YMMV / X-Men: The Krakoan Age

• Applicability: The mutant metaphor has had a long history of being applicable to any number of real-life minorities, but House of X and Powers of X seems to introduce another applicable metaphor: Judaism and the theme of making a homeland, i.e. Israel. Per this Twitter thread:
  Let's start with the obvious: Jerusalem was chosen almost entirely to point out the similarities between a nation like Israel to a Mutant nation. About how ideals can clash with the reality of world politics. Is it condemning? Not really (at least not as much as it could be); it's more of a wake-up call both in text and out of text: good intentions can only get you so far. And Magneto being the active member here makes it look intentional (also about the speech at the end and Magneto's own religious standing is probably a different discussion but overall it seems both in character and somewhat theatrical) but the meat of the story and what cements it in my mind as a very specific Jewish/Israeli allegory is Magneto saying "There has never been a Mutant war". Well, there has never really been a Jewish war when we were a minority. But when we have gotten a nation things changed. Because for good or ill your responsibilities changes once you become a nation. And that's partly why this feels more like Krakoa is more a Utopia than actually real. Why the Mutants are falling into the same traps Humanity/Israel has fallen to in the past.
• Awesome Art: Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva's artwork on House of X and Powers of X are positively gorgeous. The comics are just fascinating to look at, whether it's the scenic vistas of today or the wartorn wastelands of tomorrow, it's easy to get distracted by the art when reading the story. At the same time, all the characters are very distinct and detailed, and look just as they should with total consistency across the board. Impressive, as there are many characters to draw.
  • The Giant-Size X-Men series mainly exists for the purpose of showing off some of Marvel's best artists. For example, Russel Dauterman and Matthew Wilson, mainly known for their collaboration drawing Thor (2014), reunited for two of the Giant issues, and are also responsible for the costume change mentioned above.
  • Alan Davis returns to work on Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler after being maybe the definitive artist on the character outside of Dave Cockrum thanks to his legendary run of Excalibur (Marvel Comics).
  • Rod Reis continues his stellar work from the first arc of New Mutants (2019) by serving as the artist on Giant-Size X-Men: Fantomex and rendering the Mind Screw region that is "The World" in a number of suitably twisty ways that update the already awesome Chris Bachalo art from the original World story arc in New X-Men.
• Awesomeness Withdrawal: This is widely seen as the most interesting and addictive X-Men has been in a very long time. It also makes each week between House and Powers feel like forever.
• Base-Breaking Character: Beast. Unlike characters like Scott Summers and Emma Frost, who got to benefit from Character Rerailment in this new status quo, Hank has instead only gotten increasingly worse. There's a split between those who find this Fallen Hero arc for Beast interesting and those who condemn it as a huge disservice to the character and his history - wanting Hank to heal and be restored to his Pre-Schism characterization.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: As explained down in Memetic Mutation, for those who don't read the series, it's become known for being Hotter and Sexier. Even the marketing around the Hellfire Gala storyline was entirely around showing off the characters in their party outfits.
• Broken Base:
  • The extremely creepy and cult-like undertones of the group have split the fans into multiple camps of varying approval or disproval. This is likely intentional, given how Krakoa is getting this treatment in-universe.
  • Hickman's departure from the line, specifically to go write creator-owned comics, has caused some fans to lose interest in the line since many were on board to see what Hickman's plan for the mutants was supposed to be. Others, however, found excitement when the official press release for the departure said that Hickman left in part because the whole DoX-era and what it means to readers became bigger than any plans he could've had for it, implying that, post-Inferno, this will be the status quo for the X-Men and mutants for the forseeable future.
• Continuity Lockout: Hickman himself stated that House of X and Powers of X are needed to be read in order to have a clue as to what's going on in the books launching afterwards, as those two stories set up a status quo that the rest of X-Men will follow. That's a major reason why they didn't go into heavy detail as to what the initial six titles were going to be about at SDCC 2019.
