Our Destiny Awaits In Immortal X-Men #3

In “The New Testament of Irene Adler,” Destiny experiences visions of many possible futures… all ending in nothingness! Immortal X-Men #3 written by Kieron Gillen, with art by Lucas Werneck, colors by Dijjo Lima, lettering by Clayton Cowles and design by Tom Muller and Jay Bowen.

Mark Turetsky: Austin! It’s been only a month since we last met in this hallowed council chamber to discuss Immortal X-Men #2. Though with issue #6 (a Shaw-focused issue tying in with AXE) now being canceled pending a re-solicit, it seems like our supply chain-related comic delays aren’t entirely behind us.

Austin Gorton: In much the same way Marvel has (wisely) removed the dates from the upcoming issues listed in the back of the X-Men titles, it’s probably best to consider all series as “monthly(?)” at this point. Immortal X-Men #3 was well worth the wait though, with a peek behind the gleaming metallic mask of everyone’s favorite precog/Inferno kindling, Destiny! 

The Past

Mark: Before we get much further, I wanted to very quickly amend something we talked about in our previous installment. We were wondering what was going on with Destiny telling Sinister about a time when she told him they must be on the same side, and yet we didn’t connect it to issue #1, where we see Destiny whispering some unknown thing into Sinister’s ear. I made the connection right after our review went live and have sat on it since then. So here we are.

Austin: In other “past” happenings, this issue opens with an extended look back at Destiny’s history, from the dawning of her mutant abilities, to the loss of her (physical) sight, to her decision to let herself be killed by Legion. 

Mark: That’s kind of been the series’ balancing act so far: acting as something of a synopsis for latecomers while also advancing the story in interesting ways. Are there any notable additions to Destiny’s history/retcons, oh gentleman of leisure?

Austin: Near as I can remember, the fact that Destiny had “regular” sight until her powers manifested is new information. But more than specific retcons, what this whole sequence does is add some clarification/definition to some different things. Like the notion that it’s easy for Destiny to see Colossus bursting through the wall in three minutes but big picture stuff is harder, that there are certain “hard” points in history (that she calls nexus events) that have a gravitational pull of sorts, pushing time in their direction, and that she knowingly went to her death in Uncanny X-Men #255 in order to bring about Krakoa (as opposed to the more general “save Mystique” explanation that was originally given). These are all things we kinda already knew, but Gillen is formalizing and/or recontextualizing them, somewhat. 

Mark: It’s a similar trick to what he did in Eternals, acknowledging everything that’s happened as having happened, but also straightening out all the parts that seem to contradict each other. But then again, that’s the challenge for anyone managing a long running comics series or major religion. There are a few points I’d like to highlight here: first, I’d like to applaud Lima’s coloring work, casting the past through a gauzy, sepia lens. It helps to keep things straight, visually. Also, Werneck keeps everything in flashback within tight rectangular panels, with nothing popping out of them until Irene meets Raven. It’s a nice, subtle way of highlighting Raven’s importance in the story of Irene’s life, making her pop off the page like, I dunno, a selectable item in a video game.

There’s also the way Destiny’s power is portrayed in this issue. It’s eerily comparable to Moira and Sinister-with-Moira-clones’ power. Instead of the experiment/change-variable/rinse/repeat of those two, Destiny only gets one shot to create her future, but with an added foresight that the other two don’t really have.

Austin: I was struck by how well Gillen and Werneck depicted emotion in this sequence. The connection between Mystique and Destiny felt raw and powerful (thanks to things, as you said, like the way Mystique’s arrival into Destiny’s life altered the panel construction). The opening page splash of young Destiny riding a horse, literally rearing up in the face of the future, sold the impact of her powers hitting her so hard it knocks out her physical sense of sight. Destiny’s narration as she sits down to pen her now infamous diaries also hangs a lampshade on the Romanticism of it all, and in doing so, it makes those panels feel Romantic: writing by lamplight, the quill scratching on paper as she labors to make the most of her new sense before her ability to do is undermined by the diminishment of another sense. It all creates a strong sense of Destiny’s characterization – a chief goal of these character-centric solo issues – without bludgeon us over the head. 

Mark: I’d also like to call your attention to what she’s looking at when describing nexus events: the creation of the atom bomb, presumably ushering in the age of mutants into the world. Remember a few months ago, when people got really upset because they believed a certain scene in the Eternals movie implied that the lone gay Eternal, Phastos, invented the atom bomb (to which I’d say the scene only portrayed Phastos’ regret at having sent ancient humanity down a path of scientific invention which eventually led to the atom bomb)? Well, here we’ve got something much more explicit: Irene and Raven, lesbian terrorists, actually moved the flow of events toward the atom bomb’s development. At least that’s my reading of things. 

