Sins of Sinister

Sins of Sinister #1-11

by Kieron Gillen

In the culmination of years of planning, the devious Mister Sinister finally makes his move, and the X-Men are caught right in the center of it!

From his vaunted position on the Quiet Council of Krakoa, Mister Sinister has plotted and schemed. Now, at last, his plans come to fruition beyond his wildest dreams...and his darkest nightmares! Can the X-Men survive the experience? Can anyone?

Collects Sins of Sinister #1, Immoral X-Men #1-3, Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #1-3, Nightcrawlers #1-3, Sins of Sinister: Dominion #1.

Genres: Comics, X Men, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book

344 pages, Paperback

First published September 19, 2023

About the author

Kieron Gillen is a comic book writer and former media journalist.

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the very beginning of the Krakoa Era Sinister was conspiring and plotting and was a key figure in most stories over this period, and it all culminates in this 11-part four serial Limited Series. Sinister contaminates the X-Gene and when he pulls the trigger the great experiment dies and a 1,000 year Sinister era follows, this series somehow covers those 1,000 years. The first six comic book issues were all over the place (including two One Star reads!) but the final five comic book issues were so good, om point, character developed so well, and most importantly made real changes to the X-Universe. Worth a read for the outrageous deep dive into the mutant mythos, optimum Emma Frost, the final Dark Beast, peak Storm and more. The portrayal of the level and darkness of Sinister's gene splicing as it evolved over a 1,000 years, oh and the bones hardly any Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Havoc, Polaris, woo woo. Forty plus years of character development rewarded with this ode to Sinister. Averaged a Three Star overall, 6 out of 12.

2025 read

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what I love about 21st century Marvel. The most high-concept possible weird science fiction, a time travel saga requiring complex foreknowledge of mutants spanning generations with references to Kraokoa and Arakko and is absolutely indecipherable to anyone but the most hardcore of sophisticated postmodern nerdcore fans.

I really mean that as a compliment. Still, read at your own risk. Sins of Sinister is about the iconic and fabulous villain Mister Sinister effectively taking over the universe by the way of Moira's timeline superpowers and the logic of video game "save points," with a healthy amount of confusing precognition thrown in. The fun part is trying to make sense of it at all.

In Powers of X fashion, the chapters take place ten years in the future, then a hundred years in the future, then a thousand. It's mainly written by Kieron Gillen from Immortal X-Men, of which I enjoy because his title primarily focuses on the politics of the mutant nation of Krakoa. The writing is also very funny. Al Ewing also has a title that stars Storm as she is a freedom fighter covering the planet Arakko/Mars. And there's also the army of Nightcrawler fusion chimeras, another interesting factor.

Because of the unique take on time travel rules, it feels like this one matters more than the typical dystopia storyline where the heroes go back in time and erase everything. There's a valid philosophical argument there actually, over if a reset is the right thing to do or not, and whether or not all those lives should count or not. Like Hickman's X-Men, there is a problem at times for the reader in not knowing who to root for. This does make it all very engaging and fascinating, don't get me wrong.

Sins of Sinister sure cements the main antagonist of one of the greatest supervillains of all time, who truly could spoil an entire timeline with his evil genius. The levels of cloning and wanton murder in this, on a cosmic level, it's a lot. I'll probably have to reread this a few more times to truly understand, and that kind of ambition is worth appreciating in superhero comics sometimes. It's why I continue to love it.

[Tom Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bottle universe stories are an X-Men tradition - a ghastly alternate reality takes over the comics we love for a few months before the reset button is hit. They’re usually based on the idea that one of the many supremely powerful beings knocking around the X-cast Gets Their Way and we see how things would turn out for them. (Generally extremely badly). We’ve seen Apocalypse, Magneto, Legion and somewhat unexpectedly X-Man get their go and now Sins Of Sinister gives us a universe quite literally in the image of the arch (in both senses) genetic manipulator Mr Sinister.

