Behind the Scenes with Vita Ayala

[Lady Midnight]

Kinetics (Joshua Engelhard, Monica, Jacob Williams, Christopher O’Leary, Megan Ogawa)

• Joshua Engelhard (20, male): The only child of a relatively liberal family, Josh grew up believing in the goodness of man and the kindness of strangers. It was quite a shock to him, then, when his mutation manifested and they tried to kill him. He ran into the woods near his home, and spent the next few months living off the grid and sparking rumors of the Jersey Devil being back. He is a kind person by nature, but no longer trusting. He doesn’t smile much anymore.
  
  Powers: he can manipulate molecules to make them excited or still, essentially making fire and ice, but he has to be touching the object. He can do it to the air, but that is dangerous to him and everything around him. He is also very strong, his horns are like ivory, and his tail is prehensile.

• Monica (18, non-binary): Monica is from Eugene, Oregon. Their mother worked at the university, and their father sold cars. They had a relatively normal childhood, until their mother died when they were a pre-teen. The trauma of the experience caused their mutant manifestation. Their father kicked them out of the house within hours of it happening, and they were forced to live on the street. They are very shy and gentle, and love to dance.
  
  (Their girlfriend is LIANA from the PSYCHICS group.)
  
  Powers: Monica’s arms become super stretchy and hard (think like super hard rubber), and they can charge their arms with electricity. SO basically, their arms become electrified whips!

• Jacob Williams/Brutha Nature (17, trans boy): Jacob ran away from home long before his mutant powers manifested. He grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, but made his way up north to Chicago by the time he was 14. There he found his long lost (lesbian) aunt, who took him in. He’s a very serious kid, who never really had close friends until his aunt took him in and his powers manifested Around the same time). Since then he has attempted to be less aggro all the time.
  
  (His best friend is MARKOS ARGYROS, from the Flyers group.)
  
  Powers: He can control the shape, density, and harness of plants. He can animate plants as well, and can “connect” with them in a way that allows him to experience what they experience, and communicate the way they do. He can make armor out of tree bark that is harder than steel, or cleave a tree with a light touch (he wouldn’t though, he likes plants).

• Christopher O’Leary (19, male, bisexual): In and out of juvie from an early age, Chris is the picture of a problem child. Aggressive, rude, and angry.
  Powers: He is pyro-kinetic, using his own energy for fuel (so he has to eat A Lot).

• Megan Ogawa/Kappa (20, female, bisexual): Born and raised in Hawaii, Meg grew up in the water. When her powers manifested, her parents were delighted – it just proved to them that she was a blessing, sent from above. Pretty happy-go-lucky most of the time, she is slow to anger but when she does, she is like the raging flood and she holds a grudge. (There is nothing as soft as water, yet who withstand the raging flood?)
  
  Powers: She can manipulate water and other fluids to do her bidding, in the same way that Pyro can control fire. She draws the water/fluids from things around (including the air in humid places), and can completely dehydrate something if she wants.

Psychics (Alec Walsh, Leo Eng, Liana, Julia, Alice Campbell)

• Alec Walsh (58, male): Alec seems very serious at first, but his humor comes through (dry and sharp) pretty quickly. A father whose children do not want to see him, he takes in a lot of strays. He’s good with his hands (a builder, carpentry and electronics both) and decent in the kitchen.
  
  Powers: Empathic and telekinetic.

• Leonara (Leo) Eng (23, trans woman):Leo is fully a genius, and so very baffled by people. She has trouble connecting with people, despite being telepathic, and spends a lot of time trying to find common ground. She loves games and uses them to socialize in a safe and controlled way. She likes go laugh, but her sense of humor often goes over people’s heads. She's a bit of a nervous person, but actively tries to overcome that.
  
  Powers: Telepathic and telekinetic.

• Liana (19, female):Lovable and slightly absentminded, Liana is an artist at heart. She grew up in Florida, where she was always the life of the party before she manifested. She managed to get a tattoo gun and make a tidy bit of money. This came in handy because when her powers manifested, she had to beat it out of town. She’s a bit of a foodie, though she is not the best in the kitchen.
  
  Powers: telekinetic and can shoot bolts of energy from her eyes!

• Julia: (17, female)
  
  The darling apple of her parents eye, even though she had two sisters, Julia grew up getting everything she wanted. Her nature is kind and gentle, though, so all that meant was that she had more things to share. When she manifested her powers, she was afraid her parents wouldn’t love her anymore and ran away from home. Rosie found her and took her in.
  
  (Her best friend and mentor is ROSIE RODRIGUEZ from the Ferals group.)
  
  Powers: she shoots psionic blasts from her big arm, which also can act as a psionic shield. That arm is also VERY strong, with skin tougher than alligator hide.

