Is the current portrayal legitimate or will there be a twist to explain it?

[CoCoBandz]

Oh my goodness, all this discussion and we're only one issue in. Well 14 if you count HoX/PoX and Marauders. Frankly I am enjoying reading some of these debates and personally I am really enjoying this new direction. I think it is legitimate, but I think Hickman is bending the truth when he alludes to there not being a "twist" so to speak. Having read much of his work I don't foresee 11 more issues of simply X-Men destroying Orchis bases, something even bigger then Mother Mold is going to rear its ugly head.

I mentioned this earlier, maybe even in this thread, but I'm pro Krakoa. The X-Men tried to integrate with humanity on humanities term (which were gtfo) and now they are going to integrate on their terms. They will still save the planet when it needs saving, they'll still rescue people who need rescuing, biggest difference now is they made it even harder to blow up the mansion.

If only the anti-krakoa crowd wasn't so hell-bent on not understanding this simple point then a lot of these recent discussions wouldn't be a thing.

That may be boring though.

[People Of The Earth]

I agree that the co-existence is one-sided. But isn't it justified for safety reasons? Is it any different than a country banning immigration from a nation who is a sworn enemy? It's isolationist, yes, but that doesn't mean it isn't co-existence. We seem to differ on what we consider co-existence. I don't think the X-men have changed one bit on this, they've just adjusted to reality.

The safety reasons are close to non-existent apparently.

1. The portal network allow only mutants through, sapiens can't use them at all without direct mutant supervision.
2. The portal network is so efficient and well-monitored by Krakoa, Douglas and Sage, that it seems that the portals are not even guarded physically on the Mainland, at least from what Marauders #1 shows.
3. Pryde managed to reach the Mainland by boat without encountering any sort of Kraked coast guard or defence, so we can assume for now that even the surrounding of the island doesn't allow for infiltration without the island of Krakoa reacting to it.

There's also the fact that posters are making this case for the people who are either allies of the X-Men, or the loving friends and families of the mutants living on Krakoa Mainland.
Not for some random sapien, let alone known antagonists.

But as demonstrated yesterday, it's impossible to have a discussion around here without detractors twisting what is said, inventing things on the spot, or arguing points that were never made to begin with.
Case in point, no one said the island should be open to every sapiens of Earth, every day, all the time, Under any circumstances.
But that's what some posters are choosing to Believe or decided to interpret that way, hence the recurring critiques and hostility on this particular point that is, to me, neither unreasonable or far fatched.
I asked yesterday to one of those critiques in what way Stevie Hunter or Corsair represented "forces of genocide" as s/he painted sapiens to be, I received no actual response.
The Truth is, the likes of those are not security issues at all, and even if they were, the way Krakoa is set up wouldn't allow them access to the Mainland anyway.

Nor do I think they are any less able to have an education and other ambitions. In fact, it seems to me this was the part of the dream that was dead the most prior to this aggressive move. The X-men had so thoroughly failed to gain footing with the mainstream populace that they'd achieved nothing in this regard for decades. They were no closer to achieving this. In a mutant only world, I'd argue these opportunities finally have a chance to thrive.

Mutants losing their jobs or being expelled from school/university once outed or on the sole basis of a shift in political climate has been an issue for a long time, true.
Them being able to make a place for themselves in society was a big deal to the X-Men as a result - especially given it happened precisely to some of them during their early days.
Xavier was proud of that, of mutants achieving that, he didn't want for mutants to just pack and leave when such things happen to them, at least he wouldn't have wanted that before this new version of his.
Yes, in a mutant only world, the mutants wouldn't meet such issues, but there again, when did Xavier EVER promoted a mutant only world to begin with? That's Magneto's vision, not Xavier's. Xavier never wanted for mutants to suppress sapiens or dominate them, he Always had been about cooperation, mutual development and equality.
Them being no closer to achieving this wouldn't have led him to dismiss his own vision, without any of his former students batting an eye about it.

