Comic Book / X-Men Red (2022)

The three mutants taking center stage here are not the X-Men of Mars. If they were, they wouldn't be the heroes.

"If we are to defend Arakko, we must be of Arakko. We understand the logic. We understand the cost."

— Magneto, X-Men Red #4

X-Men Red is a comic book by Marvel Comics about the mutants who are trying to shape the future of planet Arakko, written by Al Ewing and illustrated by Stefano Caselli, with color art by Federico Blee.

The series is part of the X-Men franchise and one of several new books launched for Destiny of X, the third phase of the long-running Krakoan Age saga. It's also a continuation of Ewing’s previous X-Men series, S.W.O.R.D..

Arakko was once a living island populated by mutants, a twin to the X-Men's new home Krakoa, but thousands of years ago it was shifted into another dimension and, eventually, conquered by the demonic realm of Amenth. In modern times, the mutants of Krakoa liberated Arakko and its people, brought them back to Earth's dimension, and then helped them to found a world of their own.

Planet Mars, terraformed by the combined efforts of Arakkii and Krakoan mutants, swiftly became Planet Arakko - and the X-Men's former leader Storm became its new regent and part of its ruling council, the Great Ring.

Storm, the first outsider to hold such a role on Arakko, struggles to help the Arakkii way of life, forged by centuries of endless war, awkwardly adapt to peace. Joined by Magneto and Sunspot, she has her hands full. Meanwhile, the cynical Abigail Brand is forming her own mutant team - the "X-Men of Mars" - to protect and manage Arakko, regardless of the Arakkii's wishes. And the time-traveller Cable, who's watching both factions, is keeping his own secrets.

The series was temporarily replaced by Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants, following some of the cast through a thousand years of Bad Future, during the Sins of Sinister event.

The first issue was released on April 06, 2022. The series ended with issue #18 in December 2023, though some plot threads are continuing in Resurrection of Magneto.

---

X-Men Red (2022) provides examples of:

• 0% Approval Rating: Brand’s coup attempt is harder than she initially thought, as hardly anyone trusts her or respects her authority, (as seen in both X-Men Red and Immortal X-Men). In the first issue she seeks Storm's help to assemble an X-Men team for Arakko, which backfires and prompts Storm to found a Brotherhood to counter Brand's efforts.
• Action Politician: In many ways the whole point of this book. The people who govern Arakko are also the ones who protect it on the field of battle.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
  • Tarn the Uncaring tries begging for his life when Magneto overpowers him. It doesn't help and he's Killed Mid-Sentence.
  • Orbis Stellaris isn't above pleading to others when events go out of his control, such as when his minions threaten to use Manifold's powers to damage the fabric of space itself.
• The Alleged Boss: Despite his claims to the contrary, it's clear that the three aliens from the Fault are only barely under Orbis Stellaris' control. When they overwhelm Manifold, a terrified Stellaris meekly begs them not to use Manifold's powers to tear the universe apart, and they revel in their so-called "master's" fear - while implying that they actually serve a far more powerful being.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Weaponless Zsen finds John Proudstar hot, much to her sister's disgust.
  Zsen: I like him.
  Khora: [grossed out] You would.
• Almost Dead Guy: After his battle with Uranos, Magneto finally dies in Ororo's arms - but lasts just long enough to warn her that Xavier, the final surviving architect of Krakoa, will need to be watched.
• And I Must Scream: Nova takes a shot from Pestilence for Storm and ends up infected by her disease. It kills through pain, but the Nova Force in Richard's body is keeping him alive. All telepaths can tell is his mind retreated into itself beyond their reach to cope.
• And Show It to You: In the first issue of the A.X.E.: Judgment Day tie-in, Uranos tears Magneto's heart out and holds it aloft.
• Antagonist Title: X-Men Red is the name of Brand's X-Men, initially composed of Mentallo, Random, Frenzy, Cable and Vulcan. Brand is at odds with the protagonist, Storm, and her Brotherhood.
• Angst Nuke: A flashback shows Professor Xavier deciding that the best way to help Vulcan with his mental instability is to force the matter, travelling to the Summers House to confront him with the truth. The result? Vulcan blows up the Summers House, with Xavier in it.
• Apple of Discord: A key granting one hour's service by the Eternals' imprisoned Omnicidal Maniac Uranos causes conflict in the final arc. It was gifted to the Arakkii as a gesture of goodwill after the events of Judgment Day, to be used as they see fit. The catch is that Uranos will wage war in his usual way, and everyone in the faction he's unleashed against will be slaughtered, regardless of guilt or innocence. Some of the Arakkii think that's an acceptable price to win the civil war against Genesis and her army. Storm doesn't, and eventually destroys it before it can be used.
• Arc Welding:
  • The Progenitors from Royals are now serving Orbis Stellaris. Orbis is able to pilot their bodies himself, when needed, with his spherical exoskeleton replacing the usual Progenitor's head.
  • Issue #8 further ties together threads from some of Ewing's previous Marvel books (Empyre, Guardians of the Galaxy (2020), and S.W.O.R.D.), as well as X-Men (2019), to reveal the full scale and scope of Brand's scheme.
• Art Shift: Issue #4, subtitled "Three Short Stories About Death", uses a different artist for each of the three plot threads. None are illustrated by regular artist Stefano Caselli. Writer Al Ewing has confirmed that this was a deliberate stylistic choice, not driven by deadlines.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Henry Gyrich, who Brand murdered in the previous S.W.O.R.D. series, was a monumentally unpleasant person. When his death is discussed at the start of X-Men Red, pretty much no-one believes Brand's story, assuming (correctly) that she killed him - but when she asks if it'd be bad if she had killed him, some people are uncomfortable but no-one actually objects.
  • Tarn the Uncaring was a horrible, sadistic creature. Most of Arakko is very glad to see him gone after Magneto kills him in a duel.
• Badass Boast: Given that Uranos left him for dead and he's only survived by using his powers to improvise an electromagnetic prosthetic heart, Magneto's declaration is this.
  Magneto: The Seat of Loss takes command.
• Badass Finger Snap: When Magneto finally figures out how to handle the alien Progenitors, he does so by snapping his fingers. Cue a Progenitor's head shooting off into space.
• Badass Normal: The Fisher King has no mutant power as a weapon (although he's insistent that he's not human - humans are born on Earth, whereas he was born in the prisons of Amenth) but has fought and thrived on Arakko. Exemplified when he faces down Isca the Unbeaten and secures her resignation from the Great Ring.
• Battle Discretion Shot: Issue #6 ends with members of the Great Ring ready to seek vengeance on Uranos. Issue #7 opens with Ororo holding a dying Magneto next to Uranos's smoking body. Downplayed a little in that the battle is glimpsed elsewhere, over in the A.X.E.: Judgment Day core series, but in a single page with no detail before the final twist.
• Beneath the Mask: Ororo's initially got some confidence issues going on, which have been building since her fight for her seat on the Great Ring. She has difficulty telling anyone, believing that the Arakkii would look down on that as a sign of weakness.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: A flashback reveals that Nameless, the Power Copying shapeshifter who previously held Storm's seat on the Great Ring, used those powers to call lightning down on herself rather than surrender.
• BFG: When facing Uranos, Cable breaks out his biggest gun - the Omega-One Pulse Rifle. It's an energy weapon supported on a load-bearing harness (and, based on the art, may also have anti-gravity support or something similar). The barrel is a similar diameter to Cable's torso.
• Big Bad:
  • Carrying over from the reveal at the end of S.W.O.R.D., Abigail Brand continues scheming from the shadows to bring down Krakoa and take over the Sol system.
