It’s a week of many questions, far more than usual. I expect that as we get to the assorted X-Titles coming out that this situation is going to increase steadily. So once again, a comment before we start: if questions came down to either what’s going to happen or to something that I can’t speak about for one reason or another, I simply skipped past them. Doesn’t mean I didn’t see them, doesn’t mean that I have any particular feeling towards anybody who might be asking them. But if the answer is “wait and see” or there’s some ongoing situation that prevents me from getting into some point or other, I find that it’s best to just say that up here at the start rather than repeat it again and again. Thanks for your understanding.
Cyclops had a lot of interactions with Corsair in the past. There's some emotional moments in Uncanny that focus on them way back in the '80s. He had a whole solo about bonding with his dad in space. He's had tons of moments with Alex as far back as the Silver Age, and as recent as Hellions and Dark Web. He isn't close to Vulcan but he at least tried to help him and let him live with him. Cable and him had a great bond in the Duggan Cable solo.
Corsair, Alex, Vulcan, Cable, Rachel are also their own characters. They have their own fans and their own stories. They should appear in other peoples books, not just be props for Cyclops.
It seems pretty clear that Peptty and thirdligthy and Han and Moneolphie are all the same person. All of your accounts use the same sort of awkwardly written English to make a bunch of uncomfortable demands that your personal fixations on niche Cyclops lore be officially reflected and focused on in the upcoming comics, and all those accounts have a heavy overlap in the handful of substacks they follow. Please be normal and stop blowing up these comment sections with so many tedious replies.
I like how the comments have gone from deranged conversation about legacy numbers to deranged conversation about a throuple that only existed in people's heads.
And here is Logan getting drunk and flirting with Storm - and Storm telling him to stop it or she'll tell Jean. Because everyone is aware that Logan and Jean are an item. https://imgur.com/a/ye6Gq97
I believe throuple exist but was short lived the moment Jean Grey left X-Force and help lead the newly elected X-Men team that won the Hellfire Gala vote. She moved to the Tree House with Scott, and there is no bed room in there. If you check all the X-Force issues, following Jean departure. The sex between them ended the moment she left. That is a hot spring in X-Force # 10 and it is safe to assumed they had going that. That issue was the last time we see Jean. In Hellfire Gala 2022, we see Jean sleeping with Scott. When Jean was attacked by Nightmare, we see Jean sleeping with Scott. She lived in the Tree House until she was killed during the Hellfire Gala 2023. She was resurrected again in the new issues. We have Scott and Jean Grey kissing after defeating Enigma in Rise of the Power of X # Issue 05. If Logan and Jean are an item, as you claimed, she didn't run to Logan. She kissed Scott Summers in her Phoenix Uniform.
The throuple exists in the comic. Scott and Logan has connections with Jean's room. They shared room with her. And Jean has sex with Wolverine in the hottub. It's not clear that Scott has something with Emma or with Wolverine. If there is not open relationship. she is infaithful to her husband since there are a lot clear evidences in the comics
As stated in the other comment. I'll just copy and paste what I wrote. I believe throuple existed but was short lived the moment Jean Grey left X-Force and help lead the newly elected X-Men team that won the Hellfire Gala vote. She moved to the Tree House with Scott, and there is no bed room in there. If you check all the X-Force issues, following Jean departure. The sex between them ended the moment she left. That is a hot spring in X-Force # 10 and it is safe to assumed they had going that. That issue was the last time we see Jean. In Hellfire Gala 2022, we see Jean sleeping with Scott. When Jean was attacked by Nightmare, we see Jean sleeping with Scott. She lived in the Tree House until she was killed during the Hellfire Gala 2023. She was resurrected again in the new issues. We have Scott and Jean Grey kissing after defeating Enigma in Rise of the Power of X # Issue 05. If Logan and Jean are an item, as you claimed, she didn't run to Logan. She kissed Scott Summers in her Phoenix Uniform. In regard to Emma Frost and Scott Summers, the sexual intimacy completely absent in any Krakoa Era X-Books. Emma even shut Scott Summers down after his fight with Jean Grey.
Wolverine by hickman and capullo is definitely the book I'm most looking forward to from any publisher. Only thing I'm mad at is that it's just a mini but hey I'm glad it's happening
Tom, I gotta know, what is the line where sales stops being the driving factor? For instance, back in the days of the CCA, there were times, such as the infamous Hobgoblin addiction arc, where someone would decide that they were willing to publish a major comic book without the CCA seal of approval, knowing full well it could lead to far worse sales because they felt it was a public good to tell that story for all the people it might help. A similar thing happened when the CCA was dropped by marvel, I believe it was an issue of X-Force having a gay kiss.
