443 – X-Retail (feat. Katie Pryde of Books With Pictures)

I love the Krakoa Era but I do think it made a couple of minor missteps. I don’t think Hickman leaving was an issue as he had helped cultivate some great talent to carry on. I do think that changing the original plans hurt though.

When the new Era began with HoX/Pox there was a lot of excitement building up about where it was going to go. For the first time in a long time, I was having excited conversations with strangers at the comic shop. We’d quickly read the latest issues, looking for clues or details and then theorize what would happen next. Those red highlighted issues really got us excited. We knew something big was coming.

Then we got the revelation that plans had changed and Hickman was leaving. People were disappointed, of course. It took a couple of months but people stopped talking about the X-Men as passionately as they had been. Inferno got some people excited again but it was short lived.

This was all very disappointing for me as I love X-Men to my bones and lived talking about it. I was also genuinely excited for Gillen, Spurrier and Ewing to join the family. Or rejoin, as it were.

Basically, most of the Dawn of X creators left and it fell to (mostly) different people to carry on.

Without that excitement for the macro story I think the anthology collections felt less important or vital. The titles themselves also felt less cohesive than they had previously. It was really disheartening to watch Excalibur, New Mutants and X-Factor end.

If the X-Books are going with to a “back to basics” approach I hope it’s only as a launching point. I think there’s a lot of places the X-Titles can go that they haven’t already. Hopefully we’ll be getting creators who bring fresh perspectives (as is rumored).

I don’t know that there is a perfect number of titles. I think it’s possible to do 20 titles under a couple of conditions. They each need to have a distinct tone, mission and cast. No character should be in more than one team book and one solo title. I also don’t think they all need to be crowded into one place. I think the Krakoa era could have had a great contrast by having a title focused on a group who rejected Krakoa. Not its ideals, but its realities. There were some random issues that hinted at these kinds of characters but never really explored it.

Of course, this all just my own opinions and I may be off the mark on some of my assessments. I just hope that the next Era can stir up some of the excitement that seemed to have faded over the last couple of years.

Okay, you’ll (probably) talk about it in the next couple of episodes. But those X-Men announcements! Two women writing core X-Men titles and one of them is Gail Simone on Uncanny X-Men! Unless I’m mistaken, she will be the first solo female writer to ever work on Uncanny! Kelly Thompson got to co-write the Disassembled arc but that’s it.

I apologize in advance if I misgendered Eve Ewing. I don’t follow creators on social media so I do not know they’re preferred pronouns. I hope they’re writing the Storm series if it’s not Tanahesi (Sp?) Coates.

I suddenly have a lot of hope for post-Krakoa X-Men.