The X-Axis – w/c 1 May 2023
At last, a nice quiet week.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #11. (Annotations here.) Okay, so it undercuts the ending of Sins of Sinister: Dominion to have the four compromised Quiet Council members who went to the Pit come straight back out again in the next scene. But that point aside, the slow burn approach feels like the right one. It’s not an immediate collapse – we don’t get to the “Fall of X” stuff for a while yet – but everything is pointing towards the looming failure of the Krakoan era, as everything about Krakoa starts to get a little bit hollowed out. Half the Quiet Council can’t vote any more. Resurrection can’t be trusted any more. And so on. In fact, the direction of travel seems so clear that part of me wonders whether it’s a feint and we’re going to get “Krakoa saved from the abyss”. But I do think it’s probably time to move on to something else, and the other way of reading it is that the focus is already starting to shift to “what next?”
Storm is our spotlight character in this issue, and we pick up on the theme from X-Men Red of her being hopelessly overcommitted. It might seem a bit odd to play that angle with Storm rather than, say, Wolverine. But of course, he’s not in charge of anything, and thanks to his amazing ability to be in nine stories at once, he doesn’t have a track record of taking on leadership roles and not being there when it matters. It’s also an angle that helps to undercut her tendencies towards sainthood, and we can already see that her attempts to manage the problem here are just going to lead to catastrophe. And, despite being warned to her face that she failed to spot any of the problems in the Sins of Sinister timeline, she magnificently fails to spot any of them in this timeline either. Poor Storm.
Some of the art feels a bit rushed this issue, though – there’s something off about Mystique’s scene, and the closing page with Colossus doesn’t feel like the work of the same artist at all.
X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – SONS OF X #1. (Annotations here.) This is a wrap-up issue for Legion of X, which also serves to get Nightcrawler and Legion off Krakoa, and set up Nightcrawler for his next issue in… er, in September. It’s patchy, if I’m being honest, and feels like the book has been accelerated to an ending. The previous series, Way of X, ended in a similar way, with its final issue being billed as X-Men: The Onslaught Revelation.
The parts with Mother Righteous and Legion work pretty well – it’s good to have someone see through her pretty quickly, though she does make it terribly easy for him here. And since Legion promptly vanishes, it doesn’t spoil the wider plot. Phil Noto’s art is always a pleasure, and I really like the slightly organic feel of his Nimrod. But there are problems here. There are glaring problems in making this book fit with wider continuity – Immortal X-Men and Legion of X both pause for the Sins of Sinister crossover with Nightcrawler in completely different places, and that’s the sort of thing that it’s hard not to notice. And the whole subplot about Vox Ignis is so difficult to follow on a mechanical level that it’s hard to even get to the stage of feeling anything about it. At best, all this is needlessly confusing and it distracts from the story. But it feels like a massive cock-up as much as anything.
Then there’s a feeling of rush. There’s a whole subplot of Orchis sending Nightcrawler to kill mutant-hostile politicians in an attempt to turn the public against mutants. Or at least someone who looks an awful lot like Nightcrawler. It could always be a clone or something. This is meant to be a big deal, but it gets three panels and a couple of sentences on a data page. And after four issues of build up, we just get a bit of hand-waving magic to turn the monsterized mutants back to normal. These are the sorts of problems to be expected when a story is cut short, but they’re problems nonetheless.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #85. By Grace Freud, Alberto Alburquerque & Yen Nitro. This is the end of the “unofficial X-Men” arc. It’s… not entirely satisfying, if I’m being honest? It kind of handwaves away the idea of the characters ageing over years in Mojo’s world, presumably thanks to resurrection, I guess, but I’m not sure that quite works. And the closing sequence where they choose a team name feels terribly abrupt. But I like Mojo Jr standing up for a version of Mojoworld that at least tries to make vaguely watchable television using captured mutants, which feels like there might be some mileage in it. Really, there’s nothing wrong with this arc that a bit more room to breathe wouldn’t fix – the ideas are there, it just feels cramped.
