As of this writing, the end of the Krakoa Era of X-Men comics has concluded. I’ve read this whole era as it was coming out from beginning to end, and I have some thoughts on its conclusion, and some of my high points of this period of the comic, and things which I wish had been explored further.
Eras of X-Men comics come in cycles. For every period where the Xavier/Jean Grey Institute is up and running, there’s another where the mansion is in ruins, everyone’s on the run or dead, and presumably somebody lost their hat. On the one hand, the Krakoa era was the start of something new in the cycle, something adding something like the Utopia period, where the X-Men had forged a safe space for mutantkind out of the world, which ultimately again is taken away, leading to another period of flux and transition.
On the one hand, I get it. Safe Spaces on their own are transitory – what safe space you have at a college, in a support group, or elsewhere will eventually end. Money runs out, you graduate, life events preclude you from being able to be a part of it, and it eventually goes away. On the other hand, superheroes are not only fiction but in some respects wish-fulfillment fiction. They’re a place where the Nazis get punched, and even if all other aspects of society are cruel and corrupt, there’s a bright colorful superhero who will stand up for you when nobody else will – even Spawn was set up at first as something of a defender of the homeless and unwanted of society, even if that wasn’t completely Todd McFarlane’s intent. So, why shouldn’t these safe spaces endure in fiction?
Certainly, Krakoa has some particular issues to it that make it a little tricky for long-form storytelling. Mutant Resurrection (with a degree of Human Resurrection, as established during the Avengers-X-Men-Eternals crossover) makes the superhero revolving door a little more explicit, potentially taking the sting off death. That said, we’ve become accustomed to deaths for comic characters being a little transitory, whether it’s Colossus, Kitty Pryde, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, or the many, many faked deaths of Charles Xavier. Krakoan resurrection just makes open what long time fans of superhero comics as a medium knew was the case anyway that death only sticks for as long as writers can’t think of anything to do with a character.
Yes, there are lots of people who would prefer that deaths “stick” and prefer Supers comics where that remains the case (like Invincible), but the ultimate thing is – the Marvel & DC universes are shared toyboxes. Ideally the situation should be that continuity shouldn’t be a thing that shackles writers – it’s a thing that facilitates storytelling and creates potential for new and exciting stories, and something to be fudged and neglected when it gets in the way of that (more on that in a bit). So, Krakoan Resurrection, and with it the ability as introduced later to resurrect humans – makes things tremendously interesting, and does create potential for new and exciting stories, and removes the shackle of a writer killing off a character that someone else wants to do something with. Does it drift the world of Earth-616 further from our own? Yes. Superhero universes have already diverged tremendously from our own by the very inclusion of superheroes (something that writers of supers comics can take from My Hero Academia, Tiger & Bunny, and One Punch Man is that they acknowledge that).
Ending the Krakoan era returns to a status quo where we pretend that death matters, which in a weird way is frustrating because of how this conceit of superhero storytelling runs headlong into the mutant metaphor. Because with mutants, because they’re a population that is hated and feared, and one that has served as an analog for BIPOC populations, along with LGBT populations and people with disabilities (something that has come much more to the fore in more recent periods) – is that one of the major causes of deaths for mutants in X-Men books isn’t just being in a big pitched supervillain event battle (like the Battle of Bludhaven in DC comics) – it’s hate crimes. Like, actual, literal hate crimes. Lynchings, getting dragged behind vehicles, rounded up into literal concentration camps for systematic extermination, all of it. This is aggravated by the language of actual bigotry being used against mutants – up to and including actual Replacement Theory language just getting used by anti-mutant bigots with a minimal find-and-replace. So, when a villain kills of a bunch of mutants for shock value by the authors, or because editorial wants to reduce the number of mutants on the table (like the bombing by the Purifiers in the wake of Decimation), it’s potentially inflicting or re-inflicting trauma on the readers.
Having Krakoan Resurrection on the board on the one hand blunted some of that. You still had characters getting killed for shock value, but I also noticed that who was getting killed and when was handled a little more judiciously, and when it did come up as a hate crime, it also often was accompanied by that character getting brought back on Krakoa – going from a place where they were hated and in danger, to a place where they were safe and had people who cared about them and would fight to protect them.
Was Krakoa as it was before narratively sustainable in the long term? Not completely, it did emphasize the separation of the X-Men from the rest of the Marvel heroes a little bit too much. However, I felt like the writers were aware of that, and were taking steps to include more avenues for stories outside of Krakoa – whether it was the Treehouse base for the X-Men in New York, the inclusion of Arakko on Mars as a mechanism for continued involvement of the X-Men in the Cosmic part of the Marvel universe, or some of the various stories tying in with the New Mutants and other younger generations of X-Men focusing on those mutants who chose not to go to Krakoa – either because they have humans they care about outside who they want to stay with, or because they don’t feel like they fit in on Krakoa.
