On the End of Krakoa X-Men Comics

Note: This Column was originally written in October 2023 for the CBH newsletter. Minor edits have been made to reflect publication again in May 2024!

Close to 5 years ago, I awaited the birth of my second son, and was so caught up in House of X / Powers of X fever, that I spent downtime in the hospital reading as many Marvel Comics involving the Phalanx as I could think of. I did this because the Phalanx had recently appeared in Jonathan Hickman and R.B. Silva’s Powers of X, and I was writing out Krakin’ Krakoa episode #4, a complete history of the Phalanx. I had just started posting the series to Youtube and the CBH podcast a few weeks prior with a complete history of Professor X, and couldn’t have been having more fun. The obsessive excitement of deep-diving into every element of X-Men lore as a new instant classic spawned fans everywhere is oddly ingrained in my memories of my second-born’s first moments.

The boy is even named Douglock.

(No, not really!!!)

Five years later, lil’ Douglock is a fully grown man working a 9 to 5, and the Krakoa era of X-Men comics is at its end. The build to *an* end has been in the works for some time (the announcement of Tom Breevort taking over as X-line editor for Jordan D. White came in the fall of 2023), but it really wasn’t until last week that I fully, finally admitted this is *really* ending. This struck me in full when I read Kieron Gillen’s newsletter announcing he was leaving X-Men Comics (and Marvel as a whole) after The Rise of the Powers of X, and alluded to Al Ewing leaving as well, with the chance to conclude his X-Men saga. Given that Gillen and Ewing have been writing my favorite X-Men comics since the Destiny of X started in 2022, this put a concrete expiration date on the Krakoan Age. Even though it wasn’t especially surprising, the confirmation nonetheless left me genuinely sad. All good stories should end, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t bittersweet.

The Krakoa Era as a whole is a complex mixture of the best X-Men comics of the 2000’s and unfulfilled promise, sometimes all at the same time. Depending on the day and my mood, I could make a case for either quite easily! Regardless of which side of the line you fall on, I’ve certainly never been more interested and committed to X-Men comics, and that speaks to the power of the foundations built by Hickman and the X-Office. The Krakoa era always had a chance to offer the best of Marvel, both present day and historically, and that’s about all you can ask for from a creative vision for these long-running perpetually recycled characters and concepts. With the end in sight, I appreciate that I got to live through this era. It was a true rarity.

By next summer, X-Men Comics will be relaunching. This is not hyperbole, as Tom Breevort recently confirmed in his newsletter that he’s actively working on said relaunch! Throughout my coverage of this era, I’ve always tried to maintain a healthy calm to counteract fandom’s reliable fits of panic. I was skeptical that Hickman was truly leaving X-Men Comics for good (he did), I insisted the era could survive without Hickman (it did!), and I’ve been on the frontlines saying the end of this Krakoan age doesn’t necessarily dictate the end of Krakoa a nation state during the Tom Breevort era (it doesn’t… but it’s not looking good for Davestiny!). As the end approaches, though, I have to admit the writing on the wall. More often than not when I step in to urge calm, Marvel shortly thereafter confirms that fandom’s concerns are, in fact, correct. So, no, Breevort’s relaunched X-Men comics moving away from the 5 year Krakoan experiment doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be bad (a weirdly common assumption), but it does almost certainly mean he’s not interested in relaunching under the shadow of a “second Krakoan Age.” I think Marvel Comics feels this experiment has run its course, and I’m done defending the idea that maybe they’ll want to protect the most interesting foundation for the franchise since Morrison.

It’s funny, one of the earliest warnings I had for X-Men fans was what happened to X-Men comics after the Morrison era of New X-Men ended. After signs of vaguely experimental progress, there is always a regression “back to basics.” So naturally, as history repeats, I overlooked it because it didn’t want it to be true. But history tells us that’s what’s coming, and we ignore her warnings too often. You can wait and see the creative teams and titles that get announced (Davestiny’s got an eye on James Tynion IV and Elena Casagrande’s Uncanny X-Men #1, and Jed MacKay and Alessandro Cappuccio’s New X-Men #1), but I promise, you don’t have to wait and see if the new regime’s going to focus on more familiar players in more familiar settings.

The most interesting piece to consider is what lessons were learned (or should have been learned) during the 5 year Krakoan experiment? There are a lot, but here are the first 3 that come to mind:

1) Linewide Collaborations Are Too Limited

There’s this platonic ideal of a shared superhero universe where all the various creative partners are working in perfect synchronicity, and their various comic books are all locked in a tightly wound shared continuity. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts by virtue of all comics rising to a clear shared goal, and every piece of the puzzle feels vital as a result (Most often this attempts to recreate the vision of the Stan, Jack, Steve days, or in the case of Jim Shooter’s early 90’s Valiant Comics, it’s the whole hook!). For most of the Krakoan Era, this is the portrait we were sold of the X-Office, a uniquely collaborative environment of storytelling, closer to a TV writer’s room than the isolated aloofness of comic books. In the first couple years, this was routinely celebrated, and you had fans wondering why the Spider-Man office couldn’t function the same way.

