New Mutants #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers are for the digital edition.
THE NEW MUTANTS: This is, technically, the fourth volume of New Mutants. The first is the original series which ran from 1983 to 1991 and featured the X-Men’s junior team. The second ran from 2003-4 and featured one of the trainee classes from the Morrison-era school – it’s the one that introduced characters like Elixir and Hellion. Volume 3, a reunion of the original team, ran for 50 issues between 2009 and 2012 (very few of which, to be honest, have stuck in the mind).
There’s also a few minis, all of which also feature versions of the original line-up. The launch of New Mutants in 1983 was effectively the point where the X-Men became a franchise. It’s interesting that this is the X-book that gets its opening arc co-written by Jonathan Hickman, along with regular writer Ed Brisson – though it’s this week’s X-Force that gets the deluxe edition treatment and seems to have the more important plot points. Hickman previously wrote both Cannonball and Sunspot in his Avengers run which, to be honest, I still haven’t read. Hickman’s idiosyncratic style of emphasis is quite noticeable in this issue’s dialogue.
COVER / PAGE 1: The cast for this series, mostly comprising classic New Mutants characters from the original line-up. That’s Mirage and Cypher at the top, Karma, Chamber and Wolfsbane on the next tier down, and Mondo, Magik and Sunspot at the bottom. Chamber and Mondo both come from Generation X, a later trainee book. They’re a slightly odd inclusion here, because the New Mutants long since outgrew their original role as the junior team, and what holds them together these days is basically a sense of family from that period of their lives; Chamber and Mondo don’t form part of that family.
While Karma, Mirage and Wolfsbane are wearing versions of the classic black and yellow X-Men uniform, they’ve dropped the X-Men logo itself. Magik, always a slightly more tentative team player, sticks with her Chris Bachalo costume.
PAGES 2-4: Wolfsbane recalls being reborn into the Krakoan utopia.
Wolfsbane. Wolfsbane was one of the many characters killed during Matthew Rosenberg’s run, immediately prior to House of X – specifically, see Uncanny X-Men vol 5 #17. Naturally, she’s been brought straight back. For what it’s worth, the flashback we see here doesn’t seem to match the way the process was shown in House of X #5 – in that issue, the cloned X-Men emerge from their pods, and then Xavier downloads their minds back into them. Wolfsbane seems to emerge already formed. Chances are it’s just an error, or maybe Xavier has just continued to refine the process since HoX #5.
Krakoa. Once again, everything is for the best in this best of all possible islands. Since everyone seems to find the place wonderfully utopian, presumably this takes place before X-Force #1.
Karma. Xi’an Coy Manh was also last seen in the Rosenberg run, also as a member of the makeshift X-Men team. She quit in Uncanny X-Men #18 to spend more time with her family. Her prosthetic leg is from injuries suffered in battle in New Mutants vol 3 #12 (part of the Second Coming crossover), but it does make her an unusual example of a character on Krakoa who is carting significant amounts of technology around.
PAGES 5-7: The recap page and the credits, all as normal. The small print reads “Let’s go to space, good times in space.” The title is “The Sextant”, which is explained later in the issue. A sextant is a sixth of a circle, or a measuring device of that size.
PAGES 8-10: Cypher experiments with getting Mondo to commune directly with Krakoa, with mixed results.
Cypher. He’s been very prominent in the Hickman run so far, as the one character who can speak directly with Krakoa thanks to his language powers. Telepathy works on Krakoa up to a point, and Cypher has apparently built some interfaces for others, but clearly he’s hoping for a better solution.
Mondo. Mondo is an odd character with the power to absorb matter into his body and take on some of its properties until eventually he consumes it. He comes from the 90s series Generation X. However, the “Mondo” who appeared as a member of that team was eventually exposed in Generation X #60 as a duplicate created by Black Tom Cassidy; the real Mondo appeared prominently in that storyline, but it’s pretty much his only significant appearance aside from a few later cameos. He’s really being written here in line with the personality his impostor showed in earlier issues of Generation X. He has no previous history with the New Mutants, though you can see why Cypher might hope his powers would be useful.
Krakoa. Krakoa can manifest through Mondo’s body, though he “doesn’t like it very much” and considers it “a bad thing”. Since he still speaks his own language, and Mondo’s mind is locked out while Krakoa is control, this doesn’t achieve what Cypher was hoping for. But remember that in Powers of X we saw an older Krakoa occupying Cypher’s body, which seems similar to what’s going on here.
PAGES 10-14. Mirage, Sunspot, Magik, Wolfsbane, Chamber, Cypher and Mondo have coffee and decide to go into space to get Cannonball back.
The Akademos Habitat. We’ve seen this name before, and it seems to be simply a residential area of Krakoa. The identical houses are presumably grown from the pods we’ve seen mentioned before. This neighbourhood seems to be grouped into six parts, which might explain why it’s called the sextant. There’s some sort of public building in the middle, which might be important in the future. The New Mutants seem to be sharing a home together.
The sixth generation of homo superior. Mirage seems to mean this very figuratively (and really more closely linked to the narrative than to anything within the Marvel Universe). Her six generations of mutant society are (1) ancient mutants like Apocalypse; (2) the modern elders, like Professor X and Magneto; (3) the era of the Silver Age X-Men; (4) the era of widespread mutant numbers; (5) the first mutant communities, i.e. the X-Men’s school turning into a real large-scale boarding school in Grant Morrison’s run; and (6) Krakoa. Sunspot puts the New Mutants at stage 5, though surely they’re really stage 4.
Mirage’s claim here – in line with good Krakoan patriotism – is that the preceding incarnation failed because they were trying to build mutant communities using human institutions; mutants can only make real progress by building their own culture. It’s a mutant version of Audre Lorde’s “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” argument.
Cameos. We see a number of mutants in passing as Sunspot and Mirage walk through the Sextant. The clearly recognisable ones:
- Glob Herman, talking to some guy with a blue head and a stick.
- Monet St Croix, who we saw in House of X, along with two small child versions of Penance. These are presumably Monet’s younger sisters Claudette St Croix and Nicole St Croix, who have gained the power to turn into Penance at will in the same way that Monet showed in House of X.
