Tom Brevoort to become X-Men's Senior Editor

[Jackraow21]

Wolverine - Stealth X-Force book.

Cyclops - Stealth X-Factor book.

I can see it. Or something along those lines.

[DragonPiece]

I’m betting even if this is the full line, at least at launch, these solos will be stealth “small team” books with lots of supporting cast. For example, we’ve seen Colossus and Omega Red both drawn by Capullo in artwork he’s shared. Along with guest stars like Nick Fury, Captain America and Bucky Barnes.

I mean, most solo books will have guest stars or supporting casts..that doesn't really make it a stealth team book unless they are apparing every issue as a group.

[Icefanatic]

Evidently, you're far from being the only one to feel that way :

https://comfortfoodcontent.tumblr.co...rraz-2019-2024

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that! He 100% nailed it!

I'll add this:

We have been dealing with 'Krakoa' and the 'Road-to-Krakoa' for a combined period of well over a decade. Krakoa was the plan in place back when Hickman was still writing Avengers. We got the Time-Displaced 05 from 'some plan that had been floating around the office'. It was Hickman's plan, with certain things built in, like the TD-05 having certain key differences from the OG-05 baked in from their arrival just waiting to be revealed, and other changes that would be made after their arrival. As the person in charge of implementing their arrival in the present and initially telling most of their stories, Bendis got to make decisions on some of that.

Example: Beast

We saw a somewhat near-future with Beast with a horned appearance and a far-future Beast with even more of a demonic form and wielding arcane power. So the TD-05 were never going back in time until TD-05 Beast started experimenting with magic and eventually developed a demonic alternate form. That allowed them in the current era to say Beast was acting evil at various points throughout his history, either by retconning in things that originally never happened or by re-contextualizing benign or good things into something evil.

The 'Road-to-Krakoa' was full of things like that. Changes to characters and continuity just randomly dropped into stories because they had to set up stories that wouldn't see print for years. At the same time they had to otherwise mostly spin their wheels for those years while waiting for Hickman to be free to return to Marvel to write the story they had spent those years setting up.

So you got a lot of wrongness that made no sense and stories that went nowhere, all while fans argued and fought over changes to characters and history while complaining that the stories were mostly retreads and directionless.

Then we finally get Krakoa and it's so fresh and exiting, but quickly politely asks that you must check you brain at the door. We had just went through a 'Schism' where the X-Men divided in part over refusing to follow Cyclops and his council of reformed villains, yet we were supposed to buy those same people would go to an island and be ruled over by Apocalypse, Sinister, Magneto, Shaw, Mystique..? The X-Men abandoning their long-held goal of peaceful coexistence for Mutant Separatism and cultism? It was preposterous! Theories of mass-mind control and it being an alternate reality abounded, among others. And there were even more massive changes to characters and histories.

A lot of fans that had had enough of changes to characters and histories in the 'Road-to-Krakoa' found 'Krakoa' to be a final breaking point, while fans that had bailed due to the stagnation in the 'Road-to-Krakoa' came roaring back to embrace the seeming forward momentum. Some fans saw what was wrong with Krakoa and figured it was wrong for a reason and waited for the reveal, while others thought the wrong was oh-so-right. This, at last, was progress!

And since sales were on-the-whole higher and interest was through the roof, Marvel decided they didn't want Hickman to bring things to his conclusion. First they had him start to drag things out and then they showed him the door and let an assortment of other writers, many of whom were already failing at executing Hickman's vision, to carry things on.

Meanwhile, where some fans had become pseudo-revolutionaries during the 'Revolution' era, fans now became pseudo-militants under 'Krakoa'. Hyper-identification with mutants and their struggles with Orchis had apparently led to desires to go out and plant bombs in Orchis facilities. But since Orchis didn't...actually...exist..., they channeled those thoughts and emotions into their posts on social media and became increasingly unhinged. They caused a lot of other fans to disengage rather than have to deal with them and turned even more fans against the current era after seeing the negative impact it was clearly having on a number of fans mental health.

And the fans who were waiting for answers to the wrongness got tired of waiting and reading stuff they didn't like hoping for an eventual payoff, so they started leaving. And the fans who came back for the forward momentum now found themselves reading some bizarre confluence of stagnation and wrong direction, so they started leaving, too. And even some of the militant fans driven crazy by 'Krakoa' were starting to realize that what they want isn't really compatible with who the X-Men actually are, and getting it was destroying the X-Men if not for themselves then for everybody else. If they weren't leaving they were at least starting to sober up to reality.

