The World Outside Your Window
Super hero comics are funny little things.
As fantastical and otherworldly as they seem, they have (almost) always been intended to be a reflection of society both as it was and how it might be. Super heroes represent the best of humanity’s hopes and, conversely, super villains represent the worst of humanity’s reality. The creation of the first generation of super heroes, most notably Captain America and Superman, was an effort by their creators to draw attention to unacknowledged societal ills (specifically Nazis) and, in bright, colorful fashion, address those ills in ways society at large would not.
Which brings us to the X-Men.
Created in 1963 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the X-Men were created as an allegory for difference. Individuals born, through no fault of their own, with fantastic powers (EX-TRA ABILITIES!) far beyond the average human. This automatically distinguished these characters, dubbed “mutants” within the shared Marvel Comics universe, from the massive number of super heroes who debuted before them. Their powers were not something that happened to them; they weren’t bathed in cosmic rays or bitten by a radioactive spider. Rather, their powers were intrinsic to who they were and the fact that they had them was a matter of IDENTITY, not utility. And in the 1960s in America (also the 1860s…and 1760s…and and and and…), divergent or otherwise atypical identities were often met with prejudice both overt and hidden. And so, as Kirby put it…
What would you do with mutants who were just plain boys and girls and certainly not dangerous? You school them. You develop their skills…instead of disorienting or alienating people who were different from us, I made the X-Men part of the human race, which they were. I felt that if we train the mutants our way, they’ll help us — and not only help us, but achieve a measure of growth in their own sense. And so, we could all live together.
In other words, they trained to “protect a world that feared and hated them.”
They saw the hatred and violence aimed at them and determined to the better people — to use their powers for good and not the evil so many assumed they were. As far as morality tales go, it’s both incredibly basic (remember, comics were originally intended for kids) and deeply powerful, reflecting the shift from the Pre-World War II perspective (punch prejudice in the face) to the “not even halfway through the Vietnam War” perspective (fight hate with love). But like I said, comics — especially Marvel Comics — were meant to be a window into the world around us and in the 1960s there was an awful lot of “give peace a chance” out there.
And boy did I eat that shit up.
When I was young, I turned to comics for entertainment and came away with morality. When I was a little older, I escaped to comics as a refuge — a respite from a life that was becoming more and more challenging. But every once in a while, a comic would come along that not only provided that respite, but contained a voice, some tiny sliver of insight or wisdom, that not only helped me to escape from my challenges, but return to them better able to persevere. No matter how my relationship with the medium ebbed and flowed over time, comic books and the colorful, powerful metaphors they contained were never far from my heart and my mind.
Which brings us to Krakoa.
But first, a little vocab lesson to keep us on the same page. Mainstream super hero comics, the ones starring characters you have definitely heard of, created by the people you may have heard of, have more or less been running with the same overall continuity for somewhere between 50 and 85 years. What that means is that, again for the most part, the stories told in the 1960s and 1980s and 2010s, etc etc are all part of one very long, winding, occasionally complex serialized narrative. Think of it like a TV or a novel, but on steroids. In TV, you have episodes; in books, you have chapters; in comics, you have issues. Then many episodes become a season, many chapters become a book, many issues become a story arc (and, these days, a collected volume) until finally many seasons become a series and many books also become a series, but in comics its a little different. This is because, at least in theory, the narrative will keep going endlessly as designed (the closest thing to this outside the world of comics would be soap operas). So, in comics, there is another type of “softer” narrative chunking: eras. These eras are typically defined in two ways: either by the creators working with the characters over a set period of time or by the central premise, theme, or idea overlaying the stories for a period of time (and sometimes both at once).
(Its worth noting that the term “series” is used in comics too, but the term is used for the different monthly comics that come out every month starring different (or sometimes the same) characters within the same shared universe.)
In other words, there are certain sandboxes built in which these creators play with these characters until either another creator comes on board or a new sandbox is built. This is how these narratives have survived as long as they have when even the most beloved TV and book series ended. Eventually, you run out of stories to tell, but in comics the story continues, because the characters continue, but the era changes to avoid stagnation and keep those characters and stories fresh. Which also means that the one constant in comics, as it is in life, is change. No matter how much you like how an era is going, you know that it will not last forever and that eventually the companies and creators who control the destiny of these characters will put them into new situations and scenarios and the narrative will continue.
So. Krakoa.
I’ll spare you a detailed description of the last few years of X-Men stories, but in short it has been an awesome ride. In late 2019, writer Jonathan Hickman and his team of hand-picked writers and artists created The Krakoan Era. They used the inevitable “sandbox switch” to more firmly define and redefine what makes these characters so unique and powerful. The status quo this team established for the X-Men and the mutants of the Marvel Universe was both fresh and familiar: acknowledging the realities faced by mutants and desiring a better life for themselves than the decades of strife trying to be the better people has caused, mutants instead banded together to form their own sovereign nation on the living mutant island of Krakoa. The idea of mutants retreating from humanity and relying on one another for their own prosperity was not new — several eras of the past were based on this idea. What made the Krakoan era different is how thoroughly thought out and, frankly, successful it was. This wasn’t just mutants running away and hiding from the haters on an island, this was mutants creating their own language, their own economy, their own businesses and laws and fashion and religion. They did not simply build a home this time, they built a society and what they did WORKED. In the long history of the X-Men, this was the first time that mutants achieved such a level of prosperity. As a fan of the characters, I loved it. As a fan of intelligently written, well thought out super hero stories, I ADORED it. For the first time in well over a decade, I was buying every series that same out under this new umbrella, each with a unique purpose and approach in filling in the contours of this new world order.
I knew it would end eventually. No era in comics can last forever, but I was determined to follow it until it did.
And now it’s ending.
Next week begins a new story arc, the “Fall of X” and it’s being touted as the end of the Krakoan era. I don’t know what the next era will be, nor do I know exactly how the fall will happen, but as the story has built towards this endgame for the last few months, I’ve found the feelings I get while reading it very…familiar.
You see, humanity could not tolerate mutant success. They saw the success the prosperity of the mutant race as an insult and a threat, despite the fact that it had nothing to do with them. Well, almost nothing, Krakoa did share its life extending medicines and even their ability RESURRECT THE DEAD with humanity, but by and large the establishment of the mutant nation was essentially the mutants saying “leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone.” But humanity could not do that — the idea of mutant happiness offended them and they refused to shake their belief that mutants were only uniting in conspiracy to overtake and eliminate them. Prosperity was a zero sum game, and humanity would not allow genetic anomalies to win it.
And so they began appearing on 24 hour news networks to spread lies and falsehoods and even claim that mutant good deeds mattered less than a human’s right to be fearful of mutants; to be entitled to an opinion despite mounds of evidence that such an opinion was based on falsehoods. They created paramilitary groups, got known criminals elected to positions of power, initiated hostile takeovers of companies that were sympathetic to mutants and doesn’t all that just sound goddamn FAMILIAR? Like we’ve seen it somewhere before?
Oh right.
Look, I know it’s no surprise that the creators penning the swan song of the Krakoan Era are bringing in the elements of our world that they worry will ultimately end it. This is what comics have always done — allowed us to express concerns about the real world in a way we can’t in the here and now. So when my heart rate goes up reading these stories, it’s because my fear of what might destroy our world actually IS destroying another world I love. A fictional one, sure, but not one without significance.
And if they can do this to the mutants…who else can they do it to?
Only time, I suppose, will tell.
