Interview: X-Men writers Gail Simone, Jed MacKay & editor Tom Brevoort

[useridgoeshere]

I feel like Krakoa was treading water these past couple of years and was honestly pretty bored with it. Doesn’t sound like they’re erasing it or “throwing the baby out with the bath water” so I’m interested to see how it’s addressed as the mutants re-integrate with the broader world. Also wondering what might remain as a fixture in the broader Marvel U (e.g., Apocalypse and family living on Planet Arakko, which sounds like is happening from the Heir of Apocalypse solicits and why he needs to choose an heir on Earth).

I’m not arguing for a continuation of post-Hickman Krakoa. I dropped them all at the start of FoX, so that’s definitely not my point. But they need to attract readers who are willing to drop everything, not the ones who buy anything. I almost wish they were erasing it, because “humans were right” is a starting place they can’t get back from with me.

So, yeah, I’m reacting negatively to the Brevoort era launching from a “humans were right” perspective. I get that the anti-Krakoa voices were the loudest and most vitriolic, but to hear the editor repeat their words as his mantra is off-putting at best. As a fan of the concept of Krakoa, I’m not interested in what he’s describing. Brevoort was on the Mutant apology tour side of the post AvX period, but I thought he might have learned a lesson from his failed own flagship.

[Jackraow21]

I think it’s more nuanced than that. Saying that telling humanity “we’re your new gods” maybe wasn’t a great idea isn’t the same as saying all of Krakoa was wrong and the humans were right. But I get that people don’t do nuance anymore, in an age of extreme black and white polarization, so I can see how maybe it comes across that way. Ultimately, though, I really don’t see humanity being portrayed as the good guys in the next era. If they are, I will humbly eat crow and admit I’m wrong here. Let’s see where it goes.

[BobbysWorld]

I think it’s more nuanced than that. Saying that telling humanity “we’re your new gods” maybe wasn’t a great idea isn’t the same as saying all of Krakoa was wrong and the humans were right. But I get that people don’t do nuance anymore, in an age of extreme black and white polarization, so I can see how maybe it comes across that way. Ultimately, though, I really don’t see humanity being portrayed as the good guys in the next era. If they are, I will humbly eat crow and admit I’m wrong here. Let’s see where it goes.

Yeah, I mean, the nuanced take here might've been to acknowledge that the criticism isn't actually 'how dare humans react badly to mutants telling them we're your new gods now' but instead is 'hey can we stop acting like this was a thing the average mutant was running around doing instead of Magneto being Magneto while readers - and now apparently Marvel humans - reference his dialogue as though every other mutant might as well have been cosigning it.'

(Dialogue, which, for the record, Magneto - the guy with the ACTUAL decades-spanning history of pushing mutant supremacist ideas - very definitively recanted as he full on stated "I get now that I was wrong, and I've been doing things wrong for years" and has subsequently vowed to shift his whole approach and methodology to be protective of everyone in need of help, human as well as mutant. But why would "funny how in all the discourse about mutants all being supremacists this era, it never comes up that this era had the most infamous mutant supremacist pull a 180" have a place in nuanced convos here lol).

Not trying to pick a fight with you in particular Jackraow21 as my frustration is with the larger conversations across all social media, this whole era - but its just kinda....bothersome to have people call out a lack of nuance while simultaneously ignoring the nuances that some of us are TRYING to center in the conversations only to have them continuously ignored.

[Jackraow21]

No worries. I don’t see it as fighting. Just discussing our relative viewpoints. Which is what we do on here. Cheers.

But I will add that you can see how maybe humanity, seeing Magneto as Krakoan ambassador, believed he was speaking for all of mutantkind… even if the average mutant running around maybe didn’t share his views re: considering themselves humanity’s new deities. Again, not saying humanity are the good guys here. Not even close! Look at what they — or some of them rather in the form of Orchis — did to the mutants. While many, many other humans either cheered them on or turned a blind eye. So, again, it’s nuanced. Humanity ain’t the good guys, but I also don’t think the Krakoan ambassador telling the world that mutants are its new masters was a bright idea, which is all I believe Brevoort was saying here. Not that mutants need to go on “an apology tour” or anything like that. Guess we’ll see how it plays out though.

[BobbysWorld]

No worries. I don’t see it as fighting. Just discussing our relative viewpoints. Which is what we do on here. Cheers.

But I will add that you can see how maybe humanity, seeing Magneto as Krakoan ambassador, believed he was speaking for all of mutantkind… even if the average mutant running around maybe didn’t share his views re: considering themselves humanity’s new deities.

I mean yeah, if he'd said that to a global audience, these convos would make more sense, but the fact is he said it to a handful of people who weren't even actually their countries' official ambassadors but members of their various intelligence agencies, making the likelihood of them having reported and aired the specifics of that convo to a global audience like....less than zero. Which is kinda the heart of mine (and some other peoples') issue....if the editor of the line can't be bothered to note the distinction that the intentionally provocative bit of dialogue was said by a specific mutant trying to provoke a specific audience - the intelligence agents of the various major governments - rather than being a widespread sentiment casually expressed by countless mutants to countless humans, which is what Brevoort's casual referencing of it kinda seems to treat it as......that's a cause for concern for those of us who feel the human/mutant dynamics of this era are constantly being misrepresented by a lot of people.

