As always, this contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

COVER (PAGE 1): Apocalypse walks through the reeds. Not much to do with the content, aside from the fact that this is where he enters the modern-day story – so far, we’ve only seen him in the future time frame of Powers of X.

PAGE 2: The epigraph sees Professor X stressing the differences between humans and mutants – very different from his traditional approach of emphasising the similarities.

PAGES 3-10: The Five use cloning to create new bodies for the X-Men who died in the space mission last issue, and Professor X… well, restores them from back-up. The final pages are a repeat of the pod-person scene that opened issue #1.

We already knew that the X-Men were bringing people back from the dead – that was clear when all five of the Stepford Cuckoos showed up in issue #1. There’s more on the mechanics of all this later in the issue, so I’ll come back to the broader implications then. In the meantime…

Lorna Dane: This is Magneto’s daughter, Polaris, who was already hanging around with him in X-Men: Blue prior to the relaunch. Like a lot of characters, she’s become much more separatist in tone under Hickman – Lorna has lived most of her life among non-mutants, not least her foster parents, and used to be an “extended supporting cast” X-Man who lived a basically normal life, so it’s curious for her to be questioning whether there’s anything good in humans at all. Lorna is also playing up the father/daughter relationship much more than usual; she wasn’t raised by him, didn’t know him all that well until X-Men: Blue, and generally hasn’t thought of him as a father figure.

(If you’re saying “Hold on, wasn’t Polaris introduced as the daughter of Magneto only for that to be revealed as misdirection within the same storyline”, then yes, she was – but she was retconned into being the actual daughter of Magneto during Chuck Austen’s run, and it’s stuck.)

“Society”: This is the title of the story, and its major theme. As Magneto tells it, the mutants have been on the run for years, but now, with an island to call their own, they can build their own society and develop their own culture. Of course, this has happened before, with Genosha – a story Hickman has gone out of his way to mention several times – and it didn’t end at all well. Magneto chooses not to mention that.

Much of what we see in this issue is about the mutants of Krakoa developing their own social rituals; you can decide for yourself how much everyone is comprehensively buying into it and how far it’s a performative exercise in bonding the group. Bear in mind many of these mutants have recently arrived, presumably leaving behind friends and family. On the other hand, mutants have been showing up at the X-Men’s school for years without showing much interest in the life they left behind… What’s very clear throughout this issue is an emphasis on the group over the individual; Storm’s public ritual with the revived X-Men validates them as the real thing, but also immediately stresses their mutant-ness as a bigger deal. And the Five – established characters all – really do and say nothing beyond acting out their socially-mandated role. Their status in mutant society has become more important than their individuality.

“The Five”: The five mutants whose powers, combined, can rapidly grow new clone bodies to revive dead mutants. There’s an echo here of the “Five Lights”, the first new mutants to emerge after M-Day. For the benefit of those of you who aren’t regular readers…

Goldballs: Fabio Medina is a character from Brian Bendis’ Uncanny X-Men run, where he was a student of Cyclops’ breakaway “mutant revolution” group under the name Goldballs. Something of a comic relief character, he basically had the power to fire golden balls every which way and hope that the confusion favoured his own side. He was more recently used as a supporting character in the Miles Morales Spider-Man series. The idea that the golden balls are eggs is entirely new.

Proteus: Uh-oh. Proteus is a reality-warping mutant who first fought the X-Men back in X-Men #125-128 (1979). He’s usually a dangerous maniac and not somebody that you want to trust your species to – the data pages will address this later on. Proteus was last seen in Astonishing X-Men #11 (2018) where he blew up, but he’s an energy being and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s returned from the dead. More to the point – and not mentioned here – Proteus is the son of Moira MacTaggert. Given how important she is to Hickman’s story, that feels like it should matter. Proteus was also on the list of Omega level mutants in issue #1.

Elixir: Josh Foley is a high-powered mutant healer who’s been associated with various second-tier X-Men teams since 2003. He was on issue #1’s Omega level list too. Before House of X, Elixir was hanging around with Emma Frost.

