Hope narrating this issue is a convenient way to provide context for the +100 timeframe and where mutantkind has gotten in the 90 years since Emma Frost put Sinister under her boot, while also giving a secondary ‘race’ between the Quiet Council members to be the last one standing. Hope, the war-mongering messiah is the first to fall, mostly because she’s more useful dead than alive. If this timelime follows the pattern that we’ve seen previously in Immortal X-Men, then Exodus is the likely last member standing as the focal point of the mutant religion. While not all mutants appear to rally around the faith, it’s interesting to see that there is a distinct portion of mutantkind that’s entered well into the realm that Mother Righteous seeks to exploit. However, as we saw in Nightcrawlers #2, her efforts to exploit belief do struggle with genuine faith. I guess what that means is that Exodus and his followers could be a liability for Righteous to prey upon or a key to overcoming her. If they play a role in that regard at all, to be honest...
The three scenes involving Sinister intrigue me the most about this issue. By having Hope narrate, Sinister is put at a distance to an extent. The only indication of what he’s been up to during the 90 years since Immoral X-Men #1 is the brief bit of hearsay in Nightcrawlers #1 about him being almost a godlike figure within the mutant empire, actually showing up to witness his latest weapon in person. While that description from Wagnerine seemed plausible in the gleeful callousness of Sinister, it also read as heavily filtered through the Nightkin’s relationship with Righteous. The Nightkin would naturally think that Sinister occupies a similar place for the expanding mutant empire as Righteous does for them, when it’s very much the opposite. In the scenes that he appears in here, Sinister is much more the remorseful scientist who has seen his experiment escape his control and run amok, and, now, is looking for any way to put things right.
Or, that’s how he appears in scenes one and three with Rasputin. To Gillen and Andrea di Vito’s credit, you want to believe that Sinister’s confession of guilt to Rasputin at the end of the issue is genuine. Both writer and artist sell the hell out of it. In the two bookend scenes, Sinister is contrite and kind and... tired. He seems worn down by the past century of watching mutants expand and slaughter their way across the galaxy. But, he’s just selling his own self-serving story, creating his own religion of sorts for Rasputin and the crew of the Marauder to believe in as he seeks to regain his lab and the Moira clones inside, so he can undo all of this – and do it again, only properly. The middle scene with Mother Righteous makes it plain that Sinister has not changed in any way except learning to be a better actor.
His tone in that scene is Sinister-as-we-know-him with sardonic wit and a solipsistic streak a universe long. His insistence that he’s the real Nathaniel Essex, for one thing. His chiding Righteous for aping his style. Or, his final words to himself after she leaves: “This does change everything. I can use this... but I need my Moiras to really use it. And I need them before the council crushes me. Oh, Nathaniel. What did you do to deserve this?” Aside from our knowledge of Sinister, these words both undercut and set up that final scene with Rasputin. Sinister is self-aware enough to know what it is he did that resulted in the current status quo. That’s what makes his unburdening to his Chimera captain work to well: he’s not lying about most of it. He did destroy Krakoa. He corrupted it with his strain of solipsism and that created a chain of events that destroyed Krakoa, Earth, and a good chunk of the universe so far. He genuinely wants to undo that damage and restore Krakoa to the paradise-in-the-making that it was when he managed to kill Hope, Xavier, Frost, and Exodus to finally get his genes to stick. He tells Rasputin everything he did to deserve this and does it in a way that makes her believe in his cause. It’s interesting how little he has to lie in the process. The only lie is the guilt.
Another element that stood out was that Sinister’s approach to Rasputin follows that of Righteous and the Nightkin. He frees her from the Sinister gene and, then, gives her something to believe in, which is his self-serving cause. Is this a signal to the similarities between the Essexes that they can’t help but follow the same paths, or did he take this idea from the book she left him? As he thanked her (her method of gaining influence), will this put her in a position of power over not just him but Rasputin and the crew as well? And I’m reminded of something that I mostly overlooked in Nightcrawlers #1: Orbis Stellaris thanked Righteous as well... I admire the way that repetitions and reoccurring behaviours are central to this event. Much like I mentioned above with Exodus, it’s hard to tell if the overlapping of methods is an advantage or disadvantage. Is it being co-opted or is that, after a certain amount of progress, it’s not a matter of the distinct paths, it’s a merging of methods towards Dominion? Or, perhaps, it’s not so easy to separate out the different approaches when it’s the same person trying them all out. Is it truly a race to the top when the participants are all the same person?
Next: Storm & The Brotherhood of
Mutants #2.
