Charles Xavier and Magneto from HOUSE OF X #6 drawn by Pepe Larraz

I’m not sure exactly when I became aware of it, but sometime during my adult life I came to the realization that a lot of X-Men fans were not the biggest supporters of Professor Charles Xavier. Whether it was the terrible ideas of the Professor X of the 1990s animated series, the creepy and inappropriate thoughts of the Silver Age Xavier of the comics, or the arrogance and overall dickishness of the big screen version played by James McAvoy, there were plenty of reasons to not love the follicly-challenged headmaster of the School for Gifted Youngsters. It also became increasingly easier to side with his arch-nemesis Magneto and his by-any-means-necessary approach to fighting oppression when literal Nazis are marching through the streets of American towns and cities in real life instead of Xavier’s style of turn-the-other-cheek and fighting for a world that hates and fears you. For the record, I am someone who proudly wears a “Magneto Was Right” shirt and think his philosophies and actions are the better choice over the traditional views of Xavier. But all of that changed when superstar writer Jonathan Hickman took over the X-Men line of books at Marvel starting with House of X and Powers of X and continuing with X-Men as the flagship title of the “Dawn of X” relaunch of the Marvel Comics line.

Xavier had become little more than an afterthought in the years leading up to Hickman taking over the line. He was murdered by a Phoenix-possessed Cyclops in the pages of Avengers vs. X-Men in 2012, and his primary role since then had been as part of a plot by Red Skull to steal the brain from his corpse to use as a weapon (not exactly a dignified death). It wasn’t until an issue of Astonishing X-Men (vol. 4) written by Charles Soule with pencils by Michael Del Mundo published in 2018 that it was revealed that Xavier’s consciousness was still alive in the astral plane, and he was finally brought back to the physical world when his consciousness entered the body of the mutant Fantomex. That was the only use of the character since his death prior to Hickman taking over the X-Men line. When Hickman jumped on board, he immediately brought Xavier to the forefront of what he was doing and made some radical changes to the character.

The first and most obvious change to the character is his appearance (as drawn by Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva in House of X and Powers of X respectively). Xavier now has the full use of his legs and wears a skintight body suit and portable Cerebro helmet that covers the top half of his face at all times. It gives Xavier a distinct new look that evokes a feeling of mischievousness from the character. The new look bears a striking resemblance to The Maker, another character used extensively by Hickman in his Ultimate Comics: Ultimates and Secret Wars series who was an evil alternate-reality double of Reed Richards. This caused some readers to draw the conclusion that this Xavier was also up to no good and might not even be “our” Xavier (though subsequent issues in the “Dawn of X” books seem to confirm that this is the main continuity Xavier).

The second and most important change Hickman has made to Xavier is a fundamental shift in his ideology. Up to this point, Xavier’s ideology can best be described as a yearning for peaceful coexistence between mutants and humans. That’s it. There’s nothing more specific than that, and his method to obtain this peace has been to recruit teenagers to fight and sometimes die facing threats to humanity to prove the worth of mutant life. This naive worldview has been the critique most often leveled at Xavier by X-Men fans over the years. Magneto, Xavier’s counterbalance, has frequently tried a wide variety of tactics and strategies to throw off the shackles of mutantkind’s oppressors and guarantee a future for his people. So how has Hickman updated Xavier’s ideology? He has essentially made him a Pan-Mutantist with an emphasis on national self-determination. That was a mouthful, but I believe it’s the best way to describe what Xavier has become in the pages of House of X and Powers of X (and subsequently X-Men). Pan-Mutantism is not a real world ideology since mutants, you know, don’t actually exist in the real world. But for context, it is essentially a derivative of the real world concept of Pan-Africanism. Pan-Africanism is a movement to unite all Africans both on the continent of Africa as well as the diaspora under one nation of cultural unity, and it has frequently been centered on a rejection of colonialism and imperialism as well as the effects and legacy of the Atlantic slave trade. What Hickman has done in the pages of House of X and Powers of X is create a movement spearheaded by Xavier to create a mutant nation-state on the island of Krakoa where all mutants are welcome regardless of where they are throughout the world or what their previous alliances and allegiances were. Magneto has partnered with him on this venture, and the United Nations have recognized Krakoa as a legitimate nation-state. Xavier’s ideology has gone from a sort of milquetoast liberalism to a Pan-Mutantism that meets the material needs of his people and has successfully reached the hearts and minds of the vast majority of mutants around the world (including some of the most powerful in existence). To call this the most monumental moment in the advancement of mutantkind would be an understatement. Not only has Xavier successfully founded a mutant nation-state on a living mutant island, but he has figured out a way to utilize a select group of five mutants’ abilities to resurrect any mutant who ever dies and implant their memories and personality that he saves and backs up using his portable Cerebro helmet. He has truly allowed for his people to have self-determination in a way that they have never before experienced. It is an amazing accomplishment, and yet there are still plenty of X-Men fans who have taken to social media to decry Xavier as being little more than an evil dictator. So let’s take a look at some examples that Xavier’s detractors point to as evidence that he is more villain than hero.