Tempus: Eva Bell is another of Cyclops’s trainees from Bendis’ Uncanny X-Men run. She hasn’t been used since. She wasn’t on the Omega level list in issue #1, but she has previously been described as “nearly” Omega level (in Uncanny X-Men Annual #1, 2014).

Hope Summers: A regular in Uncanny before House of X, Hope is the quasi-messiah figure who was the first mutant to emerge after the Scarlet Witch removed all mutant powers on M-Day. Her main power is the ability to copy the powers of other mutants in her area, but she’s also been shown stabilising and controlling mutant powers in the past, so her co-ordinating role here is nothing new. In Generation Hope, there was a suggestion that her minds of her team were becoming linked in some way, which would fit with Hickman’s themes. The data page later suggests that something similar has happened to the Five, who “have become an inseparable family unit and are almost never apart from one another.” Note that her syringe has Mr Sinister’s diamond logo.

“Separate, yes, they are great mutants…”: Magneto is being really generous to Goldballs here, to make the events fit his preferred narrative.

“Together, these five mutants have made us whole”: Presumably because, as we’ll see, they’re engaged in a systematic attempt to revive the dead of Genosha.

“Temporally evolved to their desired age…” A similar device has been used in the past to explain why Xavier and Magneto are both younger than their back stories would suggest. Xavier got a new cloned body from the Shi’ar after being infected by the Brood; Magneto was turned into a baby and aged back to adulthood. It helps with the sliding timeline.

Cerebro: Magneto seems to be claiming here that since some unspecified time in the past, Professor X has been using Cerebro not just to find mutants, but to copy their “mind – the essence, the anima”. This is… frankly creepy, since there’s no suggestion that he’s asked anyone’s permission for this. And later on, the data pages will tell us that Xavier has a copy of the mind of every mutant – yet he can’t possibly have got everyone to agree. Admittedly, Cerebro has always had dubious privacy issues, but this is something new.

Magneto is keen to stress that this procedure absolutely, definitely results in the new cloned mutant acquiring not just a back-up copy of the original’s mind, but the original’s “soul”. As we’ll see, the Krakoans have a whole ritual later on to stand around chanting about how very true this is.

Cyclops’ visor: Note that the cloned Cyclops doesn’t need his visor. Xavier gives him one just before downloading the mind into his body. Traditionally, Cyclops’ inability to control his powers was attributed to brain damage caused by a head injury suffered when he jumped from a plane as a child – but that shouldn’t apply to the clone. Does the clone actually need the visor? Or is he just wearing it to validate himself as “Cyclops”?

“Did it work?” The X-Men evidently knew they were going to die and be restored from back-ups. That makes more sense of the conversations between Nightcrawler and Wolverine in the previous issue.

PAGE 11: Credits. The story title is “Society” and the small print reads “The House of Xavier – Here They Come.”

PAGES 12-17: The revived mutants are paraded before the people of Krakoa so that everyone can do some ritualistic chanting about how genuine and authentic they are. This is all about the Krakoans generating their own rituals as they build their own society, though at the same time everyone seems a little too on board with this. The Krakoans seem to be well aware of what the Five do, presumably because many of them were in fact revived by the Five. The ritual also stresses mutanthood over individuality (“His name is Cyclops, but he is more than that…”) If these mutants are in fact largely people who have been revived by the Five, perhaps that has something to do with their cult-like embrace of Krakoan culture.

The revived X-Men all get asked a question to demonstrate that it’s really them, though we don’t see all of their answers. Cyclops alludes to the time Storm claimed the leadership of the X-Men from him in Uncanny X-Men #201 (1986). Jean’s answer – “I’m the only ‘me’ that ever was” – is heavily ironic, considering that she’s been copied in the past both by Phoenix and by her clone Madelyne Pryor. (Madelyne was herself animated by a part of Jean’s soul retained by Phoenix – is this Jean really any more authentic than Madelyne?) Penance – apparently the codename Monet is now going by – simply refuses to be touched, and her air of distance is taken as the proof of her authenticity. This is a pretty low standard of proof.

