The Beginning & End of Forever Arrives in Powers of X #3 Review

Writer: Jonathan Hickman / Artist: R.B. Silva / Marvel “I am immortal, and I have no end.” If you are just now joining us, current Don of all mutantdom Jonanthan Hickman is holding court on how to tell proper X-Men stories. Please take a seat and try not to drool on the floor. Powers of X #3 breaks the timeline-jumping structure of the previous two issues for a well-timed and streamlined installment. It is minimal on the interstitial meta-page info, but overflowing with revelations and the smackdown of the year that we had no idea we needed – APOCALYPSE vs. NIMROD. Of all the brutal X-Men future dystopias to come, Powers of X already stands as both the most beautifully crafted and tragic. Instead of breaking or ignoring continuity for his own purposes, Hickman peels back the timelines and zooms in on a thousand-year continuity that elaborates upon both the beginning and end. This issue moves with more immediacy than either of the previous installments as a small team of X-Men crash a ceremony by the Church of Ascendancy.  While the ministers of the church spout the dominance of machines as they infect a human infant with the techno-organic disease, “the last X-Men” — Xorn, Rasputin, Cardinal, and North — arrive on the scene as a diversionary tactic for their core team – Apocalypse, Wolverine, and Krakoa. They lay waste to the church and take out priests, eventually drawing the attention of Nimrod’s right-hand femme-machine killer and a horde of Sentinels. Meanwhile, using t…