One reason that seems to crop up fairly frequently is that Xavier is cold and distant now, and these are traits meant to show us that he is evil and no longer benevolent. I think there are perfectly reasonable explanations for this depiction that don’t mean he is some sort of sociopath. For starters, he wears a helmet that covers his eyes at all times now. Not being able to see someone’s eyes can make it difficult to assess their intentions. This might be part of his reason for never removing it, but I suspect it has more to do with how valuable Cerebro is to him and how powerful it makes him. The other reason I think explains his cold and seemingly unfeeling demeanor is that he has seen and experienced horrors that would surely steel anyone’s outward emotions. Something I haven’t mentioned up to this point is that the driving force behind Xavier’s new ideology and mission is what he has learned from his longtime friend and companion, Moira MacTaggert. The biggest revelation from House of X and Powers of X is that Moira MacTaggert has secretly been a mutant and not a human as she has always been portrayed since her introduction in 1975. Her mutant ability is that she is reincarnated each time she dies and retains all of her memories from her previous lives. She has lived nine previous lives before this one, and in each previous life mutantkind has been wiped out (or at least decimated to the point of being an inconsequential population). No matter what she does, the mutants always lose in the end. She shared this information with Xavier in her tenth life to try to inspire him to solve this problem, so he has essentially experienced all of the horrors that she has lived through in one intense instant. Knowing that your entire species faces certain extinction unless you can figure out a way to stop it is going to have the effect of making some people a bit more resolved and unfeeling than they might normally be. I don’t think this can be held against Xavier as proof that he’s somehow evil or deranged.

Another criticism I’ve seen as proof that Xavier is a villain is that the Quiet Council governmental body on Krakoa is undemocratic, and Xavier is therefore a dictator. The Quiet Council is made up of five groups: Autumn (Xavier, Magneto, and Apocalypse), Winter (Mister Sinister, Exodus, and Mystique), Spring (Sebastian Shaw, Emma Frost, and Kitty Pryde), Summer (Storm, Jean Grey, and Nightcrawler), and Krakoa (Cypher and Krakoa itself). These council members serve as the governing body for all three phases of government (executive, legislative, and judicial). It is unclear exactly how all of the members were chosen, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that Xavier is the one who appointed everyone (other than Kitty who we know was chosen by Emma). If Xavier was actually a dictator, then why create the Quiet Council at all? Why not just proclaim himself the undisputed ruler of Krakoa and dictate his decrees to his subjects? It may not be a truly democratic system, but it also isn’t fair to lay everything at Xavier’s feet when he has gone out of his way to add so many other mutants to the council. At worst he is one of three primary officials with equal control over Krakoa along with Magneto and Apocalypse.

The event that has triggered the most outrage and backlash against Xavier on social media is his treatment of Mystique in X-Men #6. In this issue, we learn that Xavier and Magneto have been sending Mystique on increasingly more dangerous and difficult missions that the rest of the citizens of Krakoa have been kept unaware. Mystique has been agreeing to these missions in exchange for Xavier resurrecting her dead wife Destiny. Xavier and Magneto have promised to do so, but Moira has instructed them that no mutants with pre-cognitive abilities are allowed on Krakoa. This could be for multiple reasons, but the two most likely reasons seem to be that Moira is concerned that a mutant with those abilities might see her plan and interfere, and the second reason is that Destiny brutally murdered Moira in one of her past lives (so it could be a purely personal vendetta). This behavior has rightly been pointed out as cruel, manipulative, and exploitative, and it has clearly harmed Mystique both emotionally and mentally. It has driven Mystique to the brink of potentially trying to bring the entire Krakoan experiment down, and many readers are rooting for her to do so. But is this really demonstrative of Xavier being evil? Xavier is making every decision based purely on a drive to preserve mutant life, and he clearly feels that this is something he must do in order to avoid mutantkind facing extinction like in every previous Moira lifetime. It is clearly awful what he is doing to Mystique by using her with no intent to make good on his promise, but I think it is hard to fault him for doing what he truly believes is necessary based on the information provided to him by Moira. If he were to bring Destiny back, and she were to undermine everything that was being done to preserve the mutant race, then everything would be for naught. It’s horrible what is being done to Mystique, but dooming millions (and potentially billions) of people to extinction as a result of genocide would be significantly worse. In Moira’s ninth life we see that mutants within our solar system are reduced to single digits in a mere 100 years. In Moira’s sixth life we see that the only mutants left are kept on a nature preserve controlled by genetically and technologically enhanced humans a thousand years in the future. In all of the other lives, mutants are wiped out by sentinel attacks in modern times.

For those of us who have sided with Magneto over the years for doing whatever it takes to prevent the genocide of his people, shouldn’t we now be celebrating that Xavier is doing the same? Magneto has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Xavier through all of these recent events, but I have not seen the same level of criticism directed towards him. In fact, Xavier has succeeded where Magneto has always failed in the past. He has created a nation-state where mutants have security and have all of their material needs met. He has convinced the most powerful and dangerous mutant rivals of the past to put aside their differences and join him in his latest venture. He has even brought a legitimacy to his project from world leaders that has eluded all previous mutant leaders. He has truly ushered in a new age of optimism and prosperity that mutantkind has never before experienced. Xavier isn’t evil. Xavier is right.