NYCC 2023: The Rise and Fall of the X-Men's Krakoa Age Revealed

Marvel.com: In 2019, fans witnessed the dawn of the Krakoan Age in Jonathan Hickman’s groundbreaking HOUSE OF X and POWERS OF X, two interconnected five-issue limited series that spanned mutant history and future. Now, the Krakoan Age ends in the same dramatic fashion in FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X and RISE OF THE POWERS OF X. Each delivering half of the story that will bring the Krakoan Age to its conclusion, the pair of series will feature the X-Men of today and the X-Men of tomorrow as they wage the final war against extinction across their entire existence! Evolution is inevitable. Extinction is optional!

The two series are fittingly crafted by some of the Krakoa’s defining architects, writer Gerry Duggan (X-MEN, MARAUDERS) and artist Lucas Werneck (IMMORTAL X-MEN) delivering FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X and writer Kieron Gillen (IMMORTAL X-MEN) and artist R.B. Silva (POWERS OF X) delivering RISE OF THE POWER OF X, plus covers by HOUSE OF X superstar artist Pepe Larraz. 

Mark Brooks confirms Betsy is depicted as Lady Mandarin on the right.

A.X.E.: Judgment Day #6 Spoilers & Art

Jean Grey mentions Betsy's mastery of psychic weapons and pays homage.

X-Position: Kieron Gillen

CBR: In his final X-Position before moving on from the X-Universe to Marvel NOW!, Kieron Gillen answered a number of fan questions about his time with "Uncanny X-Men," including his favorite single issue, the aftermath of "Avengers Vs. X-Men," the exploration of the Marvel Universe in "Consequences," characters he hopes to bring in for "Young Avengers" and his opinions on fan fiction.

One of the gems of your series was the surprisingly amazing double act that was Magneto and Psylocke. I would never had put those character together. What was it about you those two together that interested you?


Kieron Gillen: That grew out of the secret of Tabula Rasa in "X-Force." Magneto was the only person to know about X-Force. So when they go into Tabula Rasa, it made a lot of sense to pair them together, and the rest of history.

As I've said before, Psylocke, Magneto and Storm really were the Greek chorus to the run. I was trying to get the three of them together in "Consequences" one last time, but it didn't quite line up. But there is one last dance of Storm and Magneto, which ties it off in a way that makes me smile.

Uncanny X-Men #17 Spoilers

Spoilers: In Sinister London, Magneto, Storm, Psylocke and Danger are attacked by Sabretooth clones. Betsy mentally tricks the clones into gorging themselves. Meanwhile, Sinister has The Phoenix Five captive with their Phoenix portions possessing the Madelyne clones. Unit doesn’t like the idea of someone like Sinister having a fundamental power of the universe, so he commands Danger to get into the castle. As they need a stealth specialist for this, Psylocke wears Danger and heads to the castle, while Magneto and Storm provide distraction for Sinister’s army. One of the Madelynes defeats Storm and Magneto by herself and tracks Psylocke’s localization by taking the information from Erik’s mind. Psylocke orders Danger to head to the castle, while she poisons Magneto, freeing him from Madelyne’s control. Unit realizes there’s nothing they can do to stop Sinister, so he tells Danger to run away. While Sinister is distracted, Emma talks to the Phoenix and convinces it to return to the Phoenix Five. The Phoenix then burns away each and every version Sinister alive. The Phoenix Five meet the others and tell them the war is over and so is Sinister’s species.

Uncanny X-Men #17 Preview

Uncanny X-Men #17

Written by: Kieron Gillen

Art by: Daniel Acuña, Mike Del Mundo

Cover by: Mike Del Mundo

The Story:

AVX TIE-IN!

• The climactic end to the X-Men’s greatest stand against Sinister!

• The culmination of everything Sinister has planned since Uncanny #1!