• Crack Pairing: Readers seeing X-23 and Kid Cable together on a book has already sparked shipping for this pairing, and for many of the same reasons she was shipped with Teen Cyclops.
• Creepy Awesome: Destiny in House of X #2, for totally owning Moira and her attempts to justify and dial down her participation in making a mutant cure. Her attempt to teach Moira a lesson is extreme, but her Breaking Speech is awesome and as she says, since she is acting to preserve mutant, she is "not without cause".
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Title-wise, Marauders got quite a bit of positive attention. Many are interested in picking it up, mainly because of the unique premise of being a pirate-themed X-Men comic and the fact that it's a completely new title. The fact it features Captain Kate Pryde as the leader and a heroic Emma Frost again is a plus.
  • Character-wise, Sinister's new take as a comedically camp, yet terrifying villain has made him the highlight of every story he appears in.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Because of Xavier coming off as being evil and very suspicious, and because of his helmet bearing an uncanny resemblance, it's speculated by some that the Xavier we see isn't actually Xavier, but rather the Maker. The idea is that the Maker is impersonating Xavier through high-end inventions, such as being able to block out telepaths, replicate Xavier's abilities, and take the appearance of Xavier, to conduct an Evil Plan that involves playing the mutant population like a fiddle. The heavy themes of pushing towards the future, which fits very nicely with the Maker's motives as a futurist, further draws the comparison.
  • Another theory being peddled is that the body is Xavier's, but the mind is actually Moira, suggesting that she pulled a Grand Theft Me in some way to get where she is. The main clue people are using is the suggestion that no one has tried putting a different mind inside a shell of a body with the thought that it has been done, but the idea has been secreted away. This theory was subsequently discarded with the last issues of House of X and Powers of X, which revealed that Moira is still around in her own body, but is simply keeping a low profile.
  • Yet another theory is that Xavier is either Cassandra Nova (based on the somewhat suspicious use of the pith hat outfit that Nova favored), or Onslaught, based on Moira's journals making reference to 'breaking' him and the potential consequences - and last time Xavier's idealism was broken, he became Onslaught.
• Fan Nickname: The name some have given the run is HiX-Men. It was barely a day before X-fans started abbreviating Knights of X to KoX for obvious reasons.
• Funny Moments: The all-text pages all contain little bracketed words at the top denote where the contents are from^{For Example...} When an entry from Beast's Logbook is shown it reads [NOTE]...beast][SCRAP]....log]. When a page comes from the Quiet Council it starts with [Shhhhh].
• He's Just Hiding: The possibility that Rasputin and Future!Zorn survived getting sucked into the later's black-hole head. Especially since A: the series makes a big deal about the Phalanx entering black holes, B: other characters have survived it before (as seen in Chuck Austen's Uncanny X-Men) and C:... they're X-Men.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During Brian Michael Bendis' last run with the Miles Morales Spider-Man, he had Ganke be a humongous fan of Goldballs despite his lameness. Come House of X #5, many other people now see how awesome Goldballs is.
  • In the book itself, Magneto Blasphemous Boast compares the mutants to gods. In Moira's sixth life, one thousand years from now, humans, thanks to technology and genetic engineering, are close to divinity themselves as mutants remain stationed as they were.
  • The method of resurrecting mutants, using brain engrams saved to Cerebro and uploaded into clones of deceased X-men, with their entire history and personality intact, is exactly what Dr. Venture from The Venture Bros. did when he resurrected Hank and Dean, who are nearly as death-prone as the X-Men, possibly more so. Dr. Orpheus even said the machine Venture used housed their (Hank and Dean's) souls as well.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • That all of the book reveals so far mostly highlight the same characters who have been driving the franchise for some time has led to some fans responding with this. It also happened again when it was announced that there would be another Wolverine ongoing.
  • A majority of the books are about clandestine black-ops teams fighting multiple generic, faceless mutant hating organizations. Even Marauders ditched the pirate aspect almost immediately in favor of being Emma's personal strike force.
