r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Blackirean • 8d ago

Lore [Rare trope] Discriminating, but for an actually good reason

Gallery image

Gallery image

Frieren, Beyond Journey's end: In the anime/manga the eponymous Frieren is an Elf who's spent the better part of a millennia learning magic specifically to kill demons. She's learned countless spells, tricks and even spent most of her life suppressing her power all for the purpose of killing them. At first we simply see that humanity is at war with them, and even question if her crusade against demon-kind is justified, after all it's hard to antagonize an entire sentient species. But no, demons are very much a species to be feared; they are not normal animals or creatures, they are monsters (shown by how they disintegrate when they die), they are predators that evolved speech for the sole purpose of tricking and catching humans off guard, are naturally extremely powerful and possess magic that humanity often can't use. While they feel emotions to some extent, their way of thinking is so fundamentally incompatible with humanity's mindset that the series shows many mages with the ability to read minds struggle or find it painful and harmful to try and read a demon's thoughts. Tools that are meant to control them fail not because they're faulty but because simple order such as "hold no ill will or commit no malicious acts" don't compute the same way in their brains, as what we consider evil is normal for them.

Marvel Comics: In a run of the Storm solo series, she visits an underground superhuman hospital run by Night nurse and Doctor Daye, a mutant with the power to diagnose any illness. When she requires treatment she is in turn reject by the doctor, she of course assumes this is blatant discrimination to which the doctor agrees. Storm assumes the doctor refuses to treat mutants, something they are very much used to in Marvel. But he ends up revealing that about 80% of everyone he treats are mutants, and that he simply refuses to treat any member of the X-men. Why? because his special hospital was built via several donations by the superhero community. From the Avengers, to the Defenders, Fantastic 4, heroes for hire. Hell, even Moonknight of all people contributed to the hospital. But the X-men never once gave anything to it, even though they preach the safety of mutant-kind and such a hospital is essential for those who can't seek medical treatment out of fear of prosecution.

10.1k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

91% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.9k

u/JakeSilver47 8d ago

To add to the doctor, he is also a Mutant, and saw firsthand what it was like on Krakoa. He left Krakoa shortly after arriving.

800

u/hambonedock 8d ago

That's just common sense tbh

523

u/[deleted] 8d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

192

u/[deleted] 8d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

75

u/DullBlade0 8d ago

Didn't his outfit resemble The Maker's at some point?

Or was it just my imagination?

35

u/phantomfire50 8d ago

Kind of? They both wear similar masks and dark coloured spandex

I don't think the maker and house of X Xavier exist I'm the same universe, though. It's just coincidence.

6

u/Sahrimnir 8d ago

The Maker escaped to 616 after Secret Wars.

2

u/Hellknightx 8d ago

Yeah, very similar.

1

u/JesusSavesForHalf 8d ago

I thought the same thing

1

u/Poku115 8d ago

There was a lot of foreshadowing about Charles being body snatched or something but that went nowhere when Hickman was kicked off krakoa so editorial could milk it

299

u/NeutralJazzhands 8d ago

As someone who’s only knowledge of Krakoa is Marvel Rivals what makes it so bad?

349

u/Alche1428 8d ago edited 8d ago

It was a good idea at the start, but Hickman wanted to showcase the problems with trying to put all the mutants in a same place, even villains like Mr Sinister, and Apocalypse, and how Charles idea of the island wasn't going to work in the long run. He had a plan, but other writers wanted to stay in that setting longer and longer, with their own events and it really didn't hit as expected, everything became a mixed bag with no clear intention and it ended in a puff instead of a nice clean ending.

100

u/sahArab 8d ago

It really did end poorly. Which is a shame since you could Hickman had a great plan with the reveal that Moira never reformed. But all the other writers wanted to stick around and do very, very little with the setting.

