ATG Comic Review: House of X #1-#4

Alright, everyone, I’ve been saying for a few weeks now that I was going to give you a few extra review blogs, so here’s one of them. I have been getting some good new series from Vibranium Comics in Ocala and I plan on going over 3 of them in the next few blogs. This first one and the second will actually be connected and will each cover several comics. So, since this isn’t one of my official blogs I’ll still leave you with the banner to Vibranium below but I’m going to jump right into the blog itself without further ado.

So, this blog concerns itself with the newest X-Men series called House of X, of which I have read #1-#4 so far. I have been enjoying this series a lot but I have to say it took a little bit to get into it and now that I have I really wonder how they are going to segway from the things that are happening in here to the new X-Men books that are slater to come out I believe in Mid-October as this is a transition mini-series along with Powers of X, which I will discuss in the next blog.

The reason it took me a little bit to get into this one is because in Issue One they do like an 8 month time jump or something like that. So at the end of Uncanny X-Men, you see all the X-Men who were trapped in the Age of X-Man alternate pocket verse suddenly reappear. When House of X #1 starts however the Mutants have suddenly created their own island nation on Krakoa that humans can’t get to. They have flowers that can cure disease and flowers that lengthen lifespans by 5 years and flowers that can cure mental illnesses. They also have flowers that can make mini-Krakoa Biomes that are linked to the main Krakoa nation. In the first comic you also learn that Xavier is withholding these precious plants from humans unless they recognize the Krakoan mutant nation as an official nation. They have also gotten diplomatic immunity for mutants. Oh and Krakoa also has worked with Cypher (Doug Ramsay) to create a mutant language that can’t be broken that is telepathically installed in all mutants minds when they come to Krakoa the first time. Oh, Krakoa also has a Groot like human form now.

In another issue, they did a HUGE retcon on Moira MacTaggert. She is now suddenly a Mutant and most likely Omega Level considering what her power is. She is able to reincarnate basically however when she comes back she comes back at the moment of her birth with all the knowledge of her past life. As long as she does not die before her powers manifest, she is basically immortal and can change the entire course of the Marvel 616 Universe just by doing something different during her life. So, she kinda time travels, kinda rebirths and kinda makes alternate realities. In my opinion, this is a very God-Modded power. I mean you basically have someone who can say “Oh hey I didn’t like this outcome in my life.” and she can just die and redo her whole life over again changing what she needs to change to make things work out for her and whoever she wants. Sure, outside influences have an effect on her but if she dies once her powers kick in and not before then on the next run through she knows “oh hey so and so will do this so I can maybe counter it by doing this instead.” This power is actually heavily relied upon in the Powers of X storyline at the end of issue 3 even though they only touched upon her character for a few pannels. Basically, the whole Powers of X so far has been leading up to using her powers but I’m not sure if that means that Powers of X is in the same timeline/alternate as House of X or if House of X is supposed to be how things are after she has rebirthed this last time. It gets a little confusing which you’ll see in my other blog.

The last two issues so far (there are still 2 left to go in this series) have seen how various human agencies have banded together with just some of the greatest minds from them and are basically trying to solve the mutant problem. This new Agency is made up of members of A.I.M., S.H.I.E.L.D., S.W.O.R.D, Hydra and more. Both good and bad, these people have been brought together for one purpose and only one purpose, to stop the mutants. To do this they have created a bunch of Sentinels to mine Mars and they have also used this to create a space station close to the sun which houses an advanced Master Mold which is known as a Mother Mold. The various stages of Sentinel are also described in the books on little information pages scattered throughout them. This organization that is doing this is known as ORCHID.

So issue #4 saw a group of X-Men comprised of Cyclops, Marvel Girl, M, Archangel, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Mystique use a ship to go to the station and raid it to try and destroy the Mother Mold. Now while they seem to have succeeded we also see that every single one of them seems to die (except maybe M but she shifted to Penance and was in the middle of a huge firefight so she is most likely dead too). So the thing is I know from covers and such that some of these characters are going to be in the next X-Men groups of comics to come out. So it makes me wonder how much does this comic even means in the grand scheme of things. Is Moira’s new power going to wipe out these deaths and change the whole Marvel 616 Universe into something new? I mean we see Scott and Jean in covers for the new comics, we see Wolfsbane and Sunspot in the covers and descriptions and all of them have now died. Hell Wolverine is seen in the future in Powers of X but he just got tossed into the sun with the Mother Mold as far as I could tell and I doubt even he can survive that so who is this Wolverine we see in Powers of X.

I am enjoying this new series so far, but I have to admit they have created a lot of questions with it and so far answered few and just gave us more to ponder over as we keep reading. Can’t wait to see how they tie all this up and I hope it makes for a good lead-in to the new X-Titles. I hope this ends in a good way and I hope the new series can gain some good momentum from this and do the X-Men universe proud. Who knows, maybe this will even create some sort of jump-off point where the MCU can use these new stories to put in the X-Men though I doubt it’ll be that huge a retcon for them. Anyways, those are my thoughts on this storyline so far. If you have read any House of X 1-4 what are your thoughts about the characters and story thus far? We would love to hear your thoughts so sound off in the comments below!