The ‘Fall of X’ is a Black Nerd Problem

The Road to ‘The Fall’ In 2019, a year before the delicate strings holding the status quo afloat were exposed and stressed to their breaking points; X-Men fans were handed the gift of a lifetime. A retcon for the ages that resets the X-Men’s lore from all the way back to the 1970s and gives readers in the present a glorious vision of the state of Mutantkind. A future grounded in sovereignty, a time of peace and prosperity after a publication history filled with decades of hate, oppression, and genocide levied against mutants only for it to be a prelude to The Fall of X. Marvel really set us up to have the limitless possibilities of symbolic sovereignty on behalf of the real-life oppressed, only to take the rug out from beneath the fandom?! I am feeling some type of way about that.  Virtuoso comic writer Jonathan Hickman opened the hype train floodgates in 2018, baiting readers with a social media campaign that read simply, #HickmanIs. [This, of course, refers to DC Comics’ mainstay, big bad, and resident thigh-high boot-wearing ‘thicc despot’ Darkseid.] Although the use of the phrase is from DC Comics, little did we know Hickman was about to change the Marvel Comics landscape. After amazing runs on several IPs, Hickman left Marvel to focus on some original characters and stories. Only to return to and deliver House of X and Powers of X (read as “ten”).

Promotional art for HoX and PoX that became an iconic connected cover for issue #1.

Run Them IPs Important to note: wh…