PAGES 18-20: Data pages about resurrection. Page 18 largely just spells out what we saw in the earlier scenes, also confirming that Mr Sinister has a nearly complete library of mutant DNA “carefully constructed with the help of Xavier” – we saw that alliance being formed in last week’s Powers of X. The possibility that the revived mutants might be changed in other ways (“designer modifications”) is floated – again, do you really trust Sinister with this?

This whole scheme depends on having all of the Five on hand, though the data pages float the idea of using power-copiers such as Synch or Mimic. Synch was a member of Generation X, and he died in Generation X #70, but that’s obviously not much of a problem. Mimic’s origin story is actually a lab accident, but the possibility that it activated latent mutant powers has been raised before, in Marvel Comics Presents #59 (1990).

At any rate, this is clearly not the sort of facility that future writers (and perhaps even Hickman) will want to have around indefinitely, and the fact that it depends on having all of the Five plus a telepath, plus access to the DNA database, plus access to the back-up minds, means there’s plenty of scope for it to be taken away in future. If I were Goldballs – the most absolutely essential member of the group and the one who’s far and way the most expendable in terms of his broader significance to the X-Men – I’d be watching my back.

Except… what the Five are basically doing, according to everything we’re told in this issue, is preparing a clone body from a stored DNA sample and accelerating it to adulthood. And for all the ritual we see here, Mr Sinister’s been doing that for years using equipment he’s knocked up in his lab. So how much of all this is for show? Or is it about minimising the X-Men’s reliance on Sinister (or even on technology generally)?

Proteus: His insanity is addressed here. As per previous continuity, his power tends to consume his own body, leaving him to hop from host body to host body, consuming each one in turn. The claim here is that an endless supply of freshly cloned bodies has solved the problem and solved his psychological problems. We’ll see. Curiously, we’re told that Proteus’s bodies are always created using Professor X’s DNA – Proteus can possess anyone, but why not use his own DNA? And how does this fit with the final note on the same page, which insists that there has been no experimentation with putting the wrong mind in the cloned body? Isn’t that exactly what Proteus is doing? At any rate, this is pretty much a red flag that we’re getting a story about a mind/body mismatch at some time during the Hickman run.

Scale: The X-Men are indeed trying to revive the entire population of Genosha, which is going to take ten years, assuming some other telepaths can be brought in. This is presumably what makes an explosion in the mutant population credible again, per the projections we saw in issue #1.

Ethics: There’s a protocol that prevents mutants from being resurrected until their death has been confirmed or Cerebro has failed to detect them for a month. This is meant to prevent actual duplication. All right, but… the obvious question in all this is whether the clones really are the same person. The data pages and the X-Men are keen to insist that they are, but at the same time Hickman throws in lines that make clear that there’s really nothing aside from ethics to stop you from doing this while the original mutant is still alive. The back-up-restored mutant will be identical to the original in mind and body, but if you believe in the soul – and in the Marvel Universe, you should – then you should probably have some serious issues with this.

Other obvious questions raised by all this: How do we know that the X-Men who died on the station were the originals? What happens about Wolverine’s adamantium – does Proteus have to smoothe over that sort of thing, or do people just get a reset? (Note Warren is no longer Archangel.) And how would any of this work with Moira MacTaggert?

“FORCE conventions”: It’s the first we’ve heard of these, but if they apply, they apparently supersede the (ethical) resurrection protocols. That sounds bad, doesn’t it?

PAGES 21-22: Professor X, Emma Frost and Beast attend a drinks reception at the UN after the Security Council recognise Krakoa as a nation. Emma has plainly been telepathically manipulating the ambassadors.

This isn’t really how the recognition of countries work, but more to the point it’s an incredibly confrontational way of going about it – Emma isn’t just engineering a win, she’s doing it in a way that will make it obvious to the national governments what has happened. If the X-Men were trying to be subtle about this, they’d have gone for the people back home who were giving the instructions. Professor X goes out of his way to tell Emma that she’s made a sacrifice by doing this, and that something nebulously bad is going to happen to her (though it might just be a crisis of conscience he has in mind). He seems entirely unbothered.

