X-Men #18 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #18
“Wounded Wolves”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: CF Villa
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Designer: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Synch fights vampires while using Wolverine (Laura)’s powers. And yes, they are vampires, not just random nobodies. Some of them have fangs.
PAGE 2. Opening page – a quote from both Jean and Scott. I’m sure this has probably appeared in dialogue somewhere during the series, but I don’t have time to trawl through the back issues, I’m afraid.
PAGE 3. Beast recaps the plot.
Laura seemingly died covering Synch’s escape from the Vault, and was resurrected on Krakoa, in X-Men vol 5 #19. The original, older Laura was rescued from the Vault last issue and happily reunited with Synch, her partner from her time inside the Vault, who has been pining for her ever since he escaped. (The resurrected version had no memories of their time together).
The information that she’s joined the X-Men is new – but unsurprising, since she was so happy to be reunited with Synch.
Beast clearly suspects that she’s an impostor planted by the Children of the Vault, but it’s basically his job these days to be cynical and wrong.
PAGES 4-5. Synch and Laura head to Detroit.
Laura is going to see her duplicate younger self to talk about the awkward fact of there being two of them. The younger Laura/Wolverine is in Detroit fighting vampires alongside Dazzler and Jubilee. Those three are fighting Vampire Nation in the current X-Terminators miniseries, which isn’t finished yet. The next scene clarifies that this is effectively a sequel, with the vampires making revenge attacks on Dazzler during her US tour, and Jubilee and Wolverine coming along to help once again.
“Gabby” is Laura’s younger clone sister, Scout – mostly a New Mutants character these days.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
PAGES 7-10. Laura, Synch and the X-Terminators fight vampires.
Old Laura has a hologram helmet for… some reason? It doesn’t really fit the colour scheme of her costume and it seems very out of place, but maybe there’ll be a reason for it in the end.
Jubilee seems to assume that future Laura is just another time travelling doppelganger. It’ll be interesting to see whether that’s the line generally taken to explain the duplicate Lauras on Krakoa – the idea that resurrection can create duplicates might give more than a few Krakoans an existential crisis.
PAGES 11-13. The rest of the X-Men rescue Orchis scientists from a space station explosion.
Orchis’s orbiting space station, the Bloom, makes its first appearance but gets some background in the next data page. Since Judgment Day, Orchis has been clearly positioned as a public and popular outfit, and presumably (like Feilong’s station on Phobos) this station is mainly being presented as a legitimate scientific outfit. In fact, this does seem to be a genuine explosion rather than a trap, though the scientists are predictably cagey about explaining what they were up to.
OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (The British equivalent is the Health and Safety Executive.)
PAGE 14. A memo from the Beast about the Orchis’ space station. Despite the Beast being a raving lunatic these days, this seems to be broadly sensible – except for the bit of the end where he suggests cloning a non-mutant spy, presumably in the expectation that they’ll get killed.
“Wolverine (Kinney) managed to infiltrate the organization’s Phobos base…” In issue #10.
“[W]e’ve … breached their Mother Mold Foundry multiple times, and at great loss of life. Mostly Wolverine’s (Logan).” As covered in Inferno #1 (2021).
PAGES 15-19. The two Lauras talk while fighting vampires.
The vampires are kind of in this story as random bad guys to make it more than just “Laura and Laura go for a coffee”.
“I wanted to see the body.” Wolverine is suggesting that she always suspected that she was a doppelganger – perhaps reasonably, given that it was always unclear how anyone had verified that she had died.
“We’d already been used so much…” Wolverine is about to say something about their long history (and origin story) of being exploited as living weapons. The interesting point is why she mentions it in this context. Is she suggesting that Beast deliberately engineered her resurrection in circumstances where the protocols weren’t actually met? It would fit with his attitude at the start of the story, and explain why he gets mentioned twice in a story that’s otherwise irrelevant to him.
“They resurrected you with a full adamantium skeleton, huh?” Laura is meant to just have adamantium claws, but Duggan wrote her with a full skeleton after her resurrection. This seems to have started out as a continuity error, but it was explained as an error on Proteus’s part in issue #10.
“If something goes bad for one of us, they’ll only bring one of us back.” This is in line with what we’ve been told before about the Krakoan policy on resurrecting clones (i.e., don’t). In particular, this general policy was a plot point in Hellions, though an exception was eventually made for Madelyne Pryor in order to appease Alex Summers. The Five were increasingly objecting to the refusal to resurrect clones with clear individual identities, though, and Scout (a clone of Laura) was in fact resurrected on Hope’s authority in New Mutants. Scout seems a pretty compelling precedent for the idea that both Wolverines should qualify for resurrection – but young Laura is technically right about it being the ostensible rule.