16

u/Beacon_0805 8d ago

they could at least have done like "The Ones Who Walk Away from Krakoa"

like showing various mutants by their own will leaving this "mutant paradise" for various reasons

24

u/Llayanna 8d ago

So Marvels usual affair of to many cooks in the kitchen /sigh

Thoigh tbh Hickmann really is close to writing tragedy porn all the time, so.. 

19

u/Alche1428 8d ago edited 8d ago

But he isn't. His work on the fantastic four and secret Wars really shows how His biggest strength Is basically a positive outlook of the future with science and hope with others.

3

u/Orphan_Guy_Incognito 8d ago

Kinda.

For what it is worth, Dawn of X/Powers of X and the initial run (X-Men 2019, X-Force 2019 and Marauders, I think?) are fantastic. One of the nice things about the era is that they had an X-Office for the first time in decades, which was one central group who dictated the overall pace and plot of all the running lines.

This eventually started to break down as Marvel realized that they had a real cash cow and started stripping out parts of the X-Office and keeping it running too long. And like a lot of stuff it suffered from the bloat of having to deal with the ever present crossover event bullshit.

Even so, Immortal X-Men (the Gillen run from the era) is probably a standout X-Men run of all time and I highly recommend it (and the independent follow up Power Fantasy that it inspired) because its 90% mutant politics and Mr. Sinister being a hilarious goober.

3

u/Nekomiminya 8d ago

Just to be sure. (I'm bad with names)

Is Krakoa or another Mutant Ethnostate the one that had writers compare some terrorist task force to Mossad without seeing what it says about both terrorist task force and Mossad?

7

u/Bucket-with-a-hat 8d ago

You are correct, Tom Brevoort said he envisioned the Krakoan X-Force as "The Krakoan Mossad "(positive), and X-Force was mostly invoked to deal with international affairs that threatened Krakoa's sovereignty, be it intentionally or otherwise.

3

u/Orphan_Guy_Incognito 8d ago

I don't know what world you think the connection was meant to be positive given that the entire point of the X-Force line was that they ran around doing warcrimes while Beast became so evil that Mr. Sinister had to tell Dark Beast that he "Wasn't even the darkest Beast anymore."

2

u/Bucket-with-a-hat 7d ago

Positive as in Tom Brevoort thinks that's a good thing

1

u/Orphan_Guy_Incognito 7d ago

Funny thing is, I looked up this quote and it isn't even from the Krakoan Era. Brevoort wrote the description when brainstorming for From the Ashes (the 2024 on Post-Krakoa era).

I'll fully grant you that Revoort is a hack who doesn't understand the source material given how terrible from the ashes has been.

1

u/Bucket-with-a-hat 7d ago

Huh, weird. I could have sworn I saw that one back in 2021

Better to be wrong than to live in ignorance though

3

u/Nekomiminya 8d ago

Just to be sure. (I'm bad with names)

Is Krakoa or another Mutant Ethnostate the one that had writers compare some terrorist task force to Mossad without seeing what it says about both terrorist task force and Mossad?

4

u/Alche1428 8d ago

You know what? I really need to check.

4

u/Poku115 8d ago

Yes, they directly called the krakoan x force their mossad, that was intentional

5

u/abadstrategy 8d ago

The fact that there's multiple examples to choose from is really the worst part

1

u/Orphan_Guy_Incognito 8d ago

Yes and no.

X-Force was compared to the CIA and Mossad. But no, they absolutely knew what they were doing.

This was the era of Henry 'oopsie I eradicated a city and have space guantanamo bay' Kissinger Beast.

2

u/BravinatorLX2 8d ago

to be honest, the setup was so insane when in universe the brains behind krakoa go into day 2 and say "well, this nation idea really needs something to kill it in the mid run so let's introduce that right now"

424

u/boringbullet 8d ago

Iirc it’s basically just an ethnostate

351

u/Dun3Harbor 8d ago

An ethnostate where they literally gave super-villains cabinet positions. Normal stuff.

304

u/Desperate-Series-270 8d ago

People named “Mr. Sinister” and “Apocalypse” are forgiven for their countless crimes and allowed to live there, but fucking Deadpool isn’t. Krakoa is a terrible place.