  • Wolverine's solo starts with him going into a berserker rage and killing his allies again.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Non-X-Men fans are here for the run just to see what Hickman will do with it, having won a lot of love and esteem for his major run on the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, with some noting that he stands to become one of very few writers to do a defining run on all three of Marvel's major teams.
• Like You Would Really Do It: The huge number of deaths in House of X #4, especially those of Wolverine, Cyclops and Jean Grey. Not only would the death of one of those characters otherwise be a storyline defining event (not to mention all three have died and come back in the last year and a half), but they were also featured in the cover of the then-upcoming X-Men #1, meaning fans were not convinced this would stick. Sure enough, they — and the other casualties of the battle — are brought back in House of X #5 as part of The Reveal of Xavier's resurrection technology.
• Memetic Badass: Magneto has become this during this era. While the Master of Magnetism was never a pushover, the first issue of House of X alone has cemented him as a memetic one in the fandom for three reasons. First, he acts as the Ambadassador to all of mutantkind on Krakoa, speaking volumes considering just how many superpowered beings live there. Second, he calmly yet with no holds barred shows the human ambassadors that mutants are not to be trifled with, holding one in the air when they're revealed to have a gun, shrugs off the "it was for my protection!" comment like a lame excuse, and then closes out the issue with an epic Blasphemous Boast where he compares mutants to gods. Third, the graph that established just what an Omega-level mutant is confirmed that Mags himself is one (rather than "just" an Alpha-level mutant-like before), and then proceeds to use him as the go-to example as to why he's Omega compared to Forge. By the end, the message was made clear: you don't mess with Magneto.
  • X-Men #11 seems devoted entirely to enforcing Magneto's status as this In-Universe. Exodus gathers a group of mutant children around the campfire to retell Magneto's defense of Krakoa from invading Cotati. What follows are scenes of Magneto donning his classic purple and red uniform, launching shrapnel and metal orbs through Cotati like they were paper, ordering Magma to erupt a volcano, having Iceman freeze the molten iron and turning it into razor-sharp spikes to devastate the remaining Cotati and finishing the fight off by standing face-to-face with the Cotati leader, who clearly believes they are set to have a mano-a-mano clash. Magnus simply drops three satellites from orbit on top of his head in hilarious succession, before strolling away and telling Sage to cover the bill. The creative team seems to be using the issue to say, "When we said he's an omega mutant we meant it."
• Memetic Mutation: Nightcrawler's "make more mutants" decree, along with the casual nudity in the series, have led fans to portray the X-Men as being incredibly horny and constantly having sex. When it turned out that Cyclops, Jean and Wolverine happened to have their bedrooms connected, this led to further jokes about them being in a polyamorous relationship. Then it turns out to not be a joke.
• Misaimed Fandom: With the announcement of the X-Men: From the Ashes relaunch, there are some fans who were very upset at the Status Quo Is God nature of the relaunch, believing that Krakoa should stay, even pointing out that they were going to have democratic elections replacing the Quiet Council. This completely misses the point of what Krakoa is — a desperate attempt to stave off one of nine possible futures by dumping all sense of morals and decency by playing themselves as holier-than-thou beings who have absolutely no idea how to run a country. Even if they did the elections, what's stopping any of the less scrupulous mutants from skewing things?
• Narm: In the X² timeline, there are "only" roughly 10,000 mutants left. It's treated as a dire situation, and while the war itself certainly is, it's still funny considering that this is over twenty times the number of mutants that existed from Decimation until this run. ^note Before, the peak level was still under 500. In real-world terms though, 10,000 is definitely a very low number for a sentient species. With that being said, this ends up being justified in-universe: these events happen in an alternate timeline where Apocalypse led the X-Men, in which the events of Decimation never happened.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Wiz-Kid is a very obscure X-Men character, and has usually been regarded as lame and boring. S.W.O.R.D. revamps his character completely; he looks a lot older and cooler, and he comes off as more competent and snarky.
• Shocking Moments:
  • House of X #2 and The Reveal that Moira MacTaggert, always once thought to be a human, is actually a mutant with multiple lives and spent those lives trying to change the path of mutantkind.