That said, considering that one of the things Johnathan Hickman used in his setup for the Krakoa era was putting the biological technology of Krakoa in opposition to the technological intelligences of the Sentinels, having the final battle be the Phoenix Force-powered hyper-intelligent mutant group consciousness vs. a synthetic intelligence born out of the Sentinels, Nimrod, and a variant of Mister Sinister felt right to me.
Perhaps this thus becomes for the best that the first setting book to come out for Marvel’s new RPG is one for the X-Men, with a particular focus on the Krakoan era – creating a situation where fans can extend the Krakoan era for as long as they like, and create a Marvel Universe where it never had to end.
Also, as a final note before I get into some of my highlights – I’m amused by the fact that Krakoa ended before they could resurrect Henry Peter Gyrich. Nobody liked that fucker.
So, my high points –
I really liked the New Mutants stories coming out of this from Vita Ayala, along with the Children of the Atom series. Charlie Jane Anders’ New Mutants books were also great, and honestly, I kinda wish she’d been kept on after the end of Krakoa to follow up on these characters in the wake of Rise of the Powers of X.
I really liked the Kate Pryde & Emma Frost power duo in the Marauders series, even if that somewhat ended up fading to the background over the course of the series. I also liked Kate finally formally outing herself as, if not Bi, then as a Lesbian. I also liked Betsy Braddock getting her body back, and Kwannon becoming active again as well, with Betsy & Rachel Summers getting to become a couple, with Betsy as the current leader of the Captain Britain Corps – I do also hope that doesn’t get lost in the shuffle in the stories to come.
The X-Men Blue Origins One-Shot, which retcons and formally fixes Nightcrawler’s parentage (as being Mystique and Destiny) was great, and some of the ways that paid off over the course of the finale was finally good, with both his parents getting to embrace him as their son.
The new concept of X-Factor Investigations was great, with the idea of Krakoan resurrections being dependant on confirming a person’s death, with them going to look into that, both to confirm the death but also to get into the circumstances why, and how that would (for example) tie-into the Mojoverse.
The Invincible Iron Man tie-in issues and the Uncanny Avengers mini – I like when the X-Men exist outside of the X-Line – in particular Uncanny Avengers is going to have some very likely reprecussions for the Captain America ongoing as well.
The Hellfire Galas before the most recent Mutant Massacre – I love how each one was just another way for the Mutants to Flex, I loved the shifts to the X-Teams that came out of them, and I especially loved seeing all the fashion to come out of it – not only with the concept of Krakoan fashion coming with the X-Men, but also the costumes that were devised for some of the non-mutant heroes to come with it (especially when some of Steve Rogers’ outfits).
Uncanny Spider-Man: I liked Nightcrawler posing as a Spider-Man, and I kinda wish he was in the NYX book to follow-up on that.
My Low Points:
During the Krakoa era, they decided to bring back X-Statix, only instead of trying to do a commentary on reality television, they’re influencers now, except Mike Allred and the rest of the crew on the book don’t actually get YouTube, so it instead looked like some Old Man Yells At Cloud mocking of people who blog and do YouTube videos.
X-Corp wasn’t executed well, I felt. I never quite got that they were able to really pull off the concept. It was always on the brink of being interesting, but it never quite landed.
X-Force felt like the writers really wanted to have Dark Beast again, so they had to turn current Beast into Dark Beast. He certainly had become someone who had been becoming more morally compromised since the Legacy Virus, but this felt like going just a little bit too far – and wasn’t helped by the really heavy gore. Bringing back an older version of Beast at the end helped – but also felt a little bit like when they had to restore Tony Stark’s mind from an older backup in the Iron Man books after Civil War, because they realized that Mark Millar had done just too much damage to the character for him to ever not be a villain as he was.
I’m looking forward to the From The Ashes era to come, and with that title it is clearly meant to be a period of transition. I do hope that what we ultimately get out of it is that we do get some form of permanent Mutant Safe Space to be fought for. After having had about a half-decade of basically Mutant Joy as a constant, I’d rather Marvel Editorial not decide that Mutant Misery should become the norm again for a decade or more after.
If you’ve fallen behind on the Krakoan era and would like to catch up, I’d recommend getting a subscription to Marvel Unlimited, or picking up the books digitally on Amazon – and a bunch of the story is available through Comixology Unlimited (Amazon links are Affiliate Links).
