A man needs a mission. What else do we have in this life but the urge to accomplish a goal? Why even keep this blog going after all these years considering it never became the biggest, most interesting blog in the world? I guess I just like having stuff to do. There’s my Strong Guy Watch, chronicling every random, minor appearance of Strong Guy. And now I’m going to dub this my Multiple Man Mystery!

Multiple Man is alive and well on Krakoa…but is he the real Multiple Man? New evidence arrived this week in Empyre: X-Men #1, the tie-in to Empyre. For the first time in Dawn of X, Multiple Man has speaking lines.

He’s also wearing his modern costume, which is mostly just a jacket over a stylized T-shirt. I really like the modern costume.

So in this issue, Multiple Man joins up with Angel, Monet and Magik to investigate one of the gateways on Genosha, with the lot of them getting wrapped up in the whole Empyre thing. Multiple Man is mostly used to help clean up the gateway.

And that’s it so far! We’ll find out more as the story continues.

But here’s the big deal: not too long ago, Multiple Man was killed off. He was eventually replaced by one of this dupes, who had reduced powers and just wasn’t the same guy. This duplicate starred in an actual Multiple Man-titled comic book mini-series, the only comic to ever bear that name, so it felt like a big deal.

When all the mutants were resurrected on Krakoa as part of Dawn of X, Multiple Man came with them…but which Multiple Man? Did they resurrect the original? Or did they resurrect the replacement? I’d like to think it was the original, but considering the weird retcons and continuity flubs inherent in the replacement storyline, I wouldn’t put it past the current X-Office to just not care to get Multiple Man right.

Hence this new Multiple Man Mystery segment! I will track every appearance the character makes on Krakoa to hopefully determine, once and for all, whether or not this is the original Multiple Man back among the living. It’s important to me.

Also, he’s worn a different outfit in every appearance so far. That part is kinda weird…to the point that it’s gotta be intentional, right?

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