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comfortfoodcontent · 2 months

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2024 X-Men #35 cover by Pepe Larraz

2019-2024 - RIP Krakoa Era X-Men

I love this cover. The art is amazing. It marks the end of the Krakoa era X-Men. It's been on my mind a lot lately and I had to get some thoughts out on it. If you know me, if you ever followed me or my comics site or whatever, you know I was a very loud, very big fan of the Krakoa era at the start, basically up until X of Swords and Hickman's decision to leave. It's finally ending.

2019-2024 - RIP Krakoa Era X-Men

But truthfully it may as well be 2019-2019 -RIP Krakoa Era X-Men. It pretty much failed from the start. I loved HoxPox when it dropped. It was, embarrassing to say now, life changing for me. I thought Hickman was a genius and had found a way to reinvigorate the line and render death as a cheap storytelling gimmick useless. A bunch of my faves were being used and ressurected. I was happier than a pig in shit. I joined Twitter and all the insane X-Fans on there. I started a website and a podcast dedicated to comics. Soon the Covid pandemic started. I was terminally online, my brain rot started and grew worse by the day. It was an insane wild ride that started high and died soon thereafter.

It's hard for me to separate my pretentious Comfort Food Comic media brand time with the pretentious Krakoan Era. Both started out so happily, so full of potential and optimism. To run a site or a podcast in these hellish times you must also play the social media game. Constantly be on there, constantly push your product. Being on Twitter during that time and being part of the X-Community, you start to see how much being on social media fucks you up. You constantly feel like you need to have an opinion on everything, and that it actually matters. You need to be a critic to every piece of media, every decision, every little thing someone says or posts. You lose your grasp on reality, the real world, how to function and interact like a normal human being not stuck hidden behind a screen with your dual public twitter profile and private locked one (something I'm glad to say I never stooped to). It brings you attention. It brings you friends. It pushes your product or brand. It gives you validation and the dopamine rush. It's an addicting, disgusting, fake as hell experience. I was fully caught up in it. It didn't help that I was quarantining and barely leaving my house for a few years. It got me through the pandemic but it also left me so much worse than when I started. Much like how the Krakoan Era treated the X-Men franchise.

Why am I talking about social media so much when I started with X-Men? Well, it felt like this era of publishing went hand in hand with what was being put into the comics. Every creator was constantly on Twitter interacting with fans, always seeing what they had to say. Even Hickman was on there. Dude just wanted to post photos from movies and talk about like what Gen X members he liked. He eventually left because insane X-Men fans wanted him to talk about George Floyd and compare real world race issues with some superhero comics and weigh in, OH GOD WHY ISNT HE WEIGHING IN PUBLICALLY??. It was really weird how fans dealt with that one. Vita Ayala, Tini Howard, Leah Williams - constantly interacting with fans, friends with many of them. A pretty cool thing really, but that shit started influencing their comics throwing in characters or scenes specifically to make some X-Men fan they know on Twitter squee real loud. Shatterstar is not your favorite AEW wrestler. We do not need a book of human X-Men fans who pretend to be mutants influenced by dorky X-Men fans online. We do not need longtime villain Apocalypse to become our "Blue Dad". Jordan White should be editing or at the very least reading any old X-Men comics instead of being on Twitter. We don't need to know what the X-Writers do on their Slack, or worse, what X-fans do on their own incestuous Slack. Gerry Duggan, a writer I loved and thought could do no wrong, joined this group and upped his Twitter usage and the brain rot commenced and his work was so influenced by it. I'll never forget when white people started using fuck around and find out on Twitter and then it was in like 3 of his books the next month. My point in this ramble is the books were being influenced by and written for the loudest X-Men fans on Twitter. The art was dead. The books were a product made in that echo chamber for that echo chamber. They got bad real fast because of our society's addiction to social media these days.

Now that the honeymoon phase is over and I've revisited a lot of these books I do still feel HoXPoX was a wonderful series, one of the best X-Men series, masterfully executed and a perfect jumping off point with so much to explore. I also see the usual Hickman faults. The my series starts some time later, not really addressing anything prior to it that all his books share, the insanely detailed long term plans that he nor the comics business machine will actually follow through on after a year or so, and the shadowy superior group of power that exists in all of his comics. The Moira retcon, while brilliant, quickly falls apart when they never develop her further, or deal with the fact Xavier and Magneto went on to have an entire publishing history knowing what amounts to their entire future until the Krakoa Age must be established. That never really worked and was ignored by the creators and fans alike, including me. So it never really worked from the jump.

