[COLUMN] Five Years Later, Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men Run Remains a Towering Accomplishment | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

July 2024 marked the fifth anniversary of House of X and Powers of X, the twin miniseries that relaunched Marvel’s X-Men line under the oversight of writer Jonathan Hickman.

Despite the fact that the X-Men represent one of the most popular brands in mainstream American comics – Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 remains the best-selling comic book of all-time – the franchise had been allowed to languish and decay over the previous decades. In the 2000s, the Avengers replaced the X-Men as the company’s flagship team. In the 2010s, Marvel had spent quite a few years trying to supplant the X-Men with the Inhumans within their shared comic book universe.

Some observers argued that these editorial decisions were dictated by factors outside of the comic books, in particular the fact that Marvel had licensed the multimedia rights to the X-Men franchise to 20th Century Fox, which was a problem for a Disney subsidiary. "I have to say quite honestly as I understand it now the X department is forbidden to create new characters,” Chris Claremont explained in October 2014. “All because all new characters become the film property of Fox.”

Figure 1: House of X (2019) #2 (Art by Pepe Larraz)

Of course, everything changed when Disney purchased Fox, a process that began in December 2017 and concluded in March 2019. As countless breathless fans pointed out, this merger effectively brought the X-Men brand under the control of Marvel Studios. As such, there was no longer an incentive to strategically marginalize the characters. If anything, there was a need to make up for the years that had been squandered, what Hickman himself would characterize as “the lost decade.”

In an era where the primary function of comic books was to serve as a research and development laboratory for franchises that could be exploited in other (more lucrative) media, it was almost criminal to leave the X-Men brand lying fallow. There was a clear need to get the franchise producing material for potential adaptation, Hickman wryly acknowledged in his final issue on the main title by having Cyclops effectively narrate the concept of the X-Men to Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige.

Figure 2: X-Men (2019) #21 (Art by Russell Dauterman).

Hickman was a logical choice for an undertaking of this nature. He had already overseen extended runs on Marvel’s Fantastic Four and Avengers lines, telling sweeping and epic stories that built to the gigantic crossover event Secret Wars. Hickman is a writer who tends to deal in big ideas and high concepts, pushing characters and concepts forwards rather than indulging in empty nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia.

Hickman’s big pitch for the X-Men franchise was the establishment of a mutant nation on the parasitic mutant island of Krakoa. This was not an entirely novel concept. There had been mutant nations before. Magneto had briefly ruled Genosha, a state clearly modelled on Post-Apartheid South Africa. Cyclops had crashed the former supervillain lair Asteroid M into San Francisco Bay and declared it to be “Utopia.” However, neither concept had been explored to its logical extreme.

Hickman imagined Krakoa as a fully formed nation state. It had its own laws to govern its inhabitants, declaring complete amnesty for every mutant on the planet. It had its rituals and traditions. It operated a complicated and often contested foreign policy, with individual books within the line like Excalibur and X-Force exploring the island’s diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom and Russia. Hickman even sent a delegation from the island to Davos, engaged in realpolitik with major powers.

Figure 3: X-Men (2019) #4 (Art by Leinil Francis Yu).

While this approach was radical for a mainstream and in-continuity comic book title at a mainstream publisher, it was really a recognizable extension of the work that writers like Warren Ellis and Mark Millar had been doing with The Authority and The Ultimates at the turn of the millennium, which were themselves building on the work of Alan Moore in comics like Miracleman and Watchmen. These were stories about power, its application and consequence, crashing the superhero fantasy into contemporary geopolitics to uncomfortable effect.

This makes sense for Hickman. One of his earliest books at Marvel had been a relaunch of the struggling Ultimates title, which culminated in the crossover event Divided We Fall, which saw the United States collapse into Civil War. Although that run was truncated, a lot of the basic ideas bled over into the X-Men relaunch. In particular, both Hickman’s Ultimates and X-Men are built around an existential fight for the planet’s future between multiple competing evolutionary branches.

Figure 4: Ultimates Comics: The Ultimates (2011) #2 (Art by Esad Ribić).

