Warning: Dead X-Men is a direct sequel to events in other Krakoan Age X-Men stories, including the Fall of X arc, so Late Arrival Spoilers for those previous comics are unmarked on this page.
You can't keep good X-Men down
Dead X-Men is a 2024 comic book limited series from Marvel Comics. It is part of the Fall of the House of X (Crossover), the concluding chapter of the extensive Krakoan Age saga, begun in 2019.During the Hellfire Gala, Frenzy, Dazzler, Jubilee, Prodigy and Cannonball all died. Now, as the X-Men desperately try to find a way to prevent their greatest enemy from rising, these five X-Men search through the various realities generated by their former ally Moira Mactaggert's Mutant power to reset the timeline to find the key moment, or die trying.
Dead X-Men contains examples of the following tropes:
- All Your Powers Combined: Moira in the Orbis-ruled Timeline is working on what she calls "Weapon M", a weapon intended to combine carbonadium, adamantium, vibranium, Xorn's black hole brain and mysterium into an axe she plans to use to cut her way into her past lives and completely change her history.
- Asshole Victim: Orbis-timeline Moira kills Henry Gyrich in her visit to her seventh life, declaring as she does so he's an unpleasant person in any timeline.
- Back from the Dead: The titular X-Men all died at the Hellfire Gala, but have been resurrected at Rachel's request for one more mission.
- Bad Future:
- The first issue shows a future where Magik has betrayed the X-Men and conquered the Earth.
- The main setting of the first issue is a future where Abigail Brand's Well-Intentioned Extremist plan defend Earth against interstellar threats succeeded, only for Orbis Stellaris to outmaneuver her and devastate both Earth and Arakko. It's implied that this is the same timeline where he combined Mysterium and the M'Kraan crystal to try to achieve Dominion.
- Butterfly of Doom: Discussed extensively in issue 2, between the team and an alternate Moira, their actions are already altering a timeline from its established flow of events, and playing havok with Moira's own timeline.
- Classical Elements Ensemble: Askani manifests her presence to the team via one of the classical elements: in issue #1, through a burning bush; in issue #2, through a waterfall; in issue #3, she assembles some rocks to form a human face; in issue #4, Rachel's face appears inside a little tornado talking to David.
- Continuity Nod:
- The dead team visits a timeline wherein Magik rules the Earth in her demonic form. This was previously shown as a vision for Destiny, back in Immortal X-Men #3.
- Dazzler mentions her previous brushes with resurrection, a nod to her constant unexplained resurrections in New Excalibur.
- Continuity Overlap:
- Rachel Summers is a member of Xavier's No-Place X-Men, as shown in Rise of the Powers of X #1-2, along with Cypher and Rasputin IV.
- The very last pages of issue #4 happen almost concurrently with Rise of the Powers of X #3, when Xavier is ready to kill a young Moira at the start of her tenth life - the life where she helped build Krakoa.
- Fusion Dance: One of the X-Men in the Orbis devastated timeline is Sunroot, a fusion of Sunfire and Redroot, a walking tree that's half on fire. Unlike the main timeline, it seems that Apocalypse didn't separate them after they merged in X-Men Unlimited (2021).
- In Spite of a Nail: Emma Frost ends up walking out of a Killer Robot induced slaughter holding the corpse of one of her students, while having turned to diamond, as she did in Grant Morrison's New X-Men... only here it's happened several years earlier, and she suddenly dies.
- Irony: In the Orbis timeline, Abigail Brand leads what's left of the X-Men and Mutantkind, when it was her plotting that's helped lead them to the sorry state they're in. Not that she's actually learnt anything from it, as she freely admits.
- It Only Works Once: The X-Men are trying to find the right spot to hit the timeline so as to Retgone Enigma's ascension, which is when Moira's Mutant gene first activates. Problem is, they've no idea when that is, and don't think any information given from Moira is reliable. They're also concerned that Enigma will notice their efforts and try to stop them, meaning there's only one chance at doing so.
- Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Moira intends to travel back to her first life and completely change her destiny.
- My Skull Runneth Over: Prodigy's natural limits on his powers have been removed by Rachel so he can more readily scan and retrieve info from Moira's mind in the timelines they travel to. As the fact that there were limits would suggest, this has left him with the risk of overloading his mind, doubling over just from a room full of people.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the main timeline, Brand's ruthless Well-Intentioned Extremist plan failed in X-Men Red (2022). The first issue shows that, if she succeeded, she'd simply have been outmaneuvered by her 'ally' Orbis Stellaris, opening the way to his destruction of the Sol system and ascension to godhood. Which, as Enigma exists across the different timelines, also means she's partly responsible for its creation and the threat to all timelines.
- Once More, with Clarity: In issue #2, the team takes a detour through Moira's seventh life, which was first presented in House of X. This time, the timeline is expanded a bit more to show that despite killing the entire Trask family, the mutant-hunting sentinels are still developed... by human scientist Hank Pym, this time based on his Ultron creation.
- Resurrected for a Job: A variation. The team were selected at the 2023 Hellfire Gala one-shot as members of the X-Men, until Nimrod dropped like a bomb and killed them. They are later revived through the resurrection protocols and assembled as a team by Rachel Summers to travel through the Moira timelines and gather information to defeat the Enigma Dominion.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- Rachel's communication with her team in the White Hot Room from No-Place X comes through in the form of a burning bush, which All-American Boy Cannonball lampshades.
- In a splash page in issue #4, the Dead X-Men and Rachel are pondering the meaning of their quest, and in the background the page is divided into six sections. Thematically, Jubilee is in the top left corner and Dazzler in the bottom left (both mutants with light-generating powers), and Cannonball in the top right corner and Rachel in the bottom left corner (both mutants with powers associated with fire).
- Scotireland: Orbis-timeline Moira speaks with an attempt at the Claremontian Scottish accent she possessed before the Krakoa era... but she also uses the Irishism "boyo".
- Superpowerful Genetics: In the Orbis devastated timeline, Sam's son with Izzy inherits both their powers.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Professor X and Rachel go over their plan in one of the data pages for issue #1, all but guaranteeing it's going to go belly-up somehow.
