Comic Book Herald

Counting down our top 5 favorite comics of the year so far with the head of Comics Bookcase and writer at The Beat, Zack Quaintance!

You can also find our full lists via the links below. Otherwise we chat about our very favorites (including plenty of overlapping picks!) on this episode. Stick around to the end to hear our picks for favorite books that aren’t quite getting the attention we think they should.

Comic Book Herald’s best comics of 2020 (so far)

Comics Bookcase’s best comics of 2020 (so far)

Since we did have technical difficulties that lost some of our top 10 picks (the initial plan!), I’ve shared my list below, as well as Zack’s top 5.

Enjoy the comics!

10 – Money Shot — New

9 – Jimmy Olsen – Holdover

8 – Bog Bodies – New

7 – Farmhand – Holdover

6 – Immortal Hulk – Holdover

5 – Machine Gun Wizards – New

4 – X-Men – Holdover

3 – Ice Cream Man – Holdover

2 – Superman Smashes the Klan – New

1 – Dragon Hoops – New

5) Superman Smashes the Klan

4) Immortal Hulk

3) Monstress

2) Ice Cream Man

1) Dragon Hoops

The post Best Comics of 2020 (W/ Zack Quaintance) appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

Mike Carey’s time writing the X-Men from 2006 to 2012 is the second longest consecutive run by any creator in Marvel history (trailing Chris Claremont), and despite a goldmine of concepts and character studies, the run is frequently overlooked in broader discussion of the best X-Men comics. Certainly, Carey’s work is referenced nowhere near as often as Grant Morrison’s time on New X-Men, or even the later run by Brian Michael Bendis.

Today I’ll answer:

Spoilers for discussed comics may follow!

Hickman X-Men

Modern X-Men

Following well regarded comics runs on Lucifer and Hellblazer (among plenty of other work), Carey took on adjectiveless X-Men in 2006 with issue #188. The title takes place post House of M, post Scarlet Witch’s declaration of “No More Mutants,” during the Decimation era.

Carey’s entire run on X-Men and the X-Men: Legacy title it would evolve into is very much integrated into the X-Men continuity of the time, progressing from “Decimation” to “Messiah CompleX” to “Dark Reign” to Necrosha to Second Coming to Age of X to “Regenesis.” Considering only one of those event is Mike Carey’s own event, it’s an impressive feat collaborating and rolling with broader storylines and shifts in status quo for mutantkind.

Carey’s work is also very much a “fan favorite” and according to current X-Men mastermind Jonathan Hickman in interview with AIPT “criminally underrated.”

The underrated nature of the run can probably be attributed to operating in the shadows of larger X-Men franchises (for example, Carey’s “X-Men” launched alongside Ed Brubaker taking over “Uncanny X-Men” after his work on Captain America: The Winter Soldier), and the absence of a central, go-to story highlight that stands out individually (the “Age of X” event was likely the greatest opportunity here, and although it’s fascinating for our purposes, I wouldn’t call it a great, highly recommended read for all X-Fans).

In many ways, the run’s greatest strengths – complex integration of long-running and developing X-Men continuity, deep slow builds of the characters Professor X, Rogue, Gambit, and occasionally Magneto – are what keep it a mild secret for casual comics readers.

Nonetheless aside from Claremont’s 16 years with the X-verse from 1975 to 1991, and arguably the Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo era of Generation X, no X-Men comics have a greater influence on the 2019 and 2020 Dawn of X. Regular artistic contributions from Chris Bachalo, Clay Mann, Scot Eaton, and Steve Kurth should be highlighted as well.

The clearest influence, and the one I’ve already discussed the most, is right there in Carey’s first story arc with artist Chris Bachalo, with the introduction of the Children of the Vault in the “Supernovas” story.

The Children of the Vault are a post-human species that spent an estimated centuries in accelerated, sealed time developing beyond advanced technologies that more or less manifest as superpowers. As I’ve identified in Krakin’ Krakoa previously, the Children are very much in line with the human threats of Moira’s 6th life, “human adaptation along technological lines.” In X-Men #5, Professor X goes so far as to say “the Children of the Vault represent the single greatest existential threat to mutantdom… and we know nothing about them. Not really.”

The Children consider themselves Earth’s superior inheritors, and plan to wipe the planet clean so their enhanced kind can ascend. As written by Carey, the Children are consistently more powerful than mutantkind, and it’s generally through some sort of Deus Ex Machina and unexpected turn of events (in “Supernovas” it’s the X-Men more or less encouraging Mystique and Lady Mastermind to trick and kill a number of the Children) that the X-Men survive.

With the Children emerging as early as Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu’s X-Men #1, they remain the most direct connection from Mike Carey’s X-Men to the Krakoa era. It’s a story well worth reading, and not at all difficult to see why Hickman drew inspiration from it.

It’s the influences beyond what’s already been heavily utilized that strike me the most in 2020 though, such as Carey’s clear interest in Exodus, Bennett Du Paris, as this tremendously powerful mutant follower of Magneto now branching out on his own path of mutant dominance.

In X-Men, Exodus and his new acolytes also have a genuinely intriguing plan, seeking to combine Cable’s knowledge of the future and the Destiny Diaries in order to predict when mutants will begin repopulating the planet. Not for nothing, the story’s revelation that mutantkind is a truly “Endangered Species” (also the title of a series of backups Carey writes about Beast trying to solve for Decimation!), Exodus turns to Mister Sinister and his master plan for the species’ survival.

Exodus spans both the early X-Men days and the Professor X focus of X-Men Legacy, and the Omega Level telekinetic is now a part of Jonathan Hickman’s Quiet Council of Krakoa (as well as his go to campfire storyteller for the kids!).

Apart from his 90’s origins (and that wild Black Knight one-shot that connects Exodus, Black Knight, Sersi of the Eternals and the everlovin’ Apocalypse), Carey’s work is without question what I think of first when I think of Exodus, and a clear fountain that Hickman is drawing from in his own evolution of the character.

There’s also the selective reemergence of Destiny’s Diaries, a loaded concept from Chris Claremont’s early 2000’s return to X-Treme X-Men, and a reflection of the supporting, but obviously relevant role Destiny will play in the run. In the Carey run, Destiny’s Diaries are hunted as the key to unlocking the survival of mutantkind.

The Destiny Diaries are a superfun artifact in X-Men lore, the recorded futures written by Irene Adler as her powers manifested for the first time. As Claremont writes in X-Treme X-Men #1, “Much of the entries in her diaries was written in languages unknown to her, in code and in pictograms…” If that doesn’t set the stage for a Krakoan revival, I don’t know what does!

Adjectiveless ends with both a build and tie-in to Messiah CompleX, marking a break point in Carey’s run from X-Men #188 to #207, as the title would become “X-Men Legacy” after this point in time.

Crucially, the rush to “Messiah CompleX” affords Carey a focus on Mister Sinister and his reassembled Marauders. The exploration of Mister Sinister would continue successfully into “Legacy.” I really don’t think it can be overstated how well Carey bounces off larger linewide events and crossovers without missing a beat, and often using the occasion to add exciting ideas that simply wouldn’t have been possible previously.

Following Messiah CompleX – an X-Men crossover about the birth of the first mutant since Decimation – Carey picks up the pieces of Professor X, literally gunned down by Bishop of all people (it was an accident!) and thought dead at the event’s conclusion. X-Men Legacy #208 to #225 is a remarkable character study of Charles Xavier, something I celebrated in my very first episode of Krakin’ Krakoa with the history of Professor X! Here I’ll go into greater detail about some of the best parts of this era.

Big picture, Carey really captures the complexity and contradictions of Professor X, riding into X-Men Legacy in the wake of X-Men: Deadly Genesis and New Avengers: Illuminati, amidst the confrontation of some his greatest failures and ethical compromises.

For those House of X readers missing the kindly 90’s Animated/Patrick Stewart Professor, Legacy captures a more introspective version, trying to make his many wrongs right, but essentially, acknowledging that his methods have been far from the purest. It’s a needed quest for atonement that allows the character attempted heroism without erasing the shadows of his past.

Speaking of shadows and impurities, after his resuscitation by Exodus, the new Acolytes, and kinda Magneto, Professor X uncovers a sinister secret lurking in the back of his consciousness.

The coolest trick Carey pulls here is that Sinister’s presence is part of a decades long plan to make himself immortal (or, ya know, more immortal), all deeply integrated into the fabric of Professor X’s childhood.

Cooler still, Carey revises Professor X’s past so that his father, his step-father Kurt Marko, Sinister masquerading as Dr. Milbury, and – get this – Irene Adler, aka Destiny were all part of a collective of geneticists working in Alamogordo.

Sinister’s ultimate plan is to write his own genes into Charles Xavier as a child – among others including Sebastian Shaw – so that if his person was threatened, he could back himself up in an extraordinarily powerful mutant body. As Sinister puts it “I can write myself – my mind, my physical matrix, even my memories – onto the mind and body of someone else.” Honestly, in a lot of ways, Sinister’s own resurrection protocols kind of dwarf Krakoa’s, although of course Sinister is only securing these methods for himself (not all of mutantkind).

It’s a very in character plot for Mister Sinister, here in a pre-“Everything is Sinister” phase, as we’ve seen him execute similar background operations on the lives of various X-Men, most memorably Scott Summers. Xavier confronts Scott with this unsettling reality, reminding him that Sinister clones and proxies constituted the majority of people Scott grew up with in the orphanage, and raising the possibility that like himself, Scott could be infected with Sinister’s DNA without knowing. This continues to be something to look for as the Hellions series gets rolling.

The entire plot leaves a lot of wiggle room for House of X and Hickman era X-Men theories, and frankly adds plenty of credence to those HoX/PoX readers still wondering if this is actually Professor X plotting Krakoa!

Even if the story is not quite so literal as to feature Sinister actually masquerading as Professor X, there’s a question of Sinister’s influence on the Professor over this entire timeline. Sinister is certainly hinting that the Professor’s actions could never fully be his own, but lies, deceit and manipulation are the name of Sinister’s game. For my money, I think a “The Professor Was Sinister The Whole Time” twist is too obvious for everyone involved, but I’m never ruling out Sinister lying in wait where we least expect him.

