Krakoa
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Krakoa is a fictional character in Marvel Comics, commonly associated with the X-Men. It is literally a living island, a sentient ecosystem able to command all the living things native to its island body, and even its terrain. Its name was derived from the real Indonesian volcano island Krakatoa.
Although Krakoa has made only one notable appearance in the X-Men franchise, it is vividly remembered by the fanbase as the main enemy in the probably most influential X-Men comic of all time, Giant-Size X-Men #1. Krakoa is directly responsible for the formation of the "new" X-Men.
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[edit] Fictional character biography
[edit] Giant-Size X-Men #1
Krakoa was originally a very small island in the Pacific Ocean that was located close to where some nuclear bombing tests were done. The radiation somehow turned the island's ecosystem into a hive-mind entity.
In Giant-Size X-Men #1, the X-Men (then consisting of Cyclops, Angel, Havok, Iceman, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey) and Polaris) came to the island after Cerebro detected an unknown mutant there, and were captured by Krakoa, who used them as foodsources. Cyclops was the only one able to flee, but doesn't remember what happened. Professor X decides to recruit international mutants to save his X-Men, namely Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, Sunfire, Thunderbird, Banshee and Wolverine, and sends them to Krakoa. (Unknown to the heroes, Krakoa had intentionally allowed Cyclops to escape, so he could lure in more mutants for it to feed on; it had also telepathically influenced Xavier so that he would organize a new team of untrained mutants to rescue the X-men, instead of, for example, asking the Avengers or Fantastic Four for help.)
Cyclops' group of mutants pair off and after each pair encounter and defeat various aspects of the island, the new X-Men team finds the original X-Men, who are weakened from being fed upon by Krakoa for so long. At this point, it is revealed that the island is itself the mutant they had originally detected and Krakoa battles the new and old X-Men by forming a giant humanoid body out of its terrain. With a combination of psi interference by Professor X and energy blasts from Cyclops and Havok, Storm is able to supercharge Polaris' magnetic powers with bolts of lightning. Polaris interacts with the Earth's core and creates a magnetic pulse so strong that she is able to launch Krakoa into outer space. The X-Men - now counting thirteen members - are saved.
Krakoa was apparently found and captured for study by the cosmic entity known as The Stranger, as seen when Quasar visited one of his 'laboratory worlds'.
[edit] X-Men: Deadly Genesis
The 2006 X-Men: Deadly Genesis storyline is a major retcon in which it is revealed that many of the elements in Giant-Size X-Men #1 were in fact deceptions and delusions created by Professor X to hide the major part of the story. Another team of young mutants, composed of Petra, Darwin, and Sway and the third Summers brother Kid Vulcan, from a parallel X-Mansion led by Moira McTaggart, were sent to help the original X-Men. They managed to save Cyclops and returned him to Professor X. However Krakoa, no more intelligent than an animal, killed Petra and Sway and left Darwin and Kid Vulcan almost dead. Xavier had erased all records of the real events in Cyclops' mind, and altered the mutants' minds to cast the illusion of a speaking, sentient Krakoa.
Apparently Krakoa was left orbiting around Earth for years, thus contradicting the Quasar comic.
[edit] Powers and abilities
In its original depiction, Krakoa was an immensely powerful being. It could manipulate its flora and fauna at will and possessed incredible psi powers, rivaling those of Professor X. After the revelation of the events surrounding Vulcan, it was revealed that Krakoa was little more than an animal-like system whose intelligence was merely survival instinct.
[edit] Other versions
[edit] Ultimate Krakoa
In the Ultimate Marvel continuity of Ultimate X-Men, Krakoa was reimagined as an apparently normal island near Genosha, on which TV mogul Mojo Adams hosts his gruesome reality TV show Hunt for Justice, in which mutant felons are hunted to death. It is where Ultimate Deadpool takes Spiderman and the X-men in the Deadpool arc of USM.
[edit] Amalgam
In the Amalgam Universe Krakoa appears in The Magnetic Men Featuring Magneto #1, here it is known as Krakoa the Living Dinosaur Island, named because of its ability to reanimate extinct lifeforms (i. e. dinosaurs). The insane mutant hater Dr. Will Magnus and his Sentinel robots used Krakoa as their base of operations before their location was discovered by Magneto