Austin: I saw it less as Raven and Irene orchestrating the creation of the atomic age, but rather charting its impact as a nexus event, but given that the X-Men are Children of the Atom and the birth of the Atomic Age is,as you say, often cited as the inciting incident for the explosion of the mutant population (though not the creation of mutants, as plenty of long-lived mutants including Irene and Raven attest), we probably are meant to imply they played a role in bringing it about.  

Mark: The description of “nexuses” also calls to mind that oft-cited page from Ewing and Rocafort’s Ultimates #5, where Galactus describes the flow of Marvel time to the team. “Events have weight. […] Some events– those with a peculiar unique gravity– are caught by the present.” Compare that to Irene’s “gravity well[s] of probability” when discussing nexuses. Has Irene touched one corner of a greater truth about the Marvel Universe, something known only to beings of unimaginable perception, like Galactus or the incarnations of primordial forces of the universe? This would suggest a tantalizing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Austin: The other big semi-revelation coming out of this flashback material is Destiny admitting that sometimes even she wishes she wasn’t a mutant, as it would make her life so much easier. Obviously, this connects back to Moira and the events of “Inferno” and casts them in something of a new light, but I especially like the way Gillen keeps this revelation grounded in the personal: Destiny compares being a mutant to being in love, both a gift and a curse. A bit maudlin, perhaps, but fitting to the overall lowercase-r romantic feel to the Destiny/Mystique interactions throughout this issue.  

Mark: Yeah, it definitely got me thinking about Destiny’s harsh judg(e)ment of Moira back in HoX #2. The two issues are absolutely in conversation with each other. The key difference is that Destiny keeps reminding herself that her power is a gift, whereas in HoX #2 Moira says, “What seemed to be a gift– something of a blessing– wasn’t a blessing at all. It was a curse.” 

And it definitely ties into Destiny having one, true soulmate in Raven. In the very next panel of HoX #2, the omniscient narrator directly connects the “curse” to the man Moira thought was her soulmate: “Meeting the love of your life already knowing every flaw they possess – along with the knowledge they will never change – destroyed any chance of Moira re-creating what she had in her first life. Familiarity breeds contempt, and her once-husband could see it in her eyes.” So is the core difference between Destiny and Moira the Fifth Element itself, love? Or, to take a more cynical view, that compared to Moira, Destiny still has rose-tinted glasses for the woman she loves after more than 100 years? I’d like to think that if Irene met Raven again, with the full knowledge of what would become of them, she’d still be just as in love as she is now. After all, she had foreseen what they would mean to each other the moment they met.

Austin: Or is this a further illustration of the differences in their powers: that Destiny can see ahead in time, but Moira can reset and relive it? Which makes them, essentially, avatars of the future and the past: Moira’s gift allows her to bring her knowledge of her past lives (basically, her past) into her new life, whereas Destiny’s power gives her visions of what is to come. Either way, this issue does a lot to further the tie between Moira and Destiny as, essentially, the poles of the Krakoa Era. 

Mark: Moira fumbles blindly in the dark while Destiny makes her own light.

The Future

Mark: And as this is essentially Destiny’s HoX #2, such an endeavor wouldn’t be complete without a chart of some timelines, amirite?

Austin: Charts! Charts! Charts! Charts charts charts! 

These are, tellingly, a different kind of chart. Smoother, rounder, like an x-ray or microscope slide with possible (?) future happenings loosely attached to them. 

Mark: I love that the origin point is named “NOW” which is such a formal Marvel thing. Everything happening in the Marvel present is “NOW” (although Marvel NOW was ten years ago, hyuk, hyuk!). And what she sees are a variety of futures all cut off because they lead to fail-states for Mr. Sinister, at which point the branches abruptly end. But before we get to a close reading of the chart (chart! chart! chart!), I think we should take a look at the splash page of Destiny perceiving the possible futures. We’ve got Krakoa in flames, some kind of Magneto temple, the forthcoming AXE, an enthroned Sinister with Sinister versions of Jean, Emma, Cyclops and Logan, Exodus being adored by many, Darkchylde triumphant over the X-Men, and another manifestation of The Phoenix flying above the earth.