Rather than keep the line condensed and maybe just let Hickman write his own story, they expand it out from there involving a bunch of different creators and new ongoings. Plenty of series to explore the ramifications of these retcons, the perceived ethnostate the mutants have established and their abandoning of the coexistent dream the X-Men always fought for, grappling with identity and what it means when death no longer matters, and the conflicts that would arise from having all these villains live with them now. Sadly we instead basically just got Utopia 2.0. Surface level shit where the mutants are on an island surviving that rarely ever went in on all the amazing story ideas we could have explored. But hey certain fans were happy because they could go "Hey Synch is here for a few panels!" or "this horrific out of character gladiator death ceremony is TOTALLY the same thing as my real life transitional phase". Nobody really wanted to question any of this in the comics or in real life. And hey sour grapes aside, we did get some cool stories and some fun character interactions and moments, mostly in the Hickman books. But even from the start, some of it is horrible, more of the same schlock - Fallen Angels a great example, or Hickman's more boring Giant Size issues or his Shi'ar issue, or half of every other title. What should have been being explored or dealt with in the text often went ignored and we got X-Men being superheroes or Otherworld nonsense, which at the time I ate up because I'm such a fan of the old Captain Britain material. Sadly that never really went anywhere either, just making nebulous dimensions that were out there somewhere, don't question it LOOK IT'S JIM JASPERS! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED! Even things that should have been celebrated like Betsy and Rachel pushing through Gal Pals territory to being together felt largely flat and hollow and forced rather than natural or fun. And that was a common theme as it kept going. Everything felt forced, felt wrong, the writing felt amateurish and simple as it ignored more major issues or reasons to exist. Things just seemed to start happening for no real story reasons. No real further development or exploration. A ton of plots don't make sense as established history and characterization is thrown out the window. Nothing really matters. Rockslide is ruined forever just because. Arrako will never REALLY make sense, Loa and Mercury are psychopathic sex fiends, Pixie of all people is a callous death pervert, Banshee is a Ghost Rider, Warlock's doing something, Colossus joins the Quiet Council and just sits there, Children of the Atom is designated a "red" important book and does nothing of value or import, Moira gets pissy so she turns into a no shades of gray villain robot who skins her soul mate and wears his skin and joins Orchis, mutants are fucking so much and I guess just quickly going to term and they just abandon countless babies in the forest, Anole and a few others are brainless dolts who love the Shadow King, Onslaught is bouncing around, there's an old X-23, Synch is now the best and can recall any power ever magically but never talks to any member of his old team or deals with his death, Inferno as a whole essentially just didn't happen or matter, Sinister isn't Sinister at all he's a clone and there's 3 more of them, Casandra Nova is on a team, Doug knows secrets, Magneto buys a lighthouse, characters are randomly and indiscriminately put into The Pit, Shaw and Selene are maybe the only two villains ever that get examined in a way where maybe they shouldn't be buddy buddy with the X-Men - I need to stop now before I get more angry and depressed but I could go on and on and on. Point is things got bad. Like a ton of this was just bad writing and bad comics. I'm sorry. I get it. I was blinded too. I ignored things. I made my own head canons. I focused on the good stuff.

By the time Hickman actually announces he is leaving, things are already falling apart due to him and Marvel deciding to expand and stretch this shit out instead of just letting him do his shit and end it as a complete story or era. He does Inferno which as I said did nothing and didn't matter. It's good but it's a big ball of nothing. From there the books get worse and worse. Duggan's superhero X-Men book is fluff. Nearly every other series declines more and more. Hellions is a fun dark comedy, but sloppy and lacking that depth and exploration. Al Ewing's work tries hard to reach those Hickman highs and I found myself quite enjoying his work on SWORD and later on X-Men Red but mainly because it all ends up divorced from Krakoa as part of his larger Marvel Cosmic work, with great characterization. I really dig that work and it's common theme is really how off to the side not involved it is.

Later writers, including some real Literal Whos? and pretentious "novel authors" further dilute the line with their less talented work(I like Steve Orlando as a person but I desperately wish he'd try harder to write actual stories instead of being a human youtube video that summarizes obscure 90's comic characters for modern day zoomers). Kieron Gillen, bless him, tries to be the new Hickman and he does have some of the best Krakoa era material, but even he starts failing pretty badly. Sins of Sinister was a clusterfuck of boring nonsense for people who want to seem or sound smart, same goes for this current Dominion plot.

