Show notes
In July 2019, writer Jonathan Hickman returned to the Marvel Universe after a nearly 4 year sabbatical to deliver House of X #1, a game-changing paradigm shift for Marvel’s X-Men comics. With collaborators Pepe Larraz, RB Silva, and Marte Gracia, Hickman completely reinvigorated X-Men and the fandom that surrounds it. After the massive success of House of X and Powers of X, Hickman turned to an ongoing X-Men series, set during the new status quo of the X-Men’s Krakoa era, a run that lasted from Fall 2019 through summer 2021. Looking back at the full run now, what did we learn, what mysteries still remain, and how effective was Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men as a whole? Before digging deep into the content, it’s essential to preface the conversation with the following: Jonathan Hickman’s post House/Powers X-Men comics are strikingly scattered, often to the point of feeling wholly disconnected. Over the course of about a year and a half (with a Covid pandemic disruption square in the middle), Hickman wrote or co-wrote 35 full issues of X-Men comics, including the 5 “Giant-Size” specials, and two very short teasers in Marvel Incoming #1 and Marvel 1000. In the below Comic Book Herald graphic, I’ve reconfigured the run into thematically connected parts, which you’ll quickly note is greatly different than publication order. Personally, I find it more enjoyable to read the comics like this, grouped into related segments, but admittedly this is with the benefit of having read the full run according to publication as the books were released. The major caveat w/ the above is I still think you’d want to read X-Men #1 and X-Men #4 as your first post HoX issues, but beyond that, reading according to segment works great. Regardless of approach, the core takeaway should be there are 5 primary focuses of the Hickman run, tackling the “World of X” (aka Krakoan affairs), “Arakko and the X of Swords event” (aka the Apocalypse family saga), Nimrod & Mystique, the Children of the Vault, and X-Men Cosmic (which resonates most clearly with Hickman’s work on New Mutants.) This is the framework I’ll be using to consider what actually happened in this run, what questions remain unanswered, and where we’re going from here. In terms of framing, Hickman’s work on the X-Men series is primarily through the lens of Cyclops, Scott Summers, as he travels and interacts with various elements of the newly established Krakoa. X-Men #1 opens with Professor X promising to show Scott his vision for mutantdom, and through much of the run, we’re experiencing that in a similar way, our eyes opened to the new world of X-Men on Krakoa. From the first issue, Hickman is set on proclaiming this is a bold new era of X-Men comics after too many years of slow incremental changes. 12 of the 21 issues closely involve Cyclops, and indeed, in his pre-Inferno interview with AIPT, Hickman states this was the original focused intent of the run. This very much speaks to the scattered nature of the work, keener on showing a variety of aspects and threads with Marvel’s many mutants than any one centralized plot. Hickman’s World of X One of the promises of House of X and the Krakoa era of X-Men is seeing how this new status quo would manifest across the wider Marvel Universe, and how mutants declaring a sovereign nation state FOR ALL MUTANTS would impact everything from political alliances, to world economies to anti-mutant sentiment. Likewise, the stage is set for the truly fascinating exploration of building a nation in its earliest days, and all the complications that brings to the table. Krakoa announces this is a mutant nation with tremendous pharmaceutical advantages, and that leads to unprecedented financial power for mutantkind. This is the driving force for the best issue delving into Krakoan Affairs, X-Men #4, in which Professor X, Magneto, Apocalypse, Scott Summers and Gorgon visit Davos, Switzerland for a conversation w/ the world’s foremost economic titans. X-Men #4 stands out as such a great entry because of the ways it parallels real world power, governance, and as Hickman is fond of asserting, the ways the hidden hands of economics controls people. I don’t think it’s any kind of stretch to say X-Men #4 is the most directly politically and socially relevant issue of the run, and arguably the only issue where Hickman leans hard into the mutant metaphor and extensions to marginalized communities. Magneto deliberately and clearly lays out the strategy for mutantkind, making it clear that were once force would have dictated his actions, now mutants have learned dominance can be best achieved through money, and the control that brings, and the way it will define mutant influence of all aspects on Earth. Ironically, Magneto makes no bones that the strategy is a human one at heart, and that’s why it’s so resonant outside the fiction of mutantkind. Turn on the news any given day, and you’ll see countless examples of these lines: “Leverage people w/ debt. Make them pay to be healthy and whole. Make them pay to become educated. Make them pay you interest so they can have a place to live.” This is just our world but here Magneto is describing it from the perspective of the mutants who will manufacture this leverage and wield it for their own control. Of course it will work. It already does. There’s a