In Stores: August 22, 2012

Uncanny X-Men #16 Spoilers

Spoilers: Magneto, Storm, Psylocke and Danger decide to follow the Phoenix Five in Sinister London. Cyclops decides to take the city starting with the creation engines, so no more Sinister are created. Sinister awakens a clone of Krakoa under his castle, while his minions take Namor down by using a laser cannon. Colossus grows in size to take on Kraoke, but Sinister drops living “Gambit” bombs on him. Magik teleports the Gambits within the Ruby Converger, destroying the laser cannon. Sinisters then drop Cannonballs on Magik and Colossus and take them down. Namor disobeys Cyclops and attacks the castle. Namor is ambushed and teleported to elsewhere. Meanwhile, Emma is attacked by exploding cows and knocked out. Three Madelynes approach Cyclops, who ends up unconscious after blasting them. Sinister approaches Cyclops, while Magneto, Storm, Psylocke and Danger arrive in Sinister London and witness all the destruction.

Uncanny X-Men #16 Preview

Uncanny X-Men #16

Written by: Kieron Gillen

Pencils and Cover by: Daniel Acuña

The Story:

AvX Tie-In!

• We can’t say much or we spoil the event of the summer!

• The X-Men move against the forces of Sinister!

In Stores: July 18, 2012

 

Uncanny X-Men #15 Spoilers & Art

Spoilers: In Utopia, Psylocke and Magneto talk about The Phoenix Five and their actions, while growing suspicious of Danger. At the Crimson Cosmos, Colossus wants to be excommunicated by The Cyttorak. The Demon Lord rejects his offer saying the Phoenix is also a spirit of destruction, which serves him right. The Extinction Team gather at the meeting room and decide they must stop Sinister as they find out he was the one who told Hope about the Phoenix and sense Sinister is a threat to Hope. The Phoenix Five head to Sinister London, deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Sinister Prime declares war on them and so the battle begins.

Uncanny X-Men #15 Preview

Uncanny X-Men #15

Written by: Kieron Gillen

Pencils by: Daniel Acuna

Covery by: Daniel Acuna

The Story:

AvX Tie-in! We can’t say much or we spoil the event of the summer!

The X-Men move against the forces of SINISTER!

Sinister Forces Plague the Phoenix Five in Gillen's "Uncanny X-Men"

CBR: Mister Sinister, a longtime X-Men foe, holds yet another point of view regarding the Phoenix Force. In "Uncanny X-Men" #14, on sale June 20, writer Kieron Gillen and artist Dustin Weaver kick off a story that puts the cunning villain in conflict with the titular team and their newly cosmic empowered members, the Phoenix Five. CBR News spoke with Gillen about his plans for the series.

"In issue #13 I wanted to create this weird mood where we had Storm, Magneto, and Psylocke, three of the most powerful individuals on Earth, sitting there in a cellar drinking bottled water and they're all exhausted. They don't talk about who they've beaten. They talk about how they've been hurt and how they've lost. They're all exhausted because the last 25 hours of their life have been complete chaos," Gillen continued. "They haven't really had a chance to stop and process it all. Now's the time for conversation, but when there was so much at stake Storm and the others had to follow Scott. For me, the low key-ness of the moment makes the epic superhero conflicts more real."

Speaking with Scott Summers the next time Storm sees him will be a very different experience, because at the end of "Avengers X-Men" #5 the Phoenix selected Cyclops and four other members of the Extinction team -- Emma Frost, Namor, Colossus, and Magik -- to be its avatars. When this cosmically powered quintet, dubbed the Phoenix Five, returns to Earth their non god-like team mates will each have their own opinion on what they have become.

"In issue #13 I deliberately put Storm, Magneto, and Psylocke together. They're almost like our Greek Chorus. They'll comment about what's going on. Storm leans one way. Magneto leans another, and Psylocke is conflicted. So they provide interesting commentary and in their own ways they're all voices of reason," Gillen explained. "They're there when the Phoenix Five do what they're doing and they're our view point characters in a lot of way. I wanted to try to keep the Phoenix Five at a slight distance because I wanted to convey a sense of the otherworldly and their immense powerful. It's quite uncanny when you see some of the images of what the Phoenix Five get up to. So Magneto, Storm, and Psylocke end up walking into this room with the Five and they're all sort of glancing at each other. In a 'Er... worried now!' way.

