X-Men #7
Jonathan Hickman (w), Leinil Francis Yu (a)
Marvel Comics

Liz says: Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men series continues to astonish, one magnificent issue after another – this week by confronting the events of M-Day, when the Scarlet Witch depowered ninety percent of the world’s mutant population.

In HoX/PoX, Hickman made the X-men essentially immortal with the help of The Five, who collectively possess the power of resurrection. In X-Men #7, he reveals what this means for those who lost their powers through a ritual called Crucible.

For practical reasons, The Five are unable to simply restore the million depowered mutants all at once (there are already millions of dead mutants for them to resurrect first). This is where Crucible comes into play.
Crucible is a ceremony during which mutants who lost their powers on M-Day are allowed to fight Apocalypse to the death so that they might be reborn, having symbolically earned their powers back through the sacrifice.

Even knowing how it would play out, reading this was brutal – watching Melody Guthrie face Apocalypse to die and be reborn was simultaneously horrific and beautiful. There were a lot of other standout moments in this issue – the quiet camaraderie between Scott and Wolverine, Nightcrawler questioning his religious beliefs and also the ‘new rules’ by which they live, and what they might mean for the future. Issue by issue, Hickman’s run is reinventing the X-Men from the ground up, a rebirth of sorts in itself – and I am living for it.