#xspoilers

[artbytesslyn]

The immortal wives finally got their wedding

[asgardswinter]

They are all family🩵

Storm #3 (2024-)

[superherotiger]

Scarlet Witch (2024) Vol. 4 #3

I’m obsessed with the green siblings thank you

[soviet-supersoldier]

Alright, since the events of Raid on Greymalkin directly affects Arkady, let's talk about it and how terribly the X-men have all been written in this narrative for this story to work and what it likely means for Arkady’s future.

So, in the first issue of Sentinels, Omega Red was captured and brought to Greymalkin Prison by the new Sentinels that Larry Trask and Warden Ellis have created to hunt down "bad" mutants. Keep in mind, Omega Red did absolutely nothing to deserve being thrown into a place like this, as his arc in the From the Ashes Infinity Comic shows. In fact, no one imprisoned here deserves to face what goes on behind these closed doors:

Here, we are shown the state of this prison. It's flithy, rat-ridden, and disgusting. These characters have to live in this place. Blob is being tortured, and -- as we later come to learn in the events of Raid -- brainwashed KGB-style through this method of torture to become a "trustee." I'm going to focus on this a bit as it is important to not only show how this is going to affect the imprisoned characters moving forward from this storyline, but also how it paints the X-men in a very bad light for allowing this to continue.

So, the characters who are imprisoned in Greymalkin currently are all characters who have been villains at one point or another. Every one of these characters has faced judgment and hatred for being what they are and what they were made into. Omega Red is a prime example of this. As a child, he feared and hated his powers:

This is not a view of himself that has improved in adulthood. Arkady still views himself as a monster, that his abilities make him a bad person:

And this is a view he holds even after his time spent on Krakoa where he was able to start turning his life around. He doesn't have to kill to live anymore, and Sage had done a lot to help him improve himself while he lived there and worked as a member of X-Force. Even after all that and her encouragement, the doubt lingers. The self-loathing is still there. I know Arkady is not the only prisoner trapped in Greymalkin right now who struggles with such doubts. Who carries guilt like he does. It's a subconscious view that a lot of mutants have about themselves because society has pretty much told them for their entire lives that they're horrible people because of their powers. That they're all monsters and freaks of nature that need to be killed or locked up. And now, these characters have been put into a place where those fears and doubts about themselves and their place in the world are being indoctrinated into them to be the only thought they're allowed to have about themselves:

This creed that these trustees are forced to recite and believe in is just sickening. Any amount of self-worth that any of them started to get in their lives as of late is being stripped away again in the cruelest possible way. They're being told -- through torture mind you -- that they were born evil. That they're monsters. That they are lesser than humans and lesser than any other mutants because the genetic lottery gave them powers that were a burden and a curse rather than something that can easily be used to benefit others or that would allow them to pass as a normal human like so many of the X-men can.

Which brings this all around to the main point: the X-men. Before this new era even started, I want to point out a few things. The first is that the X-men worked with all of these current prisoners in one form or another while living on Krakoa. They (eventually) gave every one of these characters a chance. Blob was a bartender. Omega Red got cured of his need to kill and became a member of X-Force. Theresa was able to reconcile with Sean and Black Tom and bring their family together. The X-men were able to see these changes and progress made by all of these people. In Omega Red’s case, they even voted on the decision to give him a second chance, with Kurt being a voting member of the Quiet Council who decided to listen to Sage’s argument to have him brought back. They should know that these former villains have been making an effort to improve themelves. The last time they saw any of them, these former villains were all allies, which makes comments like this seem very out of character for someone like Kurt to make:

Kurt should know Arkady is an ally. But yet he's acting like Omega Red is a monster and that nothing he did on Krakoa to improve himself even mattered. Which, again, is something that all of these prisoners are being tortured into believing about themselves. Hearing the X-men hold the same view about you as these horrible guards do is not something that will make a person feel welcomed or loved or help them believe that they can be better than what the world made them into. The trust that Omega Red had started to build on Krakoa with the X-Men is going to start to crumble because of how they are continuing to view him and the plight that all these characters are in.

