The Krakoa Era has reached a terminal point for the X-Men. The story was never supposed to last forever, but original head writer Jonathan Hickman’s departure slowed the whole process down. Recently, the X-Men participated in two massive events — A.X.E. Judgment Day and Judgment Day — that showed their cracks to the world, setting what looks like the final arc in the Krakoa Era.
Fall Of X has been teased all year, but at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel gave a tease of what is coming next. A teaser image asking “Who Are The New X-Men?,” with a promise to reveal more in November, has fans talking. Will Krakoa end? What’s coming next? These are the questions gripping the X-Men fandom right now, but many eagle-eyed fans noticed a similarity between the New X-Men font and the one used during The Age Of Apocalypse. Nostalgia has played a massive role in the X-Men franchise during the Krakoa Era, but this might be a road too far. Marvel’s legacy of milking The Age Of Apocalypse has had sometimes disastrous consequences in the past.
The Unprecedented Success Of The Age Of Apocalypse
The ’90s were undeniably the X-Men’s decade. They had been cementing their sales dominance since the 1980s, and the ’90s represented the victory lap. X-Men books topped the charts. They were the biggest comics in the land, but things often seemed to be in a holding pattern. Plots stretched interminably, and while there were some big changes, like the loss of Wolverine’s adamantium and Magneto’s mindwipe from Fatal Attractions, things were getting a little stagnant. However, the tail end of 1994 shook things up completely.
Teaser images started showing Legion screaming over a coffin at a funeral for his father, Charles Xavier, with the cryptic phrase, “The End… Because There Never Was A Beginning,” teasing something massive. Legion Quest gave readers the answer as the X-Men battled Legion, who had traveled to the past to kill Magneto and save his father’s dream. Unfortunately, Legion ended up killing Xavier and The Age Of Apocalypse was born.
The Age Of Apocalypse completely redefined the X-Men. Alternate timelines have long been a part of the X-Men, but rarely were they taken this far. “Canceling” the bestselling comic books in the land and relaunching them was a huge gamble, but it paid off big time. While not every book is a classic, overall, The Age Of Apocalypse is full of engaging stories, each one highlighting different aspects of the conflict between Magneto’s X-Men and Apocalypse’s empire. Readers responded very positively to the story, and it became the gold standard for pretty much every alternate universe that came after it.
The Ten-Year Anniversary And Uncanny X-Force
In 2005, Marvel marked the tenth anniversary of The Age Of Apocalypse by revisiting the universe. Several anthology books were published, as well as a six-issue sequel series written by current Marvel editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski when he was pretending to be a Japanese writer named Akira Yashida and artist Chris Bachalo. The Age Of Apocalypse (2005) left unanswered questions, but the ten-year anniversary was widely considered a success.
The next comic appearance of The Age Of Apocalypse came in Uncanny X-Force in 2011. X-Force has a complicated and violent legacy, and the new team played into that. Wolverine, Psylocke, Fantomex, Deadpool, Archangel, and Deathlok hunted down mutantkind’s greatest threats, but Archangel had a secret. He was secretly becoming the next Apocalypse, and he needed more Celestial Seeds. X-Force found this out and traveled to the AoA universe at the behest of Dark Beast, who was secretly working with Archangel. They discovered a world under the control of Weapon X, that universe’s Wolverine, who had also become the new Apocalypse. They escaped back to their reality after helping Jean Grey and the X-Men, but Archangel had ascended to Apocalypse. He and his Horsemen, including the AoA Iceman and Blob, almost defeated X-Force, but timely interference by the AoA X-Men saved the day. The story was well received and had an interesting aftermath.
First off, the AoA Nightcrawler stayed in the 616 universe to help hunt down any AoA stragglers. The Age Of Apocalypse Nightcrawler was quite different from what readers were used to and fit in perfectly with X-Force. That wasn’t the end for the rest of the AoA‘s characters, though, as Marvel launched The Age Of Apocalypse, an ongoing series by writer David Lapham and multiple artists that focused on the battle between Jean Grey and the X-Men and Weapon X. The book was met with a mixed reception and only lasted 14 issues. Marvel had seemingly found the limit of AoA popularity with readers.
Age Of X And Age Of X-Men
2011 also saw Marvel do something AoA related, The Age Of X. The story was unlike The Age Of Apocalypse in structure, as it mostly took place in X-Men: Legacy, but it was definitely a spiritual successor to The Age Of Apocalypse. The story chronicled an alternate universe, one where the X-Men are the last bastions of the mutant race, holed up in Fortress X and surrounded by humanity. The story was generally positively received by fans and critics, but it has no staying power in X-Men history. It was just an alternate universe X-Men story that felt like AoA, and it was quickly forgotten by most. However, it showed a disturbing tendency for Marvel to try and recreate the success of The Age Of Apocalypse.
2019’s Age Of X-Man was more explicitly an exact clone of The Age Of Apocalypse. Spinning out X-Men Disassembled, a weekly relaunch of Uncanny X-Men at the end of 2018 that didn’t exactly light the world on fire, the story transported the majority of the X-Men to an alternate universe created by X-Man. In this antiseptic universe, the X-Men were the violent enforcers of X-Man’s orthodoxy, with Apocalypse portrayed as a firebrand hippie rebel. However, the story didn’t connect with audiences at all. Fans didn’t want a watered-down AoA derivative, and the announcement of Hickman’s House Of X/Powers Of X revealed the story’s real purpose — a filler event that no one really wanted.
A Legacy Of Failure
The Age Of Apocalypse was a new thing at a time when such stories didn’t really happen, and that’s why it succeeded. Marvel put a lot of work into creating the event, and it paid off. Even with the well-received sequel, Marvel was tempting fate, but at least they found a way to modernize the story and keep it interesting. Their later attempts to bring the AoA back or at least go back to the well all failed in one form or another because Marvel was hoping that nostalgia would sell the books. The Age Of Apocalypse is quite ironic — it was a massive success and is still a beloved story, but its only real legacy is failed attempts to bring it back.
Fall Of X promises to shake things up, but playing too much into nostalgia can be a huge mistake. The Krakoa Era has been more nostalgic than fans like to realize, and the big ending being an Age Of Apocalypse-style story would just show Marvel’s misunderstanding of what fans really want. Using New X-Men, a title that was revolutionized by writer Grant Morrison and was the first and last time from 1991 to 2019 that the X-Men actually felt different, as a title for a book that may play into Age Apocalypse nostalgia is a complete understanding of both books and what they mean to fans. The Krakoa Era has gotten stale in places, so a shake-up is needed, but nothing like this.