I’m not sure of the broader implications, but I also can’t help but call out X-Men Legacy #219 as one of my absolute favorite single issues of the Carey years, focusing on a diner confrontation between Professor X and Juggernaut. If you’ve ever wanted the rival step-brothers dynamic in miniature, this is the issue for you.

Beginning with X-Men Legacy #220, Carey shifts the character study back to a favorite from his start on the run, Rogue. The book is still very much an X-Men title at heart – we spend plenty of time on Utopia with Cyclops, Emma Frost, Dr. Nemesis, and the whole essential crew (such as Nightcrawler gloriously sassing Magneto in the field) – but more often than not it’s through the lens of Rogue, with supporting focus on Gambit and Magneto (two historical romantic pairings for Rogue).

I actually like to think of this period as one where Rogue takes on a role similar to The Doctor in Doctor Who, or even Dream of the Endless in Sandman. The story can run in a million directions, but she’ll always make an appearance and play a role.

Within that framework, Carey consistently makes very interesting choices when plucking characters and elements from X-Men history and weaving them into something new. Again, it’s easy to identify a large swath of choices that connect to the Hickman era.

The first and most obvious is the return of the Children of the Vault. The children’s return via their floating atemporal city of Quitado is not quite as exciting as the team’s debut, although even here, we get more insight into the function and formation of the Children (their rulers, their society, their plans for a new world), and we see them explicitly identifying as “post-human,” which snaps my mind forward to Moira’s 6th life.

I also love the potential of a detail the Children tell Rogue during their inevitable fall at the hands of the X-Men, mentioning their new plans: “We’ll make our own world, here in the void between dimensions.” This has a lot of potential for the Hickman era, either tying to interstellar travel via blackholes, or possibly with the Vault inhabiting the limbo like space where Apocalypse’s first horsemen (and seemingly Old Man Cable) are trapped.

One of my favorite developments elsewhere is a fondness of Carey’s for playing with Precogs, as Blindfold becomes a recurring player, and Destiny is notably utilized during the Necrosha event (i.e. she’s brought back from the dead as part of Selene’s grand schemes). Blindfold, aka Ruth Aldine, has the mutant ability of clairvoyance, although her messages usually arrive jumbled and difficult to piece together.

Given Moira’s fear of precognitive mutants on Krakoa – and her particular enmity towards Destiny – there are many fascinating moments. I was especially struck by a revived Destiny stating ‘I see timelines, past and future,” which rings true in an entirely new light given the revelations of House of X #2. It’s not intentional, but the sequence could now be read as Destiny’s admission of her knowledge of Moira’s abilities.

It’s unfortunately also worth calling out that Blindfold commits suicide in the volume of Uncanny X-Men immediately preceding House of X, and as far as I know, has not been revived (presumably by Moira’s edict, she would not be allowed to resurrect).

The same arc includes some additional nuggets through the return of Proteus, and Destiny’s admission that his presence and powersets clouds her reads of the future.

While this is obviously just meant in regards to the particular Necrosha story Mike Carey and company were telling, it also really fuels my ongoing theory that Proteus is a targeted part of Moira’s life 10 plan.

Proteus is engineered by Moira as a means of giving birth to a mutant with reality warping abilities. This plays a role in making the dream of The 5 and mutant resurrection on Krakoa possible. That *could* be enough on its own, but what if Proteus’ abilities also offered Moira a way to escape the predictive powers of Destiny? This offers some textual evidence that Proteus can uniquely impact Destiny, which is perhaps not at random.

Speaking of major House of X / Powers of X connections, Carey’s role throughout the entire Second Coming crossover event brings in Nimrods, Cypher traveling to the future to take on Master Molds, and evolving Omega Sentinels in the event’s wake.

While Second Coming is all a part of the larger crossover, Carey uses the aftermath to explore the impact on Karima Shapandar, the Omega Sentinel, and a character House of X fans will recognize from project Orchis. The fallout means that Karima’s “Nimrod CPU” was attacked by a virus Cypher created to stop time-traveling Nimrods, and that Karima more or less devolves into the out of control Omega Sentinel.

On a final note from this time, there’s also a continuation of the Gambit / Death / Apocalypse development that occurred in “Blood of Apocalypse,” the issues of X-Men immediately preceding Carey’s own run, when Gambit became Apocalypse’s horsemen of death.

I truly do not remember if this ever saw resolution, but given Gambit and Apocalypse’s reluctant alliance in the pages of Dawn of X’s Excalibur, it certainly makes that relationship more interesting.

I’m generally a sucker for “Age Of” and alternate realities in the Marvel Universe, but Carey’s Age of X crossover never quite won me over. The sudden alternate reality – spread across some event issues, Legacy, and New Mutants issues also written by Carey – features a world without X-Men, just mutants hunkered down in a fortress defending wave after wave of humanity’s hate. There are some memorable alt-reality interpretations of known characters – Carey and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s origin for ‘Basilisk,’ the psychologically decimated soldier version of Scott Summers is a stand out – but I’d actually argue the aftermath of the Age (in which character’s retain their memories of the alternate universe and have to decide whether or not to keep them) is the best part.

Age of X is also the point where Carey very earnestly leans in to the various connotations of “Legacy” in the book’s title. There’s the legacy that Professor X has left behind for mutantkind, as he reevaluates his decisions with the X-Men, but there’s also Rogues’ ability to absorb dissipating mutant memories into a walking database of mutantkind’s history. Amazingly, she develops in ways not entirely dissimilar from the use of Cerebra backing up all mutants in House of X. In the Age of X she is quite literally codenamed “Legacy,” although Cannonball and others refer to her as “Reaper” due to her position absorbing powers when a soldier has fallen on the battlefield.

Likewise, Legion is a genetic part of Professor X’s legacy, and ultimately it’s revealed that the Age of X is all a creation of one of Legion’s powerful personas. This would all be well and good in the grand scheme of Legion (after all, he also basically starts the Age of Apocalypse through his actions), but the specifics of Legion’s accidental alternate reality are so fascinating in the wake of House of X.

In the Age of X, Legion operates as one of the 5 force warriors, with his mother Moira MacTaggert awaiting him in the fortress. As the cracks in the false reality begin to show, it’s revealed that Moira is really the one behind this reality, just wanting to create a space where Legion can be free from the sorts of medical experiments and “fixes” that the likes of Dr. Nemesis have in store for him on Utopia.

Now, as the story is told, “Moira” in the Age of X is just the persona chosen for the rogue Legion personality that sets off the warped reality. There’s no “real” Moira in this story, and as far as everyone reading X-Men comics in 2011 was concerned, she was very much dead.

Nonetheless, I find it impossible not to consider the possibility: What if that was Moira? Or what if that foreshadows actions Moira might consider taking? A separate reality that she can control in order to ensure mutant victory? Why not? It’s something she hasn’t tried.

Again, Moira’s hiding plans. She refuses the existence of precognitive mutants on Krakoa because she doesn’t want them to know here plans. Something like a warped reality, bent by Legion to her whims is not out of the question. That said, I will admit here that I’ve been thinking more about Moira’s secrets, and as fun as they are to theorize, it’s also very, very plausible that she and the leading mutant triumvirate simply don’t want their people to know Moira’s story. The details that Moira has lived through 9 lives of this, and lost every time, could be absolutely devastating to morale. We’re in on the secret to create dramatic irony, but the likes of Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm… they don’t know (or at least, we don’t know if they know!) How different might everyone behave with the added weight that this is Moira’s last ditch effort to find a victory for mutants?

I wasn’t planning on going into his 80’s origins, but the inclusion of the Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz New Mutants #27 as a backup in X-Men Legacy #250 reminded me that Professor X seems entirely unaware that Legion is his son until that adventure in Legion’s fractured psyche.

If this holds true, this is actually quite important, because it means that Moira somehow nudged Charles directly into the relationship with Gabrielle Haller that led to the birth of the powerful mutant Legion. Remember, Moira finds genetic matches for herself and Charles to reproduce a reality altering mutant. Until reading this I had generally imagined that both of them were in on this plot, but the Professor’s complete surprise at fatherhood makes me wonder.

Following the Age of X, Professor X and Dr. Nemesis create new tech for Legion to control his various personalities and abilities, which reveals the need to capture several escaped personalities. I don’t have any broader connections here other than to say these are some very good Legion and X-Men comics!

The Carey era of X-Men concludes with a trip to Shi’ar space, and Rogue, Gambit and Magneto’s decisions following the great Wolverine vs Cyclops Schism of 2011.

It’s almost a throwaway detail in one of my least favorite arcs in the run, but it is worth calling out that Rogue and company travel via wormhole from Shi’ar space back to terran proximity.

This of course calls to mind the likely reemergence of Moira’s 9th life stalwarts, Omega, Rasputin and Xorn. Again, the means of travel have been used, it’s really just down to specifics and timings on when they’ll pop back into the Krakoa era of X-Men.

Carey would return to the world of X-Men in 2014 with the original graphic novel X-Men: No More Humans, and it’s characteristically full of really cool seed ideas (what if humans disappeared over night?), and beyond smooth adaptation to the shared universe throughlines (Dude’s out here even weaving in Battle of the Atom like it’s nothing!).

Even here, in this generally overlooked and tepidly reviewed graphic novel, there are outstanding ideas. I’m particularly obsessed now with the idea of alternate reality mutants from “hopeless” Earths – would Krakoa be open to these alternate realities? How might they play a role in the stories to come?

Whether or not the Children of the Vault remain the most direct connection between Hickman’s X-Men and the Mike Carey run remains to be seen, but even if so, there are so many concepts and good stories in the second longest X-run ever that it’s well worth exploring for any X-Men comic book fan.

Next Time – What would you like to see covered? I have the following topics queued up for coverage:

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Music for Best Comics Ever by Anthony Weis. Check out more music at anthonyweis.com.

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The post Krakin’ Krakoa #52: Mike Carey’s X-Men Run – The Legacy Behind Dawn of X appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

Zack & Dave cover your questions, poll results, and recap the Marvel Comics of 1983 parts 3 and 4!

