As Apocalypse faces off in a final contest with his long lost wife Genesis, Scott and Jean confront the Quiet Council with the news from Cable’s telepathic warning in Cable #6.
Scott and Jean suggest leading a strike team to rescue their people, but this meets with resistance from the Quiet Council members, particularly Sebastian Shaw. The danger, he suggests, is twofold. First, if the gates are left open for the strike team to return, this potentially leaves Krakoa open to invasion. Second, and an even greater point of contention in the issue, if members of the Quiet Council itself go and they fail, a loss of so many members could cause instability in the government of Krakoa. The council decides that if a member goes to Otherworld, they lose their seat.
While Scott’s status as a Krakoan captain going forward is unclear, the decision to go to Otherworld means Jean Grey has lost her seat and will need to be replaced. I’m sure this will be a point of contention moving forward in the aftermath, given that this may open the door to Krakoa’s first vote or to a more villainous person taking Jean’s place.
As independently operating heroes, the X-Men had the luxury of taking risks in the face of impossible odds. Still, this issue highlights how governing a nation is more complex than being a superhero. As Cyclops points out, governing requires necessary evil, but heroes can’t operate by the logic of necessary evil but my right and wrong.
Cyclops declares that while the Quiet Council governs Krakoa, the X-Men will be its heroes.
While Xavier and Magneto seem to give their tacit approval to this statement, this issue’s prose section reveals that the X-Men proper were disbanded when the Krakoan government was founded. While X-Force was approved as the nation’s official strike team, the X-Men’s independent nature and loaded history were seen as a potential impediment to Krakoan progress.
But Scott argues that the X-Men are still important as heroes and exemplars, injecting a little idealism into the real politick of governance. We’ll see if this opens up potential conflicts in the future with a Quiet Council that, in its attempts to include multiple mutant ideologies in its ruling body, may have let a few foxes into the hen house.
X-Men #15 is available now!
