Previously on Reviews of X: A bunch of people planned for suicide missions and Xorn hoped for a glorious death! In Powers of X #3, Xorn gloriously dies. MORE SPOILERS AHEAD!
Powers of X #3: This Is What You Do
Story: Jonathan Hickman
Art: R.B. Silva
Colors: Marte Gracia
Letters: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Marvel
Grim and Gritty
The art in this issue is a bit more gritty than the previous two Powers of X issues. I thought it was just to service the story, but seeing that Adriano Di Benedetto isn’t credited for inks, it seems R.B. Silva offers a slightly dirtier look when left to his own devices. Di Benedetto is good, sure, but I like Silva’s art better with a bit more texture.
Or maybe I’m just hallucinating and they just accidentally left Di Benedetto out of the credits.
The Ending I Have Always Wanted
In my Powers of X #2 review, I mentioned that Xorn was the character I cared about the most and predicted he would die a glorious death. And boy, did he.
Hickman and crew didn’t make us wait long for a resolution to the planned suicide mission of Year One Hundred X-Men. Apocalypse, Wolverine, and Krakoa/Cypher infiltrate Nimrod’s crib while Rasputin, North, Cardinal, and Xorn provide the distraction by flushing out Omega and her old school Sentinels. Xorn gets the ending he has always wanted.
Things go BOOM and surprise, surprise, only Wolverine survives. But the actual surprise comes with the revelation that they sacrificed their lives to get the information of when Nimrod first came online… so they could then give it to none other than Moira X.
This isn’t actually one hundred years into the regular Marvel Universe’s future — this is Moira MacTaggert’s future in her ninth life! This is the Apocalypse War! What?!
In my House of X #2 review, I said I needed to know what happens in the Apocalypse War and hot damn, I actually got what I wanted. Thanks, Comics Gods!
The way they revealed that Year One Hundred is actually Moira X’s ninth life is absolutely satisfying. It’s all coming together and I love it.
IN CONCLUSION
Things are finally starting to make sense as the different stories being told are starting to connect.
A lot of people’s collective apprehension about what Hickman is trying to do comes from the uncertainty of it all. Are these multiple branching stories ever going to make sense? Will this 12-issue HoX PoX thing work? Is this mad man taking us on an absolute thrill ride?!
If we’re constantly going to get moments like the ending of this issue, the answer is yes raised to the power of X.
Powers of X #3 is available now wherever fine comic books are sold.
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