A.X.E.: JUDGMENT DAY #6 Review/Spoilers

[Steroid]

Cap defending the Treehouse. Nova tirelessly fighting to protect Port Prometheus. That's the good stuff and I want more of it.

I absolutely agree. I love seeing heroes being heroes which is why I absolutely love Nova. During the Civil War era when all the heroes were busy fighting each other Nova was out there saving the entire universe from the Annihilation Wave. It was very telling seeing him return to earth and being disgusted in what he saw. It echoed my feelings as a fan during that time.

[Saithor]

I appreciate your post and I think it opens up a healthier discussion rather than dunking on characters as we often see. The anti-mutant rhetoric on this forum far outweighs the anti-Avengers rhetoric. If it were simply "criticism" that would be fine but we know it gets nasty and very often swearing is heavily included (which is technically against the rules of CBR, but I digress.) The Avengers rarely come up unless the story involves them. But it's often that "criticism" of the mutants pop up all over threads including appreciation threads, even if the discussion at hand has nothing to do with the criticized topic. Let's be honest, how many times have you brought up Apocalypse when he wasn't part of the discussion? I know you have a poster of him above your bed and it's okay, I don't judge you.

I think some posters can reel in the vitriol a bit in general. I'm not kidding when I say the release of HoX/PoX was the best and worst of times on this forum. Bans left and right (twice for me) and there was literally a schism where a chunk of the fandom broke off and made their own communities, never to be seen again, because of how toxic things became. And I wasn't here for the epic Avengers vs X-Men war years which I hear were downright brutal. That's why many posters won't even participate in the touchier discussions, some are just exhausted from it. I just don't want us to go down that road again so while I understand why some posters dislike the way the Avengers are talked about, there are others that dislike how the mutants are talked about too. It's a wacky merry-go-round.

I was around for neither, and honestly Apocalypse is just a bit mixed with outright bafflement at the love of such a....I'm not even going to go with misguided, he's a Social Darwinism who preys on people at their lowest points to convert him to his cause. Creepy cult leader, which fits the proclivity for young women. I don't go into Appreciation threads with critiscism, and critique does get out of hand on here, but at the same time there are statements on here I certainly hope are jokes from the other direction but you never know for sure.

I'm not surprised there was a schism. Krakoa is a cool central concept that unfortunately set itself up for a lot of nickpicking. Warning for incoming words

1). There was not a plan for Krakoa. This is not me being facetious. It's my opinion that while Hickman did have a meticulously put together plot for what was going to happen, the rest of the office decided they wanted to spend more time in Krakoa and dragged it out way past when he had already planned for it to be concluded and Krakoa to either be gone, or like Genosha, kept in the background and away from the reader's attention. This leads into several problems later on, one of which is that

2). Krakoa's worldbuilding is not that fleshed out. This is one where the level of detail varies between different elements, some of which is more important than others. Hickman spent a lot of time explaining Krakoan diplomacy and such, not so much internal affairs. Krakoan locations are mostly minimal. People joke about how the island only consists of the Quiet Council room and the bar because that's where most of the early books took place. Occasional books like X-factor and Maruders would have a singular additional location but typically books congregated there, which made Krakoa feel less like a nation and more like a pub. Social services and other parts of a nation are non-existent, to the point where the New Mutants are put in charge of education because they were the ones noticing a proper version didn't even exist. Law Enforcement was apparently on a vigilante justice basis, which would be a nightmare considering the array of powers mutants can have that would help them control or manipulate a mob. The set-up for Krakoa worldbuilding wise just feels lacking, and this is before we get into how or why they are the guranteers of the galactic economy (The entire galactic economy being based on weapons was dumb enough, the idea that every major power would agree to a third party some of them probably don't even know being the lynchpin of the economy is...just not very convincing). There's a lot of worldbuilding issues that we could lay at the feet of this story lasting way longer than it was intended.

