly think we were going to sit around forever and take it like.

Dean: And you know when he says my family he's talking about mutants. He is specifically talking about his family.

Morgan: Yes.

Dean: Like, you know, heing.

Morgan: He takes the found family and flips it onto Sue's nuclear family.

Dean: Yeah. And it's like he's specifically talking about like his family in the sense of like mutant dumb. He's also talking specifically about like his family, his wife, his daughter, his son. Every single one of these family dynamics is way too complicated to get into. But like we will defite people that he truly cares about. Yeah. Like the people that he cares about on a very, very deep, specifically personal level. Which I'm going to jump back over to "House of X" 5 and you know the, the name declaration scene, which before.

Morgan: You do that we have to hit the final punch. The final like thing that he hits Sue with.

Dean: Oh yeah.

Morgan: Which is him accusing her of being a bad mother. But is also really relevant to this discussion where he says, he says, "Please greet your son for me and tell him when he's ready. He has family on Krakoa waiting for him."

Dean: And family is emphasized.

Morgan: Yes. So this is what I want to just like highlight the lettering of Clayton Cowells because he doesn't do a lot. It's like not a lot of crazy editing in this book. But the emphas, like in that like sit around and take it line, he's both using italics and bold to emphasize different things. So hunted and hated are italicized versus less more andake are bolded. And then that line, he is family bolded. So he's placing emp these emphases on really specific parts. And in that line, I mean, Scott is accusing Sue of being a bad mom.

Dean: Yeah, choices.

Morgan: And we talk about Franklin Richards.

Dean: No, no, we've been, this has gone on for so long. Like we can't of time.

Morgan: We don't have time. There's so much happening. But the idea that family is also where your loyalties lie is also something really interesting because right after that we get the data page of the Omega mutants, of which Franklin Richards is one, and with it is like, where are your loyalties? And all. But to have their loyalties to Krakoa there's Jamie Braddock, who is a wild card at all times, and there's Franklin, whose loyalties are specifically listed to humans, not to mutants.

Morgan: So that's the end of that scene in which Sabretooth has to go to court.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: So we go back to five.

Dean: So yeah, flipping all the way back to five. And then we'll flip back over. Cause we have to talk about my u. we do have to talk about my girl if we're talking about family and, children. Yes.

Morgan: Cause inn talk about her children. So.

Dean: Oh, yeah. so we, we have the sort of beautiful scene after the resurrection, where Storm is declaring, you know, brothers and sisters of Krakoa Do we know them? and she's asking, each of them, you know, who are you? Like, what is your name? How do I know it's you? Storm asking Scott, being like, how do I know it's you? And him saying, "Once I thought I was strong, a leader of mutants, and then you showed me what strong was." And then Clayton Cowells, like just teeny tiny letters, just has Storms say, "I learned it. Watching you" is so amazing.

Morgan: As she kisses him on the forehead.

Dean: I like, like Hickman, Larraz Cowells Just cooking. Just absolutely cooking in both these, like, massive heady concepts and these teeny tiny character moments. And then like, declaring like, this is my brother and I know him is, m incredible. Do you want to take the Jean one? Because ye. I know you have. I know you have a lot of thoughts about that one specific line.

Morgan: I have. So I have. So let me find the actual page because I just wrote it down in bits and pieces. Oh. Oh, it's so. It's so. It's so. Okay. So Ororo approaches Jean and she said, and I have a lot of thoughts about Jean going back to Marvel Girl but I think that we can save that for a Jean episode.

Dean: Yeah.

Morgan: She asks, "How do I know it's you, Jean?" And Jean says, "Oh I'm the only me that ever was Ororo."

Morgan: "This is my sister. I know her." And then I know her is in full bold. And they're hugging like they're just in full embrace.

Dean: It is completely crazy that this Is like the one thing Storm does in this series, like in this book. And yet it is like so unbelievably impactful. And you have to give this moment to Storm. Because it's Storm.

Morgan: Because it's Storm.

Dean: Yeah. You can't give this, you can't give this to any other character and have it like be believable.

Morgan: There are two characters that I'm like, those are the "X-Men" and it's Cyclops in its Storm. Yeah, those are the "X-Men"

Morgan: If the "X-Men" are not Cyclops and Storm, that's not the "X-Men" to me. So you have to give this like m moment of pure mutantdom and.

