'Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler' introduces major discrepancy with Lady Mastermind coming to Krakoa
Spoilers for 'Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler' by Jonathan Hickman and Alan Davis.
Jonathan Hickman's 'Giant-Size X-Men' one-shots are a planned set of character-focused stories, putting one important mutant in the limelight. The latest of these focuses on everyone's favorite furry blue teleporter with a mystery that takes the X-Men back to their old home on the grounds of the abandoned X-Mansion.
It's a pretty creepy issue with a strong mystery element and some solid artwork by Alan Davis. Maybe it's not as stunning as its immediate predecessor, 'Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey and Emma Frost' but it's still a great book, even if it does raise a possible inconsistency in its final moments.
A Quick Recap
Nightcrawler, Magik, Eye Boy, and Cypher head to the old X-Mansion to check out an error with the Krakoan gate there. All they know is that there may be a mutant on the grounds and after some very trippy and eerie sequences, it's revealed that the mutant they're looking for is none other than the illusion-casting supervillain Lady Mastermind and that she was being kept prisoner by a race of alien bounty hunters called Sidra.
Cypher makes a deal with the Sidra, allowing them to use the X-Mansion as their nest in exchange for providing mutants access to the gate. It's not an ideal solution but Nightcrawler chooses to be hopeful that it will all work out.
The Mastermind Problem
And that brings us to the one big problem in the issue. According to this story, Lady Mastermind was captured while she was trying to reach Krakoa.
Now that's all well and good, except that she already did come to Krakoa alongside the first wave of formerly evil mutants, all the way back in 'House of X' #5. None of the mutants on Krakoa are supposed to leave the island without prior approval from the Quiet Council and if someone as dangerous as Lady Mastermind was out in the field, the council would have kept a closer tab on her.
So either this isn't Lady Mastermind or there has been an impostor in Krakoa for months. Either way, that's a huge problem for mutantkind since there's plenty of groups still out in the world trying to bring Krakoa down and any breach of security is no laughing matter.
Of course, then there's the possibility that this was just a plot hole, a random inconsistency. But that theory doesn't quite fit in with the level of attention-to-detail we've seen from Jonathan Hickman so far, so we seriously doubt it's anything as mundane as that.
Either way, we'll just have to wait and see where this story goes.
'Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler' was released in stores March 25.