3). The Villains. This isn't my point on the villains in Krakoa actually, but rather the villains in general. Early X-villains for this era ranged from the very disappointing to the bland and copy-pasted. Orchis suffers mostly from pacing issues. The idea itself isn't bad, the issue is that their story was stretched out too far because of the change in plans it made them look weak and ineffective, not helped by writer's not really incorporating them into their books so Orchis felt more like a villain just for Hickman books. Ewing and Duggan were the two to work at fixing that the most, but even then Dr. Stasis is a Sinister clone essentially making the X-men's villain just Sinister again, and with Ewing it's just an extension of Brand. Orchis doesn't really add anything to either of these characters and Orchis itself seems very little changed from them being part of it. He comes in later but the same goes for Judas Traveller. Then we get the books that just had boring or bland villains. The Maruders have the Hellfire brats, who are jokes, out of story and hopefully in. Excalibur has anti-mutant organization type B (Magic supremacy) sub-category F (Connection to Apocalypse) whose characterization can be summed up as "We wanted Tories but we don't want to actually make them tories. Also the actual tories are more progressive than these schmucks actually". We got the occasional former villains like Mojo and Mikhail, but typically they were side villains mostly used for comedy, Mojo, or fell into the decompressed storytelling hole like anyone involved with the Percy books. It's not hard to see why people thought uniting all of mutantkind robbed it of all it's best villains.

4). Now we get to the Villains in Krakoa. And the concept of Mutant Solidarity. So people have issues with the villains being part of Krakoa. Some of that is from a moral sense, that characters should not be rewarded for their past crimes, which the amnesty essentially is. One can have a discussion on rehabilitative vs judgmental punishment for crimes, although this breaks down for me in fiction where villains often engage in games of villainous one-up manship very rarely shown in real life, mixed with that fact that very few of these characters actually have remorse for their crimes. The other issue is how these characters are working together considering that some of them have killed each other, some of them have done worse things to each other, some of them have dedicated entire portions of their lives to making life living hell for others. And on Krakoa...they get along. In fact, with the exception of Sinister, and eventually Nova, and I suppose Fenris (Because having the characters get along with Nazi's was a line too far for the writer's, even if they are having Rictor forming what I hope is a student-teacher relation with a man who once tried to kill 90% of the world population because of a philosophy not far removed from Nazism), they get along remarkably well. It was already stretching things a little that so few people with the exception of Gambit would have issues with Apocalypse. Wolverine sharing drinks with Gorgon is what made me convinced this was a mind control plot, because not only have they long hated each other guts, not only did Gorgon show no real signs of repntance for what he did before joining Krakoa, but his introduction was literally feeding the corpse of a child of some of Logan's friends to pigs. Now people have tried to justify this, mostly along the lines of Mutant Solidarity. The idea that things are so bad for mutants everyone was willing to put outside their personal objections to form Krakoa because everyone is needed. That's...unrealisitic, especially given the rapsheets of some of the people involved. The books also just don't show the kind of tension that would have. This isn't just an X-men problem, this is a problem of a lot of shows where once a character is redeemed it's espected everyone be completely fine with working with them, regardless of lasting trauma, or that trauma is treated as something they need to get past and just not dealing with the causer of it is not allowed as an option. This has all of those problems with the added wrinkle of very little of these character being redeemed or actually showing remorse for what they've done typically. The best book on this was Hellions, with characters who were actually remorseful for past crimes, and some characters given a massive wiping of the magic marker or morality shown to not be so morally pure (Seriously, wtf was up with Mastermind in X-corps? Or Selene). But ultimately part of the issue is that while the stakes were certainly high, we also weren't given any hints of it coming. There's not a lot of set-up for it, except maybe Apocalypse.

[Saithor]