Which brings me to my next point: just what are the X-men doing? When Krakoa fell, Orchis had mutants under siege. They rounded up mutants in camps to strip them of their powers and torture them. The X-men and Avengers didn't stand for that and fought tooth and nail to get rid of Orchis. They went to war for their kind, for their right to exist. And they beat Orchis. But what did they really end up gaining at the end of it all? Well, if you're the X-men, you got some variation of peace or concessions, getting bases, time to relax and enjoy the world and your victory. Being able to pass for human really helps in that regard. If you weren’t able to pass, however?

You faced violence. Discrimination. Hatred. Society is not kind to mutants who look different. Who are unable to blend in. These were the mutants --villain or not -- who benefited the most from Krakoa. Because they all finally had a place where they could be safe and accepted no matter their looks or abilities. When the X-men finally beat Orchis, they seemed content to leave everything at that and didn't try to reclaim any piece of what they had lost for the sake of those mutant brothers and sisters who were bound to struggle the most without a mutant community to support them.

They unfortunately seemed to just accept that everything was still fine since they themselves weren't personally being bothered by the hatred. But all the while, mutants have started to slip through the cracks without support from the wider mutant community. A community that the X-men are supposed to protect. And this extends beyond characters like Omega Red and the other Greymalkin prisoners, although they are the ones currently being tortured the most. Lifeguard. Chamber. Firestar. These are all characters that have faced a world that hates and fears them without the X-men doing anything to help them. Why haven't the X-men done anything? Because so many of them just gave up and settled for what they have. They had the luxury to be able to do so because they look human. Their powers aren't horrendous abilities that they can't control or that kill people.

Even still, even if they want to take a break, they should all know the fight is not done. They are all well aware of what was done to their former home, the X-Mansion. They know it was turned into a prison. Jubilee scouted it out. Rogue and Scott had phone calls about it. And yet they did nothing. They let it continue to stand, this place which sullies the name of the X-men and their history. This place -- which treats mutants in a similar way to how Orchis treated mutants -- is allowed to continue to grow and thrive even after the X-men and Avengers had just put their foot down and said such places were not going to be tolerated. Now they're tolerating it? Why? There is absolutely no reason to wait. And yet they did. They did absolutely nothing to correct this injustice towards their fellow mutants until one of their own was impacted. Until they themselves finally started to face the same things characters like Omega Red had already been facing for months now. It was only when they were personally threatened that they decided to do anything. Which brings us to the Raid itself.

The Raid... was a mess. A disaster. A series of unfortunate events that didn't have to be. Instead of going into this place, seeing the atrocities committed on the grounds of their first home and feeling a strong urge to eliminate this threat, what did they do? They fought amongst themselves. They argued. They did absolutely nothing to help any of the prisoners. Kurt left Omega Red to rot in his cell. They did nothing to free the trustees nor made any sort of real threats of anger towards the warden for what she was doing to their fellow mutants. Rogue came the closest to saying this place was wrong, but all her concern was devoted to Charles Xavier, the only mutant willingly imprisoned in this place. No concern was given to any of the others at all until it was too late.

And yet, again, this whole thing just seems wrong and runs as an antithesis to what the X-men are, what they stand for, and what they would actually tolerate. A big laser gun should be something they should be able to take care of. The X-men shouldn't be this easily cowed into obedience after everything they recently faced with the fall of Krakoa and how they fought back against Orchis. Thry shouldn't be taking "no" for an answer. They shouldn't allow for this prison to stand. They NEVER should have. And yet, time and time again here, they have failed in their work to actually help their kind, to make the world a better place for mutants. This is not the X-men I fell in love with reading about. This is not the X-men that I know. The X-men should be doing so much better than this. But they're not. They've rolled over and accepted that this is the reality and that they are powerless against a podcaster and her satellite weapon.

This is something the X-men should have never allowed to happen. They should have never allowed things to get this far. And as a result, by doing nothing when they could and SHOULD have been doing something, their enemies were allowed to regroup and begin targeting the most vulnerable members of the mutant community. The X-men failed in their responsibilities and let a place full of cruel and unusual punishment to stand because they weren't the mutants being personally affected by what was happening. And now, so many more have to pay the price for their inaction.