Topics discussed include:

Up Next:

My Marvelous Year – Marvel Year Twenty-Three: 1984 Pt. 1 —

You can find more Marvel Comics guides on Comic Book Herald at:

mymarvelousyear.com

https://www.comicbookherald.com/the-complete-marvel-reading-order-guide/

Music for My Marvelous Year is credited to Disasterpeace. Support for My Marvelous Year comes via Patreon backers, for as little as $1 a month.

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The post Marvel Year Twenty-Two: 1983 Variant Cover B appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

For my 32nd Birthday week, I decided to explore some of my favorite 32nd issues in comics, and that led me back to the Jonathan Hickman written Avengers #32. I wasn’t planning on the next episode of Krakin’ Krakoa centered around Hickman’s Avengers, but this issue, and the “Infinite Avengers” storyline is particularly compelling in connection with Hickman’s X-Men and the structure and approach to future timelines. Hickman’s Marvel Universe, dating back to 2008, is uniquely interconnected, and it’s useful to consider lessons from his previous work that will carry forward into X-Men.

Today I’ll answer:

Spoilers for discussed comics may follow!

Hickman X-Men

Modern X-Men

Since this all started from my review of Avengers #32, you can check out the full review if you like! Otherwise I’ll post here the parts of the script that I didn’t include in the issue review.

Avengers #32 in particular also offers a very important glimpse into how Hickman views the nature of time in his Marvel Universe – Cap functions as a stand-in for a pretty common viewing on visions of the future. Cap sees Franklin thousands of years into the future and presumes that this means that future is an outcome that will happen (or at least that there will be a future).

Franklin (clearly banging his head against a wall) explains that Cap’s understanding of time is, frankly, all wrong. Here’s the full quote, which made approximately no sense to me in the moment, and still generally flies way over my head, but at least clearly connects to X-Men comics!

“Much like society is an organism composed of humans, and the universe is one composed of societies, space-time is an organism made up of universes. It exists and evolves just like we do – like any living thing does – in response to our environment.”

“Space-time is an organism made up of universes” – this sci-fi theory comes to fruition in Hickman’s exploration of Dominions and the types of galactic societies in Powers of X. In fact, the “Universal” types of societies explanation is basically the annotated guide to exactly what Franklin’s trying to explain to Captain America in Avengers (he should have just handed him copies of Powers). Universal societies make up space-time, and in fact beginning with societal intelligence on the scale of a Titan, the intelligence has collapsed space-time into a singularity.

While a lot of this is a real head-scratcher, the big takeaway is that the X-Men and Avengers futures are playing by the same governing principles.

This reading on the nature of time also marks an advance – or at least a modification – on Hickman’s own explanations via Nathaniel Richards in FF. Through Hickman’s Fantastic Four, Nathaniel is careful to remind Valeria that certain universal constants are a given, even in fluid evolving space-time, and that some events are unavoidable – all they can do is change circumstances around the event.

If this holds true, it really makes me wonder what events in this Avengers future will hold true for the impending Mutant future, and how might the factions react to them differently.

The subsequent time jump connects heavily to Powers of X’s futures as well. Right off the bat, the tower of the Worldcore Captain America visits in the most distant future also brings to mind the recurring tower in X-Men.

Likewise the evolved AI of this distant future is deeply similar to the Phalanx-ascending post-humans in Moira MacTaggert’s 6th life. They voice what in many ways appears to be the deepest desire of the humans in X-Men: Year 1,000 “Now we are free from long gone human restrictions… now we exist as a perfect idea. You understand such a thing? Ideology made action.” In two separate distant futures, humanity’s quest for perfection results in a hivemind collective absorption into something akin to a broader intelligence.

Because we’ve only ever seen the human’s ascend, a question this leaves me with is what is the mutant version of “ideology made action?” We’ve never really seen this because, as Moira famously puts it, “We always lose.” Perhaps this is the secret that has Moira so scared of precognitive mutants like Destiny – her vision for mutant survival may mean the dissolution of everything that mutants evolved so wholly individually.

A few interesting developments come from the Worldcore’s brief history shared with Cap. The first is Hickman’s general obsession with various singularity. They grew from “the rotting husk of the Ultron singularity.” Again in the worldcore’s explanation of time-travel to the past: “Traveling to the past requires a super-massive singularity strong enough to bend space-time.”

This brings to mind Xorn, Rasputin and Omega Sentinels black hole. I’ve theorized previously that we haven’t seen the last of these Powers of X players, and I can’t help but believe Hickman’s own previous use of a super-massive singularity that can bend space-time is going to reemerge here to bring these characters back into our X-Men narrative.

I won’t pretend to understand the science of singularities in earnest (I just read a few articles on scientific journal sites, and I think one of my eyes can see gravity now?), but if the end result is a means to travel across Moira’s lifelines – again not time travel, not necessarily travel across the Marvel multiverse; this is something else! – I certainly buy in.

Arguably the coolest aspect of the Avengers Worldcore future, though is their war “fought throughout space and time.”

“In order to achieve perfection we created protocols to reimagine our creation. A plan to correct future errors before they occurred.” Doesn’t this time travel approach to mutant survival sound like the sort of thing that might deeply appeal to Moira and Krakoa? We already know from House of X that Moira and Charles Xavier set up protocols to catch the potential build of a Nimrod, so why not protocols to predict and prevent “future errors” before they occur in the same way?

Likewise, Hickman has fun with the Marvel Universe in the final “infinity” future, corralling Iron Lad, Kang the Conqueror, and Immortus together as the Last Avengers. I’d really love to see the X-Men’s version of this, and the time-travelers who could be involved.

Time traveling X-Men (or adjacent characters) who could play a similar role include

Plus, what is future Franklin’s role in the growth of Krakoa? He’s here waiting for Cap in the Avengers future, but surely he would now have a role in sustaining a future for mutantkind.

Big picture, I suspect the role of time travel and mutants with powers related to traversing space-time will play a substantial role in this story by the time all is said and done. I’m still generally unclear why Moira MacTaggert is quite so up in arms about precognitive mutants, but with minimal qualms about known time-travelers. If visions of the future worry her, why don’t trips to the future?

Likewise, it’s not like the X-Men (here’s looking at you Beast and Age of Ultron Wolverine) have been particularly careful about messing with time travel and the timestream. If all that careless action is coming home to roost, it could also seemingly interfere with the Krakoan triumvirate’s best laid plans.

One major question that remains for me:

Does Secret Wars and the “end of everything” signify the end of Hickman’s Avengers futures, and the start of mutant futures? I still have a fair amount of questions about the build and aftermath of the 2015 event.

Next Time – What would you like to see covered? I have the following topics queued up for coverage:

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Music for Best Comics Ever by Anthony Weis. Check out more music at anthonyweis.com.

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The post Krakin’ Krakoa #51: What Avengers Time Travel Tells Us About 2020 X-Men! appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

Marvel comics of 1983. Limited series galore including Vision & Scarlet Witch! Plus, freakin’ Alpha Flight!

On this episode we cover the following issues (all available via Marvel Unlimited):

Up Next:

My Marvelous Year – Marvel Year Twenty-Three: 1984 Pt. 1 —

You can find more Marvel Comics guides on Comic Book Herald at:

mymarvelousyear.com

https://www.comicbookherald.com/the-complete-marvel-reading-order-guide/

Music for My Marvelous Year is credited to Disasterpeace. Support for My Marvelous Year comes via Patreon backers, for as little as $1 a month.

Make sure to subscribe now in order to get every reading list for every year of Marvel Comics! Subscribe to the Podcast! — iTunes, Google Play, Pod Feed

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The post Marvel Year Twenty-Two: 1983 Pt. 4 appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

For the 50th episode of Krakin’ Krakoa, I felt it was time to return to the source that inspired this X-Men deep dive project, and now that House of X and Powers of X are fully available to read on Marvel Unlimited, it’s the perfect time to explore what made the event so special, search for clues that take on new light in the wake of X-Men’s Dawn of X, and craft all-new theories I didn’t see the first time around.

Today I’ll answer:

Spoilers for discussed comics may follow!

Hickman X-Men

Modern X-Men

The quote “we have to break all the rules” becomes the apparent theme throughout House and Powers, but it helps to elucidate why that’s necessary. What are these rules that need to be broken, and how were they identified? In other words, who here is the rulemaker?

This is where Moira MacTaggert and the revelation of Moira X’s 10 (or eleven!) lifelines changes everything. Through the preceding 9 lifelines Moira has experienced, she has accumulated the knowledge of all the rules that mutantkind has to break in order to *finally* survive and thrive on the longest term plan imaginable.

One of the angles I find most intriguing re-reading House of X and Powers of X is what separates Moira’s life 10 plan from the previous 9 (or really previous 6, since those are the lives she spent trying to preserve mutants). I’d theorize that all the changes in this lifeline, however apparently minor, are with great purpose, or at least they should be if mutants are to find success.

This is a big reason why I find Powers of X so utterly compelling on re-reads, as visions of future lifelines in “Year 100” or “Year 1000” are full of attempts at mutant triumph, only to be met with defeat after defeat. It’s essential to remember throughout the Dawn of X that Moira’s 10th life – what may be her final chance at all of this – isn’t a stab in the dark, it’s based on literal lifetimes of failure. Radical shifts are necessary to succeed!

Otherwise, as Emma Frost puts it: “What’s going to make it different this time?”

Mutants are exterminated, regularly, over and over, and they (mostly) stay dead. As Professor X says at the end of House of X #4 “Every victory… ash. Every triumph… defeat. They’ve murdered so many of us the world has grown used to it.” Culminating in the dramatic resolution, “No more,” also a deliberate inversion of Scarlet Witch’s decimating “No More Mutants.”

So, in life 10, how do Moira, Magneto, and Professor X plan to break this rule? The first significant measure is taken in House of X #5, when the recently deceased X-Men lineup that blew up Project Orchis’ Mother Mold and apparently stopped their plans to eventually activate a Nimrod are all resurrected in an emotional ceremony in front of Krakoa. Resurrection protocols are promptly explained, and long story short a combination of Cerebra’s “essence” backups of all mutantkind, Mister Sinister’s genetic base, and the mutant Five combining their powers create an all-new scenario wherein all mutants can be brought back from confirmed deaths.