So what makes a good bottle universe? To truly justify doing one of these events I think you need to achieve three things beyond simply telling a fun story. They should be the definitive story about the main character (Age Of Apocalypse is THE Apocalypse story). They should explore and illuminate aspects of the regular characters in this changed environment. And there should be a meaningful impact on the post-reset story going forward.

Sins Of Sinister pulls all of these off with considerable style, tells a millennium-spanning space opera story with entertaining nods to a half dozen sci-fi franchises and manages to say some interesting things about bottle universe stories themselves.

The modern take on Mister Sinister was introduced by Kieron Gillen (who writes almost half of this crossover too) - he’s an amoral lunatic specialising in cloning, mixing and matching mutants; he’s also addicted to complex, ambitious schemes and is absurdly hubristic, like a high-camp take on Doctor Doom. Jonathan Hickman made him central to the overarching story of the Mutant Nation of Krakoa, and most recently Zeb Wells wrote a terrific (and very funny) Sinister in Hellions, a guy who is extremely clever, absolutely ruthless and prone to hilariously catastrophic overreach. Gillen’s return to the character for Sins Of Sinister builds on these other versions in the way they built on his, and we end up with the most interesting and infuriating Sinister yet.

Which is just as well, in that all but a handful of characters in Sins either are Sinister, are cloned creations of Sinister or have been corrupted by his genetic tampering into hybrid versions of themselves and him. A handful of other characters play important roles in the story - Storm and Destiny, for instance - but one of the main recurring points here is that even given a whole universe to play with Sinister will fuck things up for himself. Fill the timeline with Sinisters and all that will happen is they scheme and counter scheme against each other at ever more baroque scales. At the same time, corruption by Sinister draws out the worst in other characters in often interesting ways - Gillen has worked minor miracles to make religious maniac Exodus a compelling character, for instance, and that continues here as his faith in Hope Summers is taken to a cruel but satisfying conclusion.

In terms of the wider Krakoan plot, Sins Of Sinister matters in ways it would be a shame to spoil - it’s a lot more consequential than X Lives/Deaths Of Wolverine, for instance - but it also justifies its existence by some clever inversions of the usual bottled universe formula. In most of these stories the hero is the person who realises the universe is wrong and works to reset it and the villain is the bottle universe’s creator who wants to preserve it. Here, though, Sinister himself wants to reset the timeline and the most “heroic” characters are on the side of the argument we know as readers is doomed. The reader knows a better outcome is possible, but from the characters’ perspective this shitshow is all they’ve got. And for the X-Men, who’ve seen victory and defeat dramatically switch places a dozen times, why not cling to that possibility? Overall one of the most successful recent X-stories and the best thing of its kind since Age Of Apocalypse itself.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love me a What If. A good alternate reality story. Age of Apocalypse was my jam. But this ain't it. The basic concept was good, but the whole thing became so overly complicated. I got so confused and I still don't understand half of what I read.

[johnny ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

why was all of this necessary?

[Matthew Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there were some very big things that happened in this, most of the meat of this story really just seemed unnecessary within the entire Krakoan age, almost in an Elseworlds type of way. The beginning and ending were strongest in my opinion and I’m curious to see what all of this means for the future of Krakoa.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me start by saying I LOVE what they’ve done with Sinister during the Krakoa era: arrogant, egotistical, shit-disturber, hilarious. If there’s any gang of supes that needs the comic relief of a court jester, these mofos earned Sinister.

If this event is a mess of jumbled ideas, it’s ironically a reflection of Sinister himself: a pastiche of supervillain ambition, tragic ennui and overcompensating ego.

But it’s a helluva lot of fun, watching the sausage get turned into an exfoliated kaiju, then wrapped around a clown car of bizarre chimeric cannabis hallucinations. The Nighcrawlers especially (but most of this event) were reminiscent of Aaron’s Wolverine and the X-Men “guns that shoot Frankenstein monsters” level of weird.

