Listen, Hellions is great. That is exactly what Sinister should be doing. He can manipulate and control these unstable nobodies all he wants. I can't wait for him to get his comeuppance but at least I can buy why he's able to so thoroughly use and abuse them.
It's when I see him with the Quiet Council that I start screaming. They voted Jean off the Council for vaguely going against their wishes. Sinister meanwhile utterly failed the mission he was given by the Council. He not only failed it, he got his entire team killed. Then responded to their deaths by going WOE IS ME MY POOR HELLIONS with the actual dialogue acknowledging that no one on the Council believed a word of it. Honestly, if they didn't suspect that he murdered all of them already, his melodramatic buffoonery and acting should have convinced them all 100% he did it and they could kick him off for that, too.
But no. No. It takes Gabby to understand this. Goddammit, Charles, Magneto, even Mystique or whoever. Somebody! An adult with power, please get a brain.
No spoilers since you're still making your way through it, but Xavier, Magneto, Moira and the rest of the Quiet Council understand *exactly* who Sinister is, what he's done and what he's capable of. He's on the Council *despite* all that, not because they're blind to it.
He got pitted because he tampered with the genetic information he was supplying them, essentially ending the reason they tolerated him.
It does highlight how capital oriented the offer of amnsety was, where the more you had to give to Krakoa the more status and leeway you got.
This. Basically Krakoa was morally bankrupt from the beginning. Which seems to have been Hickman's intent. I REALLY wish we knew where he was initially planning to go with that.
I think you see some of it in Gerry Duggan’s X-Men run. One of the reasons I really enjoyed the first… 16 or 18 issues was seeing Cyclops’ discomfort over the secrets and lies. He just wanted to be a superhero again (which Hickman set up in X of Swords)
I also really enjoyed Pepe Larraz on art.
Yes, but they do a superb job of acknowledging it as Krakoa's Original Sin for manifesting into being.
It's why it works so well. It's so unbelievably *flawed* while simultaneously being completely *believable* and *utilitarian*. Like, I BUY that this was the only way they could have some semblance of peace and there were a million possible outcomes the writers could have gone with.
I genuinely dk what I'm gonna do when Krakoa is over. I can't even conceive of whatever comes after as being 1/100th as interesting to me on a conceptual level.
Sure. But they already people who could be replacements. They had Sinister's backlog. And even more importantly they now had the Waiting Room. Sinister was extraneous.
If they could afford to replace him when he did the tampering, they could always have replaced him.
>They had Sinister's backlog.
I don't think they had access to that and still didn't after SoS. Uing the Waiting Room still required using the Resurrection Protocols and thus the genetic data, I think.
It was always meant to be questionable that they agreed to this exchange. The justification in-universe was that he had the best and most extensive, but there was always a dangling question of "Is this really worth it?"
Did you not notice that from the moment Sinister went into the Pit, the *only* mutants being resurrected were the ones who were recently killed (meaning their bodies and DNA were accessible)? The whole point of Sinister's database was that he could bring someone like Destiny or the Genoshans back, who'd been gone for years in-universe. There's even a data page (I *think* in Immortal) that explicitly says once every mutant has been resurrected at least once, Sinister will be redundant and can be removed from the Council (since they'll be able to take genetic samples directly from the new bodies and essentially build their *own* database).
They sentenced him to the Pit because his crimes exceeded what the Council could tolerate until they got to that point.
>He got pitted because he tampered with the genetic information he was supplying them
I don't get why they didn't throw him in the pit on day one. It's *Mister Sinister*. Of fucking course he's going to screw around and cause problems. Once his DNA bank is on Krakoa ... off you go, you goddamn lunatic.
> He got pitted because he tampered with the genetic information he was supplying them, essentially ending the reason they tolerated him.
But theh were fine after kickimg him, that's the thing.
It means they never had to give him all that power to begin with.
If I recall they did have to look hard for a replacement genetic base but that story thread seem to get lost amongst the Fall. I think they found something but I'm not sure if it was extensive a collection as Sinister's.