Honestly, I’m hoping Krakoa continues (or ‘a new Krakoa’, as per Destiny’s possible future from Immortal #3). It really works as a part of the X-Men universe, and there’s a potential for a lot more stories in this setting.
Krakoa works as a setting to get all the many, many X characters in one place. I don’t think the marketplace can really sustain the distinct “team” we used to have. It’s also fertile opportunity for spotlighting so many underused or villainous characters. Anyone could get a chance at headlining, it feels.
Plenty more stories in the pipe but if there’s a clear idea of what’s next… Great. So long as there’s a framework!
And Immortal X-Men continues to deliver. I hate the undercutting of the Sins of Sinister finale – how dull! Bring on new quiet council! But I trust Gillen enough that it’ll be worth it. On Storm, she’s so untouchable at this point she really does need brought back to earth and humanised. How can she not believe her own hype??
Yeah. For all it’s little quirks and inconsistencies, the Krakoa era has felt like it mattered more than anything in the X-Universe since the Grant Morrison days. It wasn’t an over-hyped cross-over event; it wasn’t a done-to-death rehash of played-out X-Men tropes; it wasn’t overblown melodrama or thwarting generic bad-guy schemes.
It seemed to have this deeper thematic resonance that just gave everything more weight. And I know that some of the individual titles worked better than others, and the execution wasn’t always flawless, but as when taken as a whole, it made for a pretty rich, substantial tapestry.
I really hope they don’t abandon all of that for some new, generic status quo.
I want the Krakoa era to end, because following it relies on having kept track of so many books for so many years. You can’t pick up any of the books today and have any idea what’s going on without reading a dozen previous books that set things up.
I think one thing the Krakoa era established, and which can carry over after, is that you can have a number of X-books with different casts and agendas. They don’t all have to be variations on “surviving in a world that hates and fears them.” They can each do specific things that utilize their respective casts.
I feel like the next era should present a new twist on an old concept, like how Morrison updated the concept of the school and mutant culture. Parts of Hickman’s series touched on the “hated and feared” angle in a new way, but never spent enough time on it. I think that’s ripe for mining, maybe not in the same way as Hickman’s take, but something else that’s different from what came before.
Given what we know about the post-Fall of X titles, it looks like Krakoa is not going to be the main setting for the X-titles. I like the Krakoa set-up a lot, even if most of the comics haven’t fleshed out the setting and what it’s like to live there enough for my liking. Still, mutants being scattered and having to form new teams and alliances while on the lam has some interesting story potential. I just hope we won’t see the end of Krakoa.
Zoomy says:
“, ’ …”
Yes, well, the novelty of the Krakoa era is starting to wear off, and the cracks are beginning to come through. Like any era, it has had it time and it is now it most move forward. More than likely what will happen is that Krakoa will continue somewhat, but will be placed in the background for the foreseeable future. It will become something of a Genosha for the time being. The looming threat of the Dominion will also be backburned and will present an existential threat to the wider Marvel Universe(s) in the possible future.
I meant to quote: Honestly, I’m hoping Krakoa continues…
I hope they retcon the whole damn thing, though I know they won’t.
It corrupted literally the entire premise of the series up to now.
Kill it with fire, kill a Moira, blame Onslaught, blame Gorgeous George, I don’t care.
As much as I’ve enjoyed parts of the Krakoa era (essentially the “main events”: HoXPoX, XoS, Inferno, SoS), I’ve found I have to work very hard to keep up with what’s happening – which is why the annotations here have been so helpful. It seems to be quite fractured storytelling with elements introduced with a sense of importance and foreboding that don’t go anywhere. Somewhere along the line, the plan for Krakoa left the tracks (I heard Jordan White say this the other day on a podcast) and, it seems to me, that Gillen, Spurrier and Ewing have been left trying to keep going in a “Hickmanesque” manner and Marvel editorial stopped caring about what was happening. It’s certainly not a part of the Marvel Universe for new readers. In many ways, I’m longing for a beautifully-drawn “classic” X-Men comic with a small team of mutants led by Cyclops punching baddie mutants. And time to give the data pages and clunky graphic design a break.