I’ve somehow had a hard time during the Krakoan Era tracking all the fuckery that Sinister has been up to, and thankfully somehow they’re all tied into this event without me feeling even dumber for not getting the reference.

And good god, you guys aren’t kidding about the incomprehensible mess of Si Spurrier’s wandering words.

Not that the rest of the climax made me feel any less inattentive. Who the fuck were all those people and asides?

But since it was the very definition of “this doesn’t matter”, it was east to breeze past the scattered shells on the atomic beach, and just watch as Sinister got some form of comeuppance

[Alex Sarll]

Oh, this is more like it. You might have thought Gillen would fancy a break from orchestrating X-events after the ambitious if uneven AXE. But this time out he only contributes a more manageable five issues, sharing the writing load with the X-office's other Brits, Al Ewing and Si Spurrier. Which pedigree might explain why, while the X-Men have confronted more than enough nightmarish possible futures over the years, this one distinguishes itself with definite notes of 2000AD and then 40K as it pushes through snapshots of the world and then the galaxy 10, 100 and finally 1000 years into a timeline where Mr Sinister's fiendish plans have come to fruition - and nobody likes it, not even him. "There hasn't been real progress in the last nine hundred years. There's merely been an increase in scale." "Mutants are undisputed rulers of the galaxy. Yet, somehow, hate and fear remain."

This is a big part of the appeal, of course, because Gillen has always written a compelling Sinister, turning a character who used to be faintly embarrassing into a delectably hissable pantomime villain. Unmistakably a dick, but an entertaining dick, and one who isn't always wrong - his reducing mutants to the utility of the genes he's stolen from them is self-evidently monstrous, but he has a point about how many of them have wasted their powers over the years, and indeed that before he took over, humanity was apparently bent on something at least as bad as his dystopia. Hell, even on the small scale: "I'm not sure why the Boston Tea Party was a big deal. Americans lobbing fine tea into freezing water is just business as usual."

But if Sinister embodies the urge towards commodification and instrumentalisation, that doesn't leave the other mutants blameless, and certainly not their leaders. They may have been corrupted by Sinister's science shenanigans, but they had their sins too, whether a faith that can be weaponised by the unscrupulous, or that terrible temptation of how much better the world would surely be if only all the idiots could see that you were right (a theme picked up from the Xavier issue of Immortal X-Men, and at the last Xavier comes off at least as badly as anyone here).

Some of the underlying work is exactly the sort of thing endemic to modem superhero events, especially the notion that if Sinister has a diamond on his forehead, what about the other three suits? Yet where Geoff Johns and his heirs have made stuff like this a wearying grind of brand extension, here (and in the build-up) it regained the appropriate sense of satisfaction and wonder at a question implicit but long unasked, and pieces falling into place. Similarly, the hubris of his/their plan, aiming not to become a mere god - who, after all, in Marvel tend just to be big lads who join superteams - but something much more impressive.

And if that's the big picture, the page by page and panel by panel telling of it sings too. I understand that some of the American comics audience found it too fragmented in the way it tells the story through glimpses and vignettes, rather than plodding from A to B to C and leadenly on to Z, but, well, sucks to be them; for those of us raised on the aforementioned British dark futures (and maybe a dash of Eurocomics SF), it's easy enough to follow, and so much more prismatic fun this way. A nod to Alan Moore's Sinister Ducks one minute, a beautiful line like Emma's "He unlocked the cages of our sordid, beautiful hearts" the next. And the images! Giving each era its own artist and thus a unified look was a masterstroke, and letting them play with decayed and recombined elements of the whole Marvel toybox produces some wonderfully memorable moments. Though after AXE, I fear that, petulantly, my favourite may just have been the sodding Eternals getting dispatched in a single page. Still, not bad for a project which I remain fairly sure began life as the pun and/or typo Immoral X-Men before getting entirely out of hand. I particularly enjoyed the way it didn't go the obvious reset button route which has left so many of those previous dark future stories feeling faintly pointless, instead echoing back with real impact on the present.

