X-Men Legacy #211-214 (2008): 1st Miss Sinister

This story is full of stuff I dislike.  It requires detailed knowledge of Professor X’s lineage and relationship to  Juggernaut, and features the New Orleans Assassins’ Guild, which of course means Gambit.  And it has extended dream sequences.

Despite all of these things, it’s not a terrible story.

Professor X is not dead, despite having memories of being shot in the head by Bishop.  Something is dream-attacking both Xavier and his brother Juggernaut.  Something is also attacking the Professor in real life and it’s the Assassins’ Guild, but Gambit rescues him.

The Guild has been hired to kill X, Juggernaut, Sebastian Shaw, and a guy from Professor X’s past who I guess I should know but don’t (Carter Ryking).  I also don’t care enough to look him up since he’s killed early in this story.

They investigate and what I think happens is that Xavier realizes that Mister Sinister experimented on him when he was a child.

Sinister implanted his own DNA into Charles’ body, which meant that Sinister could essentially “remote control” if/when he died–allowing Sinister to occupy Charles’ body.  And Sinister did the same thing to Juggernaut and Sebastian Shaw.  Thus, the Assassins’ Guild’s contract is really to stop the rebirth of Mister Sinister in the bodies of those targeted by the contract.  I will grant that that’s a cool idea, in a story that is otherwise fairly jumbled and crowded with pointless psychic manipulation.

I say this because much of what Charles learns is via internal psychic exploration, so a bunch of X-Men do in fact appear in this story–but they are hallucinations.  Or memories.  It’s not entirely clear.  All of which feels heavily cribbed from how Wolverine’s past was kept open by sharing “memories” with the reader throughout the years, many of which were later revealed as misdirects and figments.  I didn’t need this similar kind of development from the world’s most powerful psychic.  Although, admittedly, it does make sense.  Xavier planted memory blocks and false memories in several of his students’ minds–so I guess this is where he got that idea.

While this is happening, the Guild is outside trying to get close enough to kill Xavier.  Gambit is fighting them off and eventually Shaw shows up to help.  Only it turns out, they weren’t trying to kill X.  They were trying to kidnap him to deliver him to “Dr. Mueller” who shoots him.

(Why didn’t she just let them kill him?)

Mueller, it turns out, is an ageless mutant whose immortality was what inspired Sinister to do all this in the first place, and she’s working to stop Sinister, so to stop her Xavier let’s Sinister enter his body. Once possessed, X/Sinister puts Shaw and Gambit in clear containers.

But then X pushes Sinister out and all is well again.

Screenshot

Until we see that Shaw managed to put Mister Sinister into the body of Black Queen.

I hate it when a story is a whole bunch of build up just to get to a redirected ending that there was absolutely no way you could have seen coming.

Moreover, this isn’t a real gender change. It will later be revealed that Miss Sinister is a clone–a unique being. She is not Nathan Essex.

Still, she’s hot.