X-Men ReduX
Issue 1
Cover: shot with cyclops jean kurt kitty psylocke magneto storm and professor x
Story starts after a 3 months gap from the last hickman issue.
The x-jet arrives in a island. What used to be krakoa is now a lifeless inert island. Professor x shows up in company of storm and cyclops.
They are greeted by emma and magik. Emma is reforming the nation of genosha on the remains of Krakoa. Genosha welcomes all of its former inhabitants as well as mutants not willing to relocate back in their home countries nor USA after the fall of krakoa.
Emma explains that she had transferred the headquarter, factories and other facilities of frost corporations to genosha, and for that, she had Magik to teleport all facilities with her magic and jokes that some of the buildings weren’t even completely empty.
The relocation of her business is the first part of her plan to kickstart the repopulation of Genosha, now that she has finally obtained its recognition as a sovereign nation by the UN. Cyclops is intrigued how the UN was unanimous towards it and emma states that surprisingly, support and assistance is coming from many nations.
She tells xavier and the others that she is also creating a federal institute for mutants students and asks Magik to teleport them to the site. The Institute is located on the Boneyward, the x-factor’s krakoan headquarters. Emma tells them that many krakoan facilities are now genoshan public agencies. There, they run into Rachel, who hugs scott and ororo. Rachel explains that x-factor will remain active as Genoshan prime superhero group. They will work as the country police, defense and also scouters in search for mutant refugees across the globe.
Scott asks who is in the team. Polaris shows up in time to introduce the roster: she is leading, rachel provides intel, Magik: transportation, cecilia reyes is the team’s resident doctor, multiple man is resposible for patrolling the whole territory with his dupes serving as the island’s policemen. Syrin, M and Rictor are also in the team as field members and investigative force. Scott asks if there any open positions and mentions that Havok has a story with Genosha and could be a perfect fit for the team. Lorna is visibly uncomfortable and tells him that the team already has its leader. Scott insists that he is quite positive alex would gladly cooperate nonetheless.
Before departing charles asks emma if she is to be considered the island governor, president or PM. She mentions that just like Krakoa, Genosha is being governed by a council untill its first feasible elections. Xavier senses Emma is not willing to reveal who is in this committee with her and respectfully leaves without asking it.
In the reformed x-mansion, back in westchester, kitty is showing the school to a class of new students. They check on colossus arts class, a martial arts class with wolverine and a science class in with beast. Hank’s lab is their final destination and kitty dismiss the class. She is surprised by nightcrawler, who teleports in the lab right behind her. Kurt wonders if it feels like old times to her and kitty replies that its the only comfort she can find after what happened to krakoa. Through kitty’s recollection we get the first of a series of flashbacks that will slowly tell us what happened in krakoa before the reboot.
Flashback***
We see coordinated attacks to the cerebro backups. A complete devastation of the hatchery and some of the Five getting severely injured, including Elixir. We see many casualties including black tom and healer. We see many mutants fighting against hordes of nimrods and sentinels. We see betsy joining the battle leading the captain britain corps. We see that the x-men got the upper hand at the cost of many losses and devastation.
***End of flashback
In the danger room betsy and kwannon are fighting each other in a training sequence. The fight perfectly displays the equivalence between them. In the locker room, betsy laments their fight was short as she was just getting started, but unfortunately she had an appointment to attend. The senior staff is meeting to define the new x-teams. Betsy gears up in her new uniform, a “Psylocke” revisited uniform and Kwannon asks if she is dropping her captain britain mantle. Betsy replies that with the corps around and peace reigning in Otherworld at brian and jamie’s hands she will be more focused on assisting the x-men and mutants in general to recover from the latest crisis. Kwannon tells her she can take the codename back as well as she was hardly referred as Psylocke by her teams. Betsy asks her if she is sure about it since she would soon have another chance with another team. Kwannon confirms and confess she thought it was a good idea to get rid of kwannon, a name she considers a shackle from her past, but she finally grew to accept it. Betsy wonders if she is curious about her new team assignment. Kwannon states that there’s not much left for her imagination, since as the team’s resident ninja, she’d certainly be placed in a covert ops x-force alike team. Betsy says she also couldn’t avoid the cliche back when she was in her shoes and asks if kwannon would rather be in a face front team. Kwannon simply replies she is been in the shadows for enough time now. Betsy takes it into account and leaves to the war room.
In the war room, The new x-men board members gather for the meeting: xavier, magneto, cyclops, jean, betsy, ororo, kitty and kurt. They start by defining the 2 major missions for the x-men. Mutant affairs and defending the world. Each one of the board volunteer for a mission so 2 teams are formed: blue: magneto, storm, psylocke and kurt and Gold: cyclops, jean, kitty and xavier. While the first would take a more proactive surveillance of threats to mutants, the other would be the public face of the x-men and engage in the fight against world class threats, like the avengers and the fantastic four.