In response to Emma’s joking suggestion that he make her “governor of a province”, he replies that he has “much bolder things in mind” – more foreshadowing.

PAGES 23-24: Data pages about “mutant diplomacy”, though the second one is just a map. Again, this is a bit ropey in terms of how things work in the real world, but we’re basically told that all but a handful of countries have either made a trade deal with Krakoa, or are in discussions for one, in order to get those pharmaceuticals that were mentioned back in issue #1. Then – and more important going forward – we have a list of countries that have outright refused a trade deal, all of which are described as “naturally adversarial”. The previous scene showed us that the X-Men are not above simply forcing people to play ball, so perhaps there’s also something about these countries – or at least the more significant ones – that makes that less of an option.

They’re a mix of real-world and Marvel Universe states. The real ones are Iran, North Korea, Russia (which was going to vote against Krakoa in the Security Council in the previous scene), Brazil, Venezuela, Honduras and Kenya (we’ll come back to Kenya). The fictional ones:

• Madripoor. A southeast Asian island nation which features heavily in Wolverine stories and is generally portrayed as rather lawless. Its objections are “political”. In recent years, stories have wavered all over the place as to who is actually running the place, but I believe it’s currently meant to be crimelord Tyger Tiger.
• Latveria. Dr Doom’s country, for “political” reasons.
• Santo Marco. The country that Magneto briefly conquered in X-Men #4 (1964). We last saw it in Weapon X #14 (2018), where Weapon X helped a group of rebel fighters to overthrow the government, so its inclusion here on “ideological” grounds is curious.
• Terra Verde. This looks like a misprint. Marvel does have a “Terra Verde” – Diablo tried to conquer it in Fantastic Four #117 (1971). But it has nothing to do with the X-Men, so it’s much more likely that Hickman is thinking of Tierra Verde, where Wolverine helped to overthrow the government in a 1989-90 storyline.
• Wakanda. Home of the Black Panther, and so technologically advanced that “they do not need mutant drugs.” That doesn’t stop them from making the list of potentially hostile countries, along with three countries listed as “Wakandan Economic Protectorate.” Two are fictional (listed below), but the third is Kenya, a strange inclusion. It is, however, the country where Storm lived before joining the X-Men.
• Azania. Originally an apartheid-era South Africa stand in from the 1988 Black Panther miniseries.
• Canaan. A country briefly conquered by Moses Magnum in a Deathlok storyline from 1993. These two have probably been included on the basis that they’re well established to border Wakanda.

PAGES 25-29: Professor X and Magneto welcome the mutant villains through the portal to join the Krakoan community, despite Wolverine’s misgivings. Apocalypse says he’ll be a good citizen because Krakoa is the realisation of his dream of mutant dominance (which, he says, is what he was trying to foster all along). Professor X doesn’t seem to have a problem with this.

Obviously, having decided to prioritise mutant-ness over all else, Professor X and Magneto have to accept the villains – and we’ve seen already that they’re prepared to shelter the likes of Sabretooth. But while Apocalypse is submitting himself to the Krakoan regime, he’s also ringing more loud alarm bells that things aren’t right at all here, even if Xavier clearly thinks everything’s going just fine.

Apocalypse: The first time we’ve seen him in the modern time frame in this series. In the past, he’s been presented as pursuing conflict as an end in itself, but he’s also appeared to believe that the mutants ought to come out on top. It’s worth noting that we last saw Apocalypse in the “Age of X-Man” crossover, where he seemed to undergo some sort of epiphany through being forced to live out a life as a father and religious teacher – it’s too early to tell whether any of that feeds into his role under Hickman.

None of the other villains get any dialogue, though some are foregrounded. Here’s who they are.