Where does that leave the unfortunate prisoners of this place? At this point, beyond being torn down in mind and body, it's hard to say. Every single one of them does have the right to call the X-men out on their failure, though. They all would be very justified in their anger at being left behind, both after Krakoa fell and here at this prison. In Omega Red’s case, I could very easily see this whole experience souring him on the X-men again and making him very unwilling to trust them again. Because even after everything that these former villains have been trying to do, there's still some part of the X-men that seem to view these unfortunate souls as monsters that deserve to be treated like animals. That they deserve to get beaten, fed rotten food and forced to sleep in wretched cells.

The X-men have failed in their role to protect mutants. They have failed to stand for what is right and failed to help their fellow mutants from being condemned to one of the worst fates a mutant can face: to be weaponized and used like a tool to attack other mutants. The Raid on Greymalkin story arc is a blight on X-men comics and is an example of what not to do when doing a story like this. Characters and their histories cannot be ignored. Petty fights over arbitrary issues should not be taking place when there are SO many higher priorities that need to be taken care of. This story was nothing but disappointing and sours me on the direction Marvel is taking the X-men. There is nothing to look forward to. Like the mutant prisoners who were left behind to be further tortured and devalued, we the readers have been left to a similar fate, wondering when in the world we will finally be freed from this prison that Marvel's writers are putting us in and what we -- and the characters we love -- will even come out on the other side looking like.

[rightmedicine]

Murewa wrote something in this issue that helps to showcase the African-American portion of Ororo’s heritage and I appreciate that as that’s something that can be overlooked, especially with general audiences

Gumbo / okra is a cultural dish that our Ancestors brought here from Africa-descendants of chattel slavery often use rice in the gumbo dishes that they create here. I really love this moment as it helps us resonate more with Ororo and helps her connect w her past

[scottcyclopssummers]

I have to say, I absolutely LOVED the third issue of X-Men (2024)! Scott Summers really made an impact with his compelling lines and commanding presence. Here’s what stood out:

We see him stepping up as the leader, managing a team of misfit mutants, many of whom have either been villains or have had morally ambiguous pasts.

He doesn't hold back in calling out Agent Lundqvist and the government.

He mentions being tortured.

After all this time, he finally gets to enjoy his long-awaited sandwich.

The issue also touches on his struggles with PTSD, culminating in a panic attack.

After being sidelined on Krakoa, this issue really gave me the Scott Summers spotlight I’ve been craving. Hoping it won't go sideways.

[beep3]

I just realised Laura Kinney - Wolverine #1 is literally just Laura embodying

‘I love hanging out in groups of 3 cause then i can go nonverbal and they entertain eachother while i look at a tree or sum’ with a bit more stabbing of human traffickers involved.

Which is probably the most accurate she’s been written in a while, she’s still a bit too Logan for me, but it’s still a win in my books lmao

[zyralynn]

Jean Grey Fanart !!! by me The first XMEN but not the last I will draw! #art #xmen #jeangrey #illustration #marvel

[samsonet3]

LESBIAN GWENPOOL?

[farsight-the-char]

Dumb Fans: "Why do people hate mutants? It makes no sense?" X-men '97, articulating a point X-men has been making for years: "Fear of mutants is fear of replacement, of change, of the "Impure" replacing "the Pure"."

[asgardswinter]

Every time they talk to each other theres smth homoerotic going on

[lexcellence]

When I heard Gerry Duggan get asked on Cerebro, white boy to white boy, about the unfortunate optics of announcing and then immediately murdering the least white team of X-Men in years, I knew we'd be in for some shit. Man, did he deliver - after some evasive waffling about how ORCHIS is meant to be fascist, and how the story's point is to put the collective back of mutantkind even more against the wall than it was any of the last six times something like this has happened.

And, honestly? That's fair! This year's Hellfire Gala is ultimately the first part of a larger story, and history shows it's not going to last forever — hell, does anyone remember what the status quo was immediately before HoXPoX? At least this time most of the characters have implicitly just been sucked into Mother Righteous's magical Poké Ball, rather than outright killed; if anything, that's an improvement. I was fully content to just think "hey, not for me," and get back to ignoring everything beyond Immortal and Sabertooth, secure in the knowledge that certain topics are bound to be handled poorly when almost everyone in the room is white, when Duggan said three words that stopped me in my tracks:

"Keep the faith."