• Alice Campbell (20, non-binary): Alice wanted nothing more than to be a world famous actor when they grew up. They have an encyclopedic knowledge of movies and are a bit of a chameleon in terms of personality.
  
  Powers: telekinetic and able to project glamours over themselves.

Thank you. This helps a LOT.

[Tank]

I really think there are way too many background characters as it is and characters who need attention to go through this much effort creating more. Especially because they’re not all that unique or add anything new that an older character wouldnt already have.

[rcaguy]

Alec Walsh is my favorite, since he's pretty unique from the others and has a lot of potential. He seems to be the nurturing type and his powers help him understand others, yet his kids want nothing to do with him? Do they dislike him because he's a mutant, or did he say/do something to drive them away?

Brutha Nature's visually distinct. He has a niche that's not filled by another character, a unique power for mutants, and personality & backstory that can be mined for drama. I could easily see him being part of an teenage ensemble book.

I also like Hector because he's a little fat cat.

Other than that, everyone's competing with other mutants who have similar powers or niches, and given how little of them actually get shown in the comics in a meaningful way, you could just as easily give their appearances up to other characters who have been around longer and would benefit from just those quick cameos. Having some of them be supporting characters in an Academy X-like book could be great - they wouldn't overshadow or take up space for other characters, but would still get time and space to develop and form bonds with other characters, all while building on the current lore. It would be pretty cool... as long as Marvel doesn't act like these characters will be the next generation, and won't be abandoned like 98% of teen X-characters the second Marvel wants something new to play with.

The reason 98% of the teen X-characters you mentioned were abandoned because like the X-Statix "teen" characters they flat-out sucked. Pretty much nobody didn't and still to this day don't want to deal with the utter crap they represented. (See one Nature Girl for an example of this)

Better to start over from scratch than trying to fix messes like this. ****Hello exploding School Bus****

[MYCMTSC]

I don't think the ones with good visuals/powers match with the interesting backgrounds.

I think Julia, Jacob, and Kappa have the neatest powers but I'm also intrigued by the Diwa Twins. We are never in need of more telepaths or ferals IMO.

[H-E-D]

I really think there are way too many background characters as it is and characters who need attention to go through this much effort creating more. Especially because they’re not all that unique or add anything new that an older character wouldnt already have.

It’s hard to say that these newer characters don’t bring anything new to the table when they’re the first trans, non-binary, genderqueer characters in the franchise.

[Veitha]

How are the fans going to get invested in those kids when Ayala is not even writing any of this in the comic itself, if you don`t fallow them on twitter or substack you wouldn't even now their names or powers, much less that they are "the definition of sunshine" or " a stereotypical jock"

Until this is on paper this is all fanfiction. At least the New X-Men had the Academy X Yearbook.

They are appearing in New Mutants though

[ComeOnBunny]

How about lets use the many characters that are unused instead of creating more fodder to be killed off or used as furniture for the background.

[Grunty]

That's the biggest concern with introducing swaths of new X-characters. Marvel sees canon fodder. They're safe for now with resurrections, but in 5 years when we need another mutant tragedy these folks will be the first on the chopping block, no matter how much representation they added.

Reminds me how the Morlocks always magically recovered enough nameless members to have a large number of them killed (or in case of House of M depowered) by some villains, which is particular impressive when it happened in the time between Decimination and the current status quo when mutants were still supposed to be tiny in number or only a new generation of mutants appearing (yet somehow new older mutants appeared with the Morlocks).

I have the joking head cannon that Dark Beast, Mister Sinister and who ever else is in the business of producing tank breed mutant experiments just dump their "left overs" with the Morlocks and they just collectively fit them into their memories as a result of the trauma from the Mutant Massacre:

"Oh that's just Johnny Forkhands, he has always been with us. He appeared here 5 days ago out of nowhere but i'm sure he was with us all the way since the we survived the Marauders attack."

Though those are "outsider" groups mind you. Their whole point is usualy to provide similar characters to the heros but distant enough (in characterization and importance) to the hero faction that they aren't meant to be in the spotlight unless they are needed as element for a story, which includes being the victims of the bad guys.

The Good (heros), the Bad (villains) and the Others (problem makers, victims, supporters, allies, non-villainous antagonists, etc.) so to speak.

Though that being said, it's of course much more problematic with the X-men students. Because unlike the outsider groups like the Morlocks, these are part of the hero faction, infact the students are in part meant to be the (potential) next generation of heros by design.

It arguably worked for a while when the situation with the Xavier school was a bit more "optimistic" between 2000 and 2005, because some of them got backstories and focus (quality) via being central characters in the student sseries, while the rest were backround fillers with occasional interesting designs (quantity), all with the feeling that eventualy the unused fillers would graduate and be replaced with new fillers, while the used characters would go leave to join hero teams or at least have off-pannel adventures or lifes.

