Marvel’s X-Men have left their Krakoa Era behind – but it doesn’t seem like Marvel is done messing with its legacy. The Krakoa Era of X-Men (2019-2024) was deeply divisive for many reasons, but one of the most controversial story elements that writer Jonathan Hickman introduced in his two-part House of X/Powers of X event series was that mutants gained the ability to conquer death itself – or so they thought.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!
In the new X-Men reboot comic issue X-Men #7 by writer Jed McKay and artist Netho Diaz, we finally get the flashback to ten months ago, immediately following the Fall of Krakoa, and what happened in Merle, Alaska to have Cyclops make it the X-Men’s new home. More importantly, we finally get an answer to the background mystery of how Magneto got confined to a floating wheelchair like Charles Xavier, after achieving an all-powerful Resurrection during the “Fall of X” event that ended the Krakoa Era.
It turns out that Merle, Alaska was just the location of the Summers Family cabin, where Scott Summers went to have a Wolverine-style bender after Fall of X. Scott was lost: Krakoa had failed; he’d been horribly tortured while being a hostage for Orchis; his mentor Charles Xavier had irrevocably tarnished his own reputation as mutantkind’s great savior – and a Sentinel factory had been built on the land next to his family cabin.
Magneto finds Cyclops drinking himself through depression and implores Scott to rebuild the X-Men. Scott refuses – until the pair witness a Wild Sentinel, rebuilt from the factory materials, attack the town of Merle. Magneto and Cyclosp put aside their long history of conflict and team up to save the town, ultimately taking down the Wild Sentinel together. However, there is no time to celebrate as a more dangerous threat presents itself as soon as the Sentinel goes down…
To kill the Wild Sentinel, Magneto accessed a lot of magnetic power to rip the robot’s outer shell open so that Cyclops could blast its core. However, Magneto can’t shut his powers down after the fight and begins attracting all kinds of loose metal shrapnel with such intensity that Cyclops has to take him down with an optic blast.
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Back in the present, debilitated Magento talks with Cyclops about that day, revealing that the X-Men have since diagnosed Magnus with having “R-LDS,” or “Resurrection-Linked Degenerative Sickness.” The disease has weakened Magneto’s body significantly and caused his powers to spiral out of control. As Magnus points out, he only went through the Krakoan Resurrection process once: other mutants like Cyclops, Kid Omega, Nightcrawler, and other X-Men died and were brought back dozens of times. Magneto makes it clear: there’s a ticking clock on every mutant who cheated death, as well as the omega-level powers some of them wield.
There seems to be some kind of mandate at Marvel to shake up virtually every idea that Hickman introduced in Hox/Pox. The new alternate timelines that were established; the entire “Moira X” character; the unified mutant culture with its customs, religion, and language; the living island and its powerful biotech – now the entire concept of mutant resurrection – it seems like none of it is being left to stand.
A lot of X-Men fans are going to be happy about that, as Krakoa had a lot of detractors – but to those who liked that era of X-Men, it’s just another slight. It also echoes the infamous “Legacy Virus” storyline from the 1990s X-Men Comics, which was unleashed by the time-traveling villain (and Cable clone) Stryfe. Legacy was an obvious AIDS parallel for the ’90s; R-LDS is less clear in its intent or metaphor – at least right now.
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Marvel’s X-Men have left their Krakoa Era behind – but it doesn’t seem like Marvel is done messing with its legacy. The Krakoa Era of X-Men (2019-2024) was deeply divisive for many reasons, but one of the most controversial story elements that writer Jonathan Hickman introduced in his two-part House of X/Powers of X event Read More