[Tyler Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was indeed a Marvel event, it is now a thing that happened. Most of it feels pretty pointless by the end but I think I know what direction it’s put us on and I’m excited to see where this story goes. If anything this continued to prove to me why I love Storm so much. The action is fun, the plot is complex and relies on deep X-Men knowledge these last many years. But I did have fun and enjoyed the ride.

[Benji Glaab · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a lot going on here and tbh this collection is way too long for me to finish if I'm not really enjoying myself. Once I realized there is no bearing on the continuity of the X universe it seems even more pointless to drag myself through the mud. I'm sure some people will enjoy this but not for me sadly

[Milan Konjevic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Na momente bespotrebno komplikovan i konfuzan event, ipak pobedjuje svojim sumanutim SF konceptima. Gilen, Spurier i Juing su, kao scenaristi, ovde napravili nesto zaista posebno. Naravno, ako ne poznajete barem poslednjih 40ak godina istorije XMena, ovo ce vam biti necitljivo.

[Bertazzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a nuance in Gillen's Sinister that conveys a certain melancholy amidst the humor. But not so that you can empathize with the villain, but rather so that you can notice the eternal impossibility of his plans. He will always be betrayed by his ego.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a great read! This is in my top ten favorite x-titles of the year. Love how it ties everything together in the end! And how much it goes through time.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars.
Continuing directly out of Immortal X-Men, this story begins with Sinister's 10th use of the Moira Engine, a failsafe device that allows him to figure out how to reign over everyone and reset when everything goes wrong. This time he is blocked from being able to reset, and the chaos of his reign takes over for 1000 years.
Overall, this story gets rewritten out of canon, but there are a few things that happen by the end that will be important for the future of the X-Books, probably contributing to the beginning of the end for the Krakoa Era.
- Sinister is put into the Krakoan Pit for his crimes
- Rasputin (the popular Chimera character from the Powers of X story) comes through to our reality and seemingly joins the Quiet Council.
- Xavier, Hope, Emma Frost, and Exodus are revealed as corrupted on a genetic level by Sinister, and hold themselves to the same rules as they make others follow, so all 4 of them go into the Pit until such a time as they can be fixed from possible Sinister control
- Mother Righteous, one of the original 4 clones of Nathaniel Essex (one of which is the Mr Sinister we've known for years) makes friends with the Quiet Council, after her 1000 year old Sins of Sinister timeline self is able to communicate all that happened from the building of the Reliquary Perilous. (But I don't trust her!)

Overall, I enjoyed the story, but it was way too long, and ultimately was missing everything involving the Summers family, which Sinister is known for being heavily involved with.
Recommend

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens when everything becomes Sinister!? In this hellish future where Nathaniel Essex has won, see what a mutant dominated universe looks like, especially when the man himself is overridden by his peers he perceives to control. Having read this over several months in single issues, I believe it'll read much better all collected.

In terms of pure entertainment, I don't think this hit the highs of events like X of Swords or Inferno, but it's certainly no X lives/X deaths. Gillen, Ewing, and Spurrier give it a solid effort, and I dug a lot of what they brought to this. Gillen aped Star Trek, Ewing was doing Star Wars, and Spurrier apped more of his dangers of blind faith. There's almost too much window dressing as well, you want to see what else was happening in this twisted future, but there ain't enough time.

Overall, this event was unique in its approach to the Moria dangling thread, and the giant red sized elephant in the room going forward. It certainly feels me with dread, it's about to be a rough time for the mutants, and Nathaniel might finally realize the errors of his ways.

[Frédéric · Rating 2 out of 5]

The basic idea is quite good actually and the ending weakens Krakoa enough to be interesting and a bit more than the traditional status quo ante.

