Pax Krakoa
“Pax Krakoa”
X-Men #1
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Pencils by Leinil Francis Yu
Inks by Gerry Alanguilan
Color art by Sunny Gho
Welcome to the new normal. “Pax Krakoa,” the first proper issue of Jonathan Hickman’s flagship X-Men series, has the feeling of the opening episode of the second season of a television show. After all the major paradigm shifts of House of X/Powers of X we’re coming back into the story in a more low-key way, and just getting a feel for the new world of the X-Men. We get a sense of what X-Men field missions are like, we see what domestic life on Krakoa is like for some of our heroes, and check in on Orchis after the X-Men wrecked their Mother Mold. There’s some action at the start as the X-Men attack an Orchis base, but even that scene is mostly just Cyclops and Storm spouting exposition that brings the reader up to speed on recent changes and the X-Men’s new mission.
This could be dull in narrative and plot momentum terms, but since everything is still so new it’s just a pleasure to take in some smaller character moments. The issue is largely focused on Cyclops, and establishing Hickman’s take on the character. This version of the character is very much in line with the mutant survivalist radicalism that was central to his depiction from the mid 2000s through the mid 2010s, but relieved of the burdens of being played as a pariah or terrorist, this Cyclops gets to be portrayed as a purely heroic figure.
Hickman is relatively subtle in shading in Cyclops’ flaws, which mainly come down to his myopic idealism. His line early in the issue – “we called incremental change ‘progress’ when what we’ve really needed was a great leap forward” – resonates in a very earnest DSA sort of way, but the use of the phrase “great leap forward” comes across as Hickman nodding to the catastrophic failures of Mao’s Communist revolution that Cyclops himself is not fully considering. Later on he tells Polaris about how he felt when his son Nathan was born, and while his dialogue is certainly expressing his emotional truth, the reader (and Polaris) know very well that he’s telling a very simplified version of the story where he didn’t in fact make several huge mistakes. He yadda yaddas years of bad decisions and failures to arrive at a “because I believed in a thing, now it’s real” conclusion about the new Krakoa status quo, and Polaris asks him if he actually believes it. Of course he does! He’s Cyclops. He’s the best there is at what he does, and what he does involves monomaniacal focus and a lot of self-delusion.
Later in the issue we spend a bit of time with Cyclops’ confusing extended family at his house on the moon. (The Blue Area of the moon, to be exact – the place where Jean Grey killed herself in the “Dark Phoenix Saga.”) Cyclops lives with his two brothers, his time-displaced son, his daughter from an alternate future, Jean Grey (their marriage seems to be reinstated?), and Wolverine. There is a strong implication that Jean Grey is in a polyamorous relationship with both Cyclops and Wolverine, which is quite a thrill to behold. I have no choice but to stan this heroic mutant polycule on the moon. This scene is pleasant and fun, but also supports the general theme of Cyclops hammering his deeply bizarre life into a happy new shape, and the mutants of Krakoa more generally deciding what “normal” is to them now that they’ve stepped away from human society and are building a new one. Maybe in mutant society, the Summers-Grey clan is as normal as it gets.
At the Orchis Forge we finally get to meet Doctor Killian Devo, the organization’s leader, and see the immediate aftermath of the X-Men’s suicide mission to foil their plans. At least 32 Orchis soldiers and scientists were killed in the raid, and Devo’s line lamenting this – “Mutants, just look at what they have done” – directly echoes the language used in the internal X-Men memoranda laying out the numbers of how many mutants have been killed by humans in various attacks and genocides. Hickman portrays Devo as an idealist who truly believes he’s working for a greater good – the “last hope of humanity.” His personality is set up as a parallel to Charles Xavier, and so is his visual representation – like Xavier, he also wears a machine that covers his eyes but provides him with a more expanded range of vision. So here we have three leaders – including Cyclops – with grand vision, but no one can see their eyes.
We also check in with Doctor Alia Gregor, who is quite traumatized following the death of her husband Erasmus, who died as a suicide bomber in House of X #3. Devo comes to console Gregor and speak well of Erasmus, showing him to be a decent and considerate leader. The issue ends on an intriguing bit of information – Gregor apparently has figured out how to resurrect him – that could potentially even out a mutant advantage the Orchis people aren’t even aware of yet.
Some notes:
• Note how the Orchis scientists de-evolve themselves into apes as a last ditch effort to fight the mutants. Also, “all these apes have PhDs!” is a classic line. Never let anyone tell you Hickman isn’t funny.
• One of the mutants rescued by Storm and Polaris is not a mutant at all, but rather an artificially evolved posthuman from The Vault. This character is Serafina, who was created by Mike Carey and Chris Bachalo in the “Supernovas” arc about the Children of the Vault. It would seem that Hickman is a drawing a line from this pre-existing concept to the homo novissima species from the far future timeline of Powers of X.
• We spend a bit of time with Storm, who appears to be over-extending herself in the pursuit of bringing as many persecuted and captive mutants as possible to salvation on Krakoa. Storm seems to be particularly zealous about the Krakoan nation in this run so far, and I’m curious to see where Hickman is going with her.
• I love every establishing shot of the Orchis Forge in this issue, and in previous issues of House of X. It’s always so visually interesting and sets a mood in a way that feels very Star Wars-y, but very unlike what you typically get in comics, where establishing shots are generally quite dull for no good reason. It would seem that Hickman is drawing a lot on the Empire in his depiction of Orchis, and even the gradual reveal of Doctor Devo recalls the way The Emperor was not introduced right away in the original film series.
• Wait a minute, does Alia Gregor have a shard of M’Kraan crystal?
• Now that this issue is out, the blessed run of 13 consecutive weeks of Hickman issues has come to an end. The next issue of X-Men won’t be out for a month, but there will be an issue of New Mutants written by Hickman in between. I will be writing about every Hickman-written issue of X-books as they come out, but I haven’t decided on what I will do with non-Hickman material. I will write about anything I find particularly interesting as it comes up, but I may only cover the spin-offs in chunks of issues or story arcs at a time, or skip some things entirely.