moment in issue 4, too, where Professor X – largely settled to let Magneto do the speechifying, takes off his Cerebro helmet for the first time readers had seen since the House and Powers began. It’s as if to say, the era has changed, the methods have adapted and evolved, but these characters? These are your X-Men. There’s no Shadow King under the Helmet, no Cassandra Nova (at least not outwardly or obviously!), this is your Professor, and that was still his dream. But now? We’re building a nation now. It’s time for new dreams. The World of X themed issues go on to explore the day to day of life on Krakoa and its culture, none more influentially than X-Men #7, which introduces Krakoan Crucible. Resurrection of mutants on Krakoa grants immortality of a sort, but it’s a problem for all the depowered mutants left not feeling whole following Wanda Maximoff, the Great Pretender’s “No More Mutants,” in the wake of House of M. So in order to deal with this in a way that doesn’t encourage mass suicide, Apocalypse and the Quiet Council of Krakoa settle on… well a gladiatorial arena where mutant can fight for the right to an honorable death and prove their desire to be a mutant again. It’s a very Apocalypse idea. Crucible’s compelling because it feels both unique to Krakoan culture, and full of sinister complications that call the nature of this island utopia into question. Is mutantkind really ok with cheering on a generally lopsided fight to the death, like Roman gladiators of antiquity? There’s a violence and a bloodthirstiness to the proceedings, prior to the beautiful miracle of resurrection and mutants reborn. Whether directly intended or not, Crucible mirrors the dark heart of Krakoa, and the ways secrets, compromise, or closed door decisions can influence nations, and drive them towards their worse impulses. A theme of Hickman’s Krakoa is absolutely that nation-building is fraught with challenges and complex decision making. Binary assertions of good or evil, too common in superhero comics are increasingly irrelevant as we consider what it takes to cultivate a people. What matters most? The people’s short-term happiness? The longevity of the nation? The “Final End” of mutant survival? Or something deeper and more spiritual as we see Nightcrawler wrestling with in this issue, and later in the spinoff series Way of X by Si Spurrier and Bob Quinn. At its fullest, this is the full suite of potential Krakoa offers X-Men comics, in ways wholly unique to the history of the Marvel Universe. The remaining “World of X” explorations again dig into Day in the Life on Krakoa, whether it’s Magneto standing up as the nations hero during the Empyre event invasion, or Cyclops and the Quiet Council responding to the emerging threat of Octogenerian Eco-Terrorists Hordeculture. There are perfectly valid reasons to find the Hickman run aimless, or worse, boring, but I’m struck re-reading even these seemingly one off pieces how many ideas are set up for future story. Magneto’s defense of Krakoa carves out Mutant Technology, targeted combinations of powersets, before Al Ewing gave it a name in SWORD #1, and X-Men #3, the controversial and out of nowhere elder comedy issue, sets up both hacked Krakoan gates, and the psychic feeding of Krakoa, measured by Selene and Emplate, just to name a few examples. There are always more examples, and that’s part of the thrill and potentially the disappointment of this run: overflowing ideas, with minimal resolution. Arakko / X of Swords The saga of Arakko is particularly unique in Hickman’s run because it directly follows up on one of the seeded plots of House of X, and I’d argue is the only plot category that sees a fulfilling end during Hickman’s time on the title. It’s also the only category with a full event around it – X of Swords – which definitely helps. The premise, is that in House of X #5, we learn that Apocalypse is familiar with the land of Krakoa, and that actually thousands of years ago, he was there when demonic forces invaded and split Krakoa’s original state – the one land of Okarra – into two: Krakoa and Arakko. The saga from X-Men into X of Swords then is the story of what exactly happened and what it means for Apocalypse. The thing Arakko does effectively early on – the first threads are continued in X-Men #2 – is lean into the history of Apocalypse, as one of few mutants on Krakoa who has generations of experience. Where Professor X and Magneto have decades of shaping human / mutant relations, Apocalypse has thousands of years of scheming, plotting, and waiting. And through the arrival of Arakko, the Summoner, and in X of Swords the full fledged reveal of the Apocalypse family, there’s a strong sense of mutant history, lost mutant culture, and purpose to the character Apocalypse, that had never been laid so bare before. I wouldn’t have guessed it, but when looking back, the most fully formed character development in the entire run goes to En Sabah Nur. The X of Swords reveal that Apocalypse stayed behind on Earth while his wife and children went to Amenth to fight for Arakko against Annihilation and the demon hordes is a huge one for the longtime villain. And it’s not just that the romance softens Apocalypse – although certainly revealing the beating heart of the Big Blue Daddy does that – but it’s the way it so incisively cuts to the character’s