The X-Men are most famous for operating out of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, a.k.a. the X-Mansion. Alas, the fall of Krakoa required the team to find a new headquarters. X-Men #1 by Jed MacKay and Ryan Stegman outlines the team’s latest base, which serves two symbolic purposes beyond its practical functions.
The new X-Men headquarters is located 20 minutes outside of Merle, Alaska. The first issue finds Beast, who serves as the Base Commander, guiding a local sheriff through the facility. This is intended to reassure the nearby community that they are safe with an infamous group of Mutant vigilantes living close-by.
Beast shows how the new X-Men headquarters is more farm than a military base, with several non-combatant Mutants tending the crops. Beyond providing for the nutritional needs of the team, they hope to eventually provide fresh produce for Merle. This helps promote the idea of Mutants as good neighbors, but Beast also notes the symbolic importance of Mutants facilitating life over death.
X-Men base turns Sentinel factory into a farm
The irony of this decision is driven home by the revelation that the new X-Men farm was built from a Sentinel factory. The From the Ashes preview showed how Cyclops and Beast had chosen a former Orchis base as their new headquarters. X-Men #1 reveals that the base had been the city of Merle’s main source of jobs until Orchis’ defeat.
The sheriff is quick to defend her people, saying most of them weren’t happy building “murder robots.” More, Orchis automated the factory, taking away the jobs even before the Mutants moved in. Beast is sympathetic but notes the Mutant struggle is now that of refugees everywhere.
“We’re trying to build life in a place that was good for nothing but death,” Beast notes. “And so now we must find our place in the world all over again. And ever have refugees had to settle for the broken and unwanted places of the Earth.” Broken as it may be, the former factory has proven a symbolically fitting headquarters for the X-Men.
X-Men #1 is now available at comic shops everywhere.
