Tom Brevoort to become X-Men's Senior Editor

[Nicoclaws]

I'm still steamed that we didn't get to see Williams' ideas for a mutant pantheon. I suspect I would have had a lot more fun with that than what Spurrier was doing in LoX.

Don't get me started on Williams's treatment.

[PotniaTheron]

I agree with that.
Gillen took a little too much time to get to his point (the Council is flawed from the root, Sinister is Krakoa original sin). The Eternal mandate, while fun, was really not necessary indeed.
Duggan was definitely writing X-men as a super hero team, and that was partially in response to critics about Krakoa, so I cannot blame him.
Ewing was limited to Arrako and developped that really nicely, but it left Krakoa feel empty in comparison.
Spurrier focused on his weird psychic society ideas and forgot about Krakoa, which is a shame as that was the book that was supposed to show what Krakoa's society IS (with Immortal).
Orlando did superheroics in space and only adressed a tiny part of Krakoa.
Howards was confined in Otherworld and the UK.
Percy did his X-force thing completely disconnected from what is initial book was about.
Alaya did what they could.
Williams got cancelled.

I don't think Ewing has explored Arrako enough either. After reading 18 issues of X-Men Red v2, all we know about Arrako is still a primitive, warlike race of mutants, and nothing more. He should have explored Arrako society more deeply, but he didn't.

No one knows anything about Arrako mutants' traditional festivals, food, or customs other than dueling.

It would have been nice if Spurrier had written another book that focused on detailing Arrako society.

[Nicoclaws]

I don't think Ewing has explored Arrako enough either. After reading 18 issues of X-Men Red v2, all we know about Arrako is still a primitive, warlike race of mutants, and nothing more. He should have explored Arrako society more deeply, but he didn't.

No one knows anything about Arrako mutants' traditional festivals, food, or customs other than dueling.

It would have been nice if Spurrier had written another book that focused on detailing Arrako society.

I think the point of Arrako is precisely that they knew nothing but war. A whole society based on Genesis's principle. The "simpleness" of what was shown was the point : if there's nothing more than war, a society cannot grow.
And then we saw cooks (otherworld feast, storm's dinner with doom, etc.), artists and poets villages thriving. We saw Arraki characters evolving and learning (both in Ewing, Spurrier and Orlando's books). Earth characters also learned from them.
We even saw one of their festivals, precisely (admittedly, it was not in Ewing's book, and in Unlimited, but it was talked about in the book).

It's a comic book. I'm not expecting Epic Book Saga of world-building. But I expected Immortal to be more political.

[JB]

I think the point of Arrako is precisely that they knew nothing but war. A whole society based on Genesis's principle. The "simpleness" of what was shown was the point : if there's nothing more than war, a society cannot grow.
And then we saw cooks (otherworld feast, storm's dinner with doom, etc.), artists and poets villages thriving. We saw Arraki characters evolving and learning (both in Ewing, Spurrier and Orlando's books). Earth characters also learned from them.
We even saw one of their festivals, precisely (admittedly, it was not in Ewing's book, and in Unlimited, but it was talked about in the book).

It's a comic book. I'm not expecting Epic Book Saga of world-building. But I expected Immortal to be more political.

Yeah we definitely got to see some different sides to the Arakkii as time went on. Port Prometheus was great because it showed that some of the Arakkii were into rubbing elbows with different alien races, opening businesses, and hanging out at the Red Lagoon.

[Grunty]

The main "problem" with the Krakoan era is that once Hickman left, the remaining X-Creators stopped working on developing an actual mutant society and focused on general heroics. There a plenty of decent stories, SoS included; but they similar to this relaunch they ultimately fall into basics and clichés. I love this era deeply but it could have lasted longer with proper development.

It's arguably not like there would have been much development of any discernable socio-cultural developments under Hickman either, since his main concern was seemingly just to have everyone on Krakoa act elistist, stuck up, snobbish and posturing about being superior to "humans" in every regard with no believable evidence to back it up or reasonable explain it, because he seems to have chosen the path of "tell don't show" (the "white pages" are a prime example) in order to focus on what seems to be important to his story.

Which seems to have been black hole gods, reality and time spanning cosmic chess games, political backstabbing, loss of identity through technology, the rise and fall of a nation of super powered people, etc.

Basicly anything except discernable culture developments and functional societies. Which is also why the general population of Krakoa was just a homogeneous blob of weird looking arms stretching into the air and shouting a word in unison.

Just like Krakoa itself, everything was just snapped things into existence with no build up or foundation, all so the named characters, who are exclusively part of an elite, could dispense exposition and act in accordance with the "epic" Foundation Cycle/Dune style story that seems to have been the intended direction for the run.

