ATG Comic Review: Powers of X (for real this time!)

Welcome back to our reviews everyone and let me just apologize for how that last one went off on a bit of a tangent. Anyway, we’re getting back on track with this blog but first I want to let you know All Things Geek has a facebook page where we share all of our blogs, movie news, tech news, comic news, and just general geek news and stories! If you want to join us there so you can keep up on all things geek related or share your own geekiness with our followers, just click on the banner below to be taken to our facebook page!

Let’s just jump right in now to the somewhat confusing story of Powers of X and how it ties into the House of X storyline. Now just an FYI because I have read an interview that says this and because this is a big pet peeve of mine in the current season of Fortnite, X, in this case, is the Roman Numeral for 10 and is thus pronounced Ten and not X. Unlike House of X which I haven’t heard anything different about so should most likely be called House of X since it focuses on the community of the X-Men. If something is a ten and uses roman numerals you don’t call it X Fortnite is not on season X it’s on season 10 and to say it otherwise makes you look uneducated and stupid. Learn your damned roman numerals! OK, mini-rant over…sorry.

Anyway Powers of X is a somewhat confusing little tale for the X-men until you hit issue 4 which I just read last week. Issue 4 clears up some timeline questions and ties it into House of X a little better than what it had done in the beginning. Powers of X tends to be confusing because it is told in a rotating fashion between 3 time periods. X0 is a little bit in our past when Xavier is just starting to gather together the mutants and plan things out, X1 is year 10 which is basically present-day timeline, X2 is 100 Years in the future and X2 is 1,000 years into our future. The jumping around sometimes makes it hard to see how the story ties into the main story taking place in Houe of X until you hit #4 and then it starts to make sense a little more.

In Powers, we see some of our past and near to the present day in the Marvel Universe in a way that kinda retcons a lot of things. For example, we learn that Xavier and Magneto teamed together to have Mr. Sinister gather mutant DNA into a huge DNA library basically. We find out that Krakoa was a twin Island if I’m remembering this right and there was basically a fight between Krakoa and the other mutant island that Apocalypse stopped to save the world in the distant past. We also get to see that Moira MacTaggert is a mutant as mentioned in our blog for House of X and in Powers of X we learn she has lived 9 lives and in our current timeline is on life #10 which ties in with the whole ‘power of ten thing’ with how each time jump is a power of 10 above the last one ect ect.

As we go along through the issues we see document pages similar to the ones seen in House of X that kinda try to info dump us with terms, timelines, ect and in one of these info dumps we see a timeline of the various lives of Moira. Each one kinda describes what she did at what age in her life leading up to this her 10th life.

Other than Moira we also see in X2 100 years into the future that there is a huge war between a human/sentinel alliance and mutants. Mr. Sinister has created mutant hybrids that basically can have 2-5 power sets based on the DNA he spliced together. Mutants used to live on Mars but got wiped out almost by Sinister’s own 4th gen creations which then went and killed themselves. We also learn that there is a small enclave of mutants in hiding within the Shi’ar Empire.

The time jump to X3 shows 1000 years in the future where aliens have taken over, humanity is on its last legs and Mutants are down to like 10 members. There is a Nimrod that has a huge library of knowledge and we see the remaining mutants led by Apocalypse going to raid this library. It is around this time we find out that this timeline and House of X timeline are different. For in X3 we see the mutants steal information that shows when the sentinels came online for the humans and the start of the downfall of mutant-kind in this ninth timeline of Moira’s life. Wolverine gets the information to a Moira that was in suspended animation after reviving her. Wolverine then kills her sending her into her 10th life which is what we are seeing in House of X as Moira works to bring about a better future for mutants.

This basically brings both comics together finally and clears up a lot of questions I had until issue 4. As I write this Issue 5 is due out tomorrow so we’ll see if Powers of X now focuses on the present and the X1 timeline and maybe a bit more of the X0 timeline to show how things have progressed. All of this is leading to what’s basically a rebooted X-Men storyline as rosters and teams get refreshed and a new story direction expands out of this limited series. I can’t wait to see where these stories start to go from here once the new series drop in October and I can’t wait to see how this is all tied up in the next few weeks.

I have to admit, a lot of the X-Men things in the past year or so have felt a bit off to me. Maybe forced like they just had the comic out because they know they need an X-Men franchise to push sales. Nothing really felt big to me once they had Kitty take over the X-Men. Which is a shame because Kitty is my favorite X-men character of all time! House of X and Powers of X is the first time in a while that I have felt fully invested in the X-Men again since restarting my collections recently. I’m hoping the revamped lineups and such can keep up the feeling that these limited series have been able to start them with.

How about you guys? Have you been enjoying the Powers of X books if you have been reading them? Are you looking forward to a reboot of the X-Men teams and storyline? Let us know in the comments section down below as we love to hear from you! Also if you love the content you see here and want to help support us you can click this link for Ko-fi.com and leave us a tip. Every little bit is hugely appreciated and will go to making this site bigger and better and to getting more things to review for you our readers!