WARNING: The following contains spoilers for X-Force #3, by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara. Dean White, Guru-eFX, VC’s Joe Caramagna and Tom Muller, on sale now.
Even though the X-Men have lived in a world that hates and fears them for their entire existence, they’ve usually enjoyed a fairly comfortable life. Thanks to the deep pockets and small fortunes of members like Sunspot, Angel and Emma Frost, a lack of financial resources is seldom a problem for the X-Men.
For unfathomably affluent characters like Tony Stark or DC’s Bruce Wayne, immense wealth is essentially a superpower that explicitly enables them to go on fantastic adventures with impossibly advanced – and expensive – technology. However, wealth has traditionally played a far more subtle role in the X-Men’s world, where it’s allowed the team to regularly live in a sprawling, secluded mansion that’s been rebuilt multiple times from the ground up.
While the establishment of the island nation Krakoa has taken the X-Men far beyond the X-Mansion’s walls, the wealth of the X-Men’s founder, Charles Xavier, was still instrumental in establishing the mutant paradise.
After a mysterious group tries to steal Xavier’s fortune, X-Force #3 reveals just how wealthy Professor X is with a data page that contains his financial portfolio and identifies him as the wealthiest man and most influential figure in Marvel's world.
The precise source of Xavier’s family fortune has never been revealed, but the family built the mansion that would become Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters well over a century ago. After Charles Xavier’s scientist father, Brian, was killed in a nuclear accident, Charles inherited the mansion and his family fortune, and he used both to found the X-Men.
As this issue reveals, Xavier also used that fortune to quietly back a dozen organizations that quietly helped him amass more wealth and influence. Xavier has a diverse portfolio of business holdings ranging from Xavier "Pharmaxeuticals" and Gifted Mind Technologies to less likely ventures like Uncanny Valley Farms and Wolverine Waste Management. Alongside the charitable His Dream Philanthropic Foundation, Xavier was also the shadow chairman and primary stockholder in media companies Cerebral Films and Summers News and Media.
While all of those businesses have punny names with some link to the X-Men, they all serve a common goal: the establishment of Krakoa. Thanks to the strategic positioning of these operations, Xavier was able to set the stage for in the financial, educational, news and entertainment sectors across the Marvel Universe. In a move that might seem more at home in a supervillain’s playbook, Xavier even created his own form of currency, the digital Xcoin.
At one point, this issue states that all of his holdings add up to give Xavier “incalculable” wealth, while Sebastian Shaw later asserts that Xavier is merely a billionaire. In either case, the X-Men’s newest foes have set their eyes on Xavier’s fortune, and they’ve already carved a bloody path towards their goal.
At the start of the issue, a masked group of thieves descends upon one of the distribution sites where Krakoan pharmaceutical exports are being distributed. After fatally wounding one of Multiple Man’s duplicates, they hack into the X-Men’s computer system and begin transferring funds from Xavier’s accounts.
While stopping robbers might be routine for other superheroes, the X-Men usually deal with ideological extremists. Even though the issue ends with these thieves using shockingly violent methods to take out some X-Force members in their next heist, these villains still seem to primarily identify themselves as thieves after Xavier’s deep pockets.
Throughout House of X and the ongoing Dawn of X relaunch, financial and economic matters have played an unusually prominent role in the early days of Krakoa. Marauders is built around the drama inherent to the Hellfire Trading Company, another center of mutant wealth.
The attack in this issue indicates that the non-mutant world may be starting to realize just how much money is in mutant hands. As this issue makes devastatingly clear, Xavier and the X-Men are starting to learn that more money brings more problems.