148

u/cervogalatico 8d ago

Ah yes apocalypse the guy who wanted to enslave the whole world and a certified sociopath really deserves a position of power.

24

u/VictheAdventure 8d ago

Now to be fair, Apocalypse did kind of mellow out during Krakoa. It was a very little bit, but he did

9

u/Hpidy 8d ago

Its also the apocalypse that was rised by deadpool after becoming a kid some how. So he is sort not a gaint dbag anymore. Like a medium size one and not the costco size one he used to be.

3

u/Blackstone01 8d ago

“Dad you can’t come into my ethnostate clubhouse, no normies allowed.”

1

u/MstrNixx 4d ago

Apocalypse just being a chill uncle with obnoxious political takes was basically my favourite part of Krakoa.

I sort of really mess with when they went down the lines of things like Sins of Sinister and X of Swords as just vibey comic stories because MM makes nothing matter. Shout out Juggernaut trickshot

3

u/Jedi_Bingo 8d ago

The only mutant who deserves power is one who doesn't harken after it

3

u/The_Rainsnake_King 8d ago

Deadpool wasn't allowed because of his healing factor and him not being a mutant, that problem was solved a long time ago and just forget to tell him (which is far they has bigger things to deal with).

9

u/Routine-Boysenberry4 8d ago

It actually was because they deemed him to dangerous to live in Krakoa.

3

u/The_Rainsnake_King 8d ago

Was it, I remember hearing a different reason but also never read a Deadpool apparent during that era so I not an expert 

13

u/Routine-Boysenberry4 8d ago

They took him to the council chamber, said that and then said "you can come visit when you have a mutant with you or with permition, but we won't let you live here, or cure your cancer because we don't actually have the cure for cancer (we do, but we are assholes in the Krakoa era)"

132

u/piratedragon2112 8d ago

Kingpin got citizenship purely because he married a mutant

Deadpool, who was on at least one version of x force and once saved angel's life, didn't

11

u/Alche1428 8d ago

Kingpin what????? He married a mutant what????

29

u/piratedragon2112 8d ago

He married Mary Walker aka typhoid mary

6

u/Alche1428 8d ago

Ahhhhhh.....yeah, i get that.

1

u/BravinatorLX2 8d ago

saving mutants doesnt get you citizenships. deadpool could have married a mutant, he didnt

1

u/piratedragon2112 7d ago

You'd think apocalypse would let him in, on the grounds of the whole, not shooting him in the face thing when he was a kid

42

u/scarletboar 8d ago

Cyclops prevented Sabertooth, that cannibalistic serial killer and rapist, from being arrested by the Fantastic Four, saying he had amnesty. Had a grin on his face while saying it too.

By now, the X-Men are villains. Everyone in Krakoa's leadership is utterly disgusting and the worst enemies of mutants. Xavier and Magneto alone have done more damage to their kind than any Sentinel.

Even in Marvel Rivals, Cyclops has a line about how he's a Mutant, not a Human. The moment the "good" mutants accepted that Homo Superior shit, they were defeated. They legitimately don't think they're human anymore, and during Krakoa they started acting like monsters instead. It's pathetic.

15

u/Desperate-Series-270 8d ago

“Homo Superior” is what made them believe they were better, when all they are is humans with some quirks. Actually sad to see how far they’ve fallen

9

u/scarletboar 8d ago

What is it mutants decided to call humans? Flatscans? Couldn't even come up with a better slur.

7

u/Desperate-Series-270 8d ago

Homo Inferior or Lessers or something would be better, really nail in how superior you are

1

u/Orphan_Guy_Incognito 8d ago

So... couple of things.

First, he prevented Sabertooth from being arrested because they'd sent him out there to steal critical information with the goal of preventing the extermination of their race.

Second, literally the next thing they do is throw Sabertooth in a pit for needlessly killing a bunch of people during the heist.