  • After Sins of Sinister, Genesis takes center stage as everyone's problem.
• Big Brother Instinct: John Proudstar thinks the mentors and role models his little brother has had over the years have been manipulating him. Doesn't mean he's not proud of who Jimmy's become, though. In fact, the only person he's not actively rude to is Sunspot, his brother's friend and former team-mate.
• Book Ends: The first issue ends with a full-page spread of Storm declaring, “The Brotherhood does.” The final issue ends with a full-page spread of Genesis saying the same thing.
• Both Sides Have a Point: When the question of whether Empress Xandra should be revived via Krakoan immortality to avert the Shi'ar Empire collapsing, Nova and Orbis Stellaris respectively make strong points for and against the idea; Stellaris argues that it simply delays the inevitable and Xandra could become an immortal dictator who can never be truly removed from power, whereas Nova argues that not only is it moral to revive Xandra but it could buy precious time to solve the wider problems in Shi'ar society.
• Break the Haughty:
  • Isca freaks out when Sunspot uses her own powers to ensure that Tarn loses his duel with Magneto, showing her how one can "lose without losing" or, in other words, a Pyrrhic Victory.
  • In the wake of Isca's betrayal of the Great Ring, Issue 7 breaks her even further when the Fisher King challenges her to truly understand loss, forcing her to confront the way her power has shaped her life and the friends it's cost her.
  • In the finale, Genesis gloats about how she is stronger and more worthy than Ororo. The latter takes the opportunity to grab the Annihilation staff, distract it and call down the lightning, which both destroys the staff and causes the defeat of Genesis.
• Brown Note: Discussed. When Weaponless Zsen sees the three 'mummies' in the World Farm, she comments that if she used her power to paint their true nature, nobody who saw that painting would remain sane.
• The Bus Came Back: Issue #12 sees the return of Genesis and the First Horsemen after the end of X of Swords, though not Apocalypse, a fact the White Sword comments upon.
• Call-Back:
  • Once again, Magneto settles down on an island.
  • In issue 4, Nova and Sunspot both reflect on the nature of death in Marvel and come to the same conclusion that "everybody dies". Paraphrasing the Arc Words of Jonathan Hickman's Avengers run ("everything dies/lives").
  • In issue 6, Storm willingly uses her power and life force to empower Magneto, something that was done unwillingly back in Uncanny X-Men #150.
• Came Back Wrong: Discussed and deconstructed with Rockslide (aka 'Wrongslide'), who was resurrected during X of Swords. It's not that he's wrong as such, he's just a different person from the Santo who died. He finds a certain attraction in the idea of eventually dying on Otherworld so that another entirely new Rockslide can replace him when the Five bring him back.
• The Cameo: When Cable and Khora recruit Weaponless Zsen, who's left Arakko to pursue a career as an interstellar mercenary, they find her in a bar with Blackjack O'Hare and Prince of Power, supporting characters from writer Al Ewing's run on Guardians of the Galaxy.
• Character Development: Magneto is forced to do some serious self-reflection on his Super Supremacist beliefs and the nature of his "mutant utopia" after the double-whammy of learning his first daughter Anya was human (and thus can't — or rather won't — be brought back to life through the Five) and meeting the Fisher King, a baseline human born of Arakko.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Back in S.W.O.R.D. issue 3, a Knull-possessed Kid Cable tried demoralizing Eden by suggesting there was someone out there with a power like his, but better. Turns out that someone is Lacuta of the Great Ring.
• Chess Motifs: The cover of issue 9 has Abigail moving other characters as pieces on a holographic, multi-layered chessboard.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Cable, Manifold and Thunderbird all vanish after #10's arc finale. Other comics swiftly establish that Manifold and Cable have left Arakko, but X-Men Red doesn't really address any of the cast changes.
• Code of Honor: The Arakki code of honor is a recurring theme in the series, and a steep learning curve for the Krakoans. Some outsiders initially assume that the Arakki are simply a Proud Warrior Race, whereas others (such as Vulcan) stumble over local customs because they don't even try to learn.
• Combat Tentacles: With his psychic powers temporarily neutralised, Tarn shows Vulcan that his face tentacles are entirely serviceable for grappling.
• Commonality Connection:
  • Roberto strikes up a friendship with the Arakki mutant Kobak Never-Held over lost lovers; Roberto with his first girlfriend Juliana and Kobak for Tarlo, a lover lost in the war with Amenth.
  • The Fisher King grew up tortured in a eugenicist's prison and suffered through a war which he lost a loved one in, and can tell that Magneto experienced something similar, which means that he will fit right in on Arakko.
• Continuity Nod:
  • A data page in issue 2 has Professor X note how he let Petra teach a class on Krakoa despite just being an energy construct, and how he regards this in hindsight as a bad move.
  • Part of Magneto's motivation for leaving the Quiet Council is learning that his rarely mentioned first daughter Anya cannot (or will not) be revived through Cerebro and the Five because she was human not a mutant whose power had not expressed.
  • To snap Magneto out of his funk, Sunspot calls him "Headmaster" referring back to Magneto's Heel–Face Turn and tenure as leader of the New Mutants back in the original Chris Claremont run… a tenure which ended in Erik betraying Roberto and the team to take over the Hellfire Club.
  • Ora Serrata notes that Arakki law already has precedent for resurrections and immortality, referring to the powers of the White Sword, an Arakki mutant in exile who appeared in X of Swords.
  • Nova brings up the time when he used the entire Nova Force to revive all the dead on Xandar in the Star Lost Saga of New Warriors. Then he muses bitterly on how everyone he revived was promptly killed again several years later when Annihilus attacked Xandar in Annihilation.
  • The Amalgam-clone of Rockslide created back in X of Swords is still hanging around Krakoa, must to the discomfort of many of the X-Men and contributing to difficulty in processing Rockslide's apparent permanent death. Krakoa's children have taken to calling him "Wrongslide".
  • The 'Shapeless Ridge' massacre is named as one of the Ten Shames of the Shi'ar, who manipulated the Kree into attacking a civilian site. The Ten Shames are a major plot point in the Marauders (2022) series.
  • In issue #9, in Roberto's data page trying to plan together a counter-plan for dealing with Brand, he mentions hiding in a coffin or pretending to be the president again before dismissing them, something he did at the end of New Avengers (2015).
  • Roberto's data-page also has him pondering about growing a mustache, with a note that he'll give up if he can't achieve "the full Selleck." Roberto's fondness for Magnum, P.I. was a part of his character in the Claremont years of New Mutants.
  • Among the crimes Nova says Vulcan committed first time around, during War of Kings, he mentions Vulcan's habit of dropping nega-bombs on Kree planets.
  • In issue #10, when Cable reclaims his techno-organic virus and assembles it into armor, his "man-to-man... and quite literally face-to-face" line is directly repeated from X-Force (1991) #16, during the X-Cutioner's Song event. Then, as in X-Men Red, he was armed to the teeth and wearing similarly bulky armor.
  • When Brand unmasks the mole in her team and realises how Sunspot's Out-Gambitted her, she asks if she should expect the Mission: Impossible theme to start playing. Back in New Avengers Sunspot used that music to let the villainous Maker know he'd been out-gambited.
  • In issue #11, Richard brings up how he's still, even after everything else he's been through, suffering the physiological problems from holding too much Nova Force he's had since 2008.
  • In issue #17, when Apocalypse prepares the mutant magic circuit with representatives of the four classical elements, he comments that he wanted Rictor for the earth slot.
  • When Professor X goes through Storm's mind, there's a small montage of events between them from the Claremont days.
• Cool Sword: Purity, sword of the White King, finally gets its power revealed in issue #12; it is an Absurdly Sharp Blade, it is essentially the essence of a sword, designed for cutting. That includes reality itself, in the right place.