Because it seems to indicate the literal editor of the next era buys into the exact same misrepresentation.....which strips the past five years of stories of, well....NUANCE, in order to characterize things as 'well it just makes sense that humans are oppressing mutants superhard right now because mutants have spent five years treating humans as inferior.' When again, that's like.....very much Facts Not In Evidence, when looking at the actual material of the era instead of just cribbing from popular soundbites from the loudest takes about how the X-Men are all bad guys now bc Mutant Supremacists.

Like, that in specific is my gripe and concern here.

[Kingdom X]

I can't believe Orchis won the PR war, even IRL.

This part. If Brevoort said this right after HOX/POX I would maaaaaybe buy it, but we’ve just spent the past year of stories with mutants getting hunted, deported, imprisoned, and experimented on. They really don’t need to prove anything to humanity, especially not over one thing Magneto said years ago.

I’m gonna try out these new books but this status quo excites me less and less as we get closer. The idea that mutants need to go on an apology tour or put in extra effort to reintegrate is WILD, considering what they just went through.

[BobbysWorld]

This part. If Brevoort said this right after HOX/POX I would maaaaaybe buy it, but we’ve just spent the past year of stories with mutants getting hunted, deported, imprisoned, and experimented on. They really don’t need to prove anything to humanity, especially not over one thing Magneto said years ago.

Ooof, this part also can't be emphasized enough. Characterizing this era as five years of mutants having it good when a full fifth of that five years has been spent with Krakoa 'fallen,' mutants scattered and actively trying to survive the mass extermination of their people, and six months of another year was devoted to the previous genocide attempt which resulted in a massacre on Arakko that WASN'T undone with the rest of the deaths the Progenitor reversed, and ANOTHER almost half-year was devoted to exploring a now-defunct/erased future timeline where mutants were explicitly all the bad guys in a 'what if everything Krakoa's enemies said it might become actually turned out to be true all along' scenario.....

Like its not exaggerating in the least to say that we really, truthfully, can only say that three of the past five years actually showed mutants having it good, or any kind of real deviation from the usual genocide/extinction plots.

[Malachi]

But it’s also a plot thread from Hickmans run. So in that sense it makes a lot of sense. When he left Marvel did a soft walk away from it.

One of my overall complaints with early Krakoa was the homogeneous society Krakoa was turned into. It was hand waved away with “it’s war” and that suited the big conflict that was set up. But it also meant that to us and certainly to humanity in the MU, mutants were reduced to a secluded island with some big, and infamous, personalities like Magneto and Apocalypse speaking for them.

Duggans X-men was in created to counter this but all of the good PR they did was a drop in the bucket compared to the messes created by Orchis vs Mutants. I don’t buy the way Orchis got carte Blanche to do what they wanted and the overwhelming support they got, but I can buy humanity being vary of mutants. Hickman run played up the gods among us angle, to show us mutants hubris, in the fall a valid story is to show the consequences of that hubris.

[IN-a-Synch]

These people didn't deserve Hickman.

I second that

[Master of Sound]

X-Men: From the Ashes Wants to Make Cyclops the Leading Man He Was Always Meant to Be
Exclusive: X-Men writers Gail Simone and Jed MacKay and editor Tom Brevoort talk about the future of Marvel's Merry Mutants in the From the Ashes relaunch.
https://www.denofgeek.com/comics/x-m...s-new-mission/

- “We wanted to start with Cyclops and wanted to bring him back to Alaska,” X-Men writer Jed MacKay tells Den of Geek during an exclusive interview at SXSW. “And from there we started thinking what his mission would be moving forward because he’s Cyclops, he always has the mission.”

- “The mutants that he assembles with him are parts of that mission,” explains MacKay. “These are a group of people who are not especially well suited towards simply going back to a normal life in the world.”

- For Simone, Gambit’s retreat to the bayou gives Rogue a chance to rest after the complicated events during the Fall of X storyline. But her retreat gets interrupted, not only by some young mutants who need help, but also by a frightening new baddie.

“Besides the Southern Gothic vibes, [Uncanny X-Men is] probably the scariest X-book,” she teases. “The new villain in there is someone that I would put up against any horror movie, psychological villain out there … and the sexiest.”

- According to Brevoort, these various retreats to old, familiar places is a natural outcome of the From the Ashes event, in which Marvel’s mutants must find a way to live without their Krakoa home.

“All of the assorted mutants of the world need to go and reintegrate back into the rest of the planet and live and coexist alongside a whole bunch of people that they just spent the last five years saying that they were the new inheritors of the future and that you have new gods now,” Brevoort says. “People around the planet have not taken that message to heart in a purely positive fashion.”