Dean: Heart to Storm and a moment of pure joy for mutants. Yes to.

Morgan: Yes. That's the other Storm.

Dean: It's like this is like mutant joy is I think a theme that runs throughout this series. The, the sort of last moments of "House of." Of really "Powers of X" 6

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: With sort of the grand celebration of Krakoa is kind of this important part.

For the Children

We are running so long and I like feel like we do need to maybe start wrapping it up and. But I do want to talk about, I mean I have to talk about for the children. Yes, we have to talk about for the children.

Morgan: We have to talk about for the children. I also just want to shout out, just other brief moments. Krakoa welcoming Apocalypse home. Like when Apocalypse enters Krakoa the island physically responds because Apocalypse is originally from Krakoa and Arakco when they were joined together. That's just so beautiful. It's just like such a beautiful moment of literally like waking up and is happy that he's.

Dean: And then of course, and then him declaring like this is all I've ever wanted for us. I've never been more proud.

Morgan: Yeah, it's huge. That's a huge moment. The death of the moments. The death of Logan. The moments before Logan dies. I just have, I just have to circle back to. Circle back to that. Because we get the moment with Kurt and Logan where Kurt says, "When you wake from this earthly slumber, my friend, look for me. I will be there waiting for you. Radiant with open arms."

Dean: God, I love gay people.

Morgan: God, I love gay people. When you're so insane for that considering the theme of go of God, I love gay people. After Logan is killed by the Mother Mold Scott's like looking off and he says. And he calls Logan the bravest man he knows. Cool. Cool. Rightol. We then have to like "Jean tell the Professor. It's done. It's cost us friends, our family, but it's done." Like we will save an entire episode. Just talking about Scott in Xavier's relationship, especially in this comic because yeah, he loves him, they love each other and it's so fucked, up. But we have to talk about, for.

Dean: The children, I mean. Yeah. So this is, this is a scene in "Powers." "Powers" five. Emma. Emma has a lot to do in this series. I can't, I mean we can't get into legitimately the best she's ever looked in the courtroom. When she walks into that courtroom and she's got.

Morgan: It's one of my lock screens for a reason.

Dean: Like it is, it is the best she's ever looked.

Dean: It is the best she's ever looked.

Morgan: It's craz that we've been like, we're like two hours in. It's the first time we've mentioned demo.

Dean: We. This is the first time we've mentioned. This is the first time we've mentioned Emma in like both episodes. That's crazy.

Morgan: Crazy.

Dean: so there's this, the scene in the Louvre with Emma, ah, Charles and Eric as like a, you know, kind of establishing them as this interesting triumvirate of Krakoa and kind of the three sort of founding members of Krakoan society. she kind of lays it into Magneto in this really fascinating way of like, you know, let's put all the mutants on an island again, gather them together, put them in one place, put a giant target on it. You should know better. She's pointing at Magneto, which is terrible. And you, you think I'd. And she's talking to Charles in this moment and you, you think I'd actually help with this. they're talking about forming a mutant government. And she has this moment asking both of them. U, Charles says, this is, U, this is that day you've been waiting for. Eric says to make right all the things that went wrong. And of course a big thing with Emma is all of her students dying atonement and she is constantly atoning for that sin. She asks what's going to make it different this time. And so the image of Eric holding the Kiccoan flower, saying let us show you. There are so many unbelievably just like evocative images that Silva and Laraz'make combining with just like very simple lines of dialogue from Hickman. And she sees Krakoa She sees Krakoa for the first Time. And she just sighs and says one more time. Then for the children having, having that be Emma's Gateway is. Is just amazing.

Morgan: That's gonna make me. You just saying like, oh, she sees Krakoa Like, yeah, it's the. Oh.

Dean: This comic makes us so emotional in like I was rereading it today and I'm like, this comic just makes me so emotional because I think at its core it is everything that is so powerful about the "X-Men" coalesced together in a real. In just this complete package that every "X-Men" s story and all of the famous "X-Men" stories are so bleak.

Dean: You think about "God Loves, Man Kills." You think about "Days of Future Past" You think about, think about. You think about "Dark Phoenix." You think about like "Mutant Massacre." You think about "Fall of the Mutants." Every single one of these stories is about mutants dying at the hands of humans constantly. And this story, even though it declares at the end that they always lose, says while you're reading this story, it says they don't have to. And that idea that they don't have to lose this time is. Feels genuinely radical in a way that comics just don't get to be.