• Covers Always Lie: The third issue's cover shows Tarn the Uncaring turning his flesh-warping power on Magneto. Tarn's unable to use his powers for both of his duels in the issue, and Magneto kills him almost immediately.
• Crimefighting with Cash: Back in S.W.O.R.D. (2020), Brand confirmed that Mentallo was the best telepath she could get. Not because he was the most powerful, but because he was amoral, purely interested in money, and had no loyalty to Krakoa. She eventually discovers that this works against her - Mentallo has been The Mole in her team for quite some time, as Sunspot paid him more.
• Crossover Finale: The final issue, #18, is a tie-in to the Fall of X storyline.
• Cross Through: Charles Xavier's daughter Xandra, empress of the alien Shi'ar Empire, is murdered in the Marauders (2022) series. X-Men Red doesn't feature the Marauders team or discuss the reasons for her death, but it shows Krakoa's immediate resurrection of Xandra - and the diplomatic wrangling that causes with other interstellar power blocs.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Magneto's duel with Tarn. He blocks Tarn's powers with his metal helmet, holding it over Tarn’s head, then reshapes it to kill him. It's a very short duel.
  • Uranos's battle versus Arakko's ruling Great Ring lasts about twenty minutes out of an allotted hour. He spends the next forty killing everyone else within a fifty-mile radius and getting creative with the remains.
  • The resurrected and reawakened Vulcan easily beats Frenzy, Gladiator, Paibok, and Nova.
  • Jon Ironfire singlehandedly defeats the White King's Hundred and the King himself.
• Cursed with Awesome: Isca the Unbeaten's power is to always win. The series explores the benefits and curses of that. For example, even as a child, she'd win at everything, friendly games included. As an adult, she always walks away from every fight, but she's never learned the lessons that come from losing. And while she can't lose, everyone else around her does. Including her loved ones.
• Death Faked for You: After Lodus Logos is knocked unconscious in the battle with Uranos, Xilo hides him under the remains of the Eternal's other victims. Uranos leaves Arakko assuming Lodus Logos was among the dead.
• Death Seeker:
  • Not actively seeking it, but Magneto confesses to the Great Ring that he does not really desire to be brought back to life by the Five if he should die and would prefer to stay dead. He admits to, on some level, fearing what he would do with true immortality.
  • Another passive, but more optimistic, example is Wrongslide, who hopes that whenever he dies, it will be in Otherworld to make it permanent. That way, they can create another amalgamation that will be just as unique, and also have a fresh start.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Mildly, with Khora of the Burning Heart. Having apparently been demoted or removed from S.W.O.R.D. in favor of Cable, she's now suffering from a lack of purpose. More seriously for her sister, Weaponless Zsen, who left Arakko seeking adventure - both of them are recruited by Cable.
• Didn't See That Coming: Brand is absolutely shocked when Vulcan seemingly incinerates Xandra... and sitting there is Roberto.
• Did Not Think This Through: Vulcan didn't consider that Tarn knows how to fight without powers, and is still dangerous in a duel where both combatants are Brought Down to Normal. Vulcan gets a few hits in before Tarn beats him to death with his bare hands - while mocking him for relying on unarmed combat rather than bringing a non-mutant weapon. Issue #8 later reveals that Vulcan's ally, Abigail Brand, was also running a Xanatos Gambit. Vulcan's victory would have been useful, but his death-and-resurrection at some point was necessary to advance her wider Xanatos Speed Chess plans.
• Dramatic Irony: Nova assumes out loud that Krakoan resurrection is more sophisticated than cloned bodies with mind recordings.
• Enemy Mine: Thunderbird has a grudge against Cable due to the way his younger brother was exploited and inducted into Cable's X-Force while Thunderbird was dead. However, both regard Brand as a common foe and can put their differences aside until she's dealt with. After that, well, that's when Thunderbird settles up.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: After everything is said and done, Cable admits to being a tad hesitant to hand over Vulcan to the Shi'ar for trial and happy when the Empire instead leaves him in Krakoa's custody. Vulcan may be a total lunatic and a supervillain, but he's still Cable's uncle, and Nathan can't help but feel a degree of familial love and kinship for him.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Two ways in issue 9. Mentallo feels horrified watching what Vulcan does, mainly because he's a Dirty Coward, while Brand forces herself to watch, calling it the price of what she does.
  • Death of the First Horsemen had shown himself in Swords of X to be less ruthless and sadistic than his sisters, and it comes up again in issue 16. Unlike his siblings and mother, he has a genuine code of honor and feels it must be stuck to. When Pestilence breaks the rules and taunts him about it, he kills her.
  Ororo: Do you think your rules can still apply?
  Death: ... They have to. Or what was this for?
• Exact Words:
  • The data-page that introduced the Great Ring back in Hickman's X-Men, and reiterated in issue #1 is quite clear; Only Omega level Mutants may serve on the Great Ring. This has never changed, and never will change. But the Night Seats aren't considered part of the Ring.
  • One of the three laws of Arakko is "destroy our enemies". That doesn't necessarily mean physical destruction, but a more metaphorical kind, as the Fisher King says to Brand when he catches her.
• Faking the Dead: The short-term version, during battle. Uranos, confident in his power, doesn't stop to confirm his kills. At the end of his hour on Arakko he's surrounded by fields covered in bones, and 98% of all life in a 50 mile radius is gone. However, some of the Great Ring's omega level mutants - Xilo, Ora Serrata, Lodus Logos and Magneto - are still alive at the heart of the destruction. It's the Death Faked for You variant in Lodus Logos's case, as he was unconscious while Xilo concealed him in the bone piles.
• Fictional Document: Issue #10 opens with Lodus Logos's poem "At the Autumn Palace", apparently an extract from the Collected Works.
• The Final Temptation: In issue #18, Annihilation speaks to Ororo, offer her its power to wipe out Orchis, perfectly willing to discard Genesis for being useless to its own desires. Ororo immediately rejects it and destroys Annihilation.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Nova was already allied to Arakko before Judgment Day. After it however, he is fully accepted by the Arakkii.
  He stood when all else fell. He stands when all is lost. The Broken Land sees him. Richard Rider is of Arakko.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Magneto says "if souls exist", showing that even with all the necromancy and evidence of afterlives he has personally witnessed, he is not convinced.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Idyll's prophecy: An empty heart beats hardest:Magneto get his heart ripped out by Uranos, but then continues fighting anyway and delivers the final blow to him with Storm's help. An empty hands deals the impossible blow:Fisher King defeats Isca by challenging her on who has a greater understanding of loss. The stalemate ends in victory's loss:Idyll, who sits in the seat of stalemate, gets her head chopped off by Isca, who sits in the seat of victory, while switching sides to Uranos.
  • Issue #10 opens with a poem by Lodus Logos, "At the Autumn Palace". Three verses include “I was there” statements as he retells events - foreshadowing The Reveal that he literally was there, and that Storm wasn't fighting Vulcan alone.
  • When Brand pulls a gun on Mentallo, it's teleported into her hand using Cable's 'bodyslide' technology, foreshadowing her escape via teleportation using the same stolen tech.
  • Months before Heralds of Apocalypse, issue #7 gave a brief history in regards to Isca that Genesis was always a bloodthirsty warmonger. It was however something that was very easily missable.
• Funetik Aksent: Nameless, the Arakki shapeshifter who fought Storm, has all of her dialogue written this way. Almost every word is distorted.
  Nameless: Lyar. Yuu arr nott kwik tu kyll. I amm shaypshiftur omeyga. I bekumm yuu. I amm yuu.
