Taking place between pages of Sins of Sinister #1 (specifically after Sinister says “How can I not think I’m better than everyone?”), this issue echoes the first Judgment Day tie-in Ewing wrote as well. However, in rereading X-Men Red #5, the differences are obvious. Where that issue was a poetic death tome that doubled as an exercise in precise, controlled storytelling, slowly unfolding the horror of the inevitability of Uranos’s slaughter on Arakko, this one is a quick burst of action adventure. It propels you forward with a group of plucky rebels on a mission to save the universe from a world gone wrong as former enemies work together and overcome adversity to succeed... and, then, comes the doublecross. Not an unheard of twist, it nonetheless comes as a bit of a surprise here as Ewing and artist Paco Medina (who will be drawing all three of the +10 issues) play off the expectations of the first half of the issue, right from Storm and her Brotherhood seemingly showing up Mystique (disguised as Destiny) to the Star Wars crawl. This seems like a comic where the good guys are going to win by taking the lab and... then, we’ll see. Instead, it’s more like the good guys wi—oh, no they didn’t, whoops. And it works.
The Star Wars text crawl and the cast list pages are somewhat redundant, if you break down the contents of the book. The two pages prior to the text crawl are literally a recap and cast of characters plus credits. But, those two pages are key for the tone of the issue: scrappy sci-fi underdogs taking on a seemingly unstoppable foe, with the text crawl heavily alluding to (as I’ve said a few times) the Star Wars franchise, while the cast page is more like a TV series, both done with 3D text to play into that retro feel. Oddly, for a comic that takes place ten years into the future, it’s rooted in retro vibes and influences, right down to Storm’s ‘Queen of Mars’ outfit that looks like something out of Flash Gordon. Of course, as the comic leans into those influences and gets you rooting for the Brotherhood to succeed, it counts on you to forget that things in those stories always got much, much worse before they got better.
Part of that trick is that, much as X-Men Red #5 used the knowledge from Judgment Day #1 that Uranos decimated Arakko to lead to the surprise hope at the end where everyone expected nothing but death and destruction, this issue plays off the reader knowing that Sinister’s lab is stolen by the end of Sins of Sinister #1. When the Brotherhood and Mystique embark upon the mission to steal it, Ewing is counting on us to know that the plan is a success and, then, assume that that means it goes to plan. Hence the light and breezy pacing and tone during the mission – why wouldn’t it be a nice, fun action issue? We know that they will steal the lab! It’s the same trick as his previous tie-in issue, except done in reverse. X-Men Red was slow, deliberate, almost plodding in its poetic destruction, allowing us to languish in the inescapable onslaught of Uranos; this issue is fast, fun, and entertaining... it’s a popcorn flick right up through the betrayal. And Ewing keeps on playing the same trick, right up to the final page reveal that mirrors Magneto not being dead: Orbis Stellaris working with Destiny and Mystique to steal the lab and keep the timeline from resetting. What’s even funnier, to me, is that the final page of this issue is pretty much the last page of last month’s X-Men Red #10 where it was revealed that Orbis Stellaris is an elderly human with long white hair and a long beard, sporting a blade spades symbol on his forehead. Ewing ripped himself off twice in a single page.
(In another world, I would be a bigger Al Ewing guy. I’ve dipped my toes into his work here and there, but SWORD/X-Men Red is the first sustained work by him that I’ve stuck with. SWORD was marked by continual ‘interruptions’ by events and X-Men Red hasn’t been too different. He seems to love events and crossovers, and he would make for a great study of how a writer doesn’t just navigate them, but dives in head first. He has a way of making events and crossovers seem like they function solely to advance his various ongoing plots. In some cases, because he was the main writer of the event; in others, because he’s just damn talented. It reminds me a lot of Kieron Gillen’s history with events and crossovers at Marvel. I’m not sure if Ewing has pulled off anything as impressive as Gillen’s first Journey into Mystery arc where it rewrote Fear Itself in the background of that event as it was happening, but still... This project easily could have been about Ewing in a different world.)
So, let’s talk Orbis Stellaris...