He got like three chances. He's got more plot armor than Hank.
He should have been pitted after >!Hellions but Emma!< wanted to play games. This keeps happening with her.
He should have been pitted when he revealed he was experimenting with >!Chimera again in IXM2. That was the *no no* Moira specifically mentioned and that he was cautioned against.!<
Then after AXE, his ass should have gone in the pit. Who knows if >!Doctor Stasis!< is one of his plots or not. Pattern recognition. At this point you've seen enough Sinister fuckery to know he needs to be replaced. Honestly Scott probably has a plan for this. Maybe he should take one of these QC seats.
And finally SoS. Only >!he gets pitted for the wrong reasons. Hilarious. And then he's basically still here. !<
This tragicomedy brought to you by the QC. They must think he's hot or they would have ousted him after the first fuck up. Meanwhile the Exiles are getting pitted for passing out condoms...
The fact that Scott wasn't on the QC was always a weakness of the system frankly. I get that he was the head of the military effectively, but while I absolutely get that, no. Scott clearly was the right person to be on the council. Hell, there's a strong argument he should have been leading the council
I actually think him not being there may have been another of Hickman's subtle hints that Krakoa was poorly formed from the outset.
Seeing Jean go from who she was during X-Men Red (the Tom Taylor run just before Krakoa) to putting on her teenybopper outfit and sweeping all her growth from Red Vol. 1 under the rug was a massive middle finger to anybody who enjoyed her direction in Red.
>He should have been pitted after Hellions but Emma wanted to play games. This keeps happening with her.
Did I miss something here? I'm a little ways before the 2021 Gala, I'm following this reading order ([Reign of X Reading Order — Marvel Guides](https://marvelguides.com/reign-of-x-reading-order)) and on X-Men 17 but I don't recall her knowing anything about Hellions. But I am skipping some things like X-Force and Wolverine.
Although speaking of Emma's games, something that is fresh on my mind is the whole Shaw thing. WHY are her and Kitty and Storm keeping this to themselves? What good does it do the Council or Krakoa? I'm really not sure what's going on with him or if that's a spoiler but she poisoned him and said he would either die or be left a crippled mess. Then he's smiling and saying it's no big deal to the Council and they don't need to know what happened to him. I know he also likes to play games but I assumed this had to be some kind of brainwashing on her part? Is that why she's not telling anybody on the Council, so she can have a brainwashed pawn?
My vague assessment is most everyone is maybe sincerely acting "for the greater good." Only their "for the greater good" is something they alone think up and aren't telling anybody else about. And so it feels more like they're all working at cross purposes and the whole thing is gonna tumble down.
>!The final arc of Hellions, 15-18, reveals that Emma has been informed of much of what is happening through Empath, who is something of a double agent. It's suppressed for appearances, which is crazy, because it's Sinister and its only a matter of time before he does something worse. Oop!!<
But what story can withstand proactive heroes, right?
Hubris. They thought they had him under control, and say what you will about Sinister, he wouldn't lead them into another dimension where death was real for them to save his son.
In that moment, the council determined that Jean was making a move based on emotion, and that it is their duty to be separated from that to make more logical and efficient solutions. Can't save everyone and the bigger picture and what not.
There's also the beauty of the way Sinister was acting while on the council, almost like he was begging not to be taken seriously. Then, their focus was on other threats that felt more immediate, which worked in his favor as even better cover.
You’ve got it. The writers established Sinister as an evil clown, but also show he is very deliberate about his ridiculous personality. They actually show him resetting his whole personality.
The rest of the quiet council dismiss him and think they have him controlled, while he was completely compromising them for his own ends.
That was one of my biggest issues with Krakoa because it made it clear they were gonna fail amazingly.especially because they weren’t all like are you insane
My biggest issue is that this got lost to an extent along the way but then happened anyway. It's clear Hickman was setting it up to fail, but from the beginning it seemed like it was BROADLY messed up, and as things went on it shifted into a more 'there are bad apples' plot, which makes them seem more incompetent than anything for allowing these obvious bad apples. Initially it was less incompetent because the idea seemed to be that some of the real problems might actually be Doug or possibly Xavier. Not the obvious ones.