- The blonde guy wearing a Hellions uniform and talking to a group of other characters is Bevatron. He’s about as obscure as X-Men villains get – he’s a late-period member of the original Hellions who debuted in New Warriors vol 1 #9 (1991), just in time for the entire team to be killed off in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #281 (er… 1991). Evidently he’s been restored from back up.
- The woman in the niqab is Dust, who’s been shown on Krakoa before.
- The big rock guy is, of course, Rockslide.
Fauna. Credited here with making the coffee beans, Fauna is the green kid who was seen travelling to Krakoa in House of X #1. Quite why a character called Fauna has got flora-based abilities is less than clear, although maybe that’s what Mondo is hinting at in suggesting that there’s something dodgy about this stuff. It seems to taste good, though.
Chamber. Chamber was another casualty of the Rosenberg bloodbath, dying in Uncanny X-Men vol 5 #18. Evidently he’s been restored from back up, but it seems that this body, just like the previous one, couldn’t handle the amount of power it was trying to contain, and has blown a big hole in his front, covered up here by bandages. He still enjoys the smell of coffee.
Magik was in the X-Men at the end of the Rosenberg run, and there’s not much to say about her. That’s her magic sword stuck in a tree trunk.
Cannonball. The founding New Mutants were Mirage (as Psyche), Sunspot, Karma, Wolfsbane and Cannonball. Cannonball isn’t here because he married Smasher and settled down in the Shi’ar Empire during Hickman’s Avengers run. (By the way, the other characters who joined the New Mutants during their classic run – before they merged with the X-Factor trainees – were Cypher, Warlock, Magik and Magma. Cypher and Magik are here, Warlock is represented as a part of Cypher, but Magma is conspicuously absent. She was in the Age of X-Man crossover, so there’s no obvious reason for her to be missing.)
PAGES 15-18. The New Mutants hitch a lift to the Shi’ar Empire with the Starjammers. The Starjammers’ Krakoan gate is already causing trouble.
The Starjammers. We saw them visit the X-Men, and get their Krakoan gate, in X-Men #1. As previously mentioned, they’re interstellar pirates.
The Shi’ar Empire. Mentioned repeatedly in Hickman’s run to date, and evidently going to be important somewhere along the line – so this story may not be quite the side jaunt that it first appears.
Krakoa. More warning signs that all is not as it seems with Krakoa. Mondo finds it “itchy” to absorb bits of Krakoa and actively wants rid of it. Cypher has brought a gateway flower with him – presumably so that they can get back again, since the Starjammers are only taking them some of the way – and it seems to be magnetically drawn to the existing gateway. (Even allowing for this, it’s surprising that someone as important to the whole Krakoan project as Cypher was allowed to go into space – his absence, and the other X-Men’s inability to communicate with Krakoa Prime, might matter.) More worrying yet, the Krakoan gateway wants to terraform the garden around it, and it’s killing the Starjammers’ other plants. Not sinister at all! Mondo absorbs the return flower in order to keep it safe, in the broadest possible sense of “safe”.
PAGES 19-21. Everyone watches Magik sparring with Raza, and she cuts off his robot arm.
They’re pirates, this is the kind of thing they do. Although as we’ll see at the end of the issue, the New Mutants are starting to seriously annoy the Starjammers by this point.
PAGE 22. The Starjammers arrive at the Benevolence space station.
We find out more about Benevolence in a couple of pages time. It seems to be new. EDIT: As pointed out in the comments, Benevolence was mentioned in Powers of X #1 as the place where around 8,000 mutants were living in the “Year 100” timeline. It was described in that issue as “a converted transit station located on the fringe of Shi’ar space where it has long served as a buffer between the Empire and the wild space spawning grounds of Brood breeding territory.”
“A very reputable space lawyer.” More of this guy at the end of the issue.
PAGE 23. Data page in the form of the Starjammers’ wanted poster. The members are listed bottom left – Cr’reee, the one with the tiny price on his head, is Ch’od’s pet. The comedy list of crimes is self-explanatory.
“Assault (Phermonal)” presumably has something to do with Hepzibah, whose people communicate by smell. The name Hepzibah was supposedly given to her by Corsair, because he couldn’t pronounce her real name (see: communicate by smell). It’s a reference to the character of the same name from the Pogo comic strip, the idea being that they’re both skunk women.
PAGE 24. Data page about Benevolence. Contrary to what the Starjammers are telling the New Mutants, it’s a repository for material too dangerous to be allowed anywhere near the Shi’ar Empire proper.
The King Egg. A ludicrously over the top piece of foreshadowing (which is the joke, of course). In particular, the King Egg should apparently be kept clear of alien biomes (like the Starjammers have) and “interstellar pheromone production” (which is presumably what Hepzibah does, I guess). “Superguardian protocols” means calling out the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, which is where Cannonball might come into all this.
PAGES 25-35. The New Mutants ignore the Starjammers’ instruction to stay behind, go exploring, and realise the Starjammers were lying to them. The Starjammers have completely lost patience with these clowns, so they take the King Egg and dump the New Mutants with the Shi’ar authorities.
Largely self-explanatory, this. Part of Corsair’s miscalculation is that in trying to trick the New Mutants into staying on the ship, he tells a tale so awful that the New Mutants, as good little heroes, feel obliged to try and help. The Starjammers, meanwhile, are actually acting like the pirates that they’re always claimed to be, even though in practice they’re usually closer to swashbuckling heroes. They also seem to be in something of a rush to meet their employer, which is another reason why they leave the New Mutants to it. Their destination, Pshor Prime, is new.
“Judgy fundamentalists.” Corsair seems to make up this nonsense on the fly, after asking the New Mutants what the worst thing they can imagine is, and getting this answer from Wolfsbane. It’s a reference to her extremely religious upbringing in the Western Isles, which was played on extensively in the original New Mutants series. (Corsair also throws in the “four arms” answer given by Chamber, and the New Mutants still fall for it.) Corsair is probably plucking the names Nuwabi’ka and Kaliwaki out of the air.
Sharra & K’ythri are the well-established gods of the Shi’ar Empire. They actually showed up in Thor a little while back.
PAGE 36. Data page on Sunspot’s “really good space lawyer”, in the form of an advert. The art is taken from Rocket #2 (2017), and this is Rocket’s lawyer from that issue, Murd Blurdock. At least, he would have been Rocket’s lawyer, if only he hadn’t had to run off and fight ninjas instead.