• Funny Background Event: In issue #12, when Roberto tells Richard he has been dunked in the whole "death and despair" thing, as the scene focuses on Jon Ironfire, Rich is seen trying to work out how that makes sense.
• Get Out!: Vulcan screams this at Charles, meaning both out of his mind and physically out of his home.
• Give Him a Normal Life: Issue 9 brings up the subject of Deathbird and Vulcan's son. Cal mentions he's elsewhere, being raised away from the Shi'ar court, the scientists who want to experiment on him, and most importantly, away from them both.
• Given Name Reveal: After Brand's scheme falls apart, the Fisher King addresses her as Abigail Thanriaguiaxus - Abigail 'Born-as-Axus-ended'. It's the first time her original surname's been revealed, and Brand's visibly shocked that he knows it.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • In order to fight Uranos, Cable unpacks his biggest BFG, a weapon outlawed even in the nightmare timeline he grew up in. It doesn't make a scratch.
  Narration: It hurts Uranos.
  Uranos: Is that all?
  Narration: That is all.
  • The Uranos Trigger is designed specifically for this. It can't just be turned on by anyone who comes by, it lets them know exactly what they're doing by letting Uranos out of his cage.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Jon Ironfire wrecks the White Sword in their fight, but they both know as an Omega-level healer he'll patch up quickly enough.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Magneto crushes or impales Tarn's head with his metal helmet We are not shown the process or the result, beyond an arm with a trickle of blood on the ground.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Coven Akkaba and Orchis's plan in issue #12. Either Genesis is impressed with the current state of Arakko and sets up shop, giving Storm another headache to deal with, or she isn't impressed, and decides to wreck the place with her army of demons and unkillable Mutants. Regardless, they figure it keeps Storm and Arakko busy while they implement their own plan. And Genesis is not impressed.
• Heroic BSoD: After recent events, Magneto's started feeling completely broken by the failure of Krakoa to live up to his dreams, and retires to Arakko to, essentially, wait for death.
• High-Tech Hexagons: The shimmering portals used by Uranos and his killing machines all have hexagonal patterns (other comics have already established that Eternals view six as a holy number, and much of their technology features hexagons).
• Hold the Line: Several times in issue #5, the first part of the Judgment Day tie-in, with varying levels of success. Uranos the Undying, an Eternal Omnicidal Maniac, tries to exterminate all life on Arakko.
  • Richard Rider fights off Uranos' robot weapons to allow the alien visitors to Arakko to escape. Barring one or two loses, he manages.
  • Sunspot, Wrongslide and the artisans of Arakko fight against an army of self-replicating war machines. They're forced to retreat.
  • Isca is confronted by a range of deep sea creatures. Since her power is to always win, they don't hold her back.
• Hypocrite: T'Challa talks to Ororo about their promise that there would be no more secrets between them, saying that he only heard about Krakoa's Resurrection Protocols in the newspaper. Ororo flips it right back, asking if the spy T'Challa had planted on Krakoa could have told him that.
• I Have Many Names:
  • The Fisher King is a little bemused to hear just how many names and titles Magneto goes by.
  • It comes up again in issue #11, when Professor X calls him "Erik". Ororo acidly corrects him by saying it was "Max".
    Charles: I never knew him as "Max".
• Immortality Immorality: Downplayed and discussed. Arakko already has legal precedents for immortality and resurrection. Magneto and Storm agree that, although Krakoa's immortality is not immoral in its own right, immortal Krakoans ruling over mortal Arakki would be problematic. On that basis, as they now sit on the Great Ring, they have opted out of Cerebro's back-ups.
  Ora Serrata: No one is immune from the risk of death. And no one should be immune — for who faces the challenge without feeling the risk? A poor challenger. A poor ruler.
  • Likewise, with regards to whether the Shi'ar empress Xandra should be revived via Krakoan immortality to avert a civil war, the alien diplomat Orbis Stellaris argues that this is only a temporary solution to the many crises on that planet, and that it risks creating what Stellaris considers an "immortal dictator".
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Ororo is the regent of Arakko, not the queen. And definitely not the queen of Mars.
  • Abigail terms what Mutantkind did to Mars as colonizing. When Storm says otherwise, Brand shifts to calling it appropriating.
• Ironic Echo: A variant, as the words shift slightly but the theme is clear. During their duel, Nameless, the previous regent of Arakko, dismisses Ororo as unworthy because 'you weren't there' - Ororo's an outsider who didn't shed blood on the battlefields or suffer in the jails. Ororo defiantly responds that she was fighting other battles, which Nameless knew nothing of. Later, when Uranos's war machines are devastating Arakko, Ororo looks upon one scene of carnage and blames herself for not being there. Sobunar, who served on the Great Ring with Nameless, has a different view.
  Sobunar: The words of the old prison legend echo to me. "If you weren't here you were somewhere." Fighting the same foe.
• Irony: There are a few examples of the situational irony variant.
  • In the first issue, Vulcan drains Sunspot's powers while they're brawling. Sunspot says he's fought without powers before, and Vulcan mockingly asks him how that worked out. Two issues later, Tarn nullifies Vulcan's powers and then, despite Vulcan's confidence, beats him to death.
  • Following on from the punchline of the previous example - while killing a powerless Vulcan, Tarn mocks him for not bothering to bring a weapon to the duel, relying solely on his mutant power. Immediately after his victory, Tarn is challenged by Magneto, who notes that he did bring a weapon - and promptly kills Tarn with it.
  • Peepers and Hairbag drew the short straw and got guard duty on the Peak on Hellfire Gala night, sparing them from the events that happen there.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: While chilling in the hot springs on Arakko, Nova ends up calling Roberto a "narcissistic oligarch in a fancy suit".
  Roberto: How dare you, I'm completely naked.
• It's All My Fault: Roberto takes the events of "Fall of X" and then the Genesis War extremely personally, feeling he should've been able to prevent it.
• It's Personal: Thunderbird decides to stick around on Arakko after Cable takes a shot at him about his death, declaring that he's made it personal. Except that's a lie. He does have some scores to settle with Cable, but the fight was staged and they're working together - at least in the short term.
• Jerkass: Thunderbird gets his resurrection off to a roaring start by picking a fight with Vulcan simply for being related to Cyclops, then picking a fight with Cable for much the same reason, and just generally being a bad tempered asshole. Subverted when it turns out the fight with Cable was staged and the two are working together... though Thunderbird does still hate him for the way Cable turned his younger brother into a soldier.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Orbis Stellaris raises valid concerns (namely, fear of an indefinite President for Life scenario) over Krakoa resurrecting Empress Xandra, though they are undermined by his role as an Arms Dealer who stands to benefit greatly from the intergalactic war that would break out if Xandra remains dead.
• The Juggernaut:
  • The Eternal Omnicidal Maniac Uranos the Undying. He faces down Magneto, Legion, Cable, Brand, Xilo, Lodus Logos and Ora Serrata. Nothing they can throw at him does more than slow him down, and of all of them, only Legion seems to actually earn Uranos' respect as a foe. By the end of the battle, Cable and Brand are dead and most of the rest are severely injured.
  • Vulcan, as per. He's an Omega level energy manipulator capable of just generally frying everything in his path, and if he can't do that, he can use his powers to mess them up in some other way. And he's got a Healing Factor on top of that. Needless to say, resurrecting him with his insanity perfectly intact was not Brand and Stellaris's smartest move.
• Kaiju: In issue #17, Apocalypse's magic raises most of the autumn continent as a living creature to oppose Genesis's forces, the huge Kaorak. In form and name, it appears to be a third sibling to the living islands of Arakko and Krakoa.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: At the end of their duel, Magneto kills a powerless Tarn mid-sentence, and possibly mid-surrender.
