Warning: SPOILERS for Marauders #9!Since relaunching for the Destiny of X epoch, Krakoa's team of Marauders has taken some big creative swings, including a massive retcon of X-Men history with grounds in real-world science. The X-Franchise has a long tradition of blending elements from many disparate pulp genres like supernatural horrors and tragic romances into their storied tapestry. However, their root mythos is tied to science fiction, specifically gene mutation as a function in a sci-fi evolutionary process. Now that Captain Kate Pryde's crew of Marauders are in the midst of their largest rescue mission to date, real-world evolutionary phenomena may be the key to understanding the enigmatic existence of Threshold.
The majority of Marauders Vol. 2 has revolved around a mystery box plot that was ignited by a literal mysterium puzzle cube. Getting to the bottom of this caper has resulted in a major revision of the Shi'ar Empire's history, the appearance of mutants from the distant future as well as the archaic past, and Cassandra Nova briefly hosting her own Venom symbiote. All of it has been part of the Marauders' search for Threshold, a previously unknown society of mutants and humans who lived on Earth billions of years ago. Threshold's existence poses a bit of a paradox, since the earliest Homo sapiens only appeared over 300,000 years ago, not 3 billion. The solution may not lie in humanity's evolutionary history, but instead in that of crabs.
Marauders #9 by Steve Orlando, Eleonora Carlini, Matt Milla, VC's Ariana Maher, and Jordan D. White gives readers better insight into the mechanics of Threshold society, including their reproductive process. Rather than how contemporary mutants and humans usually go about it, new generations of Thresholders spawn from a birthing sea after the eldest generation returns to it. This characteristic is more akin to fish than present day humans and mutants, and crucially introduces the idea that these humans and mutants of Threshold may have a different set of evolutionary ancestors. Unrelated species evolving to produce slight variations of the same creatures may sound impossible, but it is real. Crabs are the proof, or rather the number of creatures that evolve into crabs are the proof.
Carcinisation Is The Key To X-Men's Newest Wild Retcon
Carcinisation is a phenomenon of evolutionary biology where a species of crustacean evolve into a crab-like form from a non-crab-like form. The term was developed by L. A. Borradaile, who also stated it more plainly as "one of the many attempts of Nature to evolve a crab." Carcinisation results in many different species of crabs that evolved into existence independently of one another. This knowledge provides a clarifying lens into the mysterious connection between the residents of Threshold and present day Homo sapiens and Homo superior. Billions of years ago, from a primordial soup older than most life on Earth, a human-centric equivalent to carcinisation occurred as ancient organisms eventually evolved into the humans and mutants of Threshold. Even though this race of humans was apparently killed off by X-Men villains Sublime and Arkea, this same evolutionary phenomena took place billions of years later among a species of upright primates. Thus, the humans and mutants of today were born.
Of course, the people of Threshold are not the only humans on Earth-616 to be living earlier than scientifically possible. Notably, Jason Aaron's Avengers 1,000,000 BC storyline includes several pockets of early humankind living hundreds of thousands of years before they ought to even exist, although minor details in A.X.E.: Judgment Day indicate that those humans are actual Homo sapiens that fell en masse through a temporal rift. The same could have been used to explain the existence of Threshold, but key features of their biology like the usage of the birthing sea point to different evolutionary ancestors. Real science phenomena like carcinisation thankfully provides innovative ways to understand Marauders' unexpected reshaping of X-Men lore.
Marauders #9 is available now from Marvel Comics.