5). One Minority to rule them all. This one is going to get massive pushback, but Hickman era PoX/HoX, and some of the other books to varying extents, did not acknowledge the existence of minority identity outside of Mutant. I've mentioned a few times how early writing for Dani disturbed me in New Mutants, where she seemed to treat Humanity as the Other. Now, disclaimer, my tribal heritage is very thin. I am essentially cacausian. But I do care about native american rights, so having someone who has been written to be proud of their native heritage start talking about "Human concepts" like they were some lesser thing hit an extremely sour note. Similar sentiments to Synch's leaving the Vault while he narrates inside his head about his parent's idea of dying for the ones you love being"Human words" and "useless words". Even recently, in Unlimited, the issues where Doug is trying to come up with a mutant language and pontificates about the moral quandary of speaking German because Nazi's used it, what? Then we have a mutant who essentially a living language talking about how language is nothing but a stop sign, which, no, stop. Language can be a lot of things. A sign of cultural identity. Cultural supremacy? Sometimes. Typically by making it so it's the only language used, which the unlimited comics seems to suggest is Doug's goal with his new language that would not have the baggage of human tongues. Which is offensive considering actual real world efforts to stamp out the languages of minorities as direct efforts to take away their cultural identity. The books have a weird insensitivity about certain things that if they weren't supposed to be hints about something being rotten in the state of Denmark come off instead as uh...not good. We can put Emma saying the Hellfire Trading Company is going to emulate the East Indian Trading Company here. Also impossible because charter companies actually colonizing places went out of style a long time ago.

Outside of things like that, Krakoa is entirely too homogenized for a country that supposedly was put together in a very short time period (It is possible that Erik and Charles somehow laid the seeds across all future mutants for this, but it's highly unlikely). Krakoa should be put together from a vast number of different cultures, by density alone mostly Chinese and Indian mutants. The US contains a bit over 4% of the world population. Europe is almost ten. But not only are the majority of important characters not in the story but in Krakoa itself, mostly of Caucasian descent, most of Krakoa's ideas seem to take aspects mostly from those two regions as well. Very little to no culture clash is shown, language is apparently not an issue, very few foreign mutants are shown, everyone is okay with government mostly being of caucasian, western descent (I'll be generous and assume no one knows Sinister is a Victorian age Englishman except maybe Mystique, but it's counting former members one Russian, two Germans, seven American, one French, an African, and an Egyptian who is colored Blue.) and apparently no one has an issue with this. There should be a lot of cultural aspects from across the planet that don't exist because we are supposed to believe it was abandoned in favor of Krakoan. Which for a culture...is again very underdeveloped.

6) The Quiet Council. So, let's just jump into the most important thing, why is everyone on the Island okay with these schmucks? Let's ignore the entire incompetency angle, the entire population of the island is apparently okay enough with twelve unelected mutant oligarchs ruling over them, unaccountable, who vote their own replacements? Considering that this is supposed to take place during the 2020s, most of the characters on the island should be at least familiar with the veneer of democracy, regardless of how well the places they come from have democracy. Actually the ones from oppressive, non-democratic nations are probably more wanting of a democratic government than even those that are since they should understand the issues much more upfront and personally. Honestly, the idea of everyone heading there is kind of weakened by it, the people most likely to head to Krakoa from oppressive, authoritarian regimes, and they are fine with this? Yes the Quiet Council was supposed to be temporary, but as time has gone by this should be a rising issue. Except we don't really see people get upset with it, we see Jean and Scott get upset with it, and later the people get upset with...Charles. And not really anyone else. Because they didn't know about the pit which is more of a "What are you, blind?" moment considering they decided to trust the unelected oligarchs.

7) Moira, Moira, Moira: Let's ignore everything that happened in Inferno and afterwards, Moira herself before that is a divisive element. The idea that a side character, one who has been dead for years, was in fact a time resetting mutant all along is already a hefty retcon to make. The idea that she, Charles, and Erik were pulling strings behind the scenes the entire time. That's even more of a tough sell because now you are adding facets to their entire history that didn't exist before. I do question how much Moira was needed for this status quo, all things considered, and fans of the character from before do have a right to be upset with all the changes. But more importantly than that, it just rewrites all the past stories in such a way that can't be removed. Every past X-men story now has the aspect that Moira, Charles, and sometimes Erik were lurking in the background plotting and arranging things from behind the scenes