The thing is, that I've accepted at least, is that the comics have told a long story in which the X-men keep ending up failing to save mutants from genocidal humans. The dream is still real and hasn't changed, what's changed is the tactics. Is it really heroic to stand for something you continually fail at accomplishing because you aren't willing to look at reality? The X-men still stand for peace. They still protect human lives. They've just stopped pretending that their prior tactics were helping all mutants. Mutants powerful enough to be X-men largely avoided the genocide, but while they fretted about a dream....mutants with less power were murdered. It was well past time to be heroes to mutants and this was a logical progression of their dream given their failures.

The dream has been tossed aside in HoX/PoX to be replaced by Something else.

Xavier pointed out how he was wrong in believing mutants and sapiens could achieve his dream of peaceful coexistence - and how sapiens were wrong in believing the Earth was theirs.
"We are the Earth's TRUE inheritors".
His words.
Mutant prominence is the priority now, making sure that mutants will strive long enough to outlast sapiens - period.
They've Always been the priority of the X-Men, now they're the sole one.
At best, "We'll play ball until we overcome you" is what Xavier seem to consider in the last issue of PoX, which is what motivated the move the Kraked made with the miracle drugs: to buy them goodwill among sapiens and, as a result, respite to structure their new nation. It was a powerful move, considered as instrumental toward this goal, not as an endgame.
Now you may say regardless of the motivation behind it, it's still a form of coexistence when the situation lead to "We Don't kill you, you Don't kill us, everybody wins. Look, we can trade even…" or Something along those lines.
Great, really! who would argue against that? Who would argue for more wars?
But as I said yesterday, and as you pointed out earlier, I Don't consider coexistence on a scale where individuals Don't even interact with each other as meaningful.
It holds no weight and rings hollows to speak of coexistence with people who live thousands of kilometers apart from each other, who never interact physically nor face the same environment.
Empathy and understanding can still be displayed, of course, but it's the experience of the Other that makes coexistence real. That's why sapiens not being allowed on the Mainland is such a detrimental move toward coexistence, let alone after what Xavier said to the world.
I know people will argue habitat will be the nexus allowing for interactions between sapiens and mutants, but on what scale will it be?
Are we talking about thousands, ten of thousands of people from both branches of humanity interacting with each other around the world on a daily basis, or are we in the dozens with friends, families, possibly business and diplomatic partners only?
Every bit of interaction would help, of course, the question is more how much is necessary to reach critical mass, where it's significant enough to be acknowledged as sapiens and mutants truly coexisting with one another. So far, it's a complete non-factor.

[Icefanatic]

But he can’t say there will be a twist tho, that would be spoiling.

I know, right.

Imagine...

Interviewer: A lot of the fans are saying that characters are not acting like themselves. Even acting sinister and creepy. That some of this started in the years leading up to the event and have now reached a tipping point. The Dream of Xavier and the X-Men has been abandoned for mutant separatism and supremacy... the way of Magneto. There are also questions about continuity and things built into the story that seem put there to obscure...

Hickman: Let me stop you. Don't worry about anything, none of this will stand. We are going to keep making things more and more obvious until even the naysayers decrying all that will be saying something else. When we have taken everything as far as we absolutely can... boom! Massive hero moment! Big reset. Here are my notes, a massive outline, a wall chart, and some breakdowns of the final issue I had an artist draw just to give us all an idea of what we are working toward. Feel free to share all of it!

[RachelGrey]

What you want is for the books to be written completely differently and ignore the last 20 years of events in the Marvel Universe.

Over the course of the last 20 years genocide of mutants has become more and more of a problem to the point that mutants have been running in fear of death for a while. They establish a base, even try to get along with the humans, then they are attacked so violently by anti-mutant groups or government agencies that they have to move their base again and again.

Sure the X-Men might be lucky enough to fortify their position in the United States, but what of the 1000's of other mutants who are being persecuted. What about the mutants that Magneto had to rescue from hidden secret US government detention centres. It was because of those secret detention centres that Magneto reformed the Brotherhood and went terrorist again, to save all those people who were being held against their will by the US government and other governments of the world.

Sometimes dreams change, sometimes so many horrible events occur for your people that you have to adjust the dream or have your entire people erased from existence.