Each board member is granted the right to choose one additional recruit for their teams, considering the profile of each team major assignment: Storm chooses gambit, betsy: kwannon, kurt: wolverine and magneto choses rogue. For the gold team, jean chooses colossus, cyclops: iceman, kitty: bishop and xavier picks two, considering he won’t be in the field: beast and angel, his remaining original x-men. Xavier asks cyclops to debrief the others about the team assignments and dismiss the x-men except for jean and betsy, who he requests to join him for a walk trough the mansion’s lower levels.
Meanwhile we see the news covering the mutant relocations programs around the world after the fall of krakoa. Aside of genosha, the new york city mayor is granting mutants temporary free housing in community buildings in District x. The Xorn brothers are sheltering refugees in new tian. Many other hubs are shown across US and Surveillance footage shows that morlocks are back hiding in manhattan sewers. Mr sinister is watching the news from his headquarters in sinister london and we get to see that he is also sheltering a number of rogue mutants there. The news is broadcasting a live speech of NYC mayor telling that the city welcomes American mutants back home and no violence or bigotry will be tolerated. In his view, Mutants have saved the world many times and society owns them the right to inhabit America with no persecution. We see many manifestations with anti mutants protest signs like “Humans rights not Mutants rights”, “america free of muties” “human lives matter” but the mayor sounds determined and unshakeable by the public opinion.
Rogue, gambit, iceman, beast, bishop and colossus are in the mansion’s TV room, watching the news. Rogue says it all looks too positive for mutants, despite the protests, and that it feels utterly weird considering what they’ve recently been trough. Bishop agrees, complementing that no nation assisted them during the war on Krakoa, and now support to the mutant cause is coming from everywhere. Beast says he is even trying to identify any possibility of reality tampering in favor of mutants, but despite concluding there’s no signal of it, such manipulations are hard to track.
Back in the lower floors, xavier walks betsy an jean to the cerebro, now equipped with three seats and three amplifying helmets where telepaths can use their powers in unison. Xavier thanks the two women for their cooperation and secrecy and it’s revealed that after the attack on Krakoa, xavier ultimately grew tired of human bigotry towards mutants and together with jean, betsy and the amplification of cerebro, they are able to manipulate most of the world’s leaders and many influential people and agencies officers like SHIELD, Pentagon, NSA and others to join his pro mutant agenda. Then they run their weekly cerebro protocol to check on these minds, erasing all traits of hatred and and feeding them with new instructions.
As Jean and psylocke leave cerebro, jean asks betsy how does it feel to cross all possible ethical boundaries to safeguard mutants. Betsy says that she have seen many horrible things done to the mutant kind and always thought it was due to the clash of homo sapiens and homo sapiens superior living on the same lands. But after krakoa, mutants were living in full separation and even though they were ultimately persecuted and decimated by humans. She thinks xavier has finally ran out of alternatives and if they want mutants to survive on earth, that could possibly be their only option. Jean says betsy has always been the more pragmatic telepath, but to her, this is the opposite of what she has been taught by xavier since she was a teenager. Betsy says that they have been trough different and more turbulent times and asks if it’s really that hard deal with it. Jean says this precisely her issue: she is accepting and cooperating, what leaves her wondering if she herself could also be having her mind nudged by the world most powerful telepath?
Cyclops talks to iceman, angel and beast regarding the gold roster and the chance to finally reunite the original five in a flagship team. Beast is reluctant they are once again putting themselves in the public eye, as world class heroes, when the same victims they save are at the same time their own tormentors. Scott says he has stopped believing in xavier’s dream long ago and perhaps even charles has stopped believed in it some point in time but they seem to be living different times now as they finally not alone and have some the world must influential leaders with them to assure hate will not win. Hank looks suspicious as hell with scott’s unusual optimism, but agrees with the new team assignment.
Storm meets wolverine in his dojo to invite him to her team. Wolverine is surprised with storm leading a team with such approach specially with magneto joining them. Surveillance and proactivity were always his x-force profile, which storm strongly opposed in the past. Storm responds she draws a different line and thus, killing won’t be allowed unless strictly necessary. Wolverine asks her where this line is drawn, what would be “strictly necessary.” Storm replies: when it’s the only way to avoid other casualties or in a fatal situation of right of self defense. Logan ironically smiles and says that those two reasons per se are enough to make her team a band of killers, no different from him. He accepts the invitation and resumes training.
In manhattan, we see nyc police officers breaking into a building near alphabet city. They identify the bodies of 5 disfigured dead mutants. one of the cops says that the mayor will get out of his mind when nyc police reports that in the same day of his pro mutant speech. Another cop says it’s better not to jump into conclusions before they get to see what is in the other room. The cops gasp as they face the dead body of the mayor tied to a chair and the words “mutant lover” written in the wall behind him.
End of chapter One.