Powers of X #4

History

Powers of X was announced in March 2019 as one half of a twin miniseries alongside House of X, marking Jonathan Hickman's return to Marvel after stepping away following his 2015 Secret Wars. The two six-issue series were designed to be read interleaved with each other, with Powers of X handled by artist R.B. Silva and colorist Marte Gracia while sister series House of X used Pepe Larraz; both were edited by Jordan D. White under Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski. Issue #4, released September 11, 2019 with a November 2019 cover date and the in-series title 'Something Sinister,' sits at the midpoint of the miniseries and functions as Hickman's designated 'breath' issue — a structural pause between the emotional peak of House of X #4 and the anticipated red-coded House of X #5 — yet it was deliberately loaded with foreshadowing content, including two full pages of cryptic 'Sinister Secrets' gossip-column data pages and an infographic on the Krakoan interface designed by Cypher. Hickman's campy, flamboyant take on Sinister was consciously building on Kieron Gillen's earlier reinvention of the character as a glam narcissist surrounded by clones in his 2011 Uncanny X-Men run, while also canonizing for 616 continuity the 'Bar Sinister' domain Hickman himself had first introduced as a Battleworld territory in Secret Wars.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Written by Jonathan Hickman, pencilled and inked by R.B. Silva, colored by Marte Gracia, lettered by VC's Clayton Cowles, and edited by Jordan D. White; released September 11, 2019 (cover-dated November 2019).
• In-series title is 'Something Sinister'; it is issue #4 of a 6-issue miniseries and the midpoint of the combined House of X / Powers of X event.
• First appearance of Okkara, the primordial single landmass of which Krakoa and its twin island Arakko were each a half — a retcon that became the entire premise of the X of Swords crossover event in 2020.
• Establishes via Cypher's translation that Apocalypse and his original First Horsemen repelled a demonic invasion through the rift created by the Twilight Sword, permanently separating Krakoa from Arakko — Apocalypse's first Horsemen had previously debuted in Hickman's own Marvel Comics #1000 story published weeks earlier.
• Depicts the secret 'Year One' deal between Professor X, Magneto, and a mutant Sinister clone: Xavier and Magneto commission the mutant-gene Sinister to build a comprehensive DNA archive of all mutants, then Xavier telepathically wipes Sinister's memory of the meeting — the foundational plot engine behind Krakoa's resurrection protocols.
• Cypher (Doug Ramsey) is shown as the first mutant Xavier brought to Krakoa to decode the island's language and design the bio-computer interface network that allows other mutants to communicate with Krakoa directly — elevating a long-underutilized character to a central role in the Krakoan nation-state.
• Features two full pages of in-universe 'Sinister Secrets' gossip-column data pages — cryptic foreshadowing items that fan communities spent years decoding, correctly predicting plot threads from Hellions, Inferno (2021), and beyond.
• Collected in the House of X / Powers of X hardcover (ISBN 9781302915704) and later in the House of X / Powers of X: Chronological Edition (2024), which reorders all twelve issues by in-story timeline rather than publication order.

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