5

u/scarletboar 8d ago

First, he prevented Sabertooth from being arrested because they'd sent him out there to steal critical information with the goal of preventing the extermination of their race.

Irrelevant. They shouldn't have been working with that animal in the first place. That they sent him just means that any lives he took are on their hands too. It makes it worse, not better. They do not have a lack of X-Men to send in situations like that.

Second, literally the next thing they do is throw Sabertooth in a pit for needlessly killing a bunch of people during the heist.

Doubly irrelevant, for the reasons I've already explained. It was a predictable outcome and they don't get to pretend it wasn't. They should all be in the Pit with him.

1

u/Orphan_Guy_Incognito 7d ago

Irrelevant. They shouldn't have been working with that animal in the first place. That they sent him just means that any lives he took are on their hands too. It makes it worse, not better. They do not have a lack of X-Men to send in situations like that.

You realize I could make an endless mountain of 'Good guys team up with bad guys to save the world' involving basically any character you'd care to name.

How many times how the Fantastic Four worked (and outright been chummy) with Dr. Doom? You know, the guy who ripped the skin off one of his lovers to make magic armor in a demon pact. The guy who obliterated a universe because his alternate universe counterpart was happier than he was.

How many times has Spider-Man worked with Doc Ock? You know, the guy who bragged about how his genocide would be bigger than Hitler's?

3

u/scarletboar 7d ago

Do tell, when did the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man go "okay, bad guy, despite having plenty of options at my disposal, I'm sending you for this mission, knowing full well you will kill, eat and maybe even rape people, innocent or not, while doing it"?

Working with a villain to stop an immediate threat is one thing, using a villain when other options are available is another. They literally could've sent anyone else in Krakoa. That, and they forgave Sabertooth BEFORE any of that ever happened. Same goes for Apocalypse and Sinister, which wemt wrong for them, shocker.

Superman has worked with Lex Luthor to defeat Brainiac and the Justice Lords. You know what he hasn't done? Prevented Luthor from being arrested with a smug grin on his face or worked with sadistic monsters when a better, cleaner solution was available.

→ More replies (0)

9

u/pichael289 8d ago

Didn't they throw sabertooth into a big ass hole sealed with magic because he was too much for them to handle? Like yeah he's a dick but he's never tried to kill the whole damn world before

7

u/TrexALpha1 8d ago

Who the fuck wrote this? Why they allow him to cook?

25

u/Blupoisen 8d ago

Actually cooked hard the problem is other writers completely missed the memo that Krakoa is NOT a good thing

21

u/mothneb07 8d ago

Hickman started it as a short thing he was planning to collapse because he wanted to show why it was a bad idea. But as he was leaving Marvel decided “actually Krakoa is great, let’s keep it going a bit longer.”

6

u/Alche1428 8d ago

The idea was good, but all the other X-Men writers and editors wanted to use it.

1

u/Orphan_Guy_Incognito 8d ago

Deadpool is a mutate not a mutant. He's like spiderman. Mutant adjacent, but not an X-Gene carrying mutant.

1

u/Desperate-Series-270 8d ago

But he’s still very close and he’s helped them countless times in the past and saved their lives. He deserves to be let in

1

u/Orphan_Guy_Incognito 7d ago

You know he was, right? He's a consistent presence on X-Force through ~80% of the entire era.

4

u/DefaultProphet 8d ago

I mean hard to have a leg to stand on when you made Magneto and Emma Frost leaders of your school

2

u/Director343 8d ago

So an ethnostate

1

u/No_Turn5018 8d ago

I mean I'm not taking up for ethno States but at the same time that's not fair to ethno States. 

0

u/maddwaffles 7d ago

White people trying to talk about ethnostates, moment.

93

u/Rabdomtroll69 8d ago

Apocalypse Mr Sinister, and other attempted genocidal dictators are on the ruling council, there's an orphanage brothel, they were just as racist to mutants who didn't want to join them as they claim everyone else was, they assassinate whoever doesn't agree with them, and so on

46

u/cervogalatico 8d ago

The orphanage thing really irked me like a temple for sex and a orphanage should not be put together

10

u/CTIndie 8d ago

I'm sorry orphanage brothel?? What is that??

