“The Apostate”
Credits: Si Spurrier writes; Andrea Di Vito draws; Jim Charalampidis colors; Clayton Cowles letters; cover by Leinil Francis Yu and Jesus Aburtov
Veteran Marvel artist Andrea Di Vito blows us away this issue with his best work to date. Readers may be familiar with his stint on Larry Hama’s five-issue Wolverine: Patch mini last year, where his bold linework and dynamic figurework were on full display, as well—but here, he gets to fully flex his fantasy/sci-fi stylings thanks to Si Spurrier’s wildly imaginative scripting for our first foray into the far future of “Sins of Sinister.”
SPOILERS AHOY!
Of course, 100 years into the Sinister-infected Earth isn’t as unimaginable as a millennium hence, which we’ll get with the third issues of our three minis—but a horrific alien apocalypse has already come and gone from our dear dead homeworld, and we are fully into Sinister mutant terror in space. At first, I thought it odd that our first foray into the 100-year-plus chapter would be Spurrier’s heavily magic-themed book, but now it makes perfect sense: In issue #2, we finally get to see what sort of super-powered malevolence Mother Righteous is easily capable of; it’s clear that she is going to prove a formidable antagonist not just to the other Sinisters but whatever remains of the resistance. And while a lone wolf for the time being, Wagnerine (a chimera of Nightcrawler and Wolverine, of course) finds herself by issue’s end as one of Mother’s enemies. Her many decades of service in the role a morally neutral magical artifact pirate and thief, plus the anguish of her experience as a grieving mother in the final pages, provide so much ground for future character work—and so far, she deserves to emerge from this event as the breakout new character (especially when you consider the lack of real distinctiveness we as readers are expected to be satisfied with when it comes to Marvel pushing for those they want to be the next breakout). It would be fascinating to see her escape this reality and return to the current 616 to see her interact with both Nightcrawler and her longtime comrade Banshee, to say nothing of her existential war against her tormentor.
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Note also that Wagnerine’s baby daddy is Summernight, meaning that through the blessed Nightgene, Wolverine and Cyclops have now canonically had a child! 😉 Also, like Sinister stealing baby Nathan, Righteous has likewise abducted yet another Summers baby! She’s not so different, after all.
As for Summernight’s fate here, there’s much going on that isn’t yet spelled out, but while it appears that those Nightkin who don’t die in the field eventually fall back under the sway of their original Sinisterization, and Mother Righteous has constructed a rite of passage for euthanizing each chimera at this point: They teleport into the impenetrable face of Sinister’s stolen lab at the Worldfarm. Over the decades, we see that thousands of skeletons have amassed in close orbit around that black sphere.
The bones of true believers are nothing if not holy, right? Think of what Mother is building that might need a great deal of belief built up around it for it to work. We’ll return to this below.
Of course, while Wagnerine has a much clearer backstory than another alt-future chimera that X fans have been clamoring for more of since Rasputin IV’s few and only appearances in 2019’s Powers of X, we might expect that the event’s next installment, Immoral X-Men #2, will steal some of Spurrier’s thunder. Regardless, Spurrier has done an amazing job introducing and building up a new character, and Wagnerine will deserve just as much clamoring as Rasputin IV (it’s not clear yet how she could be the same chimera we’re familiar with). I can only hope Wagnerine will reappear before the event’s penultimate chapter, which will be the next and last issue of this mini, as well. Despite her ridiculous name, she deserves to be more than a tragic figure of rage and loss that doesn’t break out of her home timeline, a reality we will inevitably leave behind very quickly once the event is over. At the least, every villain needs their archnemesis, and Mother Righteous has hers right here.
Still, Nightcrawlers #2 makes this dystopian future AU as memorable as possible, from the mystic angle, especially. While I wasn’t completely sold on the notion that an artifact hunt would amount to all that much in this heavily science fictional reality, Spurrier and Di Vito really do sell the equal importance here of Marvel’s mystical elements, alongside the cosmic. For of course, would-be universe conquerors must be equally prepared to take on the Shi’ar and Otherworld—and we see both dealt with this issue, albeit briefly but brutally and beautifully (in terms of diabolically creative ingenuity).
We also get a one-page flashback telling us what happened with Legion sometime in the past: Something of a god now, or close enough, he raptured into a kind of noetic transcendence, definitively turning down the paltry offer of a transparently mercenary alliance from Mother Righteous. Who knows how many mutants David saved, sheltered inside the Altar in his mind, at the edge of astral infinity. Perhaps we will see this omega mutant gone singularity once more, when it comes time to topple the Dominion of the most dangerous Sinister left standing (inside a pod, perhaps)!