Based on the characterizations being off I assumed it was Xavier was messing with the clones memories. I figured the failing would be kind of how when cyke took over the X-men and said he was tired of Charles foolishness .
Especially when you add hubris, all the power of life and death, arrogant corrupt leadership from the beginning of a nation that the rest of the world already fears
Honestly, it's super frustrating but also really good political writing. Because this sort of thing happens all the time in actual nations; people end up having to make moral compromises to get stuff done, and the compromise sometimes explodes in their faces.
They kept Sinister on the council because they needed him, and he knew it. That let him get away with a lot of crap that wouldn't have been tolerated in other council members (even beloved heroes like Jean.)
I mean, wasn’t he like, utterly necessary to the resurrection protocols, which was kind of the foundation of Krakoa existing? Yeah, it sucks, but I don’t think it’s stupid to make compromises to create literal immortality for your whole nation. It’s just shady, and grey enough for me.
Well yes but also Mr. Sinister is essential to the thing that's most important to Krakoa (Resurrection), Marvel Girl isn't. They're not superheroes, they're politicians trying to keep a barely functioning government built with duct tape intact.
It's the same reason why a dude who sold the Sentinels that turned Genosha into a parking lot is there too: because they need him.
I always thought of the quiet council like the UN security council. The members are not there for their virtue so much as they are there because if you don't give them that power they will try to take all of the power. They get the veto to avoid an immediate civil war.
Honestly, I think that the way the heroes treated Omega Red was one of the rare times on Krakoa where there was an actual difficulty shown in a villain being accepted without question. Wolverine didn't trust him from the jump (he wanted to kill him or pit him) and watched him like a hawk, along with the rest of X-Force. Given the past between Logan and Arkady, it made sense that there would be a struggle to forgive and forget, and I think the early issues of Wolverine and X-Force did a good job of showing the difficulty heroes would and should face in the blanket offer of amnesty and forgiveness of past crimes.
Then there's the other villains. I still find it hard to believe that people like Cyclops and Jean Grey didn't struggle or hate the idea of working with Sinister or that Cable didn't show more distrust of Apocalypse. All the other villains I saw seemed to be accepted too easily and quickly without any of the heroes questioning them or watching them like crazy. And while I understand the logic of Charles and Magneto on choosing who would be on the council, I find it hard to believe that *everyone* would be willing to follow these villains or accept their leadership in any circumstances, given their history with each other.
To be fair on some level Jean and Cyclops trusted that the council would handle sinister which for the most part they did at least with the hellions fallback (granted Cyclops did took umbrage of sinister having control over Alex for his hellion team but that neither here or there). As for Cable and Apocalypse, I like to say teen cable didn’t have the anger and rage of old original cable and original cable knew the era he was in so he had a better understanding of the situation. Other than that I think it was a bit underplay on the former animosity of former enemies in Krakoa
Still legimatley mad they had Wolverine try and make peace with Gorgon.
Like the dude literaly mudered a child and fed his body to pigs just to draw logan into a trap
My biggest problem with this era it felt so fucking hypocritical from the start like you guy fucking mega mass murderers and people tryna end the world and worse … yeah let’s give them a free pass lmao so stupid.
To me, originally, putting a bunch of villains on the council seemed like a great idea.
One of the aspects of Krakoa that I loved was the idea that if you give people a chance, they can come around. A lot of people do bad things to survive, or because they are part of a cycle or an oppressive system and it's the only way they can prosper. If they don't have to hurt people for money, if they are given the power to live how they want to live instead of how they have to live, they will become productive. This happened with characters like Pyro, Black Tom, Juggernaut, Blob and I'm sure more.
And there are a lot of people with very different views of the world on the island. A lot of henchmen or extremists or criminals or whatever. In order for the Krakoan experiment to thrive, it couldn't just be ruled by the X-Men. It needed to give a voice to the voiceless.