Murd is an Echomelian – a race of blind reptiles who make brilliant trial lawyers because their echo-senses let them read everyone’s heartbeat. Now, those things on his face might look to you like eyes. But according to his partner Froggy Nelson, they are in fact “scars” from when he was “struck by radioactive originium as a child and lost his echo-senses – forever!” Despite this, Murd is “still a great lawyer – supernaturally good! Almost as if he can tell the expressions on a jury’s faces through some unknown ‘visual sense’… But that’s crazy talk! The only Echomelian with that ability is the violent vigilante known as Seeing Being – the Sentient Without Self-Preservation!”
Oh yes… the place names in the bottom right.
- Chandilar is the Shi’ar Empire’s capital world.
- The Aerie was the Shi’ar’s original homeworld.
- The Maul is a ring of inhabited asteroids, previously seen in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #277.
- Timor is Ch’od’s homeworld.
- M’Kraan is presumably the location of the cosmically-powerful M’Kraan Crystal.
- Chr’yllalisa is the homeworld of the Starjammers’ medic, Sikorsky.
PAGES 37-38: The trailers. The Krakoan reads: NEXT: LAWLESSNESS AND DISORDER.
YLu is saying everything better than I would have. 🙂
Obviously, not everyone’s going to be into this era of the X-Men, and that’s fine. I’m enjoying hearing why others aren’t into it, though.
re: Emmanuel
In theory, yes, they could just walk through the Starjammer’s portal once they arrive in the Shi’ar Empire, but the Starjammers point out in the story that they’re wanted pirates and are only getting them close to the Shi’ar Empire. Also, the New Mutants wanted to go on a road trip and thought riding along with the Starjammers would be fun.
I guess they could use the flower inside Mondo to escape, but that flower would be stuck on the space station and give Shi’ar troops a potential entry point to Krakoa. Probably not a good idea. Also, I don’t know if there’s any dirt to plant the flower on the space station, anyway. In addition, the plan is to plant the flower at Sam’s place so he has a Krakoa entry portal.
I’m making a prediction that in the end the portal flower will blossom inside Mondo and give him the ability to be a mobile Krakoa gate.
It would sort of make sense given his powers – or as much as I remember about them from Generation X. And also the scene with Krakoa taking over him in this issue could be seen as foreshadowing.
@Alan L – good catch with the Rahne/innocence bit from the coffee sketch, I missed that completely.
But for all that Hickman’s writing is visible in the dialogue – especially in the mutant generations speech – I’m not sure the whole issue can be attributed to him, if only because it’s full of character work. And whether we consider it good, poor or mistifying its presence alone makes it, well, un-Hickman-like.
On a complete tangent, I wonderg once again why Bendis was (deservedly) getting flack for introducing new characters to Avengers without giving them anything to do, but nobody batted an eye when Hickman included Beast in New Avengers throughout his whole run and never used him as anything other than set dressing.
(This isn’t the first time I’m mentioning it, it has been really bugging me for years now).
re: Krzysiek Ceran
Well, Beast has been an Avenger since 1975 (once an Avenger, always an Avenger, right?). As for him having nothing to do, you got me there. 🙂
“Rahne hates judgy fundamentalists most of all. Not losing her child. Not her friend’s betrayal. Not the cold sleep of death.”
Alternately, Rahne, like most people, isn’t prone to telling their deep and personal fears to someone they barely know and isn’t about to offer a serious, soul-searched answer in this kind of situation. I doubt four-armed monsters are genuinely Jono’s biggest fear, either.
No offense, but like with the bit with Corsair’s flower where you didn’t consider that it might be for the brothers to visit dad, you sometimes seem so eager to find flaws that you look right past fairly apparent interpretations.
Maybe I’m missing something, but can’t Ilyana just teleport them all to wherever they need to go?
Not that continuity matters anymore if somebody wants to ignore it, but I’m pretty sure that so far Magik’s teleportation powers were planetwide in scope, not galaxy-spanning.
For what it’s worth, based on the Summers habitat on the moon, it seems as those Krakoan flowers can be planted anywhere. And the Shi’ar couldn’t simply enter the portal for the same reason the Russians and Sokovians, in Marauders and X-Force, respectively, cannot enter the portals: Krakoa controls who is allowed through.
As for Magick teleporting, I’m not sure about this one actually. She should be able to enter Limbo wherever she finds herself, and from Limbo there shouldn’t be any limitations on destinations. Right? At the very least, she should be able to get them out of jail. But she was knocked out early in the fight and we can pressure next issue there will be some Shi’ar power dampeners or something.
@AlanL
I totally get why some people aren’t digging these new series, but geez man. You just spent paragraphs complaining about the coffee scene and bemoaning how it doesn’t have any ties to the broader themes of the X-Men. It’s a gag. Does every joke and gag need to be thematic? Does it really matter if this isn’t a recurring character point for Chamber? Would it please you if in a few issues time the New Mutants are bested by a big bad because Chamber wasn’t willing to put down his fresh mug of coffee to join the fray?
And some of your other points are really stretching it as well. The fetishization of coffee was part of the joke and the light hearted nature of the series as a whole. You don’t have to find it funny or even amusing, but you have to have realized that it’s not meant to be taken super seriously. Not to mention that in America, and here in New York in particular, coffee is already pretty fetishized. And as for why Chamber brewed two pots of coffee, I though that was obvious – they weren’t for him, but for his friends. I don’t like green tea but if I had some in the house and had a bunch of green tea loving friends coming over, I’d absolutely brew some up for them.
There’s legitimate criticisms about these series that you could be making (and sometimes are). But you get so hung up in completely excoriating each issue, tearing apart every single word of every single panel, that you end up looking silly.
“Marauders has promise, although I’d like to see it deal a lot more with the issue of trade.”
Geez, we’ve had ONE issue. I think them not using the X-Jet is silly, but I’m willing to wait to see them get to the point where they’re carrying much more cargo than the jet can hold (they still should’ve used the jet for a pure rescue mission, though).
I seriously doubt all the build-up so far about Emma, Hellfire Trading, the drug black market and the ship is for nothing.
Though I think AlanL did go a bit far in some other criticism, the coffee thing bugged me as well. Writers who love coffee (and there are a lot of them) love to project their coffee addiction onto characters even when it’s not very appropriate. The rest of the issue goes really hard at trying to age the character’s down and then finds them drooling over black coffee, which is a pretty rare trait for anyone under 30. Yes, it’s a joke. It’s just not a funny one. “Raawwgghh need coffee to be functioning human” is the kind of low effort posting that should probably just stay on twitter.
