It’s actually pretty funny how, throughout this event to this point, there’s been a sense that Mother Righteous was lurking just beneath the surface, ready to steal away Dominion from Orbis Stellaris and Mr. Sinister. Building up thank yous and regrets, sinking her hooks in, and amassing magical objects, all to step in at this moment and become Dominion while her ‘brothers’ watch, horrified. Instead, all of her work was to... create a slightly more complicated version of Sinister’s plan...? Well, consider me fooled. I thought that she was somehow a different breed from the other Essexes... something smarter or more ambitious. Nah, just the same sort of simplistic solipsism. Use people in the laziest way possible to get a slight leg up in the next go ‘round and, maybe, after you try that a few hundred times, you may actually get somewhere... You just have to laugh.
What hit home in this issue – and I feel like a bit of a fool for not picking up on it more before this – is how misleading the part numbers given to each issue are in this event. I’ve been so focused on the larger story of the Essexes and the playfulness with Powers of X that the obvious-from-the-beginning connection that I’ve mentioned, but not really discussed so far kept getting overlooked: Age of Apocalypse. If you’re not familiar with AoA, it was a 1995-96 X-Men story that began when Legion went back in time to kill Magneto before he and Charles Xavier had their falling out. He assumed that, without Magneto to act against his father, Xavier’s dream would happen easier. With only ‘good’ mutants in the public eye, the Dream would be achievable. Of course, it all goes wrong and Legion accidentally kills his father. This leads to a four-month period where the entire X-line of books are replaced with the alternate present where the lack of Xavier allowed Apocalypse to rise much sooner and conquer North America. Every book in the line became a new title (Uncanny X-Men was now Astonishing X-Men, X-Men was now Amazing X-Men, X-Force was now Gambit & The X-Ternals, Cable was now X-Man, etc.). It was bookended by Alpha and Omega issues and was a lot of fun. As a 12/13-year old, I loved it. I loved seeing all of these changed, alternate versions of characters that I knew, picking up on little details about their pasts, maybe where each of them veered off from the story I already knew, and I spent a shocking amount of time looking at the map of this new world.
The important part here is that it told one big story through individual titles that each told their own stories that added to the larger story. It wasn’t a linear story where you read the comics in a specific order and needed to read every single one (while my dad read comics and bought the entire line, I only got all of the first issues and, then, focused in on X-Man specifically as the book that I wanted to follow). There were details that crossed over (the Sentinel airlift launched in Weapon X #1 became a major plot point in Amazing X-Men) and there was a cumulative effect so that, by the time you reached that Omega issue, all of the various books’ plots smashed into one another for the climax. Skip some of it and you were fine. Even now, you can go back and read it all in pretty much whatever order you want – read all four issues of each series in succession or the mixed up order that the omnibus has or even figure out your own – because it wasn’t a story told in a specific ‘correct’ order. The actual story of Age of Apocalypse was one of those ‘more than the sum of its parts’ things where it existed outside of the actual comics to a degree. Each reader created their own version of the larger story.
Sins of Sinister is based off that idea... kind of. Unlike Age of Apocalypse, we’re given a specific reading order from the getgo with a much smaller ‘line’ of books participating. Sins of Sinister takes the loose idea of Age of Apocalypse and turns it into a weekly series. There are advantages to that as specific effects are created, like propelling the story forward through specific successive issues (Sins of Sinister #1 ending with Sinister finding his lab stolen leading right into Storm & The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants #1 showing the theft) and creating a sense that every issue is essential to the larger story. But, thinking about it, it’s also misleading in that it implies a much more coherent and structured story than it delivers (or intends to deliver). There isn’t a linear story exactly, yet the existence of story numbering on each issue implies a more coherent story that each issue of the event advances. Some plot points begin in one part and pick up in the next (the +1000 time period is the most cohesive chunk of the event where each issue does lead to the next in a much more direct manner than the previous time periods), but, now that all three mini-series have been released, their specific structures are much clearer. Like Age of Apocalypse, each of these ‘substitute series’ tell their own stories that contribute to the whole:
Immoral X-Men is of Sinister’s struggle to stay alive long enough to regain his lab and reset the universe with a subplot about the progression of the Sinister-infected Quiet Council over time.
Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants is about... well, the titular characters fighting against the prevailing Sinister forces. As the Sinister-infected mutants become more and more powerful (more the status quo), the Brotherhood (with Storm both a part of and apart from the group simultaneously) are the ‘evil’ mutants rebelling and trying to overthrow that new status quo.
Nightcrawlers is about Mother Righteous’s schemes with a specific focus on her manipulation of the Nightkin.
Each of these series tell those stories in shockingly straight forward, linear ways. None stand alone completely, of course, but they come damn near it in a few cases. I don’t know how many titles would have needed to be part of this story to escape the idea that it’s a linear larger story much more akin to past X-line crossovers that has similar part numbering schemes. Five? Six? Enough to break free from the one-a-week release schedule, I suppose. But, with only three titles and each issue numbered as a specific part of Sins of Sinister, the idea of the larger implicit story of the event looms larger than it did in Age of Apocalypse. AoA was so big that, as a reader, you knew you wouldn’t get it all, even if you read every issue. It was a miniature version of trying to keep the ongoing story of the Marvel Universe straight in your head in real time with every week’s new releases. While there are some fools crazy enough to try, most of us know that it won’t happen and accept that we’re only ever going to know a piece of it and move on with our lives, hoping that we know enough for everything to make sense in the end (it never ends).
Sins of Sinister’s structure and release gives the impression of a specific story being told (and the cycling of the order of the three titles in each time period (ABC, BCA, CAB) played into that idea of a very specific order/structure)... and I’m not sure that’s the right takeaway. While there is a story told by Kieron Gillen, Al Ewing, and Si Spurrier, I’m convinced more and more that it’s much looser than we (I) may have imagined. It took until Nightcrawlers #3 and seeing the end goal of Mother Righteous to have that particular bubble popped. If you look at only Nightcrawlers #1-3, then her plans don’t take on the same implied epic scope as they do when you add in her other appearances. Her appearing as a vision to Jon Ironfire or dropping off her book with Sinister... they helped create a larger myth for the character than the self-important fake-it-til-you-make-it false god of Nightcrawlers. Her pettiness is a key limitation of the character and was lessened by her appearances outside of this series... All of which pointed toward a larger plan – a larger payoff. Instead of a race to Dominion, we get a race to remembrance... And, make no mistake, the release structure purposefully downplayed Mother Righteous’s pettiness and made her seem more important with that four-issue gap between Nightcrawlers #2 and 3.
I guess what gets lost in the larger story approach are the little stories that, while not necessarily as prominent in the grand scheme of things (not as... fun and alluring as the schemes of the Essexes). The stories of Wagnerine, Jon Ironfire, and Rasputin IV all play a role in the (for lack of a better word at the point) metastory of Sins of Sinister, but are all much more prominent in their specific series (and, as I haven’t developed the idea but want to get it out there, let me just mention how interesting it is that Orbis Stellaris doesn’t get the same prominence as his siblings... Storm gets that role and that seems important in ways I haven’t thought nearly enough about). Wagnerine (and the Spirit of Variance!) plays a rather key role in thwarting Mother Righteous in this issue... but that seems like a crucial moment delivered by a minor player when you look at the metastory. Read exclusively through the lens of Nightcrawlers as a series, it’s a major moment from a main character! The release structure of Sins of Sinister de-emphasises those series-specific elements in favour of speculation on how they play a role in the metastory... last week’s Custom Kitchen Deliveries is a clear example of reading this event in that manner gone awry.
And, of course, I hit this realisation right before the final bookend issue that will firmly conclude the Sins of Sinister metastory. Alas. Hindsight and all of that.
Next: Sins of Sinister: Dominion #1