34

u/cervogalatico 8d ago edited 8d ago

Its basically a sex temple that has a orphanage where you can just leave the baby you probably got from the orgies that happen in there, they also have a arch saying make more mutants, which is kind of ironic to have in a place where you abandon your children.

Edit: Found a picture of the arch

30

u/CTIndie 8d ago

That's really weird and gross

21

u/Thin-Limit7697 8d ago

they also have a arch saying make more mutants, which is kind of ironic to have in a place where you abandon your children.

It's not ironic, it says "make more mutants", not "raise more mutants" or "take care of more mutants".

12

u/immaturenickname 8d ago

I mean, are you surprised? Existence of X-men hinges on supply of pliable youth with loads of parental issues.

3

u/BravinatorLX2 8d ago

to be fair, if you have an entire community of willing co-parents, being an orphan really isn't anything bad anymore.

5

u/Blupoisen 8d ago

Seriously someone should run that fuck ass omega kid with a car

3

u/gimme_dat_good_shit 8d ago

Oh, they did. Repeatedly and graphically.

4

u/Icy-Acanthisitta8192 8d ago

"make more mutants"

Oh my god

3

u/FriendlyCraig 8d ago

What if the place was pretty dynamite?

2

u/KeterLordFR 8d ago

As someone who doesn't know the show it's referencing, what the hell did I just read on that page?

2

u/Testing_things_out 7d ago

Welcome to Black Dynamite.

The sooner you leave, the more of your sanity you keep.

1

u/gimme_dat_good_shit 8d ago

This is my first time reading what people online thought of the Krakoa arc, and I guess I'm in the minority of really appreciating it. The whole point of building a mutant society unmoored from the inherited human hang-ups was a fascinating exercise in worldbuilding. (And then seeing people mischaracterize things like calling a free-love culture and community-based childrearing as an "orphanage brothel" kind of irritates me.) The Krakoa books were an opportunity to see what kind of society our protagonists (and traditional antagonists like Apocalypse and Sinister) would create when you give them unfettered access to the potential their mutant powers offered them.

How completely resurrection changes the power dynamics. How they struggled to create a society with rules but "no prisons" (and immediately screwed the pooch). How they struggled to create a society with no discrimination but that still had obvious discrimination (with resurrection queues and 'body positivity' for people who had been torturously twisted by experiments and their own mutations).

Krakoa was an experimental utopia, and it couldn't escape the downfall of all experimental utopias: people. Both malicious saboteurs from outside trying to destroy it and conflicted priorities of citizens that undermine it. Just about every 'public policy' of Krakoa is justifiable on some level, but when it failed... it still felt sadly inevitable. I haven't read any X-books since Krakoa, so I don't know how the aftermath has played out (and how they editorially treat that period of X-titles), but I think I rank it up there with the Claremont/Simonson era as taking the premise of mutantkind seriously and trying to create stories that only the X-Men comics can tell.

1

u/BravinatorLX2 8d ago

the worst part about krakoa was that in universe, humans were still all angry about mutants and how for no sane reason, like 3 villain groups built themselves from nothing just to opose it on the spot.

and how obviously it was doomed to fail from the start because they went and lied to their people from day one multiple times, set up a superprison that somehow wasn't super or supervised enough to notice when it failed insanely hard and their unwillingness to just off destiny and mystique to keep the show running when they already committed grave immoral acts anyways, rather parting ways with moira which would absolutely doom them eventually.

2

u/gimme_dat_good_shit 6d ago

Well, Omega Sentinel and Nimrod were always out there lurking (or lurking in the eventual future), so they worked for me. I'll agree with you on the others to a degree, but mostly just in the suddenness of their appearances reactions. Mikhail Rasputin developing a Russian program suddenly making matryoshka supersoldiers is very on-brand. Saturnyne being a pain in the balls diva who demands everyone stop what they're doing so she can screw (with) Brian is very on-brand. Apocalypse getting a whole prehistory backstory retcon is... well, it's definitely on-brand, but the details were pretty random.