Dave-A lot of times, readers are only willing to give a comic one issue to win them over, considering that comics cost $4 for one issue.
That’s a lot to ask someone to spend for something frivolous.
There’s also a lot of competition out there. When Marvel is publishing hundreds of issues a month (it seems), Marvel titles are in competition with themselves.
I’m worried that the writers are being hand-tied by the way this relaunch is set up, so that we won’t really see much of importance happen in any of these books, because everything has to be kept static until one year from now when Hickman tells another chapter in this saga.
As far as the jet, that seems to fit the thematic elements of the mutants mostly avoiding technology on Krakoa.
It makes perfect sense to me.
I don’t expect we’ll ever see the X-jet as long as the Krakoa set-up lasts.
It’s funny that the one aspect of “mutant culture” that we’re seeing explored is the concept of…magic.
With a completely out-of-left-field interpretation of Apocalypse which bears no resemblance to the one we saw from Hickman.
Exploring mutant culture is certainly an interesting direction, and one I was hoping to see going forward, but magic being part of mutant culture seems like a real stretch to me.
I want to see the books moving in a new direction.
Dazzler’s biggest complaint has been, “if it’s not broke, why fix it?”.
My response to Dazzler has been it was broke, so let’s fix it.
If the plots are going to boil down to Captain Britain Corps story-lines, mutant-hating bigots invading and killing mutants, and mutants rescuing other mutants, and the Shi’ar (even though I really did like this issue of New Mutants)…I’d say all of those stories could have been told prior to Krakoa.
I’d like to see Krakoa as something other than something that is mandated to be included in the background, while the writers continue telling the same stories we’ve seen many times before.
So far, it seems like “Dawn of X” is trying to appeal to the widest number of fans, while only serving to alienate both sides in the debate over Hickman.
We have some fans complaining that this isn’t the X-Men they remember and they don’t like the changes.
We also have readers (like me) who want to see the idea of the X-Men move on and start to progress the concept.
Instead, it seems like “Dawn of X’ is trying not to alienate both sides in that debate, and it’s only going to end up alienating both sides, I think.
I also don’t know why everyone thinks that the X-Men should be opposed to what they’re seeing with Krakoa.
We know that some things are being kept secret by Professor X, Magneto, and Moira.
So, there are some secrets on Krakoa that the X-Men are unaware.
Based on what the X-Men are seeing, is it really that out of character, if Xavier explained what they were going to try to do?
We never saw the X-Men have a problem with the concept of the X-Men either, even though it seemed completely ineffectual as far as achieving Xavier’s dream.
They just kept going along with it, acting like true believers.
So, Xavier tells them that their constant fights with “evil mutants” isn’t doing anything to help the cause of peaceful coexistence.
Instead, they can bribe the “evil mutants” to come to Krakoa with the promise of eternal life.
Once there, they set up a council which says it is now against the law to harm humans.
They make an example of Sabretooth, sending him to Hell.
(There may be more going on with this than we’re aware, and Xavier shared this with the X-Men, but not with the “evil mutants”.)
That’s what will happen to any mutants who decide to declare war on humanity.
The X-Men can now watch their enemies, instead of hiding in a mansion and waiting for one of their enemies to attack, and then go fight them.
I don’t see why the X-Men should be actively rejecting Krakoa, although we are seeing that some of them may have some doubts.
These Reboot threads remind me a lot of wrestling fans on the internet, especially that part of the fanbase that can only nitpick and complain, yet do not move on to something else and just continue to feed the machine.
Those are the fans that Marvel and DC need though, because those are the fans who continue to buy the comics, no matter what.
Based on sales, most readers have decided to move on when the comics aren’t to their tastes.
It’s why sales have dwindled so badly as the 21st century has gone on.
Without the fans who are going to buy, no matter what, Marvel and DC’s sales would be in the gutter.
I hope I don’t come across as a fan who only complains.
I complain about some things, but I have enjoyed House of X, Powers of X, X-Men, and New Mutants.
I am willing to give Marauders and X-Force a chance to improve, even though I found them a lot more problematic.
I did not enjoy Excalibur at all, and am not continuing to purchase it. I have no interest in Fallen Angels, so won’t buy it.
I don’t think an entire line is ever going to be to someone’s taste.
Some books will work better for what they are wanting to read than others.
With a relaunch, there a whole series of new #1 issues to try.
As I said, many readers will only give a book one issue to decide if they are going to keep buying it or not.
@Chris V: You’ve mischaracterized my biggest complaint. It’s not that the X-Men wasn’t broke and didn’t need fixing, it’s that Marvel (and apparently all of the editors and writers and fans) for various reasons completely lost sight of what made these books work in the first place. In my opinion X-Men has been broken for 20+ years ever since editorial interference kneecapped the Kelly-Seagle plans. Essentially I believe they have a blueprint that they’ve been ignoring for decades to the point where they decided they had to throw everything away (muddying X-Men history along the way because none of this honestly fits at all).
@Alan L: Sometimes a little extreme and it comes in walls of text that would make even me blush, but I really appreciate your thoughts. I agree with most of what you said, and I’ve put it in other ways. It’s just not a workable status quo. I understand the early intrigue, discussion, debates, etc., but I must have lost all touch with comic book readership if this is going to keep people excited now that the dust has settled. There’s really nothing here that interests me in the least.
I’ll also add: If they’d just taken an honest shot at dusting off and updating the blueprint after all of the major characters were alive again, I’d be much more open to throwing out the baby with the bathwater like they did. One more classic crack at recapturing the audience with the original premise, and if it didn’t work, do something ridiculous like this.
What was so great about the Seagle/Kelly run?
There was nothing very interesting there.
It has always seemed to me that this is a case of fans pining for “what might have been?” due to their runs both ending early.
Yes, both writers did a fine job with writing, but there was nothing in there to get excited about.
The sales continued to be down after the mess that was Onslaught, so Seagle and Kelly weren’t drawing back the fans who had been lost.
That period of time reminds me a lot of current-day Marvel with the X-Men.
