As a long-time X-Men reader, I've been really excited by Hickman's take on the team and its mythos. The story in HoX and PoX is the first time in a long time that I've considered any book a "must read." This issue was a gut punch in some ways, although I'm pretty sure that we're going to see that graphic of Moira's past lives come into play with regard to everything that went down. I'd give this a 10, but I have issues with Hickman's dialogue. Like a lot of modern writers, he seems to have trouble nailing the individual voices of the characters, which has been a Marvel trademark since the beginning.

I've been reading comics for over 40 years. I honestly cannot remember the last time I was this excited to see how a story was going to turn out in the end.

A world-building issue, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it seemed a little disjointed. Of course, that's probably by design, but I'm still going with a 9.5 instead of the whole magilla. A couple of stray thoughts: Is it just me, or was Xavier giving off a sinister (no pun intended) vibe during those scenes with Forge? Another mention of the potentially dire consequences of the wrong brain/body combination. Recently the thought occurred to me that the professor's resurrection happened in this way, since his mind took over Fantomex's body in Astonishing X-Men. Really makes me wonder.