Uncanny X-Men #13 Spoilers (AvX Tie-In)

Spoilers: Cyclops, Emma, Magik, Colossus and Namor go to the moon where both Hope and the Avengers are. Meanwhile, Psylocke, Magneto and Storm regret they couldn't be there as well. They suggest using Pixie to reach the Moon, but Storm says she escaped the Avengers Academy along with the other kids and don't know where they are. The kids come back to Utopia as Hope left them a note telling them to look for Unit. Back to the X-Men, Storm reveals her husband knocked her out. Psylocke says the Red Hulk broke her arm. They all contemplate the fact that the Gold side's X-Men joined Cyclops and that only Wolverine, Quicksilver and Beast turned against them. In Utopia, Unit explains to the kids that Wanda's spell of "No more mutants" angered the Phoenix and that Hope and her five acolytes were needed to calm it. The kids asks Unit why he didn't tell Hope she needed her Lights to tame the Phoenix, to what Unit replies that he wanted to see what would happen if Hope couldn't control the Phoenix. Magneto, Psylocke and Storm debate about ways to reach the Moon. They think of Danger, but they don't know her whereabouts. As the Phoenix comes closer and tries to bond with Hope on the moon, Psylocke suffers a momentary psychic breakdown. Unit forces Danger into fighting the kids, knocking all of them out. Danger places them on the beach of Utopia with no memories of what just happened. On the Moon, the Phoenix bonds with Cyclops, Emma, Magik, Colossus and Namor.

Uncanny X-Men #13 Preview

Uncanny X-Men #13
Written by: Kieron Gillen
Pencils by: Billy Tan
Cover by: Adam Kubert

The Story:
• Hope is on the run for her life, but can she outrun destiny?
• What has Mr. Sinister been doing since Uncanny X-Men #3? And what has he been doing while the X-Men have been fighting the Avengers? Find out here!

In Stores: June 6, 2012

Tuesday Q&A: Kieron Gillen

Marvel.com: We checked in with Gillen about what’s ahead for the Children of the Atom as the war comes to Utopia, how Spider-Man will face a Juggernaut like never before in AVX: VS, plus much more.

Marvel.com: Now, which Uncanny X-Men characters will benefit most from the event, in a sense of growth as fictional characters, not necessarily in their "lives"?

Kieron Gillen: I've said before, I've been building towards AvX. It's meaningful for all my key cast. The big people to watch? Scott, Namor, Hope, Emma, Piotr, Illyana and Danger. My other three—Storm, Magneto and Psylocke—have important roles too, but perhaps not on the same level of redefining them. They're actually more the people who are a half-step back from the chaos, and as such are about giving perspective on everything. “Benefit” is an interesting word, though. I'm not sure it's the word I'd use. It's going to be very hard on all of them.

X-Position: Kieron Gillen guides "Uncanny" into "AVX"

CBR: Now that Emma's on the mend, will Psylocke stick around in ‘Uncanny,' or was she more of a temporary substitute?

She's the substitute. Nine is a big field team, so more permanent staff is unwieldy. However, "substitute" is still an important supporting position. She's got some important roles to play in my "AvX" "Uncanny" issues.

Kieron Gillen on Psylocke

From his Formspring:
Kieron Gillen: [Psylocke] She's effectively a core part of Uncanny X-men. You'll see how I use her in AvX.

Uncanny X-Men #8 Spoilers

Spoilers: Good Apex explains that since Tabula Rasa grew with no light at all, the Sun will cause every living being inside it to have "cancer." Meanwhile, Namor seeks a private audience with the Queen of the River. Namor and the Queen apparently have sex and become allies. Elsewhere, Colossus finally finds Magik and defeats her attackers. Illyana makes Colossus understand that despite the Cytoorak, he's still him. Psylocke tells the relatives of those who died for Tabula Rasa to grow that there's no chances of survivors and that she's sorrier than they could ever know. The solution to Tabula Rasa's problem is to build a sphere that isolates it from the outside Earth in a joint operation between S.W.O.R.D., S.H.I.E.L.D. and the X-Men. Back in Utopia, Emma Frost gets her arm reattached while Good Apex says goodbye to the X-Men. Magneto tells Psylocke that he brought down the murals revealing X-Force's involvement with Tabula Rasa because he owned them. Eriks assures Betsy they're on the same side. She asks which side is that, to which he replies that she shows. Psylocke wishes she didn't.