Looking at the art now I'm struck by how none of these characters are TRULY changed from this era, let alone had a lasting or defining story. It's crazy to me we went 5 whole years with this and really what has changed, ESPECIALLY with the current Orchis wrap-up story. X-Men fight some nasty humans who don't like them. We're back to that ALREADY. We aren't getting to the end of the Krakoan Era, we've been in it for quite some time. As I look at this art I see only 3 wholly new characters, which they'll be lucky if they are used after this. One of them is Pogg-Ur Pogg, a perfect example of this era. A big Aligator man, not much thought behind it, that fans LOVED. Sadly, he wasn't actually an alligator man. It was all a fakeout. That was some suit a little boring gremlin wore. A little boring gremlin. Nothing unique, nothing fun. Same old shit you've seen in thousands of comics. That's what the Krakoa Era was. Something that seemed SO DAMN COOL, SO DAMN THOUGHT OUT, but really it didn't have much thought behind it. It was a flashy suit of potential hiding the same old gremlin you've always seen. Even after the eternally online creators saw how popular he got, they didn't change any of this, they just thought we've got it. The suit/gremlin thing is good. It wasn't and they tried to bring it back for further stories but it was so lame at this point it was pathetic. Much like the repeated attempts to salvage and course correct after Hickman.

So here we are at the end. I can't believe I'm actually THANKFUL it is ending. That I actually want to regress and return to the X-Men as superheroes fighting their villains again. I've been rereading old X-books and I crave that big, bold excitement of what truly made the X-Men superhero team work. It's such a bummer and such a failure of execution with so many to blame. What DISGUSTS me so much is already seeing fans eulogize this era as perfection that was cut short by Marvel and not a fun experiment that was botched from the start. I'm with you, I was the biggest believer and supporter at the start. I joined Twitter, I examined every panel, made countless threads of discussion, debated and discussed every little thing with fellow fans. I wanted so much for this to be what it could be. Please, examine it honestly and critically. It's a failure. It's time to pull the plug.

It's ironic to me that I deleted my Twitter this year, the Krakoan age having the same amount of life my Twitter fandom life did. It went from such excitement and fun to soul sucking everyday nonsense. It seems fitting and emblematic of what this age was and turned into. This era, just like Twitter which influenced it so much, is/was a stupid, ugly, brain rotted mess dotted with sparing gold with the unrealized potential for so much more. I for one, welcome it.

Peace Out Krakoa Era, you won't be missed.

#krakoa #krakoa era #x-men #mutants #me #my writing #writing #comics #comic books #marvel #marvel comics #pepe larraz

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water-god19 · 1 month

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So this is it…we’ve finished x-force. All issues done. All story lines done and all interest done. So why do I still feel like nothing happen? Was time wasted? Was it really all for nothing…

Fair warning I do ramble on for quite a long time, but it’s for good reason! Anyways…let’s begin.

Chapter 1: A Promising Start/ First Impressions

When I first stumbled into the new era of the X-men I was originally very skeptical. For someone who doesn’t have any comic book knowledge outside of a few DC and Spider man comics from the early 2000s I was expected to be lost. But then after reading a little of the new era, made by Johnathan Hickman, I was truly intrigued in what I was seeing. Sure I had questions…many of which I wouldn’t get the answers to unless I read spin off comics of the new era. Despite that I was beyond HOOKED!

When I first saw this I immediately thought back to deadpool 2 and what they did with X-Force. Now not everything as memorable in that incarnation of the team you still had colossus, deadpool, and domino. 2 of which was seen here and the last one would come a little later. Outside of that I knew a lot of these characters already:

Beast

Wolverine

Colossus

Jean Grey

Deadpool

Domino

I’ve seen all this characters at some point in my life to give the X-force branding of comics a try, and thankfully I did. Sure, I didn’t understand a lot of the context behind why certain characters acted a certain ways but I could appreciate how rare those moments were. Most of the time if I just kept reading the issues I’d understand what was going on, especially in relation to the newer characters.

Kid Omega

Omega Red

Sage

X-23

Black Tom (I think that’s his name).

The dialogue between both the old and newer characters, to me, really sold me on this new era. It got me invested with what could happen to these characters. On the side note, I don’t really see many people talking about this, but the art style of these characters are VERY COOL!!! It looked fun and expressive! I’ll show examples of why I love the art so much throughout this. It really says a lot about what your gonna read, for better or for worse.

If it wasn’t obvious at this point, I clearly haven’t read comics or even x-men comics for years. So when you hear my opinions just remember that my knowledge on certain things are fairly limited in most aspects. I. Don’t. Know. Everything. Yet I’m still enjoying what I’m reading so far, with or without connections to the past. To me that only enriched everything, not the pinnacle of my interest in this initially. Anyway…let’s continue

Chapter 2: Enjoying the concept material

In my opinion, the first couple of arcs with x-force seemed like they had promise. They had a lot of interesting stuff going on. Take this for example.