8) Racism, racism never changes: Well, this is essentially a lie. Racism in Marvel comics does change, it just happens to travel a reverse road to what it does in real life. Marvel can't tolerate hints that the Human-X-men status quo is going to change outside a nebulous "Maybe, in a dozen or so years, things might change. Maybe". So human mutant relations are not only frozen, to raise the stakes they actively have to move them backwards to such a degree that we reach animosity that makes the books feel less like they are set in the 2020s and more the 1920s. It's not even the nature of the reaction, but the sheer scale of it. Many x-books portray this like the entirety of humanity is united in hated of Mutants and wants to see them dead. Which is just weird af. Attempted genocides haven't invoked that kind of response...in forever. Even in the days of the romans salting and putting all of carthage to the sword those actions got condemnation not just from other nations but inside the roman empire itself. Actions like the Rhineland Massacres in 1096 not only got widespread condemnation from not just national leaders, individual towns and cities, and the frigging Pope, most of the perpetrators got themselves killed when the King of Hungaryto massacre them when they tried to pass through his lands. Even among allies like the US and the UK during world war 2, England's colonial ambitions was a huge damper on those relations and caused Roosevelt to work with Stalin on foreign arrangements during and after the war that helped hasten the end of colonialism. There's a massive number of examples of how this kind of universal, widespread hatred of a single minority, even during the height of persecution is extremely difficult to pull off. There's many incidents from just the crusades alone, mired in human greed, a lot more muslim-christian alliances than you would expect, and mostly were just territorial conflicts everyone was using for their own ends.

So when the books try to pull the "Everyone, and we mean everyone, secretly hates or fears mutants in their hearts to the point where no one has issue with genocides" It falls flat because there's not a good historical context where that works.

I had other points about mutant supremacy, individual characters, the nature of power and protest, how the books has issues at portrayaing a population vs individual characters, the use of characters as tools instead of characters, but this is already too long. Maybe tomorrow.

[vitruvian]

The 5 can revive anyone. All you need is a willing psychic and a DNA sample.

You couldn't ask for a better incentive for a desperate villain

The psychic does need to be convinced to take the necessary scans before the one to be revived dies, I suppose.

But then, the mutants also have some folks who can deal with that issue using time travel.

[Sutekh]

I'm not surprised there was a schism. Krakoa is a cool central concept that unfortunately set itself up for a lot of nickpicking. Warning for incoming words. [SNIP]

Those were some quality words, Saithor. And yes, also quantity.

It bugs me that some fans seem to put more thought into this Krakoa setting, and the characters involved, including yourself and Bobbysworld, than the writers who are paid to do so, care to do.

The issues with Krakoa not really having any serious development annoys me, because of the wasted storytelling potential. I do not need to know bupkiss about Krakoa currency exchange rates or zoning laws or whatever. Do not care. But I'd love to see a Krakoan volunteer force, handling both security and safety issues. Bishop and his resurrected XSE peeps like Fixx, Archer, Graystone, Shard, Malcolm and Randall (losers who have boring powers and no 'mutant names,' those last two!), as well as assorted other mutants-we-never-see like Surge or Hellion or Skids or Rusty Collins or various Acolytes or members of the Mutant Liberation Front, Alliance of Evil, Mutant Force/Resistants, Brotherhoods past, etc. could also be on this force, and we could see them in the background defusing mutant fights (since not every mutant is 100% a nice person) or putting out fires (oops, says rando fire-guy like Match or Scorcher who burped and set a tree on fire) or attempting to fight off one of the attacks on the island that happens every few months. They can *fail* to stop some of these attacks, to maintain the threat level of the baddies and allow the stars of whatever book they cameo in to swoop in and save the day, but at least we could see an *active* Krakoa, not a *reactive* one that sits around and gets attacked all the time, and is always just terribly shocked that the same ****ing thing happened last month and yet mysteriously keeps happening despite them not doing a damned thing to defend against it / prepare for it.

Such a scenario would not only allow us to see some Krakoan mutants being all involved in the defense and maintenance of their own society, but also, when they occasionally get pushed back by the incoming threat (so that the stars of the book can deal with it), make a case for the threat of the week being an actual threat. Cause, as it stands, the amazing ability of Orchis or Xeno or whatever to threaten a community that has ZERO defenses, and does *nothing* to anticipate or counter threats, except show up afterwards and say 'how did this happen?', is NOT impressing me with their awesome villainy. At this point, they're just punching third-graders and stealing their lunch-money. It's hard to feel much respect for villains that attack such defenseless targets, *or* be terribly supportive of the protagonists who just insist on being reactive victims all the time and not actually doing a damn thing in their own defense. (And this is 100% bad writing. I refuse to believe that Cyclops, who 'doesn't have a plan B, since plan B implies that I only have 26 plans,' wouldn't have a support network set up that is *tight.* Perhaps coordinated by his son, Cable.)