Page 26, panel 1 (left to right):

• Wildside. A long-standing D-lister who started as a member of the Mutant Liberation Front. Last seen allied with Emma Frost in X-Men: Blue‘s “Mothervine” arc last year.
• Random. An X-Factor supporting character from the Peter David run. He was last seen hanging around on Utopia, which was a few years back. Barely a villain.
• Mister Sinister. Seriously A-list, and not actually a mutant. And curious that he’s arriving here, when his diamond logo was already on Hope’s syringe earlier in the issue.
• Lady Mastermind. One of the daughters of Mastermind, and a long-running minor villain. Briefly a member of the X-Men during the Mike Carey run circa 2007. She hasn’t been seen in a few years.
• Mesmero. B-list hypnotist villain dating back to the late Silver Age. Last seen manipulating a version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in X-Men: Gold. Unequivocally a villain.
• Animax. A very minor character from the Brian Bendis run who has the power to create monsters (like the one she’s riding here).
• Mentallo. Not principally an X-Men villain, but he is long established as a mutant. He was last seen as an ally of Reverend Stryker in the recent Weapon X series.

Page 26, panel 2 (left to right):

• Sebastian Shaw? It certainly looks like the long-running Black King of the Hellfire Club, and Emma Frost’s old partner in villainy… but, er, he was seemingly murdered by Emma in X-Men: Black – Emma Frost #1 (2018). There’s a bit of wiggle room in that issue, but not much.
• Selene. I know tons of characters look kind of like this, but trust me, that’s Selene – exactly as shown on the cover of X-Men #11 (2014), right down to the skull she was carrying. Last seen as a member of the Power Elite in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Captain America.
• Emplate. Monet St Croix’s brother, and a major villain in Generation X.
• Exodus. Identified as an omega-level mutant in issue #1, Exodus is a Big Deal. He used to be a fanatical follower of Magneto – and was loyally following him when we last saw him at the tail end of X-Men: Blue – but evidently went his own way at some point for reasons yet to be revealed.
• Gorgon. A Hand leader introduced in Mark Millar’s Wolverine story “Enemy of the State.”
• Callisto. Long-time leader of the Morlocks and, again, barely a proper villain.

Page 28, panel 1: Most of these are either unrecognisably blurry or I’ve already mentioned them, but on the left-hand side next to Emplate are…

• Forearm. Another member of the Mutant Liberation Front.
• Daken. Wolverine’s estranged son. He was seemingly killed in Hunt for Wolverine: Claws of a Killer #4 (2018), but he was brought back as a reanimated henchman by Persephone in Return of Wolverine (which is basically how Wolverine returned from the dead, so perhaps Daken got better in time too).

Page 28, panel 5: Left to right, again (and ignoring Apocalypse):

• Azazel, Nightcrawler’s biological father, and a mutant who claims to be a demon. I know. He comes from the Chuck Austen run, but was last seen in the tail end of the recent Weapon X series, hanging around selling favours to politicians.
• Masque. Another long-running Morlock with more sadistic tendencies. Last seen as a member of the Brotherhood in X-Men: Gold.
• Black Tom Cassidy…? Well, this is odd. The guy in the wing collar with the red symbol on his chest certainly looks like Banshee’s cousin Black Tom Cassidy, but didn’t Powers of X #4 tell us that he was already involved in running Krakoa…? What are he and Sinister doing in this group, exactly?
• Lady Mastermind again.
• Frenzy. Long-time footsoldier Joanna Cargill, who started as a henchman for Apocalypse in early X-Factor, then became one of Magneto’s Acolytes, and eventually joined the X-Men for a while. She’s an odd inclusion in this group too, because she hasn’t been a villain for ages, and she actually showed up to fight Nate Grey alongside the other X-Men in the recent “X-Men: Disassembled” story.
• Marrow. Sometime terrorist, sometime late-90s X-Man. She was allied with Emma Frost in the recent Uncanny X-Men issues too.

Some of these characters are really quite strange choices for a generic crowd shot of villains. Is it just random selection to make up the numbers, or is there a reason…?

PAGE 30. A quote from Magneto, again stressing mutant-ness as an overriding consideration.

PAGES 31-33. The reading order and the trailers. “NEXT: FOR THE CHILDREN” and “THEN: I AM NOT ASHAMED OF WHAT I AM”.