But how bloody long and convoluted was the road to get there!!
The main plot gets diluted through sub-series and useless sub-plots and drowned under hundreds of captions. Though I’ll admit they’re well written- with some delectable dark humor at times- it’s way too much to keep focused. It is a mind-numbing plot already and I felt tired after reading every single issue

Deploying three series by three writers is the original sin though. We’re not speaking a main series and tie-ins here. The 3 series are the whole plot.
It just adds to the overall confusion, even using the reading order. The same story could have been told in 8 issues by one creative team only and would have been that much more impactful.

So it’s a 2’5*, rounded down from the spite of what it could have been with a more coherent editorial team.

[Dakota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this was a great story that added some depth to Krakoa and always kept me wanting to know what was going to happen next. Although this story closed most of the doors that it opened, there was still enough to take away that makes this event necessary for anyone reading through the Krakoan era we are in right now.

[Matty Dub · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this a lot more, the build up is incredible and the narrative here really shines up to year 1000 where Gillen loses the plot and the story is left without a trace of coherency. The art also gets extremely uneven from year 100 on. The end is satisfactory although I’m not 100% sure how we got there but yeah… very uneven event, still entertaining throughout so 3-3.5 range for me.

[Keith Hewitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume does a great job building on Hickman’s foundation and the best of Immortal X-Men, Legion of X, and X-Men: Red. More fun than Judgment Day and establishes that Gillen is the current MVP of the X-Men writers.

[Rory Wilding · Rating 4 out of 5]

During the post-Jonathan Hickman era of the First Krakoa Age, a number of writers have been taken over this new status quo for the Marvel Mutants, from Gerry Duggan writing the flagship X-Men title, Al Ewing writing X-Men Red and Kieron Gillen writing the best of the lot, Immortal X-Men. When you specifically look at Gillen's title, Nathaniel Essex/Mister Sinister has been the standout character as despite being part of the Quiet Council, which has governed the nation for the benefit of mutantdom, he has his own motivations that are, well, sinister.

It's worth reading the first year of Immortal X-Men to have a grasp of what Sinister has been planning, which pays off in Sins of Sinister, a crossover event involving a dark future brought about by Mister Sinister's corrupt machinations and his experiment in creating a batch of Mutants called Chimeras. Considering the numerous times the X-Men have had a dark future storyline, this crossover takes cues from the Age of Apocalypse storyline from the nineties, beginning with a one-shot written by Kieron Gillen and artist Lucas Werneck, and then three limited series that replaced three of the main X-titles.

Considering the complex ideas that Hickman was doing with House of X/Powers of X, from the high sci-fi concepts and massive time-jumps, you can see that approach somewhat replicated here in Sins of Sinister, which has an identity of its own and is arguably even wilder, considering the twisted if humourous nature of Sinister himself. No doubt it can be too much, especially when this storyline from these three writers that is pulling in different directions and jumps through periods of time.

While I wasn't a fan of Nightcrawlers from writer Simon Spurrier, which features Sinister's private army of chimera assassins, the two other limited series were more successful. Gillen's Immoral X-Men feels more of a direct continuation of where the one-shot, in which we see how Sinister's actions influence Xavier's dream of a mutant utopia to a horrific conclusion, leading to world domination. Considering that many of these characters like Emma Frost and Xavier being tainted by Sinister, there is a distinct personality, whilst Sinister himself is realising that his perfect plan that has come to fruition, isn't panning out the way he hoped.

However, Al Ewing writes the best of the three limited series as X-Men Red temporarily turning into Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants. Presenting Storm, who leads a resistance in response to the cataclysmic events of the destruction of Arakko, Ewing continues to prove that Storm is one of the best characters in all of X-Men, showing how dominant and passionate she is as a leader. Showing how Sinister's actions have affected the cosmic side of the Marvel universe, Ewing goes hard on the Star Wars references, whether it is a resistance group against a galactic empire to even an infiltration of something that looks a bit like the Death Star.

With numerous artists involved, including Lucas Werneck, Paco Medina, Patch Zircher and Alessandro Vitti, as previously stated, this crossover event throws a lot and it can be too much, but one cannot deny the level of the ambition throughout. As much as I'm more excited about returning to the main storylines that these writers are doing during the Krakoa era, Sins of Sinister is a mostly successful detour that tries to do new things with the X-Men.

