Their methods may make them the perfect X-Men threat in the Krakoan Age, but Marvel Comics’ mutants have outgrown the too-zany cabal of child villains known as Homines Verendi. Long gone are the days of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and the foibles of young mutants discovering their powers. There’s a new “Head of X” in town, and under Jonathan Hickman’s unified vision, the latest archenemies to grapple with Kitty Pryde’s Marauders may fit the bill in some respects, but in the grand scheme of things are more problematic than they’re worth.
Though, Homines Verendi was first introduced in Marauders #4, written by Gerry Duggan and illustrated by Lucas Werneck and Federico Blee, it formerly operated under the name of the new Hellfire Club. Led by the genius twelve-year-old Kade Kilgore, son of a leading weapons manufacturer, the inner-circle includes Wilhelmina Kensington, Manuel Enduque, and Baron Maximilian Frankenstein (née von Katzenelnbogen). Together this band of highly connected and resourceful young psychopaths founded the Hellfire Academy, which appeared in the Wolverine and the X-Men series. Albeit a short lived run, the academy was a keen adversary to the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning and its team of fledgling mutants. But all of this was before the promise of Krakoa unified mutants across the globe. Now that the X-Men have risen beyond their former constraints and entered the political theatre of sovereign nations, as much on Earth as the Galaxy at large, what used to be a fun reversal of the criminally-minded “old guard” of the economic elite, are an awkward vestige of past storylines.
To be fair, Homines Verendi as an entity is a credible threat. Unlike the super-assassins, magic-users, and vicious super-villains other X-teams are facing in the current storylines, Verendi has positioned itself to beat the mutant nation at its own game. Deploying their resources with machiavellian ingenuity, the Hellfire Kids are waging a multi-tiered campaign against mutants: weaponizing media coverage to stoke anti-mutant sentiment in Madripoor and among the United Nations; manipulating property markets to create economic instability; and using their vast wealth and knowledge of gene experimentation to engineer advanced weapons of war to counter mutant combat superiority. These prodigious child crime lords may be a fixture of the Marauders series, but there can be no doubt that their true target is Krakoa itself. But therein lies the rub: despite it all, they are still children.
In the scope of the mutant maritime team the Marauders, led by Kitty Pryde, they miss the mark. Ever since the launch of Hickman’s run, Pryde has struggled to regain greater agency among the cruel maneuverings of the Quiet Council and the Hellfire Trading Company. To have her tangle against a conclave of evil kid billionaire geniuses, one of whom is a descendant of Victor Frankenstein, is goofy and undermines the trials her character has overcome. On a grandeur scale, now that Verendi has explicitly set its sights on Krakoa, the juxtaposition is even more jarring. After all, the overarching thrust of Hickman’s X-Men continuity is that mutantdom’s limitless adaptability and capacity for renewal will lead to their inheriting the future. Having them suffer defeats and celebrate victories against a group of human children with no special powers, regardless of how rich and intelligent they are, belittles that destiny.
Despite the best efforts of the creative teams over at Marvel Comics, Homines Verendi does more damage than good to the integrity of the new world order being built. Cast in the weighty political storytelling of a budding empire amidst the death throes of humanity’s dominion, the X-Men and the Marauders have moved beyond cartoony threats.