The two Lauras don’t apparently want to hang out with one another, despite the increasing “Wolverine family” vibe that younger Laura has had with Scout, Daken and Logan. Still, the weirdness of being such direct copies with such an extensive common history (not something Laura shares with Scout) may make the difference.
PAGE 20-21. The two X-Men return home.
Jubilee and Synch were members of Generation X together back in the 1990s, which probably explains why they’re the two who seem most comfortable together (even if the subjective age gap is now massive).
PAGE 22. Jean Grey vouches for Laura as real.
Beast continues to insist that he doesn’t trust her. But given his behaviour in X-Force and Wolverine, if he really thought that, he wouldn’t even be discussing it with the Quiet Council; it makes more sense if he’s making a show of not believing her, maybe to cover his tracks for having engineered the resurrection of a duplicate in the first place.
For some reason Beast seems to be sitting at the Quiet Council desk, which might be an art error, or might just mean that he’s making a show of importance when the Council isn’t actually sitting. The fact that he’s clearly positioned as the most cynical person in the room is especially telling when Sebastian Shaw is apparently present.
PAGES 23-24. The Starjammers have been infected by the Brood.
This is setting up a crossover with Captain Marvel next issue. The Brood, of course, are the aliens who infect people with eggs that grow and take over the host.
“To my dear sons … the ones I knew about and the ones I never did…” The sons Corsair knows about are Cyclops, Havok and Vulcan. He ‘s implying here that there could be more, though the last time somebody suggested there might an extra Summers brother it set up the notorious “third Summers brother” dangler that meandered through most of the 1990s.
PAGE 25. Carlos Pacheco tribute page.
PAGE 26. Trailers.
Paul> I’m sure this has probably appeared in dialogue somewhere during the series, …
Jean says a variant of this to Iceman during the ORCHIS rescue in this issue.
Paul> alongside Dazzler and Jubilee
Boom-Boom seems to be here too (she’s the one with the BOOM BOOM sound effect behind Dazzler on page 7). So that’s the entire X-Terminators team present.
Paul> Old Laura has a hologram helmet for… some reason?
The hologram helmet is actually from X-Men (Vol 5) 19. I think the idea was that once their costumes started breaking down, Synch and Wolverine jury-rigged some Vault tech into their new costumes. Laura brought the helmet with her when she left the Vault.
By having Beast be the one to put doubt into how genuine the old Laura is, I guess we–and the other Krakoans–are supposed to dismiss his concerns and side with the idea of her being real.
Which makes me wonder if there’s indeed a level of fake-out whereupon Old Laura will turn out to be a spy/mole/brainwashed/imposter. Or maybe we’re supposed to think that. Either way, the issue with Forge suggested -someone- or -something- extra came out of the Vault with him. Still, having two Lauras is indeed awkward since it brings back an issue of who has the soul/spirit/spark of the real character, how can they coexist, and so forth. This storyline has the potential to get extremely messy and complicated before it’s over.
God I hope there aren’t any more lost Summers kids out there. Also, I’m a little concerned for the other Starjammers, since it looks like there were some unidentifiable bodies with Corsair.
So after all this time we finally have a duplicate of a living person which should immediately throw the entire resurrection process into massive doubt and they just ignore it entirely?
That’s very on brand for Krakoa.
The upcoming Captain Marvel crossover looks to be interesting.
Over in Captain Marvel (where the Brood story arc has already begun), Carol is leading a team of Spider-Woman, Hazmat, Gambit, Psylocke, Polaris and Wolverine (Laura) to go rescue Rogue and Binary from being captives of the Brood.
Here in X-Men, it seems like Jean and Scott will be leading their team of X-Men (Synch, Forge, Magik, Iceman, Firestar) + Old Woman Laura to go rescue the Starjammers from being devoured by the Brood.
So the two Lauras might cross paths again relatively soon.
This issue really speaks to how terrible of an idea it was to not have Krakoa be a temporary thing and instead have it be the new main world. Any stakes are gone because anyone can be resurrected now, and Hickman was already pushing that even back when this was presumably going to only be a brief period, and now I guess we’re at the point where it’s really starting to collapse in on itself.
Also, like I’ve speculated here before, Havok looks to be leaving the X-Men soon over the events of Dark Web (only to probably resurface as the All-New All-Different Captain Krakoa in time for Duggan’s Uncanny Avengers book).
This creates an opening for Laura to take his place on the X-Men team. I suspect Jean, Scott, Everett and Laura will stay with the X-Men when the team changes roster during Hellfire Gala 2023. Duggan clearly has a story he’s exploring here.
When you can somehow resurrect an infant mutant baby from Ancient Rome who never even had an active X-gene via the Waiting Room, you’ve completely lost the thread.
Re: the clones- Scott mentioned the loosened resurrection protocols for clones when Maddie was resurrected. I think the issue is that Jean and Maddie and Laura and Scott are closer to identical siblings with different life experiences than two versions of the same person. The two Lauras had the same life experiences until Laura went into the Vault.