One of the four Nathaniel Essexes, the one that went to space. He first appeared in SWORD #6 as a representative of the Galactic Rim and drops this telling-in-retrospect line: “Humanity is obviously capable of far more than I had previously considered.” He mostly stays a background galactic figure until the final arc of SWORD when he’s responsible for unleashing a group of cloned cyborg terrorists against SWORD and the Shi’ar, seemingly at the behest of Henry Gyrich and ORCHIS, but we learn more due to his own interest and desires. From there, he works with Agent Brand to try to destabilise Arakko and, until the final arc of X-Men Red, most notably appears in issue 4 where he makes an impassioned case against the resurrection of Shi’ar Empress Xandra. Much as the line from his first appearance reads different in retrospect where the surprise that the humanity he abandoned to seek the next stage of life in space could progress this far. Do I detect a note of jealousy that his sibling Sinister succeeded so? If not, it comes through in *ahem* spades when he says “Why can only Earth’s mutants deny the reaper? Where is the fairness? Where is the justice?” At the time, it read like a moral argument; now, it reads like a man jealous of his brother. “Why can Sinister’s bunch escape death and I’ve never managed to figure it out?” And, then, in the most recent arc, many of his plans are thwarted by Cable and company as they take back the techno-organic virus sample that was stolen and leave Orbis Stellaris humiliated in defeat: “The mutants of Earth have requested my undying enmity—my vengeance in full measure—and Nathan Essex is happy to deliver.”
So, that’s the broad view of Orbis Stellaris to this point... not quite the obtuse, inscrutable possibility to be one of the ‘four Sinisters’ once Dr. Stasis was revealed with his forehead clubs symbol (and being the Essex who put his faith in humanity rather than genetic mutations or aliens or...). With his clone armies and slowly emerging status of a possible main villain within SWORD/X-Men Red, many people guessed his true identity long ago. Looking back, Ewing wasn’t always subtle in his hints (SWORD #11 having him admit in his private “after-action report” that he’s originally from Earth) and, well, I guess, now that he’s revealed at the end of Storm & the Brotherhood of Mutants #1 as not wanting to reset the timeline despite Sinister’s ever-spreading influence/self, we’re left wondering exactly what his goals are...
The line that the issue ends on (“There can only be one... who has dominion.”) suggests that this is very much a competition between the four to see whose methods can produce a dominion-level society first and Orbis Stellaris looks to use Sinister’s project as something to possibly usurp for his own ends. If we continue on last time’s little metafictional thought exercise that Sinister is a stand-in for Jonathan Hickman, then who could Orbis Stellaris truly be other than Ewing’s stand-in? In the X-titles (and Marvel in general), he’s been the space guy, the one interested in exploring and expanding upon the space side of Marvel. While his most critically acclaimed work at Marvel is the now-marred Immortal Hulk, he’s mostly favoured space-tinged stories and specifically tried to evoke the cosmic feel of Kirby, Starlin, Englehart, and Gerber’s works... and has spent the last two years making in-roads in that respect in the X-line, to the point where he writes the comic about the new capital of the Sol System. If the future for the X-line (and Marvel) is in space, who better to be at the forefront of that? Why, in fact, lean into events and crossovers so readily other than to become as central as possible to the Marvel Universe?
Okay, that sounds a lot more calculated and, well, sinister than reality almost definitely is. But, I want to plant that little extra meta detail now – and you can see where I may look to be heading as we get deeper into this event, though that will depend on the actual comics. We’ll see if this holds up at all or it’s just me going way over the top into wanting to ready an obviously collaborative story as a secret confession of creative in-fighting and power struggles to be the one guiding voice for the X-line (and Marvel in general).
Beyond that, there are two other elements that I want to be mindful of as we move through this event: the use of single artists for each time period and the relationship to Age of Apocalypse. I don’t think we’ve got enough information yet to speak intelligently to either (they may even need to wait for a post-event piece, for all I know). For the latter, something that really needs to be emphasised is that, as much as Sins of Sinister has not been framed as an alternate reality story necessarily, it actually is. Except, while Age of Apocalypse deviated and ran parallel to the regular Marvel Universe, Sins of Sinister deviates from and runs parallel to Powers of X. The influence of Hickman is inescapable...
Next: Nightcrawlers #1.