Both those cases ended up working out fine, and I believe the ASM issue actually sold incredibly well and led to the CCA changing their restrictions on depictions of drugs, but what would happen if that wasn't the case in a future similar situation? The CCA is defunct now but there are certainly things that some people who read comics just wouldn't be on board with. For instance, if you were presented with certain, unassailable evidence that having a character in a comic book of a specific minority group would lower sales significantly, that it simply wasn't what readers wanted to see, would you change a comic book featuring a character of that type to not include that character? Would the many people who that comic book could help be outweighed by the need for sales?
I always have this worry, when I see a business like this where sales are as high up there in importance as the story being told in any given run, that it could lead to people prioritizing sales over morals, over doing something that actually makes a difference. It's one of the reasons I've started drifting towards indie comics, especially ones by people like Kieron Gillen who have such powerful and amazing representations of diversity in their books to an extent unseen at the big two. I've especially noticed that despite marvel's earlier victories in that field that these days, DC is providing far more representation in a less tokenized form.
All of this is just meant to be food for thought. Some of it was posed as a question, so answer as you will, but I know a lot of this was posed in unclear or confusing terms so it's fine if you don't have a response. Have a great day!
When you say something like “this is how the character was for the first decade of his existence” you seem to implying that the original conceit of a character is more important than the FORTY YEARS of stories that have happened since then.
What makes the initial design of a character more important than the way they’ve been written for the majority of their existence? What makes old comics that the majority of your audience hasn’t read more important than recent comics that your audience has actually read?
I hope the answer isn’t simply because how the character was when you were a child is most important to you and you’re in charge so you get your way at the expense of the last forty years of readers
I'm worried this job of resetting the X-Men is a poison pill. In order to lure back the people who left over Krakoa, they're going to have to alienate all the people who really responded to Krakoa. Ignoring the thruple stuff, and finding out that Shogo is going to be inexplicably absent just doubles down on the notion that if you are a current X-Men fan, the new books are assuredly not for you. Feels like a "damned if you do" assignment.
I was recently re-reading the latest Uncanny X-Men masterwork edition (with the Inferno crossover) and in the intro Chris Claremont states he (and the other writers) did the best they could with the convoluted continuity of Jean coming back at the time (he implies he wanted her to stay dead).
If you could travel back in time - what do you think the best creative decision would have been? Keep Jean alive (pre Shooter mandated death) with Dark Phoenix as a recurring foil? Not bringing Jean back as X-Factor and letting her stay dead? Having Madelyne as Jean reborn?
The Death of Phoenix is a seminal story but in hindsight I kind of like the original plan of keeping her alive better (considering she came back again and again).
Ha! Interesting that the X-Men column you reposted from 2003 ends with you saying that we wouldn’t want you editing the X-titles. Funny how things change. I’m curious to hear how your perspective on what you wrote about in that column has changed in the past two decades. I’m skeptical that we’ll be seeing Illyana’s fateful battle with a cinder block in the pages of Jed’s X-Men for example.
Thinking about some of the blood and thunder going on here and elsewhere about the shift in the X-line, I wonder if it has something to do with the way comics tend to handle status quo changes in the modern era. Back in the 70's or 80's, big shifts happened, but they tended to happen organically: a new writer would begin where the last one ended, and spend a few issues getting things set up the way they wanted them. And that, perhaps, made for a more gentle way of easing readers into the new order of things.
Nowadays, the changes tend to have much firmer lines in the sand: Krakoa ends one month, and From the Ashes begins the next, and never the twain shall meet. That makes things much more digestible in collected editions, but it also must be jarring and upsetting to those attached to the previous era. So my question, Tom, is: do you see any of this as a problem? And do you think there's any kind of approach that helps to address it?
interesting how Daredevil is the one title that seems to avoid this the most significantly over the past couple decades (and also is usually one of the least controversial titles)
Daredevil is a great illustrative example, since it's filled with cases where writers shifted the tone and content substantially, while still building it gradually out of the prior issues. Ed Brubaker was doing something very different from Brian Michael Bendis, but there's no hard break whatsoever when one writer ends and the other picks up.
Hi, Tom. Here's a break from debating X-Thruples: Do you know why the 60s Captain America series is generally referred to as Vol. 1 rather than the 40s series? Is it as simple as the 40s book technically being from Timely instead of Marvel?