Re: Beast- I think the idea is the Council just called him in to ask him if he thought this was the real Laura and someone gave him a seat, despite appearances in the art.
This is probably before Jean heard about the events of this week’s Wolverine or she probably wouldn’t be as civil with Beast.
Re: GN- I don’t think the new Captain Krakoa is Alex. For starters the description of the Free Comic Book Day issue makes it sound like Captain Krakoa and the Uncanny Avengers are two different stories:
https://www.ign.com/articles/marvel-fcbd-2023-x-men-spider-man-venom-uncanny-avengers
For another, the entire purpose of the Captain Krakoa suit is to conceal the wearer’s identity and Alex doesn’t need that. Judging from the leaked images, wherever he’s going, he’s going with Maddie, after she fixes the mess she made in New York.
(As a side note, does every X-crossover have to end with all the deaths being undone? Judgement Day ended that way, and it looks like Dark Web and Sins of Sinister will end the same way.)
« The vampires are kind of in this story as random bad guys to make it more than just “Laura and Laura go for a coffee”. »
To be fair it’s also a bit of promotion for the X-Terminators book.
Synch has been aging recently in the book so I suspect he and Old Woman Laura will be shunted off together somewhere soon enough.
Forge likely has CotV mole Darwin within him, thus Beast continues to justified in his suspicions but wrong in detail.
Deaths being undone?
Is this nu Who?
Laura got her arm cut of in X-Terminators, I guess Williams didn’t know she was supposed to have an adamantium skeleton now. 🙂
I’m waiting for Duggan to stop taking the easy way out. Kitty can’t be resurrected or use Krakoan gates, until… it’s fine. Cyclops has to disguise himself as another person until… it’s fine. Synch alters someone’s mind against their will, and then… it’s fine. Havok is on the team to cause friction with Cyclops and is acting erratically, the results being… it’s fine. There’s two Lauras, and… it’s fine.
Coming soon: Fall of X! Krakoa is destroyed, the mutants in total disarray, and then… it’s fine.
I think it’s the fact the x-books are very much ducking the hard questions or weirdness that comes from resurrection, clones, and the soul/spark. It could be some great stuff to read about. Or at the very least, the highly entertaining melodrama I want from my x-books! 🙂
The Krakoan age has ducked the hard questions the entire time, unfortunately.
So much room for drama, and they’ve chosen “everything is great and perfect” over and over.
I think the first couple years of the current era were about setting up Krakoa as a good thing, but:
– while not executed as well as I would like, Beast/X-Force is not presented in a sympathetic light.
– Sinister and his schemes are presented as unequivocally bad.
– Prof. X is characterized as morally compromised.
– the Sabretooth comics show just how wrong Krakoan Justice is.
– Magneto grew disillusioned with Krakoa, and rejected the resurrection protocols.
– In New Mutants, we’ve seen how Krakoa failed the younger members of its society before the eponymous team worked to fix the society’s mistakes.
The creative teams should be doing more to explore the problems with Krakoa. Beast not being imprisoned and/or on trial makes no sense, and the non-police police of Legion of X haven’t been explored enough. Still, Immortal X-Men and Sabretooth give me the sense of tension that Duggan’s comics lack.
It wasn’t Hickman’s plan for Krakoa. Most of the other writers from this era decided they wanted Krakoa to be an actual mutant utopia, rather than addressing different questions raised by Hickman in House/Powers and Inferno (even with all that series myriad faults).
It feels as if one of the side effects of the Krakoa era has been to turn any sort of “classic” X-Men team title into an ancillary title, since the real action is with the bigwigs on Krakoa (and, arguably, Mars/Arakko for the cosmic scene).
Even a title like Marauders is doing bigger reveals about the lore and backstory than this title.
Maybe it could work if it’s about the characters trying to be a standard hero team, acting as if this is all uncomplicated, but showing the disturbing undercurrent and having their denial get increasingly difficult to sustain.
Or perhaps the X-Men really could be the characters who reject Krakoa on the grounds of all its very visible faults, walking a tightrope between their ideals and the dangers to mutantdom if Krakoa falls apart too fast or int he wrong way, distrusted by Krakoans and humans alike. That’d be a fun spin on “fighting to save a world that hates and fears them.”
But what we’re getting are fairly typical “standard” X-Men-in-superhero-mode stories with Krakoa in the background to provide the occasional plot gimmick.
My sense is that the kinds of characters most likely to be voted onto on a team running around trying to do mutant-themed superheroing — and the kind of writer likely to go all in on it — are not going to be that into the politics of Krakoa or the ambiguities of its new technologies and ready-made rituals and laws.
re: Beast’s plan to infiltrate The Bloom.