We’ve also seen in X-Men #7 how “The Crucible” will restore depowered mutants. Hickman’s vision for X-Men pulls no punches with “The Great Pretender,” Wanda Maximoff, longtime Avenger and more recent “fake” mutant, responsible for depowering nearly 1 million mutants in the post House of M M-Day Decimation.

In order to rectify this injustice, and restore mutants to their powered abilities, mutantkind avoids suicide or euthanasia in favor of a Roman Gladiator arena swordfight with Apocalypse (at least in the initial example we’ve seen in Dawn of X). Mutants have to fight for their birthright, and in so doing earn the gifts of death and resurrection on Krakoa.

Digging into the details of resurrection, it’s not just the fact that resurrection is an option on Krakoa, it’s the specifics of the 5 that perform these resurrections, in particular the inclusion of Proteus, the son of Moira MacTaggert.

I’m going to come back to this for the final rule breaking as well because I’m pretty fixated on the details here, but for now let’s just consider the following.

I’m positing that Proteus is new to lifeline 10 (from Moira’s journals in Powers of X #6). If he wasn’t present in life 9, this would confirm (in theory) that the Krakoan nation state existed in Moira’s ninth life, but without resurrection protocols – they would have lacked the proper reality warping abilities, plus Moira’s journal indicates this idea stems from Charles Xavier specifically in life 10.

Likewise, Moira’s 5th life – in which she embraces Xavier’s dream and they move mutantkind to a protected habitat away from humankind – is very similar to Krakoa (or really Genosha, Utopia, any of the mutant getaways attempted over the years in X-Men comics). It makes sense to me that a key difference would be the addition of Proteus and resurrection.

Notably, Lifeline 10 is only one to call out marrying Joseph MacTaggert (which – given the awfulness of that pig – is a HUGE why would you do it otherwise?) and giving birth to Proteus in Moira’s 31st year.  This alone doesn’t mean the events didn’t happen in any of Moira’s other lives, but coupled with the Journal entry, it certainly gives the implication that this coupling is a first, and that it’s done entirely because Joe provides a genetic match for the birth of a reality warping mutant.

Again, after her first life, Moira doesn’t take time to have kids – she’s on a mission. This is a cold, calculated decision to fulfill the potential of mutant resurrection, and perhaps more.

And finally on this first rule, not only is the sting of death systemically alleviated, but the limits of evolution are – very likely – completely upended. This will be especially important when we get to rule #3, but the process of resurrection allows for mutants to come back with enhanced powersets, performance levels greater than the ones they had prior to death, and eventually all sorts of custom modifications. This is teased in both the event data pages, and again in X-Men #7. The ability to resurrect mutants with omega level powersets added to their own is a game-changer.

Mutants are never truly together, always butting heads over plans and approach and philosophies. Professor X dreams of peaceful co-existence with humans, Magneto dreams of mutant domination, and Apocalypse dreams of weeding out the unworthy and unfit. The list goes on and on.

Breaking this rule requires unity. As Professor X tells Magneto: “Apart, we always lose. We believe it’s only together that you and I – that all our people – can survive.“ They’ve had peaceful moments, sure, but this is true, no turning back togetherness.

Even with this knowledge, the road to unity is full of complications, whether it’s Moira and Charles losing Magneto in 1991’s X-Men #1 to #3, or even broader differences of vision between Professor X and Magneto throughout all of X-Men history. It can be easy to undersell the complexity of actually bringing all mutants together, something that has clearly taken years in X-Men history.

Whatever the path, through Moira’s lifelines, mutantkind is never united like they are in life 10. After all, one of Apocalypse’s first moves in life 9 is to *kill* Xavier (and later Magneto).

Likewise, Moira’s lives turn to the various leaders in turn (Professor X in Life 5, Magneto in Life 8, and Apocalypse in life 9), rather than this final call to combine their efforts.

It’s not like the X-Men have never teamed up with quote-on-quote villains before (Gold Loves, Man Kills stands out as a personal favorite example), but this instance stands out because of the scope of the alliance (truly, all mutants), and because it’s clearly the summation of Moira’s learnings rather than another individual approach.

This is Moira’s hardest learned truth and the hardest rule to break because it is, in reality, the entire ballgame.

Nimrod will ascend. Rise of machines and post-humans is inevitable, and evolutionary biology can not compete. Mutantkind just can’t stop losing.

In truth, we don’t yet know the final answer to breaking this rule, and we won’t until Jonathan Hickman decides his years long plan for X-Men has reached a finale. Nonetheless, there are enough clues in House of X and Powers of X, plus preceding years of X-Men stories to theorize ways to break the chain of loss.

I’ll start with some of the simpler ones, and work my way up to the more expansive theories. In the wake of Powers of X #6 revealing humanity’s genetic engineering and post-human state are an even greater long-term enemy than the machines, there’s a strong argument to be made that natural mutant evolution is too slow to give mutantkind enough of an advantage to fight back sentinels, nimrods, and eventually “Year 1000” post-humans seeking ascendancy to the Phalanx.

The librarian asks Moira X^6 and Wolverine “What happens when humanity stops being beholden to its environment?” My takeaway from that and the statement that “Evolution is no match for genetic engineering” is to flip the question: “What happens when mutants stop being beholden to evolution?”

To me, this sounds like Mister Sinister’s entrance music (I’m hearing Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” for the record). Sinister’s genetic engineering efforts, and those resurrection infused upgrades we mentioned earlier, feel even more essential. In Life 9 Sinister’s 4th generation chimeras are omega-based, and although the hive-mind chimeras are a part of Sinister’s ultimate betrayal of mutantkind, the idea for an army that strong remains tantalizing. It would also explain Krakoa’s stated goal of omega level mutants as the most valued natural resource of mutantkind.

Importantly – and this is where the idea of true rule breaker falls apart – Sinister’s engineering is not actually a part of Moira’s plan. Instead, it’s a decision Professor X and Magneto make without her consultation or approval.

Again, from Moira’s journal entries, it’s clear she disapproves, perhaps understandable given Sinister’s betrayal of mutants, and the lingering thought that her lifeline with Apocalypse might have worked but for Sinister!

Two more quickfire theories for how mutants break the losing rule:

Could Okarra be another game-changer? In the timelines of Moira’s lives only Krakoa is mentioned, for example the mutant nation state that exists in life 9, but falls 30 years after the 1st generation of Sinister mutants. Presumably, Apocalypse and Moira rescue the first horsemen from the same fate as described in House of X #5, in which the islands are separated, but the “Fall of Krakoa” later isn’t “The Fall of Okarra.” This could easily just be convenient naming (Chicagoans still refuse to call our largest building anything other than the Sears Tower), but it could be more. Perhaps making Krakoa whole is way more meaningful to mutantkind’s success than we yet realize.

Likewise, the idea of mutant leverage is truly unexplored in our knowledge of Moira’s past lives. Krakoa’s life-changing (and in some cases, life extending) drugs for humanity could be everything from new idea that buys time and resources to part of a plot that ensures humanity can’t rise up to post-human achievements. Krakoan flowers could also be a trick Moira’s pulled before – we simply don’t know yet.

This is also where we really start to tap into the following quote from Moira: “There can be no precogs on Krakoa. We cannot – will not – tolerate mutants who can see the future.“ What is it exactly that she’s so terrified of mutants discovering?

Regardless of the answer, we’re definitely not done with these questions of leverage, and the purpose behind them. I was struck re-reading the comics that on the mutant diplomacy data page, Wakanda’s status for rejecting Krakoa’s drugs is both unique – “They do not need mutant drugs” – and colored in red (a coloring choice so far only utilized for absolutely game-changing turning points in the Hickman era of X-Men). My first thought is a competing drug war from Wakanda that brings the nation into conflict with Krakoa, but it’s likely something far more inventive.

With all that said, lets now get into the three biggest theories for how Moira and mutants are planning to break the chain (cue Fleetwood Mac soundtrack).

First, let’s dig into the seemingly simple ways Moira’s ninth life benefit the tenth, and how that lays the groundwork for something far more complicated. In Powers of X #3, Moira’s 9th life learnings are obtained in order to take out Nimrod early in life 10. Nimrod activation is seen as a point of no return, and an assurance of decades long war, accompanied by unimaginable levels of mutant death. The X-Men of life 10 take this knowledge, and send a Mother Mold crashing into the sun in House of X #4 – losing their lives in the process – to keep Nimrod from activating in this life.

As we’ve seen in X-Men #6, this may not have been successful, as Mystique discovers a Nimrod still in development within Orchis (perhaps even accelerated due to mutantkind’s actions).

Another, perhaps more unsettling possibility: Couldn’t Year 100 Nimrod have grabbed the grand mutant plan from Apocalypse’s head and traveled to Moira’s 10th life? Originally, Nimrod is a time-traveler from the “Days of Future Past” timeline. This would have a similar feel. After all, we never actually see life 9 Apocalypse killed, the battle ends with Nimrod firing energy into his skull.

With all of this, I think it’s key to remember Moira is not infallible. In fact, by her own admission, she has done nothing but fail, despite her herculean efforts. Just because it’s a part of her carefully acquired plan does not ensure any degree of success.

Speaking of traveling across time and space, the real “rule break” could stem from travel across Moira’s lifelines.

In Powers of X #6, the librarian explains to Moira and Wolverine that by existing outside of space and time, a Dominion (essentially a godhead composed of interconnected blackholes) could “see” outside of all Moira’s lifelines, effectively retaining their knowledge, status, and power regardless of Moira’s death and start of a new lifeline.

Earlier in Powers, could (Death-Seed) Xorn, Rasputin and Omega from Life #9 have traveled similar routes via blackhole? The repetition of language – both scenes reference singularity and black holes – and ominous foreshadowing (“Do you have any idea what les at the heart of a real black hole”) – feels like near certain connections.

Maybe Moira did scheme for Rasputin to enter that Black Hole with Xorn, and bringing her 4th gen Chimera DNA through to life 10 will advance the cause of mutant genetic engineering without any need for Mister Sinister. Maybe that’s why she’s so bothered by Professor X and Magento’s inclusion of Mister Sinister without her (although I’ll admit there… why not just tell them of this plan?). It’s dense and full of complex science fiction in the hands of Hickman’s Kree Supreme Intelligence master brain, but I really think there’s something to this, and it would be a game-changing shift in Moira’s tenth life.