The sales were way down, they were panicked, they started trying to throw as many different changes at the titles as they could to try to raise sales, the sales stayed down, so Marvel finally found Grant Morrison to get fans excited again.
Besides which, I thought that Seagle/Kelly era was what you were opposed to with the X-Men?
Seagle picked up on Claremont’s original idea, with the original five X-Men discussing retiring as superheroes.
Professor X was gone after Operation: Zero Tolerance.
Magneto was a de-aged clone with amnesia.
Wolverine was the only really popular/core X-Man still active.
That looks pretty similar to what was happening with the X-Men around the time of Marc Guggenheim’s “back to basics” run.
Personally I loved Joe Kelly’s X-Men. Loved basically everything about it, liked the lineup and the characterization, they kind of had their backs against the wall. Loved that he turned Marrow from someone I absolutely hated into a textured, interesting character over the span of like three issues. Absolutely loved Maggott and miss him dearly. In his 15 issue run, Kelly actually wrote a few of my absolute favorite X-Men issues ever. I didn’t particularly care for Seagle’s book, but so much of what he did was transitional and I wanted to see where it was going. Kelly was going to write the school-centric book with the new characters and Seagle was going to write a the classic X-Men team book. I wanted to see that happen.
That said, I’m not saying this run was the greatest thing of all time; I’m identifying this period as when the X-Men went straight to hell after Marvel changed their minds and insisted on having both books share the same team and be heavily interconnected at the direction of editorial. I think that’s when it all went south. They went backwards to frankly stale retreads like Alan Davis and Claremont, then they had Morrison take over and essentially reboot the books into something very cold and cynical, more concerned with being very adult than being remotely fun. And I think it’s been a struggle ever since in terms of the main narrative.
Bear in mind, what was happening in the Kelly/Seagle run was a natural continuation of the narrative. The X-Men were in a state of disrepair based on events that unfolded organically in the narrative. So the team is decimated, but most of the main characters were still there, and I thought Kelly/Pacheco and Seagle/Bachalo was about as strong as you could get in terms of creative teams.
The run actually reminded me a lot of the Outback era, which is also a favorite of mine, and the thing they both had in common is that the X-Men’s ranks were bit decimated and their backs were against the wall based on organic developments in the continuing story. Note that after the Outback era, they did a reset. And the Kelly/Seagle plans were certainly headed towards another reset with a classic team book and a school book.
I don’t know how badly sales were dipping like you say, but I’m basically certain that the core books were still at the top of the sales charts during the Seagle/Kelly run. I know a lot of people didn’t like the new characters, etc. I think Marvel was absolutely insistent on folding Excalibur’s big three into the books, and I’m guessing they were just doing their normal thing by interfering way too much, resulting in a bad creative environment. I think if sales were that bad, they would have fired Kelly/Seagle instead of telling them what stories to keep writing until the duo quit.
Also, it’s not like Morrison’s X-Men sales were ultimately a good thing. Maybe sales spiked during that run, but it wasn’t remotely sustainable and you can easily point to that era as the turning point where the X-Men would lose their footing as the #1 franchise in comics. I think plenty of readers like myself took that run as a jumping-off opportunity, and the books have never been the same since.
“I don’t expect we’ll ever see the X-jet as long as the Krakoa set-up lasts.”
I’m not sure if it was *the* X-jet, but the team used an X-jet of some kind to reach the Forge in HoX/PoX.
I’m surprised that you like the Outback Era so much, Dazzler. It was when Claremont began to move further an further away from the old status quo for the X-Men (he had begun during the Romita Jr. period, but it just continued).
The rest after the Outback Era was the Siege Perilous/non-team era.
It was only editorial meddling which made Claremont have to steer back towards
“business as usual”.
I mean, you could just as easily say that the X-Men vol. 2 wasn’t a good thing either, if you don’t accept Morrison’s helping sales, because X-Men vol. 2 helped start the speculator boom, which was definitely not sustainable, and the comic market eventually collapsed, never to actually recover again.
——————————————
It seems like a lot of readers took the Onslaught event as their jumping off point.
If you do the math, a lot of people who were born around, say, 1980 and so were of the age where they’d be around the appropriate age to love the X-Men cartoon, would then be getting to about the age where they’d start growing up and moving on to other things outside of comic books around the time that Onslaught was happening.
Then, there was a big deal about Chris Claremont returning to X-Men, and that brought back some older fans again.
The Claremont return was a huge misfire, and those fans quickly jumped ship again.
Then, Grant Morrison came along and the sales went way up again. The closest they had been to the early-1990s.
It was Marvel editorial’s fault that the sales began to drop again after Morrison left.
They stayed pretty high for a little while with Joss Wheedon and then Bendis’ House of M.
Unfortunately, Marvel decided to look back at the early-1990s as the model to follow, where big yearly cross-over events were so popular.
Instead of focusing on keeping the monthly comic fresh after Morrison, Marvel put all their focus in to coming up with another stupid cross-over for the next year.
The X-titles became about “mutants going extinct” for years, which kept losing more and more readers.
@Chris V
“I’d like to see Krakoa as something other than something that is mandated to be included in the background, while the writers continue telling the same stories we’ve seen many times before.”
I just don’t see this at all.
It’s absolutely true that *tonally* some of these books are really similar to your typical X-book, and to your typical modern Marvel comic in general really. They’re mostly written, after all, by typical Marvel writers.
But plot-wise? I just can’t see how the new status quo is being pushed into the background when these books are pretty much nothing but the characters responding to the new status quo. (With the exception, as mentioned previously, of the book where the cast decide to go into space partway through the issue.)
Positioning the continued existence of lots of violent fighting against bigots as a sign everything is business as usual is rather reductive, I feel. It’s a superhero story revolving around a minority metaphor. That kind of plotting will always be a major ingredient.
By that standard, you could just as easily argue that HoX/PoX itself was business as usual — that it’s just another story about warring against Sentinels and bigots (Orchis) and trying to prevent a grim, genocidal future. Why did we need Krakoa for that?
Because, I thought that Hickman was putting a red line under all of the “mutant genocide” and “mutants are going extinct” plots.
Just like Morrison’s run was a meta-running commentary with the Chris Claremont era, rather than a clear break with what had gone before.
You couldn’t just completely ignore the history of the franchise. It had to be addressed.
Morrison’s run was, basically, one long attempt to lay to rest the Claremont legacy on the X-Men.
