And thus ends an era. The issue itself is a solid conclusion, with the idea of what happened to the mutants stuck in the White Hot Room being a particularly lovely idea — I adore the concept of the Krakoan dream ascending to Heaven, leaving its flawed architects behind to exist forever in an unreachable eternity. But it suffers in places from the rift in talent between its writers, with (presumably) Ewing giving a lovely scene between a reborn Magneto and Xavier and (unmistakably) Duggan giving us one last moment of out-of-character ultraviolence with Nightcrawler casually ripping out an enemy's eyes.

The Krakoan era was an odd beast, reinvigorating the X-Men at a time when I would have sworn they were a dead concept continuing on for no reason except that they were lucrative IP, but designed to merely be phase one of a never-completed Hickman megaplot.

The concept always had a sloppiness that reiterated its originally limited intentions, a sort of Potemkin village where only the protagonists were ever real. Krakoa was an island with no media, no art, no sports, no culture, few living spaces and no place to go except the one tiki bar with the one bartender, a place where nobody seemed to mind that the architect of one of the worst genocides in mutant history was on the ruling council or that the ruling council was self-appointed. (While much of that is because it wasn't meant to last so long, an innate aversion to democracy has always marked Hickman's constructions.) For all its immense utopian promises Krakoa was never more than a storehouse for NPCs who seemed to do little with their lives but stand around waiting to be added to the cast of the 27th monthly X-title. One could fairly accuse Krakoa of being little more than the high-concept equivalent of the smoke that endlessly drifts around a Liefeld character's feet.

But Krakoa was also a framework that forced writers to tell new and exciting stories at a time when the X-Men had been lost in the metaphorical wilderness through years of storytelling that was either sloppy (Bendis, Fraction), lazy and uninspired (Guggenheim, Lemire), or Whedon. Krakoa forced writers out of the comfort zones that they'd been trapped in with brilliant new ideas like the resurrection protocols, which broke the X-Men free from the drab cycle of routine deaths and returns and forced writers to find new ways to make the threat of death meaningful. Krakoa opened the door to new stories and new ways of looking at the X-Men in a way that nothing else had even come close to since Morrison. And while the era had its duds, there were some truly great comics that came out in the last five years: HoXPox, Way of X, Hellions, Sabretooth, X-Men: Red, Immortal X-Men — and of course the greatest of them all, X-Terminators.

And now we're headed into the backlash era. Just as Austen and Whedon followed Morrison, the conservative "back to basics" retrenchment must come after all experimental phases in superhero comics because corporate IP management means superheroes can never grow and change more than temporarily these days. I'm excited about the creative teams (I mean, Gail Simone writing X-Men!!!) and ready to love the new era and certainly ready to move on from the quagmire of Fall of X. But whatever critiques I had of it, I'm truly sad to see Krakoa go. more

This issue has a lot of things going on. The promise of Krakoa fulfilled. The inevitable collapse. The beginning of something new. I went into this issue not knowing what to expect, and what I got, by my estimation, was a pretty thoughtful, mostly quiet issue, at least in comparison to what came before. Big things happen, sure, but the bombast of the FoHoX/RoPoX finales are much bigger. What I find most interesting about this issue is the use of Apocalypse. I'm pretty sure it's been accepted by most readers that Apocalypse serves as an embodiment of trauma. The generational trauma and violence that consumes the marginalized, that they have to overcome. So I find it so interesting how they use him here. When faced with the other side, when faced with a world as it should be, a world without hate and fear, Apocalypse turns violent. He cannot accept it. He won't accept it. He is trauma, and he won't be shed. It's such an incredibly powerful metaphor, I think, that genuinely gets to the heart of what X-Men is, and especially was during the Krakoan Era. In that way, I feel like this is an incredible way to send off Krakoa.

The rest of the issue is not quite so excellent. The Clairemont story is well-deserved. We finally get to see him chime in on what was initially his idea. And it mostly works. I feel like a better artist would've been welcome, but I don't have a large issue with it. The preview of what's to come has me both excited and nervous. Something that was so great about this era was how interconnected the mutants felt, and to separate them all again is... A choice. I'm not quite sold on all the pitches here, but I'm willing to give them a chance of course. I've read every single issue of the Krakoan Era, I'm not jumping off here. The creative teams look mostly great. I'm sure it'll be fun.

Also, briefly: Duggan's run on the X-Men had its ups and downs. It at times felt disconnected and all over the place, but I felt like it ultimately had more good than bad. Even the more lackluster issues were a fun read, at the very least. more

Ayala and Reis did the thing!

Thank you Vita Ayala and Rod Reis for bringing us the best New Mutants run since Zeb Wells. And I think I'm actually liking this even more than Wells' run so thank you for the best since Claremont. I hope it continues well into the new year and beyond!

This is a perfect comic. The art, the writing, everything, perfect. The debate between Shadow King and the New Mutants is so well written to the point I can actually see where Farouk is coming from (even though I still want to see the NM kick his ass). Can't wait to see how this plays out next month!