Plus, consider the unknown logistical status of Sabretooth’s “exile” and Krakoa’s no-places. The undefined science of either option presents the possibility for connection to alternate life blackhole travel, or even better yet – as a handful of eagle-eyed Krakin’ Krakoa readers have suggested to me – a future Exiles comic book starring Rasputin, Death-Seed Xorn, Omega, Sabretooth and perhaps a few add-ons. Considering the original early 2000’s Exiles written by Judd Winnick was one of my favorite mostly mutant books from the early aughts, I love the ways this could weave into the narrative of Hickman’s X-Men.

More concretely, there has to be a reason Rasputin is among “The Tower” and Cardinal on the Tarot Cards that Moira discusses with Charles in their park meeting scene (which is reproduced twice across House and Powers, as if to emphasize the importance). Look at the language used for Rasputin’s card: “See the magician, the metal metamorph, the great sword and the girl with one foot in two worlds…”

We’ve seen plenty of the recurring “tower” across a variety of places, including the Powers of X home of Nimrod the Greater, and in X-Men #7 as the cathedral of Nightcrawler on Krakoa. To my mind, next up would the reemergence of a character with one foot in two worlds, or in this case, lifelines.

The second major theory for mutant’s breaking the “we always lose” rule is hidden in plain sight (to the point that it’s almost too easy when you start thinking about it). In Powers of X, The X-Men: Year One is “The Dream,” and Year Ten – where we are in the present day Krakoa story – is “The World.”

Thing is “The World” has major meaning in X-Men comics, and I’m increasingly thinking that applies to Hickman’s narrative!

What is “The World”?

In short (spoiler: it’s not short), “The World” is an environment developed by the Weapon Plus program (the same one that experimented on Weapon X, Wolverine, and Weapon XIII, Fantomex), specifically designed to run controlled, accelerated time to conduct experiments on weaponized super-soldiers. Most frequently, developed weapons are for the purposes of winning the war against mutants. We’re introduced to “The World” in the pages of New X-Men during the debut of Fantomex.

The way the pieces add up here is kind of thrilling. Grant Morrison concept? Check. Fantomex – last known owner of the World – giving up his body to Xavier prior to HoX PoX in the Charles Soule written Astonishing X-Men? Check. Trying something new by “Worlding” out a Krakoan nation-state, and then watching the Professor move his findings to “reality.” Why not?

To me, this feels like the big “button” Hickman keeps alluding to in interviews when he talks about the next stage of things, and how there are deliberate plans to blow up the status quo whenever the Dawn of X hits a wall. I think it’s very conceivable the X-Men are in some form of “The World,” perhaps without their knowledge or consent, hence the secrecy from Moira and co.

The ambiguity of the Powers “Year One, Year Ten” could be explained by “World-Time.” For example Year One is both Moira meeting Charlie AND Moira and Charles visiting Magneto at his Bermuda Triangle Island M (likely after Uncanny X-Men #150 – this makes sense too because they’re waiting for that post Kitty moment when he starts to soften). If this is all meant to be a literal year one, it’s cramming a little less than 20 years of X-Men stories into their “first” year. More importantly, this also completely fails Moira’s timelines where we’re told Moira meets Xavier at Age 17, and they recruit Magneto when she’s 43.

While “Year One” can still easily just be a category rather than a literal year, I also think it makes a great deal of sense if we’re working within accelerated “World-Time.” Fantomex describes time in The World as liquid, which is frankly a gift to Marvel creators and editors exploding and exploring as much continuity as House of X and Powers of X attempts.

Another consideration here is how the Children of the Vault rival and threaten work within The World. In X-Men #5, Professor X refers to the Mike Carey and Chris Bachalo creation as their greatest threat, which frankly makes more sense when you consider The Vault and The World are very much two sides of the same coin.

Here’s a Morrison selection on The World from New X-Men #142: “…Splicing human genetic material with Sentinel microtechnology, we’re then able to sculpt the resultant strains through high speed realtime scenarios using artificial evolution technology…”

And here’s Hickman on the Vault in X-Men #5: “Time flows different inside the Vault. The ideas behind it is essentially the same as the World – that out here in the real world, time moves at its normal pace, but in there it’s accelerated. The difference between the two is that the World is evolutionarily based… the Vault however it’s something else entirely. Human adaptation along technological lines, not evolutionary.”

The slight differences between the two are eerily similar to the distinction the Librarian makes between post-humans and mutants in Powers of X #6.

Moira’s death is a liability – when she dies the lifeline seems to “end” (I can’t quite get my head around the timey-wimey logistics here – does this mean she has to be eternal? – but this is what she tells Magneto and Professor X in Powers of X #6). The World allows a test site to work around that, while simultaneously leveraging the adaptative technologies the Weapon Plus program was integrating into human subjects in order to win their perceived mutant-human war.

Rules are made to be broken. In anticipating where the future of mutantkind might be going, the key question remains: What hasn’t Moira tried? That’s why my final theory – and the one I’m most excited about – centers around reality itself.

Legion and Proteus and particularly fascinating because the entire purpose for their birth appears to be ways for Moira and Charles to produce reality altering mutants! To reiterate, after determing their lack of a mutant with the ability to tweak primal matter and give reality a push, Moira “finds potential matches for both Charles and [herself] to produce such a mutant.” If you were looking for ways to describe grey morality and cold and calculating, I think “produce such a mutant” to describe your own children is pretty spot on.

The reality (pun intended) is that Legion, David Haller, and Proteus, Kevin MacTaggert, aren’t just mutants, they’re omega level mutants. That means Charles Xavier and Moira’s kids account for 1/7 of the known omega level mutant population. That’s an enormous percentage, and not a coincidence, which leads me to believe both are intended for much greater purposes to come.

One element that really sticks out to me is that Legion at various times in X-Men history has been responsible for two such monumental disturbances in reality that they caused their own new alternate reality “Age” in X-Men comics. For Legion, his actions in “Legionquest” (aka killing Magneto in order to create a path for his father’s dream) lead to the “Age of Apocalypse,” and later his powers create the “Age of X.”

I won’t sink too deep into this, but it’s also fascinating that in “Age of X” Legion’s mind manifests an alternate Moira MacTaggert (at the time presumed deceased) as his proxy in this alt-reality. He’s worthy of his own deep dive, but Legion’s the son of Charles Xavier, raised for a time on Muir Island by Moira, and his omega level powers are some of the most extreme in all Marvel. There’s no way he doesn’t play a huge role in the plan here.

For my money, I’m ready for any of the following: Age of Moira (The Moira Millennium sounds better), Age of Sinister, or Age of Destiny (I quite like that name!).

Speaking of Destiny, again, worthy of a solo deep dive, but Legion and Destiny have a surprising connection in X-Men as well. For starters, in Uncanny X-Men #255, Legion (then possessed by the Shadow King in the build-up to the “Muir Island Saga”) kills Destiny during a Freedom Force mission that involves Moira’s Muir Island mutants and the cyborg Reavers.

This act results in some sort of psychic merger between Destiny and Legion, and in X-Men #38, Destiny appears to Legion in a dream to tell him “if the dreamer rises, perhaps redemption is not far off.” Legion’s interpretation of this message is that Magneto blocked Charles Xavier from fulfilling his dream of mutant and human co-existence, and he attempts to take out Magneto setting off the “Age of Apocalypse” as a result.

It is possible, though, that Legion misinterpreted Destiny’s words, and that actually it was Moira’s actions – breaking Charles Xavier early in his life – that kept the dream from being fulfilled. Given their tense, fatal encounter in Moira’s third life, Moira and Destiny more or less can’t co-exist, to the point that Moira says “There can be no precogs on Krakoa. We cannot – will not – tolerate mutants who can see the future.“ In addition to Mystique’s clear plans to bring Destiny back, the Legion and Destiny connection remains another possibility around this to throw a wrench in Moira’s grand plans.

Of course, Legion isn’t the only mutant with reality-warping powersets we haven’t seen much or any of yet. Other mutants that break all the rules include:

And I’m sure plenty of others I’d like you to nominate in the comments!

Given that five of these reality-breakers are on the mutant known Omega Level list (Legion, Proteus, Mister M, Jamie Braddock, and Franklin Richards), I wonder if there’s a possibility of another “The Five” in mutant lore: The Omega 5, who break the bonds of reality in order to give mutants long sought peace.

At the end of the day, the only thing I’m certain of is we can expect major shifts to the already shifted status quo developed in House of X and Powers of X. Hopefully by defining the rules of mutants and the need to break them, we’ll at least have an inkling of what we can expect when the time comes.

On a final note, here’s a list of some of the biggest questions or items we still haven’t really seen developed in the Dawn of X that I’m looking forward to. I’d love to hear what’s on your list as well!

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The post Krakin’ Krakoa #50: How House & Powers of X Break All The Rules appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

Marvel comics of 1983. Simonson Thor! Perez Black Widow! Fantastic Four classics!

On this episode we cover the following issues (all available via Marvel Unlimited):

Up Next:

My Marvelous Year – Marvel Year Twenty-Two: 1983 Pt. 4 —

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The post Marvel Year Twenty-Two: 1983 Pt. 3 appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

While there are many fascinating aspects of the Jonathan Hickman era of Marvel’s X-Men, no one word sums up the shift in status quo quite like the following: Krakoa! One time little more than the mutant monster island that brought the All-New All-Different X-Men together, Krakoa is now the home to all of mutantkind, providing everything from sustenance to shelter to language and beyond.

Today I’ll answer:

Spoilers For Discussed Comics May Follow!

Hickman X-Men

Modern X-Men

Krakoa debuted in the pages of 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1 by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, appearing as the most powerful mutant Cerebro had yet detected on the island known as Krakoa in the South Pacific. The original X-Men unit of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel, Havok, and Polaris flew to investigate, and their subsequent disappearance leads Professor X to assemble the All-New All-Different lineup of mutants Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird, Sunfire, Banshee, and Colossus.