So now were are getting a rushed resolution to a mess of an era, 'Krakoa' and the 'Road-to-Krakoa' combined should have taken maybe five years and we are well over a decade combined and still not out of it yet. And Marvel is now crafting something to try and appeal to those who loved Krakoa, those who hated Krakoa, and those who started off loving Krakoa but came to hate it.

Good luck with that.

[Malachi]

Evidently, you're far from being the only one to feel that way :

https://comfortfoodcontent.tumblr.co...rraz-2019-2024

I agree with much of it. His journey doesn’t mirror my own but I can see his points. Still glad I stay out of social medias, this forum is enough for any possible brain rot.

[Jackraow21]

I mean, most solo books will have guest stars or supporting casts..that doesn't really make it a stealth team book unless they are apparing every issue as a group.

That’s what I meant. That there might be other characters who are regular supporting cast/appearing every issue in these solo books.

[Phoenix Raptor]

Oh, speaking of piloted robots, whatever happened to the X-Men's robot from Duggan's run? Is it still around somewhere?

Didn't Cyke have it turned into a lighthouse at the end of the issue?

[Wally West]

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that! He 100% nailed it!

I'll add this:

We have been dealing with 'Krakoa' and the 'Road-to-Krakoa' for a combined period of well over a decade. Krakoa was the plan in place back when Hickman was still writing Avengers. We got the Time-Displaced 05 from 'some plan that had been floating around the office'. It was Hickman's plan, with certain things built in, like the TD-05 having certain key differences from the OG-05 baked in from their arrival just waiting to be revealed, and other changes that would be made after their arrival. As the person in charge of implementing their arrival in the present and initially telling most of their stories, Bendis got to make decisions on some of that.

Example: Beast

We saw a somewhat near-future with Beast with a horned appearance and a far-future Beast with even more of a demonic form and wielding arcane power. So the TD-05 were never going back in time until TD-05 Beast started experimenting with magic and eventually developed a demonic alternate form. That allowed them in the current era to say Beast was acting evil at various points throughout his history, either by retconning in things that originally never happened or by re-contextualizing benign or good things into something evil.

The 'Road-to-Krakoa' was full of things like that. Changes to characters and continuity just randomly dropped into stories because they had to set up stories that wouldn't see print for years. At the same time they had to otherwise mostly spin their wheels for those years while waiting for Hickman to be free to return to Marvel to write the story they had spent those years setting up.

So you got a lot of wrongness that made no sense and stories that went nowhere, all while fans argued and fought over changes to characters and history while complaining that the stories were mostly retreads and directionless.

Then we finally get Krakoa and it's so fresh and exiting, but quickly politely asks that you must check you brain at the door. We had just went through a 'Schism' where the X-Men divided in part over refusing to follow Cyclops and his council of reformed villains, yet we were supposed to buy those same people would go to an island and be ruled over by Apocalypse, Sinister, Magneto, Shaw, Mystique..? The X-Men abandoning their long-held goal of peaceful coexistence for Mutant Separatism and cultism? It was preposterous! Theories of mass-mind control and it being an alternate reality abounded, among others. And there were even more massive changes to characters and histories.

A lot of fans that had had enough of changes to characters and histories in the 'Road-to-Krakoa' found 'Krakoa' to be a final breaking point, while fans that had bailed due to the stagnation in the 'Road-to-Krakoa' came roaring back to embrace the seeming forward momentum. Some fans saw what was wrong with Krakoa and figured it was wrong for a reason and waited for the reveal, while others thought the wrong was oh-so-right. This, at last, was progress!

And since sales were on-the-whole higher and interest was through the roof, Marvel decided they didn't want Hickman to bring things to his conclusion. First they had him start to drag things out and then they showed him the door and let an assortment of other writers, many of whom were already failing at executing Hickman's vision, to carry things on.

Meanwhile, where some fans had become pseudo-revolutionaries during the 'Revolution' era, fans now became pseudo-militants under 'Krakoa'. Hyper-identification with mutants and their struggles with Orchis had apparently led to desires to go out and plant bombs in Orchis facilities. But since Orchis didn't...actually...exist..., they channeled those thoughts and emotions into their posts on social media and became increasingly unhinged. They caused a lot of other fans to disengage rather than have to deal with them and turned even more fans against the current era after seeing the negative impact it was clearly having on a number of fans mental health.

