Stacy X has finally returned to X-Men comics! She’s a favorite character of mine because she debuted just as I was finally starting to read and collect X-Men comics on an ongoing basis. But for a variety of reasons, she was dropped from the team after a short while. I’ve kept up with her in whatever weird little appearances she’s made over the past 20 years, and I’m very pleased to say that she’s on Krakoa and she’s got her powers back!

Stacy X showed up in this week’s Way of X #3. I hope she becomes a reoccurring character!

While it’s great to have her back, I’m a little disappointed that we did not get to see her Crucible. I was very much looking forward to that. And it would have been a pretty big moment for her character, considering her loss of powers has been her defining character trait over the past 20ish years.

Allow me to explain, because I love talking about favorite obscure mutants of mine!

So Stacy X is a mutant with both snakeskin and the power to control the pheromones and other chemicals in a person’s body. The X-Men met her while she was working at a mutant brothel, where she used her powers to give customers some truly mind-melting sexual experiences. This backstory and general attitude did not sit well with some of the X-Men (and perhaps Marvel?) and she was dropped shortly thereafter.

Then Stacy was one of the more high profile mutants to lose their powers on M-Day. She was an X-Man, after all, and most of the team kept their powers. In their M-Day aftermath comic, Generation M, Marvel really twisted the knife by turning Stacy into a real hooker living and working the streets.

Stacy did eventually clean up her act and joined a random incarnation of the New Warriors a few years later. This version of the New Warriors was made up of ex-mutants using technology to become superheroes again. Stacy was known as Ripcord and she ended up getting killed. Such a thing happens a lot to New Mutants.

Stacy made a random and minor appearance in the comic Vengeance, which I think was supposed to be some kind of statement comic by Marvel? It didn’t go anywhere. Her rebirth was never explained.

Then she showed up in an issue of the recent Domino comic, attending a Mutants Anonymous meeting put together by Domino and Nightcrawler for mutants struggling to live with powers that make them look abnormal.

So as you can see, after a brief membership in the X-Men, Stacy X has been defined by the loss of her powers for nearly the past 20 years. It was a bigger deal for her character than pretty much anyone else in the X-Men franchise (if we don’t count Jubilee’s weird couple of years as a vampire).

When Marvel introduced the idea of the Crucible on Krakoa — depowered mutants fighting in an arena in order to earn their death/resurrection/repowering — I had hoped to see Stacy X go through it. I think it would have been a great way to cap off her major story arc.

But alas, it apparently happened off-panel. I’m just going to have to be happy with the fact that Stacy X is back, she’s got her powers and she’s doing good on Krakoa. I should be able to make my peace with that.

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