Warning: Spoilers for S.W.O.R.D. #5
Now months into breakthroughs in mutant technology and the dissemination of Krakoan flowers and medicines, the X-Men have emerged as leaders of their own sovereign nation-state.
Their meteoric rise may not have been without problems, but they haven’t allowed any setbacks from impeding their forward momentum. At least, for now that is. At the moment, they don’t have the numbers or resources to quietly conquer the Galaxy as they have Earth, so instead they’ve strategically chosen to position themselves as kingmakers. Krakoa has become such a capable powerbroker, in fact, that nobody seems to have even noticed its cunning maneuverings.
They started by establishing a political controlling interest in the galaxy’s three largest civilizations: the Kree/Skrull Alliance, the Shi’ar Empire, and the Zn’rx. In the wake of Al Ewing, Dan Slott, and Valerio Schiti’s epic crossover-event Empyre, the former Young Avenger Theodore Altman, more commonly known as Hulkling, became the emperor of the newly formed Kree/Skrull Alliance. During this time, the assassinations of the Zn’rx (or Snark) royal family. Through these covert killings, the Quiet Council successfully ended a bloody war of succession and installed the current ruler of the Snark Empire. With one of their own—or one owing them their crown—so highly placed in the three most advancement civilizations in the Galaxy, the X-Men have integrated themselves as the connective tissue behind an unprecedented triangle of power.
It doesn’t end there, however. The X-Men’s ravenous ambitions are already pushing them to look deeper into the universe. Ever since mutants took over S.H.I.E.L.D.’s space-based counterpart—S.W.O.R.D.—and restructured it into their very own space program, they’ve busted through the limits of possibly. The Universal Translocation Mutant Circuit known as “The Six”, have journeyed to the farthest point of the unknown universe, the engineers of their own downfall if they continue to throw caution to the wind and step on too many powerful toes.
Recent storylines have done more than rejuvenate mutantdom, they’ve made the X-Men masters of their own fate. For decades, they were relegated to being the ever-optimistic punching bags of the Marvel Comics universe. Now they’ve evolved beyond the struggle of heroes vs villains, and embraced the darker side of their species with what appears to be a single goal in mind: inherit all.