This is for example how it worked in My Hero Academia so far. There is the hero class, the rival class, a trio of senior students soon to graduate and a lot of filler designs from which the author might eventualy draw new characters from if the need arises, but who otherwise just exist to make the school more alive looking.
Nobody expects the fillers to be important, because the author has the focus on the main class and has the rival class as backups, all who occasionaly get their moments to shine.

And then Decimination happend and everything changed when the Fire Nation invaded. So basicly the whole in universe situation did not allow the main classes and backround student situation to be maintained anymore. Infact even those characters who were previously the "main characters" of the students got affected and lost members to depowering. But thanks to the X-men movie, everyone now pop culturaly associated the Xavier institute and with that the X-men's base of operation to be filled with backround filling students.

So the students got massacred down to the handfull who got previous development, but those who are left where to many to all get spotlights. To make it worse, the previous dynamic of who of the students was important and who wasn't was all out of order (because half the hero team was out of order), so readers no longer had any clear picture anymore of who among the left over students was important and who was not.

Which means having some of them get personalities, identities and backstories, only to then be pushed back to only appear in the backrounds or be redshirts, weakens that "next generation" role immensly via growing apathy by readers.

And that's where we are now. A fine mess created by someone thinking there were too many nameless mutants in the world of the Marvel Universe and they had to get back to being a small number...

Thanks Joe Q. you did a fine job shooting your own comicbook franchise in the foot (and i don't just mean X-men).

[MYCMTSC]

How about lets use the many characters that are unused instead of creating more fodder to be killed off or used as furniture for the background.

If fans/future writers don’t get attached to these kids and they’re forgotten…whats the big deal? Vita obviously didn’t want to use the existing furniture.

Its a bit bizarre to me to be upset someone created a new character instead of using Dryad.

I don’t love all of these character concepts but Vita obviously is taking the advice of ‘if you want to see an <x> type character…create them’…and they are doing just that.

[scourge]

If fans/future writers don’t get attached to these kids and they’re forgotten…whats the big deal? Vita obviously didn’t want to use the existing furniture.

Its a bit bizarre to me to be upset someone created a new character instead of using Dryad.

Because people would like to see the characters they're already fans of and attached to not be so terribly underused instead.

They are appearing in New Mutants though

But the problem is that none of this info is. At all. Unless you're following them on twitter and such, you don't get to know any of this stuff.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

People keep saying that you should've folded these OCs into existing teen characters so how would that work?

No judgement or bias, I'm just curious.

[Lady Midnight]

Because people would like to see the characters they're already fans of and attached to not be so terribly underused instead.



But the problem is that none of this info is. At all. Unless you're following them on twitter and such, you don't get to know any of this stuff.

Perhaps this info should have been published when they started blending these kids into New Mutants?

[Kingdom X]

People keep saying that you should've folded these OCs into existing teen characters so how would that work?

No judgement or bias, I'm just curious.

This might not be what you're alluding to, but this got me thinking that if even the most background Academy X characters started coming out as queer (especially gender-queer), there'd be somebody saying, "this is so FORCED! Make your own characters instead of changing established ones."

Vita even alluded to this in the post:

The refrain of “well if you want it so bad, make it” is one that BIPOC and Queer (and QUEER BIPOC) people get told to endlessly. And we do, and often when we do, the support is not there. It is extremely exhausting and infuriating, but that’s how the world works, right? Maybe, but that sucks.

They avoided that discussion of changing older characters altogether by making their own characters.

[Frobisher]

This is not really improving representation if none of it makes it to the page. The end product is usually “blue guy”.

[Rift]

People keep saying that you should've folded these OCs into existing teen characters so how would that work?

No judgement or bias, I'm just curious.

I feel like quick cameos or appearances could be given to other characters. For example, when Leo was in New Mutants, all she did was use her powers and fight. That role could have been given to another telekinetic. Her inclusion doesn't add anything, gives us nothing to care about her character, and just creates more wallpaper in a franchise that has a serious problem with wallpaper already.

On the other hand, we don't have any other transwoman on the cast, and she has a somewhat unique personality and outlook. Something actually exploring her character or story would be acceptable, since they're the only one who can have that story. Fleshing them out could give us a unique and compelling story, as well as giving us a reason to care about the character.

There's also the bigger problem of them introducing characters, then replacing said characters to tell a similar premise or plot with these new characters, before repeating the process again and again. But that's a whole other thing that also needs to be addressed.

EDIT: I just remembered. Leo is the only transwoman besides Jessie Drake... who isn't being used either. This franchise is really bad at utilizing their characters. Which is why piling on more and not fleshing them out hurts.