Well… that’s what the Gerry Duggan’s book is. Beautifally drawn, small team led by Cyclops, focused on superheroics.
They still are a team of Krakoa brand ambassadors, but other than that – that book exists.
RE: Duggen’s X-Men
Yeah, it’s kind of baffling how what, in another time, we would have called the Flagship Title is so generic and inconsequential.
Easily the least interesting of the current X-line.
It’s weird how two years running they’ve built up the Hellfire Gala NEW TEAM ANNOUCEMENT!!! only for the mutants they chose to have almost no bearing on the stories. I remember liking the idea of a wider variety of mutants getting a cool spotlight as a member of the main team, but then none of the characters ever do anything besides generic fighting.
I guess it’s why they let the public vote on one of the new members. It literally doesn’t matter who’s on the team, since Duggen treats every character like they’re just some rando to fill out the line-up.
@Krzysiek Ceran You’re right about Duggan’s X-Men.
I think I’m nostalgically longing for the old “classic” X-Men team rather than characters I’m not invested in (I realise that there are readers who love Synch and Laura). Maxwell’s Hammer seems correct about how Duggan treats chsracters.
But what would a “classic” X-Men book be about anymore? Are they struggling to survive? Are they struggling to learn about their powers? Are they constantly under attack by sentinels? By evil mutants? Are they searching out new mutants?
I’m not really interested in any of these concepts in their “classic” approach. I’m okay with taking them and reinventing the approach, depending on the concept and the approach.
I think the upcoming titles might be about mutants on the run once Krakoa is compromised and the world hates and fears them… more? again? I don’t know if it will feel more like classic X-Men, or “world tour”-, in-space-,Outback-, or post-Outback-but-pre-X-Tinction-Agenda-era X-Men, but it should be a big shake-up. I wonder how people will react, especially those sick of or disinterested in Krakoa.
I mean I gotta be honest, what was the point of all the writers going like “we want to stay on Krakoa” and forcing Hickman to do a rushed conclusion to his stuff, only for editorial to decide to do a big ending period anyway?
Yeah I’m with Jenny. I always figured the setting would have an unsatisfying ending, but at this point stretching it out has just given it an unsatisfying middle as well. Remember at the beginning, when everyone was digging for clues in every panel?
I think anyone who was searching for clues in Hickman’s X-Men books never read Hickman’s Avengers or Fantastic Four books. Dude doesn’t write stories that way. Dude has a setup, an endgame, and filler that can last for years if editorial asks for it.
Consider Hickman’s Avengers. The only setup that “mattered” in the setup for Secret Wars was the fifth or sixth issue of New Avengers where Doom sees them stop an incursion. That was it. All the Avengers Worlds stuff, all the Infinity stuff, all the Starbrand stuff . . . just filler.
Jenny > I mean I gotta be honest, what was the point of all the writers going like “we want to stay on Krakoa” and forcing Hickman to do a rushed conclusion to his stuff, only for editorial to decide to do a big ending period anyway?
Did Hickman actually say that he wanted to leave Krakoa, or is this a fan narrative that has spread like wildfire?
Hickman said that he pitched his X-Men run as a 3 year, 3 act story with HOX/POX as the prologue that kicked it off. Act 1 (expanded to 1.5 years because of COVID) ended with Hellfire Gala 2021, which had the lost island of Arakko turned into Planet Arakko, a mutant planet. During the COVID break, the other writers expressed interest in expanding Acts 2 and 3 as well because they had more ideas they wanted to explore. Hickman agreed but also decided to leave the X-Men early because he couldn’t commit to what was now a +5 year run. He implied that “Marvel doesn’t really pay me to just write ongoing monthly books”.
With Hickman leaving, Gillen was brought in and Hickman’s ongoing storylines were divided up:
Gerry Duggan took over the ORCHIS and Children of the Vault plotlines.
Kieron Gillen took over the Mr Sinister and Moira X plotlines.
Al Ewing took over the Planet Arakko and Genesis/Apocalypse plotlines.
Si Spurrier took over the Mutant Religion and Technarchy/Dominion plotlines.
