X-Men Monday #67 and BotA Interview with Leah Williams

[Dante Milton]

https://aiptcomics.com/2020/07/27/x-...iams-x-factor/

Leah was also interviewed on the Battle of the Atom podcast, which can be listened to here, http://www.xavierfiles.com/2020/07/2...leah-williams/ , if you so choose. Some bullet points:

- Began work on X-factor by considering the potential problems with resurrection, which lead to the development of The Resurrection Protocols.
- The Resurrection Protocols were conceived as a system of rules written in Krakoa's future, Leah then used these rules to reverse engineer storylines for X-Factor. The Protocols will be shown as a highly redacted data page with more being revealed as the stories unfold.
-Leah believes in Krakoa and wants to show the ways Krakoa works.
- X-Factor #4 will be focused on the Five.
- The Crucible will not be used to erase disability representation. Interested in showing how Krakoa adapts and provides for the needs of its people, it doesn't ask them to assimilate.
- X of Swords "engineered to be badass", the polycule will be addressed.
- Daken is in a completely different place than he has been before, is experimenting with kindness to mixed results.
- Rachel's chronoskimming ability will get used.
- Rachel and Polaris have leadership potential, Leah felt they needed development as individuals in order to flourish, which is why they aren't leading X-Factor.
- Fred, Blob, shows up and she has plans for him.
- X-Factor is more like the IT department than cops. Krakoa is a nation, but not a state and its systems are not structured as hierarchies. There are no cops on Krakoa. they are a "lovely communist society". Organizations work for the community.
- Will explore and develop Proteus as a person.
- Eyeboy is sweet and kind, the team baby. The team is generally protective of him, except for Daken and occasionally Northstar.
- The baby warwolf is going to get big.
- X-Men Empyre was written like a game of telephone, one writer would do their pages and then it would be given to next writer and they would do their pages, started with Hickman>Tini>Gerry>Ben>Leah so on. Tried to one up and out crazy each other.

[salarta]

Cross-post. This is only concerning the AIPT article, not the podcast mentioned above.

If that's Polaris (as the AIPT article suggests), then it's a good cover. Gives off Lady of the Lake vibes.

The question about Magneto and answer to it is fairly typical and expected. The only thing it really does is confirm that Marvel isn't planning to retcon Lorna out of being his daughter right this second. I saw the AIPT thread asking for questions, and when I last looked at it, a majority of the questions were about Lorna and more than one asked specifically about Genosha. I don't know if Chris Hassan selected the questions for Leah to answer or if Hassan presented all of them and Leah picked what she wanted (though she could've looked at the thread herself and picked; she was tagged on it). Now obviously it would be absurd to expect a Q&A for a whole book to be all or heavily about one character. But out of 12 questions, the only one focused specifically on Polaris didn't really offer anything we didn't already know. The one positive to it for me is that it wasn't about Havok again.

Lorna does come up in other questions, but in a very vague way. Leah says Rachel clicks with Lorna right away, which implies awareness of their having been in space, but doesn't outright say so. Leah later says in a question about Prodigy's trauma that she could've answered the same about Lorna and others on the team, but that doesn't say anything about which trauma, or if all of them. Is her Genosha history bundled in that? Or is it only about getting possessed by Malice and her experience with Genosha is still being ignored (which I'm starting to lean toward thinking it's editorial mandate not to acknowledge Genosha for her, especially if it doesn't factor into Empyre).

Also Leah takes a Rachel question for the one to answer about history of traumatic experiences (mind control and such). Two questions relating specifically to Northstar, which is to be expected for the character who's leading the team, but shows where the focus of the book lies.

All in all, the AIPT interview just further reaffirms for me what I've been expecting, and that it's bad place for Lorna. Lorna naked on a cover holding up a sword isn't a substitute for acknowledgment of critical character history, and that history is more important than taking up a question to reiterate something we already know.

[misty101]

Oh, completely forgot Rachel was in this.

[gealach]

I've transcribed the bit concerning Daken:

BattleOfTheAtom: One of the characters I was most surprised by is one that I have never really been able to like, in fact I think I said on the show before that I generally hate Daken. In X-Factor #1... he’s like absolutely delightful! And I can’t wait to read more. He’s good! What is your approach to him? And how did you make him this really wonderful character that I want to spend more time with?
Leah: So... he’s a really complex and layered character, like a lot of my cast, where they’ve been depicted differently across different runs, which kind of turns them into a patchwork quilt of different traits. But for my purposes I really do like folding it all in kind of a deep well of nuanced character decisions. And Daken is somebody who has experienced a lot of growth in recent continuity. He is in a completely different place in his life now than he was in his origins or even seven years after that. And I’m really interested in developing this kind of newer, softer side of him, because he’s in the same boat with the rest of my cast where he has a hugely traumatic upbringing and horrific history. But you know, like I said before, I really believe in Krakoa and what we’re doing and the holistic adaptive nature of it, and I’m not interested in rehashing a lot of their trauma or story-mining from that, so much as showing them moving forward together, and healing, and working through these things, because I think that it opens up the potential for some really extraordinary progressions of their power sets as well. And I think that empowerment is a huge thing that factors into it. So, for Daken specifically, the way that it plays out with him is he’s experimenting with things like kindness right now, and he’s not the best at it, but he’s trying.

[Fokken]

gealach where did you find that image for your avatar? Its beautiful!

[gealach]

gealach where did you find that image for your avatar? Its beautiful!

Thank you! It's from Kevin Wada's Paper X-Men series. He did something like eight Daken variations, I think.
And then I slapped the ace flag behind him

[Nyssane]

So excited for this!

[MechaJeanix]

Leah's personality is fun and I enjoy her thoughts on X-men (mostly). I expect her book to be quirky and fun. The resurrection process is so interesting and exciting so I'm for more stories involving the five and the overall process. The X-factor main cast should be very fun. I love Rachel, Lorna, and Northstar. I also can't wait to see more of Prodigy.

[Veitha]

Got to love the lovely communist society :3

[Soulsword323]

Nice to see Proteus will get some focus. I am worried about the number of characters in this title. Between the main cast and The Five, that's a lot of characters for Leah to juggle and I hope some won't get shortchanged. Would love to actually see some development of Lorna's and Rachel's friendship.

[Filthy Mutie]

Cross-post. This is only concerning the AIPT article, not the podcast mentioned above.

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[salarta]

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AndNoOneCared.jpg

And they can scroll past if they don't care.

[Veitha]

Nice to see Proteus will get some focus. I am worried about the number of characters in this title. Between the main cast and The Five, that's a lot of characters for Leah to juggle and I hope some won't get shortchanged. Would love to actually see some development of Lorna's and Rachel's friendship.

Yeah my main concern is having to juggle too much or having too many concepts.

But I'm kind of sold on this as of now.

[Grunty]

- X-Factor is more like the IT department than cops. Krakoa is a nation, but not a state and its systems are not structured as hierarchies. There are no cops on Krakoa. they are a "lovely communist society". Organizations work for the community.

Kinda easy to have such a society if a magic mutant island suddently exists and just solves all problems of production and resource gathering. No exploitation of labour if there is no labour to be done.

Though given that the remaining activities are extremely limited in number and mostly taken by a handfull of individuals with specific skills or powers (and often recieving these position via personal connection) one has to to wonder how long this all could last until a "Player Piano" situation arises where the majority of the population feels utterly useless and all the partying and entertainment starts to wear them down mentaly?

There are allready thousands of mutants on Krakoa who's only job is to fill the backrounds and the leaders plan to add millions to that. What are all of those supposed to do in a society that has no need for labour, very few options for service work and is mainted by a small elite of skilled, empowered or connected individuals?

In Star Trek they explained the problem to have been resolved by people in the federation being encouraged to work for their personal betterment, administrative and service work still existing and classic craftmanship being valued for non-standard qualities.
But that setting also has countless worlds to settle and settled worlds were one can still find a niche for their work to be valued.

Meanwhile Krakoa is extremely limited in physical scope and desired jobs or activities. So there seems to be a huge danger for a majority of the population to end up as "dead weight".

Nothing against a bit of an utopic society dreaming. But there is a reason i have a brewing "Brave New World" feeling when i think about Krakoa.

- The Crucible will not be used to erase disability representation.

What if there is a mutant who was born as or became dissabled via an accident, but also lost their super powers from M-Day?

Would they go through the croucible and then get printed out with their powers again but still dissabled?

Feels a bit like they try to avoid unfortunate implications but run straight into a classic super hero comic issues ("Why would someone remain dissabled if there is all that super tech to correct that?").

[jmc247]

Nice to see Proteus will get some focus. I am worried about the number of characters in this title. Between the main cast and The Five, that's a lot of characters for Leah to juggle and I hope some won't get shortchanged. Would love to actually see some development of Lorna's and Rachel's friendship.

The size of the cast could be a pitfall, but hopefully Leah can balance that out. Enthusiasm matters and the writer has it in spades. In terms of Lorna and Rachel their relationship had no depth last time because of its basis around generic super hero antics and talking about ships. We will see if Leah can make them interesting without shipper stuff.