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

X-MEN vol 6 #7
“The Secret Origin of Captain Krakoa”
by Gerry Duggan, Pepe Larraz & Marte Gracia

COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fly into action, with Cyclops as “Captain Krakoa”.

PAGES 2-4. Dr Stasis drugs his chimeras before sending them to battle the X-Men.

Stasis’ use of animal chimeras sets him up as a parallel to the High Evolutionary and his New Men, who we saw in issue #3. It also echoes the references in House of X and Hellions to Mr Sinister developing “chimera” mutants as a way forward.

Bornan is the same aide we saw with Stasis in issue #2.

PAGE 5. Recap and credits.

PAGES 6-7. Cyclops is resurrected.

This storyline isn’t told in chronological order, so this scene shows Scott being resurrected after his death at the hands of Dr Stasis (which he see later in the issue). Emma really just tells us what we already knew from last issue: Scott died in a way that was so public that he can’t simply go back to the X-Men in New York without giving away the secret of Krakoan resurrection.

Now, I quite like the idea of Captain Krakoa in theory, but there are quite a lot of problems with it in practice. For a start, it’s the Marvel Universe and people have come back from seemingly incontrovertible public deaths really quite often. It doesn’t feel like it should be that hard to come up with a plausible cover story about clones or illusions or impostors or whatever. Which means you have to work extra hard to make the plot premise work, and I don’t think this story does that.

And two, if this is such a concern, why are characters like Jumbo Carnation allowed to wander around New York openly, given that he was a high profile celebrity death? And why keep throwing copies of X-Force at Orchis (as we learned in Inferno, which surely gives the game away to precisely the people you don’t want to know about it? Shouldn’t there be a bit more urgency for everyone about not getting killed, if resurrection is as top secret as this? It’s a nice enough story idea but the underpinning plot support is definitely wonky.

Jumbo Carnation, in the unlikely event you don’t know, is the mutant fashion designer who mainly appears in Marauders.

PAGES 8-12. The chimeras fight the X-Men in New York.

The chimeras are completely insane at this point, and while they’re meant to be fighting the mutants, they seem quite happy to attack anyone in sight. Perhaps they’re just causing some chaos in order to draw the X-Men out – Borman seems to be faking it when he joins the fight later on – but it looks a lot more likely that neither they nor Stasis care very much.

“It’s a nice change of pace from spaceships.” The X-Men fought various alien attackers (or the High Evolutionary) in issues #1-3.

Cyclops gets to dominate the field, partly to show us that he’s iconic, but also to remind us that the optic beams are very much his thing – so switching identities is easier said than done.

“What you said back at the Hellfire Gala.” Synch is referring to the election for membership of the X-Men. The one-panel flashback is the first time we’ve actually Scott’s pitch: “I am the X-Men.” This is basically right, of course – not only was he the first recruit, but he’s the one who stuck around into the 1970s and beyond. His stint away from the X-Men in the 1980s is a small part of his overall career.

PAGE 13. Stasis sends Bornan into action.

This is the clearest shot we’ve had of Bornan yet; apparently he’s got the head of a tiger on the body of a gibbon or something along those lines.

PAGES 14-17. Cyclops rescues a baby from Bornan.

Synch’s use of Jean’s powers is addressed after the main story, so we’ll come back to that.

Basically, this is Cyclops dying heroically while saving a baby. It’s not in the least subtle, and even in the Krakoan era, it feels a bit arbitrary for him to take that sort of damage that quickly while fighting a butler.

PAGES 18-19. Stasis, posing as an EMT, makes sure Cyclops dies.

Stasis tells Cyclops where to find him – the point is to test whether resurrected mutants keep their memories up to the point of death. We know that they don’t.

There are, again, some awkward problems with the mechanics here. The plot here absolutely hinges on Cyclops’ death being very very public, but all we get is a few shadowy people in the background – who have apparently materialised from nowhere in the three panels since Stasis dramatically slashed Cyclops throat. Again, for this plot to work, the death needs to be very public, and this… doesn’t feel especially public. Especially when the same story has a plot about Ben Urich’s memory being erased. Doesn’t this need the smartphones-and-Twitter, genie-out-of-the-bottle scene?

PAGES 20-21. Scott and Jean discuss matters in the Quiet Council chamber.

The Captain Krakoa outfit is evidently the creation of Forge and Jumbo, with Forge providing the mechanics that (presumably) use Scott’s optic beams to power him.

Ben Urich told Cyclops in issue #5 that he had learned about resurrection and was planning a story about it, but had lost all his memory of that by issue #6. Since Jean wasn’t responsible, Scott is understandably suspicious that Emma is the one covering Krakoa’s tracks – but he describes it as a feud with the Quiet Council as a whole, suggesting that he suspects she’s acting with the approval of the likes of Xavier. If Cyclops has a problem with the Quiet Council using telepathy to preserve state secrets, what does he make of X-Force?

The closing page seems to have Stasis viewing his EMT gear in a display case.

PAGE 22. Data page about Synch’s latest power-up, copying Jean’s powers when she isn’t even there. Dr Reyes suggests  that Synch hasn’t been powered up to the point where he can copy someone on another planet – rather, he can use at least some powers that he’s synched to in the past. In Jean’s case, the fact that she’s a teammate and he’s spent a lot of time around her recently should help.

PAGE 23. Another data page, this time about the “Earth-Arakko-Relay” (or EAR) which allows telepathic communication between Earth and Arakko. Apparently these things are packed with cloned brain parts from Professor X. Lovely. And that sounds like the sort of thing with the potential to go very badly wrong. Interestingly, while EAR itself is public knowledge among the mutants, the rather unpleasant way it works is some sort of state secret.

The Cheyenne language is indeed endangered, with an estimated 1,900 or so speakers.

Blightspoke is the graveyard of failed dimensions which forms part of Otherworld over in Excalibur.

The Children of the Vault were the posthumans whose time-distorting Vault Synch and X-23 spent centuries trapped in (from their perspective).

The Beast was, we’re told, unhappy that the EAR was launched without him having any involvement. The heavy implication is that he would have wanted to bug the thing on behalf of X-Force. The lesser implication is that he’s been deliberately cut out of the loop for precisely that reason.

“Mutant communication is fundamentally telepathic.” I mean… it isn’t, is it? They mostly talk to one another, and the telepaths are a small minority. Let’s be generous and assume he means long-distance communication.

PAGE 24. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: MODOK – just like it says at the bottom of page 21.