For me this story of Krakoa is the natural progression of the last 30 years of stories, the escalating conflict between humans and mutants, the escalating genocide being perpetuated by the human governments and agencies.

For me Krakoa represents the mutants fleeing as refugees for freedom from genocide. I get that this isn't the answer that some want, but in order to write a cooling down of tensions, you have to have a place to start from. Forming their own independent nation that is not land connected to any other continent or country gives the mutants the freedom to seek peace terms with different human nations.

As I said before we do not know the status of mutants visiting Krakoa. We have what Magneto told the secret agents posing as politicians, but we also have what Jean told one of the children on Krakoa who wanted to know if she could still see her human family and relatives. Unless we are told otherwise I choose to believe that humans can visit Krakoa as long as they are escorted to the island by mutants.

I know you are going to hate this direction because you have your vision of how the X-Men should be and this is not it, I don't think there is anything you and I can say to each other that could possibly convince the other to change their mind.

I love the new direction and I love all the books that have come out so far, and I am looking forward to all the future books. More than anything I hope that the mutants are able to hold onto their nation of Krakoa for the next 20 years of comics and that this becomes the new status quo for the X-books because I think this is one of the best things to happen to the X-books in years!

[spirit2011]

I don't know, it seems pretty clear they are setting things up so that there's something off with what's going on. If its supposed to be totally sincere, then either the writing has been way off or there's a major disconnect between the writing and the art. And he's said in a previous interview that they have a story planned for 12 issues of the main book and then they're doing....something vague? Who knows.

And I'm pretty burned on writers talking about how many stories they have planned for the future. Last writer I saw say that was Jim Zub on his recent Champions run. Then he started a relaunch with One More Day 2.0, nuked everything interesting about the book and got cancelled after 10 issues. So I suppose the real answer is 'if it continues to sell, this premise will continue'

Pretty much this. one of the things Hickman said is that he build a out if the sales went down too much.

It all come down to sales

I know, right.

Imagine...

Interviewer: A lot of the fans are saying that characters are not acting like themselves. Even acting sinister and creepy. That some of this started in the years leading up to the event and have now reached a tipping point. The Dream of Xavier and the X-Men has been abandoned for mutant separatism and supremacy... the way of Magneto. There are also questions about continuity and things built into the story that seem put there to obscure...

Hickman: Let me stop you. Don't worry about anything, none of this will stand. We are going to keep making things more and more obvious until even the naysayers decrying all that will be saying something else. When we have taken everything as far as we absolutely can... boom! Massive hero moment! Big reset. Here are my notes, a massive outline, a wall chart, and some breakdowns of the final issue I had an artist draw just to give us all an idea of what we are working toward. Feel free to share all of it!

LOL
Hickman didn't even let HOXPOX have previews beyong the 2 first issues

He is not saying a lot of things

[Confuzzled]

@People Of the Earth: If you consider people barely interacting with each other as hollow coexistence then isn't that just reflective of real-life parallels with examples such as the White Flight in the 50s whose effects last to the day, city planning made without the welfare of black neighborhoods in mind, and other instances of shameless environmental racism?

Then if you consider more direct racist interactions like police brutality against POCs at the worst to daily microaggressions at the mildest, then by your logic, "peaceful coexistence" is largely a failed concept. It's not peaceful coexisting when minorities still feel the impact of oppression and racisms to various degrees on a day-to-day basis, perpetrated by a majority who constantly feel threatened by their very presence.

The X-Men isolating themselves have a better chance at achieving peace for their race than what real-life socio-economic structures provide to minorities.

And it's only 'supremacy' when Magneto wants to commit flatscan genocide or terror attacks just for the sake of it. Otherwise just believing mutants are the inheritors of the Earth (which even the humans believe to be true from a biological standpoint, hence their retaliation in the form of Orchis), is simply going by the scientific data provided to him.

[jwatson]

I've come to the conclusion that i don't care either way.

[BroHomo]

Crab People

[Icefanatic]

LOL
Hickman didn't even let HOXPOX have previews beyong the 2 first issues

He is not saying a lot of things

Big time.

