Marvel’s Senior Editor forX-Mencomics, Tom Brevoort, has shared his dissatisfaction with how the last five years of the comics turned Marvel’s mutant heroes into"gleeful killers,“promising fans that thenew ‘From the Ashes’ erawill hold the superheroes to a"higher standard.“The remarks arethe latest in Brevoort’s frank and relatively controversial commentary onX-Men’s Krakoan Era, which lasted from 2019-2024, seeing the X-Men unite with their villains to create an island nation.
The comments come viaMan With a Hat- Brevoort’s Substack, where he occasionally answers fan questions. Asked by a fan if he intends for the X-Men’s new era to be less morally gray than the five-year span that just concluded, Brevoort says that his big complaint about the finale ofX-Men’s war against the anti-mutant Orchis groupwashow casually and joyfully the X-Men dispatched their attackers.
The X-Men/Orchis War saw the soldiers of Orchis attempt genocide against the X-Men, framing them for war crimes while seemingly killing hundreds of mutants and exiling thousands of others off-world. Orchis unleashed armed patrols to hunt down and detain mutants, as well as unleashing an army of new Sentinels to kill mutants on sight. Once the X-Men’s fight-back began, they killed Orchis by the dozens. Brevoort states:
My philosophy boils down to this, Levi; I don’t think that the X-Men should be casual or gleeful killers. While they have certainly been in situations where lethal force was called for and appropriate over the years, I don’t think that this should be their default setting. And one of my big complaints about the end of the Orchis War was in how readily and even joyfully some of the X-Men murdered their foes. That’s fine for some characters - nobody is going to question Wolverine killing a bunch of people (though I feel that even he has certain rules of engagement which he will honorably try to follow). But seeing Nightcrawler teleport a couple of hapless Orchis goons into deep space and leave them to die just felt wildly out of character and wrong to me. If our heroes are going to be heroes, then they have to be held to a higher standard than that. … I’m sure that we’ll have plenty of moral grey area that we can explore, but I do think that the days when the X-Men would casually throw around lethal force and laugh about it thereafter are over now.
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The X-Men were fighting for the survival of their nation and species, and it’s easy to see Brevoort’s description of them as"superheroes"during this period as simplistic.
The X-Men Slaughtered Orchis Soldiers In Their Battle for Survival
Brevoort is certainly right that the X-Men were particularly bloodthirsty towards Orchis. Standout moments includeFall of the House of X #1(Gerry Duggan and Lucas Werneck), which began with the kind-heartedColossus tossing Orchis soldiers for Wolverine to sliceinto pieces, with the two bantering about what to call their new combo move. The next issue saw Polaris unleash an army of Brood aliens on Orchis' satellite base, gloating as they were literally eaten alive. Emma Frost likewise murdered Orchis members with hi-tech knuckle dusters created for her by Tony Stark, and a jaw-dropping sequence inX-Men #25saw Kate Pryde use her phasing powers to slaughter a unit of Orchis agents.
However, this issue - from Gerry Duggan and Stefano Caselli - also included the sentiment that offers the best counterargument to Brevoort’s criticisms.In her fight against the Orchis agents, the narration notes that,“The aggressor sets the tone in any conflict, and overnight, Orchis turned a cold war hot.“During the ending of the Krakoan Era, the X-Men were fighting for the survival of their nation and species, and it’s easy to see Brevoort’s description of them as"superheroes"as simplistic, both in terms ofX-Men’s narrative and the real-world implications of its story. It’s also important to appreciate that from beginning to end,the Krakoan Era asked hard questionsabout its characters' morality.
The end of the Krakoan Era saw the X-Men fighting a literal war after an attempted act of genocide - under those conditions, even Captain America has been known to crack wise while killing Nazis.
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The Krakoan Era Was About Moral Grays
The X-Men’s Fight for Survival Crossed Some Major Lines
While the X-Men living together in veritable paradise was idyllic on paper, the Krakoan Era established from the start that they were no longer purely heroic.House of XandPowers of X(both written by Hickman, drawn by Pepe Larraz and R. B. Silva respectively) made it clear that to establish themselves as a nation, the X-Men had to accept their former villains back into the fold, even giving them positions of immense political power. Professor Xavier was portrayed as an unsympathetic character who had built Krakoa on a lie, secretly planning with Magneto for a predicted future where AI would wipe out mutantkind.
