X-Men: Homecoming (Comics) | Review

The Krakoan-era is over. The mutant nation has collapsed, Orchis has been dismantled and the dream of a sovereign mutant homeland is ash. This is the wreckage Jed MacKay (Avengers: The Impossible City, Avengers: Masters of Evil) dumps at Scott Summers' feet on day one– and the narrative that follows refuses to pretend it's not.

Collecting X-Men (2024) issues 1 through 7, the X-Men: Homecoming arc works as a clean entry point for readers arriving fresh to the From the Ashes publishing era and a significant emotional pivot for anyone who lived through the years on Krakoa and is still processing what was lost.

MacKay writes across all seven issues and his command of this roster is evident from the very first page. He came to this book off an acclaimed run on Moon Knight and that background in grounded, character-first storytelling is visible in everything he does with this creative team.

Pencillers Ryan Stegman (Inhuman: Genesis, Superior Spider-Man: A Troubled Mind) and Netho Diaz split art duties throughout the volume, with Marte Gracia providing colors across all seven issues. All three are already operating inside the visual language this book needs– and together the arc looks, moves and feels exactly as it must.

The arc opens with Scott Summers leading a newly assembled team– Beast, Magneto, Psylocke, Magik, Kid Omega, Juggernaut and Temper– out of a vast repurposed Sentinel factory in Merle, Alaska. The base is called the Factory and the bitter irony of that choice is entirely intentional.

The X-Men also maintain a public-facing outreach presence at the Xavier Institute in New York, positioning the team as something closer to a traditional superhero operation than the nation- state apparatus Krakoa once represented. MacKay makes that tonal shift deliberate and visible from the very first pages of issue one of the run.

The central mission driving Homecoming is the protection of new adult-onset mutants– people whose X-gene activates in adulthood rather than during adolescence. It is a fresh premise that sidesteps the usual discovery template and opens the book to different emotional territory.

These late-manifesting mutants appear tied to a new covert operation now called 3K, a faction whose structure, leadership and goals are kept quite deliberately obscured throughout this arc. MacKay uses them as a slow-build threat, seeding just enough detail across the seven issues to make the mystery feel earned not just held back.

Trevor Fitzroy and the Upstarts make a notable return in this volume, which will either land as a welcome piece of continuity for long-time readers or register as unfamiliar territory for newer ones. MacKay deploys them with obvious purpose– this is not sentiment dressed up as plotline.

The standout character work in Homecoming belongs to Temper, formerly known as Oya. Her internal conflict around loyalty, ethics and the real cost of serving on this particular team gives the arc its most grounded emotional material– she asks the harder questions without flinching and the narrative is arguably all the better for it.

The Iron Night– a Sentinel assault on rural Merle explaining how the X-Men came to occupy the Factory– is delivered through a long flashback sequence that ranks among the best-constructed pages in the volume. MacKay earns the emotional weight he asks of it without overstaying it.

Issues 4 and 5 shift the action to San Francisco, where the X-Men team stops an alien incursion. The sequence works as a large-scale action showcase and it delivers on its spectacle, though its register occasionally pulls against the quieter, more grounded character work the rest of the arc has been carefully establishing through the book.

Magneto's deteriorating health is among the most carefully managed sub-plots in this volume. His sacrifice during the Iron Night triggers R-LDS– a degenerative condition tied to the Krakoan resurrection protocols– introduced with quiet weight that signals MacKay intends to pay it off.

One real criticism worth naming: Scott's conversation with Rogue lands awkwardly outside the From the Ashes line. The beat assumes context the trade does not supply and the absence of a brief recap page is a missed opportunity for a book otherwise well-constructed for new readers.

The arc closes by introducing a mysterious council of four– The Zealot, The Doctor, The Means and The Chairman– whose appearance at the end of issue one functions as the strongest signal that Homecoming is not a self-contained story but the very deliberate foundation of something considerably more ambitious than this arc alone.

MacKay writes with precision and restraint. His dialogue has a natural, unhurried rhythm and he manages a large, tonally varied roster by ensuring every character holds a distinct voice– no small task across seven issues when your team spans five very different eras of X-Men history.

Stegman and Diaz handle the visual handoffs smoothly despite their differing individual styles– Stegman's pages in particular carry a combative, high-energy quality that suits the book's most action-heavy sequences very well. Ramos draws energy into action; Stegman channels it into controlled aggression and it suits this team well.

Marte Gracia's coloring does more structural work than it might initially appear. The palette moves between cool, shadowed tones and a vivid, saturated register during combat– a tonal range that holds the two pencillers together visually and keeps the book consistent throughout.

X-Men: Homecoming is not a comfortable book and it is not trying to be. MacKay treats the loss of Krakoa as something genuinely unresolved– a wound the team is working around rather than past– and that choice gives the arc a real weight that most soft-launch volumes never attempt.

Temper is the standout addition and the clearest signal that MacKay is building something long-term. She arrives with enough unresolved history, moral complexity and forward momentum to anchor her own storyline and the questions she raises in this volume do not receive the easy answers she or the average reader might expect.

For readers following at the time of release, the connective tissue here matters more than it first appears. Hostile Takeover is coming. The Hellfire Vigil is on the horizon. MacKay is laying some real groundwork and this volume makes clear he knows precisely where he is taking it.

X-Men: Homecoming earns its place as a From the Ashes opener without much argument. It is occasionally uneven– Juggernaut is underused, the San Francisco sequence disrupts the pacing and some beats need wider line context– but the foundations are solid, Temper alone justifies the read and the run ahead looks very promising.

X-Men by Jed MacKay Vol. 1: Homecoming is available in trade paperback format, collecting X-Men (2024) #1-7. You can grab the physical editions from local comic-book shops or bookstore chains. For digital readers, it's available on Amazon Kindle, ComiXology and Marvel Unlimited.