Sins of Sinister #1 is a dense one-shot kicking off the new X-Men crossover of the same name. Picking up from the last scene of Immortal X-Men #10, the last issue of that title before this prologue one-shot, Sins of Sinister #1 explains exactly what readers saw take place in that story, and what it means for the Marvel Universe.
While there's far too much happening in Sins of Sinister #1 to go into a beat-by-beat playbook of all the story's events, we've got the TL;DR on everything you need to know about how the event starts and, more importantly, how the remade reality of Sins of Sinister comes into being.
For a brief recap, Sins of Sinister is much like the classic '90s story Age of Apocalypse, meaning that in Sins of Sinister, longtime X-Men villain Mister Sinister remakes the world in his own image by using clones of Moira X, whose power to reboot the timeline on her death provides the key to Sinister creating his own reality. As such, three X-Men titles - Immortal X-Men, X-Men Red, and Legion of X - will be briefly rebooted as titles tying into the Sins of Sinister timeline.
Immortal X-Men #10 set the stage for the start of Sins of Sinister, in which Mister Sinister is exiled to the mutant prison of the Pit, with the issue's final page revealing that, somehow, Xavier has been corrupted by Sinister.
Now that we're all caught up, here's what it all means.
Spoilers ahead for Sins of Sinister #1
First off, here's how Sinister corrupted Xavier. And not just Xavier, but Emma Frost and most of the Quiet Council.
Mister Sinister's DNA database is accessed every time a mutant is brought back through the Resurrection Protocols. But when the Krakoa project was started, Sinister implanted his own personality as a virus of sorts in the DNA held in his database, with the intent that everyone resurrected through the Protocols would become a partial clone of Sinister himself.
However, Hope's power, which is necessary for resurrection, prevented the Sinister virus from taking hold - until Sinister managed to kill Hope and nearly all of the Quiet Council, forcing the entire council's resurrection, including Hope's, to take place without the cleansing aspect of her mutant power.
As a result, most of the Quiet Council is infiltrated by the Sinister virus on resurrection, while the "prime" Sinister is sent to the Pit for his crimes in order to cover up what happened.
Through the rest of the one-shot, Sinister's influence on the timeline through the Quiet Council is shown, leading to the ultimate corruption of not just the entire population of Krakoa, but the entire world, including the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and eventually pretty much everyone else.
It's all part of a plan by Sinister to create a perfect mutant world that can resist the threat of conquest by Orchis and their AI, as foretold in the House of X/Powers of X limited series that launched the Krakoa era.
There are a couple of other big takeaways from the one-shot that will likely prove vital to the rest of the crossover - though believe us, we're just scratching the surface of the issue's content.
At the end of the issue, the "prime" Sinister escapes the Pit to find that his secret lab of Moira duplicates has been destroyed, effectively trapping him - and the rest of the Marvel Universe - in the corrupted timeline.
And there's also a hanging plot thread leftover from Immortal X-Men #10 that's addressed briefly at the start of Sins of Sinister #1. In that issue, when Sinister was exiled to the pit, Mystique and Destiny fled. Mystique and Destiny, who were among the few members of the Quiet Council Sinister couldn't kill, are not shown on page as being infiltrated by Sinister's resurrection virus.
That may be the key to what finally unravels and reverses the Sins of Sinister timeline, as Destiny has the power to see through Moira X's power and predict the future. That came to a head in Inferno, in which Moira X became a villain and fled Krakoa.
But the likelihood is, Sinister has no idea that Destiny's precognitive abilities counter Moira's timeline resetting power - so there's a seed of hope out there lurking somewhere.
The story continues in February 8's Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #1.
Stay on top of all the new X-Men comics Marvel has planned, including the rest of Sins of Sinister, with our handy listing.