Upon investigation, the new X-Men are able to find the original X-Men trapped on the strange island, and upon freeing the team, quickly learn that the mutant they’re searching for is in fact the entire island itself.

Krakoa’s origins telepathically flood the mutants minds, telling the tale of an early atomic bomb test on the island that mutated all living things into a hivemind island intelligence. Krakoa is also able to feed on the mutant energies of the original X-Men (in this case without actually killing them – they’re kept catatonic in his vines), which does raise the question what Krakoa’d been feeding on until the X-Men showed up.

At this point in time, Krakoa is not terribly different from the Jack Kirby and Stan Lee creation Ego the Living Planet, first introduced as a Thor villain. Frankly, the monster is even more traditional, lacking the cosmic scope and magnitude of Ego (p.s. art here by the incredible Tradd Moore).

At the conclusion of Giant-Size X-Men, Polaris is able to fling the entire island of Krakoa into space – Silver and Bronze Age understanding of magnets is a beautiful thing – effectively leaving the threat concluded for the X-Men’s future. Or so it seemed!

In later years, Marvel Comics would update the X-Men’s connections to Krakoa’s origins, most notably in the pages of X-Men: Deadly Genesis by Ed Brubaker and Trevor Hairsine. In this six issue miniseries, it’s revealed that the All-New All-Different X-Men weren’t the first team of mutants Charles sent to Krakoa, and that there was another failed squad – led by the third Summers brother, Gabriel Summers, aka Vulcan – that marched to their deaths (well, some of them) at the behest of Charlie X.

One of the more interesting aspects of this secret history, at least as far as it concerns Krakoa, is that Professor X manipulated the X-Men’s perceptions of Krakoa so they’d believe the island was speaking to them and had to be stopped.

There are a few elements that connect to the broader post House of X Krakoa era of X-Men here:

The first is that Brubaker and Hairsine’s reveal here effectively “fixes” the oddity of Krakoa speaking English to the X-Men, setting the stage for Hickman and company’s mutant language, and a Krakoan dialect only Cypher can translate.

The other intriguing piece to me is whether this is a part of Charlie and Moira MacTaggert’s plan? How does this tie in to Moira’s goals for her tenth life, and a last stand effort to see mutants prevail into the distant future? This is one of the bigger questions I’m considering reflecting on the entirety of Krakoa’s history, as I remind myself that Moira – through nine lifelines – has tried everything from siding with Magneto to siding with Apocalypse to assassinating the Trask bloodline, but now in her tenth life, she picked Krakoa. Why? How does this fit?

Admittedly, it’s very possible the Professor’s actions and Krakoan plot here don’t fit. I’ve already done a deep dive on tying Moira’s redacted journal entries to X-Men history, but it’s highly likely Deadly Genesis fits into at least one of these redacted pieces.

As you can see from Krakoa’s presence in House of X / Powers of X, the journey through space was not the end of the island, although from here it’s comic history is way muddier.

In the pages of 1990’s Quasar, written by Mark Gruenwald, Quasar finds himself trapped among the cosmic Stranger’s prize collection, which proves to actually contain Krakoa. It’s a brief cameo, but it alludes to the survival of Krakoa after being launched into space. Aside from this, though, Krakoa’s appearances in Marvel Comics generally become tied to pieces of Krakoa or “offspring,” really leaving a lot of room for interpretation and “lost years” storytelling throughout the rest of the Krakoa era of X-Men.

Before really moving on to Krakoa’s descendants, I’d also like to look back at Krakoa’s stated origins as they compare to the updated origins in the pages of House of X / Powers of X. Apocalypse tells a story of Krakoa belonging to a larger land called Okkara, as he puts it, “Ancient before that word existed.”

To my mind, this pretty clearly contradicts the atomic testing origins found in Giant-Size X-Men #1, and oddly enough reinforced in the pages of the 2019 Journey Into Mystery: Birth of Krakoa. In the Dennis Hallum written Birth of Krakoa, Nick Fury, Dum Dum Dugan, and the Howling Commandos happen to fly into Krakoa in the aftermath of the atomic test that mutated the island (or so we were told in Giant-Size).

There are two possibilities here.

Otherwise, as mentioned, there large and small moments of Krakoan descendants over the past 30 years. My favorite one and done example is in Excalibur #31, an issue I read as part of a Nightcrawler binge (thinking he would, you know, be a big part of Giant-Size Nightcrawler #1 by Hickman and Alan Davis!), and was all too thrilled to discover contained the Son of Krakoa! It’s an extremely fun one-and-done story, with Nightcrawler at his quippiest and most swashbuckling, but it also sets the stage for the possibility of Krakoan offspring lingering around planet Earth.

Other small appearances include a brief Kaiju connection in the pages of the alternate reality hopping Exiles, as well as the short-lived Young X-Men.

One of the most tantalizing additions to Krakoan legacy runs throughout the 1990’s Generation X, in which Krakoan ties to the team’s “Ecological bio-sphere” are sprinkled throughout the run. In Generation X #47, Forge visits the campus and posits that the bio-sphere – which up and disappeared in Generation X #44 – leaves the X-campus in order to make the original Krakoa whole, as Forge puts it “for some unknown and possibly dire purpose.” Again, this leaves a lot of wiggle room for future creators to play with if the ‘lost years’ or Krakoa are to be explored.

The absolute most memorable Krakoa, though, is the one developed throughout the pages of Wolverine and the X-Men, introduced as a weapon of the new Hellfire Club by Jason Aaron and Chirs Bachalo. The new Hellfire Club, led by Kade Kilgore who’s been seen in the Dawn of X in the pages of Marauders, launch their Krakoa as a weapon against the new Jean Grey School for mutants (with headmaster Wolverine), only to have Quentin Quire eventually befriend Krakoa, and convince him to stay with the school as a living breathing school landscape.

In many ways, this friendly inversion of Krakoa sets the stage for the allied island mutantkind currently inhabits.

Krakoa becomes enough of an ally of the X-Men during this run that he even leads Wolverine and company to the Hellfire Club’s opposing school base, where Kilgore and the like have their own breeding pool of alternate Krakoan islands. The Krakoa vs. Krakoa’s throwdown is amazing work from Jason Aaron and Nick Bradshaw.

This same friendly Krakoa re-emerges in the pages of 2017’s super underrated Generation X written by Christina Strain, when Krakoa goes looking for his pal Quentin Quire. This is puppy-dog Krakoa, as the island unleashes all kind of (accidental) damage – including the near impaling of Jubilee – as it trudges through Manhattan to get to Quentin.

Apart from that, though, the most memorable uses of Krakoa relate to clones or warped versions. One of these I’ve covered, as the Warren Ellis written Astonishing X-Men unleashes a cloned Krakoa infected by the Brood. The biggest takeaway for me here is that Krakoa, or at least versions of Krakoa, can be manipulated by outside influences.

Another incredible version can be found in the Kieron Gillen written Uncanny X-Men, where artist Daniel Acuna delivers a vision of Castle Sinister atop the back of Sinister’s cloned Krakoa. The Sinister heavy X-Men run is set during the events of Avengers vs. X-Men at this point in time (issues #14 to #17), and Krakoa is more or less included purely to escalate the action, but it’s worth noting in both these instances that Krakoa can be cloned and infected.

I think it’s particularly interesting that Mister Sinister would have experimented with clones of Krakoa. Obviously Mister Sinister is a key player in the Krakoa era of X-Men, and his eventual betrayal of mutantkind is all but assured. Plus, we know from “Sinister Secrets,” that Mister Sinister is likely no longer controlled by Professor Xavier, and is operating his own schemes and plans. It’s possible that he even predicted Professor, Magneto and Moira’s move to Krakoa, and began developing his own insights into Krakoa’s nature well before the move.

So what else have we actually learned about Krakoa in House of X / Powers of X and the Dawn of X?

To me, the most important reveal comes in Powers of X #1, when we see that Krakoa survives into Moira’s 9th lifeline to become one of Apocalypse’s final horsemen. This indicates that Moira and Apocalypse have some experience working with Krakoa. Likewise, data pages in the issue refer to the “Fall of Krakoa,” establishing that a Krakoan stronghold is a part of Moira’s 9th lifeline as well. Scanning Moira’s lifelines will also reveal that she and Apocalypse freed the first horsemen, which, if events played out similarly in lifeline 9 and now 10, indicates a successful journey to limbo on Arakko as well.

All of this tells me that something about Krakoa and the plan has to be different this time, otherwise Moira is just replaying scenarios she’s already seen lose.

In the present, apart from Doug Ramsey, both characters that have a unique relationship to Krakoa were also tied to the mutant’s presence – however mysterious – in the pages of Generation X. The first is Mondo, who Doug convinces/tricks into becoming a conduit for direct Krakoan conversation. Mondo’s also able to keep a Krakoan gateway flower in his belly when the New Mutants discover the flower kills one of the Starjammers space plants.

The second is Black Tom Cassidy, who reveals in Generation X #25 that he created a plant-clone of Mondo to sabotage Gen-X, and uses the Krakoan bio-sphere to infiltrate the team. Black Tom is particularly “one” with Krakoa, although developments in X-Force are indicating that this bonding is driving Tom further and further from sanity.

The biggest development for Krakoa itself is when the island is made whole in X-Men #2, with Arrakko joining its long lost other half.

This happens oddly fast, although since the “joining” we’ve hardly seen Arakko, save a map here and Cable #1 journey there. I anticipate the upcoming Ten of Swords event will play heavily into Arakko and Apocalypse’s first horsemen being trapped in some mysterious dimension (perhaps accessible through the island), but until then I do think it’s interesting to consider that Krakoa is set up and performing throughout House and Powers without its other half. What changes for the mutant island when it’s reconnected?

Krakoan feeding requirements remain one of the more troubling components of life on the island, and a reflection of the broader impact Krakoa has on mutantkind oftentimes without them even realizing. Use of Krakoa as an island nation, and mutantkind’s collective willingness to allow Krakoan feeding on their own psychic energy, is what enables Krakoa to grow to this size and operate a hivemind collection of gates across the globe (as opposed to the reduced versions we’ve previously seen in the pages of Giant-Size X-Men #1).