I read his idea about cloning “an operative that doesn’t have an X-Gene” as meaning that the place likely has mutant-detecting tech that a non-mutant might evade. The basic point though is to remind us that Beast is a baddie, who will create sentient life to be used as a mere tool, much like, for instance, Peacock Tat Guy.
@Jenny: My perspective is that–due to the serialized nature of comics–the stakes are exactly the same because characters were being brought back from death long before the resurrection protocols existed. And while I agree that there have been some fascinating but serious problems with the premise (specifically the generally unaddressed mutant supremacy angle), I’m quite fond of how radically different and challenging this era is. As a lapsed fan after Morisson, the only time I checked back in with the X-line until now was with C&Y X-Force/Uncanny X-Force, and I certainly wasn’t reading those stakes of death, but for tension generated by great character work.
@Uncanny X-Ben: See Mike Loughlin’s list if ways other books *have* criticized the status quo and poked holes into veil of paradise. If your problem is that the writing team isn’t going in deep enough, that’s a separate point.
@Chris V: It’s interesting that the notion that this is all somehow a 180 u-turn against Hickman’s original master plan still persists when he, himself, was responsible for perpetrating a lot of the things people have been critical of here and elsewhere: Odd or outright bad characterization, lack of self-awareness or exploration with regards of some the more controversial elements of the Krakoa premise, etc. Also it’s disingenuous to suggest Hickman’s been the only person to raise challenging questions about tbe setup when, in reality, we’ve seen it being challenged by other writers to varying degrees since the beginning (e.g., Wolverine, X-Force, New Mutants, SWORD, Red, Way of X, even Excalibur).
I’m not sure how Excalibur challenged anything when it seemed to be one of the biggest offenders for the idea that “whatever mutants do is fine because they were once persecuted”.
Outside of that, I agree that Hickman’s work on the title was far from perfect and his entire premise deciding to ignore much characterization which existed prior to the creation of Krakoa, that wasn’t the issue being critiqued in this particular discussion.
I also wasn’t saying that Hickman was the only writer to challenge the concepts underlying Krakoa, but that once Hickman lost his planned direction for the storyline, it became much more accepted that the very concept of Krakoa wasn’t based on problematic beliefs but was an actual mutant utopia in its birth throes. The underlying assumptions behind Krakoa were no longer open to question, but were to be accepted at face value even if there are some problems.
Probably Percy’s X-Force in relation to Beast is the most glaring example of flaws in Krakoa since Hickman leaving. However, as many have pointed out on this site, it seems more and more that Percy’s intention isn’t to critique the very existence of an organization like X-Force (which may be a necessary evil), but that allowing morally compromised and incompetent leadership is the real problem.
Hickman presented interesting conceptual questions about resurrection, immortality, nationalism, and what exactly are the repercussions inherent in the idea of “mutants winning” (in “Inferno”).
If Hickman never properly followed up on his premises, whether that was his own failings as a writer or simply forced upon him by constant editorial changes, those issues were set up on the table for the other writers. Most of the writers working on the X-books seemed to want to push back against Hickman’s undermining of the idea of a “mutant utopia” by presenting things like resurrections as “mutants finally gaining their position as the dominant species”.
Reading others’ comments, I think some of the problem is pacing. We *know* Krakoa can’t last forever. I think some readers are getting itchy. It doesn’t help that Percy won’t wrap up his plots (by choice or editorial decree) and that the era keeps adding new books (none of the newly-announced titles sound all that interesting).
Duggan’s X-Men is representative of the problem- it’s not bad, but it feels like a mid-tier super-hero comic in which characters don’t deal with consequences. It doesn’t mean other titles aren’t at least pointing out the problems with Krakoa, but I still want a more substantial read from this series.
We all want Hickman’s other shoe to drop, but the other X-writers collectively (read: Marvel editorial) wanted to tell more stories (make more money) with the current status quo. So Hickman left, the current X-situation has dragged on way too long, and no one seems to be writing towards its conclusion.
Some good stories have been told, sure, but a lot of setup is still waiting for its payoff. Can we please just wrap up the Krakoa era and hand the reins to Ewing & Gillen already? They must have some good ideas for the franchise that aren’t wrapped up in Hickman’s ripped-to-shreds original outline.
There’s an event called “Fall of X” coming this Summer and I expect it will mark the end of Krakoa. The 60th anniversary of X-Men is going to be celebrated later this year, and I expect Marvel will want a big relaunch at that time.
It might lead to a true back to basics direction where Krakoa will lead to “humans hating and fearing mutants more than ever”, while after Krakoa is put to an end, Xavier and a small group of core X-Men go into hiding attempting to work towards Xavier’s dream again.
I’d like to see Al Ewing take over the franchise, but I have doubts. If Marvel really does want to pursue an ultra-conservative creative direction next, I don’t see Ewing being a writer who’d be right for a 1960s- throwback straight X-Men series. Of course, I’m just speculating.