motivations as we’ve seen them in the history of the comics he’s appeared in. Apocalypse’s mantra of “survival of the fittest” is given emotional and deliberate heft behind the mission of making Earth’s mutants strong enough to support the Arakko mutants lost in Amenth. Apocalypse isn’t just acting out of belief; he’s acting out of desperation and expectation of a coming disaster. And perhaps most importantly, out of a desire to prove himself strong enough to the woman he loves. Structurally, the reveals of Apocalypse’s history remain one of the more controversial formalistic maneuvers of Hickman’s time on the title. X-Men issues #12 to #14 all tell the same mutant’s history Arakko, but from the vantage point of three different mutants (Summoner, Apocalypse, and Genesis). The use of comics and the space between panels to expand on known histories is a trick Hickman pulled to greater effect in East of West, but stacked one after the other, the effect feels a bit too openly like a deadline reprieve for Leinil Francis Yu and Sunny Gho, or perhaps Hickman himself. I think this is most disappointing because Arakko – a world inspired by Dune (the Dune planet of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic – A Hickman favorite – is literally called Arakkis) – has so much world to fill in, and fantasy to explore. Time spent rehashing known details to the degree these issues do is time away from getting to know the White Sword, or the legacy of Annihilation, and I would have preferred more of that. Big picture, though, the addition of Arakko and the many, many new mutants it brings to the Marvel Universe is an absurdly rich windfall of new character and potential story. The possibilities of fully developing characters like Isca the Unbeaten or Tarn the Uncaring (not to mention the millions of Arakki mutants as yet unnamed) is a much greater legacy than even the updates to an established property like Apocalypse. Among the many massive reveals of X of Swords core three issues – Creation, Revelation, and Destruction, cowritten by Hickman and Tini Howard – the return to Cyclops as our guide, as he and Jean determine the need for an X-Men roster, is one of the most important and memorable. It’s honestly a bit of a remarkable thing where readers realize together Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu’s run has lacked a proper X-Men team for the duration. Ultimately, though, if you flash back to X of Swords, and look at what Hickman wrote or co-wrote, the effect and legacy is the most decisively successful of anything in the run following House and Powers. Apocalypse and the story of Okarra is firmly followed up on and resolved. We get: The restoration of a mutant Captain Britain Corps The restoration of an X-Men team The restoration of the Apocalypse family in Amenth (a thing we didn’t know we should want) A vastly expanded mythos and relevance of Otherworld Complications with Krakoa’s resurrection process, particularly for Rockslide and Gorgon A reconfiguring of Krakoa’s Quiet Council Millions of Arakkin mutants on Earth, including the island Arakko itself. Nimrod’s Destiny House and Powers also set the stage for Nimrod and Destiny as major players in the future of mutant stories, and Hickman interlocks both threads across X-Men #6 and X-Men #20, by following up on Mystique’s role during the mutant invasion of the Orchis Forge in House of X, and Professor X and Magneto’s manipulation of Raven Darkholme despite Moira’s House/Powers declaration that Destiny cannot be resurrected. The backdrop is that Nimrod is the ultimate manifestation of mutant hunting sentinel technology, and that Moira’s 9th life is used so mutants of life 10 can destroy the Nimrod facility before it comes online (this happens in House of X #3 and #4. What we learn in these issues of X-Men, is that not only did this mission not succeed as it originally appeared, but unless Mystique can infiltrate Orchis in time, the inevitability of bringing a Nimrod online will come to fruition. At the heart of this story is the emotional core of Professor X and Magneto withholding Mystique’s wife, Destiny, from resurrection protocols as punishment for both her past and current failures. Nothing quite shines a light on the cruelty and callous pragmatism of the duo as their treatment of Mystique, knowing full well that regardless of Mystique’s actions they will never grant her the comfort of her loved one. Of course, what Magneto and Professor X don’t know is that Destiny foresaw this occurrence, and gave Mystique the instructions to burn it all down if they would not resurrect her. Again, it’s the perfect distillation of the hubris of the mutant ruling head of Xavier, Magneto and Moira,, as their hubris and treatment of those around them like pawns in the grand game will ultimately result in their undoing. Or at least it sure feels like that’s where we’re heading. Despite Mystique’s infiltration of Orchis, she does allow Dr. Gregor to successfully create a Nimrod, with the personality of her late husband (who sacrificed himself defending the Orchis Forge and killing the mutant strike team in House of X). This particular development feels like one of the larger glaring holes of the Hickman run, as Mystique has countless opportunities to strike earlier, but instea…
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