  Tarn the Uncaring: I y—
• Killed Offscreen: Forearm, who was established as part of S.W.O.R.D.'s security team in the previous S.W.O.R.D. (2020) series, is glimpsed as a floating corpse when Cable and Wiz-Kid enter S.W.O.R.D. Station Two in zero gravity after Uranos's attack.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Sunspot tells Vulcan he could try frying him with his powers, but since Sunspot can absorb solar energy, it'd just turn into a recursive loop. Vulcan leaves to go and find Xandra, but once he's gone Sunspot admits he was bluffing, and both he and Deathbird acknowledge that Gabriel would've killed him.
• LEGO Body Parts: Orbis Stellaris's spherical exoskeleton can serve as a substitute head for whichever Progenitor body he wants to pilot.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Storm versus Famine and War, by which point Ororo is far beyond breaking point. She one-shots Famine and uses her power to knock War out. However, Death points out for all her rhetoric, she hasn't actually killed them.
• Let's You and Him Fight:
  • During a relatively calm point in the Kree/Skrull war, the Kree attacked 'Shapeless Ridge', believing that it was an illegal research site developing genetic weapons. It was actually a treatment facility for wounded Skrulls who'd lost their shapeshifting powers. Captain Glory's Kree soldiers killed everyone there, wrecking tentative peace talks and extending the war. It's revealed that the Shi'ar deliberately leaked flawed information to the Kree, triggering the raid, as they wanted the two empires to keep warring and weakening each other.
  • In the present, the Kree/Skrull alliance becomes aware that the Shi'ar fed false information to the Kree, leading to the 'Shapeless Ridge' massacre during the Kree/Skrull war. This threatens to ignite hostilities between the alliance and the Shi'ar - as planned by Abigail Brand, who leaked the information to create a crisis. Although she's also hoping that Vulcan will kill the assembled dignitaries before it actually spirals into war.
• Let Them Die Happy: As he dies, Magneto apparently sees a vision of his daughter Anya, and asks Storm if she does as well. She doesn't, but tells Erik she does. It's later revealed that this was the Progenitor Celestial appearing to him in this form, giving a double dose of this trope.
• Little "No": Brand, monitoring the situation, sees the resurrected Vulcan incinerate Empress Xandra, as planned. She refuses to look away from the screen. There's a small “oh no" when she realises she's been outsmarted and it wasn't Xandra.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Isca the Unbeaten never loses. Not even when victory comes at a personal cost she wouldn't necessarily have chosen. When Magneto and Tarn duel, Roberto bets her that Tarn will win. She never loses, so won't lose the bet - and Magneto kills Tarn. Isca does not take it well.
  • The Fisher King also uses Isca's power in this way, in a challenge to understand the concept of loss. Isca can't lose, but she can understand loss and, after doing so, is sufficiently shaken that she quits the Great Ring and walks away.
  • Likewise, Tarn can psychically manipulate the biology of others. Magneto therefore drops his helmet, which blocks psychic powers, onto Tarn's head, negating his powers and allowing the former to kill him.
  • Frenzy is Nigh-Invulnerable... but she still needs to breath. So Vulcan defeats her by asphyxiating her.
  • Annihilation is made of gold. As Storm demonstrates to it, that includes one of gold's notable properties; its melting point.
• Long-Lasting Last Words: Despite having had his heart ripped out, Magneto manages to last several pages longer with a speech to Storm. Made even funnier since before he does this she tells him to save his breath, not "give me a soliloquy".
• Lord of the Ocean: A variant. Sobunar isn't a god and his powers aren't supernatural, but the oceans of Arakko were created from his blood, and all of the life within them is linked to Sobunar. When Isca betrays the Great Ring and Nightcrawler drops her into the ocean, the creatures living there obey Sobunar's will and attack.
• Madness Mantra:
  • Vulcan's taken to yelling "I NEVER DIED!" at anyone and everyone. In private, he's started muttering "is it happening now?" (It being his programming breaking and his original, highly insane personality breaking through).
  • Being frontline for Uranos' attack on Arakko, Richard Rider finds himself thinking "It's all up to me!" over and over and over...
• Manchurian Agent: Vulcan's Mask of Sanity was installed by Brand and Orbis Stellaris after he escaped the Fault, to allow him to be welcomed back into Krakoa. Brand's plan was to set an unstable Vulcan against his former empire, the Shi'ar, compromising the X-Men and Krakoa due to their connection to him, and dragging them into an interstellar war.
• Manly Tears: We did not see him find out, but telling his team mates that Wanda's eldritch orchard cannot bring Anya back has Magneto shed these.
• Mask of Sanity: A report from Mentallo describes Vulcan as wearing one. Delving into his mind is described as a tunnel painted on a mountain that one can run into, but is still an illusion, while the mountain is his true, untouched ego. As the series shows, this mask is gradually slipping. His resurrection breaks it completely.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • Tarn throws Vulcan's Madness Mantra back at him during their fight, moments before rendering it invalid by caving his head in.
  • As he's dying, Magneto reflects on what he said back in House of X #1, namely "you have new gods now", and how hubristic it was.
  • Previously, the more open-minded Arakki have stated "if you weren't there (meaning at war with Amenth), you were somewhere." When they try defending Storm from Genesis's sneering, she just shoots it down because Storm wasn't there.
• Mind over Manners: Professor X, feeling on edge after Sins of Sinister and still grieving Magneto's death, tries forcing his last words from Ororo's mind. It doesn't work, and leaves her unimaginably pissed at him.
• The Mole: Brand chose Mentallo as her team's telepath because she believes he's an amoral mercenary with no loyalty to Krakoa. She's right, but that doesn't stop Sunspot from simply buying his allegiance with more money and using him to spy on Brand's plans.
• More than Mind Control: The demon god Annihilation, now embodied as a staff, is shown manipulating both its wielder Genesis and those nearby, playing on their preexisting flaws and insecurities. It's portrayed with some kind of Compelling Voice, often reinforcing Genesis' speeches by repeating key words. This contrasts with the complete mental domination it imposed on its wearer in X of Swords, when it was embodied as a helmet.
• Motive Rant: When Brand is exposed for all her crimes and conspiracies, Xandra demands to know why she did it. Brand proceeds to go on a drawn-out rant about how she was just doing what she had to in order to protect Earth and how she won't be judged because this is just how the world is. Without even missing a beat, Xandra bluntly says that's a load of bull and just a stupid lie that Brand tells herself so she can justify her selfish behavior.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Isca experiences this after The Fisher King challenges her in a duel of understanding, to see who amongst them most understands the meaning of loss. Isca's power means that she can never lose a battle - but, in doing so, she finally realizes how her constant victories (and her Chronic Backstabbing Disorder that results from them) have cost her every meaningful attachment in her life. This realization ultimately causes Isca to resign her seat on the Great Ring and go into a self-imposed exile, declaring that she can never be a part of Arrako, for she has never had to fight for anything.
• Neck Snap: Isca kills Roberto this way after realising how he's manipulated her power.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Vulcan's used to fighting his way through with sheer power. When he gets into a fight with Tarn, a product of a Forever War between a nation of Mutants and an endless horde of demons, he assumes both of them losing their powers gives him the advantage. It doesn't. Tarn overpowers and kills him.
• Non-Answer: Genesis and the First Horsemen reappear in issue #12, sans Apocalypse. The White Sword asks Genesis where he's gotten to, but she never answers the question.
• No-Sell: Uranos's response to Ora Serrata's Deadly Gaze, which can annihilate gods. While many of the other attacks lobbed at him slowed him down slightly or, at the very least, annoyed or distracted him, he was not even remotely fazed by Ora.