At certain points, Hickman seems to be parallelling the foundation of the mutant nation of Krakoa to that of Israel. The subtext isn’t buried particularly deep. Mutants are an oppressed minority, the victims of multiple attempted genocides. Magneto is a Holocaust survivor. Xavier’s rallying cry of “no more” is not just a clever continuity reference, but neatly echoes the promise of “never again.” Magneto even announces the formation of Krakoa to the world in Jerusalem to underscore the point.

The parallel isn’t direct. There is no equivalent nation to Palestine, for example. However, the comparison invites the reader to grapple with deeply uncomfortable questions about what happens when an oppressed minority establishes an ethno-state anchored in a religious belief of their own righteousness and built around the promise of security at any and all costs. How does the audience’s sympathy align with the victims of historical injustice when those survivors leverage their own military and industrial power against what they perceive to be threats to their own survival?

Figure 5: House of X (2019) #1 (Art by Pepe Larraz).

Hickman depicts the process of building a nation as inherently amoral. In order to create a paradise where mutants can thrive, free from persecution and exploitation, the X-Men have to make compromises. This is very much in keeping with Hickman’s general attitude towards these sorts of power structures, most obviously during his Avengers run. When dealing with this sort of power, morality becomes an abstract concept, particularly when weighed against self-interest.

This may explain why “the Krakoan Era”, as it came to be known, was so controversial to certain traditional comic book fans. There was a certain kind of reader who was uncomfortable with the intrusion of murky moral relativism into the relative simplicity of mainstream superhero comic books, earnestly asking, “Are the X-Men villains now?” However, Hickman’s X-Men proposed something all the more unsettling and uncanny: at that level of power, pragmatism is the priority.

In the miniseries that launched the era, House of X and Powers of X, Hickman confronted the reader with compromise after compromise. To secure a database of mutant genetics, Xavier and Magneto recruit the evil Mister Sinister. To ensure stability among mutants, they offer a place on the ruling council to the genocidal Apocalypse. When the villainous Sabretooth refuses to play along, he is buried under the island. Xavier concedes, “It’s distasteful, I know… this business of running a nation.”

Figure 6: House of X (2019) #6 (Art by Pepe Larraz).

There’s a common problem in discussion of genre fiction, particularly mainstream genre fiction, which is rooted in the assumption that the audience is always intended to uncritically endorse the protagonists of a given narrative. This was one of the reasons why some fans were so upset by the conclusion of Game of Thrones, which aired the same year as House of X and revealed that Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) was not a hero but a conqueror and that she would use her power to crush any who opposed her. Incidentally, Game of Thrones seems to have been a major influence on Hickman’s Avengers.

It is much more uncomfortable and challenging when a work rejects the simple binaries of “heroes” and “villains.” It is very easy to root for the idea of Krakoa in principle, particularly knowing how mutants have been systematically oppressed and murdered for no greater crime than existing. However, trying to make any dream a reality involves some measure of compromise. There are very few nations on Earth – particularly the major powers – that aren’t steeped in moral compromise.

Hickman doesn’t ignore the obvious criticisms of Krakoa. Characters like Nightcrawler are deeply uneasy at the implications of the island paradise. “It’s perfect, Scott,” Nightcrawler tells Cyclops. “Doesn’t that make the hair on your arms stand up?” When Cyclops dismisses his old friend’s fears, Nightcrawler quips, “Ah, in the land of blind faith the one-eyed man is king.” Hickman’s monthly X-Men series begins with a scene of Cyclops putting on rose-colored glasses. The final lines of Inferno, the event that closes his run, warns, “We built the walls high. And locked ourselves inside. Forever.” It’s hardly triumphant.

Figure 7: X-Men (2019) #7 (Art by Leinil Francis Yu).

Indeed, Hickman’s run is populated by characters with literally blinkered vision. Cyclops is the most obvious example, but Xavier spends most of the run wearing a helmet that is not unlike the one that Hickman gave to the supervillain the Maker, an evil alternate version of Reed Richards. Indeed, in the first issue of Hickman’s monthly X-Men title, Cyclops casually references Chairman Mao’s infamous “giant leap forward” to describe the founding of Krakoa, a deliberately unsettling image.