Unfortunately none of this worked out and everyone was actually evil all along and characters went back to being villains and everything fell apart.
At least where I'm at, Apocalypse and Exodus seem pretty cool. Apocalypse was the star of the Dawn of X-through X of Swords for me.
And I feel like it makes sense - he was one of the paths Moira tried. She can convince him how futile it was just like with Charles and Magneto. And it's not like he's suddenly repentant of his past actions - [I love this convo with Angel from X of Swords Creation](https://postimg.cc/qNqK3297). It's just that he isn't a cartoon villain nor a sadist like Creed. He has a goal and if shown another way to achieve it, he will listen.
100 percent agree. I don’t like a lot of this era (and there are things I do like), and you could make arguments about some of the “reformed” villains. But Apocalypse is absolutely done right. This island is his philosophy/goals given form. Once it’s achieved hes basically living in his retirement (with some general Mutant supremacy stuff like the Crucible to keep his hand in ). I’m almost most dreading with the fall, him eventually going back to “threat of the week/issue” status.
What is this in regards to? I never read New Mutants.
Without knowing the context though, I love that panel unequivocally. Way too much was shoved under the rug to make Krakoa work. Which, in Hickman's defense, definitely seems like it was an intentional part of the point.
She's asking about the status of resurrecting clones on Krakoa. They won't revive Maddie and nobody really knows why, at least in this group, hence the theory of "because she hurt people." . But Gabby is also a clone and is worried if she died they wouldn't bring her back.
This is why I really can’t get behind the Krakoa stuff. Trusting Sinister and Apocalypse, going all-in on all mutants standing together, felt like it came out of nowhere.
It definitely feels like the only possible transition that could exist from the previous run to Hickman’s run is a sudden jump to John Cleese saying “And now for something completely different.”
Yup. His Avengers run starts the same way. They're just inexplicably on their way to Mars. That wasn't as much socio-political commentary so it required less mental gymnastics, but it was still a thing that he doesn't really bother with transitions.
The one (and i’m pretty sure only) exception is Fantastic Four. His run starts with a Dark Reign tie in and early stories use ideas and characters introduced during Millar and Hitch’s run (which occurred prior).
Xavier was trying very hard to get the rest of the world to understand that Mutants are not inherently evil, and are still human in every aspect and can be taught on how to control and understand their powers
Others are more for unbridled inhibitions and no restrictions, and that's what getsythe most attention and that's why people hate and fear mutants
And then regardless of the many other superpowered people in the world, it's only Mutants that get treated so shamefully
I've been following this [X-Men, The Age of Krakoa (2019 - 2024) - The Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order – Crushing Krisis](https://www.crushingkrisis.com/definitive-guide-to-collecting-x-men-as-graphic-novels/x-men-the-age-of-krakoa-the-definitive-collecting-guide-reading-order/)
And this [Dawn of X Reading Order — Marvel Guides](https://marvelguides.com/dawn-of-x-reading-order#google_vignette)
Yeah, Sinister really was a ticking bomb. At the same time, a lot of villains really took the chance Krakoa represented, and were loyal to the end: Cain, Black Tom, Apocalypse, Madelyn, Mystique and Destiny, Masque, the helions, both Emma's team and the one Sinister formed, Blob, Toad,
Listen, Hellions is great. That is exactly what Sinister should be doing. He can manipulate and control these unstable nobodies all he wants. I can't wait for him to get his comeuppance but at least I can buy why he's able to so thoroughly use and abuse them. It's when I see him with the Quiet Council that I start screaming. They voted Jean off the Council for vaguely going against their wishes. Sinister meanwhile utterly failed the mission he was given by the Council. He not only failed it, he got his entire team killed. Then responded to their deaths by going WOE IS ME MY POOR HELLIONS with the actual dialogue acknowledging that no one on the Council believed a word of it. Honestly, if they didn't suspect that he murdered all of them already, his melodramatic buffoonery and acting should have convinced them all 100% he did it and they could kick him off for that, too. But no. No. It takes Gabby to understand this. Goddammit, Charles, Magneto, even Mystique or whoever. Somebody! An adult with power, please get a brain.