  Ora: Cease to be! You will cease to be! The eye of the law is upon you, and you will—
  Uranos: No. There is no law but the principles coded into me, and no vision of that law but my own. All non-Eternal life must end. That is the law as I see it. Now you see it too.
• Not Afraid to Die:
  • A recurring theme is the Arakki, being a Proud Warrior Race, are not "afraid of a life that ends".
  • When Lodus Logos, the Omega class metal calling poet, calls out Isca for her inevitable betrayal and murder of Idyll during Uranos' attack, she warns him in smug superiority that his next haiku may be his last.
  Logos: You threaten me with death? Foolish, Isca. Art lives forever.
• Not Quite Dead: Magneto and Ora Serrata fall into this category after Uranos's assault. Magneto's had his heart ripped out, but is keeping himself alive via his powers. Ora Serrata's huge eye has been gouged, but it's mentioned that her body isn't mortally injured. Xilo and Lodus Logos were left for dead by Uranos, and aren't much better.
• Obviously Evil: Roberto may not know Brand's siding with ORCHIS to bring down Krakoa, but he still pegs her as being shifty. In fact, he figures she's always been shifty, just now she's more open about it.
  Roberto: Abigail Brand is up to something. She always was, if you were looking - and I do more looking than people think - but now she's being more open.
• Off with His Head!: Isca's power forces her to change sides as soon as Uranos attacks, decapitating Idyll while the rest of the Great Ring are focused on the Eternal's arrival.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When Brand realises that her equipment's working but a Perception Filter's been hiding the readings from her, Mentallo's reaction is an 'oh crap' expression and a sudden cold sweat, realising he's just been unmasked as The Mole. And that's before Brand puts a gun to his head.
  • The Fisher King, flashing back to his life in Amenth, remembers only too late that Genesis' power allows her to commune with plant life, including seeds. Like those in the belly of the kaiju Storm just killed.
  • In issue #17, Genesis is planning the next steps after her imminent victory over Storm when the living continent Kaiju called Kaorak comes into sight, marching through the ocean. The ocean reaches its ankles. Suddenly the outcome looks very different, and Genesis's wordless look of shock makes it very clear that her victory plan's just been abandoned.
• Once More, with Clarity: Storm's fight against the past Regent of Arakko gets revisited with more context. Her name isn't Yuu, she's Nameless, and she was taunting Storm about killing her while assuming her appearance. Storm's response that the former queen can't be her, because if she was she would have killed her already.
• Out-Gambitted: Sunspot is one step ahead of Brand for most of her plan, although she only starts to realise it when Vulcan tries to assassinate Xandra and finds himself facing Sunspot instead. It's not until #10 that she realises her telepathic sidekick, Mentallo, was working for Sunspot all along.
• Out of Focus: Random is a member of Abigail Brand's X-Men team, but as of issue #6 he's only been a background character, with not even a single line of dialogue.
• Painted Tunnel, Real Train: Discussed with a Shout-Out to Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. When Mentallo telepathically scans Vulcan, he realises he's not truly seeing Vulcan's mind. Instead, as he explains it, he's going through that metaphorical painted tunnel, and only realising it's not real after he's left the other end. It's very much an Oh, Crap! moment for him, as it's likely to hide something terrifying - and as more powerful telepaths (such as Professor Xavier) didn't notice, he believes he's only spotting it because the 'painted-on' fake personality is starting to fail.
• Papa Wolf: The debate on whether to revive Xandra after her assassination becomes moot when Storm reveals Professor X has already gone ahead and gotten started on it anyway.
• Parrot Exposition: The first page of issue #9 introduces a bar by saying it's a bar where lowlifes and mercenaries gather, followed immediately by Zsen saying the same thing in disappointment, since all she's found is Blackjack O'Hare and Prince of Power.
• Persona Non Grata: Storm tells Xavier that he is not welcome on Arakko in issue #11 after he tries to use his telepathy against her to find out what Magneto's last words were.
• Point of Divergence: Sins of Sinister foreshadowed a few developments in the series, but the prevention of that future causes a few changes. One of the major ones involves Jon Ironfire, who in that timeline owed his Undying Loyalty to Storm due to an incident where he refused to trust her and killed someone he shouldn't have. Issue #18 shows that someone was the White Sword, and in this timeline Jon decides to trust Ororo, sparing his old friend's life.
• Power Incontinence: As hinted at in previous series, Isca the Unbeaten cannot consciously control her power. She always wins. This also limits her free will when there are only certain paths to victory.
  • Roberto uses this to his advantage, tricking her into a wager on Tarn's duel with Magneto. When she sees what he's done, her response is a Neck Snap - but it still works.
  • When Uranos the Undying attacks Arakko, Isca's power registers that she can't beat him, so she immediately changes sides and turns on her allies in the Great Ring, decapitating Idyll.
  • The Fisher King also turns this back on Isca, defusing a stand-off with the Great Ring by challenging her to truly understand loss. She does, even if she can't directly lose. It's a Break the Haughty moment that leads to her resignation.
• Power Nullifier: The Arakki refer to those who can do this as "weapon thieves".
  • Tarn the Uncaring is an omega level mutant who can reshape other people’s bodies at a genetic level. Among other things, this lets him change or cancel their mutant powers.
  • Vulcan controls energy and is learning how to cut off other mutants' powers, as he demonstrates when fighting Roberto in the first issue. His duel against Tarn sees them both Brought Down to Normal.
  • Magneto manages an improvised solution in his own duel against Tarn. Magneto's helmet is designed to block telepathy and other psychic powers, a block that works in both directions. Tarn's genetic control is a psychic ability. So when Magneto puts his own helmet over Tarn's head, Tarn can no longer use his powers against anyone else.
• Put on a Bus: Cable, Frenzy and Manifold after the events of Fall of X; Cable because he's over in Children of the Vault, Frenzy because she got a bridge dropped on her.
• Reading Your Rights: Nova attempts to formally arrest the resurrected Vulcan when he gatecrashes the diplomatic meeting to murder Xandra.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Cable gives a brief but devastating one to Thunderbird, pointing out that for all his protests about taking care of his brother, he's always put his own ego first
    Cable: But you weren't there, were you, John? Not for James. Not for anyone. You had better things to do. You had a plane to catch.
  • The entire Great Ring (or what's left) give Isca one when they confront her, during Judgment Day.
  • Xavier is insecure about the revelations from "Sins of Sinister" and still grieving Magneto, but also worried he left because he saw hints of Sinister. While Ororo refuses to betray Max's dying wish and tell Xavier his last words, especially after he tries telepathically taking it from her, she tells him something arguably worse to hear. Magneto left not on any suspicion of Sinister in Charles, but because of full knowledge of who Charles is as a person. She concludes that Magneto believed this even considering them friends, while the same can no longer be said for her and Charles.
• Red Skies Crossover: Pun aside, the book's tie-in to the overall Fall of X narrative does not deal with Orchis, which are the main enemy for the period (as shown in contemporaneous titles and mini-series). Instead, it pulls together threads from the first Krakoan Age crossover, X of Swords.
• Relationship Reveal: He's not mentioned by name, but Isca's internal monologue after Tarn's death makes it clear that the two were lovers for centuries, if not millennia. It helps to explain her Villainous Breakdown when her own powers were exploited to ensure his death.
• The Reveal:
  • Petra and Sway were just energy constructs created by Vulcan, Replacement Goldfish for the two friends who died. As his Sanity Slippage accelerated they seemed to act less like real people.
  • Thunderbird, Cable and Manifold are working together against Brand. Cable and Thunderbird's fight was staged - some of their disagreements are very real, but they put them aside in the interests of the greater good.
