i rated it the same number of things that happened in this issue :)

One issue from its conclusion, Aaron's Thor run continues to be The Best. Aaron does that thing he loves doing where he introduces a team of one-off characters who have such great designs and gimmicks that they feel like they could headline their own book--it's great as always. And the final page is KILLER, thanks to the pure genius of Esad Ribic. Seriously, the man is an artistic god. Long live Gorr.

Crowded said gay rights! This issue had less comedy than the last couple, but the action scene was KILLER. Stein and Brandt are masters of fight choreography. Also, Vita in a tank top.

If you thought the Matthew Rosenberg X-Men run had potential that it didn't fulfill, THIS is your issue. Fantastic, heartbreaking stuff, with one of the most impactful endings I've read in a superhero comic in years. Larraz, of course, continues to bring beautiful art and Gracia delivers on the colors.

I'm not normally one for "everything you thought you knew was wrong!"-type retcons. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with them, it's just that they're hard to pull off without just coming off as the writer smelling their own farts and being unfair to prior creative teams. With this issue, Hickman shows so much respect-- for past creators AND the reader-- that it's impossible not to read the whole thing with either a big, goofy smile or a perfectly O-shaped mouth. Larraz brings his A-game, too, bringing so many more layers to a story that could've been artistically very basic. Simply genius work!

House of X #1 was a stunning, awe-inspiring debut that showed how committed Jonathan Hickman is to matching the feelings of the characters inhabiting his brave new X-world with those of the readers. In House of X, there's this palpable sense of inspiration, of hope renewed-- you truly feel like the mutants are moving forward after so any years of stagnation, ready to walk hand-in-hand into the future as they always should have. The tagline for the series is even "Face the Future." Well, Powers of X's tagline is "Fear the Future," and holy hell, do Hickman and his collaborators scare you in this issue. Taking place over 4 different time periods, House of X chronicles the past, present, and future of mutantkind. Mostly the future, though-- there's a perplexing opening scene taking place during Charles Xavier's formative years and another following up on a plot thread from last week's House of X debut in the present, but the lion's share of pages are devoted to showing the future of mutantkind. And oh, what a future it is. Similar to Grant Morrison and Whilce Portacio's "Here Comes Tomorrow" storyline (which, given that Hickman's an avowed Morrison fan, may be a conscious inspiration here), Hickman and artist R.B. Silva take elements from several of the X-Men mythos' myriad dystopian futures and put them all together to make something that's an entirely new kind of dreadful. Pretty much every single bad thing that you can imagine has happened to mutants: selective breeding, strategic depopulation, exploitation of natural powers, implied mass infanticide, it's all here, and it is all god-awful. What really sells the horror, however, is that Hickman never loses that clinical, matter-of-fact tone that's so emblematic of his writing, creating a sense of inevitability that isn't there in other dystopian future X-Men stories. Hickman's writing doesn't make the future of X^2 sound like a possibility that can be prevented, it makes it sound INEVITABLE, and it's so much better for it. This awful future is presided over by two familiar X-villains, one of whom doesn't appear here but whose shadow looms large over the many data pages. It's a character Hickman's written before, and written well, so I'm excited to see them make a proper appearance. The other villain, Nimrod, however, is nothing short of a revelation. Over the course of a few pages, Hickman, Silva, colorist Marte Gracia, and letterer Clayton Cowles turn what could have been a generic robot dictator and turn him into the single best evil Sentinel in ANY possible timeline. He's got so many layers: he's both a ruler and little more than a child, both an unrepentant killer and a remorseful figure, and worryingly human while decidedly alien. It's one of the best villain introductions I've read in any comic of the past year, at least. Our new heroes are no slouches, either. Rasputin and Cardinal take all of your favorite traits of several modern X-Men and mix them together to make characters that are an entirely new kind of charming. Cardinal and his hard-wired pacifism make for some compelling storytelling possibilities, but Rasputin, with her excellent design and pure badassery, is a fan-favorite in the making. We also end the issue with a glimpse of the state of mutantkind 1,000 years from now, guided by the mysterious Librarian, who Silva infuses with a level of familiarity while, like he did with Nimrod, keeping him totally alien. In general, all the characters Hickman introduces here are ones I can see becoming viable pieces of the X-Men mythos for years to come. Finally, R.B. Silva's art is great here. Like Larraz, Silva is a clear acolyte of the great Stuart Immonen, his style landing in the perfect medium between realistic and cartoonish. I really can't say enough how great his Nimrod looks, boasting a killer new design and some really great expression work that makes him almost childish. With House of X's Pepe Larraz, there was a kinetic movement about the art, like Larraz was just so good that he put the pencil to the page and didn't take it off until the whole thing was finished, but Silva's art feels more methodical, more controlled, fitting for the future which the book clinically implies cannot be avoided. My one complaint about the issue is Gracia's coloring, which feels more flat than it did in HoX-- in particular, it feels like a lot less effort was put into the lighting of each scene, making a few panels look almost unfinished. That said, this is still a great debut, and I can't wait to see what Hickman's got planned.

I hopped on board the Hickman train midway through his Avengers run and I haven't gotten off since, so I'm very pleased to say HoX #1 lives up to the hype and then some. Hickman seamlessly blends traditional superhero storytelling with a sci-fi political thriller, with plenty of help from Pepe Larraz and Marte Gracia's gorgeous art, Clayton Cowles' subtle lettering, and some truly excellent graphic design from Tom Muller. When it comes to the massive paradigm shift for mutantkind introduced here (which I won't elaborate on, pick up the book yourself), the creative team manages to walk the tonal tightrope between the joyous wonder shared by the mutants and the paranoia of humankind, the natural fear of being replaced as the dominant species. The mutants feel more larger-than-life than any other time I can recall in comics, and it feels like something they've finally EARNED after 80 years of fighting for it. Even then, though, Hickman still dresses the story in some deliberately familiar trappings. I've seen some people complaining that this is simply yet another story about mutant isolationism, but I vehemently disagree; it's about the promise of a true safe place for mutants, and those calling it isolationism are simply having the same reaction as this story's human characters. If anything, it shows that the tone Hickman's setting was done TOO WELL, which is certainly not a bad problem to have. There's also some pretty great character work on display here. Magneto gets a couple of lines here which deserve to go down as some of his most iconic-- what Hickman does with him here is a lot like what Matt Fraction did with Emma Frost (specifically, the "How I Survived Apocalyptic Fire" speech), taking an already fantastic character and showing why they're so great in a couple of sentences. Cyclops and Professor X, characters I'm not usually fond of, have some great moments, too, which made me understand why they're still looked up to by so many people. Finally, the Fantastic Four makes a brief appearance, and Hickman writes them as perfectly as ever. In conclusion: pick this book up, regardless of how much you care about the X-Men. It's well worth the read, and I can only hope that Powers of X will be too when it drops next week.