And the villain thing.

I could see a bit of amnesty for like, Mutant Force or whatever. And even in those tiers, I could see drama. Asp, Black Racer, Rock Python, Slither and any other mutant members of the Serpent Society sign up for a house on Krakoa, intending to use it as a safe house for when things get too hot after a big score (perhaps even inviting their non-mutant friends to crash on their couch as guests), only Krakoa doesn't want the reputation of being 'where career crooks go to escape extradition' and so mutants who *remain* active criminals in other countries (with whom they have treaties) become unwelcome...

But Cassandra Nova? Selene? Sinister? Nope. Sinister, double nope, 'cause he's not even a real mutant! (And he's not even a slightest bit necessary. His genetic data could be as readily available through many mcguffins, including time travellers, mutants who can read data (Comcast/Black Box explicitly already knows everything in Sinny's databases!, etc.))

Again, there's story potential here. As with the Serpent Society mutants trying to 'game the system.' But we've seen little or none of that.

My last quibble would be with the plot-conveniences of the Krakoan-era, the 'boost fruit' being the latest (hey Chance, Fabian, Khora, y'all are out of a job!), but the teleportation gates being my least favorite (hey Ilyanna, you're now a swordswoman in a bikini, because we don't need transport, and Lila, Manifold, Vanisher, Pinpoint, Pixie, Ariel, Jaunt, Amelia, etc., etc. y'all can just go screw, we don't need you anymore.). Every single effing time someone uses a teleportation gate, I think, 'Well, there was my guest appearance by Vanisher or Manifold or Lila.'

'Cause heaven forfend mutant paradise allow actual *mutants* to do anything.

[Jack The Tripper]

For me, Krakoa is still just a breath of fresh air for the X-Men. And with Gillen’s Immortal, Ewing’s Red, and Duggan’s adjectiveless, there’s still fun to be had with the concept. It might not be perfect, but I really do think it would have been a waste to end it after Inferno like Hickman initially planned.

[sunofdarkchild]

My last quibble would be with the plot-conveniences of the Krakoan-era, the 'boost fruit' being the latest (hey Chance, Fabian, Khora, y'all are out of a job!), but the teleportation gates being my least favorite (hey Ilyanna, you're now a swordswoman in a bikini, because we don't need transport, and Lila, Manifold, Vanisher, Pinpoint, Pixie, Ariel, Jaunt, Amelia, etc., etc. y'all can just go screw, we don't need you anymore.). Every single effing time someone uses a teleportation gate, I think, 'Well, there was my guest appearance by Vanisher or Manifold or Lila.'

'Cause heaven forfend mutant paradise allow actual *mutants* to do anything.

They use Illyana for transportation all the time even with the gates. The X-Men need to get to Otherworld when the tournament of swords goes sideways - Magik teleports the entire SWORD station. Wolverine needs to go Mars to deal with some AIM rejects, he calls up Magik. Cable comes back to life and needs to find the dimension where Stryfe is hiding out - he calls up Magik. Nightcrawler needs to make a dozen teleports to the Orchis station to get Moira and Nimrod to cooperate to save the earth - he calls up Magik. She's such a powerful and versatile teleporter that the gates could never replace her. But the point still applies to the rest of the teleporters.

[JB]

Yeah, that's why you posted naked Steve.

My community service.

I absolutely agree. I love seeing heroes being heroes which is why I absolutely love Nova. During the Civil War era when all the heroes were busy fighting each other Nova was out there saving the entire universe from the Annihilation Wave. It was very telling seeing him return to earth and being disgusted in what he saw. It echoed my feelings as a fan during that time.

