Preventing The Future Darkness In House Of X #3

After a two week break, House of X is back and things are a little different in the wake of the revelations we just saw from Powers of X. This leads to a bit more standard superhero story, but is it really?

Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, Marte Gracia, Clayton Cowles, and Tom Muller thrust our X-Men into the war between mutant and machine.

The X-Men have learned about the Orchis Protocol and their Mother Mold. Cyclops leads a team into the sun to shut them down, before it could lead to the activation of Nimrod. However, Orchis is ready for them. Could it lead to the end of the X-Men just as Krakoa is rising?

There is so much here to dissect that I could go one for a very long time. First of all, this issue is a fascinating study in foreknowledge and the scifi trope of prophecy. Moira X was set up in House of X #2 as a parallel figure to Destiny, the prophetess who’s driven many a story. However, it made clear that Moira’s foreknowledge was not the same as Destiny’s prophecies. Here we see exactly what that means.

Moira herself clearly knows the difference. Hickman shows that she doesn’t use her knowledge assuming everything will be the same as last time, largely through the supplemental material. Instead of taking past knowledge as fact, she looks for patterns, establishes systems to keep ahead of the evils that will wipe mutantkind out. He takes the tropes and makes sure they’re addressed with intelligence instead of the obvious.

Outside taking classic scifi tropes and writing them as something more, he does a much more classic superhero styled story. The X-Men are fighting for survival, not just to save the world (though it’s clear their actions would do that too). He captures their personalities and their relationships perfectly.

Its also captured in the art by Larraz and Gracia so perfectly. The team- consisting of Cyclops, Jean, Wolverine, Archangel, Nightcrawler, Husk and Monet- each carry their own individual presence on the page. One great example is that Nightcrawler’s grin is ever present, even when faced with the Omega Sentinel within the Orchis Protocol. 

One of the most interesting things about it is how Cyclops changes in the story. When he’s in front of Xavier and Magneto, he’s stiff, overly formal, and almost robotic, but with his squad he’s more casual and in control. Along with those changes in body language in Larraz’s work, Gracia changes the tone and quality of the lighting as the change happens. It adds to the story cues from the entire story so far that something has changed with Charles and Erik, and it casts the rest of the story in an interesting light.

The story is kicking in high gear now as it enters act 2, and once again, I hope everyone survives the experience.

House of X #3 is available now from Marvel Comics.