Quote Originally Posted by RachelGrey View Post
I think the other part of this is the fact that the writers in Dawn of X are trying to show that the X-Men have to strive to protect all of those nameless mutants who were never able to defend themselves. It's like the thread about E is for Extinction, where it's pointed out that the people of Genosha were faceless. This is why the Krakoa era works better, because the X-Men are living there, several members of the X-Men are a part of the nascent government body. Member's of the X-Men are the commanders in the Krakoan military. The Krakoan secret service is run by mostly X-Men. Even with the smattering of villains thrown in the mix so far, it's really just Sebastian Shaw and Sinister that are trying to sabatage everything. Apocalypse wants to expand mutants into Otherworld, and I even think most of what he is trying to do is to get his original 4 back, because they were like family to him. The only criticism I have about Apocalypse is that he thinks everyone is expendable, but funny enough he was willing to let himself get killed too in order to complete the spell on the Otherworld gate.
First of all, thank you for the effort you put into this. I really appreciate it. That was a nice, substantial and nuanced piece. I agree that the options available to the mutants of the world were few, especially after the X-Office allowed a decade of miserable genocide storylines. Where it seemed like the moment you went from the other MU titles to an X-book you entered into one where the average human is a hateful, fire breathing demon and mutant suffering is the only story the writers can create. However, during this time (and moving forward into the current era) is one where it became increasingly obvious trying to use mutants as a reflection of real minorities just doesn't work. All Krakoa does is make those comparisons even more ridiculous, because it doesn't withstand even moderate scrutiny.

However, just because our heroes' people are beleaguered and hunted doesn't mean I'm going to soften my opinion of actions that, if performed by another group, would be seen as malicious, spiteful, and counterproductive. I'm glad you brought up that one of their apparent goals is to divert human innovation away from AI and Sentinels to avert the future Moira lived through. That makes perfect sense, because wow the mutants got crushed. But in the actual issues themselves, I'm seeing Krakoa and its leaders plainly uttering their intent to undermine and control all human institutions for the benefit of mutantkind. This type of saber rattling is what gets nations military R&D budgets swelling in with dozens of new projects and weapons systems. The actions on page are not matching up with the apparent goal of this Krakoa project.

As for Excalibur unwittingly helping Apocalypse take over another dimension and install Krakoan ruler, that's unacceptable. It immediately calls into question Betsy's loyalty and fitness as Captain Britain, and Krakoa's true long term goals. I'm not willing to give a character like Apocalypse any leeway. Apocalypse is an evil piece of crap, his ideal future is one even more miserable than what we saw awaits mutants, and his plans and goals must be challenged at every step. Apocalypse and his 4 original horseman being reunited would not be a good thing for the planet.

There's just this bizarre lack of nuance in the book. The humans are an almost entirely uniform writhing mass of vipers spitting hateful vitriol. The few human allies they get are killed off quick, and any others are suddenly revealed to have been mutants. In one fell swoop missing the entire point of such friendships and efforts at unity and understanding. I saw it mentioned earlier, but in the real world tremendous progress has been made in almost all fields of civil rights for minorities. But in the X-Men books things have inexplicably deteriorated worse than the early days. Going from other MU books with monsters, aliens, robots, little girls on red dinosaurs, etc... you find level headed humans of all temperaments, intellects, backgrounds, etc... Those data pages with the officer on the U.S. naval vessel observing Krakoa were a breath of fresh air and made me wish for more of that. Some people mewl, whine, and bray that these are mutant books and it'd be a waste: No. Humanity has been deemed the overwhelming antagonist of mutantkind. Because the enemy of the X-Men is an entire species occupying an entire planet, in multiple countries and multiple cultures nuance is required. Otherwise you just wind up with our heroes fighting an undifferentiated hateful horde. It's yet another reason why the mutants do a poor job of reflecting the struggles of real life minorities. Most people are not hateful and through some work will recognize the shared humanity of themselves and others. Otherwise no progress would've ever been made.