Colossus, a mutant that everyone has heard of and it known for his heroism snaps the neck of this random mutant…THAT RAISES HUGE FRICKING QUESTIONS OF YOU ASK ME! Like why is he killing people? What’s the importance of this character to him? Based on how this is drawn it looks as if he struggled to kill her even though his face doesn’t portray that, the veins on his muscles do. Speaking of the art colossus looks more cold and distant being in his metal form…and every time I saw him before he never gave me that impression. It was always more light hearted rage fulled or disappointed dad (thanks Deadpool 2), but never cold murder. a more underrated question, HOW OLD IS COLOSSUS?! I mean he has a fricken beard now…didn’t know he could grow one.

Or…what about this!

Why does Jean look so…classic and basic in her design? Compared to Wolverine and Hank she doesn’t look like she belongs there. Even though she’s going through Omega Red’s mind she seems to be the odd one out. Speak of designs why does Hank got mad scientist energy now? Wolverine…more understandable since I’m pretty sure this guys a villain. Although this looks more painful than any super hero interrogation I’ve ever seen before. This doesn’t even look like interrogation, this looks like torture.

What really caught my eye in all this was the moral ambiguity at play here. Reading early x-force a lot of that was present, and as some one who loves seeing situations within the grey area this satisfied me greatly. Look at this conversation between beast and Jean.

Now I’ll address this later, but look at the points they make. Normally the X-Men are depicted as people who want coexistence between humans and mutants, yet here Jean weights the two evils and says lying is for humans not mutants. She views that as the bones honest path for x-force than what beast did.

Although beast, surpassingly, does have a point. A lie would only suffocate the process needed to save their nation. They already have enemies who would want nothing more than to harm them, so what’s the point in letting them strategize when he can just kill then now? Why should let billions die in the future when we can kill one person now and save billions?

Do the end’s justify the means…that’s for you to decide.

As for me though I’m picking up so many mixed signals here from beast on this one. Look his eyes, their blackened, this is mostly for evil, corrupted, shady, malevolent intent. Yet there’s a sense of honesty when beast confesses his mindset here. It’s almost as if he himself doesn’t enjoy the ruthless calculus of war at affect here. He hates himself for it. He wishes he could be on Jean side and yet after experiencing so much pain and damage he doesn’t see the point in being hesitant with those who want to hurt you. For him the line was drawn when they even had a thought of hurting Krakoa. Even Jean, who has her back turned towards him, seems to be getting what he’s saying. In some way she gets it. But she doesn’t want to get it, she doesn’t want to understand his reasoning but she does.

First time I read this I was stunned! Like all this was just one panel?! Wow! I really hope this continues onward. I would love to see every character get this much depth in them!

I could go on here for ages about this stuff, but if you really read x-force this is kinda what it’s about. At least until we get towards the end…which is where I started to realize the issues in all this beauty.

Chapter 3: Problems in paradise

Remember when I talk about how much I adored the concepts of what I was seeing? How much I loved what the art brought to the table so subtlety? Well…look at this.

Do you see anything wrong with it? Probably not. And honestly I didn’t either when first viewing this.

Just colossus suspiciously murdering someone. Initially I didn’t think much of this because I thought, “hasn’t he killed before? Why put such emphasis on this one?” But look back x-men history the writers and artist always illustrate the emotional distress of colossus murdering any one. He has never taken any pleasure in doing it, and he hardly does it. So when he does do it you gotta ask, “what did that person do to deserve that response from him?”

Anyway we’re getting side tracked here. Next photo.

Do you see a problem here? Again probably nothing. Art looks great, nothing outstanding but nothing terrible either.

On to the last photo.

Did you spot the issue? No? Well, just look at the number on the top left and right side of the photos. Do you see it now? I’ll explain. The first time we see colossus arc really begin is in the 24 issue of the comic. The next time we see it is in issue number 39. The very end of the arc is issue number 46. You could argue that his arc spanned several issues in between them…I wished it played out like that. The reason why I chose these 3 photos is due to them being the only time we see the colossus arc take center stage. Now you probably asking, ‘okay so if his arc wasn’t taking center stage then what was?’

This is what was taking place:

Change in X-Force leadership

The quiet council putting colossus as a member.

Beast going rogue and wolverine in pursuit of him

Kid omega disappearing in a fight after a corrupted Cerebro goes on the loose.

Kid Omega coming back, not really a kid anymore, but he has x-force follow to the future to deal with beast.