It looks like a new version of Uncanny Avengers might be one book which will follow Krakoa (or so I am guessing that’s the purpose of that book).
As long as folks like Ewing, Spurrier, and Gillen are still mining interesting stories out of the Krakoa premise, I’m happy for it to continue.
There’s also the question of what the end to this era would actually mean. I imagine it’s not going to be an all-or-nothing thing. They’ll keep some aspects of it even as they revert others. Like, all the mutants being ostensibly on the same side is something I can easily imagine them holding on to, even as resurrection and whatever else get dropped. As Gillen pointed out in an interview, the most interesting thing about heroes vs. villains is the actual interaction, when they talk to each other, and the strength of Krakoa is it basically provides infinite opportunities for that.
@Moonstar Dynasty
FWIW, I agree with pretty much everything you said.
I get the sense that Hickman approached the X-books with a general outline of the Krakoa era already formed. Powers of X was launched alongside House of X so that we could have some glimpses of how the Krakoa era was both limited in time and giving a lasting legacy.
It is interesting to compare and contrast this (Gerry Duggan’s) volume of the “core” X-Men book with the previous one (Hickman’s). This one glosses over the oddities of the setup as much as it can. The previous one helped in establishing many of those oddities. The storylines largely develop naturally from the previous volume, but that book was almost unpredictable, while this one goes out of its way to be approachable as possible. This is the core book because it wants to be an entry point, not because it is particularly essential reading (quite on the contrary).
I am a bit bothered by the pacing. Oddly enough, it feels like the Krakoa era may be ending in a bit of a rush. The best books are dealing with ambitious storylines of their own and there seems to be little or no attempt at addressing the idea of Krakoa as a place where people actually live as opposed to a convenient hub for exotic groups and happenings.
Apparently right now the Krakoa era is well accepted enough that it is being part of several minor crossovers (Dark Web, Sins of Sinister, this Brood storyline). But I don’t see it lasting much longer even then.
I feel we’re way past the point where Krakoa could be completely wiped away as if it never happened – you can do Age of Apocalypse for, what was it, 4 months and then go back to status quo. That’s a fun diversion.
I don’t think you can do that after three years without a lot of people asking what was the point.
So I don’t think a complete break from the Krakoan status quo is on the table. And I agree that if the Krakoan Era were to end this year, it would seem rushed – there’s a lot more shoes that have yet to drop.
I wouldn’t put too much in the Fall of X name. It might just as well be an event centered on the death of Adam X.
As for this issue – I said previously that I expect Duggan to take the easy way out. I thought he’d just have Old Wan Laura Die heroically without a backup. Instead… He still went for the easy way out. Except his way leaves a lot of open questions that… He’ll probably ignore, going by his past choices.
*Old Woman Laura, of course. I don’t know what the phone meant by Old Wan.
I wish the two-Lauras situation could last. I fear it will not. And despite what this issue implied, Old Woman Laura is likely to be the one to be left behind.
The Vault is a fascinating concept, but also a considerable challenge. A character that has lived through many centuries is not an easy character to write. Young Laura is objectively much easier to write than Old Woman Laura.
I half expect OWL to meet some form of Darwin sooner rather than later. A nice story could be told of how the two of them handle the consequences of this sad Vault mission.
BTW, I don’t think I will ever warm to the idea of calling any Laura “Wolverine”. It strikes so many of the wrong buttons. The failure to establish a proper codename for OWL only compounds the problem. This is not the way to treat a character who has been fighting to develop an identity of her own from her first appearance.
I don’t think Krakoa has ever been presented as an unalloyed utopia–I mean, come on, when Sabretooth is sent to the pit in HoX #6, a crack appears in the Quiet Council’s floor! There are characters who *believe* it’s a utopia, like Cyclops and (in his awful way) Beast, but the flaws have been subtly emphasized since the beginning.
Immortal X-Men, in fact, has been playing up a couple of those flaws: the entire resurrection scheme depends on a handful of particular mutants, only a couple of whom can theoretically be replaced. If somebody kills Hope or Proteus, they’re screwed. Nobody else has Egg’s powers, either. I suspect that once everyone’s gotten used to the idea that “any mutant can be resurrected and it’s NBD,” we may get the rug pulled out from under us.
I don’t know what “an end to the Krakoan era” would even mean at this point–what, you’re expecting the X-Men titles to go back to all being about superhero teams operating out of a school/mansion in Westchester? That ship has sailed and sunk. The fictional world has changed now, and I don’t think changing it back would benefit anything.
(I also think the idea that “anything that’s enjoyable was part of Hickman’s tragically abandoned master plan / anything that’s not is the tragedy that results from its having been abandoned” is worth dropping, because it’s demonstrably false. I think as comics readers we’ve gotten too used to the idea of creators abruptly being fired or quitting in a huff a la Claremont, as opposed to moving on after making the next few years’ worth of long-game plans with their collaborators and successors.)