But Nightcrawler’s Krakoan home, the Narthex, is still around, now as the prow of a grand starship, where the Nightkin and Mother Righteous have made their space-faring home, apparently safe from space wars.
(The Narthex name refers not just to the entrance to an ancient church, but to the symbolic use it was put to in such a church: Tellingly, it was the closest some penitents were allowed to get to the church’s sanctuary, which is to say the furthest point. In other words, Kurt wasn’t merely devout in naming his home, but painfully self-deprecating, unsurprisingly. No wonder this trait remains dominant among his descendants.)
The present action of the story, though, is Asgard’s fall to Sinister Magik and her bizarre forces, above all the Frost Giants, which appear to be chimeras of Jotunheim’s traditional denizens amalgamated with Iceman, Colossus and possibly Emma Frost. But a Thor in absolute despair just calls them “Fimbulwinter,” the winter to end all winters, as prelude to Ragnarok. In Sins of Sinister #1, Magik’s Muspel sword sundered Asgard from Midgard. Ninety years later, she returns with some of the wildest chimeras yet seen, with recognizable elements from Sabretooth, Archangel, Chamber, Cyclops/Eye-Boy, possibly Omega Red and who knows what else (Abyss of AOA?).
And the grimly beautiful cover does not lie: The stars are villains stealing an old man’s hammer! But they’re not really villainous; the Nightkin operate under Mother’s orders without rancor or even passion. Yet they’re not quite satisfied with just being her tools. Their ambivalent potential here makes them interesting. For decades, they’ve been stealthily making off with mystical artifacts from already dying venues, civilizations beyond Earth, their doom sealed as soon as they become active targets of the Quiet Council. They’ve been “Dancing between the raindrops of war,” as Wagnerine poetically describes in her narration. Sometimes, they announce their intention before the Sinister invasion has begun (Otherworld); others, the end is already actively at hand (the Shi’ar, Asgard, Xandar). All this booty will go into some crucible out of which Mother Righteous will somehow forge her so-called Reliquary Perilous, which I’m sure we’ll see next time. She seems to magically smelt these objects down between her bare hands.
(The cover does lie, however, in that none among the Nightkin is worthy of lifting Mjolnir. Within, we see that they made off with the hammer courtesy of a Lost/Nightcrawler chimera, able to use her gravity powers to walk off with it. Also note the silly airburst Heirburst Bomb pun—three powerful heirs in one, with Legion-style big hair, no less.)
To achieve this end, Mother has forged her Nightkin minions—whose numbers Vox Ignis has grown throughout the decades since Nightcrawlers #1, by repeating the mystical ambush we saw them perform there, releasing the Quiet Council’s Nightcrawler-themed chimeras from Sinister Red Diamond control. Amazingly, their creator appears to have been making so many of them that he only recently noticed that they were escaping his control; of course, much has already slipped his grasp. While 90 years on, Wagnerine is still very much in her prime, given her healing factor, the only one remaining from her cohort appears to be Auntie Fortune (perhaps given Domino’s luck?), and with Mother Righteous faking the death of Wagnerine’s baby, she seems to making quite a gamble given all the other chimeras’ infertility. She must be getting close to finishing her Reliquary, which we can assume requires faith to become operational. Knowing it would take decades, though, she cynically manipulated her minions’ deep religious sensibility, engineering narrowly cultic beliefs that will likely backfire on her. Instead of the three laws of Krakoa, she’s concocted a perverse send-up as the foundation of her sway over the chimeric clones of Nightcrawler; this is the “heist liturgy,” the “countdown credo:”
3. Blessed Be the Nightgene.
2. Blessed Be the Reliquary Perilous.
1. Blessed Be The Spark.
Mother’s further insults to Kurt that we see this issue are her possession of the Hope Sword his adoptive mother pulled from his chest (in Legion of X #10) and her, well, murdering the sad monster that he had long ago become.
Again, this isn’t just ornamental world-building. Mother needs others’ faith in her for her agenda to work. With the blessed Nightgene bones crowding around Sinister’s lab and Wagnerine’s stolen baby who we see full of the Spark’s light, she must be getting close to making her Perilous Reliquary operational…
Or maybe it’ll take another 900 years? 😉
Wagnerine turning “apostate” and escaping the Narthex will prove the biggest detriment to Mother’s plans, and again, if Mother escapes this future, I hope the apostate outlasts this event as well.
In the Council’s destruction of worlds, Spurrier takes the cake so far for most inventive one-off uses of chimeric monstrosities. This is the wonderful thing about AUs (alternate universes)—the only limits to imaginative destruction are whatever can destroy such a universe; this sandbox can burn to ash. But hopefully, a few refugees make it Earth-616; at least Wagnerine! Maybe the unlikeliness of this happening makes it that much more compelling.
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