Part of the reason he gave for the data pages was he wanted to break up the issues so that people wouldn't know how much actual story was left to read and be able to predict where things were going a few pages ahead.

Contrast that with: "This is what we are going to be doing for the next three years."

My only gripe is I find myself not liking these versions of a lot of the characters, which makes it harder to enjoy the journey regardless of the ultimate destination.

[spirit2011]

Big time.

Part of the reason he gave for the data pages was he wanted to break up the issues so that people wouldn't know how much actual story was left to read and be able to predict where things were going a few pages ahead.

Contrast that with: "This is what we are going to be doing for the next three years."

My only gripe is I find myself not liking these versions of a lot of the characters, which makes it harder to enjoy the journey regardless of the ultimate destination.

3 years? well I think this how much his run on avengers and FF lasted.

I remember he saying something a bit different, that something would happen and that wouldn't be so positive.

I think that Hickman knows when to say things people want to hear, he is good on interviews. he might not be saying the truth about these 3 years.

I have the same problem that you, some characterizations are way off

[People Of The Earth]

@People Of the Earth: If you consider people barely interacting with each other as hollow coexistence then isn't that just reflective of real-life parallels with examples such as the White Flight in the 50s whose effects last to the day, city planning made without the welfare of black neighborhoods in mind, and other instances of shameless environmental racism?

Absolutely.
Urban planification, access to public services, transportation systems, education, healthcare and job opportunities… They all are determining factors when identifying the degree of development a territory receive and, by extension, what supports its inhabitants are obtaining.

Then if you consider more direct racist interactions like police brutality against POCs at the worst to daily microaggressions at the mildest, then by your logic, "peaceful coexistence" is largely a failed concept. It's not peaceful coexisting when minorities still feel the impact of oppression and racisms to various degrees on a day-to-day basis, perpetrated by a majority who constantly feel threatened by their very presence.

Also true.
However, I never pretended that peaceful coexistence had been achieved IRL.
It is Something we should aim for here, just as much as Something sapiens and mutants should aim for in-universe.
To do that, you need people willing to stand and act for it. IRL, people are fighting Everyday to provoke that evolution in our societies, to see the X-Men abandonning that fight in-universe is Simply disheartening.

The X-Men isolating themselves have a better chance at achieving peace for their race than what real-life social structures provide to minorities.

We'll see what kind of society Krakoa will develop over time, but if I may, it is foolish to Believe that by isolating themselves on their island, mutants will have better chance to be free them from the same syndrome that we find in real life-social structures. Morrison made it abundantly clear when contrasting the "then supermodels" X-Men with Everyday mutants like Beak or Ugly John. And before that, the exploration made of the Morlocks and other mutants who couldn't "pass" as humans.
There will be acts of oppression and racism even between Kraked - already, we know that mutants with a certain powertype - precogs - will not be tolerated on the island of Krakoa. People tend to forget that mutants are just as humans as sapiens, and prone to the same shortcomings.

And it's only 'supremacy' when Magneto wants to commit flatscan genocide just for the sake of it. Otherwise just believing mutants are the inheritors of the Earth (which even the humans believe to be true from a biological standpoint, hence their retaliation in the form of Orchis), is simply going by the scientific data provided to him.

But that's the thing: Xavier is not just "believing" mutants are the future of humanity, he is acting upon it to ensure it comes to fruition - no matter what.
That's a promise he and Magneto make to each other at the end of PoX#6.
Also, pointing out that holding supremacist beliefs without ever acting upon them is still despicable regardless.

[People Of The Earth]

What you want is for the books to be written completely differently and ignore the last 20 years of events in the Marvel Universe [...]

Bold of you to make such an assumption.

Beyond that, I never discussed the WHYs of the creation of a country like Krakoa, yet I can't help but notice how, once again, you act like this is what I'm doing...
I don't know why you keep ignoring the actual content of my posts whenever you decide to answer me, but this failing is completely on you.

"your philosophy is that a subjugated and oppressed people need to struggle under that oppression and hope that some of their oppressors someday change their mind and free you from the oppression themselves."