Nova is awesome and I'm happy to be getting to know him. It seems like he'll be officially joining the Brotherhood and I'm all for it.

I was around for neither, and honestly Apocalypse is just a bit mixed with outright bafflement at the love of such a....I'm not even going to go with misguided, he's a Social Darwinism who preys on people at their lowest points to convert him to his cause. Creepy cult leader, which fits the proclivity for young women. I don't go into Appreciation threads with critiscism, and critique does get out of hand on here, but at the same time there are statements on here I certainly hope are jokes from the other direction but you never know for sure.

I'm not surprised there was a schism. Krakoa is a cool central concept that unfortunately set itself up for a lot of nickpicking. Warning for incoming words

Snipping your posts as well for space but I read every word and it's all very well thought out and clear. I think one of the reasons why you'll get short responses, in length and tone, from some posters is because of the long conversations already had about these points you bring up and many others. I went back to a random page in 2019 and immediately found: Are the Hicksmen encouraging segregation?. 44 pages of conversation. *pours one out for the posters no longer with us*. We'll always love you Vegan Daddy. Some other thread titles:

"Should the X-Men keep trying for coexistence?"
"Do the vines of Krakoa bear worms?"
"What if Krakoa isn't meant to last past this year?" (This was December 2019. Ha!)
"Is "Mutants will replace humans" supremacist rhetoric?"
"In what way is Krakoa like a cult?"
"Meaningful deaths and Death in the X-men Franchise"
"Understanding the Motivations Behind KRAKOA, and the Dawn of X"
"Soooooo The X-Men's Mass Resurrections Are Killing The Cosmic Entity Death?"
"What do you like/dislike about Krakoa? (As a concept)"
"Will Krakoa perdure?"
"People who wanted to see not all Humans hate mutants got what they wanted."
"Does anyone else missing having Real Villains?"

A Krakoa appreciation thread was made just to escape the arguing: "WE ARE MUTANT..KRAKOA, FOREVER!!!" - APPRECIATE THE NATION OF KRAKOA 2019"]"WE ARE MUTANT..KRAKOA, FOREVER!!!" - APPRECIATE THE NATION OF KRAKOA 2019

These are just from late 2019 and early 2020. We've gone deep into these topics, that's why many posters will give very short answers or no answers at all when they come up again today. Apocalypse was a huge source of contention, to the point that posters started championing him just out of defiance. We even made an appreciation thread for him. LOL! Everything you've brought up is valid and some of the current elements we do indeed continue to discuss. And others have been discussed for such a long time (security on Krakoa) that there doesn't seem to be anything new to be said.

[Krakoa]

My community service.



Nova is awesome and I'm happy to be getting to know him. It seems like he'll be officially joining the Brotherhood and I'm all for it.



Snipping your posts as well for space but I read every word and it's all very well thought out and clear. I think one of the reasons why you'll get short responses, in length and tone, from some posters is because of the long conversations already had about these points you bring up and many others. I went back to a random page in 2019 and immediately found: Are the Hicksmen encouraging segregation?. 44 pages of conversation. *pours one out for the posters no longer with us*. We'll always love you Vegan Daddy. Some other thread titles:

"Should the X-Men keep trying for coexistence?"
"Do the vines of Krakoa bear worms?"
"What if Krakoa isn't meant to last past this year?" (This was December 2019. Ha!)
"Is "Mutants will replace humans" supremacist rhetoric?"
"In what way is Krakoa like a cult?"
"Meaningful deaths and Death in the X-men Franchise"
"Understanding the Motivations Behind KRAKOA, and the Dawn of X"
"Soooooo The X-Men's Mass Resurrections Are Killing The Cosmic Entity Death?"
"What do you like/dislike about Krakoa? (As a concept)"
"Will Krakoa perdure?"
"People who wanted to see not all Humans hate mutants got what they wanted."
"Does anyone else missing having Real Villains?"