Austin: First of all, structurally, I love the way this mimics the opening splash, with the older Destiny positioned in the same location of the page, with her back to the readers, looking up at the images of the future. In the opening splash, it was all points of reference to which readers are familiar (or could be familiar); here it’s all as new to us as to Destiny (with the exception, thanks to solicitations and previews, of the obvious AXE stuff). I do wonder how much this is all just stealth promo for that event; will all the other future teases be left unexplored, relegated to the dustbin of history by a nexus event or Sinister reset, or will we see some of these scenarios actually play out to some extent? 

Mark: I think, a lot like the many lives of Moira X, we might get hints, but it’s clear that we’ll be traveling down the Judgment Day path. But then again, X-Men comics have had so many dark futures, with refugees from them showing up in the present, I wouldn’t entirely discount the possibility of seeing them. 

Let’s try to map the images in her vision onto the timeline, shall we? I think the Darkchylde image might be Limbic Infernality. It’s definitely infernal, though I don’t quite know how it’s limbic. 

Austin: Limbic/Limbo, it works (sort of). 

Mark: The Sinister X-Men is almost certainly “The Empire of the Red Diamond,” which we may yet see, because it’s down the Judgment Day path. Krakoa burning is possibly Krakoa Dissolution. The Phoenix might be AvX VI (as the original AvX involved multiple Phoenixes). The Exodus one is somewhere on the path to The Expanse, as we’ll see in the coming pages. Which leaves the Magneto temple.

Austin: The Magneto temple could either be “A New Krakoa” (it looks like the memorial on Genosha after Cassandra Nova wiped out all the mutants on the island) or “Cassandra Supernova” (see previous parenthetical). Or “The Reign of •┤Ȧ├•”, since Magneto was previously ruler of Genosha

Mark: There’s also a heckuva lotta Nimrod Extinction Events.

Austin: Those and the “Dominion of Orchis” are certainly…foreboding. 

Mark: The one future we get to see in detail is the fail-state of The Expanse. In order to get there, though, we need to pass through AvX VI (gulp!), and in order to get there, we need to travel down the Canticle for Talia path. Now, I’m certainly familiar with Walter Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. It takes place in a future post-nuclear dark age, when scientific knowledge is suppressed altogether. An order of monks preserves the knowledge of a bygone age until an eventual new renaissance begins. But who might Talia be?

Austin: Four Talia’s immediately come to mind: Talia Shire, the actress who played Adriane in the Rocky movies, Talia al Ghul, Daughter of the Demon and would-be paramour of Batman, Talia Wagner, the daughter of Nightcrawler and Scarlet Witch from an alternate reality who was regular in the early 00s Exiles series, and Talia Darkholme, another daughter of Nightcrawler and Scarlet Witch from the “House of M” reality. While it’s certainly not the first two, I’m having a hard time seeing how either Kurt/Wanda child fits the general gist of the literary Canticle. 

Mark: I think we need to entertain the possibility (certainty?) that some of these events are 100% jokes put there to fuck with us. Still, I’m going to bet that the Unity further down this line is an event similar to Moira’s sixth life, the one that went a thousand years in the future. The big thing in this section, though, has got to be our glimpse of The Expanse. Exodus, powered by both the Phoenix Force and the faith of trillions (already paying off what we learned about his power last month), pursues Sinister, the gene corsair, the Judas-Prime, who pilots a spaceship powered by Sebastian Shaw meat. I believe the technical term to describe this scene is “absolutely bananas.”

Austin: “Gene-Corsair” and “Judas-Prime” are just top-notch names, and this whole sequence is a delightful bit of high-concept nonsense. Even if nothing more comes of this particular future, I will always remember the Shaw-meat ship. 

Mark: And visually, this version of Exodus has a Hellboy-style flaming crown (presaged on Mark Brooks’ cover to Immortal X-Men #1) and Cowles gives him the demonic font, so he’s not quite the pious Christian he had been. Another fun visual gag is that when he consumes Gene-Corsair Sinister, the panel of Sinister gloating covers Exodus’ eyes. It’s akin to the practice among gourmands of covering one’s eyes with a cloth while eating an entire songbird, an ortolan. They do this, “to shield – from God’s eyes – the shame of such a decadent and disgraceful act.” If anyone might be into hiding their shame from God, it’d be Exodus.

Austin: As fun and visually-rich as this sequence is, it’s not all for show, either, as the way Destiny’s vision of it ends upon Sinister’s (chomped on by Giant Cosmic Exodus) death makes her realize Sinister has purloined Moira’s mutant ability by cloning her. This realization seems to snap Destiny back to her senses, enabling her to pull herself together and rejoin the present day events of the issue at a critical juncture.  

