Mutants through music: Krakoa, Renaissance and moving on…

The great crime of this article, as I write it, is that it can’t convey to you the feeling of peeling back a cover on the most exultant era of comics I’d ever read. The second is that I can’t convey how much higher that felt against the backdrop of I’m That Girl, Virgo’s Groove, and Summer Renaissance. Some moments lose just a little of their luster when confined to letters and lines; this is one. That’s a tricky thing to acknowledge in the first paragraph, but I’ll do my best and get us as close as I can.

Renaissance - from the moment it dropped - was the retroactive soundtrack to my Krakoan experience. Although separated by 3 years (Krakoa’s 2019 to Renaissance’s 2022) both occupied space in my life at the same time. The parallels didn’t occur to me at first - both times I was too busy fucking living, but a reread of Dawn of X while prepping for an episode brought the book and the album together in my living room. There’s no better soundtrack to those first seeds being carried across the world than I’m That Girl (next time you have a slow Sunday, I urge you to dig out that first run and read until the album plays out). But even once I’d matched the proverbial PB to the J, it wasn’t until years later that a random Discord conversation triggered name to reflect on why they felt so connected in their highs, lows, and eventual ends.

For years, I’d been an X-fan in the same way I’d been a Beyonce fan: I loved them but wasn’t in any way an enthusiast. I was around for big releases, dipping in and out cherry-picking favourites before wandering on to other things. That is, right up until Krakoa and Renaissance. I’ve never experienced being dragged into fandom like that. One day I was free, and the next I wasn’t. These projects consumed me entirely and demanded to be consumed entirely in return. I started a podcast. I went to my first concert in a decade. Daily plays of a whole album and weekly reads of a whole x-line, in full. It was Horse Lady and Plant People bad.

This is how [your new gods] move.

Both were holistic Bodies Of Work telling a singular story that blurred traditional lines between tracks and titles. Each time, I remember the swell in my chest; the feeling I was being spoken to directly. Where Beyonce has always hit with the queer community (Formation, Single Ladies, Sweet Dreams), this was an unambiguous embrace of Black Queer House & Ballroom. Krakoa, too, unapologetically leaned into a subculture and looked at mutants as they could be for themselves, instead of lessons they could provide for others. Neither seemed explicitly shaped for mass palatability. I loved them.

Both chose authenticity over the comfort of any hypothetical masses (typically speculation on what straight white people might be upset by). Coming from the UK, where the c-word is far more liberally spoken, Beyonce’s “cunt to the feminine” was as much a watershed, oh-we’re-really-going-there moment as Magneto’s “you have new gods now”.

And go there we fucking did. Krakoa and Renaissance were stages on which to revel in a marginalised identity, less about the ways in which one relates that identity to those outside it and more about being EMBODIED. Loving on yourself. Enjoying loving on yourself. Being loved by TS Madison. Being a siren song for Black Queers. The Tour. The Hellfire Gala. The outfits, god the outfits. Imagine Cozy, or Move blaring over that first party on Krakoa. Tell me that doesn’t hit.

I would have shown my entire ass had they played the album as this big ass party. Nobody could have told me shit for 12 straight months.

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There’s also a lot to be said for both Beyonce and Marvel as big businesses being calculated in their subversiveness. Even with great features and big overtures (Big Freedia, TS Madison, Honey Dijon, Lidell Townsell, Vita Ayala, Victor Lavalle) both had their share of integrity challenges along the way. Krakoa with a gradual degrading of its principles, and Beyonce in not disavowing Break My Soul being misappropriated by Israelis against the Palestinian people. We love it when something big does something sharp, but ultimately business interests will interest, whether in dictating what happens or doesn’t. Which highlights that smaller creators in both fields have been doing what we laud major players for approaching. But even with the bumps, and maybe predictably, they got my yaaaasss…and they got my coin.

Now, as they recede into the distance, it strikes me that even their ends seem in lockstep. Both From the Ashes and Cowboy Carter are a return to Americana, standing explicitly under The Flag. This new album was a response to Beyonce being undermined; to demonstrate her possession of head seat at the country table. Mutants too are back trying to crack hostile atmospheres. Whether in content or context, both have returned to their roots, but also to proving worth. In both cases the spotlight may have moved from one era to another, but neither can really be accused of inauthenticity because of it. Country is to Beyonce what genocidal struggle is to the X-Men. Those are their origins. In actuality, maybe Krakoa and Renaissance were the real departures and we just happened (happily) to be in the crosshairs of their deviation.

Regardless, I feel a hint of resignation. I doubt I’ll feel seen like that again soon. I also know I’ll spend a while comparing whatever comes next to those moments, which further joins them as good lessons in letting go. Neither Beyonce nor Marvel could capture that again. I don’t think they should try. Krakoa and Renaissance aren’t destinations to be revisited. I think I want what comes next, what goes further. They’re bars to exceed the next time around.

Exactly, let's go further.

Both the X-office and Beyonce have shown the capacity for taking a swing (and being commercially rewarded for doing so only makes the next one more likely) so maybe the lights came on at the right time. There will be a Second Age and I’m sure Beyonce will be in that studio until the return of Christ - so I’m reminded not to chase the high, but to hold the standard.

I was much warmer and more open to Cowboy Carter and From The Ashes without being haunted by the ghost of past eras. In the words of a scholar “Little Caesars taste so good when U ain’t got a bitch in ya ear telling you it’s nasty”.  Now, neither are for me personally, but I decided that with my biases consciously in check.

Being able to adore moments in time without stagnating around them has been freeing, both in what I read (remember those smaller players I told you about) and how I openly read it. So whether you’ve walked away from X-books on a high, or moved forward unburdened, know that someone is definitely playing Virgo’s Groove across them people’s White Hot Room, and that we got a damn good thing.