Morgan: It feels revelatory, it feels beautiful. It feels. I mean it's everything and more. It is it is if the promise of Krakoa I think I don't remember where this is said, but at some point Cable says that this is the dawn of the first Krakoan age and it is the eternal promise. And I think this is like stuck with me forever or just fairly recently the journalist Spencer Ackerman said once of Krakoa that the promise of Krakoa will fuel "X-Men" comics and the meta text of "X-Men" forever. Yes, because both within the text of the story characters will constantly be remind and like, I mean this is to. We'll see if this to be true. But at the time it could have been. At the time we was saying this, it could have been. We'constantly be reminded of Remember when we had paradise.

Morgan: And what will fuel forever is this like burgeoning hope that one day we can return to paradise.

Morgan: And one day we won't lose because there was a moment when we didn't. And it is not like an endless optimism. It is like. I mean it's like almost a mythic biblical promise of paradise.

Morgan: And you get that final celebration scene at the end.

Dean: We need to in. To do. I want to do one more readers s theater moment. Just okay, what page to kind of. To close. Literally, the last. The last page. the last, like, two pages of U, Charles and Eric talking. It's just, I think it's a good note to close the episode out onuse. We have been recording for a very long time. And, you know, I have to edit this and I have to have it be somewhat reasonable.

Morgan: True.

Dean: we do.

Morgan: Also, as I'm finding this page, I do just want. Oh, God, this celebration page is so beautiful. The celebration page, does also feature, three of my favorite.

Dean: Your two girls.

Morgan: My two girls.

Dean: Girls.

Morgan: My two girls. Having a moment. Siryn And it's just. It's a beautiful moment for Dazzler Like, just a great Dazzler pull from Hickman is that you have all these beautiful celebratory moments. And like, Dazzler makes light, and so she makes this bright party and Siryn amplifies it with her voice so it's even. It's. Oh, it's. I'm on the page. I just needed to say that moment because it's such.

Dean: No, I think it's important.

Morgan: Makes me cry. It's so beautiful as, like, both my characters and also, like a celebration at this moment.

Dean: Yeah. U, so to kind of close us out on the episode. I think reading the last moments of this book, I think are really important. "Just look at what we have made. And yet, the thought lingers. Is it enough?"

Morgan: "This is only the start, Eric. But we have to hope so."

Dean: "And if it is not, then we do more."

Morgan: "Whatever the cost, whatever it takes. This is all there is, Eric. We live and die with this, you and I."

Dean: "Then I will die for it. And if I fall, then you will raise me up. I will show this world what a real mutant is."

Morgan: "Keep talking like that and you're sure to elicit a response."

Dean: "I am not ashamed of what I am. Let them try to stop us this time."

Morgan: "Yes, let them try."

Morgan: Oh, fuck.

Morgan: I got me choked up Shit.

Dean: yeah, no, I'm like, there's tears in my eyes. Actual, this comic is amazing. We can't even, like, we just can't.

Morgan: Even scratch the service. We really did.

Dean: Yeah. No, genuinely, like, this podcast is called Mutant Studies 101. The entire first semester could be this book. like, this book could be a college text course. You could teach this forever and ever for any variety of classes. This is a, It's a seminal work. It's one of the greatest things Marvel has ever had the bravery to publish. And I am so thankful that I have people like Morgan to go on the journey of rediscovering how amazing this book is, with me. So thank you, Morgan we did this. I'm so glad we did this as well.

Morgan: Ohh, God.

Dean: So this has been technically the first episode, the first official episode of.

Morgan: Yeah.

Dean: Mutant Studies 101. I doubt they will all be this long or this smart. But, that being said, this has been an incredible experience. Thank you for going on this journey with me. until next time, I have been Dean.

Morgan: I have been Morgan. We would like to thank Ollie Phresh for our theme music hating Kirkeide for our episode art. And I would like to thank Dean for surviving this experience.

Dean: Thank you. you can find me on, the Twitters. Dean of X. I am Beakerbarnes.

Morgan: The show is mutant 101 pod.

Dean: And until next time, do your homework.

Morgan: Do your homework. It's not a dream if it's real.

Dean: It's not a dream if it's real.

#transcript

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