Even worse, the direction involved that the various characters would openly reject anything "human" in favor of a nebulous "mutant" identity, but taking real world cultures as inspiration or altering them based on different circumstances is how science fiction and fantasy writers create fictional ones so easily.

Society and cultures are based on the interaction of everyday people, the environment they live in or originate from, the materials they interact with, uniformity of certain traits and the collected habbits and traditions transfered between generations.

Compare the Fremen from Dune, as a currently visible example in pop culture.

But the environment of Krakoa was dead and hollow, since it had no history and everything was so perfect, fine and free of struggle that the entire population could be presented as compliant and passive. As if the writer was concerned they would have to be bother about presenting them as actualy people with free thought and different opinions.

Meanwhile the only defining trait of being a mutant alone is that they have super powers with little to no uniformities.

So if cut off from anything "human" i.e actual historic and functional societies and cultures of Earth, what does one get? Arguably nothing, which is exactly what Krakoa was and that apparently by design.

If anything the departure of the head writer could have been a chance to change focus on society and culture building, but the created environment actualy seem to have worked against that.

Not to downplay the admirable effort that Ewing did with fleshing out the Arrakii but he arguably had his work cut out for him, because they had a foundation for a fictional society and culture.

Environment, history, shared practices and traditions, uniformity in certain traits, the Arrakii have it. Krakoa could never with how it was designed.

"From where you're kneeling it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. Truth is... the game was rigged from the start."

[Nicoclaws]

Which is also why the general population of Krakoa was just a homogeneous blob of weird looking arms stretching into the air and shouting a word in unison.

I generally disagree with you on Krakoa but I love how you said this.

[Kingdom X]

It's arguably not like there would have been much development of any discernable socio-cultural developments under Hickman either, since his main concern was seemingly just to have everyone on Krakoa act elistist, stuck up, snobbish and posturing about being superior to "humans" in every regard with no believable evidence to back it up or reasonable explain it, because he seems to have chosen the path of "tell don't show" (the "white pages" are a prime example) in order to focus on what seems to be important to his story.

Which seems to have been black hole gods, reality and time spanning cosmic chess games, political backstabbing, loss of identity through technology, the rise and fall of a nation of super powered people, etc.

Basicly anything except discernable culture developments and functional societies. Which is also why the general population of Krakoa was just a homogeneous blob of weird looking arms stretching into the air and shouting a word in unison.

Just like Krakoa itself, everything was just snapped things into existence with no build up or foundation, all so the named characters, who are exclusively part of an elite, could dispense exposition and act in accordance with the "epic" Foundation Cycle/Dune style story that seems to have been the intended direction for the run.

Even worse, the direction involved that the various characters would openly reject anything "human" in favor of a nebulous "mutant" identity, but taking real world cultures as inspiration or altering them based on different circumstances is how science fiction and fantasy writers create fictional ones so easily.

Society and cultures are based on the interaction of everyday people, the environment they live in or originate from, the materials they interact with, uniformity of certain traits and the collected habbits and traditions transfered between generations.

Compare the Fremen from Dune, as a currently visible example in pop culture.

But the environment of Krakoa was dead and hollow, since it had no history and everything was so perfect, fine and free of struggle that the entire population could be presented as compliant and passive. As if the writer was concerned they would have to be bother about presenting them as actualy people with free thought and different opinions.

Meanwhile the only defining trait of being a mutant alone is that they have super powers with little to no uniformities.

So if cut off from anything "human" i.e actual historic and functional societies and cultures of Earth, what does one get? Arguably nothing, which is exactly what Krakoa was and that apparently by design.

If anything the departure of the head writer could have been a chance to change focus on society and culture building, but the created environment actualy seem to have worked against that.

Not to downplay the admirable effort that Ewing did with fleshing out the Arrakii but he arguably had his work cut out for him, because they had a foundation for a fictional society and culture.

Environment, history, shared practices and traditions, uniformity in certain traits, the Arrakii have it. Krakoa could never with how it was designed.

"From where you're kneeling it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. Truth is... the game was rigged from the start."

Yeah what’s odd is that the satellite books essentially served this purpose when Hickman was around. They each served to explore some facet of Krakoan society (some better than others) that Hickman had set up or teased. And then he left and more than half the writers gave up on worldbuilding. Like… that’s what y’all are here for!

[Ra-El]

Yeah what’s odd is that the satellite books essentially served this purpose when Hickman was around. They each served to explore some facet of Krakoan society (some better than others) that Hickman had set up or teased. And then he left and more than half the writers gave up on worldbuilding. Like… that’s what y’all are here for!

