Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!
The penultimate issue of Fall of the House of X is on sale, and if you’re an X-Fan, that means you’re aware of a fan-favorite character’s sacrifice and that shocking betrayal. (And if you’re an X-Fan who has absolutely no idea what I’m talking about… you know, go read Fall of the House of X #4!)
X-Men Senior Editor Jordan D. White is back to break down those major moments and more. And if you’ve missed our discussions for Fall of the House of X #1, #2, and #3, you can read those here, here, and here, respectively.
OK, spoilers for Fall of the House of X #4 beyond this point!
AIPT: Welcome back to X-Men Monday, Jordan! We kick off Fall of the House of X #4 with Apocalypse making a mockery of Orchis and the Stark Sentinels. So let me ask you a hypothetical question: Had Apocalypse never gone away at the end of X of Swords, would we even be in this Fall of X mess right now?
Jordan D. White: We’d be in a very different mess. Apocalypse is not diplomatic. Apocalypse is not a guy who works things out peacefully.
Would Orchis be where Orchis is? Maybe not. But if Apocalypse had publicly slaughtered them in the streets a year ago, that probably would’ve been another issue for the X-Men to deal with. Yeah, he’s a really powerful dude, and I feel like he’d be in a different place had he not gone away. But also, everything would be in a different place. I can’t imagine Apocalypse sitting on the Quiet Council and letting some of the things that happened happen, but I also don’t think his solutions would be solutions that the good X-Men — and hopefully the readers — would’ve approved of.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: Then, in this hypothetical scenario, add in Magneto, who was also off the board.
Jordan: Well, Magneto had already abandoned Krakoa. But if the Hellfire Gala happened, he would’ve taken an interest at the very least. He’s literally come back from the dead in Resurrection of Magneto after saying he did not want to. So I think both of them would make things different. But Magneto has a much stronger chance of having made things better than Apocalypse. I mean, Apocalypse is a bit different than he has been in the past, but he’s still a guy who, if you don’t come around to him relatively quickly, he might persuade you with his fist rather than persuasive arguments. You know, survival of the fittest.
AIPT: Well, I think there’s some material there for a future What If…? comic. Next, we see the destruction of the Summer House on the Moon. I’d like to take a minute to mourn one of my favorite locations from the Krakoan era and ask you to share your favorite Summer House memories.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Jordan: Oh, good question. You know, in X-Men #1, they just have a Summers family dinner. That was such a different feeling from what I think we expect to see in an X-Men comic. I mean, there’s a lot of found family in X-Men and there are a lot of good bonding moments. But now they have a house where they have dinner, which just seemed so… “Wait, what? Really?” Especially since they had been in such dire straits in the previous era — it was so refreshing and nice. Similarly, the family scenes with Jean, Scott, and Cable together.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Who can forget Scott eating a Philly cheesesteak? That was a pretty good one. And then the other good one was the screwed-up Vulcan, just lying around the house drinking with his two imaginary friends — it turned out. That was pretty delightful as well.
AIPT: In this issue, we have a powerful callback to the Crucible issue of X-Men, only this time, Apocalypse’s actions are to save a dying Krakoa. How did this story beat come about?
Jordan: Well, we had long talked about the idea that the original Krakoa feeds on mutant energy. And at some point in the past, we had talked about the idea that with an entire mutant nation on it, Krakoa lives off of the smallest, tiniest unnoticeable mutant energy from everyone. It’s so small, the mutants aren’t affected by it and Krakoa is able to flourish. At some point again, it came up that when everybody leaves, does that mean Krakoa is starving? That’s why Kieron Gillen has very specifically made Krakoa less lush in his books. It’s gone into autumn or winter mode to conserve energy.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
So now, here it is in dire straits. Not only that but it’s been wounded. This central essence and self of Krakoa ran off to try to protect itself and has been wounded so much. Gerry Duggan brought in this idea of what he referred to as “a reverse Crucible,” where they need to sacrifice for the good of Krakoa. And of course, that’s an Apocalypse idea and beat.
And then the idea of Wrongslide giving himself to the Crucible for the survival of Krakoa was one that came up and we thought was really sad but also interesting.
AIPT: Well, my next question was actually going to be about Wrongslide and the end of his story. What are your views on Rockslide’s transformation into Wrongslide, and do you feel his death in this issue opens the door to Rockslide’s return?
Jordan: Well, let’s see… what can I say about the saga of Wrongslide? First of all, I might still be torn on this — he wasn’t the first character that we suggested this happen to. There was another character that we had proposed before. And for a very long time, I believed we made the wrong choice and we should have gone with this other character. Now, I’m happy with where we ended up with it.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
I’ll tell you who it was and I’ll tell you why we didn’t pick him.
The character that I think maybe should have been the one to be killed in Otherworld, and therefore come back wrong, was Mr. Glob Herman. Now, the benefit of that to me is that we had spent a lot of time focusing on him in the year or so before in a couple of places. And we didn’t have any plans to use him thereafter. I mean, we still haven’t. He’s popped up, but he hasn’t popped up a lot. And in those places where he was used, he was used in a very personal connection kind of way. Like, you get to know him in a different way, and ideally, grow to like him. So it would’ve been very heartbreaking for him to have died and come back. And again, not that we had Rockside plans — we didn’t — but the fact that he hadn’t been focused on much, it just seemed like it all would’ve all fit together a little better if it had been Glob.
Can you guess why we didn’t pick him?
AIPT: … I can’t. I was going to say Ed Brisson said something and stopped it…
Jordan: You got it! It’s because Ed was still a writer in the X-Office at the time and was like, “No guys, come on, please don’t do this.”
