This morning before work, I picked up today’s copy of Powers of X #2. The comic shop had no copies available to anyone who didn’t reserve it beforehand; each and every copy was reserved by customers before the store even opened. That’s how huge last week’s House of X issue was, which has rocked X-Men fans like me to our cores.

In a previous post, I mentioned that Jonathan Hickman’s style just isn’t my thing. But last week’s issue has me reeling so hard, I’m not sure I can possibly support such a statement anymore. I obviously just hadn’t read the right Jonathan Hickman, because something that is not “my thing” couldn’t be haunting me like this. As my friend Joe said, Hickman managed to “rewrite X-Men history without rewriting it,” and it’s bloody brilliant. Can today’s issue possibly be as mind-blowing? I doubt it. I’m not sure I could handle it if it were.

Knowing that beloved X-Men character Moira MacTaggert has been a stranger all this time feels like a punch in the gut. Despite how intimately the readers have known her for three decades, we haven’t really known her at all. We didn’t know she was secretly a mutant with the power of reincarnation, we didn’t know she had done this dance of life in the Marvel Universe before, we didn’t know that in these other lifetimes she’d tried to destroy mutants, destroy humans, help mutants, help herself, etc. She’s been a lover of Xavier, a right-hand to Magneto, even a friggin’ consort to Apocalypse! Am I understanding that chart right? Did Apocalypse grant her immortality in that life? If so, how could she reincarnate into the next one? Did she, what, make it till eternity’s end? IT’S MIND-BLOWING. I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS. I AM NOT OKAY. This is the biggest X-book since Morrison’s run, and, frankly, this story may end up giving us Claremont-level impact on comics in general. The sales figures for the past few weeks would surely support that.

Anyway, I need to read today’s issue, but I’m still not okay from last week’s issue, so please send help, preferably in the form of chicken nuggets with honey dip.