  • Roberto discovered Arakko's Table of Night and joined them, taking The Seat of Nobody, before the series even started. The Fisher King holds the Seat of Nothing - and his meeting with Magneto in the first issue was no coincidence.
  • Brand and Orbis Stellaris have been working together since the dawn of Krakoa, and were responsible for reprogramming Vulcan and arranging his return to Earth with a fake personality. Brand's aim has always been to create an interstellar crisis and set Vulcan loose against the Shi'ar, then use his actions to manipulate the Krakoans and banish the Arakkii back to Amenth.
  • As her plans fall apart, Abigail Brand finally realises that her amoral telepathic sidekick, Mentallo, is actually working for Sunspot.
  • Orbis Stellaris, born on Earth in the 19th century, is eventually revealed to be another version of Nathan Essex, the man who became the villainous Mister Sinister. This version has a black playing card spade emblem on his forehead, as opposed to Sinister's red diamond.
• Sarcasm-Blind: "Wrongslide", the amalgam-clone of Rockslide, doesn't particularly understand that the kids of Krakoa were insulting him when they called him that out of grief over the original Rockslide's death.
• Sanity Slippage: As a result of what happened to him in the Fault, Vulcan's insanity is starting to bubble back to surface and possibly become even worse after a period of stability. Brand is all too happy to take advantage of that. It's later revealed that she had Orbis Stellaris create Vulcan's fake personality in the first place, so that he'd be accepted into Krakoan society.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Pestilence feels that as the rulers of Arakko, the rules exist solely to serve her and her family, and can therefore be ignored when they feel like it. Death... disagrees.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Tired of Brand's shadiness and her dismissive view of the Arakki, Manifold quits the X-Men Red team as soon as it's announced.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: After his clash with Storm and her allies, Vulcan is encased in Mysterium, the strange metal that S.W.O.R.D. has been retrieving, then imprisoned in a stasis cell. His powers only serve to harden the metal, although Storm acknowledges that he might someday escape, but it would require a more subtle approach than Gabe's usually capable of.
• Self-Imposed Exile: Twice in the series - first Isca, after she comes to fully understand loss, then Sobunar, after the Genesis War ends.
• Sensory Overload: The artists of the Morrowlands fight back against one of the alien Progenitors by overloading it with the sound and light of their creations. It's not enough to actually harm it, but it's so overwhelmed and confused that its guard drops, at which point Magneto can magnetically decapitate it.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the first issue, when Roberto talks about introducing disco music to the Arakki, he says he wants to be Arakko's answer to David Mancuso, the New York DJ famous for his exclusive private parties in the 1970s and 1980s.
  • As part of the same conversation, he wonders if Nile Rodgers has a place in the broken land.
  • Mentallo references Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner and its Painted Tunnel, Real Train jokes when describing the way Vulcan's real mind's been disguised from telepathy.
  • When he's newly resurrected on Krakoa after Isca kills him, Roberto quotes the "Back once again for the renegade master" chorus from Wildchild's song Renegade Master.
  • When he's newly resurrected on Krakoa after Tarn kills him, Gabriel quotes "Now... It's happening now." chorus from David Bowie's song Outside.
  • Orchis's plan for Genesis and Mars is named their "Orson Protocol", as is Orson Welles and "War of the Worlds".
• Smug Super: Vulcan's Fatal Flaw. As an Omega level energy manipulator, he's used to solving most problems he faces by simply incinerating them. If he's incapable of doing that, the trouble starts. Especially since he's never learned to fight without powers.
• Somebody Named "Nobody": The former regent of Arakko, challenged and defeated by Storm, was Nameless, the shapeshifter queen.
• Sore Loser: We see what happens when Isca the Unbeatable is manipulated into a position where "winning" harms her wider cause. She does not take it well.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Storm manages to scupper Brand's plan to sabotage Arakko-Krakoa relations with a conveniently timed Progenitor attack simply by showing up. Brand being Brand, she just rolls with it.
  • Uranos, though he has no way of knowing it (and wouldn't care even if he did). By killing Brand in his attack on Mars, he allows Cable and Wiz-Kid to access her files and uncover her plans without her knowledge.
  • Roberto proves to be this for Brand's entire plan as he's able to replace Xandra and No-Sell Vulcan's attack, also setting him up to battle Storm.
• Speech Bubbles: As in Royals, the Progenitors speak in ones with orange backgrounds. The ones who attack Whiz-Kid's ship in issues #9 & 10 are blue, on account of being clone knock-offs made by Orbis Stellaris.
• Sssssnake Talk: Xilo's dialogue is a variant, with sibilant sounds ending in an extra zz rather than a repeated s. The overall effect is to emphasise his insectoid nature, as if he's part-speaking and part-buzzing.
  Xilo: I had no szztrength for anything elszze. Pleazze believe I meant no inszzult...
• Story Arc: While the overall setting of the book is Storm and some mutants' presence on the terraformed Mars, now rechristened Arakko, for its first year the book moves forward the dangling plot threads from SWORD, namely, Abigail Brand's galaxy conquest plans, which come to a head in issue #10. After a temporary replacement for Sins of Sinister, the book returns and deals with the return of Genesis and her children, the original Four Horsemen, until its cancellation with issue #18.
• The Swarm: Captions note that Xilo, a Worm That Walks colony of invertebrates, can divide into a swarm and reduce a human to bare bones in seconds. Unfortunately, it's far less effective against an invulnerable Eternal like Uranos, who merely finds it disgusting.
• Synchronization: Whiz Kid exploits the fact the Peak above Arakko is a reality warped duplicate, and thus quantum entangled with the original, to covertly spy on Abigail's files as she uploads them on the counterpart terminal.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Isca is the only one who mourns her old ally Tarn, actually crying when she realizes that he's about to die. It's aggravated by the fact that Roberto manipulated Isca's own powers to ensure that Tarn lost.
  Isca: Don't you understand? Didn't any of you hear what he said? What he did? I fought beside Tarn for a thousand years! I know him better than any of you! It should not be like this! I can never lose! I can never lose!
• Taking the Bullet: Nova flies in the way of one of Pestilence's arrows when it's aimed at Storm.
• Team Spirit: Arakko's culture emphasises individual strength, and even when facing a "challenge to all", the Arakkii stop short of using teamwork to combine their powers. As the series progresses, some of them start to view this in a new light - most notably, Vulcan is caught out when he assumes he's only fighting Storm, but Sobunar, Lodus Logos and Wrongslide are subtly using their own powers to reinforce Storm's.
  Sobunar: And if our new tactics are called "help" on our new world... let us embrace that word at last.
• Tempting Fate: The beginning of issue 9 has Professor X outlaying how Brand suggested to him it was a good idea to revive Vulcan, and that while everyone else thought it might've been a good idea to put his res on the back-burner, Charles is confident that nothing will go wrong. Then Vulcan resurrects himself.
• Textplosion: Played with. It's mostly in a standard comic format but, as with other Krakoan Age books, X-Men Red sometimes uses 'data pages' to deliver large amounts of text.
  • Ora Serrata's lengthy monologue on Krakoan immortality and the Seat of Loss is presented as a text page transcript, as is Dr. Marshall's distress call to NASA after Uranos attacks Arakko.
  • Text pages sometimes expand on the history and decisions of the Great Ring, as well as Brand's private notes and Krakoan correspondence (e.g. Xavier's report on Vulcan's state of mind).
  • Diplomatic meetings start with a page listing the invited representatives, summarising their factions and roles, and noting whether or not each person is attending the meeting. The only art is a small black and white portrait of each character.
• The Protagonist: Make no mistake, Storm is the driving force of this book.