In addition to low-level feeding on mutants at all times, when something goes wrong with Krakoa (as it does when Hordeculture crashes a Krakoan gate in X-Men #3), effects include aggressive wildlife, decreasing land mass, and telepathic disruption.

Similarly, in X-Force #9, Beast casually remarks that Krakoa requires the consumption of two mutants per year if it is to survive. The implication remains that this “two per year” quota is negligible when spread across the entirety of a growing mutantkind, but never forget that Krakoa eats mutants!

I also find little comfort in the committee’s plan to let Selene and Emplate (i.e. other mutants who feed on mutants) monitor Krakoa’s behavior, as neither character has been particularly trustworthy historically.

Speaking of reasons to question Krakoa, there are hints of Krakoan trickery throughout comics in the Dawn of X, perhaps most memorably in X-Men #7 when Nightcrawler is weirded out by the exactness with which the island fills his needs. Many longtime X-Men fans have been put off by the cultlike attitude of everyone on the island, and are perhaps vocalized when Kurt wonders “doesn’t that make your hair stand on end?”

The questionable undercurrents lead me to think of the Professor X quote in Powers of X #5, when he states “They will think we are doing one thing, but the truth is we are doing something altogether different.” The broader plan and Krakoa’s connections to it simply can’t be as simple as “new safehaven home.” Moira and company know that’s not enough!

So what then are the secrets of Krakoa? One that really sticks out to me is the still mysterious “no-place,” which is a “non-naturally occurring flower” that sets up habitats Krakoa itself has no knowledge of. We know Moira is hiding out in an established “no-place,” but other options include the prison Sabretooth is kept in, or even a gateway to the Limbo of demons that Apocalypse’s first horsemen are keeping at bay. Remember, if Krakoa’s already been a part of Moira’s past lives, perhaps the use of “no-place” sanctuaries is a piece of the new developments that make this all a game-changer.

It’s also well worth noting that both Krakoan biology and a “No-Place” are utilized by Forge as part of his designs to keep Cerebro capable of backing up so many mutants of resurrection protocols. I’d considered that perhaps Krakoa was a front, and that the real plan was for mutants to settle elsewhere, but details like this make it appear essential. As such I’m more inclined to think ongoing advances in Krakoan technology lead to more surprising transformations for the island, including an engineered Krakoan / Phalanx hybrid!

There are so many big picture questions about Krakoa and its place in Hickman’s master plan that I haven’t even yet mentioned the Marvel Universe now possesses another domain to place alongside the likes of Wakanda and Latveria in unique Earth locations. For me the biggest questions remain:

Next time on “Krakin’ Krakoa”:

My 50th episode! The Great House of X and Powers of X reread, with supplemented issues for context, and an eye towards theories and ideas.

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Zack & Dave cover your questions, poll results, and recap the Marvel Comics of 1983 parts 1 and 2!

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Since Powers of X #4, some of the more tantalizing mysteries and riddles in X-Men comics can be found in Mister Sinister’s “Sinister Secrets” a gossip column found in the pages of various books.

Today I’ll answer:

Spoilers For Discussed Comics May Follow!

The most direct interpretation is to continue scanning X-Men comics for a Mister Sinister clone wearing red shoes.

Since that hasn’t appeared yet (although we have recently seen Sinister coveting Exodus’ epaullettes!), it’s tempting to explore alternate meanings for the riddle. There’s actually an astonishing range of symbolism for red shoes, from pop cultural connections to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, to feminist movements, to straight up Satanism (you know, to hide the blood drops from your sacrifices!).

The connection I like the most, though, is to Hans Christian Anderson’s horrific fairy tale titled “The Red Shoes.” In this story a young girl named Karen insists on her wearing her dopest red shoes everywhere – including (gasp!) to church – , and her vanity gets her cursed so that her red shoes never stop dancing. Even after she has her feet amputed by the local executioner. I told you it was horrific.

The moral is effectively “don’t be vain,” which is not high on Mister Sinister’s list of fairy tale morals learned. So while the secret could be in reference to a Sinister clone, or even more exciting, an alternate reality Sinister, it could also just be a riddle telling us that Mister Sinister is impossibly vain, and that his ego will always drive him to “truly sinister” acts of betrayal. He’ll always be plotting something in secret that may throw everything Moira, Magneto, and Professor X are planning out the window.

The thrill of cracking the second Sinister secret has gone, as “the flower that’s the fullest,” aka Jumbo Carnation – a Grant Morrison creation from New X-Men, began appearing in the pages of Marauders. Jumbo was famously murdered in New X-Men but has since been revived and is busy bonding with the likes of both Emma Frost and Callisto on Krakoa.

The “deceased redheaded pretender” is clearly a reference to Madlyene Pryor, Sinister’s clone of Jean Grey who went on to become the Goblin Queen during the X-Men event Inferno, circa 1989. Worth noting here that this is not the only reference to Inferno we’ll be seeing throughout Sinister’s secrets.

The most interesting tease is that Pryor – who we’ve already seen returned in the pages of Hellions #1 – left behind more than secrets. Possible secrets left behind by Maddy include:

Sinister Clones – During the Kieron Gillen run of Uncanny X-Men we see Sinister at times surrounded by clones of Madylene Pryor. While these clones appear less autonomous than the original, it’s not impossible that the real Maddy has collected an army of clones as well.

Sinister #4 is one of the trickiest to decipher, so I have two working theories, and I find both of them super exciting. For the first, I have to credit a really cool CBR theory (https://www.cbr.com/powers-x-sinister-10-secrets-explored/) that suggests this may have to do with Captain Marvel’s role in Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic’s 2015 Secret Wars.

In the aftermath of Secret Wars #4, Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel, one of only a handful of survivors from Earth-616, quite literally washes up on Bar Sinister, the Baron Sinister’s domain in Emperor Goddoom’s Battleworld.

Next we see Carol, she’s wearing a Sinister diamond in the middle of her forehead, and scheming with the Baron about plans to betray Emperor Goddoom in the climactic final event battle.

Honestly, there’s so much left to parse out here, from who’s really in charge (Carol’s straight punching Sinister in the face to get him where she wants him, but Sinister seems to like it!), to whether or not this is really Carol Danvers of Earth-616 or a clone (hence the red diamond). Plus there’s some delicious wordplay to be had with “everyone’s wrapped up in current events,” signaling that a past event comic may be exactly what Sinister #4 is a reference to. If all of this means a Battleworld Bar Sinister Carol – a longtime X-Men ally – I’ll be over the moon.

The other possibility is a reference to Kate Pryde, and her inability to use Krakoan gate technology throughout the Dawn of X. In a sense, Kate washes ashore in her tiny sail vessel in Marauders #1 due to necessity. Kate’s struggles to use gates “for all mutants,” makes me wonder if she could be a part of “all things Sinister,” or in other words a clone, tempered genetics via Mister Sinister.

A couple reasons why this might be the case:

First off, Kate names her team the Marauders, a team-name previously only used by Sinister’s murderers for hire. Likewise, “Sinister Secrets” number eleven through twenty have all been published in the Marauders comic book series, despite the absence of Sinister himself in any of these pages. Why would that be the case unless Sinister was playing a crucial narrative role behind the scenes?

Again, as far as we know  the artist formerly known as Kitty is the only known mutant who can’t access Krakoa via gates, and it has since been revealed that she can’t be revived via mutant resurrection protocols either. This could explain Sinister’s caution not to embrace the revelry to his sinisters – there won’t be anything for you to celebrate because his clones can’t be revived.

In revealing where Sinister got his implanted mutant genes, he characteristically raises even more questions. Sinsiter’s mutant gene is from John Proudstar, aka Thunderbird, who was introduced in 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1 before promptly dying the next mission during Chris Claremont’s start on Uncanny X-Men #94.

Apart from the mystery of why Sinister would select Thunderbird, there’s also the mystery of why Thunderbird may or may not have been resurrected on Krakoa. Unlike basically Marvel character, John Proudstar has generally stayed dead (a temporary “Necrosha” or “Chaos War” event notwithstanding). His ghost-like appearance in the recent Giant-Size Nightcrawler also calls into question – just where the heck is John Proudstar?

Now, Sinister’s ownership of Thunderbird’s DNA implies a couple things:

1)Sinister was there at the start of the All-New All-Different X-Men lineup in some capacity, close enough in one of his many alter egos to get access to John Proudstar.

2)Or, John Proudstar did not die in the Uncanny X-Men 94/95 plane explosion (after all, Count Nefaria survived too), and Sinister may have found the body. This gives me serious X-Men the Animated Series “Morph” vibes, where Sinister found and manipulated a former X-Men character for his own nefarious ends. I realize this doesn’t really jive with Necrosha or Chaos War, but that’s just as far as we know!

On the surface, this is clearly a reference to Wolverine, Jean Grey, Scott Summers (and maybe Emma’s) polyamorous relationship status, but there’s one detail that muddies that waters: “She’s married with a kid.” Jean Grey and Scott definitely got married, but technically Jean didn’t give birth to Nathan Summers, aka baby Cable. That said, Nathan’s the son of Scott and her clone, and during the Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix she certainly takes on the role of Cable’s mom, so I’m willing to roll with it.

We’ve certainly seen plenty of indicators that the love lives of this longtime romantic competition are in a “new normal,” from open door plans in the Summers house, to the way Wolverine interacts with Jean and Scott in the likes of Wolverine #1 and X-Men #7. In other news, I’d like a little bit of credit for making it this far into the secret without a cringe-inducing use of the phrase “thrupple.”

Secret six is actually very clear, but only if you’ve read the short-lived Spider-Man and the X-Men.

The progerian mutant – progeria is a disease that causes rapid aging or the appearance thereof – is Ernst, one of Spider-Man’s students at the Jean Grey School. During the series it turns out Ernst is a mole for Mister Sinister, collecting DNA samples of every student and teacher at the Jean Grey School, in order to get Sinister to help create a new body for No-Girl, aka Martha, aka Ernst’s best friend since New X-Men. Although Spidey and the “special class” stop Sinister in that series, he reveals here that he maintained his DNA samples of the Jean Grey School students and staff.