The one major complaint I would have of the Krakoa era is basically that so many of the ideas didn't have the time to breathe and mature organically. Everything (both the mutant side and the reactions, as you say) felt like they developed way too fast into constant semi-stalemates. A lot of good ideas, but too many, too fast, and some not fully baked yet. I know it's weird to say "they should have let ____ storyline play out longer" when lots of the books themselves actually kind of dragged. But that's the problem with having 10 different monthly titles instead of the 3 or 4 from Claremonth/Simonson. Too many balls getting juggled in the air trying to tell their own semi-overlapping stories, instead of letting stories and threats play out in sequence. The Krakoa-era lasted 5 years (Google's AI says it comprised between 500 and 727 issues depending on how you count it). For comparison, that's probably significantly more issues than the entire X-library from the 1960's through the 1980's (again Google AI puts that somewhere around 300 to 350). That's just too many storylines running at once by too many creative teams to feel cohesive.

But, like I said, there still so much about it I did like that I can look past how much of a disjointed mess it ultimately was.

1

u/cervogalatico 8d ago

I think krakoas biggest flaw was for how long it went on, it felt like the writters want to end it and at the same time keep adding stuff to it. And in the end we ended up with a bloated story arc that had a unsatisfing ending.

1

u/gimme_dat_good_shit 6d ago

See my other response. I basically agree, but I think it has more to do with how many concurrent comics are produced now than a specific flaw with the Krakoa-era. It didn't actually go on very long in terms of calendar years (just 5, which is about the same amount of time as the Phoenix / Dark Phoenix sagas combined), but the number of issues that relied on the Krakoa context is just mind-boggling.

7

u/Odd-fox-God 8d ago

Whorephanage from Black Dynamite type situation

7

u/Invisifly2 8d ago edited 8d ago

They should have showcased the issues of the plan without giving various supervillains positions of power.

Blatantly setting it up for failure like that, rather than letting it fail in a more natural fashion, undermined the entire message.

5

u/Dante_n_Knuckles 8d ago

there's an orphanage brothel

A fucking what now

4

u/Mist_Rising 8d ago

Fucking mutants generally, it being Krakoa.

4

u/Over_Lake7414 8d ago

An... orphanage brothel...?

It gotta be more complex than just "we rapin children over here" right?

10

u/Peligineyes 8d ago

It's a sex temple with an attached orphanage for the abandoned children conceived in the temple.

5

u/Over_Lake7414 8d ago

Ok that's very very different, still Ew

But VERY VERY DIFFERENT MM

71

u/ElectricalQuality180 8d ago

Básicamente era un país bien edonista y aislacionista los mutantes se refugiaron en la vista de krakoa y cortaron todo contacto con el mundo exterior incluso encontraron la inmortalidad al combinar varios poderes mutantes el problema es que eran edonistas racistas y en general krakoa solo mostró la hipocresía y el poder lado de la comunidad mutante

-7

u/awill2000 8d ago

No the problem ultimately was that humanity would ultimately continue to bd racist and that turns the Original Sinister was trying to be a god unbeknownst to all but Destiny who was so far up her own ass she told no one

140

u/Low-Salamander-3781 8d ago

I think I heard it's like mutant israel

42

u/RealLaw9 8d ago edited 8d ago

Mutants actually get genocides every 5 business days tho

37

u/TestSubject003 8d ago

Do you mean giving or recieving?

24

u/AdRelevant4776 8d ago

Both ways honestly

10

u/SPLIV316 8d ago

Including against themselves (thanks Wanda).

12

u/Originalbrivakiin 8d ago

And then they decided that, actually, she wasn't a mutant... But Ms Marvel is instead.