These moral complexities ran throughout the series, fromHellions- whereXavier and Magneto orchestrated a genocideof potentially redeemable AI ‘Smiley’ Sentinels - toX-Force, where longtime hero Beast was gradually corrupted to the core by his off-the-books efforts to keep Krakoa ‘safe.‘At its best, the Krakoan Era grappled with the question of how individual morality interacts with governance, as well as what tactics can be justified against an enemy who poses a genuine existential threat to a vulnerable group.
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While the X-Mendidgleefully murder members of Orchis in their final confrontation, they were fighting against a genocide in a situation where they’d arguably tried every other option, including distributing miracle medicine worldwide to create international good will.The end of the Krakoan Era saw the X-Men fighting a literal war against a genocidal enemy who had the upper hand - under those conditions, even Captain America has been known to crack wise while killing Nazis.
The X-Men/Orchis war wasn’t about superheroes fighting supervillains, but about what an oppressed group are morally permitted to do when their oppressors come for them…
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Brevoort states that"if our heroes are going to be heroes, then they have to be held to a higher standard than that.“This makes sense to some degree - it’s strange to see costumed crime-fightersrevelingin death - but it also underestimatesthe use of the mutant metaphorduring the Krakoan Era.Unlike the Avengers or Fantastic Four, the X-Men aren’t people with unique abilities who simply choose to do good - they’re people who, by dint of their genetics, are constantly targeted for death.While theyareheroic in choosing to protect others, they don’t fit neatly into the ‘superhero’ descriptor.
The Krakoan Era was very aware of the ‘mutant metaphor’ in Marvel Comics. The X-Men’s mutant status has been used as an analogue for race, sexuality, gender identity, race and more in Marvel Comics. The Krakoan Era employed it in the same ways, while also discussing nationhood and taking a metatextual approach acknowledging that themutant metaphor is far from perfect- as Xavier himself says in Kieron Gillen and Lucas Werneck’sImmortal X-Men #10:
Being a mutant shares traits with other persecuted groups, but it is unlike them in one way. We are dangerous.
The X-Men/Orchis war wasn’t about superheroes fighting supervillains, but literally and metaphorically about what an oppressed group are morally permitted to do when their oppressors come for them- while also leaving space to be about broader ideas rather than reflecting the experience of any single group. The end of the Krakoan Era unavoidably made a moral statement about real-world oppression and real-world conflicts, and there’s value in that commentary.
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Gleeful killingwasout of character for characters like Nightcrawler and Kate Pryde, but a) that was very much the point of a lot of the Krakoan Era’s stories and b)X-Mendedicated significant page-space to discussing how the war for their existence was damaging (and potentially corrupting) mutant heroes. It’s also worth noting that theKrakoan Era’s finaledidshow certain heroes choosing mercy over violence-Cyclops and Storm even offered to sparethe mutant-killing Sentinel Nimrod, despite the fact he had personally slaughtered many of their close friends.
Brevoort states that From the Ashes’ X-Men will do"what’s right, not what’s easiest,“but at its best the Krakoan Era embraced moral complexity.
From the Ashes' Has Very Different Goals Than the Krakoan Era
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While Brevoort promises that X-Men’s new status quo still has gray areas to explore, it’s notable that he’s so specific about his standard for mutantkind’s behavior.Brevoort has made it clear that ‘From the Ashes’ is intended to welcome in new readers, sidelining complicated characters and offering"something for everyone”- something which he states the Krakoan Era’s final stages failed to do.
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While From the Ashes' creative teams are already producing great stories, it’s hard not to seethis new era ofX-Menas an attempt to sanitize and stabilize the property after five years of ambitious ideas and creative risks. Brevoort states that From the Ashes' X-Men will do"what’s right, not what’s easiest,“but the Krakoan Era was deliberatelyaboutmoral complexity. Crucially, the moral complexity of circumstances which, while intensified by superpowers and brightly colored costumes, were relevant to the real world.
At least as things appear so far, the switch from theKrakoan Era to From the Asheshas seen theX-Menfranchise simplify its moral outlook, consciously stepping back from complexity of all types to appeal to new and returning readers. While that’s not mutually exclusive to greatX-Menstories, it’s an approach that can already be found in books starring the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, Iron Man and more. Hopefully, Marvel still has enough big questions to makeX-Menfeel both worthwhile and unique.