I don’t think anyone’s saying that everything Hickman wrote was great and everything since his departure is not.
But he did have a tightly structured plan for the franchise that was disrupted — or at least delayed — when he left. As far as I can tell, that means some of the wheels he set in motion are still spinning, which is unsatisfying for me as a reader. I was hoping to get his conclusion by this point, and instead I got another status quo change that’s dragging on.
Some of the work done since his departure is better than what Hickman was doing himself, in my opinion. But this should also be over and done with by now.
I presume that the Fall of X event will deal with the fallout over the events of Sins of Sinister. But according to details surrounding the event, it will deal more about Orchis and their machinations. As much as I like this era, just like any status, it is not sustainable forever. Hickman was clearly aware of this and that is why he wanted a beginning, middle, and end before the story begin to wear out its welcome.
While I don’t necessarily believe it will be a complete return to superheroics, they may take some of the issues and cracks in Krakoan society and try to moderate their views. It would be nice to see if the mutants in the X-books move away from their supremacist views.
With Marvel reviving Uncanny Avengers, they may be charting a post-Krakoan landscape and this could be their first steps. Only time will tell.
Not sure how much I can add to the discussion. But I do think there are structural problems built into the premise of Krakoa that were never fully confronted or resolved, and have seemingly been rationalized as the necessary cost of utopia – an idea which would require Krakoa to feel like a living, cohesive society. It never does.
I don’t this can be separated from Hickman’s inability (or unwillingness) to produce meaningful characterization, though. Krakoans are disturbingly homogeneous in their perceptions of Krakoa, and their responses to it. That doesn’t read to me as a creative decision, but rather a lack thereof, because if you do pause to consider character motivations for a minute, on an individual level, it begins to come apart.
Instead, Hickman’s writing is performatively sharp, cool, inventive. But deeply emotionally empty, in a way that Morrisson’s run never was. Always slightly irked by that comparison, but that’s beside the point.
What does living as a triad do to the relations between Cyclops, Jean, Emma and/or Wolverine? Why is there no dissensus in relation to Krakoa, and communities constituted as an alternative? Why do the Summers merit a freaking palace on the moon, while younger Krakoans share “the habitat”?
And how can some of these characters even abide each other, when you place their personal history in perspective (say, Cyclops and Mr Sinister)?
Heck, why is there no conflict within Krakoa itself? Different ideas of what it should provide, of how removed it should remain, of what it’s relationship to the planet at large is? No communities, no sects, no parties, no businesses, no culture – nothing?
It’s just this huge husk of a hollowed out idea that it’s refreshing enough to create new storytelling possibilities.
I’m really happy it happened, and that folks like Leah Williams, Zeb Wells, Kieron Gillen and Al Ewing got to do interesting stuff with it. I hope they continue to do so.
But for all it’s noise and grandeur, it feels like a huge gambit without much of a payoff.
Frankly I feel a lot of the anti-Krakoan sentiment is rooted in the reactionary nature of genre fiction that says any time radical action is taken, they have to be “bad guys/anti-heroes” We saw it in Legend of Korra, both Black Panther films, and The mainstream shallow satire of The Authority known as the elite.
A minority forming a superpower nation to upend a world dominated by capitalism and bigotry is a powerful concept. The weaknesses of the Kraloa era are in not pushing it far ENOUGH.
Why can’t we have Krakoa liberating people in oppressive regimes, using mutant power to provide free food and energy, really selling the idea of “Evolution.”
My ideal X-Men book of the Kraloa era would be. “We’re the most powerful nation on the Earth, so we have a duty to save it.” Basically what the Phoenix Five we’re doing but played heroically. (Notice how every time a hero does big world changing good in a comic it’s a “bad guy/brainwashing” re: Ultimates Dissembled, Phoenix Five, Red Son Superman, Tony making all of NYC super geniuses.”
For once I want a return of the Golden Age energy that created the Superhero genre, the idea of someone with the power and heart to see all the problems we suffer from in real life and deal with them.
Fantomex taking all the stolen goods in the British museum and returning them to the people. X-Force assassinating a fictionalized version of Putin.
as “the people” what would I do with a good stolen from the British museum?
I digress, but as a Korra diehard I have to point out that the show is some what ambiguous about the revolutionary actions of its villains. While the amtagonists are evil, egotisticvand self-centered (in seasons 1 & 2 and it’s debatable with Kuvira), and when they are defeated it’s overtly stated that it’s good their plans were stopped, the world does actually change accorsing to what they intended / professed to intend, and that change is later presented as a good thing. Republic City becomes a democracy instead of being ruled by a benders-only council, the spirits enter the material world, Earth kingdom is on the way to no longer being a kingdom…
Textually it’s still said (by Toph) that the bad guys were going too far, but their aims are realized and it’s good.