The Present

Mark: After that chilling, somewhat ridiculous view of a possible future, let’s finally turn our attention to the present. Destiny is still catatonic after the end of issue #2, and Mystique has enlisted Emma to try to help (as Emma is the telepath on the council Mystique comes closest to trusting). It’s a bit strange that Emma only senses Destiny’s visions from age 13, and not her present-day visions.

Austin: I guess maybe that’s the result of Emma doing only a surface scan (especially if we assume the flashbacks which opened the issue were diegetic, happening inside Destiny’s head as or just prior to Emma’s scan). I also appreciated Emma’s note about how Destiny hid her diaries behind lies; like the earlier clarifications about the mechanics of Destiny’s powers, this is one of those things that helps justify any apparent discrepancies in the diaries in a way that is pretty obvious, but the confirmation is still appreciated. 

From the Emma/Mystique/Destiny scene we jump to the latest Quiet Council meeting, in which Xavier is catching Hope up with all the juicy Krakoa secrets to which she’s privy now that she’s a member of the council (pretty much the Moira of it all, I believe). Hope, bless her, tries to argue that maybe they shouldn’t keep these things secret from the general population and Nightcrawler, bless him, backs her up, saying that while it may not be smart, as mutants they should maybe try to be better. Xavier still shuts it all down, as is his wont, and before long, Mystique’s machinations to revive Destiny come to light. 

Mark: Werneck’s art in this scene hits a level of exaggeration that I don’t think we’ve seen before in this series. His Sinister looks, well, monstrous in his rictus smile. It’s almost Joker-ish. And Mystique’s expressions are leaps and bounds above her “I want my wife back!” moment. But she’s now been pushed to the point of telling the council they should be grateful that she hasn’t destroyed Krakoa, so… understandable.

Austin: The page where Mystique’s actions come out is simply delightful: Hope’s indignity, Sinister’s glee, Mystique’s rage and disdain are all expertly conveyed through the art. You could strip away the dialogue and still get a sense of what is happening. There’s also a great panel later in the issue with another depiction of the Hellfire council expressing themselves via the way they sit in their chairs. 

Speaking of Hellfire, as the council debates Mystique’s actions, Kate calls out Xavier for being a jerk, referencing her famous line from the opening of Uncanny X-Men #168; how did this work for you? A cute callback, or too much? 

Mark: It’s… not so great. If the intention is for Kate to be someone who was once young and with it, and to remind us she’s now grown up and they’ve changed what “it” is, then I guess they’ve succeeded. It’s like if I made a reference to a Simpsons episode from 26 years ago as if it were current. And it’s also incredibly meta, in a way that’s out of character for Kate. If this were Gwenpool doing this pose, great. But this image of Kate isn’t a meme in the 616. Finally, I don’t think the joke even works: Kate is the one with “Professor-Xavier-is-a-jerk” energy.  Professor Xavier just has jerk energy. (The jerk store called, and they’re running out of him)

Austin: Look, if we’re going to start throwing stones at people making decades-old Simpsons references, I’ll take my Alf pogs (he’s back…in pog form) and see myself out. That said, this hit me more or less the same as it did you. It’s a little too meta to truly work; it resonates for us, but for Kate, that’s just a thing she said one time when she was mad. It’s not, as you say, a meme or anything more than that in-universe (or even something like Wolverine’s “best there is…” spiel, which is at least something he’s both thought/said a lot in-universe in addition to having extra meaning to readers as a signature catchphrase/marketing phrase). 

Mark: That said, he really is a jerk: he accuses Mystique of subverting the government for her own personal needs, but don’t forget that he spent the first few years of the Krakoan era keeping fundamental secrets about the nature of Krakoa from the rest of the council, using Mystique as his, Magneto and Moira’s personal wetwork unit. And has he read Inferno (2021)? He even calls her an “ends-justify-the-means terrorist,” despite his having taken advantage of precisely those qualities in her for years, all while dangling the possibility of bringing Destiny back, while having precisely zero intention of doing so. Magneto may have quit the council, but that doesn’t absolve Xavier for his role in all of this. They were equal accomplices.

Austin: I mean, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, Chuck (see above re: Simpsons references). Much of his actions in the Krakoan era can be reconciled with a similar “ends justify the means” outlook. 

Mark: And I have to credit Jude’s observation in his and Vishal’s review of X-Men Red #3 that while most mutants choose to emerge from resurrection with “(often debilitating) idiosyncrasies,” Professor X has chosen to be resurrected (multiple times!) with the ability to walk. He sees himself as above others. The same rules just don’t apply to him. 