I think it was supposed to be that way, Hickman would drive forward the main plot, focusing on the rise and fall of a advanced society and the dangerous of AIs, while other writers would develop the Krakoan society.
But for some reason it didn't work out, to be fair, at the start it was like that, but a some point it just become an overconnected superhero story with not enough Cyclops in it.

[Grunty]

I generally disagree with you on Krakoa but I love how you said this.

Fair enough.

Yeah what’s odd is that the satellite books essentially served this purpose when Hickman was around. They each served to explore some facet of Krakoan society (some better than others) that Hickman had set up or teased. And then he left and more than half the writers gave up on worldbuilding. Like… that’s what y’all are here for!

And this brings us back to the age old behind the scenes question. Writers, editors or both? Who is the culprit this time?

[Quill-Han-Vos]

From this week's newsletter :

https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/1...medium=reader2

Julian Eme

X-Men will have the Uncanny X-Men Legacy numbering with its #700, the last of the Krakoa Age issue. But this is the X-Men without adjectives.

That's why I wonder what Legacy numbering the X-Men by Jed MacKay and Ryan Stegman will have and what Legacy numbering the Uncanny X-Men by Gail Simone and David Marquez will have. I also assume that there will be no Legacy numbering for Exceptional, but there will be for other series with previous incarnations, such as X-Force or X-Factor.

It’s really a bit early to be worrying about what the Legacy numbering is going to be on these books, isn’t it, Julian? But oh well, the heart wants what it wants. The Legacy number on UNCANNY X-MEN will obviously be #701, whereas the number on X-MEN will be #302. X-FORCE and X-FACTOR I don’t have to hand right this second, so they’ll be a surprise to both of us.

Callie

Looking at the new X-Office, I see a lot of white. Obviously, this isn't anything new to comics but it is something I was hoping a book like X-Men could start to move on from. Was there any thought when creating your lineups (especially for the books that haven't had their creative teams announced like X-Factor and Storm) about how you could include more diversity in a corner of 616 that really does deserve to be written and drawn by more diverse people? I mean, look at how much better Miles Morales comics got when actual POC and Puerto Ricans were writing for him, or how excellent Ms Marvel books have always been under the writing of G Willow Wilson, and more recently Iman Vellani.

I'm not saying that white people can't write good X-Books, the last 60 years of comic history prove that, but I do hope to see more diversity in the lineups for the other 6 books considering it's always been a problem how dominated by white men the comics industry has historically been

It’s a little bit difficult to work out whether you’re speaking about diversity among the characters in the books, Callie, or the talent involved with them. So I’m going to assume the latter. Here’s the thing: as I sometimes tell my staff at Marvel, while everybody wants to do good and be on the right side of history, you can’t be all things to all people all the time. Which is to say, you can’t check off every possible box under every possible circumstance. Now for me, in casting the three X-MEN books, I looked for people who I thought could execute the concepts of the titles in question and bring something special to them. All other concerns were largely secondary. But across those three books and six creators, we have three women for an even male-female ratio, which I think is relatively unprecedented. Among our three writers, it’s 2/3 women and 1/3 POC. (Also 1/3 Canadian, but nobody really cares about that.) So I feel like it’s a relatively good spread. Beyond that, we haven’t announced the remaining titles yet nor who is working on them, so there you’re just going to have to wait and see. But honestly, while you are right and it’s always good to have a range of backgrounds and experiences in the mix when you talk about a line of titles like this, the paramount element of importance to me is always whether I think that the person in question can do the job and carry out the mission successfully.

Dr. Doom

Any chance that you're going to revive the Dawn of X-style trade paperbacks so we can read all the main titles at once? Or was that just a unique experiment that didn't work in terms of sales or your construction of the X-office?

Those DAWN OF X collections were an interesting experiment, Doom, but over time they didn’t really sell well enough or consistently enough to make continuing with them worthwhile. Readers like this idea in the abstract, but when it comes time to actually put their money on the counter, buying books for which they might only be interested in 80% of the content proves to not be something that many carry through on.

Paul Buignet

I believe you've said in the past that you prefer fresh writers on your books instead of old writers going back to the old well, so does this mean X-Men #35/Uncanny X-Men #700 will be Chris Claremont's last X-tale?