Victor LaValle took over the Sabretooth in the Pit plotline.
And so on.
I believe Hickman’s original Act 3 endgame was called Inferno, as heavily foreshadowed in HOX/POX. When Hickman left early, Inferno was used as a title of a miniseries that wrapped up his Mystique/Destiny plotline. Fall of X is the new Act 3 for the X-Office’s expanded plans.
Paul > In fact, the direction of travel seems so clear that part of me wonders whether it’s a feint and we’re going to get “Krakoa saved from the abyss”.
To be honest, this is how I’ve always expected Act 3 of the HOX/POX narrative to go. With the particular set-up the X-Office has right now, here’s my theory:
It seems that Fall of X begins with two brutal attacks: ORCHIS on Krakoa, and Genesis on Arakko. Krakoa will fall and the Krakoan mutants go on the run. They get scattered worldwide into new contexts (hence books like Uncanny Avengers, Uncanny Spider-Man, Alpha Flight). This is the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’, a common beginning to Act 3 narratives.
At a certain point, it will seem that everything that can go wrong has gone wrong, and the ‘Nimrod Extinction Event’ is all but inevitable. Then, through some miracle, through the right people making the right choices, things will begin to turn around. The mutants will rally, ORCHIS will be routed, and finally the mutant nation will be reformed as New Krakoa. ‘A New Krakoa’ was foreshadowed as a possible future event back in IXM 3.
Some of the aspects of the old Krakoa will stay. I absolutely expect the Resurrection Protocols to stay in some form. There are no downsides to them, they ensure writers write more more creative narratives instead of just killing C-list mutants. (The A-Listers will always be resurrected in some form.)
On the other hand, I expect the Quiet Council to be disbanded. It was always meant to be a provisional government (PoX 5) and IXM has showed all of the ways in which this form of governance can fail. X-Men has been about Jean and Scott pushing for the Krakoans to eventually elect their own leadership, using the X-Men membership elections as a test drive. WoX and LoX has built up Nightcrawler as a spiritual leader of sorts to mutantkind, his Spark ideology leading the way. Judgment Day introduced Krakoans to the Uni-Mind, the telepathic construct Eternals use to make communal decisions.
At the end of Fall of X, Jean Grey (and other psionics) will initiate a Uni-Mind of all Krakoan inhabitants so they can vote for their new leadership. I expect Nightcrawler to be elected as the first (Premier / Prime Mutant / President) of New Krakoa.
The Pit of Exile will probably be abolished from New Krakoa as well.
To expand upon my New Krakoa ending theory, I expect this nation to be formed by and consist of mutants, machines and man. I’ve noticed a number of things foreshadowing this ending, here’s an incomplete list.
1. Pre-HOXPOX, the central conflict of this era was advertised as “When two aggressive species share the same environment, evolution demands adaptation or dominance.“. This was later revealed to be narration from Moira X in HoX 2. The Dominion is the ultimate form of dominance, and we’ve seen various attempts by mutant, machine and man to join/form Dominions in alternate futures.
2. In Inferno, Professor X and Magneto ask Moira if the mutants have ever allied with the machines, to find common ground between them. Later, Nimrod and Omega Sentinel reveal to X+M the machines’ own struggle for survival and the nature of the three-way man-mutant-machine evolutionary war being waged. X+M lose the memory of this reveal.
3. In Judgment Day, Nightcrawler pushed for the resurrection of Captain America, the first non-mutant (since Scarlet Witch) to undergo the Resurrection Protocols.
4. After Judgment Day, Jean Grey founded the Phoenix Foundation, where she works with the Five to bring resurrection to a number of vulnerable and abandoned humans.
5. In X-Men Red, Magneto’s dying words to Storm were: “We must stand together. We must fight together — all of society’s so-called undesirables, human or mutant — or our enemies will destroy us simply for daring to exist. Because they never stopped, Ororo. They have never stopped.“.
6. X-Men Red has also blurred the mutant-human lines by having non-mutants (Fisher King) and humans (Nova) join the Brotherhood of Mutants. In LoX, Juggernaut joins the Legionaries.
