So, one of the lingering questions from last week’s underwhelming House of X #1 was the meaning of the title – the “X” supposedly meant “ten” as in the Roman numeral. Right off the bat of Powers of X #1, Jonathan Hickman explains it, as well as the structure of his X-Men story: X0 is Year 1 (the past, or “classic” X-Men) and X1 is Year 10, which is the timeline House of X is set in – so that’s the meaning of the “ten”; House of X is X-Men Year 10. Ten years from when the X-Men were founded, in this timeline, I guess?
And then he continues, adding two more eras: X2/Year 100 and X3/Year 1000. A thousand years in the future?! That’s the out-there kinda story I was expecting to see from Hickman alright!
Like he did on his Avengers/New Avengers run, Hickman is telling his X-Men story in parallel across two titles – House of X and Powers of X. And, also similarly, one title is weaker than the other, which, going by this first issue, is definitely Powers of X.
Opening in Year 1, Xavier and Moira MacTaggert meet at a fair and have a strange mutant Tarot-themed convo; then onto Year 10 where we get the epilogue to Mystique and co’s heist from House of X #1 (the mutants aren’t quite as unified as they first seemed); then we spend the bulk of the story in Year 100.
Not that I’m against imaginative, ambitious storytelling but it seems that whenever superhero comics try to tell stories set in the far future, they ALWAYS suck! The writers seem to overreach by making concepts and ideas too obtuse and unnecessarily complicated and Hickman is no different. It’s ostensibly the generic X-Men setup: familiar mutants (in this case a Magik/Colossus hybrid) being hounded by Sentinels. And hounds. There are evil mutants up to evil shit too. Ho hum.
What’s worse is that this sequence is filled with blocks of uninteresting text-only info dumps relating the whatevs history of this new era. The issue closes on Year 1000 where I had no idea what was going on.
RB Silva’s art is pretty good but, despite the many timelines being introduced in this issue, the only one that’s actually intriguing remains the Year 10 story. Creepy helmet Xavier is an interesting cat and Wolverine seems to be up to something, both of which I want to read more of, more so than this bland futuristic guff.
As it is, Powers of X #1 is a disappointingly weak and unentertaining comic that doesn’t seem all that necessary to read alongside the slightly better House of X to understand the overall story.
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