I wouldn’t think so, Paul, no. But I also wouldn’t expect Chris to suddenly be writing one of the core series regularly either. That’s the sort of return that I’m talking about, when you try to recapture a bygone era by bringing back the creators who worked on a series back in the day. There are very few times when this has ever worked in the history of comics, so I think it’s better to keep moving forward with new people and new ideas. But the X-line is wide, and so there’s always going to be a place for creators such as Chris who’ve dedicated so much of themselves to these characters over the years, if you see the difference.

Nacho Teso

In regards to this week, I wanna ask about logos. One of the main strengths of the Krakoan Era were the logos designed by Tom Muller. They were certainly unique, cohesive and instantly synonymous with the books. Now, however, we are reverting back to some old/classic logos in the X-Men franchise. What thoughts went into this? Was there ever a chance to keep the krakoan ones or maybe even designing new ones? What makes it proper to go back to those logos? I understand a new era comes with a new dress, so I'm interested in the whys of this choice.

The choice of logos in every case was mine, Nacho, and so, no, there was no chance that we’d be keeping the Muller ones. Part of the exercise here is to transition into a new era, and so keeping the titles looking visually the same fights that idea. You need to be able to look at our books on the stands the month they come out and immediately realize that something has changed, even if you haven’t been following the titles regularly at that point. And frankly, I believe in the power of a good, classic logo. I ran the same classic AVENGERS logo on that series for 25 years with only rare deviations from it, the current run being one of the few. To me, and to a whole generation of fans, that telescoping X-MEN logo says X-MEN like nothing else, on an almost DNA level. And it hasn’t really been seen on the books in twenty years or more. But as I mentioned a week or two back, the minute we put it on our covers, they became X-MEN comics. Plus, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for retailers to be thinking about how well those titles sold back in the day when they first carried the logos in question in terms of how it might subliminally impact on how they order in our new books. I am very happy with the fact that, while all of the X-MEN books carry the same style of telescoping logo, they each use their own distinctive version: X-MEN from the Jim Lee launch, UNCANNY X-MEN from the 1980s, and EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN going back to the Neal Adams-era one.

CG

I know you all have recently shown the main 3 titles so far but has your X-editorial team decided how you are going to move forward with the Unlimited X-Men stories? Is there an assigned editor under you for the Unlimited X-Men stories? It would be awesome to get your thoughts on that format and how it can supplement your main titles. Especially with the concern every X-office gets of fans wanting to see certain character for even brief moments. Is the digital format a priority for the X-Office?

Got a couple of questions about this beyond yours, CG, so I’m going to try to answer them all here. And the short answer is yes, we’ll be taking over what is now X-MEN UNLIMITED as well. Darren Shan will be editing it, and it’ll be getting a brand new name as well as switching its emphasis to the post-Krakoa era in June. But otherwise, it’ll be much the same kind of approach, with stories featuring a wide range of X-characters (as there are far too many to cover in the print titles alone) and stories that will be material to the ongoing tapestry of the X-Universe. Not ready to announce creative teams or anything yet, but they’ll be plugged into what we’re doing on the regular, and most of the stories we’re planning will initially fill in some of the gaps between where we last see assorted X-Characters in the Krakoa era and where they get picked up in print. But really, essentially the selfsame approach just applied to the new era.

[CGAR]

Yay he answered my X-Men Unlimited question.

[JB]

Yay he answered my X-Men Unlimited question.

Great question and I liked the answer, especially:

"But otherwise, it’ll be much the same kind of approach, with stories featuring a wide range of X-characters (as there are far too many to cover in the print titles alone) and stories that will be material to the ongoing tapestry of the X-Universe. Not ready to announce creative teams or anything yet, but they’ll be plugged into what we’re doing on the regular, and most of the stories we’re planning will initially fill in some of the gaps between where we last see assorted X-Characters in the Krakoa era and where they get picked up in print. But really, essentially the selfsame approach just applied to the new era."

I like the idea of Unlimited bridging some gaps between the two eras.

[Quill-Han-Vos]

whereas the number on X-MEN will be #302

Then I'm wondering which issue was X-Men #301 (unless he meant X-Men #301 instead of #302).

[Nicoclaws]

That answer about diversity is a bit of a cope-out. What's funny is that 3 women and 2 pocs (if I do the maths write) is actually a very good ratio, compared to what's been done. But the "well you can't content anyone" is a bit silly. Nobody is asking for EVERYTHING, the question was just "that's a really white team, and we got out of a really white team too, so maybe that's a little issue".

[Uncanny X-Man]

I'm so happy that X-Men Unlimited is sticking around to spotlight characters who don't normally appear in the print books. Hopefully the quality will be on par with what the Steves have delivered lately.

And I was the one to correctly guess Brevoort's first-edited X-book, so yay for my no-Prize