AIPT: [Laughs] It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about Ed’s love for Glob Herman.
Jordan: It was a 100% Ed stumping for him, so we shifted over to Rockslide.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Anyway, the name “Wrongslide” was a name that Leah Williams kept putting in the scripts because she wanted to emphasize that he was really different. Now, it was very unclear to me reading her scripts whether she intended for that to be a name that was actually used or whether it was just a name that she was using to be clear that this is not Rockslide. I don’t know what she intended as the editor of the books. But I knew we weren’t going to call him Wrongslide — that doesn’t make sense. He would still be called Rockslide. Who would name themselves Wrongslide? It wasn’t until Al Ewing wrote him in X-Men Red and brought up that name as something being used hurtfully, but that he then accepted. That really touched me and I was like, “OK, wow, all right. His name is Wrongslide.”
In terms of the true Rockslide returning, there was a really big and significant thing that happened between the creation of Wrongslide and now with resurrection, which was the ending of The Trial of Magneto and the creation of the Waiting Room. That changes how people are resurrected, or at least it changes how people can be resurrected — hence the resurrection of Thunderbird. So it’s possible.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: Nice. The Resurrection of Rockslide mini-series: coming soon. Then, we have Charles Xavier selling out humanity to save mutantkind, and wiping out an entire Space Force ship in the process. Does this confirm once and for all that Professor Xavier is a jerk?
Jordan: It’s very interesting. If you go all the way back to the very beginning of the character, while he has this very noble dream — the idea of humans and mutants living together — he’s an extremely flawed and problematic character. He is a jerk. Now, at the very beginning, you can probably write that off as, well, he’s the school teacher, so they’re playing him as a very strict. But the longer the series goes on, the more he expands in all ways. You understand him more, but also, he’s still a jerk. And that rose to new heights in the last 20 years when we found out about Deadly Genesis — that he led a bunch of children to their deaths and then covered it up for many years. Or when he sent Wolverine on kill missions that he erased from his memory. He’s done some pretty gnarly stuff.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
One of the things I think was so impressive about the way Kieron wrote him is that Kieron didn’t undo any of those things. He just went, let me accept those things and let me write the character in a way that hopefully the reader can understand him, even though they don’t agree with him. The speech he gives in the narration in Immortal X-Men #10 is just pure Xavier. I think it does a really great job of showing the psychology of the character in a way that makes sense of the seeming contradictions. And this story isn’t over. It will obviously go more into what he’s doing and why. Rise of the Powers of X #4 comes out this week, so you’ll have some more information after that.
Then we’ll see what new questions you have about him.
He’s a character who, again, going right to the beginning, believes he knows best. And he’s got all of these children that he looks after. He still thinks of them as his children to this day. And in a way, that can be really nice — “Oh, he cares about them.” But also, are they children? To him they are. He’s the adult in the room and he has to make the decisions. The big one was sending everyone away at the Hellfire Gala. Was that the right choice? He thought it was the right choice. He did it to save people, not to hurt people. Could the X-Men have just fought and won? We’ll never know because he made the decision for them.
AIPT: Another What If…? story! And that’s also the point Cyclops tries to make.
Jordan: Exactly.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: Then we have the S.W.O.R.D. station impaling Sentinel City and Storm on the way. Has the final battle begun?
Jordan: Yes, Nimrod was trying to cook the Earth with Sentinel City and then they stabbed it with the sword. You need to stab things with a sword sometimes.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
So, we basically have three finales: Fall of the House of X #5, Rise of the Powers of X #5, and X-Men #35, which are all part of the conclusion of the Krakoan era. They all wrap up different aspects of it. The main story you’ve been reading in Fall of the House of X will be wrapped up in the next and final issue.
In the next issue of Rise of the Powers of X, you’re going to find out more about what Xavier is doing. There’s lots to learn there and it also kicks off a really big and exciting finale of that series, which will carry over into X-Men Forever as well. So if you’re only reading Rise of the Powers of X, I would recommend reading X-Men Forever too.
Fall of the House of X #5 is going to be a knock-down-drag-out fight with Mr. Nimrod. They’ve fought with him and they haven’t done great so far. And an important thing to remember is that he’s shown from his very first appearance when he came online in Jonathan Hickman‘s X-Men, he’s not just one dude. There are more than one of Nimrod. So if you kill one, what does that even mean? It’s not going to be easy, but it should be a good issue.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: And there were people who thought amber defeated him in the first issue. Pfft. Before we wrap, I also saw that recent X-Men Monday guest Luciano Vecchio is drawing the final issue of Rise of the Powers of X?
Jordan: Yes and it looks amazing. We were obviously sad to lose R.B. Silva on the last issue, but the fact that Luciano was able to do it for us is a godsend. People are going to fall out of their chairs when they see what he does in this issue. He’s an amazing artist and has been on everything he’s done for us and for other people. But this is next-level work.
AIPT: I believe it — can’t wait! But on that note, thanks for stopping by X-Men Monday, Jordan! And thank you for bringing along these eXclusive preview images.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Before we call it an X-Men Monday, in case you missed it over the weekend, we’re collecting questions about Krakoa’s greatest mysteries for Jordan to answer before his tour of duty as X-Men Senior Editor comes to a close. If you haven’t yet, submit your questions via this link by April 24, 2024 at 5 PM ET. Then, stay tuned for answers.
Speaking of April 24, AIPT will be announcing something else that day…
Until next time, X-Fans, stay exceptional!
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