A Krakoa appreciation thread was made just to escape the arguing: "WE ARE MUTANT..KRAKOA, FOREVER!!!" - APPRECIATE THE NATION OF KRAKOA 2019"]"WE ARE MUTANT..KRAKOA, FOREVER!!!" - APPRECIATE THE NATION OF KRAKOA 2019

These are just from late 2019 and early 2020. We've gone deep into these topics, that's why many posters will give very short answers or no answers at all when they come up again today. Apocalypse was a huge source of contention, to the point that posters started championing him just out of defiance. We even made an appreciation thread for him. LOL! Everything you've brought up is valid and some of the current elements we do indeed continue to discuss. And others have been discussed for such a long time (security on Krakoa) that there doesn't seem to be anything new to be said.

I'd also add that for every poster that is here to discuss the issues and nuances in good faith, there's three more who don't read the books and are here to approach the concept in general in bad faith, jumping on every thread that vaguely discusses a Krakoa-era book to complain. So many of us on the forum are skeptical of engaging with posters anymore even if some do have all the best intentions and actually read the content they're complaining about.

[Galerion]

Don't tell me the Jean stans have foot fetishes now

Everyone has a foot fetish. Some just don't know it

[Agent Grayson]

I was around for neither, and honestly Apocalypse is just a bit mixed with outright bafflement at the love of such a....I'm not even going to go with misguided, he's a Social Darwinism who preys on people at their lowest points to convert him to his cause. Creepy cult leader, which fits the proclivity for young women. I don't go into Appreciation threads with critiscism, and critique does get out of hand on here, but at the same time there are statements on here I certainly hope are jokes from the other direction but you never know for sure ...

5). One Minority to rule them all. This one is going to get massive pushback, but Hickman era PoX/HoX, and some of the other books to varying extents, did not acknowledge the existence of minority identity outside of Mutant. I've mentioned a few times how early writing for Dani disturbed me in New Mutants, where she seemed to treat Humanity as the Other. Now, disclaimer, my tribal heritage is very thin. I am essentially cacausian. But I do care about native american rights, so having someone who has been written to be proud of their native heritage start talking about "Human concepts" like they were some lesser thing hit an extremely sour note. Similar sentiments to Synch's leaving the Vault while he narrates inside his head about his parent's idea of dying for the ones you love being"Human words" and "useless words". Even recently, in Unlimited, the issues where Doug is trying to come up with a mutant language and pontificates about the moral quandary of speaking German because Nazi's used it, what? Then we have a mutant who essentially a living language talking about how language is nothing but a stop sign, which, no, stop. Language can be a lot of things. A sign of cultural identity. Cultural supremacy? Sometimes. Typically by making it so it's the only language used, which the unlimited comics seems to suggest is Doug's goal with his new language that would not have the baggage of human tongues. Which is offensive considering actual real world efforts to stamp out the languages of minorities as direct efforts to take away their cultural identity. The books have a weird insensitivity about certain things that if they weren't supposed to be hints about something being rotten in the state of Denmark come off instead as uh...not good. We can put Emma saying the Hellfire Trading Company is going to emulate the East Indian Trading Company here. Also impossible because charter companies actually colonizing places went out of style a long time ago ...

This sums up almost all of my problems with Krakoa in a much more eloquent way than I could've managed. Great posts, well done!

I'd also add that for every poster that is here to discuss the issues and nuances in good faith, there's three more who don't read the books and are here to approach the concept in general in bad faith, jumping on every thread that vaguely discusses a Krakoa-era book to complain. So many of us on the forum are skeptical of engaging with posters anymore even if some do have all the best intentions and actually read the content they're complaining about.

I understand the fatigue with people who just want to complain, but I also feel like it's fairly easy to spot those who are reading the books and actually want to have a discussion that isn't 100% pro-Krakoa. I've had the opposite experience where I have held back from posting on certain occasions because I feel like anyone who has any criticisms of this era is often dismissed by responses like "So you just want to see unoriginal stories" or "There are plenty of X-Men comics that don't have Krakoa so go back and read them", or even worse, some kind of suggestion of prejudice.

[gonnagiveittoya]

This sums up almost all of my problems with Krakoa in a much more eloquent way than I could've managed. Great posts, well done!