  • House of X #5 reveals that Cerebro's secretly been copying the data of every living mutant down for years, with the explicit goal of resurrecting fallen mutants... Including the over sixteen million that died in Genosha. The issue ends with a number of villains joining the X-Men, including Mister Sinister and Apocalypse.
• Spoiled by the Format:
  • The twist of Apocalypse joining the X-Men in House of X #5 was somewhat undercut for solicitations of the Dawn of X comic Excalibur, which unveiled that he was a member of the team.
  • Similarly, the technically still unrevealed ^note An apparent error in a press preview copy of Powers of X #5 allowed for all of the redacted names be copy-pasted. third member of Emma's section of the council along with Sebastian Shaw ^note Kate Pryde is spoiled by the solicitations for Marauders. Lampshaded by Marauders writer Gerry Duggan on Twitter:
    Duggan: We've been telling you for months who the Red Queen would be.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Despite being part of the Five, the group responsible for resurrecting thousands of deceased mutants, Tempus's timeline-lost mutant husband and daughter, as well as her previous rejection of Cyclops and Xavier, were never mentioned and she was almost entirely a dialogue-free character who only existed as part of the aforementioned group. It's doubly disappointing that she was never seen bonding with Wolfsbane, who similarly suffered from a child that couldn't be resurrected.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • When Children of the Atom was announced, quite a few fans had expected it to tie in with the Outlawed storyline, which would start at the same time as the relaunched Champions and New Warriors titles. They were quite disappointed that they weren't, feeling that it would be a good angle to explore.
  • An alternative to the above was speculation that Vita Ayala's book would spin out of X-Men #5, and would follow a team built around X-23, Sync, and Darwin.
  • Many view the motivations of X-23 and Cable in Fallen Angels as this. Especially the case for X-23, who is driven primarily by boredom and discomfort over the idleness of Krakoa. This in spite of the fact that Laura's previous self-titled series centered around her stopping people from doing the exact same thing as the casual cloning involved with the Resurrection Protocols, giving her a natural objection to what is happening on the island.
  • In early 2021, Marvel launched a voting event for people to choose the last member of Cyclops' new X-Men team. The lineup had numerous Ensemble Dark Horse choices, especially with the likes of Tempo, Sunspot, and Cannonball. However, they decided to include Polaris in the lineup, which made it a Foregone Conclusion she would win, especially since many feel her fans were fans of her character from The Gifted (2017).
    • An interesting development came from when Marvel revealed the final order that the characters were voted in and while Polaris was obviously number one, second was Banshee, a character that hasn't really had much to do in years and his inclusion would have provided a fun tie to the original 70's revamp.
  • A retroactive example can found be with The Inhumans: In spite of the Fandom Rivalry with them due to their post-Infinity executive-mandated turbo-push to make them replace the X-Men because of movie rights; and subsequent franchise torching in the aptly named Death of the Inhumans, there is a contingent of fans of fans that thinks that Krakoa and Attilan could've been interesting foils to one another.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Bill the Lobster is an extremely obscure Team Pet who made his last appearance all the way back in Civil War. The fact that he's returning here and is featured in the promotional poster is a huge surprise.
  • By a similar token, Sikorsky, an Insectoid Alien, also appears. He's also the only representative of the Starjammers on the poster.
  • Judging by the preview posts, Vulcan is returning. And (assuming the preview is any indication) it's the younger, non-crazy Vulcan from before he became Emperor of the Shi'ar - it's later revealed that he does remember that time, but he's calmed down rather.
  • Firestar has always been a mutant, but for most of her history had no ties to the X-Men side of the Marvel Universe, and is much more closely associated with the New Warriors, Spider-Man, and Avengers. Her entire run with the X-Men began and ended in the short-lived Amazing X-Men title in 2014/15, and many figured they wouldn't try again, but there she is on the group shot.
