What’s the Premise, and Where Do You Start?

Let’s answer the second part of that first, because it helps establish the premise and is also pretty easy: you start at the beginning, with the twin series House of X and Powers of X. Each series is six issues long, and was originally released in tandem, with House first, and Powers every other week, and they’ve both since been collected together in trade releases. These two series, both penned by the now-outgoing head architect of the Krakoan era, Jonathan Hickman, are arguably still the most required reading of the last few years of X-Men comics.

Why? Because this is where everything is laid out for the current status quo of mutantkind. The duology established that Charles Xavier and Magneto, working together in secret with Moira McTaggart, a long time ally of the X-Men revealed here to herself actually be a mutant with the power to reincarnate with the knowledge of her past lives, have established a new nation state open to all mutants on the living island Krakoa (which once abducted the classic X-Men team and tried to eat them, but has now clearly gotten over it). Moira, now in her 10th existence after many failed attempts, has helped usher in from the shadows of Charles and Erik’s control a new, peaceful utopia where every mutant, regardless of previous conflicts or crimes, is invited to live. In exchange for international recognition and trade, Krakoa trades magical plant-based miracle cures with the nations of humankind, extending lifespans and curing terminal diseases. Why don’t they keep them for themselves? Well, that’s the big secret Krakoa is keeping from the rest of the world: mutants no longer die.

Well, they do, butthey come back. Five powerful mutants now run the Resurrection Protocols, a ritual known only to the new mutant society, that can rebirth a new mutant, their memories restored in a new body, upon their death. Old friends and older enemies are now returned, old rivalries among mutantkind put aside, as they all work toward a bright new future with a peace that the X-Men and their allies have sought for generations… even as Charles, Erik, and Moira look to safeguard that future from familiar threats.