Morrison’s run wasn’t that far removed from what came before, but at the end of it, we were meant to see a new future with new possibilities for stories.
Morrison inverted the trope of “Days of Future Past” with his final story-arc and allowed for hope to actually exist.
Instead, Marvel decided that “mutants going extinct” would be the plot that readers really wanted to see moving forward.
So, we had the “lost decade” (as Hickman so aptly described it).
The books were back in a rut. It was the same old thing over and over.
Either it was more stories set in the shadow of Claremont or it was “mutants are going extinct again!”.
That’s where Hickman comes aboard.
He writes a story about how mutants always lose. The future is always dark. Humans and mutants will always hate each other, and it will always lead to a dystopian future for everyone.
Moira now wants to end that cycle.
Instead of doing the same thing over and over, it’s time for the X-Men to move forward.
So, House and Powers looked to be that red-line under “business as usual”.
It wasn’t a completely new start, because you can’t just ignore what came before in the franchise.
Without the context of where they’ve been and where the franchise seemed to be going, then Krakoa makes absolutely no sense.
Krakoa is the culmination of where the books have been going for the past decade or so.
The books could finally move on. Something Morrison attempted to do, and Marvel editorial quickly put a stop.
It’s not that I have a problem with mutant-hating bigots being a plot.
It’s that I’d like to see events moving in a new direction.
Yes, there are still mutant-hating bigots to deal with, but they’re a minority now.
I’d like to see how Krakoa is changing the way that the world perceives of mutants.
During the Rosenberg run, we came to an almost laughable level of hatred shown by humans against mutants.
The human race celebrated because mutants were finally going to be extinct.
Now, Krakoa has opened up trade with the rest of the world.
Mutants are offering life-extending drugs to humanity.
How is this going to change the way humans feel about mutants?
Also, you keep mentioning New Mutants as an exception, but Excalibur is very much an exception.
A random team deciding to go to Otherworld and be involved in plots from Captain Britain has nothing to do with “Dawn of X”, regardless of how much they try to shoehorn in the concept.
“Magic is mutant culture” and “Apocalypse is a sorcerer now” are just a smokescreen to hide the fact that the writer doesn’t really want to deal with Krakoa.
You could have a series where mutants go live with the Fantastic Four and they fight Galactus and put some mandated comments about “Galactus is a threat to Krakoa too!”, it doesn’t mean that the book is actually dealing with a new status quo.
Let me put it this way, the books are dealing with a status quo, this is true.
Are they dealing with a new status quo? X-Men has been. Marauders show signs of starting to, agreed.
Location is not a new status quo.
You can move houses, and you can have characters marvel at their new house, and how different it is than their last house.
That’s not a change to a new status quo.
A location or setting is not a status quo.
Can I tell the exact same story in Excalibur anywhere other than Krakoa? Definitely!
Can I tell the exact same story in X-Force anywhere other than Krakoa? At the mansion, on Utopia, on Genosha….sure.
Can I tell the exact same story in New Mutants anywhere other than Krakoa? Since it’s very similar to Chris Claremont’s New Mutants, which predated Krakoa, yes.
Krakoa is a location for these stories (or a jumping off point for other stories with New Mutants and Excalibur), rather than a new status quo that is important for me to be able to tell this specific story.
Xavier could have bought a giant hotel chain and moved all the mutants in the world in to his new hotel chain.
You can tell the same stories from three of these five books in the new location of the X-Hotels.
I’m sure everyone would marvel at how strange it is they’re all living in hotel rooms now too.
That’s not a new status quo, it’s a change in location.
One way this is a new status quo is that all the mutants are living on Krakoa now.
If you hadn’t read House of X, would you even know this?
As someone in the X-Force thread said, they would have liked to see some former villains taking part in Krakoa’s defense.
Outside of Apocalypse, who is suddenly a sorcerer, except when he’s not in that one book; we haven’t seen anything (outside of Hickman) dealing with that new status quo.
It’d be easy to make the book stand out by showing that all mutants apparently get along now.
Or, at least are trying, because Rogue and Apocalypse got in to a bit of an argument.(Once again, that’s simply Apocalypse. He was portrayed in a more sympathetic light in “Age of X-Man” too.)
Instead, sometimes a random X-Man will say a line, “Yes, we live with our former enemies now. It is strange. Moving on.”
Well, it depends on what you mean by Krakoa. If you mean the island itself, then you’re right that you can absolutely tell these stories elsewhere. If you’re using Krakoa as synecdoche for the entirety of the new status quo — all mutants united, resurrections, mutants as a recognized world power, the whole works — then no, you cannot tell these stories outside Krakoa. Those elements have been rather essential to the stories.
To use your Galactus example, if that story was as you described but also explored former X-villains working as close allies, having to face formerly dead relatives, and characterization bits about everyone’s reactions to this newfound sense of security, I would absolutely say it required Krakoa.
There are also discrepancies between books which makes me think that the writers aren’t really sure what is part of the status quo, and therefore, they’re telling safe stories.
Krakoa is a paradise where mutants are finally safe, except for when the Reavers attack, like they always used to do too…
Is Wolverine trapped on Krakoa for some reason? Has he gotten too lazy to leave the island?
Other people can travel to and from Krakoa.
Why can’t Wolverine stop somewhere and pick up some supplies?
Is Krakoa meant to be ominous or is it not?
Some books seem to treat Krakoa as if everything is perfectly fine and they characters are fine with the new set-up.
Other books treat Krakoa like there’s still some dark mystery to reveal, and this isn’t going to be a new status quo going forward.
In that interview, Hickman wonders why people are still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Probably because of the woefully imbalanced tone between some of these books.
(Of course, Hickman may be hiding facts.)
@Chris W
“Krakoa is a paradise where mutants are finally safe, except for when the Reavers attack, like they always used to do too…”
Those are two sides of same coin. Not that I particularly enjoyed that issue, but the point was that because of living in paradise, they’d become too overconfident.
“Is Wolverine trapped on Krakoa for some reason? Has he gotten too lazy to leave the island? Other people can travel to and from Krakoa. Why can’t Wolverine stop somewhere and pick up some supplies?”
This I agree makes absolutely no sense. My best guess is that Duggan took the “only mutants can go through” concept too literally and didn’t consider how, since their clothes go with them, they can obviously take supplies too.