Jim Harbor said: A minority forming a superpower nation to upend a world dominated by capitalism and bigotry is a powerful concept. The weaknesses of the Kraloa era are in not pushing it far ENOUGH.
Why can’t we have Krakoa liberating people in oppressive regimes, using mutant power to provide free food and energy, really selling the idea of “Evolution.”
My ideal X-Men book of the Kraloa era would be. “We’re the most powerful nation on the Earth, so we have a duty to save it.” Basically what the Phoenix Five we’re doing but played heroically. (Notice how every time a hero does big world changing good in a comic it’s a “bad guy/brainwashing” re: Ultimates Dissembled, Phoenix Five, Red Son Superman, Tony making all of NYC super geniuses.”
For once I want a return of the Golden Age energy that created the Superhero genre, the idea of someone with the power and heart to see all the problems we suffer from in real life and deal with them.
Fantomex taking all the stolen goods in the British museum and returning them to the people. X-Force assassinating a fictionalized version of Putin.
Like Millar-era The Authority, stuff like “X-Force kills Putin” is reductive fantasy in its own way. Why wouldn’t that story end with the world declaring war on Krakoa and Russia firing off nukes after their political leader is assassinated?
A story like this works if it has the characters taking complexity into account. My big question, with the Phoenix Five, for example, was that the conveniently offscreen nature of “achieve global peace” meant the writers didn’t actually gave to offer a vision of, say, peace in the Middle East or peace between India and Pakistan or any of the other rather challenging situations in which there are deep grudges all around, complex intersectional axes of historical and present-day oppression.
What do you do when that oppressed group turns out to be mutantphobic, or homophobic, but no less oppressed by some dominant ethnonationalist formation? What do you do when the folks you’re trying to liberate don’t agree with you about what “liberation” means?
And there’s the media angle, too. The X-Men offer their magic mutant drugs, but then nasty corners of the internet start spewing conspiracy theories about mutant mind control and Krakoan drug injuries, amplified by Roxx News (from Al Ewing’s Immortal Hulk), and uptake of Krakoan drugs slows to a crawl. Does Krakoa send in X-Force to kill Marvel Universe Tucker Carlson? Leaving aside whether that’s even close to acceptable, how does that not feed into the conspiracies?
One of the more challenging features of ideology is the way the language of oppression is claimed by everyone, even the oppressors. And his works in part because of the ways a group can be oppressed in one way, but not another.
I’d love to see a series exploring what it looks like when minoritized genius tries to change the world. But treating that at a simple matter of having enough super-power to just enforce change doesn’t strike me as an effective story, nor as an effective allegorical model of libertatory or revlutonary politics. I’d take Millar’s Ultimate Professor X over Millar’s Authority for that any day.
With Korra, I just wish they didn’t keep bringing back the kids from The Last Airbender. I know Aang has to be dead for the story to work but I really wish that Toph didn’t come back and that Zuko wasn’t hanging around in the background.
The (80s) Squadron Supreme had the best of intentions in the Gruenwald book, and just about everyone ends up dead by the end.
@Jim Harbor: My sentiments exactly. The main, well-documented reason superheroes can’t achieve the radical societal changes they are clearly capable of this because of (I suppose unofficial) editorial mandate: The books don’t want to diminish or marginalize the impact of real-world problems (e.g., cancer, other diseases, world hunger, inequality, climate change, capitalism) and keep the books as reasonably grounded as possible.
The problem with this is that superheroes just end up reinforcing the conservative, socially stratified status quo by putting everything back the way it was before or after disaster strikes. Ironically, the only people with ambition to actually want to change the world (for better or worse) are usually the villains, and this type of radical change is usually characterized as negative or undesirable. That’s why we have the Sauron Can Cure Cancer meme or the Reed Richards is Useless trope floating around because everything these mega-geniuses or Omega-level metahumans do is only in service of punching other people.
And I get that cape books are generally power fantasies about punching other people, but I think it’s fair to say we reached the logical limit of this kind of premise a long time ago.
That’s why–for me–the Krakoa era has been so exciting and appropriately divisive: It’s just really, really *different*.
@Douglas: Agreed on all points. I completely understand that there are many controversial elements about the Krakoa elements, many of which have been unsatisfactorily explored or outright ignored, but for all the people clamoring to hit the reset button: What would we even go back to? What has been genuinely more fascinating than Krakoa since Grant Morrison? Superheroics in San Francisco? Age of X? Decimation? Hated and Feared Redux? Chuck Austen?
I’m not in love with everything being committed to ink right now, but I appreciate all the big swings these writers are taking for better or worse–especially if we end up with books like Immortal or Red or Hellions or SWORD or Sabretooth for every Excalibur or Fallen Angels or Marauders vol 2.
