Was Krakoa inevitable?
NYX #1
Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing (writers), Francesco Mortarino (artist), Raúl Angulo (colorist), and VC’s Joe Sabino (letterer)
Marvel Comics
July 24, 2024
That’s what David Alleyne (Prodigy) argues in NYX #1: that the mutant nation was inevitable, necessary even, while teaching “Examinations of Post-Krakoan Diaspora” at Empire State University. Sophie Cuckoo interjects, but not to disagree; instead, she criticizes the newly-minted tenure-track professor (“a wonderful handout,” rather than a merit-based hire, according to her) for writing “the gravestone before the body’s cold,” as if Krakoa could still be resurrected despite everything that happened at last year’s Hellfire Gala. But was it inevitable?
I don’t think that’s a foregone conclusion. I know that an idyllic island with no apparent Indigenous population is where the X-Men ended up when put in the hands of Jonathan Hickman five years ago (to the day, this issue having dropped on the anniversary of House of X #1). Still, I’m not sure it’s where they would be if they had been guided by creators of color from the outset of what we now know as the Krakoan Age, people who would have more in common with characters like Prodigy and Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel) than either Collin Kelly or Jackson Lanzing do.
Their words coming out of Prodigy’s mouth leave me uneasy because the mutant metaphor doesn’t and can’t function for them as it would or could for Black writers or readers. And they probably haven’t had to wonder if lecturing about their experience as a person of marginalized identities to a classroom of students largely unlike themselves meant they were “protecting the oppressor” too recently. Do they personally know what it’s like to have their government finance a genocide against people like them?
What does it mean to belong to a diaspora anyway? Especially in the United States, and particularly NYX’s New York City setting, where so many people are from elsewhere (recently or not) and cannot go back, let alone anywhere else. The idea that there is a wholly unoccupied place anywhere in our world waiting to be settled by predominantly cisgender, white, American expats is perhaps more fantastical than the concept of superpowers. But maybe that’s why some of you fell in love with Krakoa in the first place. And maybe that’s why Krakoa, after less than a generation to even produce a diaspora (five years in our time, less time in theirs), might seem inevitable or necessary, because the dream is for there to be somewhere left to colonize – because Krakoa may or may not have been inevitable or necessary but it was always a colony – just without all of the racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia that you hoped the mutants left behind. If they did, what would the mutant metaphor even mean?
There are more typical superhero hijinks throughout the issue, deftly illustrated by Francesco Mortarino and compellingly colored by Raúl Angulo. But I can’t help but feel like these mutants are in the wrong hands.