“Is Krakoa meant to be ominous or is it not?”
I think the ambiguity is supposed to be the point.
“In that interview, Hickman wonders why people are still waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Oh, he wasn’t wondering. He thought he knew exactly why. He thinks it’s because people — readers and writers alike — are so used to X-Men stories of disaster and tragedy that they can’t imagine anything else. He compared it to someone being repeatedly punched in the face, saying it’s his job now to convince the readers they’re not going to get punched again.
But maybe he’s just trying to mislead us all, yeah.
Dazzler-I have to ask, what is this magical “blue print” for a perfect X-Men story you keep going on about?
If you hold up the Outback Era as one of your favourite periods in X-Men history.
It’s one of mine also. I’d say it’s one of the few times that the X-Men could be considered to have moved the farthest outside of the “blue print” for a classic X-Men story.
It being so daring and different is why I love it so much.
Morrison’s run was much more traditional than the Outback Era.
-The mansion was gone. As was Prof. X.
-Magneto was the X-Men’s (nominal) leader.
-Almost all the X-Men’s “evil mutant” enemies had reformed, or been shown in a positive light.
The X-Men were no longer fighting “evil mutants” to protect humanity.
-There were very few classic X-Men characters left on the team….Wolverine, Storm, and Rogue were the only core characters left.
Once again, rather than having some classic period you’d like to see return, it seems that you just enjoy certain eras because they were well-written or engaged you.
Right. Me too.
A lot of people hated the Outback Era though, and felt that it did away with everything they loved about the X-Men concept.
YLu-The Reavers attack happened almost immediately though.
It makes the X-Men look like complete idiots.
Well, we put all these mutants on Genosha, and then Sentinels killed everyone.
So, we set up an island community called Utopia, and it kept being a target.
So, now we have an island-nation, and you know, this is totally different, because….
Oh wait, no, it was never totally different because the Reavers attacked us almost immediately.
At least save that plot for a while down the road when it seems like there’s actually a reason to believe that Krakoa is going to be different than the mansion, Genosha, or Utopia.
Or, you know, don’t tell that story at all, because we’ve read it many times before.
Now, there’s nothing to stop the idea that Krakoa won’t turn in to another Genosha.
If it doesn’t, it’s simply blind luck, not because Xavier/Magneto/Apocalypse/Moira were such brilliant masterminds.
So, it’s back to my complaint about this not being written as a new status quo, but a change in location.
I get misunderstood here a lot. I’ll try to keep this concise in the hopes of maximizing clarity.
1. The Outback era and the Kelly/Seagle era were different BUT they flowed organically from the ongoing narrative. Fall of the Mutants and Operation Zero Tolerance, respectively, took us directly into these eras. It was different and natural, and please remember that tone is VERY important to me. Tone, theme, characterization and strong creative teams are my to success. Personally I think all of these boxes were ticked. There’s no inconsistency in what I’ve been saying.
2. For the fifteenth time, what I called for was a reset of these elements, with all of the main characters in the same place fighting to protect a world that hates and fears them. Very, very obviously I’m not afraid of the books going in unexpected directions, but I think a reset was long overdue, and from there the story could flow organically.
What we have here is characterization completely out the window, the core concept completely out the window, and the tone is so bizarre most of the audience flat-out assumed mass mind control.
Here’s the blueprint: The characters act like themselves and they fight to protect a world that hates and fears them. They don’t put mutant identity over characteristics that are actually meaningful. “All mutants can be trusted?” Very, very, very obviously not. I don’t know why you’re so confused by this. You can go a lot of places with this book and these characters, but maybe don’t blow everything up just because you forgot what made it work. Character, tone, theme.
Also, the blueprint is neither magical nor perfect, and I never claimed it was. It’s just all of the major characters in the same place, acting like themselves, with grade A creators, fighting to protect a world that hates and fears them.
If you think Grant Morrison came very close to this, you’ll never get any agreement from me. Joss Whedon’s run had some of these qualities but fell well short for a few reasons. The limited nature of his run made it impossible for Astonishing to be a true flagship even before the delays. And personally I think he made a lot of very bad story choices.
Also that was, like, 2004. Since then it’s been a lot of characters taking turns dying, schisms, multiple redundant versions of the same character running around, intentionally marginalizing the franchise to spurn Fox, etc.
There’s a concept and about a dozen characters that form the core of this book, and they haven’t been together and on the same page (both literally and figuratively) in decades. I keep getting asked about this “elusive” blueprint, but I should have been asking what I might have missed over the past 20 years that could possibly be considered quintessential X-Men? Surely you have some idea of what that means, and I think quintessentiality (a word I possibly just invented) is crucial if you’re trying to refresh.
Every damn superhero comic resets to the classic formula periodically. Why should this book be any different? Why should it be forced to collapse under the weight of all the watering down that’s been done over the years? Every other series in all of history gets a back-to-basics reset. There’s a reason this was the biggest franchise in comics for decades. Maybe find the reason and at least try to recapture it before you burn everything down.
I was wondering if anyone else remembers in the early days of Gen X there was an implied connection between Mondo and Krakoa? I have a feeling it wasn’t in the books themselves, maybe in Wizard, or in some other sort of preview/solicitation.
I think I could be misremembering and confusing it with an abandoned plot about where Black Tom sent the kidnapped kids after #25 – which I think was supposed to be to Krakoa? I recall Sean saying something like that but don’t have the issues available to me anymore to check (been a while since the last classic collection came out).
Honestly, I started writing a long answer listing the many books that were doing typical X-Men stories about teams based in the mansion doing typical X-Men stuff, books that came out between Morrison’s run and now (Casey’s, Claremont’s and Brubaker’s Uncanny runs, Astonishing runs after Ellis, Amazing X-Men, various adjectiveless X-Men runs etc, all culminating in Guggenheim’s Gold), but in the end I realized we’re back to the thing we can’t agree on – you mention the ‘dozen or so core characters’ and for me the X-Men are bigger than that. And the X-Men concept doesn’t require the same dozen or so characters to be present to be X-Men.
But out of curiosity – what woud those twelve or so characters be?
Outback era was trash. Claremont stayed too long. He should’ve it handed off after #200.