There are repeated suggestions that the reader isn’t meant to look at Krakoa uncritically. The phrase “cracks in the firmament” and “crack in your firmament” recurs throughout the run. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that “crack” is the first syllable in “Krakoa,” or that one of Hickman’s first big retcons concerning the island is to reveal that the island itself was literally torn asunder millennia earlier. Even if Krakoa is the Garden of Eden, there are snakes lurking in the bushes.

Figure 8: Powers of X (2019) #6 (Art by Pepe Larraz)/X-Men (2019) #1 (Art by Leinil Francis Yu).

However, it isn’t just the heroes who have limited eyesight. Doctor Killian Devo, the head of the human supremacist organization known as Orchis, has had his eyes surgically removed and replaced with “something more effective.” This isn’t the only mirroring of the X-Men and their human adversaries. Hickman goes out of his way to echo plot points and dialogue between the X-Men and Orchis, suggesting that the two sides may not be as different as either would want to believe.

Hickman imagines humanity and mutantkind locked in an evolutionary arms race, a zero sum game in which there can only be a single winner and a single loser. Both sides of this conflict are motivated by the same certainty: if they do not take action, they will be exterminated. Xavier and Magneto are motivated by the experiences of Moira McTaggart, who has lived nine lives, whose death resets continuity and who has reached the same conclusion in each of her existences. “We always lose,” she warns Xavier near the start of Hickman’s run.

Figure 9: Powers of X (2019) #6 (Art by R.B. Silva)/Inferno (2021) #3 (Art by R.B. Silva).

In contrast, Orchis is the result of the machinations of the time-traveller Karima Shapandar. Much like Moira found her own bald idealist to manipulate into serving her agenda, it was Karima who convinced Devo to found Orchis. Towards the end of Hickman’s tenure, Karima confesses her motivations to the hyper-evolved artificial intelligence known as Nimrod. “The mutants always win,” she explains, a very deliberate inversion of Moira’s appeal to Xavier.

Repeatedly, Hickman offers the audience righteous moments for the mutants, only to later offer a horrific reprise from their antagonists. In the first issue of House of X, Cyclops points out how humanity has terrorized mutantkind, asking the Fantastic Four, “Did you honestly think we were going to sit around forever and just take it?” In the final issue of Inferno, Karima talks about mutantkind’s campaigns against artificial intelligence, goading Magneto, “Did you honestly think we were going to sit around forever and just take it?”

Figure 10: House of X (2019) #1 (Art by Pepe Larraz)/Inferno (2021) #4 (Art by Valerio Schiti).

This is the central thematic preoccupation of Hickman’s two-year stewardship of the X-Men franchise. Hickman’s X-Men is a grand tragedy about separation and unknowability, the fear that there are some perspectives fundamentally irreconcilable to one another and that this is what leads to conflict. It is most obvious in the conflict between mutants and humanity (and later artificial intelligence), but it permeates every aspect of Hickman’s run.

After all, Hickman’s other big addition to the X-Men mythos is the magical nation of Arakko. It was once united with the island of Krakoa as the unified entity Okkara. However the two were separated during an ancient magical conflict. “The twilight sword of the enemy tore the world asunder, and what was one became two: Arakko and Krakoa,” explains Krakoa of the schism, acknowledging that this trauma has left Karako as “a half not whole.”

Figure 11: Powers of X (2019) #4 (Art by R.B. Silva).

The division of Okkara into Krakoa and Arakko is an obvious mirroring of the separation of mutantkind from humanity, forming their own culture and identity. Interestingly, the first big event of the Krakoa Era, X of Swords, was built around the reunion of Krakoa and Arrako. The event received some criticism from fans for “pussyfooting around”, while others wondered what “the point” of the event was. However, X of Swords is the thematic heart of Hickman’s X-Men run.

