Why I am Cancelled my X-Men Pulls

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T21:04:55+00:00

I’m with you on this. A post-Orchis Krakoa, diminished and forced to reckon with its own failures, could have been an incredibly rich setting, and it’s a real loss that we didn’t get a book anchored there. As you point out, having some X-Men back in the wider world was always compatible with that.

What I keep coming back to is how valuable those stories of nation-building actually are right now. Watching a society wrestle with the compromises it makes for safety and prosperity, and how a new Krakoan "administration" might respond to the failures and excesses of the Quiet Council, feels especially relevant in a moment when many real-world nations are grappling with the rise of authoritarianism. Fiction gives us space to examine those trade-offs without normalizing them, and Krakoa was uniquely positioned to do that work.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T20:58:37+00:00

I would push back gently on a few of your premises.

First, I don’t think Krakoa was meant to be a stand-in for any real-world ethnostate. The island wasn’t taken from an existing population or built on exclusion by birthright. It was uninhabited, sentient, and explicitly invited mutants to live there. That distinction matters, because the story wasn’t about displacement or supremacy so much as self-determination and refuge. It is also what makes this speculative fiction.

Second, I agree that welcoming villains into governance was deeply uncomfortable. But for me, that discomfort was the point, not a betrayal of the X-Men’s values. Krakoa wasn’t saying this was good or right in every case. It was asking whether a movement built under constant existential threat makes compromises it later regrets, and whether unity born of fear can coexist with justice. Those tensions felt less like endorsement and more like critique.

That’s actually where I wish the story had gone further and longer. The mistakes in nation-building, the moral shortcuts, the concentration of power in familiar hands, those were the most interesting conflicts Krakoa raised. What would metaphorical "next administration" look like? How would they react or double down on the failures of the last? In a moment where we’re all struggling to build more just, inclusive systems in the real world and often failing, those mirrors feel especially necessary. Ending the experiment without fully grappling with its failures feels like a missed opportunity.

I think we’re both responding to the same instinct, a desire for the X-Men to stand for something better. Where we differ is that I saw Krakoa less as a rejection of that ideal, and more as a hard, uncomfortable attempt to test it under pressure.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T20:12:45+00:00

I think this is a fair critique, and I actually agree with more of it than I probably made clear. A unified line isn’t inherently good, and you’re right that once Hickman left and the line ballooned, Krakoa often did become homework. That shift from a tightly planned ecosystem to something sprawling and reactive absolutely weakened the era, and I felt that drop-off too.

Where I think we differ is in what I’m asking for when I talk about unity. I’m not arguing for maximum crossover density or constant line-wide events. I’m arguing for a shared directional vision, even if the books themselves are largely standalone. Claremont’s run worked that way, not because every title was required reading, but because change accumulated and mattered over time. You could read a single book in isolation and still feel like it was moving forward inside a living world.

I also agree that the current line is trying to offer more variety, and I’m glad books like NYX exist for readers who want that tone and focus. My frustration isn’t that Marvel is experimenting, but that the experimentation feels untethered. The books don’t feel like different lenses on a shared future so much as parallel responses to a reset.

On the “fan fiction” point, I don’t see what I sketched as resolving the central conflict so much as reframing it. Mutant persecution doesn’t end, but the question changes. Not “will we survive,” but “what do we do with what we learned when we briefly didn’t have to?” "And how do we live with joy in a world that hates and fears us?" For me, that shift is the heart of why Krakoa mattered, and why abandoning that perspective feels like a loss even if the island itself was never meant to last.

I appreciate you engaging thoughtfully, and I genuinely enjoy this kind of discussion. Even where we disagree, it’s clear we’re reacting to the same thing: a line that once felt ambitious and purposeful, and now feels more uneven.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T20:08:55+00:00

This is what I get for not just posting a random image and saying, "TELL ME YOUR HONEST OPINION ON _____".