And the fans who were waiting for answers to the wrongness got tired of waiting and reading stuff they didn't like hoping for an eventual payoff, so they started leaving. And the fans who came back for the forward momentum now found themselves reading some bizarre confluence of stagnation and wrong direction, so they started leaving, too. And even some of the militant fans driven crazy by 'Krakoa' were starting to realize that what they want isn't really compatible with who the X-Men actually are, and getting it was destroying the X-Men if not for themselves then for everybody else. If they weren't leaving they were at least starting to sober up to reality.

So now were are getting a rushed resolution to a mess of an era, 'Krakoa' and the 'Road-to-Krakoa' combined should have taken maybe five years and we are well over a decade combined and still not out of it yet. And Marvel is now crafting something to try and appeal to those who loved Krakoa, those who hated Krakoa, and those who started off loving Krakoa but came to hate it.

Good luck with that.

Dude that is some revisionist history. We have not been on the “road to krakoa” for a decade. The books were completely aimless until Hickman took over and reorganized the brand. Hickman brought the mutants and their story to the next logical place and it was freakin awesome and there’s still a lot of potential to tap. I love 90s X-Men and the animated series but I don’t want marvel to ruin everything for a nostalgia wank. Chris Claremont, Grant Morrison and Jonathan Hickman all advanced the story further and did new things that’s why everyone remembers their runs. Nobody talks about or remembers the last attempt at doing blue/gold teams.

[Icefanatic]

Dude that is some revisionist history. We have not been on the “road to krakoa” for a decade. The books were completely aimless until Hickman took over and reorganized the brand. Hickman brought the mutants and their story to the next logical place and it was freakin awesome and there’s still a lot of potential to tap. I love 90s X-Men and the animated series but I don’t want marvel to ruin everything for a nostalgia wank. Chris Claremont, Grant Morrison and Jonathan Hickman all advanced the story further and did new things that’s why everyone remembers their runs. Nobody talks about or remembers the last attempt at doing blue/gold teams.

No revisionist history. It's well known that 'Krakoa' was already the plan they were working toward back when Hickman was writing Avengers. Then Hickman left Marvel and they kept doing some of the setup while he was gone expecting his return. But Hickman was gone a lot longer than Marvel expected and they were stuck mostly treading water and doing things like 'the last attempt at doing blue/gold teams' until he was ready to come back.

What writer would even want to try for something substantial and memorable, knowing that it was just going to be completely chucked out the window the minute Hickman came back to do Krakoa?

[Digifiend]

What the heck? The road to Krakoa only started in X-Men Disassembled. That run and the Age of X-Man event were "waiting for Hickman" filler. The stuff beforehand wasn't. They were actively burying the X-Men and pushing the Inhumans because of the MCU.

[Icefanatic]

What the heck? The road to Krakoa only started in X-Men Disassembled. That run and the Age of X-Man event were "waiting for Hickman" filler. The stuff beforehand wasn't. They were actively burying the X-Men and pushing the Inhumans because of the MCU.

Where the you want to call it 'filler' or not is a mater of semantics.

Krakoa was in the planning and being written towards back when Hickman was still writing Avengers. That is known. Key things had to happen like Xavier coming back from the dead prior to the launch that also had to be set up. Do you honestly think the plan was to keep the TD-05 in the present for as long as they did? They were stretching things out until he was available, and knowing that everything would be cancelled and rebooted when he was. Then they went pure filler just to give him time to have completed scripts and art done several months ahead.

Whether you want to call the years they were treading water while waiting for Hickman to come back to Marvel and do Krakoa, 'filler' or not, that is what it was.

[Til]

I can only imagine how today’s fandom would have reacted to the news of the X-line stopping for Age of Apocalypse. Lol! My shop owner said to me “all the titles are changing.” I said “huh??” and that’s all he said, leaving me confused and silent in the middle of the shop floor. I loved it!

I was a little kid in elementary school at the time, and I remember I thought the change was permanent. I liked the story but I was really sad that I was never going to see the X-Men as I knew them ever again. I had no idea how the industry works, lol.

[Wally West]

Where the you want to call it 'filler' or not is a mater of semantics.

Krakoa was in the planning and being written towards back when Hickman was still writing Avengers. That is known. Key things had to happen like Xavier coming back from the dead prior to the launch that also had to be set up. Do you honestly think the plan was to keep the TD-05 in the present for as long as they did? They were stretching things out until he was available, and knowing that everything would be cancelled and rebooted when he was. Then they went pure filler just to give him time to have completed scripts and art done several months ahead.

Whether you want to call the years they were treading water while waiting for Hickman to come back to Marvel and do Krakoa, 'filler' or not, that is what it was.