At the end of X of Swords, it becomes clear that reconciliation is impossible. Arakko does not wish to reunite with Krakoa. Instead, at the climax of Hickman’s run, Arrako sets about colonizing Mars. There are just too many irreconcilable differences between the two nations. They have been apart for too long. This is one of the great fears of Hickman’s X-Men run, the idea that everything fractures and breaks, unravels and disintegrates.

The separation is not just between mutants and humanity or Krakoa and Arrako. It is also within mutant culture. The unelected Quiet Council that rules Krakoa splinters and fractures. During X of Swords, Jean Grey resigns from the Quiet Council and Cyclops reforms the X-Men as a rival power base on the island. Xavier and Magneto keep secrets from other members of the Quiet Council, turning the leadership against itself and weakening their own influence.

In fact, X of Swords ultimately reveals itself to be about a more intimate sort of dissolution. X of Swords tells the story of a broken family. When Krakoa and Arakko were split, Apocalypse was separated from his wife Genesis and their children. The return of Arakko represents an opportunity for Apocalypse to heal a millennia-old schism, to try to restore his fractured family unit. At the end of that event, Apocalypse decides to reunite with his family, but that means leaving Krakoa behind.

Figure 12: X-Men (2019) #18/X-Men (2019) #19 (Art by Mahmud Asrar).

In its own weird way, much like Grant Morrison’s extended run on Batman, X of Swords is a comic book epic about divorce. This basic anxiety, the fear that people grow apart from one another, recurs throughout Hickman’s run. A late story in his X-Men run imagines a romance between characters Synch and Laura when they spend years in an enemy encampment. Synch escapes alive; Laura has to be resurrected. Synch remembers the love that they had, but Laura can never reciprocate.

This anxiety is reflected in more than just the narrative of Hickman’s extended X-Men run. Form is arguably underappreciated in discussions of mainstream American superhero comics – particularly across extended runs rather than within issues or even pages – but Hickman’s X-Men run cleverly uses form to underscore the run’s core thematic preoccupations. However, Hickman isn’t just borrowing thematic concerns from writers like Moore, he’s borrowing formalist conventions.

Figure 13: X-Men (2019) #4 (Art by Leinil Francis Yu).

This is obvious in a very superficial way, with the emphasis on the nine-panel grid that is indelibly associated with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. Hickman uses that layout a couple of times during his run, most obviously during Xavier and Magneto’s visit to Davos. However, Hickman employs a very interesting visual device to reinforce the run’s core themes of separation and division. At various points in the run, occasionally even with different artists, he will repeat pages and layouts.

This technique is most obvious with two of the X-Men issues that tie into X of Swords, X-Men #12 and X-Men #14. These issues offer two different accounts of the same event, narrated from two different perspectives. In X-Men #12, the Summoner regales Apocalypse with “a mutant’s history of Arrako.” Then, in X-Men #14, Apocalypse hears the same story told by Genesis. In both issues, the artwork remains the same, but the captions change. The events are consistent, but the perspective shifts.

Figure 14: X-Men (2019) #12 (Art by Leinil Francis Yu)/ X-Men (2019) #14 (Art by Leinil Francis Yu).

This is a recurring storytelling motif in Hickman’s X-Men. It is not uncommon for issues to revisit past events from different perspectives, revealing that two characters involved in a particular event had a very different understanding of its significance. Characters may have witnessed the same thing, but come away holding two irreconcilable perspectives. When that is the case, meaningful engagement and exchange becomes impossible because characters no longer share an objective reality.

To pick one very obvious example of this, in an early chapter of House of X, Moira remembers being burnt alive by the mutant prophet Destiny. Destiny instructs her son to burn Moira “slowly, so she doesn’t forget how dying like this feels.” Towards the end of his run, Hickman revisits this scene in Inferno, complete with the same page layout. This time, from Destiny’s perspective, Destiny wants Moira to burn “slowly, so she doesn’t forget what failing to change feels like.”

Figure 15: House of X (2019) #2 (Art by Pepe Larraz)/Inferno (2021) #1 (Art by Valerio Schiti).