• Therapy Is for the Weak: Subverted, then mocked by the Fisher King. Yes, Arakko is filled with Social Darwinists, but where's the strength in being too proud to admit you need healing?
• This Is Gonna Suck: As Roberto puts it, if Richard Rider says "glorp" or "flark", that's bad. If he says "blue blazes", that's worse.
• This Means War!: A non-verbal one at the end of issue 7, when Cable and Whiz-Kid raid Brand's files. Whatever Cable sees, which could be some or all of her treacherous scheming up to this point, it makes him very angry indeed.
• Together in Death: As Magneto dies in Storm's arms, he sees his long-dead daughter Anya waiting for him
  Magneto: She's proud of me. I'll be right there, my dove. I'll...
• Token Human: The Fisher King, who is so far the only known non-mutant/baseline human Arakkan (though he insists that he is not technically human, as humans are of Earth, while he was born in Amenth).
• Transplant: Magneto, disillusioned with the Quiet Council of Krakoa, has left Earth for Arakko. Which also takes him out of the Immortal X-Men cast just in time for the first issue of X-Men Red.
• Underestimating Badassery: Abigail Brand keeps underestimating Storm. As she puts it in her own words, she expects "Queen of Wakanda" Storm, and keeps getting "Leader of the Morlocks" Storm instead. After a few goes of this, she decides the best course of action is to just try and plan around Storm rather than manipulate her.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: When Abigail Brand's plan falls apart and she's confronted by Sunspot, Deathbird, Xandra and Syzya, she uses the 'bodyslide' tech she stole from Cable to teleport out. Subverted when she reappears "somewhere very secret" - only to find the Fisher King already there, waiting for her.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • All of Tarn's bluster and ego disappears in a puff of smoke when Magneto prepares to kill him, and he starts begging for mercy. He gets none.
  • Isca the Unbeaten flies into a tearful rage and loses all control when Roberto exploits her powers to ensure that Magneto wins his duel against Tarn. Understandable given the later reveal that Isca and Tarn have been lovers for centuries, if not millennia. And her power just ensured his death. She gets a second dose when the Fisher King uses her powers against her, to ensure she truly understands loss.
    Her people despised her, and her family was lost to her, and all of her love's wit and cruelty was spilled onto the dirt with his brains, while she watched.
• War for Fun and Profit: Brand and Orbis Stellaris' big scheme is to trigger a war between the Shi'ar Empire and the Kree/Skrull Alliance by unleashing Vulcan in a key diplomatic meeting, beginning a conflict that will allow them to manipulate Krakoa and banish the Arakkii, weaken the Shi'ar and Alliance, and position Sol as first among equals in a restructured galactic society. They do this for the greater good (for Brand) and war profiteering (Orbis).
• We All Die Someday: The Arakkii wholeheartedly believe in this sentiment with their creed of not fearing a life that ends. Ora Serrata finds Krakoan resurrection foolish, as she considers it a desire for life with none of the consequences of living. To assimilate as governing members of Arrakko, Magneto destroy his and Storm's backups to adopt this philosophy. The amalgamated resurrection of Rockslide, Wrongslide as he's called, finds life too beautiful to really fear an eventual death.
• Weaponized Headgear: Magneto's metal helmet blocks psychic powers. That includes Tarn's control over others' genetics, powers and flesh. When they duel for the Seat of Loss, Magneto drops the helmet on his head, preventing him from attacking - and then crushes it.
• Weaponized Teleportation: Manifold (with his powers reinforced by Lactuca) moves the three alien horrors serving Orbis Stellaris outside. All the way outside, implied to be beyond the universe. Although he suspects that's also where they came from in the first place.
• We Hardly Knew Ye:
  • Tarn removed Idyll's tongue before the start of the series and, despite her role as seer, she plays very little part in the initial meetings of the Great Ring of Arakko. Then Uranos attacks in issue #5 and she's immediately killed.
  • In issue #14, we're introduced to Orrdon, the Living Star, new holder of the Seat of Loss. An omega level mutant with Super-Toughness and massive destructive power, he's seen clearly in two panels and gets a couple of boastful, threatening lines. Then Isca shoots him dead with a bow and arrow, using her power to find the weakness in his invulnerability.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Brand justifies her actions by saying that she sees the big picture, and they're for the greater good of the Sol system.
  Abigail Brand: Somebody's got to care enough to be the bad guy.
• Wham Episode: Issue #5. The Eternal Omnicidal Maniac Uranos attacks Arakko as part of the Eternals' wider assault on Earth's mutants and their allies. Isca turns traitor, Idyll's murdered, Magneto's barely alive after his heart's ripped out, Xilo is maimed, everyone on the S.W.O.R.D. station is killed and almost every Arakki mutant within a 50 mile radius of the Great Ring is murdered. In addition to all that, Ora Serrata's seriously wounded, Cable and Brand are killed (and resurrected on Earth, away from the war) and Uranos has left many of his autonomous war machines on Arakko to keep killing mutants after he returns to Earth.
• Wham Line: Issue #11 ends with Ironfire coming through the Otherworld gate to say:
  Jon Ironfire: Genesis is coming.
• Wham Shot: The end of Issue #10, where Orbis Stellaris’ protective sphere-shell opens up… and he’s revealed to be none other than another clone of Nathaniel Essex, aka Mister Sinister - specifically, a clone with a spade on his forehead in place of a diamond.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When the revived Vulcan appears before Xandra and the others, Nova flips out at the fact that Krakoa allowed a genocidal madman not only to be revived but still walking around.
• What Would X Do?: How Roberto worked out what Brand's plan was. He sat down and thought "what would I do if I were evil?" Then he formulated a counterplan on the basis of "what am I going since I'm not evil?"
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Not Magneto, who is afraid of what he might become with eons ahead of him.
• Wild Card: Cable's exact reasons for working for Brand, and S.W.O.R.D. are very unclear, as is where he stands on Brand's agenda (especially given the incident with ORCHIS and the Peak nearly resulted in his TO infection overtaking him). As is pretty typical of Nate, he's currently keeping his motivations to himself. Come issue #7, his motivations are revealed: He's working against Brand.
• With Us or Against Us: ORCHIS subscribes to this, seeing Krakoa and Arakko's mutants as a threat to humanity. Brand, whose ancestry is half-alien and half-mutant, finds it annoying. She's used to dealing with alien societies where that sort of view seems far too simplistic.
• The Worf Effect: Cable, an Omega Level telepath-telekinetic, is one-shotted by the Progenitors. Justified, to some degree, as they were being manipulated by Orbis Stellaris and Brand, who was specifically targeting Cable.
• Working with the Ex: A meeting between interstellar powers to discuss Empress Xandra's death has both Storm and Black Panther in attendance. Ororo and T'Challa try to keep civil, but there's obviously still a lot of bad blood over their tumultuous relationship and T'Challa's recent use of Gentle as a spy on Krakoa.
• Would Hurt a Child: Phase 1 of a fully restored Vulcan's plan is kill Xandra and retake the Shi'ar throne. The fact she's Xavier's daughter is just an additional level of satisfaction for him.
• Xanatos Gambit: It's revealed that Abigail Brand set Vulcan against Tarn in the knowledge that either outcome would work for her. If Vulcan wins, he takes Tarn's Seat of Loss and she gets a puppet on the Great Ring. If Vulcan loses and dies, his resurrection purges the false personality and restores the original, violently insane, Vulcan.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: The data page in #8 detailing Brand's grand plan is described as a living document, and the five different phases of her plan show how she's incorporated factors she couldn't have foreseen. Knull, the Last Annihilation and the "Empyre" incident have all been exploited, as have the "X of Swords" incident and the return of the Arakkii mutants.

---