I am enjoying the Krakoa Era of the X-Men a whole lot. I love the whole concept, and I love most of the creative ideas that have been built into the new status quo. I haven’t been the biggest fan of all the comics, but I love pretty much all of the ideas.

But not all of the ideas.

One of the few things that has really bugged me in the Krakoa era is what I saw as a misuse of the characters Petra and Sway. According to some X-Men comics, after being resurrected, Petra and Sway apparently spent all of their time wearing their old costumes and hanging out with Vulcan, one of their X-teammates.

This bugged the heck out of me.

If you don’t know, Petra, Sway, Vulcan and Darwin were a retcon from a few years back that, honestly, I never liked in the first place. The Deadly Genesis retcon retold the story of when the original X-Men were kidnapped by Krakoa, back when he was just an evil island monster. In the actual story from long ago, the original X-Men were kidnapped, so Charles Xavier put together his second team, with members like Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and more. It was a classic change in status quo, one of the biggest moments in the history of the X-Men.

In the Deadly Genesis retcon, Xavier put together a hastily-built, in-between team out of a couple of young, inexperienced mutants. He used his mind powers to force some experience into their brains and he sent them to the island — where they all promptly died.

So, like, these poor young people are essentially forced into service by Professor X before they’re ready and he gets them killed. And then when Petra and Sway are resurrected on the new Krakoa and given a second chance at life…they choose to spend it still wearing the costumes in which they died, hanging out with one of the guys they were forced onto a team with? Just wasting away on the moon?

Is that really the best the creators could come up with for how Petra and Sway would spend their second chance at life?

Apparently, thankfully, not. Because in this week’s issue of X-Men Red we discover something rather exciting: that wasn’t really Petra and Sway on the moon!

It turns out, those are just some mental/energy constructs created by Vulcan because he’s all sorts of messed up. That wasn’t the real characters. They haven’t been resurrected at all! There’s still hope that they can have good, second lives!

And just like that, one of my biggest annoyances with the Krakoa Era has itself been retconned and fixed. I’m pleased as punch. And I hope we see the real Petra and Sway sometime soon, being allowed to live new and better lives.

Next up, settling the long debate of whether or not Mimic is a mutant or a human.

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