Gillen Preps "Uncanny X-Men" for Earth's Mightiest Battle

CBR: When Kieron Gillen kicked off this new volume of "Uncanny X-Men" he brought together Cyclops; Storm; Emma Frost; Magneto; Namor; Colossus who had recently become the Juggernaut, the powerful avatar of the evil entity known as Cytorrak; Colossus' sister Magick; the mutant messiah Hope; and the robotic being known as Danger to form his "Extinction Team." In the series' first arc Emma Frost sustained a serious injury, and while she recuperates Psylocke has taken her place in the field.

"I wanted to take Emma off the table for a couple of reasons. First was the physicality of it. We're a book where if someone gets seriously hurt they're going to spend some time recuperating. So she's temporarily off the team and she was their telepath," Gillen told CBR News. "One of the things we X-writers talk about is how we want a natural connectivity between our books. 'Uncanny X-Force' had been kind of its own thing for its entire run, but with 'The Dark Angel Saga' there were all these ideas that were developed that we can fold back into our books. Jason Aaron has been doing some things with characters over in 'Wolverine & the X-Men' and I wanted to explore 'Tabula Rasa,' the strange land that was created in the middle of Montana during 'The Dark Angel Saga.' That idea really excited me. Plus we have Psylocke's emotional attachment to the events that occurred at Tabula Rasa and that led to her being brought in as well. There were all these necessary things that brought our British ninja into this situation."

Gillen has enjoyed writing Psylocke and feels the character fit organically into the stories he's telling in "Uncanny X-Men." "If you think about it she's also a character in an emotionally extreme situation because she can't really tell anyone about what happened and this is literally hours after 'The Dark Angel Saga.' Basically she went with the team to drop Angel off at their X-Cave. Then she went back to Utopia and was like, 'Okay there's this place, Tabula Rasa, I don't know what caused it, but we've really got to go in and make sure people are okay.' This is her basically tidying up X-Force's mess and it fits her job as one of Cyclops' security personnel. When we placed her on Scott's side this was one of the things we were thinking of," Gillen explained. "So it's all very natural because she's got both mental and physical abilities. There's all these different telepaths among the X-Men, but she's the most physical of them. Plus I got to write a real interesting relationship between her and Magneto since he's the only one of Scott's X-Men who knows about X-Force. I'm also looking forward to using Psylocke in 'AvX' as well."

Uncanny X-Men #7 Spoilers

Spoilers: The X-Men and Good Apex finally reach the Bad Apex, where he reveals his plans to use all the Celestial energies he had stored to rebirth his species. While the X-Men fight with Bad Apex, the Good Apex, wearing Danger as a protective suit, vents all the Celestial energy, dispersing it to every part of Tabula Rasa. Bad Apex knows it will take him millions of years to recollect it, so instead he decides to destroy everything. Storm tells him that if he does that, nothing of his people will remain. Her words get to Bad Apex and he leaves. Good Apex, however, tells Cyclops that unless they do something, every living being in Tabula Rasa will die.

Uncanny X-Men #7 Preview + Kieron Gillen's Interview

Uncanny X-Men #7
Written by: Kieron Gillen
Pencils and Cover by: Greg Land

The Story:
• Tabula Rasa Part 3. The secrets of the evolutionary jungle are revealed, as the X-Men face the Immortal Man, with the help of a brand new ally!

In Stores: February 15, 2012

Newsarama: To stay on the Psylocke subject, you're using her in a much more integral role than you have in the past. Obviously, it's a natural choice given her part in the X-Force story, but what have you liked about exploring that character further — and her interactions with the rest of the team?

Kieron Gillen: Using her actually has a couple of useful, contradictory reasons. For people who read X-Force, they're in the position they know that Psylocke is lying — so you get a sort of dramatic irony response from the book. For the people who don't read X-Force, they basically take position of the X-Men trying to decode the mystery, and Magneto's probing of Psylocke provides particularly natural exposition.

The fact the emotional connection is so strong is something that really attracted to me. Being involved in the destruction of a town is a huge thing, and I wanted to dwell on how that actually impacts her. Since destruction is so common in superhero comics, we can end up skating over what it really means, but I wanted to put her face to face with the family of the people in the town and bring it home.

I also love playing with a character with a secret — and someone with power over her, in the form of Magneto. That's just great drama. Power, responsibility, corruption, ends-justifying-means, etc. These are all stuff that's bubbling under the surface with the book.