Chris V –
Look, I’m not exactly enamored with X-FORCE so far myself. I’m not going to defend the Reavers’ attack as a particularly wise creative choice. But at the same time, “some bad guys attack the heroes at their HQ” is such a basic plot that its presence in and of itself hardly means everything’s still the same. Hell, it’s an obligatory episode of every remotely action-oriented TV show. You might as well say Utopia was the same status quo as the mansion was the same status quo as Genosha. They were all attacked by the bad guys, right?
But that’s just the bones of the plot. Look at what’s fleshing out that skeleton — the question of the mutants’ complacency, Xavier in Slokovia, everything involving Black Tom. That all flows out of the new status quo.
Again, I’m not saying those elements were handled in the best ways. I was pretty eh on issue, overall. But it’s hardly pushing the new status quo into the background.
@Dazzler,
Wrt “the blueprint”, I think that the “hates and fears them” bit is the part of the 70s/80s/90s and 2010s that I can happily leave behind.
I also think that whilst every other superhero franchise does reset every few years… X-Men didn’t (perhaps until 1991 and then not again until Whedon in 2004) and that was what made it so successful.
About sales:
During Kelly and Seagle around 150k.
Later drifting down during Davis to a bit ovr 100k.
Back to around 150k when Morrison started.
To around 120k when Morrison ended.
https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2004/2004-01.html
Down to the 80s after Austen during another Claremont, around House of M.
Around 60k a year ago, HOXPOX between 100k and 150k.
So. Morrison didn’t get sales from around X-Men v2, and HOXPOX gets sales around Morrison. Good for what the market is now, but still no glorious return to past successes.
Granted, at their most successful they were at their worst, so sales aren’t exactly a measure of good quality.
So the “original” Mondo was an impostor, just like the “original” Monet? Where there any genuine characters in Gen X, or were they all replaced by disguised siblings?
“Not that continuity matters anymore if somebody wants to ignore it, but I’m pretty sure that so far Magik’s teleportation powers were planetwide in scope, not galaxy-spanning.”
There were some occasions where she teleport off planet, but those were during the Claremont-era of the New Mutants, so who knows what the current status is. Plus, she never teleported directly, she always had to go through Limbo first…
“So the “original” Mondo was an impostor, just like the “original” Monet?”
Yes, but at least the real original Monet was there, she was just trapped in the body of Penance.
Re: Magma’s absence – perhaps Krakoa isn’t keen to have earth-movers set up residency on it. Has anyone caught sight of Avalanche or Rictor in the background somewhere?
Doesn’t explain why it’s okay with Polaris, though, since she did send it into space that one time.
I’m not sure these discussions will ultimately be good for my mental health, because I feel like I’m having to explain some pretty obvious things, but here’s one more go at clarification.
@Krysziek: I’m not saying that no book in the last 15 years has ever featured the elements I’m describing, but they’ve been off in the margins. The creators I thought really had a handle on the X-Men were always relegated to secondary books at best. I’m talking about the kind of “push” HOXPOX got (top creators, all the best characters), except with the original concept. Just picture X-Men #1 (1991) for a new generation of readers to enjoy.
And the core characters, in a very rough order of importance: Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Jean, Xavier, Beast, Nightcrawler, Kitty, Colossus, Iceman, Rogue, Psylocke, Angel, Gambit. I put Bishop on the fringes. Basically it’s the blue and gold teams plus Kurt and Kitty. I don’t think each of them necessarily needs to be there, but I do think you’re watering down the concept way too much when everybody gets to be an X-Man.
@YLu: I think it severely undermines the idea that this is a perfect utopia to have it attacked in month one. I mean, obviously they’ve undermined basically everything they’ve tried to establish so far, but if we’re meant to accept that the X-Men are just mindless idiots going along with the story I think you need to at least make Krakoa look safe and idyllic to the mutants themselves. How is this place any different or any safer when thugs with guns show up on day one and kill Xavier easy peasy? It’s exceptionally stupid.
@PeterA: I was going to dig up some sales data to dispute the idea that Morrison brought huge sales to a slumping title, so thank you for that. What you said is basically what I remembered. Kelly and Seagle’s books were #1 and #2 every month despite people’s complaints about Maggott and Marrow, and Morrison’s debut only brought sales back to that level and it was a pretty steady fall from there.
@Thom H: A lot of people seem conspicuously absent from Krakoa, and for random reasons, if any. The crux of this problem is that the story is too big and ambitious for its own good. It’s way, way too big for its britches. There are far too many characters, and loads of redundant ones at that, to have this blanket resurrection-plus-welcoming everyone policy. The idea of 16 million mutants on Genosha was too grand and would have been a nightmare to actually try to write in a believable way. It would have been totally unmanageable. Of course i classic Morrison fashion he destroyed it before ever having to actually define what that country was like. This time around the number is much less cartoonish, but you’ve got a lot of serious problems here for anyone who’s interested in critical thinking. You’ve got an absolute army of living weapons on an island with seemingly not much to do.
Wouldn’t any sales comparison also need to take into account how TPB sales and digital sales have become a larger portion of total sales?
I agree there are a lot of characters missing so far, but I tend to think of that as plenty of potential for future stories. I’d actually be interested in a story about Magma being kept off the island and away from her friends. But I have a soft spot for that character, so maybe others wouldn’t feel the same.
Dazzler –
I don’t entirely disagree, but a) the Krakoa set-up is at least still clearly safer in one respect: Previously, those mutants who just died would be stuck dead. And b) the story seems to be *about* interrogating that assumption of utopia in the first place.
WRT to the “potential for future stories,” I have a hard time with the idea of this island’s story potential at all. There’s already way too many people on the island with nothing AT ALL to do, and so many of them are at odds with each other. What the hell kind of sense does it make that Cyclops heads to an island full of monsters with just two (2) X-Men in tow? He has enough Alpha class mutants a his disposal to form several armies. It’s really quite stupid. I don’t think anyone really thought this through.
Also, to Krysziek (sp?) it’s not that the 14 mutants I named are the only thing that can be called X-Men, it’s that I’m calling for a refresh and I think if you want to put your best foot forward and reestablish this as the premier superhero franchise, you should get the most quintessential characters together. Also, I’m kind of comfortable leaving the last few (Psylocke, Angel, Gambit) off my list but to me they make the cut. The bottom line is that Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine and Storm haven’t all been in the same place at the same time since 2004. You’re watering down the product and wondering why people aren’t very interested.