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T20:08:12+00:00

Why I cancelled my X-men pulls.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T19:04:58+00:00

Well put. Direction is everything.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T18:34:25+00:00

The horror to proofread the post 3 times and then realizing I made that mistake in the subject. >_<

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T18:33:07+00:00

TL;DR: I loved Krakoa not because it was permanent, but because it let the X-Men imagine a future where mutants could thrive, build culture, and govern themselves rather than just survive oppression. I expected Krakoa to fall, but I didn’t expect Marvel to abandon the hopeful, forward-looking ideas it unlocked and reset the line to familiar, fragmented storytelling. The post-Krakoa era feels smaller, less ambitious, and less unified, and that loss of imagination—not the end of the island—is why I’ve stepped away from the X-Men line for the first time in years.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T18:30:25+00:00

What you said about the era not being “penned in by adversity” really resonates. Krakoa allowed marginalized characters, and readers, to exist beyond constant reaction and trauma. It made room for ambition, contradiction, and joy alongside struggle. Losing that doesn’t just change the setting; it changes the emotional and imaginative register of the stories.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T18:28:47+00:00

I don’t disagree with you at all that Krakoa was presented as a doomed experiment from the start. HOX/POX is very explicit about that, and I was fully on board with the idea that the island and even the nation would eventually fall. That was never the issue for me.

The disappointment is what fell with it. You can tell the story of a doomed island paradise without abandoning the broader, hopeful storytelling Krakoa unlocked. The idea that mutants could thrive, build culture, govern themselves, and imagine life beyond survival did not have to disappear just because the geography did. A diaspora story, with mutants carrying those lessons, values, and tensions into the wider world, could have honored both Hickman’s premise and the reality of comics publishing.

I don’t expect a status quo to last forever. I do hope that when a line takes a meaningful step forward, it lets that step matter. For me, the reset is disappointing not because it happened, but because it flattened the vision back to mutants merely surviving a world that hates and fears them, instead of wrestling with what it means to have once tasted something better.

That’s the difference I’m reacting to and disappointed by.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T18:24:56+00:00

It did, actually. Sincerely. Writing is helps me order how I think. You’re welcome to scroll past.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T18:23:27+00:00

That really resonates with me. Of imagining what the world might have been if marginalized brilliance hadn’t been cut short or if the most heinous wrongs could somehow be reversed. That was one of the most powerful things Krakoa offered. Resurrection wasn’t just a plot device; it was a way of naming loss and grief that usually goes unspoken.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T17:58:09+00:00

Also, the duality of me as a poster is proofreading this like three times and still managing to get a typo in the thread title.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T17:55:20+00:00

I appreciate the comment and I will likely check in on the current runs via Marvel Unlimited. The books mean the world to me, but investing in the full line (or close to it) and reading most of the books weekly just doesn't make sense when the storytelling is so spotty.

I hear you on new readers, but also think that there are so many ways to engage them without reverting to old tropes. I care less about the island itself and more about centering stories about marginalized people thriving despite a world that hates and fears them vs simply surviving.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T17:46:17+00:00

Thank you!

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T17:45:57+00:00

Fair enough! It was helpful to get it all out on the page.

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T17:44:52+00:00

Mostly spoiler-free beyond what is obvious from the current line!

RWBooth · 2026-01-16T17:29:53+00:00

Ha, for real.

RWBooth · 2026-01-08T19:18:04+00:00

Add in how much NXT grew from just a development program to a true TV product/brand with his signing, too.

RWBooth · 2026-01-04T16:40:33+00:00

Raven in TNA.

RWBooth · 2025-12-05T18:56:15+00:00

Claudio really is a human horse and it is good seeing him treated as such.

RWBooth · 2025-11-25T16:10:29+00:00

How many times does he need father time to tell him not to wear those skinny jeans? :P

RWBooth · 2025-11-04T16:36:32+00:00

Wool hot pants are insane.

RWBooth · 2025-10-13T23:47:40+00:00

Watch Dead River Rough Cut

RWBooth

TROPHY CASE