It was probably very hard work for everyone involved, not least of which includes editorial organization, and it definitely *did* create a sense of titles working in tandem that superhero comics often struggle with. One of the most exciting parts of the Dawn of X was seeing each of the 6 launch titles release, and figuring out which elements of the new foundation they’d get to tap into.

Within a year the cracks were showing, and 4 years later, it lacks any real selling power.

Here’s the thing: I love the premise! I get sucked into that platonic ideal, too, and I think the X-Office, for a time, got as close as I think I’ve ever seen a Big 2 network get to nailing it.

But even they fell short. Now, a big part of this is Marvel Comics sales tactics mean substantially too many comic books need to be published every month, so the X-Line’s 6 launch titles – perhaps a manageable allotment – continued to balloon until the benefits of a shared collaboration evaporated. Nonetheless, my takeaway is that the grand writer’s room approach to a Marvel book can only work in the short-term. Otherwise it’s best to let each individual creative unit move towards their own vision (with guiding foundational principles that are standard in a shared universe, of course).

2) Finish What You Start

Two things are simultaneously true: On one hand, X-Men readers who bailed after Jonathan Hickman left the line missed out on 3-4 of the best comics of the entire era (Immortal X-Men, X-Men Red, Sabretooth, and *maybe* Children of the Vault), and on the other, Hickman leaving after building House of X / Powers of X and ~30 issues of X-Men set-up is one of the great ‘What Ifs’ in Marvel history. Readers were wrong to assume X-Men comics would die without Hickman, but they were right to feel that the era could never be the same. I compared Hickman’s exodus to the Oklahoma City Thunder trading James Harden after the 2012 NBA Finals, and it’s a flawed analogy, but the center feels right: in hindsight, these franchises had a very real chance to elevate to the best in the world, and instead they got close but never won the title.

The lesson, though, is that I don’t think you can have superstar creators build the foundations for a beloved franchise, but not see it through to a form of conclusion. I don’t think comics fans will ever really accept it. It’s just not the way the medium has worked in Big 2 comics. This notion that Hickman could create this wonderful tapestry for how X-Men comics or the Ultimate Universe will function sounds nice in theory, but it breaks fan’s brains to then hear it won’t also be him taking part in that execution.

At the end of the day, this may be entirely outside editorial control. James Tynion IV left Batman because Substack threw Scrooge McDuck’s vault at him, not because they didn’t want to grant him the runway for a story. Hickman’s exit is partially a similar story. But to whatever degree possible, success of any established direction is going to ride on the creators who build it. They should be protected at all costs.

3) Never Stop Never Stopping

In football, this thing often happens with less experienced coaches where they get a big lead, and they promptly clam up. Suddenly they’re protecting something instead of building something, and their decision-making gets safe. They stop taking chances and doing the things that got them the lead in the first place, and before you know it, they’re staring down a roaring comeback and an embarrassing loss.

House of X didn’t drive the greatest resurgence in X-Men comics in my lifetime by playing it safe. X-Men Blue and X-Men Gold didn’t take the world by storm by declaring X-Men teams would be playing softball again. Yet at too many moments, in too many comics throughout the Krakoa era, the X-Office felt far too comfortable resting on their laurels. Much like Professor X and Magneto, they believed this paradise could well and truly last forever, and paced their storytelling accordingly.

Patience is a virtue, I am told. It *can* be a virtue in storytelling too. Just look at Chris Claremont’s multi-year build to Inferno or Hickman’s years-in-the-making reveal of Rabum Alal. A successful slow build is one of the most satisfying feelings as a comics fan, an affirmation of the focus and time put into a narrative honed by a master of the craft.

What too many fans forget when they highlight the masters of the long con is that they remembered to keep their works decidedly exciting and purpose-driven along the way. One of the hooks of the Krakoa era was the feeling that these stories could be told for *ages*, but more often than not, creators felt that they had too much time. This led to withholding the truly exciting moments for snail-like pace, and overly predictable windows for a final payoff (*ahem*Hellfire Gala*ahem*). During the Realm of X, which was admittedly heavily influenced by the unpredictability the COVID-19 pandemic first brought to the market, Hickman even admitted “they punted” story. As in, they weren’t trying to score, they were just keeping the game going until everything could line up. You can feel that as a reader, and it’s not just during this COVID influenced moment when that was true.

On one hand, I want to push for the continued opportunities for creators to hone long-form storytelling over years, especially since it is one of the medium’s great strengths. I also definitely empathize with the creative challenge of writing both for the month-to-month readers, and the much larger crowd that will binge the whole work in collections or via digital like Marvel Unlimited. But superhero comics have to convey a sense of urgency and direction. If you have storytelling cash, SPEND IT. If you have all the good will in the world, take a swing! If you wait too long, it has a funny way of becoming too late.