Warning! Spoilers ahead for Legion of X #1!
The core values of the X-Men and Krakoan culture at large have been redefined in a monumental shift in the debut issue of Legion of X. Stretching across nations, plates, and even pocket dimensions, mutant society is in a period of growth long overdue. To the average mutant, it feels like just about everything possible. But when anything and everything are on the table, what are the boundaries put in place to ensure mutants are able to live their best possible lives?
This of course was a central theme in Si Spurrier and Bob Quinn's 2021 miniseries Way of X and one-shot X-Men: The Onslaught Revelation. Acting together as a prologue for Legion of X, Nightcrawler finds himself leading the Legionaries as a non-police peacekeeping squad. Typical police systems are designed to punish lawbreakers for threatening sociopolitical order and label them as other or "criminals." Rather than punishment, the Legionaries are instead committed to the righting of wrongs, of making mutants whole. The core of this fundamental shift in mutant social construction? Consent.
In Legion of X #1, written by Si Spurrier and art by Jan Bazaldua, both Nightcrawler and Lost echo the importance that consent holds to the work they are embarking on. To Kurt and Marinette, the greatest violation anyone can commit is "to turn people into things." That is, objectifying a person or taking away their agency. This is codified in Nightcrawler's Legionary annotations to Krakoan law, "In all matters -- emotional, physical, sexual, and spiritual -- as long as choice and consent are present: Anything goes."
Making the concept of consent central to the spirit of Krakoan justice is revolutionary for the X-Men, Krakoa, and all mutantkind as a whole. It's a powerful message with potentially huge ramifications. Most of all, this interpretation of Krakoan law is freeing as opposed to something meant to restrict the people. It frees them from seeking revenge upon others or traumatizing others in the ways they have been traumatized. Doing so could create a culture where healing mutants help other mutants in their own healing, a reversal of the adage "hurt people hurt people."
Legion of X #1 is out now, and there seems to be no going back for Krakoa. If Kurt Wagner and his Legionaries have anything to say about it, the mutants won't just be the most powerful group in the Sol System, but also the justest. And this new era springs from the X-Men redefining their message around one key tenet: consent.
Legion of X #1 is available now from Marvel Comics.