Dan Buckley: It was like, "No, no, no, that is contradicting!" and then the writer and the editor would argue back and forth. There may have been some voting on the final tally, because I often would go to a vote in those retreats, sometimes, when people just wouldn't to get off a topic. One of the more legendary ones is they almost brought Gwen Stacy back at one point and I did not want to bring Gwen Stacy back.
Tom Brevoort: Saying Spider-Woman has been a Skrull since the beginning of NEW AVENGERS, that's not a problem. Brian knew she was a Skrull when he was writing those stories. It's baked in, so that's okay.
But you can't go back and say Gwen Stacy is alive now because that was a Skrull that got thrown off that bridge, because as much as you want Gwen Stacy back, that's a problem. There are too many stories in which that's the fundamentals. The thing that's appealing about it, of course, is it's transgressive and therefore exciting and therefore dangerous and daring. Yeah, people are going to get upset, but they'll be excited. That's always the argument.
Dan Buckley: When it came to me, and I had the final vote, "bring Gwen back" was up by one. My single vote created a tie. I then said were tied, and in order to change something you need to win the vote... so I essentially gave myself two votes. Some people were not very pleased with me because I gave myself two votes at the end.
Tom Brevoort: To me, it was always a baby/bathwater thing. You can do this, and you can do some of this, and we took the opportunity to get Mockingbird back in this, for example. She had died in—I'm going to say—1993, 1994. That's still a long way back, but not that long, having been dead; there were not a lot of stories that you were invalidating by bringing her back. It was literally just a, "Here's a character that we thought was dead and now they're alive again." That's fine. But going back and saying that the Beast hasn't been the Beast since 1976? I'm sorry, that's a bridge too far.