Despite the intended purpose of Krakoa being the unification of mutants from around the world around a single banner, the mutant nation has been set up to have some seriously dangerous turns in Inferno. Mystique seems to finally be making her play to strike back at the people who refuse to revive her wife, and teasers have suggested there may be more betrayals in store for the X-Men.
The upcoming Inferno isn’t the first time the X-Men have turned against each other — with the classic crossover X-Cutioner’s Song pitting the X-Men and their allies against their former students in some seriously brutal brawls.
The X-Cutioner’s Song was a major X-Men crossover from 1992. The story focused on Stryfe — the villainous clone of Cable — impersonating the hero and framing him for the attempted murder of Charles Xavier and the kidnapping of Cyclops and Jean Grey. Coming at a time when the mutant heroes of the Marvel Universe were somewhat divided between two teams of X-Men, the government sponsored X-Factor, the Cable-trained X-Force, and the largely uninvolved Excalibur, this resulted in immediate strife growing between the heroes. Upon witnessing the apparent footage of Cable attacking Xavier, X-Force (consisting of Cannonball, Boom-Boom, Siryn, Sunspot, Rictor, Warpath, Shatterstar, and Feral) decides to try and bring Cable to justice on their own terms in X-Factor #84 by Peter David and Jae Lee.
Reasoning they can bring him in with less of a forceful hand than the more immediately vengeful X-Men or X-Factor, the group ends up having little choice in the matter. Their attempts to investigate the matter puts them in the sights of X-Factor (who begin to get under the skin of the X-Men by trying to take authority over the investigation), and tensions flare until Shatterstar and Feral get into a fight with Strong Guy that spirals out into a brawl between the two teams. Even when they escape, X-Force just leaves a trail behind them for X-Factor and the X-Men to follow. It all builds to X-Force #16 by Fabian Nicieza and Greg Capullo, where the three teams engage in a massive battle.
But despite their skills and youth, X-Force is slowly brought down by the X-Men — especially when they try to go on the run but Wolverine leads a hunting party, resulting in Shatterstar being seriously wounded, Siryn getting a psionic dagger to the back of the head courtesy of Psylocke and the eventual capture of the entire team. It’s a particularly dark moment for everyone involved, as the X-Men themselves note with some grim reluctance that they are effectively hunting down those they once saw as impressionable children. While the three teams eventually come to an impasse and work together to hunt down Stryfe, the in-fighting continues in X-Factor #85 by David and Lee, which focuses partly on an unexpected duel that occurs between Cable and the team of Bishop and Wolverine looking for the same intel.
While the heroes eventually end up working together in the end, X-Cutioner’s Song still stands as a reminder that the mutant heroes of the Marvel Universe can be turned against each other, and their conflicting loyalties to one another could be mined by the right enemy to cause serious damage not just to their forces but their trust in one another. Unlike Stryfe in that event, Mystique has a place of power within Krakoa in Inferno, and has seemingly been moving pieces into place behind the scenes.
Like Stryfe, she could easily prey upon the divides in Krakoa that have been showcased during the fallout of Scarlet Witch’s apparent murder — only the stakes are so much higher for the X-Men and their allies, considering the entire world is watching and waiting to see if the experiment of a true mutant nation actually blossoms. If Inferno leads to the kind of in-fighting that X-Cutioner’s Song featured, then things might take some very dark turns for Krakoa.
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