I’ve already gone mildly overboard on the role of Vulcan in the X-Men’s Krakoa era in another ep of Krakin’ Krakoa, but I’ll summarize two possible theories here, both of which revolve around the presence of multiple copies of Gabriel Summers:

The first is my initial theory that when Shi’ar Emperor D’ken aged baby Vulcan up to his teenage years, he kept copies of Vulcan’s DNA and created clones. We know the Shi’ar have this tech, so not that hard to extrapolate.

The wilder, and more entertaining theory – which I’ve seen posited by several readers in the CBH Youtube channel comments – is that the Vulcan we see resurrected on Krakoa is not the same Vulcan that was left to die in the Fault during War of Kings, and remains very much alive! I don’t know how Sinister of all people would know about Emperor Vulcan’s true status (unless he’s returned and they’re working together!), but it would go a long way to explaining why Gabriel Summers is no longer acting like a psychopath murderer on Krakoa.

The other likely, frankly hilarious possibility is the long anticipated reveal of Adam X the Xtreme as another Summers brother. In addition to the most 90’s character to ever 90s, Adam is a shi’ar/mutant hybrid, with a mysterious connection to the Summers family, long rumored to be the actual third Summers brother until Gabe entered the season in X-Men Deadly Genesis.

We’ve gotten plenty on this one throughout the Dawn of X, and I’ve covered a few Krakin’ Krakoa’s on the secret history of Apocalypse’s first horsemen, and my theory that X of Swords will be heavily focused on these horsemen.

Long story short, Apocalypse’s first, most powerful horsemen are trapped on Arakko, at his behest, keeping Earth safe in eternal war. He’d like to free them!

This one could certainly go a lot of directions, but I have one strong leading theory, and then several “well why nots?”

My leading guess is Sinister #9 refers to Warlock and Doug Ramsey. This would not have been my first guess in the aftermath of House of X / Powers of X, but especially in light of X-Men #7 and Giant-Size Nightcrawler #1, the clues are starting to pile up. First off, looking at the secret, the copy refers to “the kids,” which would be most in line with these longtime New Mutants. Cypher and Warlock aren’t a romantic couple (as far as we know) but they have been linked as both friends and Douglock, a more symbiotic relationship, making them a total non-couple couple.

Now, in regards to the fireworks we can expect, this remains mysterious, but what I find intriguing is the fact that Doug is clearly keeping Warlock’s presence secret from the reset of the Krakoan nation. When Illyana sees Warlock in Giant-Size Nightcrawler, Doug makes her swear not to tell anybody. This has the potential to tie into the line “is the universe ready,” as Warlock’s presence as a technarch on Krakoa may lead to a war with either the Technarchy or Phalanx, alien races long tied to the character, and heavily utilized in Powers of X.

Other guesses that lose the « kids are all right » connections:

I particularly like the possibility of a reference to Jean and the Phoenix Force given the promise of « fireworks » and concern for the universe!

Sinister’s anticipation of an upcoming “Inferno” 2.0 is quite interesting, and we’ve already seen hints of connections to the original inferno popping up through the Dawn of X, and elsewhere in Marvel Comics.

For those newer to X-Men, “Inferno” was a massive crossover event in 1989 that impacted all the X-Men comics, as well as many across the Marvel Universe. There are a lot of threads within, but the main hook is a demonic invasion of New York City, with Madylene Pryor turning into the Goblin Queen, and Illyana Rasputin finally giving in to her darker Darkchylde persona.

So how are we moving towards Inferno 2.0?

When Charles Xavier and Magneto turn to Sinister for aid in Powers of X #4 (If memory serves, strongly against the advice of Moira MacTaggert), Charles uses his psychic abilities to make Sinister forget why he’s working on creating genetic databases for them until Professor X deems it the right time. Sinister #10 tells us that the Sinister Charlie brainwashed is no longer running the show, and that Professor X and Magneto’s planned control of the glamorous mad scientist has been lost.

This may also mean that the Sinister on Krakoa isn’t even a mutant, or potentially that he’s using DNA other than Thunderbird’s (or some combination a la a Chimera). Either way, it locks in the already locked in eventuality that a Sinister betrayal is on the horizon.

From Marauders, we clearly know Kitty/Kate is offered and eventually accepts the position of the Hellfire Club’s Red Queen. We also see Emma offer Storm the position but it’s unclear who the alternate second choice may have been. We know Shaw was offering the position around until he was overpowered by Emma Frost’s status.

While this might seem kind of irrelevant, now that Shaw has assassinated Kate, and The Five are unable to bring her back, Shaw’s pick for leader of the Red may again be relevant. There were a ton of theories about who this might be before Kate was confirmed (including a whole Krakin’ Krakoa by yours truly), but my favorite pick right now remains Selene, the vampiric mutant with Hellfire Club ties.

I’ll also fixate on Sinister’s use of “it won’t last,” which implies he either had knowledge of Shaw’s plans to assassinate Kate, or he’s running his own game here on Kate Pryde, and knows things like why Kate can’t use the gates, or (apparently) undergo resurrection.

Feels like foreshadowing for the eventual attack on Kate Pryde and Lockheed that has left Kate absent from Marauders (presumed dead) and Lockheed in recovery. I’d consider this “secret” pretty well resolved.

Who has been left out of Hellfire club proceedings that would be the most pissed off? There are plenty of great options here, as well as some very unlikely ones (shouts to OG Hellfire Inner Circle dude Harry Leland), but I have two favorites.

1) Tying back to one I previously mentioned, Selene has a long, long history with the Hellfire Club. She’s also the sort who would take great offense to not even being invited by Shaw and Emma.

2) The second is a longer shot, but that would be the inclusion of one Miss Sinister, believe it or not, a former Hellfire Culb inner circler herself! I have no idea what to make of Miss Sinister in this Krakoan era of Sinister Secrets, but her presence would certainly get my attention.

The final theory that inverts the use of “Black and White” to mean the character’s costume instead of the Hellfire Club’s inner circles could make a case for a return of Fantomax. These are pretty loose connections (it’s the color scheme and the use of the French “faux pas”) so I don’t have a ton of faith in that.

In addition to making us aware of Sinister’s recent read of the absolutely incredible Superman Smashes the Klan, this secret uses the phrase “looky-loo” which means someone who keeps looking without buying (for example at a store window), or who keeps looking at something giving it unwanted attention.

My first thought, given the hate group connotations of “humans wearing sheets,” is a group like the Purifiers, most commonly associated with General William Stryker, and viewing themselves in a holy war against mutants. It could also easily be in reference to new mutant-obsessed religions like those that have popped up in the pages of X-Force.

It also doesn’t seem like a total accident that the allusions to KKK occur in a series that had the literal Hate-Monger show up, so I could see this having something to do with Hominus Verendi as well.

Initially I thought the use of “turning heads” could mean snapping necks, which brings to mind X-Force, but I’m not sure what they have to do with boats.

Instead, I expect this secret is a reference to Yellow Jacket’s miniature submarine inside Pyro that he used to make his way to Krakoa, until the mutants jettisoned him in Marauders #9.

That said, the Marauders vessel isn’t the only one in use by the Hellfire Club, as we’ve seen ships belonging to Christian Frost and Shinobi Shaw. The secret could still refer to one of the Hellfire Club’s own ships.

This is an odd one of the surface because it appears to just be Mister Sinister calling out Kate for missing a meeting (you know because she was busy drowning).

If you buy into my theory that there’s a reason “Sinister Secrets” has moved to the pages of Marauders, though, this ties back to the theory that Sinister is way more involved in Kate’s status than we’ve seen, and he’s really digging in here. Of course he respects the power move – he made one years ago when he replaced Kate with a clone, or in some way altered her DNA using the Jean Grey School samples he stole (with Ernst’s help!).

A “Certain quirky Q” sounds like Quentin Quire, and this sounds like Quentin’s trying to impress a girl on Krakoa and needs an outfit from Jumbo Carnation to make it happen (or so he believes).

I can’t say who Quentin is after (he’s historically had a relationship with the Stepford Cuckoos but there’s a lot of baggage between them there), but I do like bringing him and Jumbo back into a plot thread. Back in Grant Morrison’s time on New X-Men, it’s Jumbo’s death following a hate crime that inspires Quentin to rebel and “Riot at Xavier’s.”

I thought maybe this was a play-on-words, but nope, Stinger is actually a direct reference to a deep-cut in mutantdom, one Wendy Sherman, debuting as part of Apocalypse’s short-lived Alliance of Evil in 80’s X-Factor. During the Utopia era of X-Men Stinger and Bobby Drake became friends, so it’s not impossible that the mom-to-be will play a role in Marauders moving forward.

Immediately revealed as Fenris, and of course, Sinister’s right! Fenris SUUUUUCCKKKKS. In Mauraders #8, Shinobi Shaw brings the Von Strucker twins into the fold as his black knights, and we’re all poorer for it.

In short, Andrea and Andreas Von Strucker are the twins of Baron Von Strucker, and like their dad they’re Nazi supremacists. Their mutant abilities – implanted by Dr. Arnim Zola – activate when they’re in contact with one another, so if you start getting Cersi / Jaime vibes, there’s a reason. In their first appearance, Andrea shoots Storm in the head, so let’s just say the Von Struckers are a controversial add to the Krakoan population.

On a final note, as fun as it is to dissect all these Sinister Secrets, it’s also a reminder that almost no one on Krakoa is as plugged into mutantkind’s day to day as Mister Sinister. On one hand, yes, I take for granted that Sinister Secrets are a convenient plot device to deliver all these riddles in one place, but practically speaking, it also means Sinister has eyes and ears absolutely everywhere.

Plus, having no done the extensive research, I have to consider that Mister Sinister is one of the least trustworthy voices on Krakoa, and that his secrets might mean nothing at all, or be entirely fabricated! After all, it’s a gossip column, and believing everything you read there is a recipe for letdown.

Nonetheless, some secrets have already paid dividends, and I expect more will in the future!

The post Krakin’ Krakoa #48: 20 Sinister Secrets Solved! Theories For Every Mister Sinister Scheme in X-Men Dawn of X appeared first on Comic Book Herald.