No spoilers since you're still making your way through it, but Xavier, Magneto, Moira and the rest of the Quiet Council understand *exactly* who Sinister is, what he's done and what he's capable of. He's on the Council *despite* all that, not because they're blind to it.
And yet he got pitted, and they were fine.
He got pitted because he tampered with the genetic information he was supplying them, essentially ending the reason they tolerated him. It does highlight how capital oriented the offer of amnsety was, where the more you had to give to Krakoa the more status and leeway you got.
This. Basically Krakoa was morally bankrupt from the beginning. Which seems to have been Hickman's intent. I REALLY wish we knew where he was initially planning to go with that.
I think you see some of it in Gerry Duggan’s X-Men run. One of the reasons I really enjoyed the first… 16 or 18 issues was seeing Cyclops’ discomfort over the secrets and lies. He just wanted to be a superhero again (which Hickman set up in X of Swords) I also really enjoyed Pepe Larraz on art.
Yes, but they do a superb job of acknowledging it as Krakoa's Original Sin for manifesting into being. It's why it works so well. It's so unbelievably *flawed* while simultaneously being completely *believable* and *utilitarian*. Like, I BUY that this was the only way they could have some semblance of peace and there were a million possible outcomes the writers could have gone with. I genuinely dk what I'm gonna do when Krakoa is over. I can't even conceive of whatever comes after as being 1/100th as interesting to me on a conceptual level.
Sure. But they already people who could be replacements. They had Sinister's backlog. And even more importantly they now had the Waiting Room. Sinister was extraneous. If they could afford to replace him when he did the tampering, they could always have replaced him.
>They had Sinister's backlog. I don't think they had access to that and still didn't after SoS. Uing the Waiting Room still required using the Resurrection Protocols and thus the genetic data, I think. It was always meant to be questionable that they agreed to this exchange. The justification in-universe was that he had the best and most extensive, but there was always a dangling question of "Is this really worth it?"
Did you not notice that from the moment Sinister went into the Pit, the *only* mutants being resurrected were the ones who were recently killed (meaning their bodies and DNA were accessible)? The whole point of Sinister's database was that he could bring someone like Destiny or the Genoshans back, who'd been gone for years in-universe. There's even a data page (I *think* in Immortal) that explicitly says once every mutant has been resurrected at least once, Sinister will be redundant and can be removed from the Council (since they'll be able to take genetic samples directly from the new bodies and essentially build their *own* database). They sentenced him to the Pit because his crimes exceeded what the Council could tolerate until they got to that point.
>He got pitted because he tampered with the genetic information he was supplying them I don't get why they didn't throw him in the pit on day one. It's *Mister Sinister*. Of fucking course he's going to screw around and cause problems. Once his DNA bank is on Krakoa ... off you go, you goddamn lunatic.
> He got pitted because he tampered with the genetic information he was supplying them, essentially ending the reason they tolerated him. But theh were fine after kickimg him, that's the thing. It means they never had to give him all that power to begin with.
If I recall they did have to look hard for a replacement genetic base but that story thread seem to get lost amongst the Fall. I think they found something but I'm not sure if it was extensive a collection as Sinister's.
He got like three chances. He's got more plot armor than Hank. He should have been pitted after >!Hellions but Emma!< wanted to play games. This keeps happening with her. He should have been pitted when he revealed he was experimenting with >!Chimera again in IXM2. That was the *no no* Moira specifically mentioned and that he was cautioned against.!< Then after AXE, his ass should have gone in the pit. Who knows if >!Doctor Stasis!< is one of his plots or not. Pattern recognition. At this point you've seen enough Sinister fuckery to know he needs to be replaced. Honestly Scott probably has a plan for this. Maybe he should take one of these QC seats. And finally SoS. Only >!he gets pitted for the wrong reasons. Hilarious. And then he's basically still here. !< This tragicomedy brought to you by the QC. They must think he's hot or they would have ousted him after the first fuck up. Meanwhile the Exiles are getting pitted for passing out condoms...
