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Krakoa’s refusal to hold Vulcan accountable for his past crimes serves as a stark reminder of Krakoa’s blatant favoritism towards mutants.
In the quest to unite all mutants in the newly-formed nation of Krakoa, the X-Men have chosen to forgive many of their enemies. They’ve offered these mutant combatants complete amnesty for past crimes and the chance to make a new life as members of the community. In many cases, these antagonists perpetrated the crimes explicitly against the team itself, so the decision to accept them as allies is primarily a matter of personal forgiveness. In the same way one can elect not to press charges against a neighbor’s crimes, the leaders of Krakoa were choosing to turn the page.
However, one of the forgiven villains committed crimes on a galactic scale. As a result, his transgressions don’t reduce to “crimes against mutants committed by a mutant.” A fresh start on Krakoa requires the X-Men to overlook crimes that they don’t have any right to decide are forgivable.
Vulcan, the estranged brother of Cyclops and Havok, is responsible for starting a brutal civil war within the galaxy-spanning Shi’Ar Empire. While he certainly harmed other mutants, his targeting of the Shi’Ar certainly caused more injuries, death, and destruction. The X-Men’s questionable decision to allow him to roam free gives merit to the objections of many of the Marvel Universe’s non-mutant heroes. Protecting mutants from a human society that often unfairly targets is one thing. Providing cover to a genocidal tyrant is another one entirely.
Debuting in X-Men: Deadly Genesis (by Ed Brubaker, Trever Hairsine, Kris Justice, Val Staples, and Dan Lanphear), Vulcan’s convoluted backstory fits right in within the Summers Family, whose lineage includes time travel, alternate dimensions, and cloning. Before Vulcan, then known as Gabriel Summers, could be born, the Shi’Ar, led by Emperor D’Ken’s orders, abducted Gabriel’s mother, Katherine Anne, and father, Christopher. When Christopher attempted to rescue Katherine Anne from the Emperor’s harem, D’Ken murdered her and artificially aged Gabriel into adulthood. Then D’Ken passed the new adult to his earthbound operative Davan Shakari. However, Gabriel quickly escaped and was eventually found by Moira McTaggert. She took him in and helped him learn how to control his incredible telekinetic powers.
Years later, Charles Xavier recruited Vulcan was into a “back-up” team of X-Men and sent to rescue the main group from the island of Krakoa, then a hostile organism that was holding them captive. Unfortunately, although they saved the X-Men, they all died in the mission, murdered by Krakoa. All except Vulcan, that is, who survived in the form of suspended animation. When he was eventually freed, Vulcan set out to take revenge against the Shi’Ar. Before that, however, he brutally killed the X-men’s close ally Banshee to spite Xavier.
Unable to take revenge on the deposed D’Ken, Vulcan overthrew X-Men’s longtime ally Lilandra Neramari and declared himself Emperor of the Shi’Ar Empire. Civil war followed with Lilandra’s allies and those who accepted Vulcan as their ruler locking horns. Vulcan’s mad quest to maintain his ill-gotten throne drove him to commit many brutal atrocities against those who opposed him, even his own family. Christopher, who’d taken on a new life as the space-pirate Corsair, attempted to convince Vulcan to end the violence. In response, Vulcan killed his father without a second thought, proving that the family he wanted to avenge no longer meant anything to him.
Eventually, Inhuman king Black Bolt Vulcan slay Vulcan. Upon his resurrection on Krakoa, he had no memory of his time as the Shi’Ar Emperor. Since then, both his family and the larger mutant community have accepted, his past crimes seemingly all but forgotten. Banshee’s Krakoan resurrection effectively nullified his murder. Still, Vulcan remains guilty of murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent beings across the galaxy. Nonetheless, the Quiet Council of Krakoa’s refusal to allow any external court of law to judge mutants means that he’ll likely never answer for those heinous actions.
Krakoa’s refusal to hold Vulcan accountable for his past crimes serves as a stark reminder of the nation’s blatant favoritism towards mutants. Despite their claims that they don’t view themselves as above non-mutants, their forgiveness of Vulcan suggests otherwise. From the outside looking in, it certainly seems saving one mutant’s life greatly outweighs giving justice to thousands of Shi’Ar.
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