The Mutants: The X-Men and the Twilight of the Gods (Part 1)

“And what’s he, then, that says I play the villain?” 

~William Shakespeare, Othello

“What have they done?  She was a hero, she was purity and courage and flame and she’s been undone.  I must know more!”

Such was my reaction to the rewriting of Dr. Moira MacTaggart.  A long-time X-Men supporting actor, she suddenly reappeared after a hiatus to dominate the House of X run, first as a manipulative key-player in the machiavellian superstructure of the series’ character-hierarchy, more antihero than paragon of virtue, then suddenly transmogrifying into a terrifying arch-villainess with murder in her heart.  What had they done?

Literary interests come and go, and I have lately been reading a lot of X-Men.  The itch has always lingered in the back of my mind and from time to time I’ve picked up a comic or two—or a multi-volume series, at one point collecting the entire Age of Apocalypse run, only to shelve it perpetually for one unfortunate reason: I am a completionist.  To miss out on a story or series is deep irritation to me, and I cannot name the number of perfectly good titles—comics, novels, movies—that I’ve put off for the sake of not having access to the earlier material.  Compound this with the tens of thousands of issues of X-Men comics extant and one is faced with a herculean task equal parts horrific and tantalizing.  It is a dilemma reminiscent of Bilbo’s on his doorstep; less “Then again why not?  Why shouldn’t I keep it?” and instead, “Why shouldn’t I just read them all!”

And so the task remained unfinished—nay! unaddressed—for many years, whole catalogues of comics on my shelf awaiting the simplest of reading pleasures, yet put off for the imaginary-yet-real agony of lost context.  Two events stirred me from this nonsensical stupor; the first was the culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s run with Endgame, the second was the rediscovery of Dr. Moira MacTaggart.  

Of Endgame there’s little enough to say: the theatrical release of Infinity Wars left me in a daze of astonished euphoria (“The mad bastards actually did it!”), which led to viewing the sequel with total relish.  (To say that the MCU’s stupefying decline in later years was bewildering after the unbelievable success of its first run would be a tragic understatement; insofar as I am concerned, what began with Ironman ended with Spiderman: No Way Home; the rest is so much bedazzled window dressing).  Fresh from Endgame, I immediately acquired a copy of the trade paperback of Infinity Gauntlet (1991) that inspired it all.  From there I made the leap to other major Marvel Comics events like Secret Wars (2015) and its namesake primogenitor, also titled Secret Wars (1984).  Of the X-Men, there was little sign, but the point here is that I was spurred to action at long last with the realization that having greatly enjoyed the movies, my appreciation would only deepen by reading the original comics.

What drove me back to the Mutants was the discovery of House of X (2019).  A limited series, it began what appeared to be a fresh narrative arc for Xavier and his acolytes.  There were new costumes, new villains, a whole new nation-state exclusive to mutant-kind, all under the forbidding headline that Charles Xavier’s dream (of human and mutant co-existence) was dead.  But lacking all context, I was as confused as I was intrigued, and the now-habitual turn to Google offered more questions than answers: Why is a genocidal monster like Apocalypse one of the good guys?  Wasn’t Destiny dead—no, she was dead, but now she’s back?    And what’s the deal with Dr. Moira MacTaggart—wait, she was dead too, but also resurrected?  And now she’s evil?

My vague memories of the no-nonsense scotswoman resurfaced in a jumble.  Her brief cameo appearance in X-Men: The Last Stand barely registered, while her role as free-thinking American CIA agent in the X-Men: First Class series did not figure at all.  I remembered that she was a longtime ally and ran an isolated scientific institute complimentary to Professor Xavier’s high school; that both were the faces of secret facilities hosting various mutant superhero teams.  So what was her role in this new milieu, and why was she a villain—and for that matter, a primary threat?  

On I read, and my head spun: here was the wholesome and courageous female scientist, maternal counterpoint to Xavier’s paternal professor, reimagined not merely as some brainwashed toady en route to the Big Bad, but a true believer with real blood on her hands and plans to kill every single mutant on earth—to include her own son and her adopted daughter.   What was going on?

My immediate questions were somewhat answered in finishing the House of X miniseries and dabbling in some of its follow-on comics.  In short, a new cadre of writers were on the scene, eager to make their mark on a franchise fifty-six years old and (so I discovered to mild surprise) recently struggling with multiple cancellations and false-starts.  It seemed to me that poor Moira was one of the sacrificial lambs to their ambitions, her recasting a sort of shock to the system to galvanize eager readers (like myself, I may shamelessly admit) into purchasing new comics.  Nor was she alone in catching my eye.  As stated above, new villains, old villains as new allies, and other character redrafts held my attention, especially the nigh-damnable line put in the mouth of Magneto toward the end of the earliest chapters: In a meeting with international delegates to their fledgling mutant nation, Magneto—first and greatest villain-turned-antihero—outlines a plan for mutant-international relations that concludes with the ominous ultimatum:

As a Christian, I was offended.  As a reader, fascinated.  

Magneto’s defining trait has always been hubris, one that I had thought mollified in recent storylines.  Here, evidently, the new writers sought to return to him his first impulses, restoring in their hero his most villainous characteristic.  Would they erroneously intend to validate Magneto’s blasphemy in the ensuing series, to see it accepted and lauded by fans of the “Mutant Metaphor” (that of the mutants as mouthpiece for intersectional oppression, so pervasive in recent years), or was Magneto’s pronouncement the foreshadowing to a Greek tragedy in the making?

And there it was for me: echoes of Oedipus, of Achilles, of Xerxes upon his throne; of the queen-mother become the mother-of-monsters, threatening to eat her own young.  I had to know more.  

I had to go back to the beginning.