One could think it's perhaps some of Academy X/ New/ Young X-Men, but Gail already confirmed on this Board that she will not use any of these students. :-(

[Rift]

I would like to smugly remind everyone that, despite everything, Hellion was right all along. He didn't kill humans (Except for Omega Sentinel, but if he didn't kill her, Hope would be dead and we wouldn't have the Krakoa era), but he didn't put up with their crap. He called everything, from robots, to the Brood, to humans.



If only Marvel had listened to him. He's the only one who has been objectively, unassailably right 100% of the time.

[Fokken]

I am sad.
We've been denied a proper close to this era.
The Marvel Unlimited stories have been doing all the heavy lifting, and access to those stories feels classist.
Putting that tragedy aside, there was so much more to explore with Krakoa and Arakko and their relationships with each other and their respective neighbors.
The incredible potential that was on the horizon: Exploring mutant magic, new Quite Council leadership and initiatives, Forge's brighter future, etc: All Lost.
What could Arakko become within the greater cosmic Marvel Universe? What about an evolution of the Uncanny Avengers?

I'm not mad at anyone. I'm just disappointed.
For me.
I wish there was more.

[Jackraow21]

I mean yeah, if he'd said that to a global audience, these convos would make more sense, but the fact is he said it to a handful of people who weren't even actually their countries' official ambassadors but members of their various intelligence agencies, making the likelihood of them having reported and aired the specifics of that convo to a global audience like....less than zero. Which is kinda the heart of mine (and some other peoples') issue....if the editor of the line can't be bothered to note the distinction that the intentionally provocative bit of dialogue was said by a specific mutant trying to provoke a specific audience - the intelligence agents of the various major governments - rather than being a widespread sentiment casually expressed by countless mutants to countless humans, which is what Brevoort's casual referencing of it kinda seems to treat it as......that's a cause for concern for those of us who feel the human/mutant dynamics of this era are constantly being misrepresented by a lot of people.

Because it seems to indicate the literal editor of the next era buys into the exact same misrepresentation.....which strips the past five years of stories of, well....NUANCE, in order to characterize things as 'well it just makes sense that humans are oppressing mutants superhard right now because mutants have spent five years treating humans as inferior.' When again, that's like.....very much Facts Not In Evidence, when looking at the actual material of the era instead of just cribbing from popular soundbites from the loudest takes about how the X-Men are all bad guys now bc Mutant Supremacists.

Like, that in specific is my gripe and concern here.

Well, I think we can agree that Xavier made a poor choice in naming Magneto their ambassador at least. There were much better options. Should’ve picked Storm. Hell, Cable would’ve been better.

[DarkMagnus]

I am sad.
We've been denied a proper close to this era.
The Marvel Unlimited stories have been doing all the heavy lifting, and access to those stories feels classist.
Putting that tragedy aside, there was so much more to explore with Krakoa and Arakko and their relationships with each other and their respective neighbors.
The incredible potential that was on the horizon: Exploring mutant magic, new Quite Council leadership and initiatives, Forge's brighter future, etc: All Lost.
What could Arakko become within the greater cosmic Marvel Universe? What about an evolution of the Uncanny Avengers?

I'm not mad at anyone. I'm just disappointed.
For me.
I wish there was more.

x2

Krakoa was meant to be forever. As the same way you rebuild the mansion 129837192361 times, why not Krakoa? why not learn about the mistakes instead of punish them?

I feel there is cowardly regards Krakoa. i mean how you top that? they easyly can say "Well the Phoenix was mad and we can get back all the mutants lost but one time we not other try" there you fix resurrection protocols
"Well the country needs money needs worker and better structure, oh also Humans are allowed if they arent mutanphobic." done other fix
"You know Sinister , Mystique and Destiny? we dont trust you so you are out of the Council. Exodus you cool can still be here" another fix

But is easier to ctrl + delete

[DurararaFTW]

x2

Krakoa was meant to be forever. As the same way you rebuild the mansion 129837192361 times, why not Krakoa? why not learn about the mistakes instead of punish them?

I feel there is cowardly regards Krakoa. i mean how you top that? they easyly can say "Well the Phoenix was mad and we can get back all the mutants lost but one time we not other try" there you fix resurrection protocols
"Well the country needs money needs worker and better structure, oh also Humans are allowed if they arent mutanphobic." done other fix
"You know Sinister , Mystique and Destiny? we dont trust you so you are out of the Council. Exodus you cool can still be here" another fix

But is easier to ctrl + delete

These aren't fixes. Every company that just has a vague policy of not being intolerant has some intolerant people that manage to make it through. And if Resurrection Protocols are for everyone then everyone in gonna try to get in.

And Exodus doesn't like Mr Sinister or any of the other villainous characters but that doesn't mean he is gonna sit on a council with nothing but X-Men and be overruled and outvoted in every single decision before a meeting has even begun.

Screenshot 2024-03-26 132943.jpg

Every single meeting would just be like this. They only found people like Exodus and Apolocalypse who were willing to try out the Krakoa experiment in good faith because the X-Men were willing to work on an even keel with these non X-Men mutant group despite their past in the first place. If one side stacks the deck to make sure they have an invincible power block in their system of government where only the ones they trust can get their decisions through, the other side won't play ball for very long.