  • Omega Sentinel was discarded years ago and Karima Shapandar returned to normal, and the marketing gave no indication that she would return. Yet in the first issue of House of X, she's clearly been restored and is operating as Omega Sentinel once again.
  • The return of the Fallen Angels title, which is a fairly obscure deep cut from X-Men lore.
  • Jean Grey joining the new X-Force team, of all things, has elicited this reaction from many.
    • And Quentin.
  • Although it makes a lot of sense, having Betsy Braddock become Captain Britain and Kwannon become Psylocke was a compromise to the Broken Base that few even thought of before the announcement.
  • Nobody expected Gwenpool of all people to be connected to Dawn of X.
  • Way of X will feature DJ for at least one issue. DJ, a Living Prop who only spoke two lines in his entire 15-year history at that point, who spent nearly all of those years dead. Though in his defense, he was an Ensemble Dark Horse during his time for his cool power set.
  • X-Factor #5 brings back every last one of the deceased cast members of New X-Men: Academy X, a book that infamously went from a lighthearted boarding school antics story to extremely dark and brutal following House of M (and a creative team change), and whose characters (aside from a few such as Hellion, Elixir, and especially Pixie) were largely relegated thereafter to scene-filler at best and cannon fodder for Crisis Crossovers at worst. Among those spotted are Wallflower, the first to die; Wither, her secret admirer who turned evil out of grief and insanity after losing her; Tag, who lost his powers and then died, and even some ridiculously minor ones like Network, Rubbermaid, and Specter.
• Values Resonance: The reprints of Stan Lee's letters to the readers have been featured in many of Marvel's books since his passing, but they are as right as they were nearly sixty years ago.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • Professor X's new design (black spandex bodysuit with a helmet with an "X" for the eyes) has been divisive to say the least. In Way of X, a newly-resurrected David Haller/Legion greets Xavier by telling him the costume makes him look like "a crap astronaut".
  • Jean Grey's return to the Marvel Girl outfit has received a lot of criticism compared to her X-Men: Red uniform - enough that the artists got the hint and gave her back the latter uniform, but with the colours of the Marvel Girl uniform.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Making the X-Men franchise a core pillar of Marvel after years of shafting due to film rights was widely praised, as is having acclaimed writer Jonathan Hickman be the one behind it. The promise that it'll reinvent the X-Men, much like Giant-Sized X-Men and New X-Men before it, with Hickman being given as much control as Chris Claremont, also drew a lot of interest.
  • Many, many people thought Hickman was going to be the sole Uncanny X-Men writer when the series relaunched in 2018, and were disappointed when it launched and, not only was he not involved, but the series became an Audience-Alienating Era. But less than a year after its launch, Uncanny X-Men (2018) was canceled and Hickman would end up as sole X-writer. Furthermore, after the conclusion of House of X and Powers of X, Hickman will be the writer of the main X-ongoing.
  • Psylocke getting her original body back and being desexualized was met with very mixed reception, with one side supporting it and the other being opposed to the new design. However, people warmed up to it when it was revealed that Betsy will remain in her normal body, but not as Psylocke. Instead, she becomes the new Captain Britain. Meanwhile, Kwannon (ie the body Betsy was in for a very long time) becomes the new Psylocke, and she maintains the classic ninja bathing suit with no strings attached. Not only does this evolve Betsy's character, but it pleases those against Psylocke being white and/or not a Ms. Fanservice, while even allowing Kwannon's character to develop as a result. It also maintains Psylocke as an Asian superheroine, since she's one of the most well-known despite the messy history.
  • During Matthew Rosenberg's run on Uncanny X-Men (2018), a lot of fan-favorite characters were killed off resulting in a lot of fans unhappy about the number of deaths. The team members of the new team books in Dawn of X show that most, if not all, of those who died, have come back to life.
  • Remember the cast of New X-Men: Academy X, who have become infamous for their poor treatment, used as cannon fodder, and spent the last 15 years real-time suffering and dying? X-Factor brings them all back, reunites them, gives the de-powered mutants their abilities back, and acknowledges several of their forgotten stories and dynamics.

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