I understand the fatigue with people who just want to complain, but I also feel like it's fairly easy to spot those who are reading the books and actually want to have a discussion that isn't 100% pro-Krakoa. I've had the opposite experience where I have held back from posting on certain occasions because I feel like anyone who has any criticisms of this era is often dismissed by responses like "So you just want to see unoriginal stories" or "There are plenty of X-Men comics that don't have Krakoa so go back and read them", or even worse, some kind of suggestion of prejudice.

Fucking thiiiiiiiiis. So many people are like "oh, so youre againt the idea of minorities forming coalitions and solidarity? Huh?"

If they were forming coalitions with literal actual Nazis then yes, I would still have those same complaints

[Devaishwarya]

I can understand the disconnect. It's what happens when we/certain fans overthink way too much and those high lofty expectations we have do not align with what the Editors and writers envision for these stories and characters. They will never align.

That's why I have always chosen to appreciate (or not) these books and stories and characters for what they are now, here in the present...and not dwell on what they once were in a different era under different writers with different intentions or what I personally want/expect them to be.
Case in point...While I personally think JD was a huge miss for many reasons (clearly a minority opinion) I'm not going to be so obnoxious as to think that Gillenister (Or any other writer in this Era, for that matter) should have written it any differently. (That's tantamount to me telling Beyonce what and how to sing) And while I reserve the right to be critical of the end product that critique is always tempered with the understanding that the X-Slack isn't writing this era specifically with MY personal wants and expectations at the forefront of their minds.

[Agent Grayson]

Fucking thiiiiiiiiis. So many people are like "oh, so youre againt the idea of minorities forming coalitions and solidarity? Huh?"

If they were forming coalitions with literal actual Nazis then yes, I would still have those same complaints

That often seems to be tied up with an "all mutants = good, all humans = bad" approach, which clearly isn't true if you've read even a single issue of any X-title throughout the years, but is a narrative that seems to have its supporters.

I can understand the disconnect. It's what happens when we/certain fans overthink way too much and those high lofty expectations we have do not align with what the Editors and writers envision for these stories and characters. They will never align.

That's why I have always chosen to appreciate (or not) these books and stories and characters for what they are now, here in the present...and not dwell on what they once were in a different era under different writers with different intentions or what I personally want/expect them to be.
Case in point...While I personally think JD was a huge miss for many reasons (clearly a minority opinion) I'm not going to be so obnoxious as to think that Gillenister (Or any other writer in this Era, for that matter) should have written it any differently. (That's tantamount to me telling Beyonce what and how to sing) And while I reserve the right to be critical of the end product that critique is always tempered with the understanding that the X-Slack isn't writing this era specifically with MY personal wants and expectations at the forefront of their minds.

I agree to an extent. I still try and find the positives to enjoy and I have a lot of praise for X-men Red and Immortal X-Men. I enjoyed the beginning of AXE: Judgment Day and while I lost enthusiasm towards the end, I did like certain parts, like Nightcrawler's role. I can also respect bold creative choices even when I don't particularly appreciate them, which is true of the reveal of Moira as a mutant. That being said, I do think that there are certain fundamentals that a professional writer should be expected to deliver on and I will critique where I think they've been missed. For me, the key is doing so respectfully.

[Devaishwarya]

If those expected fundamentals are: pacing, storytelling, clarity, interest/engagement, characterisation...ie everything to do with the Written Technique...then I absolutely agree. Spurrier's lack of clarity annoyed the shit out of me. Tini's atrocious pacing utterly killed my interest in her book. But that's me critiquing the product in my hands in the moment. Which is fair.

And which is very different from saying: Hickman should never have the X-Men share the same table with Sinister and Mystique because one is a Nazi and the other is an unrepentant Assassin or make Moira a mutant and race-traitor because, History...and that this era is inherently the absolute worst because of those decisions. That's just me being disappointed in Hickman not providing what I expected and not staying true to the image I have in my head of what these characters mean to me. Which is a fair way to feel but...me personally not liking a particular plot is not the writer's fault. He's just doing his job to suit his artistic/creative interest and integrity. Just as me personally not liking Cuff It except for the bridge and chorus isn't Beyonce's fault and I cannot/will not hold it against Hickman or Bey for not meeting my every expectation.