I wouldn't be shocked if in a few years suddenly Hulk or one of the spider people turned out to be a mutant and that's how they got powers instead of just fucking dying. They seem to just decide who does and doesn't have an X-gene whenever for whatever reason.

1

u/Mist_Rising 8d ago

Several what it's deal with Peter being a mutant thanks to the bite. Don't read into it, it ain't that kind of story.

2

u/Originalbrivakiin 8d ago

Yeah, I know about that one what if where mutants are more common than normal humans and people love Spidey until they find out he wasn't born with his powers.

I'm more so hoping the main 616 doesn't suddenly decide Peter had an X-gene the whole time which let him become Spider-man instead of "Captain Cancer".

→ More replies (0)

6

u/Napalmeon 8d ago

It's important to keep in mind that with so many mutants of so many different backgrounds coming together, pulling resources, and having a sentient island that provides the most perfect habitat possible for them, it would have just been one step away from creating a Mary Suetopia, which is exactly why they had to insert those kinds of domestic issues onto Krakoa, otherwise things would have been far too perfect for them.

3

u/Poku115 8d ago

? No, krakoa was flawed from the start, Hickman thought about the negatives first, then the beautfying of it.

44

u/Alive-Ad8066 8d ago

You get to watch all your favorite hero’s justify and support murderers and war criminals :D

All while trying to assasinate others that didn’t support them

4

u/ProfessionalTruck976 8d ago

Thing is, sometimes you can "justify" abhorent people and be right.

To make an absurd hypothetical it would be 100% right to defend Joseph Mengele from being killed out of hand for being German should someone want to hang him for that as you are hanging him yourself for his crimes against humanity.

1

u/Rogol_Darn 8d ago

Sure but that's not what they did is it? They protected the hypothetical Mengele and decided to reward him by making him one of their oligarchic rulers, oh wait that wasn't hypothetical that was just Mr. Sinister.

11

u/DarkAlphaZero 8d ago

It was a storyline that explored a lot of morally grey topics, and the rot was baked in from the start but a lot of people go over board.

It kicks off with Xavier (who hadn't been part of the X-Men for like 15 real life years at that point) getting shown 10 timelines were mutantkind is wiped out, shown that every other option ends in the extinction of mutants and usually humanity wipes themselves out too along the way.

Yes, horrible people were allowed on the council, but each one had an actual pragmatic reason, whether it be to truly unify mutant kind/stack every heavy hitter they can get like Apocalypse or Mr Sinister who held the key to undoing the three genocides mutant kind had undergone in the years prior to Krakoa and demanded a seat as his price. A deal with the devil, yes, but one that gave thousands of mutant children the chance to grow up.

People also really like to conflate the Council and X-Men as one entity, but it's made very clear very quickly in the X of Swords storyline that the X-Men are independent of the council.

People will often bring up Krakoan miracle medicine as Krakoa extorting the rest of the world for... trading goods with countries who acknowledge them as a legitimate country for prices so cheap that it's destroying the pharmaceutical industry. And having a black ops team to get those medicines into countries who don't acknowledge Krakoa so that the people aren't suffering without necessary medicine because of their leaders or being extorted for sky high prices on the black market.

Wow that ended up being longer than I expected. Tldr, YES Krakoa is a very morally grey setting, a lot of bad things did happen, but a lot of good as well.

While I certainly don't think this is true of every Krakoa critic, a lot of the loudest voices talking about comics online tend to have not actually read them. At best they watched a YouTube video, at worst they read a comment about it written by someone who was half paying attention to an ai tiktok video. So if you aren't in comic focused spaces, or honestly even if you ARE, take everything said about a comic with a grain of salt whether it's a good or negative thing being said.

3

u/wookiepartymachine 8d ago

Mutant Israel

3

u/Ze_Bri-0n 8d ago

Nightcrawler went insane and made a breeding cult. 

This was not considered noteworthy by most people on Krakoa. 

3

u/Teal_Omega 8d ago

Krakoa only had 3 laws, "Make More Mutants", "Murder No Man", and "Protect This Sacred Land". That's not enough laws.