He also insists that “the division of the elements of resurrection protocols is important” but doesn’t really explain why, and we’re left to infer that it’s to give him control over who gets resurrected. It’s his line-item veto regarding who gets to live and who must stay dead. And, of course, the incident under discussion proves that he’s not a necessary component of resurrection. It’s “important” only inasmuch as it grants him personal power.

Austin: His whole “division of elements” spiel is pretty rich, given he offers no justification for it whatsoever. He may as well have ended with “…because I said so”. 

This is all leading, somewhat surprisingly, to Xavier moving to oust Mystique from the council. 

Mark: And let’s not forget that he tried to keep Mystique from being in the council chamber while he voted her out by promising Emma “no major votes today.” Powerful men will grow more and more desperate when they feel power slipping away from them. 

Austin: But before a formal vote can be held, Destiny returns from her temporal vision induced sick bed to declare that a war is coming, and they’re going to have to fight for mutants’ immortality. While all clearly a setup for the upcoming AXE event, it’s fun to see Destiny deftly defuse the situation, shutting down Xavier’s line of argument and getting the “Mystique issue” tabled, winning over Exodus (and, possibly, Hellfire) to her side, and keeping Sinister in the dark about her realization that he’s cloned Moira (so he doesn’t reset the timeline on her). As much as this issue is about Destiny’s journey, this sequence really does showcase her as she is now, firmly establishing her as a power player on the council and thus, as one of the leaders of mutantkind. It’s a big leap for someone who traditionally stood to the side telling Blob when to dodge a punch from Colossus, but it works. 

Mark: Yes, Destiny is a formidable council member. It might have something to do with being able to see what effects different courses of action will have with heightened precision in the short term. Xavier took his shot at Mystique in the only moment he thought he had without Destiny, but he missed. And I think he’s going to keep paying for it. Someone on the council agrees Hope should get to keep the helmet (I’d guess Nightcrawler from the dialogue), so he’s being cut out of resurrection. You come at the queen, best not miss (to paraphrase a 16-year-old TV show).

Austin: If this whole series turns out to be a stealth “Professor Xavier is a jerk!’ book about his downfall, I’d be okay with that. 

Mark: The coda to this issue has Destiny sitting down to write her new testament, continuing her work. But she stops long enough to sleep with Mystique. When it comes to what’s important to her, her love for Raven trumps The Great Work of mutantkind.

Austin: And the stinger to it all is the issue-ending revelation that in all those futures we/Destiny saw this issue, Mystique wasn’t in any of them. Which means, as far as Destiny is concerned, there’s no future for her in any way that counts. 

Mark: Well, she isn’t in any of the futures that Sinister will allow to exist. That’s a key takeaway I took from this issue. So, stopping Sinister just got a lot more personal for Destiny. I should also point out that there is no potential future that’s a win state for Sinister. Just fail states all the way down.

X-Traneous Thoughts

• We should probably point out that the term “Nexus event” originated in the Loki TV series, which drew partially from Gillen’s run writing the character, and so the wheel of comics influencing the MCU, and it in turn influencing comics, keeps on spinning.
• In the opening splash of young Irene seeing visions of her future, Werneck makes a common mistake, depicting the Shadow King appearing above Legion in what is clearly meant to be an image of her death/murderer, even though Shadow King wasn’t yet possessing Legion when he killed her. Shadow King didn’t takeover Legion until Uncanny X-Men #259, four issues after Destiny’s first death. Legion was instead acting under the influence of Jack Wayne (his “evil” personality) which was strengthened by the presence of Polaris on Muir Island, who at the time had the ability to subconsciously magnify negative emotions (and then harness that negativity to generate increased mass and strength for herself). 
• Irene’s evidence board of the A-bomb nexus event seems to show, from middle to top left, clockwise, young Joseph Stalin, Einstein, Hitler, Little Boy (the bomb dropped on Hiroshima), a figure standing next to a suspended nuclear device, a map, Harry Daghlian(?).
• Destiny mentions Queen Victoria being bewildered by lesbianism, which is seemingly a reference to an apocryphal story of her preventing the criminalization of lesbianism in the UK because she didn’t believe lesbians existed.
• Young Irene has brown hair. Present-day resurrected Irene has black hair. Curious.
• Honestly, between the darker hair and green-ish swimsuit costume/opera gloves, Destiny looks an awful lot like classic Sersi of the Eternals when she goes sans cape and mask. 
• There is no dialogue in the flashback scenes. Destiny’s narration is the only voice we’re privy to.
• We were hesitant to make predictions about the Immortal Sinister Secrets from issue #1, but now, three issues in, it’s clear that they are 1:1 teases about each issue of this series.