Do you have any proof that krakoa was the plan when Hickman was writing avengers in 2013?

[Icefanatic]

Do you have any proof that krakoa was the plan when Hickman was writing avengers in 2013?

It's not exactly a secret. Jordan White was talking about it in at least one interview, maybe more, around the start of 'Krakoa'. I remember a Hickman interview that added some additional details as well.

Basically the gist is Hickman pitched the initial idea for PoX way... way... back, around 2010-2011. There was a lot of interest. But instead of getting X-Men, Hickman got Avengers and Bendis got the X-Men. But the X-Office was still very into his ideas and kept asking him more and more questions about his ideas. They were even bringing him into retreats to discuss his ideas for the X-Men through his eventual departure from Marvel in 2015, while also trying to convince him to stay and keep working on them. And he was basically just giving them his ideas all along to, in his words, 'try to help' more than really trying to pitch anything at that point. And Marvel was free to implement what they liked and to continue to do so even after he left, which they did.

So they kept working with his ideas even after he left, with the hope that eventually they could get him back to do 'Krakoa'. The problem was, Hickman left Marvel with no real intention of ever going back. So then began the long process of trying to woo Hickman back to Marvel. Basically, it reached a point that some of the things done to set up 'Krakoa' needed to be brought to a resolution, either by doing 'Krakoa' or by wrapping things up some other way. That, combined with changes like Marvel getting the movie rights back for the X-Men though the Fox/Disney merger, motivated Hickman to return and finally tell his story.

Of course, they ultimately jettisoned Hickman and abandoned some of his plans so I wonder if it was all worth it.

I'll poke around the internet and see if I can find some links to interviews with some of that...

[Quill-Han-Vos]

Whether you want to call the years they were treading water while waiting for Hickman to come back to Marvel and do Krakoa, 'filler' or not, that is what it was.

The period described as "the lost decade" (not very flattering for Bendis's run, among others) by Hickman in House of X #2 ?

hox2-1.jpg

[Quill-Han-Vos]

But instead of getting X-Men, Hickman got Avengers and Bendis got the X-Men.

And his first version of Secret Wars was supposed to start soon after the end of his FF run (with a very powerful Dr.Doom drawn by Stegman during those last issues).
Instead he did his New Avengers run (stealth Illuminati book), which lead to Secret Wars (editorial wanted him to also do Avengers and Infinity, as part of a package).

https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/51-enemies

Another Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

"I haven’t had much of a chance to talk about Jonathan Hickman’s run on AVENGERS and NEW AVENGERS in this space up until now, so this seems like a good opportunity to remedy that somewhat. This issue, NEW AVENGERS #15, came out on March 19, 2014, and focused on the background of the mysterious Black Swan, a new character introduced several issues earlier who had a greater understanding of what was going on with the Incursions from other universes that formed the spine of the central threat that was running behind the scenes in both titles. Jonathan had actually come up with the idea while working on FANTASTIC FOUR, and he pitched it to me as an ongoing series titled SECRET WARS. But when the opportunity arose for Jonathan to potentially take over the two AVENGERS titles following the AvX crossover and Brian Bendis stepping down, we decided to move that entire plotline into these new books. A couple of the specifics changed as we developed this as an Avengers story. For one thing, originally, the beginning of the Incursions was meant to be the destruction of the universe that Doctor Doom wipes out in Jonathan’s final issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, but that wound up being discarded as it was simply too removed from what we were doing now. The second bit that made things tricky is that Jonathan felt that he needed more real estate in AVENGERS to get a lot of building accomplished while NEW AVENGERS carried the spine of the story building to the eventual SECRET WARS climax. Accordingly, at least for the first year or so, AVENGERS was released 18 times a year, which made it difficult to maintain a consistency of artist. The minute the schedule started to slip, we were forced to triage, sometimes badly. At a certain point, Nick Spencer had to be brought on board to help Jonathan out with writing a couple of issues. What’s more, we had to accommodate the unpredictable effects of series other than our own on the status quos of the characters—this is why the Beast became a member of the NEW AVENGERS Illuminati—Jonathan had wanted to use Professor X, but he was killed off over in X-MEN and so we had to pivot. That sort of thing happened a couple of times in the long road to SECRET WARS. This particular issue was a bit of a breather between longer arcs, and was illustrated by Simone Bianchi, an artist with a very European flavor to his work. It’s really beautiful stuff, though occasionally more focused on creating exquisite pictures than in telling a story. That said, Jonathan was always up to tailor what he was doing to the skill set of the artists involved, and the end product both looks and reads well."