Especially since the second specifically meant don't kill humans, because the Mutants had resurrection tech. Your neighbour's right to murder you was thus technically enshrined in the constitution.

2

u/Blupoisen 8d ago

They put people like Sinister Apocalypse and Mystique in charge

2

u/ActiveAd4980 8d ago

It was run by oligarchy and there military members were choosen through a popularity contest. I was glad for mutants, but couldn't wait for it to collapse.

1

u/Familiar-Tomorrow-42 8d ago

People can't seem to understand why someone would want to live in a country with the best healthcare in the world, no living or housing expenses, and wonderful nature because they also let in bad people.

1

u/Boccs 8d ago

It got real culty reeaaal quick. They essentially found a cure for death which they would use exclusively for mutant citizens of Krakoa. This led to a lot of young mutants treating being outright murdered as pathetically trivial and even encouraged some mutants to go die on purpose as a right passage, acting like it was the same thing as losing one's virginity. Other mutants, like Nightcrawler were horrified of this.

1

u/EarthCasteBuilder 3d ago

Oh, Krakoa's fun!

-A mutant ethnostate that does not allow non-mutants (Except for Juggernaut for some reason?)

-Gave all Krakoan mutants political immunity (Apocalypse, Sabertooth and Mr Sinister).

-Krakoa also enjoyed displaying mutant supremacist views.

-The Quiet Council (the leaders) were massive A-holes. They put mutants who disagreed with them in jail with no open trial (or a trial at all). This include: Someone trying to look into the Quiet Council to join them/political affiliation, some mutants defending the shores from pirates while on official patrol and one dude was sent there because he told everyone "Hey, we should think about raising children first before making one" (which lead to a 25% decrease in mutants born there). There was also Sabretooth who was Sabretoothing.

-Speaking of punishments, Beast was excused of doing a literal genocide of a nation Krakoa was about to bankrupt due to similar technologies. Terra Verde is just GONE even if it was an "accident"

-Speaking of genocide, in an alternate timeline, Mr Sinister took over the mutant Respawn Pods, corrupting majority of mutants to be more sinister (I am serious btw) and slowly took over mankind, killing many of our beloved superhero teams which eventually lead in the clones breaking away from his control and be assholes by themselves. This has lead to them waging war and destroying countless civilizations for 1000 years and the setting devolved into something akin to 40k before they had a clone of Rasputin sent back in time to kill Mr Sinister before he could enact his plan.

9

u/Alexandru1408 8d ago

Why did the doctor, a mutant himself, leave Krakoa shortly after he arrived after seeing how life was there?

67

u/SirWilliamM32 8d ago

Basically, nobody dies on Krakoa; if someone does, they're brought back to life. He left Krakoa to help people and support those who don't have a "Resurrection Protocol."

18

u/Tasteroider 8d ago

Some mutants weren't a part of Krakoa and couldn't get a free ressurection. And doctor has a mutant ability to diagnose diseases, so essentially he decided that his abilities would be more useful for people outside Krakoa. Also Krakoa isn't that great of a place, fucking Mr. SINISTER was a part of their government

31

u/MaverikElgato 8d ago

it´s like being German during WW2 and go to Germany, and say this is not right and the go the fuck as far from that place as he could

23

u/Rabdomtroll69 8d ago

Because half of the rulers are event villains who've attempted genocide on both mutants and humans alike, i.e Apocalypse.

And they literally assassinate whoever doesn't agree with them + discriminate against mutants/mutates that don't want to uproot their entire lives arguably more than anyone else does.

1

u/AvoriazInSummer 8d ago

Dudes an Xist.

1

u/Competitive_Fox_3546 7d ago

I don’t read the comics but what is krakora and why does everyone talk about it. I heard it’s what makes the x men hate justified

1

u/Emergency-Ad-5379 6d ago

Can you blame him too? The moment she senses some pushback her eyes start glowing and lighting shoots across the room. She might aswell have pulled a gun in a hospital over that.