See, that struck me, because for a lot of us, this entire era of comics has been about nothing but faith. I've been reading X-Men, and engaging with fans since I was eight, and I've never seen the kind of collective buy-in from other marginalized readers that I have with Krakoa. X-Twitter (or, I suppose, X-X) has been Blacker, queerer, more disabled, less homogeneous than the fandom has ever been, all of us buying in to the implicit promise that this time things would be different. Sure, the line was headed by a presumably straight white guy, but there were other voices in the room for a change, and it really felt like they were going to be listened to. We thought we'd moved past clunky metaphor, past queerbaitimg and awkward racial gaffes. Storm and Kwannon were getting to do stuff, Arakko was full of amazing characters of color, Cyclops and Wolverine were probably fucking, we were hooked, and we turned out.

It's hard to overemphasize just how wild this was to see in real time. X-Men has always been allegory, sure, but it's traditionally allegory by and for the majority. For years, the readers who might really feel that resonance, those of us who have been hated and feared for the unforgivable crime of being who we are, we were afterthoughts, tolerated at best. We got scraps, "representation" from creators who seemed to be offended by the implication that we would ever want something other than being fetishized tokens. We were, as Hickman so succinctly put it, told that we were less when we knew we were more. And then, out of nowhere, Krakoa made us inescapable.

The two biggest X-Men podcasts, X-Plain the X-Men and Cerebro, are hosted by queer people. X of Words has been rocking the Black, queer experience like no one's business, Mutant Watch has been a joy to listen to and to be on. Not just podcasts, either, in everything from criticism to fanart to cosplay, voices have been elevated that were previously silent. I mean, hell, I've gotten paid to talk about comics, that shit never would have happened four years ago.

All of that was based on faith.

Faith that we were being celebrated, for once, instead of just used. Faith that for whatever growing pains there might be, things were going to be better.

And let's not fuck around here, there were growing pains. In the first year alone we dealt with everything from blatant whitewashing, to queerbaiting — any Sunspot fan can go into detail there, assuming you can get one of us to stop crying for long enough. While that was going on, we watched Bryan Edward Hill (the only non-white writer in that initial wave) put out a book that was, let's face it, at worst aggressively mid, only to be excoriated by certain portions of the fandom, and dropped by the office, while significantly worse books managed to hold fast — er, hold on. Not to say that Fallen Angels was without sin, mind you, the book was packed with enough orientalism to make Chris Claremont blush. But, at the same time, Wolverine's first year ended with him doing what he does best: trying so hard to be Japanese that I had to check to make sure he wasn't Marvel's editor in chief.

Through all of that, we kept the faith.

Things didn't really get much better, of course. Arakko was a fascinating concept, and felt like it damn near doubled Marvel's characters of color. And yeah, the ending of X-Factor was one of the most poorly handled racist messes I've seen this side of… well, any given day on Twitter. Sure, the whitewashing has never stopped, to the point where everything from X-Corp to this week's Hellfire Gala has had to be hastily edited between previews and release. Maybe we keep dealing with stuff like butchered AAVE, even more queerbaiting, Kate Pryde's funeral, the genocide of almost all of those Arraki characters, and whatever the hell was going on with Lost in Way of X. Maybe there's a very real argument to be made that there's something insidious about three straight years of voting to determine if characters like Monet (who, by the by, has been retooled from "basically Superman" to "Black woman with anger powers") deserve the honor of being written by a white man who's stayed writing with his foot in his mouth. I mean, hey! All my white friends in the scene say he's nice, just like Williams, or Howard, or any number of other crusty crackers who are still proud of tripping over the bar Claremont left on the floor in the 80's!

And dammit, we kept the faith!