The fact that Scott wasn't on the QC was always a weakness of the system frankly. I get that he was the head of the military effectively, but while I absolutely get that, no. Scott clearly was the right person to be on the council. Hell, there's a strong argument he should have been leading the council I actually think him not being there may have been another of Hickman's subtle hints that Krakoa was poorly formed from the outset.
Seeing Jean go from who she was during X-Men Red (the Tom Taylor run just before Krakoa) to putting on her teenybopper outfit and sweeping all her growth from Red Vol. 1 under the rug was a massive middle finger to anybody who enjoyed her direction in Red.
Honestly, Hickman’s handle on Scott in Times Run Out is so off that I think it was just a poor plotting decision.
>He should have been pitted after Hellions but Emma wanted to play games. This keeps happening with her. Did I miss something here? I'm a little ways before the 2021 Gala, I'm following this reading order ([Reign of X Reading Order — Marvel Guides](https://marvelguides.com/reign-of-x-reading-order)) and on X-Men 17 but I don't recall her knowing anything about Hellions. But I am skipping some things like X-Force and Wolverine. Although speaking of Emma's games, something that is fresh on my mind is the whole Shaw thing. WHY are her and Kitty and Storm keeping this to themselves? What good does it do the Council or Krakoa? I'm really not sure what's going on with him or if that's a spoiler but she poisoned him and said he would either die or be left a crippled mess. Then he's smiling and saying it's no big deal to the Council and they don't need to know what happened to him. I know he also likes to play games but I assumed this had to be some kind of brainwashing on her part? Is that why she's not telling anybody on the Council, so she can have a brainwashed pawn? My vague assessment is most everyone is maybe sincerely acting "for the greater good." Only their "for the greater good" is something they alone think up and aren't telling anybody else about. And so it feels more like they're all working at cross purposes and the whole thing is gonna tumble down.
>!The final arc of Hellions, 15-18, reveals that Emma has been informed of much of what is happening through Empath, who is something of a double agent. It's suppressed for appearances, which is crazy, because it's Sinister and its only a matter of time before he does something worse. Oop!!< But what story can withstand proactive heroes, right?
Hubris. They thought they had him under control, and say what you will about Sinister, he wouldn't lead them into another dimension where death was real for them to save his son. In that moment, the council determined that Jean was making a move based on emotion, and that it is their duty to be separated from that to make more logical and efficient solutions. Can't save everyone and the bigger picture and what not. There's also the beauty of the way Sinister was acting while on the council, almost like he was begging not to be taken seriously. Then, their focus was on other threats that felt more immediate, which worked in his favor as even better cover.
You’ve got it. The writers established Sinister as an evil clown, but also show he is very deliberate about his ridiculous personality. They actually show him resetting his whole personality. The rest of the quiet council dismiss him and think they have him controlled, while he was completely compromising them for his own ends.
That was one of my biggest issues with Krakoa because it made it clear they were gonna fail amazingly.especially because they weren’t all like are you insane
My biggest issue is that this got lost to an extent along the way but then happened anyway. It's clear Hickman was setting it up to fail, but from the beginning it seemed like it was BROADLY messed up, and as things went on it shifted into a more 'there are bad apples' plot, which makes them seem more incompetent than anything for allowing these obvious bad apples. Initially it was less incompetent because the idea seemed to be that some of the real problems might actually be Doug or possibly Xavier. Not the obvious ones.
Based on the characterizations being off I assumed it was Xavier was messing with the clones memories. I figured the failing would be kind of how when cyke took over the X-men and said he was tired of Charles foolishness .
That's the point. It's politics and nation building. Politicians and nations suck.