7. In Marauders, we were introduced to Threshold, the (chronologically) first mutant society on Earth. This was a majority mutant nation with a minority human populace. The government consisted of mutants + humans.
8. In Sons of X, Nightcrawler acknowledges that while humans and mutants are separate species, they share the common genus Homo. He believes the Krakoans have forgotten to be a people, leading to their current fall.
I believe all of this leads to New Krakoa, which will become a safe haven for not just mutantkind, but for the oppressed peoples of mankind and machinekind as well. The New Krakoan government will consist of mutants (majority) and humans (minority), just like Threshold of old.
This is how supporting characters like Stevie Hunter, Dr Kavita Rao, Dr Moira MacTaggert (now resurrected), Karima Shapandar (now exorcised), Danger and her children, etc. return to the X-Men narrative.
This will be the ultimate expression of Professor X’s dream of coexistence. But it will not be realized as assimilation, the act of mutants subsuming themselves into human society, which is how Xavier has traditionally approached his dream. It will instead be realized as solidarity, the act of different peoples realizing that ‘the things that unite us are stronger than the things that divide us’, and lifting each other up.
After all, it’s not a dream if it’s real.
What do you guys think?
That would be a good ending for the franchise, if Marvel were getting rid of X-Men comics forever. It leaves no enemies for the X-Men’s antagonists in a superhero universe.
I don’t think this scenario will apply to machines.
-If you look at Moira’s Life Nine, we see that the mutants were rescuing humans from the machines and the humans were joining the mutants against the machines. This had just occurred too late and the machines had already won.
-In Moira’s Life Six, Nimrod refers to humanity and mutants being the same as far as the robots are concerned. “Humans. So glad to be done with all that.” is what Nimrod states, something like that. We later realize he’s talking about mutants when referring to “humans” as much as he means Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
-In “Inferno”, we see that Nimrod and Omega Sentinel hate humanity as much as mutants, but that they are willing to use humanity to achieve their goals.
-In Moira’s alternate Life Ten (also from “Inferno”), we see that the Children of the Vault emerge and that humans and mutants work together in order to stop post-humanity. It is the only time in any timeline we see post-humanity lose to the mutants, when mutants and humanity work together. Then, afterwards, humanity decides to still pursue the Nimrod technology. This leads to humanity and mutants going to war with mutants conquering humanity. In that timeline, Orchis didn’t exist as Omega Sentinel would travel back in time to prevent the rise of Krakoa. In this timeline, humanity could realize that Nimrod is a threat before humans go to war with mutants, stopping the scenario where mutants conquer humans.
-The Dominions are “machine gods”, the creation of fully evolved AI complexity leading to a Singularity. The Librarian is hesitant about post-humanity achieving Ascension from the Phalanx (asking Moira what she offers as an alternative), as it will mean that the machines win.
I’d like to see a continuation of Hickman’s themes post-Krakoa. Marvel would never allow it due to it breaking the Marvel Universe, but an inverse of Xavier’s line from House of X would be interesting. “Mutants were living on an island, dreaming, while the world changed.” What if by the end of Krakoa, the rise of post-humanity has happened? Mutants and baseline humanity would find common cause and need to try to figure out how to live and their place in a society which has moved beyond Homo Superior.
I don’t know if Hickman planned to end Krakoa at the end of his story, but it wouldn’t have long outlasted him anyway. Because there will always be a creator who just wants to smash stuff up and do things their way.
But the fact that they did extend the setting partway through Hickman’s planned arc instead of waiting till he was done does suggest he planned to put the toys back in the box when he was finished with them.
And even now, whether it ends with a New Krakoa or nationless refugees or whatever, the Krakoa setting is bound to get wiped out within a few years. Mars too. That’s just what people do.
The main reason I’m against ending the Krakoa era is the issue of what would they all do after? Go back to the mansion *again*? They have the problem they’ve had ever since Morrison outed Xavier, too many mutants.