[Michael Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m an absolute sucker for this kind of stuff. Harkening back to House of X/Powers of X, Sins of Sinister finds the titular villain infecting resurrected X-people with his genes and taking control of Krakoa thanks to his bank of cloned Moiras. But Krakoa isn’t enough for the madman, and soon Earth falls victim to his machinations, and then the galaxy… and beyond. A thousand-year rule of Sinister and the various factions he’s created. This is top-notch alt-future history, X-Men by way of Alastair Reynolds. So damn good!

[Joshua]

Didn’t really live up to my long-building excitement about the inevitable reckoning with Sinister. The rare Marvel event that feels like… too short? Too rushed? At a certain point toward the end it feels like they’re just getting this stuff out of the way to move on to the next thing, which was a bummer. But. Great beginning, great ending, Rasputin IV. I had fun enough.

Oh! But a million percent not worth the insane cover price. Was able to get at a steep discount.

[Mariano Hortal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lectura 228 (2023) Sins of Sinister de Kieron Gillen, Al ewing y otros
Sinceramente, Siniestro no es un oersonaje que me guste demasiado. Desde la marcha de Hickman han centrado todos los eventos del universo mutante en él y lo leo por el unlimited, ya se está haciendo largo y pastoso a pesar de la buena premisa inicial.
3/5

[Julien L · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a concept in videogames called "savescumming" and that's basically what this comic is. What if Mr. Sinister reset the timeline so many times he fucked everything up? One of the coolest things about this is the full mutant Chimera hybrids. Banshee/Cypher that can tune its sonic screams to any frequency? Fuck yeah.

[Andy Hoover · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty dense story, and I am still not sure what is what in Marvel, but I did enjoy the focus on Sinister - he is fantastic when he is a peacock bitch with a long view - taking pretty much everything to the most absurd extreme was fun. Still, a little lost, but we are post-Krakoa now anyway, right?

[Cristhian · Rating 3 out of 5]

En concepto era la historia perfecta.

Lastimosamente, no funcionó.

[Chris Sharp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sure

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started off with some cool concepts, and there was great art throughout, hence earning 2 stars, but by the end it was pretty messy and chaotic in the way of so many big Marvel events. Perhaps its biggest issue is that, despite being an event spiralling out of the X-Men Krakoan Age, there are actually very few of the main X-Men characters present as their normal selves, which made the book feel like an annoying side story from X-Men continuity rather than the centrepiece I thought it would be.

[Christian Zamora-Dahmen · Rating 1 out of 5]

They had such a great idea. My head was blowing up with what started in Immortal X-Men. And then, the whole thing derailed.
This felt like a plot getting handed to a group of kids for roleplaying. For such dynamic characters, they all got stuck in one single theme for 1.000 years, this makes absolutely no sense. Not even the X-Men can hold a grudge for that long.
I loved getting into the story, I was surprised by the outcome and I’m really looking forward to what will come, but the entire in-between was such a horrible drag. Horrible characters, senseless battles, irritating dialogues.
I wonder if this event was rushed or what. It could have been another “Age of Apocalypse”, but it definitely wasn’t.

[Gus Mendonca · Rating 2 out of 5]

absolutamente incompreensível e totalmente niilista. Em dado momento, uma bala feita com o corpo do fanático viaja mil por mil anos e mata um galactus infectado pelo motoqueiro fantasma. Em outro, um clone da x 23 com o noturno mata um clone feminino do sinistro para recuperar o espírito de um bebê nascido magicamente 900 anos antes. Não tenho a menor ideia da razão de nenhum desses eventos ou como eles afetam a busca do sinistro por se tornar um dominion. Durante a leitura, eu nem mesmo tinha certeza de quais eram as facções lutando. Um sinal claro de que a fase krakoa vai terminar mal…