Krakoa Was the X-Men’s Most Inventive Era (And It Shouldn’t Have Ended)

The X-Men are one of Marvel’s most storied teams, and have had some amazing eras. The X-Men have always been extremely popular, and the team has some great stories under their belt. One of the best things about the X-Men was how malleable they are. While the X-Men have a great central theme — civil rights — the team has been able to move out of its status quo as a mutant school and bring readers entirely new kinds of stories. This factor played into one of the ambitious status quo changes of all time — the Krakoa Era. This era took the X-Men to the mutant island of Krakoa, where they began a nation for mutants. For five years, readers got some revolutionary storytelling, before the Krakoa Era ended in the summer of 2024.

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The Krakoa Era lasted for five years. It opened to rave reviews and massive sales, with superstar writer Jonathan Hickman leading a corps of writers who took it upon themselves to change the X-Men forever. The Krakoa Era was feverishly inventive, and while there was definitely a dip in quality towards the end after Hickman left his leadership position, it was still a status quo with potential. The Krakoa Era never should ended and here’s why.

The Krakoa Era Broke the X-Men Out of Their Malaise

The X-Men before the Krakoa Era were in trouble. Marvel wasn’t interested in the X-Men because they didn’t own the film rights to property anymore. The X-Men couldn’t be canceled like Marvel did to the Fantastic Four because they still sold books, but they could be placed in their own little corner. X-Men books from 2015 to 2019 were in a pretty dire place, but once Disney bought 20th Century Fox, Marvel got the film rights back and went all in on bringing the X-Men back to prominence. They recruited Hickman, who recruited a group of writers and artists, and let them loose on the X-Men. This led to the Krakoa Era.

What made the Krakoa Era so inventive? Well, it wasn’t that they were superheroes with their own country. Superpowered beings had run countries before. However, what Krakoa did was finally posit a solution to the problem of the X-Men and their enduring conflict with humans. The X-Men fought for human/mutant coexistence, but humans never really cooperated. There were always humans willing to kill mutants, and the governments of the world were fine with making weapons to destroy mutants. So, giving mutants a homeland, a place where they could feel safe, actually made a lot of sense. The X-Men had lost their fight for peace. They weren’t going to choose war, so they choose to go and be on their own. There was also the fact that the books finally embraced the queer undertones of the X-Men, something that excited queer fans of the X-Men.

Krakoa introduced multiple new concepts. For example, there were the Resurrection Protocols. Death was always a revolving door for the X-Men and their foes, and the Resurrection Protocols made that text. There was Moira MacTaggert’s mutant powers, which allowed her to continually reincarnate, keeping her memories, which played a huge role in the history of the X-Men. Krakoa was open to everyone, so it combined good and evil mutants, allowing readers to see all-new interpersonal dynamics. Fans weren’t getting the same old, well-tread X-Men stories, ones that they had gotten a million times. While the books still used some familiar tropes — Nimrod, Sentinels, racism, and evil racist government agencies trying to destroy them — the new setting and character relationships allowed for even these stories to feel new.

There was excitement to the X-Men again, and there hadn’t been in a long time. Even after Hickman left, creators like Uncanny X-Men alum Kieron Gillen and Al Ewing supplied killer books like Immortal X-Men and X-Men Red. The ending of the Krakoa Era was rushed so that the X-Men could rebooted in a more traditional status quo, but there were still years left of stories in the concept. In fact, if you ask most Krakoa partisans, they’ll tell you the problem with the books was the overarching plot and that we didn’t get to spend nearly enough time just hanging out on Krakoa. The Krakoa Era books were at their best when they were exploring their new status quo, and there was still plenty to explore.

The Krakoa Era Embraced Marvel’s House of Ideas Sobriquet

Marvel has something of a problem lately. The publisher has become somewhat staid, as Marvel editorial brutally pushes the established status quos of its characters and teams, doing away with anything inventive as soon as possible. The House of Ideas often feels dead, which is why the new Ultimate Universe has been so successful. These books take the familiar Marvel Universe, inject it with new ideas and concepts, and they’ve succeeded wildly. This is also why the Krakoa Era was so special and why it never should have ended — it actually felt shiny and new.

The Krakoa Era was the X-Men doing what mutants do — evolving. It’s easy to figure out why Marvel pushed for the era to end. With the MCU X-Men coming, it was time to go to a status quo that could be used for comic/movie synergy and the Krakoa Era was too far from anything that non-comics readers knew about the X-Men to maybe get them to read comics. However, this is a weak reason to do away with a status quo that was so inventive. The Krakoa Era could have been the MCU’s basis for the X-Men; what better way to explain where mutants were in the MCU but on their own secret island nation? However, Marvel played it safe, which is what the 21st century version of the publisher does best. The Krakoa Era was only five years old when it was killed, which is honestly an eternity in comic status quo years, but it easily had decades more story left to tell.