That's what you were actually accusing me of yesterday, remember? I asked you to point out where in the discussion I had even *hinted* to that one - you never answered.
I also asked you to point out how Corsair and Stevie Hunter related to your statement about sapiens being "forces of genocide" - you dodged the remark altogether.

All in all, as long as you Don't adress the actual content of my posts, and not some hidden meanings you Believe they have, then yes, you are right, we won't be able to have a meaningful exchange. It's stale, going circle, tiring for everyone involved, me included.

We can agree to disagree for the time being, it's totally fine.

[RachelGrey]

Bold of you to make such an assumption.

Beyond that, I never discussed the WHYs of the creation of a country like Krakoa, yet I can't help but notice how, once again, you act like this is what I'm doing...
I don't know why you keep ignoring the actual content of my posts whenever you decide to answer me, but this failing is completely on you.

"your philosophy is that a subjugated and oppressed people need to struggle under that oppression and hope that some of their oppressors someday change their mind and free you from the oppression themselves."

That's what you were actually accusing me of yesterday, remember? I asked you to point out where in the discussion I had even *hinted* to that one - you never answered.
I also asked you to point out how Corsair and Stevie Hunter related to your statement about sapiens being "forces of genocide" - you dodged the remark altogether.

All in all, as long as you Don't adress the actual content of my posts, and not some hidden meanings you Believe they have, then yes, you are right, we won't be able to have a meaningful exchange. It's stale, going circle, tiring for everyone involved, me included.

We can agree to disagree for the time being, it's totally fine.

Am I wrong in understanding that your issue is the writer's creative direction with the X-Men? You don't like this direction, and you don't like that the X-Men are not living at the mansion in Westchester! Is that correct?

Because for the stories about Krakoa we have been shown that the mutants fled from the constant threat of genocide and formed their own nation. This was a creative choice based on the stories of the past 20 years. Over the last 20 years the conflict between humans and mutants has been escalating, and even when the mutants do seek peace, the humans respond with increasing hate and genocide.

Are you wanting Hickman to spend a few issues showing the human allies and their relation to the new nation of Krakoa and whether they can travel to the island or not?

I guess we disagree with the interpretation of what these stories mean for mutants. I see this as invigorating the line of comics with a sense of hope that they have been missing for the last few years. For once the mutants get to have moments of joy and happiness that is reflected in the comics more. They can live free from the threat of genocide and try to find a new path to peace with the humans through trade and political treaties.

I see your long posts and you seem to be angry about a lot of things with this artistic and creative direction. Fair enough, you have the right to dislike the work of an artist and writer, you have a right to disagree with their vision.

What is your vision for the X-Men? Because Xavier's original Dream only works if the human government and agencies participate equally in the Dream in good faith. The moment you have one side imprisoning, experimenting on, and executing your people, that changes things, then it's a matter of survival to flee. In order for the Dream to work you must survive, and if your survival as a race is threatened because the other side wants to eliminate you completely then your only choice is to flee for your survival. That is what the mutants have done, they have fled to a safe territory and established their own independent country. From a position of greater economic and political strength they have approached the world governments and offered to trade state of the art medicines in exchange for acknowledging their new nation and acknowledging this as the homeland for all mutants.

The Dream isn't dead, it is modified in the face of endless genocide. The only way to get the human governments to sit down at the table and actually haggle out a peace treaty was to come to them from a position of political and economic strength. Now they can slowly work toward peaceful coexistence by negotiating with the human governments to achieve just that.

[Coal Tiger]

According to the majority of posters here, this is who Kitty Pryde should be now!



To those of you who are guests to this thread, please come to your own conclusions about the X-Men and where Marvel has decided they should head. Read Marauders #1 for yourself and decide if this is an issue that your want to support.

If, like me, you don't see anything worth supporting here, please don't. Don't buy this book. Don't mention this book in your tweets or videos. Don't give this book a moment of oxygen. More than that, reach out to Marvel and tell them what you think about their new version of the X-Men.

Gonna buy 2 copies now.

[RachelGrey]

Gonna buy 2 copies now.

I wonder if it's too late to get a floppy copy of Marauders, I bought the digital copy!