AIPT: First up, you’re known to be a big fan of Brian Braddock’s classic Captain Britain adventures. What has you most excited about Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain?
Jordan: Well, I’ve been excited about Betsy being Captain Britain since we made that change. I mean, both of those characters are characters I love. I think making her Captain Britain was a really great way to give her and Kwannon some distinction while still allowing us to use what makes both of their characters great.
In addition, I’m a fan of classic Brian Braddock stories — one of the most notable ones is about Betsy being Captain Britain — and it goes extremely poorly for her. So it’s been nice to give her some redemption on that. I wouldn’t say 100% she was a woman in a refrigerator in that story, but it’s certainly refrigerator-adjacent to the extent that it’s a story about her failing. So that’s unfortunate. It’s very much that her being hurt is there to elicit an enormous emotional response in Brian.
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the spoiler. It’s a classic story where Betsy becomes Captain Britain and Brian is retired from it. He’s like, “Fine, I’ll just go and hang out with my girlfriend Meggan.” And a character named Slaymaster comes up and is fighting Betsy Captain Britain and he pokes her eyes out and blinds her. And Brian, upon hearing this, is enraged and tracks Slaymaster down and kills him. I think Brian smashes his head in with a giant boulder.
It’s nice now to be able to bring her back as Captain Britain and redeem her and be like, “No, she’s not an incompetent character.” Now, obviously, she’s been through a lot since then. She rose to being a huge member of the X-Men in the time since then. But it’s nice that she gets to be Captain Britain again and show that she can in fact handle it. I’m also glad that we figured out a place for Brian, making him Captain Avalon. He’s very much a big part of this series. Tini Howard has been doing a great job shaping Betsy’s destiny over the last few years.
And it’s nice that this time, instead of featuring her in a team book, this is a book about her and gets to really spotlight her and focus in, as well as showing her newly formed relationship with Rachel — a thing that was kind of bubbling in the background of Excalibur and Knights of X that then came to the forefront in Knights of X and now gets to be an official thing that they are an item. I’m really excited for that. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of another X-book that was led by an LGBTQ relationship. Obviously, we’ve had a number led by people who are engaged in a straight relationship. We have one that we just announced — Rogue & Gambit. But it’s exciting that this one gets to be so front and center.