Rise of the Powers of X Review

RISE OF THE POWERS OF X #1 by Kieron Gillen, R.B. Silva, David Curiel, and Clayton Cowles is a truly fitting beginning of the end issue for the Fall of X and the Krakoan Era of X-Men as a whole. In similar fashion to how “Powers of X” released alongside “House of X”, this issue and series acts as a sister title to “Fall of the House of X”. Spoilers ahead for the issue, as it has been a week, so I’d like to dive into a few elements a bit more.

I don’t want to talk too much about Fall Of The House Of X #1 here since I’m not reviewing that, but I will say that issue disappointed me and I’m just hoping that it ends very strongly. However, Rise Of The Powers Of X #1 feels like we’re in good hands. It feels like Kieron Gillen and co told the readers to grab on because we’re going on an epic sci-fi ride through time and space, we’re going to deal with Dominions while wrapping up this era of X-Men in a pretty X-shaped bow.

Rise Of The Powers Of X #1, to put it simply, is excellent.

This issue is everything I honestly wanted from this series. It opens going through the end of the timeline where Doctor Stasis attempts and fails Dominion-hood, something I had been waiting to see since it had been hinted in Immortal X-Men #18. Here’s the situation: we’re 10 years into an alternate future where Orchis has all but defeated the X-Men. Nimrod, Omega Sentinel, and Moira activate the Worldmind to attract the Dominion, but Doctor Stasis secretly used technology that was developed by the Children of the Vault to infect the Dominion so that he can occupy its empty husk and ascend. This was an absolute failure. We learned that the original Nathaniel Essex made four clones to scour reality for ways to become a Dominion; once they all failed, he would ascend.

As this attempt was happening, the last X-Men team of this timeline went on to kill Mister Sinister since they knew he was a failsafe, this set his Moira engine off and ended the timeline.

We then go back to present, where Charles Xavier has the brilliant plan to kill Moira before her mutant gene activates so that a Dominion would never happen. 

If you couldn’t tell, the “brilliant” was sarcasm. Kieron Gillen continues to write such a perfect Charles Xavier and Gillen knows what writing this plan for Charles will do. Charles is incredibly fallible, he’s taking the burden of the Fall of Krakoa deeply to heart, and he’s literally trying to martyr the entire Krakoan age of X-Men. Back in X-Men: Red #7, Magneto tells Storm that Charles is going to “martyr us all,” and boy was he right. I, at first, thought he was referring to X-Men: Hellfire Gala (2023) #1 where Xavier sent every mutant on the planet through a Krakoan Gate and had no idea where they were going, but now it’s clear. Charles is quite literally willing to make it so the Krakoan era never happens in order to win. Easy plan right? Here’s the thing, this obviously won’t go the way everyone may think. I honestly think it’s going to go the exact opposite way. This plan is every Krakoan era hater’s wet dream, and Kieron Gillen is too smart of a writer to put the toys back in the toybox this literally. 

Also, big props to the art and letters in this issue, R.B. Silva and David Curiel are exceptional together, there were so many pages where my jaw fell to the ground because of how beautiful it looked. Then, you got Clayton Cowles, who is seriously just the absolute best in the game when it comes to lettering. Not enough could be said about how much lettering affects a comic and if you’re not entirely sure, you just have to read an issue featuring Cowles. Amazing creative team all-around on this one.

We also get two data pages here and they’re fascinating. We see that Charles is in Moira’s No-Place, which exists outside of time and space, to hide from the Dominion. He is accompanied by Cypher, Rasputin IV, and two [redacted] people. My money’s on Manifold and Sunspot as the two mysterious people, with the latter being pure bias since I’m a big fan of the character. The second data page is a graph showing where timelines branch off starting with Moira’s 10th life, specifically highlighting the failed Dominion attempts by every Sinister. Great use of data pages here, I had become very jaded by them over the last year, but I am glad to see that some writers are still capable of delivering meaningful ones.

This issue sets up this series to have such wild plot twists and turns and honestly, I am so here for it. It feels like such a breath of fresh air reading this issue. We are truly in good hands, honestly the greatest of hands that we could be in. And, I know, the Krakoan age ending is sad because it’s been a bedrock for some of the best X-Men stories in the last 20 years, however, I say let’s just enjoy this ride. We’re at a unique place where, to me, it feels like the Krakoan era is ending on its terms. We could’ve had a forced, hard reset that ended ugly. Instead, almost all of the writers, artists, and editors have told the story they wanted to, especially post-Hickman. We can sit and ponder about what could’ve been for forever, but why torture yourself? There haven’t been many eras that have lasted as long as this one has, especially in this modern day of comics. I’m just happy with what we got and with what we’re getting to end this era. As for the future, we’ll all just have to wait and see, but until then, I am here for the ride. We’ve got some mostly exciting creative teams to close out this chapter of X-Men, and “Rise of the Powers of X” is one of them and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being the best of them based on this issue.