I’d like someone to say “Hey remember voting?” or “Maybe mutants aren’t the superior race?” so I can go back to liking these characters again.
Or if you’re going to do all this crazy off the wall shit, actually explore it with the characters.
You bring Scott and Jean and Logan back from the dead and skip over everything until they’re in a totally dramatically inert perfect throuple?
You make characters immortal and don’t explore it’s impact?
You bring heroes and villains with tins of history to live side by side and it just goes smoothly and everyone’s fine with it?
A lot of Krakoa is bad power fantasy fanfiction.
I’d say the only book that fully avoids it has been Sabertooth.
I’ve long said Big Two comics are now just officially sanctioned fan fiction, since we are three or four generations now removed from writers going from fans/readers to creators. People have been introducing characters or stories created as children into DC/Marvel/other continuity. It probably all goes back to our discussion last month about Roy Thomas, who was probably one of if not the first fan to become notably become a creator and/or part of editorial.
“*Old Woman Laura, of course. I don’t know what the phone meant by Old Wan.”
You’ve got an Irish phone! Yer Aul’ Wan is your mother in Ireland. Yer Da is the Aul Fella.
I agree with Ben re: I want someone to go “Hey remember voting?” or “Maybe mutants aren’t the superior race?”
Personally, my problems with Krakoa aren’t that the premise is too different to the school. It’s that the premise isn’t different ENOUGH. The books made a big deal of how mutants would be able to create a new mutant culture and LIVE now that they have solved for death… but we’re still getting the same handful of a-listers fighting the same kind of anti-mutant antagonists, still seeing visible mutants brutalized for shock value, and so on and so on. If Krakoa got destroyed and everyone moved back to the school, I don’t think there would be much difference.
New Mutants and Sabretooth are the books that are making the most of the premise right now. It would be cool if some of those authors’ ideas got picked up in the flagship books.
I agree with Uncanny X-Ben. This new direction was eminently interesting when it started. It’s long passed that point, as the creators continue to avoid all of the interesting aspects to the setup established in House/Powers. It’s become more and more simply a different status quo for the mutants rather than telling challenging stories.
If the majority of the books were written like Sabretooth, actually addressing issues of some relevance instead of trying to pretend that Krakoa is a true mutant utopia with “some flaws which need to be rectified”, then I’d be happy with Krakoa remaining for years to come. As it is, I’m bored with the concept and only Gillen’s Immortal X-Mrn continued to hold my interest.
“Does Krakoa send in X-Force to kill Marvel Universe Tucker Carlson? ”
You obviously haven’t been reading the current Wolverine storyline.
I have problems with Krakoa. I agree that the X-books have interrogated their society’s flaws too late and not deeply enough. With no economy it’s hard to believe what everyday life is for the non-team mutants beyond surfing and the Green Lagoon, and that puts a real strain on immersion.
That said, I’m worried about Fall of X because I’m not convinced the Krakoa status quo will be replaced by something better.
At this point, ending Krakoa to return to a mansion/school setup would be a massively retrograde step. If they abandon Earth to relocate on Arakko or a spaceship, they stop being a sovereign nation and lose their tense relationship with the other Earth countries; they’d turn back into ersatz-Inhumans again.
I’m not sure how it can be resolved. And unless the MCU is about to reveal the X-Men set on Krakoa, eventually nostalgia and corporate synergy will find a way to return the mutants to Westchester. I just don’t want it to happen for as long as good X-books are coming out, even if it’s only one or two.
Going “Back to Basics” I.E. Either masochistic martyrs hiding in a so-called school fighting and dying for a world that hates and fears them anyway no matter what or an endangered species on the brink of extinctions , for the nth time will kill the franchise . Does anyone still even remember the Extra-Ordinary X-Men era or the X-Men Gold era ? No ? Because thats what BTB means in the context of the X-Line. Krakóa resonates with the Generation Z new readers that Marvel Publishing desperately requires to order to continue to remain surviving a (barely viable business enterprise, because in 2023 AD where Identity Politics and Social Justice are the order of the day , demographic separatism via Space Space , especially ethno-nationalism IS what is in global fashion right now. Xavier’s classic liberal “Dream” of Integration / Assimilation / Harmonization a.k.a. The Melting Pot Rainbow is much more naively out-of-touch now with current real-world realities than it has ever been , Big Corporate mass media propaganda nonewithstanding.
Note to self: sign with masculinized name or abstract moniker to actually be engaged with at all.
One thing that might be interesting is a civil war on Krakoa. Everyone on the same island, three or four factions, each represented by at least one ongoing comic, actively at war with eachother. While at the same time being very careful not to hurt any of the Krakoan infrastructure, because it’s all alive and will fight back. You could explore all sorts of themes, without doing something dumb like making a supervillain mayor or president.
@Salomé H, don’t take lack of response for lack of interest. I think we’re all good people here.