The problem with Krakoa is that no-one, not even seemingly Hickman, wanted/wants to put in effort at a background level to work out what the structure of the island is, we don’t even know what most mutants spend all their days doing and most of the time they obligingly don’t hang around where the big battles happen. But if they go back to the mansion, there will be this same stasis. This is why ‘no more mutants’ or the terrigen cloud didn’t work, no thought was put in, after the initial idea, into how this would change society.
I’m not saying ‘X-Men Versus the Sociology Department of the University of Manchester’ would be the summer crossover that breaks all sales records but it might be useful.
@GN- one of the problems with Resurrection is that it makes it impossible to hinder the characters long term. For example, if you have Jubilee be blinded without Resurrection, then the reader wonders “How will the X-Men find a way to restore her sight?” With Resurrection, it’s just “No big deal- Jubilee will just be resurrected without her blindness.”
Now, it does look like the plot for Fall of X is “Scott is killed, some of the Five are captured making Resurrection impossible and Maddie, Alex, Warren and Remy put together the Dark X-Men to find a way to resurrect Scott”. But I have a feeling that after Scott is resurrected, they’ll find a way to limit if not do away with resurrection.
Part of the problem is figuring out what the audience will pay for. Most X-books that don’t focus on big super-hero action and/or the most popular characters don’t sell. X-Factor was one of my favorite series of this era, and it was gone in 10 issues. X-Corp wasn’t great, but tackling the business side of Krakoa should have made it a big deal. 5 issues come out, then it’s cancelled. I don’t think Spurrier’s series were big sellers, and both ended with oversized specials that didn’t keep the same name. They dealt with a new mutant religion and mutant policing, both topics seemingly important to understanding Krakoan society.
Certainly, there were quality and clarity issues with the series I mentioned above, but I don’t think they are worse than much of X-Force or Duggan’s X-Men (X-Corp aside). Do average readers care about the ins and outs of Krakoa? I kind of doubt it. Immortal X-Men is the closest we get to a comic about the nuts & bolts of Krakoa, but it’s Gillen writing and it is, for now, the flagship of the line. I wonder if the comic would sell if Gillen shifted to writing about a random resurrected Morlock trying to find a purpose on the island.
“They have the problem they’ve had ever since Morrison outed Xavier, too many mutants.”
I fully agree. The scale of X-Men stories has been growing for quite some time, and Hickman pushed that scale to its limits in terms of cast, geography, and timeline.
I miss the days when the X-Men were a small band of misfits who really felt like a minority struggling to survive.
I’m not saying they should go back to the mansion, but winnowing down the team and giving them something Earth-bound to do seems like a good way forward.
While we’re at it, maybe some of the old guard could retire/stay on Krakoa with the majority of other mutants. There’s not much to say with Scott, Jean, Wolverine, Xavier, Storm, etc. anymore. Give some of the B- and C-listers space to grow.
I admit that pushing the scale as far as it will go can be fun, and it seems like a popular storytelling device right now. But the only way forward is to pull back. Whether it’s what Hickman originally intended or not, Krakoa should fade into the background, the Mars colony should be destroyed, the gates should be deactivated, etc.
We beat the Krakoa’s great/Krakoa sucks horse extensively in a previous thread: https://t.ly/ABh2
I still don’t see the appeal or the rationale behind the people clamoring to hit that classic/back to the basics/nostalgia reset button. Happy to be persuaded if someone can outline why that would be more interesting or challenging than what we have now–the Krakoa era at least presents the possibility of thornier issues and themes.
I’ll just reiterate that I’m a fan (warts and all) and I’m happy to see a continuation of it in some form.
@Uncanny X-Ben: Premises are allowed to change and evolve.
Re: Duggan: In his mild defense, the editorial decision to annualize (in real-world time) both the Hellfire Gala and X-Men voting gimmick created a situation where 50% of the cast is a revolving door, which has really undercut his ability to build any narrative momentum with anyone but Synch (which, for the record, I’ve loved). His work on Marauders vol 1 was also mostly great. I’d wager his run on X-Men would look drastically different without this mulligan afflicting him.
