Previously on Reviews of X: Year One Hundred X-Men went on a suicide mission to get valuable intel on Nimrod. We see the fruits of that labor in House of X #3 where Year Ten X-Men go on a suicide mission… IN SPAAACE! SPOILERS AHEAD!
House of X #3: Once More Unto the Breach
Story: Jonathan Hickman
Art: Pepe Larraz
Colors: Marte Gracia
Letters: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Marvel
Good Mutants All
It’s been a while since we saw Cyclops, Wolverine, and Jean Grey going on a mission together and it gives me pure joy. I hope we get to see these three previously dead characters sit down and talk about all the crap they went through since Jean died in New X-Men #150, way back in 2003.
It’s also great to see Nightcrawler and Monet in Cyclops’ Sentinel Suicide Squad… IN SPAAACE! These are two great characters that we should see more of, and I’m hoping they’ll stick around when the X-books relaunch in October 2019.
Boss Queen
Leave it to Emma Frost, the White Queen, to strut into a super-maximum security prison like a boss. A boss queen. She’s the White Boss Queen.
I didn’t like what they did to her post-Inhumans vs. X-Men. After all the character development she went through at the hands of Grant Morrison and Brian Michael Bendis, it seemed like she regressed into a crazy, maniacal super-villain after Cyclops died from inhaling some of the Inhumans’ fart cloud.
She’s been that way up until right before House of X and Powers of X started, and it seems she’s still in that phase, albeit toned down a bit. I hope Hickman, or at least Gerry Duggan in the upcoming Marauders book, will bring back a more sophisticated and nuanced version of Ms. Frost.
The Orchis Forge
The conflict in this issue is told from both sides, which is great.
The X-Men are on a mission to prevent one, if not most, of a multitude of dark futures by stopping technology from reaching a threshold that will give birth to an unstoppable mutant murdering machine.
Omega Sentinel, Doctor Gregor, and the rest of Orchis are just trying to save mankind from extinction by any means necessary — including inadvertently creating an unstoppable mutant murdering machine that will probably kill humans too.
Stakes are high for both sides and the characters are written in a way that makes it hard for the audience to pick a side. Even if the X-Men are the stars of this book, you’re not inclined to root for them exclusively.
There are no clear villains here, but both sides aren’t purely heroic either. They’re all just trying to give their respective species a shot at the future and a better world.
IN CONCLUSION
Hickman, Larraz, and the rest of the creative team are still firing on all cylinders, telling a story that is making more sense as we move forward. And if you’re not up to speed, they straight up explained what’s been going on in HoX PoX on a design page. It’s a recap page in the middle of the story! I love it.
They even included a translation of the Krakoan alphabet. I wanted to do the translation myself once the series ends, but still, pretty neat.
We’re halfway through House of X and Powers of X and things are going great. Here’s hoping that the second half of HoX PoX will be at least as weird and captivating as the first half, if not better.
House of X #3 is available now wherever fine comic books are sold.
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