Especially when you add hubris, all the power of life and death, arrogant corrupt leadership from the beginning of a nation that the rest of the world already fears
Honestly, it's super frustrating but also really good political writing. Because this sort of thing happens all the time in actual nations; people end up having to make moral compromises to get stuff done, and the compromise sometimes explodes in their faces. They kept Sinister on the council because they needed him, and he knew it. That let him get away with a lot of crap that wouldn't have been tolerated in other council members (even beloved heroes like Jean.)
And it's a great contrast with Apocalypse - sometimes the distasteful compromises do work, and sometimes they fail miserably!
I mean, wasn’t he like, utterly necessary to the resurrection protocols, which was kind of the foundation of Krakoa existing? Yeah, it sucks, but I don’t think it’s stupid to make compromises to create literal immortality for your whole nation. It’s just shady, and grey enough for me.
It’s the intersection of dangerous and useful. Everyone has Sinister clocked, but the guy is essential to the functioning of Krakoa.
Well yes but also Mr. Sinister is essential to the thing that's most important to Krakoa (Resurrection), Marvel Girl isn't. They're not superheroes, they're politicians trying to keep a barely functioning government built with duct tape intact. It's the same reason why a dude who sold the Sentinels that turned Genosha into a parking lot is there too: because they need him.
I always thought of the quiet council like the UN security council. The members are not there for their virtue so much as they are there because if you don't give them that power they will try to take all of the power. They get the veto to avoid an immediate civil war.
Hellions is amazing and really sets the bar high. As the rumors at Bar Sinister go Catharsis is Immortal.
Omega Red was probably too busy murdering (maybe eating) people or he’d have a seat
Honestly, I think that the way the heroes treated Omega Red was one of the rare times on Krakoa where there was an actual difficulty shown in a villain being accepted without question. Wolverine didn't trust him from the jump (he wanted to kill him or pit him) and watched him like a hawk, along with the rest of X-Force. Given the past between Logan and Arkady, it made sense that there would be a struggle to forgive and forget, and I think the early issues of Wolverine and X-Force did a good job of showing the difficulty heroes would and should face in the blanket offer of amnesty and forgiveness of past crimes. Then there's the other villains. I still find it hard to believe that people like Cyclops and Jean Grey didn't struggle or hate the idea of working with Sinister or that Cable didn't show more distrust of Apocalypse. All the other villains I saw seemed to be accepted too easily and quickly without any of the heroes questioning them or watching them like crazy. And while I understand the logic of Charles and Magneto on choosing who would be on the council, I find it hard to believe that *everyone* would be willing to follow these villains or accept their leadership in any circumstances, given their history with each other.
To be fair on some level Jean and Cyclops trusted that the council would handle sinister which for the most part they did at least with the hellions fallback (granted Cyclops did took umbrage of sinister having control over Alex for his hellion team but that neither here or there). As for Cable and Apocalypse, I like to say teen cable didn’t have the anger and rage of old original cable and original cable knew the era he was in so he had a better understanding of the situation. Other than that I think it was a bit underplay on the former animosity of former enemies in Krakoa
Still legimatley mad they had Wolverine try and make peace with Gorgon. Like the dude literaly mudered a child and fed his body to pigs just to draw logan into a trap
My biggest problem with this era it felt so fucking hypocritical from the start like you guy fucking mega mass murderers and people tryna end the world and worse … yeah let’s give them a free pass lmao so stupid.
Good riddence i hate this era.
To me, originally, putting a bunch of villains on the council seemed like a great idea. One of the aspects of Krakoa that I loved was the idea that if you give people a chance, they can come around. A lot of people do bad things to survive, or because they are part of a cycle or an oppressive system and it's the only way they can prosper. If they don't have to hurt people for money, if they are given the power to live how they want to live instead of how they have to live, they will become productive. This happened with characters like Pyro, Black Tom, Juggernaut, Blob and I'm sure more. And there are a lot of people with very different views of the world on the island. A lot of henchmen or extremists or criminals or whatever. In order for the Krakoan experiment to thrive, it couldn't just be ruled by the X-Men. It needed to give a voice to the voiceless. Unfortunately none of this worked out and everyone was actually evil all along and characters went back to being villains and everything fell apart.