Beast and wolverine have a massive fight.

The build up to the Fall of Next before it was officially dubbed so. And so much more.

All of this was happening alongside the colossus subplot, it’s a boring waiting game. For someone reading this for the first time it felt like watching an amazing episode air for the first time only to wait a week or two later for the next episode. (Disney plus)…

But it wasn’t a week or two long it was YEARS! Years for a plot that could have being unraveled by some common sense by professor x only for it to never happen, despite them being in the same room with each other so many times! You literally see him on the quiet council every single day and get you don’t ask how he’s doing? Especially after seeing his behavior towards his own teammates?!

To his lover at one point?!

Thematically this works…but for the viewer this feels scattered and rushed. Hell the photo on top isn’t even from X-Force it’s from Immortal X-Men! Why is his arc being stretched like this, only to have no impact on x-force directly? I get it, if we spread out colossus influence it will show the readers how big of a problem this really is. The ripple effects of you will. But when the ripple effects don’t lead anywhere for a long time, constantly put to the sidelines by other major events, and then given a mediocre finale it doesn’t increase the impact it lessens it.

Not to mention the conclusion of this arc is simply colossus killing his brother which is earned don’t get me wrong, I loved that. His brother deserved death. But the very second we see colossus again it’s with x-force as if nothing happened. I don’t even remember if we had a conversation or a look into colossus psyche after everything happened. It’s just straight to the Fall of X which is already happening by issue number 43.

This doesn’t even stop at colossus though, domino has that same issue. Being skinned alive, tortured by an forgettable villain, and having it all be undone by a res set button called resurrection just feels wrong. Makes it seem pointless…

The true tragedy by far isn’t even those characters…it’s by the series main stars of the show.

Chapter 4: Beast Agenda Finale/Shattering my expectations

So Wolverine vs Beast. Again, another great concept from X-forces writers and editors. And another disappointment. Why? Because every time we get close to the conclusion to their huge fight beast manages to slip away. This one…this one got me the most upset. I remember waiting around for ages to see the conclusion of this arc, this cover art didn’t help.

Yet, despite the lies this cover baited you with we don’t even get close to the finale of the beast saga. He runs away, and the only thing that does die in this issue is just beast many clones. Boring, and useless.

But you want to know what really left a nasty scar on me during this arc. The characterization.

Was gonna show an example but I reached the picture limit…didn’t even know there was one.

Anyway, what I mean is characters don’t talk naturally. It’s always it either drive forward the conflict or to build up the conflict. There’s rarely any moments we’re characters just talk about what’s going on in their lives. It’s just moment to moment action. Feels lifeless.

Going back to beast, after reading what people think of this version of beast…I see where your coming from I truly do, but I love this version of beast. He’s actually the incarnation that got me interested in every other version of the character because his actions had context and if you had the context it would enrich the actions of this character. It wasn’t required but you were rewarded for doing so. Despite his very obvious flaws he has a point in a some of what he does. Or at least there’s an external reason that tragic on why he feels the need to do this. As explained with the Jean and Hank conversation I’d like to think the reason why Hank is fighting so hard for this country is because everyone saw what happened to Genosha! No one wants their homes to be destroyed by those who hate them the most. Not even that but it shows how broken Hank truly is from everything…that’s depressing yet intriguing to read.

And I wished this version of the character was treated with the same respect as the other incarnations and not given a shitty finale. A finale that completely reboots his character and pretty much states to the readers that we as the writers are done with this character and all that hyped up facade was worth nothing…no redemption and no future. It just hurts…and as I go back into the past to see better conclusions for this character I fear this version of the character could fall future and future down the rabbit hole.

This is why I hate reboots.

Last thing I want to say on this character is the art. What. The F@$&. Happened.

Beast (Prime), as he is referred to now, looks the exact same as the one in the past. For anyone thematic reason this could have, all I get from this is laziness. From an artist and thematic lens’s they should be different. If they had made them both different it would hit home how time has really change these characters. But since they look the same I guess that nuance also doesn’t mean anything. The art used to be diverse and fun while also being serious and dark. Now it’s just flare and boring not to mention lifeless. It’s just another pointless experiment for a pointless finale.

Anyway, thanks for reading this very long post, took me about 4 hours to finish this. Had a lot to say obviously 😂. Hope this gets you to understand how I feel about this whole thing, anyways thanks for reading and take care! Oh and if you want a better deep dive into the personality of both beast go to @positivelybeastly he does a wonderful job on that front.

#hank mccoy #x-men #x force #x men comics #art #potential #Colossus #krakoa era #johnathan hickman

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