“Every Mutant Ever” drawn across six comics might not fly on Krakoa.

WARNING
Post contains mild spoilers for House of X and Powers of X.
Post also contains gluten.

Early last month, Marvel officially relaunched their line of X-Men books with X-Men #1. These books are spinning out of the super exciting and critically-acclaimed (and sometimes kind of culty) House of X and Powers of X combo mini series. Under the banner of “Dawn of X,” Marvel is kicking off the new generation of X-Men books with six titles released over a month and a half: X-Men, Marauders, Exclaibur, New Mutants, X-Force and Fallen Angels. If you happen to be curious about how I feel about each of these, you can find out on my podcast, Cover B, where I talk about each of these. Today, however, I’m not going to be discussing the titles themselves. Instead, I want to talk about the connecting covers by Mark Bagley.

For those not in the know, a connecting cover is a variant cover drawn for a particular issue meant to connect with matching variants from other issues that come together to make one large picture when placed side by side or sometimes in other shapes. These connecting covers are more often than not on consecutive issues in one series, but can also be across different titles as well, especially if they all pertain to the same story arc or event. For the Dawn of X titles, Marvel has enlisted veteran artist Mark “Remember the 90’s” Bagley to do a series of covers called “Every Mutant Ever.” The plan is to have a six cover spread that shows, well, every mutant ever distinctly shown in a Marvel book. Overall, it makes for a cool, if kinda busy spread:

That’s a lot of mutants! Plenty of appearances from classic characters like Jean Grey and Psylocke and Magneto’s Massive Head. I’m sure there are plenty on here that you’re like “wait, who the hell is this?” Same, fam. Really makes you realize how many like one-and-done/ throwaway mutants Marvel has invented in the past.

Anywho, here’s the thing about these covers I find funny: The current mutant dogma would absolutely DESPISE them.

So, this is gonna be a weird breaking coverage where I’m going to talk about fictional characters reacting to cover art. I know, it’s a super high minded concept. What can I say, I’m a philosopher.

Seriously, though, the residents of Krakoa would find this shit offensive as hell, and not just because Glob’s appearance is barely 3/4th the size of Magneto’s gourd.

See, in House of X and Powers of X, a big point of motivation and/or strife among the Mutant elite was various MASSIVE losses to the overall Mutant population. From the genocide on the Mutant refuge of Genosha, to the depowering of thousands of Mutants by Scarlet Witch, it became clear that the goal for Charles Xavier, Moira MacTaggert X and Magneto was going to be somehow recovering from these devastating moments in Mutant history. The Mutants are desperate to come back from the brink of extinction that they’ve been pushed to, which has left them with barely a few hundred of their number left.

Say, enough to put on a connecting cover.

And that’s where the humor comes in, for me, at least. Here we have a series of covers claiming to be “EVERY MUTANT EVER” appearing on books that revolve around the topic of literally trying to rebuild a race of people that once numbered in the MILLIONS before being eradicated by humans and “Mutant Pretenders.” On the pages of these books, we see X-Men braving dangerous lands to bring their kin to the Krakoan paradise. We see humans committing heinous acts, from murdering innocent Mutants in their home to creating massive anti-Mutant super-weapons. The Krakoan Silent Council has literally found a method by which they can resurrect all the fallen Mutants in history and set them up for a happy life on Krakoa, and yet here we are. 300ish mutants being touted as “Every Mutant Ever.” Its an incredibly odd juxtaposition between a series of covers trying to label the mutants as this species near extinction versus subject matter that focuses entirely on the growing numbers of the mutant population.

And really it just feels a little….. idk….. racist? Toward like a fictional group, y’know. It just has all these mutants laid out like that just kind of chilling there like “oh hey, here are the muties. Look at them and know the face of the enemy.” It weirds me out, honestly. Then again, I’ve probably just been staring at it too long to make this post.

Maybe a series of connecting covers depicting the various mutant tragedies would be better. They could have been stylized like a memorial, either each cover being a literal statue or being framed like a mural of remembrance. Perhaps a series of covers with like the beacons of mutant heroism would have sufficed more. Just anything that would have fit the tone of these books better than what we got.

How about a series of covers that are all about how cool Glob Herman is?

Nah, best boi Glob ain’t gonna get no love.

Stupid Marvel….