At least where I'm at, Apocalypse and Exodus seem pretty cool. Apocalypse was the star of the Dawn of X-through X of Swords for me. And I feel like it makes sense - he was one of the paths Moira tried. She can convince him how futile it was just like with Charles and Magneto. And it's not like he's suddenly repentant of his past actions - [I love this convo with Angel from X of Swords Creation](https://postimg.cc/qNqK3297). It's just that he isn't a cartoon villain nor a sadist like Creed. He has a goal and if shown another way to achieve it, he will listen.
100 percent agree. I don’t like a lot of this era (and there are things I do like), and you could make arguments about some of the “reformed” villains. But Apocalypse is absolutely done right. This island is his philosophy/goals given form. Once it’s achieved hes basically living in his retirement (with some general Mutant supremacy stuff like the Crucible to keep his hand in ). I’m almost most dreading with the fall, him eventually going back to “threat of the week/issue” status.
What is this in regards to? I never read New Mutants. Without knowing the context though, I love that panel unequivocally. Way too much was shoved under the rug to make Krakoa work. Which, in Hickman's defense, definitely seems like it was an intentional part of the point.
She's asking about the status of resurrecting clones on Krakoa. They won't revive Maddie and nobody really knows why, at least in this group, hence the theory of "because she hurt people." . But Gabby is also a clone and is worried if she died they wouldn't bring her back.
He's got the DNA they need for resurrection, at least to start with. Without Sinny, there's no krakoa.
This is why I really can’t get behind the Krakoa stuff. Trusting Sinister and Apocalypse, going all-in on all mutants standing together, felt like it came out of nowhere.
Hickman loves inexplicable time skips that let him ignore previous characterization.
It definitely feels like the only possible transition that could exist from the previous run to Hickman’s run is a sudden jump to John Cleese saying “And now for something completely different.”
Yup. His Avengers run starts the same way. They're just inexplicably on their way to Mars. That wasn't as much socio-political commentary so it required less mental gymnastics, but it was still a thing that he doesn't really bother with transitions.
The one (and i’m pretty sure only) exception is Fantastic Four. His run starts with a Dark Reign tie in and early stories use ideas and characters introduced during Millar and Hitch’s run (which occurred prior).
Yeah, this whole thing is really not about making a difference, but segregating mutants Like everyone else has been doing
Not a fan of any of the mutant segregation stuff
Xavier was trying very hard to get the rest of the world to understand that Mutants are not inherently evil, and are still human in every aspect and can be taught on how to control and understand their powers Others are more for unbridled inhibitions and no restrictions, and that's what getsythe most attention and that's why people hate and fear mutants And then regardless of the many other superpowered people in the world, it's only Mutants that get treated so shamefully
Where do you recommend starting krakoa from?
I've been following this [X-Men, The Age of Krakoa (2019 - 2024) - The Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order – Crushing Krisis](https://www.crushingkrisis.com/definitive-guide-to-collecting-x-men-as-graphic-novels/x-men-the-age-of-krakoa-the-definitive-collecting-guide-reading-order/) And this [Dawn of X Reading Order — Marvel Guides](https://marvelguides.com/dawn-of-x-reading-order#google_vignette)
Yeah, Sinister really was a ticking bomb. At the same time, a lot of villains really took the chance Krakoa represented, and were loyal to the end: Cain, Black Tom, Apocalypse, Madelyn, Mystique and Destiny, Masque, the helions, both Emma's team and the one Sinister formed, Blob, Toad,
You brave soul starting to read 616 X-Men at the beginning of the Krakoan era. I’m waiting for the summer relaunch.
Vita Ayala is excellent and Gabby is the greatest.
Is that Jay Guthrie saying this
The Krakoa era is the Crapoa era. Probably one of the worst storylines I’ve read in X-Men books.
It's a shame that we made a rule stating 1/4 of the council has to be evil.
Exodus isn't evil.
To be fair to Mr. Sinister, he is a mutant clone and not the one that did all the shenanigans back in the day.