Marvel already essentially hit the reset button with XMen Gold , and both sales and hype were so low enough which is why is why Marvel brought Hickman to begin with in the first place. And what else were XMen : The Hidden Years and XMen : First Class , but the back-to-basics retro “classics” that supposedly the hardcore diehards want , but apparently their sales didnt reflect it either tsk tsk tsk
The X-Men are too big, but they sell well enough that they’ll never be truly cut down to managable size. The biggest cut in recent… well, this century, I think, happened during the ‘Inhumans everywhere’ era and it meant downsizing the x-line to five ongoing titles IIRC.
It will never be smaller than this again, not unless the line crashes completely. And the X-Men are too big to fail that hard.
On a semi-related note, because I was thinking about this recently, my main ‘the X-Men are too big’ argument is that you can take two characters – mainstays of the team, with decades of individual history and multiple solo books – and find out that they’ve had basically no meaningful interactions ever.
My go to example for this are Nightcrawler and Gambit, but I’m convinced you could find plenty more.
@Jenny I wonder if they were dismayed by Hickman going to Substack, so they decided to pivot towards Destiny of X, then did Fall of X to go to the next thing.
@Jdsm24: I recall John Byrne being annoyed that X-Men: the Hidden Years was canceled despite being profitable because it was deemed too old fashioned by Quesada & Jemas. I doubt it was selling in huge numbers, however. I don’t think most people who want “back to basics” X-Men mean the original team (my pick for the most boring major super-hero team of all time). Band of heroes vs. either world that hates & fears them or evil/ misunderstood /sympathetic but misguided mutants
@Krysiek Ceran: I get what you’re saying. In your specific example, however, I think the reason we don’t see Nightcrawler and Gambit together is the same reason neither character has had much interaction with Longshot: they fulfill similar roles on the team. All three are acrobatic fighters who can provide comic relief. Thinking of characters that haven’t interacted much, Nightcrawler and Jubilee haven’t been on the same page very often. Nor have Kate Pryde and Boom Boom or Rogue and Angel, IIRC.
All I know is that I would like a single title with a stable cast that tells a long-form story and develops characters along the way.
The problem might be the current economics of the comic book market, but I don’t know how to solve that. I’ll let Marvel figure that out.
As it stands, you would have to buy two ongoing series plus invest in a special event just to follow what’s currently going on with Storm. I find that a big ask for not much reward. If you’re a Wolverine fan, apparently his storylines are resolving in X-Force without any warning. That’s just sloppy.
There’s an assumption that you’re buying the entire line, special events and all, in order to follow the few characters who are actually the stars of the show here. It all feels so sprawling and watered down.
And I’m not talking about First Class or Hidden Years levels of nostalgia here. My favorite X-books in years (aside from HoXPoX, which went nowhere it turns out) were X-Factor and Hellions.
Both had interesting groupings of recognizable characters who went on missions that contributed to their individual character growth. They intersected with the larger X-narrative but could easily stand alone. They asked big questions but kept the focus tight.
I honestly don’t think it would be difficult to replicate that kind of book, but make it the (or a?) flagship. If the X-line has to be this large at all times, then there’s certainly room for one book that’s less continuity-heavy and character-lite.
At the very least, that’s what the Avengers line is doing. They just went from literally Every Avenger Ever to a flagship team of seven members. There was literally no more room to scale up. I think (and hope) that the X-line is going to do something similar.
Chris V: That would be a good ending for the franchise, if Marvel were getting rid of X-Men comics forever. It leaves no enemies for the X-Men’s antagonists in a superhero universe.
I’m not sure Krakoa becoming the homeland to all the oppressed peoples of the world, living in solidarity with each other, would exactly leave them short of enemies.
“Marvel already essentially hit the reset button with XMen Gold , and both sales and hype were so low enough which is why is why Marvel brought Hickman to begin with in the first place”
I’m pretty sure Blue and Gold were holding books they put out while they were waiting on Hickman, not a problem to which Hickman was chosen as the solution.
How long where they waiting for Hickman? Blue and Gold were 36 issues each, lasted about a year and a half, and when they ended it was still almost a year before HoXPoX.