Even before the issue dropped, the Fall of X has had a lot of us wary. After all, all of the promotion leading up to it has been white guys saying the minority allegory has had it too good for too long, which, whatever, press copy. We all know they've gotta sell books — they, in this case, being the almost exclusively white, almost exclusively male creative teams attached to all of the books in the line. Sure, as Duggan said, the 616 has a fascism problem, but it’s hard not to see this as a deliberate step back from the almost double digit number of non-white creators these past few years — almost as if Marvel has realized they can make space for a fourth ongoing by their favorite white boy if they just throw out a Voices special every couple of months as a containment zone for the darkies. And, hey, considering how good ol’ C.B. got his foot in the door, I can’t even fake surprise. At this point, it’s a minor miracle any time a person of color is tapped for anything that’s expected to last beyond one issue.

In this issue, as a reward for keeping the faith, we got to see something astounding, something that'd bring a tear to the eye of even the most cynical reader — a team that was only half white. My god. And sure, their brutal murder in favor of a team with Kate "Hard-Arrr" Pryde and the Kingpin(????) was only a pit-stop between the resurrection of the suddenly ashy Ms. Marvel and Lourdes Chantel being killed off for the sake of a white woman's angst yet afuckinggain, but ain't that the dream that Malcolm Ten or whoever died for?

The Krakoan era, ultimately, has been the same as every other. Empty promises by white men who show us time and again that there was never any point in expecting anything better. Any meaning we've found, everything of worth, has been what we've made for ourselves.

We've spent years keeping the faith, Gerry, while you and yours have continued to let us down. What the hell do we have to show for it?

[soviet-supersoldier]

Well, Omega Red got name-dropped in X-men #9, which reveals that he is still locked up in prison here. However, Kurt’s dialogue is very unfortunate:

I shall indeed call you a poor mutant liberationist Kurt. You have seen what this prison is doing to people. Omega Red was an ally on Krakoa and a teammate to Wolverine. You are seriously going to leave him to suffer in this place? Why? Because you still think he's a "bad mutant?" You don't think he changed while on Krakoa? Whatever happened to seeing the good in people Kurt? Second chances? Belief in redemption? You'd think Kurt of all people would be decent enough to show kindness. Especially when cruelty is being shown to another human being, to a fellow mutant.

Like so many times before this, the X-men continue to show that they only care about their own core group, with no regard for mercy towards their less fortunate mutant brothers and sisters. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if they ended up leaving Blob here too because of his past Brotherhood ties. Recent ties and character growth when former villains are finally given an opportunity to change simply doesn't matter, I guess.

You guys are supposed to be heroes, Kurt. To stand against injustice wherever it occurs no matter who is the one experiencing the injustice. This prison is enancting cruel and unusual punishment on its inmates. Are you going to let such a prison stand? Even if you don't care about Arkady, shouldn't you at least care about what this prison represents? What allowing it to stand will lead to? "First they came for the undesirables, and I did not speak out..."

Knowingly abandoning someone like Omega Red like this is only going to cause the little trust he had started to build with the X-Men on Krakoa to be shattered again. Omega Red values trust and honesty. That's how Sage was able to reach him and help him change. But with the way you're treating him now, Arkady is never going to trust you people again. And with the way X-men like you look down on him and treat him as undeserving of even the smallest kindness, Arkady has more than enough good reason to believe you will never actually care. You've proven time and time again that you don't.

What an incredible shame. You really could have gotten a powerful and loyal ally here if you had just taken the chance on him. He doesn't have to be a villain anymore, but you still insist that he deserves being tortured and left behind to suffer even while you hypocritically say that people in your special friends group don't deserve to be in the same place. So what? You're the judge and jury on who deserves to be saved or not? Are you going to walk through this prison letting certain people free while leaving the others because you don't like them? That's not what a hero does. You should know better. Shame on you, Kurt and Psylocke. Shame on you.

[rightmedicine]

In some African Traditional Religions & Spiritualities, it’s taught that before one can attempt to connect with a God or an Orisha or any sort of divinity, you must first connect with your Ancestors

It’s taught that one of the first steps to approaching divinity of any kind is to bridge the gap between yourself and those who exist in the spiritual world instead of in the physical, especially those of your lineage.

[scottcyclopssummers]

"Worried? I have two wildly dangerous women with enormous swords looking out for me. When I was 13, I thought this was what heaven looked like" - Scott Summers

X-Men #2 Preview

[cherikarchive]