It is a literary approach to comic book storytelling, using the formal elements to communicate the central thematic ideas of the story. Hickman’s X-Men run confronts the audience with the possibility that heroism and villainy are ultimately just matters of perspective when operating at this scale. This is a run about how it is easier than ever for people to seal themselves away in their own private narratives without a shared reality to bind them all together.

In this way, Hickman’s X-Men run was firmly engaged with the era in which it was published. This was a period of heightened polarization and social division. Reality became an increasingly fungible construct, a reflection of a “post-truth” world. Battles weren’t just waged over the present, but over competing and irreconcilable visions of the future. The X-Men franchise has always been politically charged and engaged. Under Hickman, the Krakoa Era spoke to the big anxieties of the moment, without ever feeling heavy-handed or obvious.

Tragically, Hickman never got to finish his X-Men epic. He departed the line with the four-issue event Inferno in 2021. The writer had apparently mapped out a “three-act plan” for the Krakoan Era, but it became clear that “everyone wanted to stay in the first act.” Hickman stepped away, leaving his fellow writers to play in the sandbox that he created. Ironically, one of the great narrative tensions within the X-Men line following Hickman’s departure would be a heavy emphasis on the lack of an architect or masterplan.

Figure 16: Inferno (2021) #4 (Art by Valerio Schiti).

Hickman’s Inferno is an interesting event, in large part because it is about the tension of Hickman’s departure. It’s a book that is anxious about the threat of a looming “reset.” The mutants find themselves unable to learn and adapt from their encounters with Orchis because they are unable to “remember” the last confrontation and so can’t evolve their strategies. Simultaneously, Mystique and Destiny find themselves grappling with the knowledge that Moira has the power to reset the entire timeline, negating their existence.

The metatext isn’t especially subtle. These are comic book characters confronting the existential horror of a continuity reboot. When Moira warns Destiny that she doesn’t understand the stakes, the prophet replies, “I assume you mean that if you die, the entire universe restarts? All the hard work of mutant history erased in an instant. Every realized hope, every realized dream… gone. As if it were nothing.” It’s the X-Men grappling with the fear of losing everything they’ve gained.

Ultimately, Hickman doesn’t hit the reset button in Inferno. The Krakoa Era would continue on without him. In its own way, Krakoa became just as stagnant as the status quo that it arose in response to, the story refusing to progress into its second or third acts. It would be another three years before Marvel decided to restore the X-Men to factory settings as part of the “From the Ashes” line-wide reboot, just as the merry mutants began to work their way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel would celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Krakoa Era by ending it.

Interestingly, the incoming line editor Tom Breevort argued that Hickman’s departure was a motivating factor. “Nobody else on Earth thinks the way Hickman does, and it would be a fool’s game to even attempt it,” the editor explained. “You’re not going to outdo him that way.” He also acknowledged the editorial shift was in part “because the characters were going to be of greater importance to [Marvel] Studios in the years to come.” This may explain why the relaunch feels so traditional, returning mutants to a feared and hated minority.

Figure 17: House of X (2019) #1 (Art by Pepe Larraz)/Inferno (2021) #1 (Art by Valerio Schiti).

Naturally, Hickman’s X-Men feels appreciably less complete than his takes on the Fantastic Four or Avengers franchises. Still, it is the most fresh and exciting that a mainstream comic book superhero franchise has been in decades. Characters were allowed to grow and change, concepts were given space to evolve and develop. Hickman’s X-Men was an ambitious and literate superhero book that updated a long-troubled franchise for the modern era.

The Krakoan Era would end with a whimper, not a bang. Most of its bigger and more interesting ideas would be abandoned in favor of familiarity. It seems likely that Hickman’s X-Men will have a similar fate to Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run, hastily erased in a rush back to a safer and more tired template, but with a surprisingly long tail. It’ll be quietly influential, waiting decades for its more interesting and compelling ideas to work their way into more mainstream adaptations.

It’s a towering accomplishment, particularly for such a high-profile brand. One might even describe it as X-ceptional.