Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: House of X, marvel, Powers of X, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

Meet the New Leader of the X-Men in Powers of X #2 [X-ual Healing 8-14-2019]

Published Mon, 19 Aug 2019 16:00:37 -0500

by Jude Terror

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Welcome to the first edition of X-ual Healing… on a newly redesigned Bleeding Cool?! That's right, we've planted the black seed of Krakoa on our webserver and it grew a brand new site design. But even with all that work, we still had time to recap all the X-Books that came out last week… mainly because there was just one of them. Let's see what happened in Powers of X #2, shall we?

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities, but thanks to a corporate merger and a line-wide relaunch, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in all of comics.

POWERS OF X #2 (OF 6)
JUN190828
(W) Jonathan Hickman (A/CA) R. B. Silva
As Xavier sows the seeds of the past, the X-Men's future blossoms into trouble for all mutantdom. Superstar writer Jonathan Hickman (NEW AVENGERS, INFINITY, FF) continues reshaping the X-Men's past, present and future with breakout artist R.B. Silva (UNCANNY X-MEN)!
Rated T+
In Shops: Aug 14, 2019
SRP: $4.99

What Happened in Powers of X #2?

Following the shocking revelations of House of X #2, in which we learned that Moira MacTaggert is a mutant whose power is to return to the womb after death with the ability to live her life again, making different choices, with the implication that the familiar X-Men timeline is Moira's 10th life, Powers of X #2 opens with Moira and Professor Xavier meeting with Magneto on his Island M Bermuda Triangle base during X1, the early years of the X-Men. Charles shares Moira's secret with Magneto telepathically, and Magneto agrees to join them in their quest to save mutantkind… though he vows to check Xavier at every turn.

In X10, the tenth year of the X-Men and the "present" of the House of X and Powers of X series, Xavier and Magneto show Cyclops plans for a Mother Mold, a Master Mold Sentinel that creates other Master Molds, created in space by the ORCHIS group and posing a major threat to mutants. They believe this will be where Nimrod is created, and task Cyclops with leading a near-impossible mission to space to stop it, a mission to which Cyclops readily agrees.

In X100, the hundredth year of the X-Men and time where mutants are seemingly losing the war against men and machines, Wolverine leads Cardinal and Rasputin to the X-Men's future leader on Asteroid K: Apocalypse. There, they deliver the stolen information they obtained in Powers of X #1, though at great cost, since Percival, who was killed in that issue, was the mutant able to shield the X-Men from detection. Nevertheless, Xorn is able to decrypt the information with a little help from the tree-looking mutant, who is apparently the corpse of Doug Ramsay as animated by Krakoa, not Black Tom as we called him last issue. The thumb drive contains index of other information, which will lead the X-Men to information they need to steal to stop Nimrod. Looks like a parallel suicide mission in the future, this one led by Apocalypse instead of Cyclops. Speaking of Nimrod, at the Tower of Nimrod the Lesser, where Nimrod demonstrates how little use humans have to the man-machine alliance by incinerating two of them for sassing him. Nimrod knows that the X-Men stole something from his indexing center, but he doesn't yet know just what they're looking for.

In X1000, the far future where man has been relegated to a zoo and Nimrod is a computer serving the mysterious Librarian, we see that this future civilization has created Nimbus, a worldmind computer modeled after the Kree Supreme Intelligence, but it is merely bait to attract the Phalanx, who consume the worldmind and head to Earth, having received a coded message. They arrive and ask the Librarian what they want. The one-word answer: "ascension."

Learning to Love (or Hate) the X-Men Relaunch Part 4

At this point, the X-Men relaunch is in full swing, we know enough to make some sense of what we've been reading and to make even more speculation about what it could all mean. There are multiple devices in play that can reconcile what's happening here with past continuity, even if pretty much any way it does so is going to have major implications for how we understand a lot of past stories.

Powers of X #2 doesn't drop any mind-blowing reveals like House of X #2, but it is the first chapter of the story after that issue and now it finally feels like the plot is actually moving somewhere, rather than just worldbuilding. The Phalanx development at the end is interesting, but we still don't have any real reason to care what happens a thousand years in the future when all of our favorite characters are presumably dead anyway.

The backup material is less bothersome again this issue than it was in House of X #1 and Powers of X #1, providing additional context rather than overshadowing the actual in-comic events as it did in the first issue of each of these series. One thing that's clear, though it was admittedly presented this way from the start, as that the story being told in House of X and Powers of X is one continuous narrative, and the only real reason they needed to be two six-issue mini-series rather than one twelve-issue mini-series is a sales-based one, with two extra-priced first issues instead of one and less room for sales attrition. But Marvel will be Marvel.

Either way, the relaunch turned a corner last week for me, and as long as it continues to provide answers to go along with the new mysteries it introduces, I'm feeling optimistic about it. This all depends on successful execution through the ending though, as well as fulfilling the promise of explaining how this fits into existing continuity.