I always assumed that it was because the 1940s series was called Captain America Comics. Sure, it's a minor difference, but that's how I as another fan justified it in my head.
Yep. It's a weird reality of renamed titles and transferred postal registrations. Captain America Comics briefly became Captain America's Weird Tales, and then was cancelled. The modern legacy Captain America series was originally Tales of Suspense before changing to Captain America at issue 100. So as far as indicias were concerned, the series are unrelated to one another.
As a child of the 90’s I was over the moon to see the Andy Kubert variant cover for Uncanny, I was wondering how involved in getting Andy back you were? And if it signifies him coming back to marvel full time? Because that would be rad 👍🏻
It has already become a habit every Sunday to read your column and I wonder when you find time to write such a long and interesting document every week. In any case, that was not the reflection I wanted to share with you. Many comments this week allude to the hypothetical Scott-Logan-Jean relationship, and in one of your answers you mention that only one scene is what would support that it was an open relationship over five years.
What this comment has led me to think about is the small number of everyday scenes that exist in today's Marvel comics. I'm a reader who grew up reading in the '70s and '80s, and I really miss the everyday element in superheroes. Because at that time we knew Peter Parker's apartment inside out or what pizza he liked; and there were plenty of character treatment scenes in the Avengers and X-Men mansions or in the Baxter Building. In current times, I have the impression, probably subjective, that that element of everyday life has been lost a lot, that the Marvel characters are more iconic, but less close and identifiable in those aspects.
Recently, I was taking a look at my favorite scenes by Pepe Larraz, an artist who creates spectacular fight scenes, but the ones that stuck in my mind were not any of those, but small moments of characters talking in an everyday environment. I was thinking about a scene that is quite a few years old now: the conversation between Cyclops and the vampire Storm in a cafeteria, in X-Termination. If I remember it so vividly it is precisely because of the magical nature of these types of situations, and that for me they summarize the essence of the Marvel Universe: the way in which the fabulous and fantastic is introduced into the real world. When I remember what hooked me on X-Men, I remember a lot of that. Kitty and Doug playing video games, Peter, Kurt and Logan at a bar, Storm swimming in the Forge pool, or the usual baseball games in the mansion's courtyard. I really miss seeing those types of situations in comics in a more common way. I hope we have many of those in the new run that now begins, because that is also part of the X-Men lore.
Cyclops had a lot of interactions with Corsair in the past. There's some emotional moments in Uncanny that focus on them way back in the '80s. He had a whole solo about bonding with his dad in space. He's had tons of moments with Alex as far back as the Silver Age, and as recent as Hellions and Dark Web. He isn't close to Vulcan but he at least tried to help him and let him live with him. Cable and him had a great bond in the Duggan Cable solo.
Corsair, Alex, Vulcan, Cable, Rachel are also their own characters. They have their own fans and their own stories. They should appear in other peoples books, not just be props for Cyclops.
It seems pretty clear that Peptty and thirdligthy and Han and Moneolphie are all the same person. All of your accounts use the same sort of awkwardly written English to make a bunch of uncomfortable demands that your personal fixations on niche Cyclops lore be officially reflected and focused on in the upcoming comics, and all those accounts have a heavy overlap in the handful of substacks they follow. Please be normal and stop blowing up these comment sections with so many tedious replies.
I like how the comments have gone from deranged conversation about legacy numbers to deranged conversation about a throuple that only existed in people's heads.
It was made very clear on the page in several books, X-force, Duggan X-men, and all HIckman written yarns.
I'll have to reread it but my memory of it is I could interpret it as I wanted and I very much wanted Jean never to touch Logan.
Bad news friend - they are making out in a hot tub at the end of X-Force #10 by Percy. https://imgur.com/a/K4Ec9is
And here is Logan getting drunk and flirting with Storm - and Storm telling him to stop it or she'll tell Jean. Because everyone is aware that Logan and Jean are an item. https://imgur.com/a/ye6Gq97
I believe throuple exist but was short lived the moment Jean Grey left X-Force and help lead the newly elected X-Men team that won the Hellfire Gala vote. She moved to the Tree House with Scott, and there is no bed room in there. If you check all the X-Force issues, following Jean departure. The sex between them ended the moment she left. That is a hot spring in X-Force # 10 and it is safe to assumed they had going that. That issue was the last time we see Jean. In Hellfire Gala 2022, we see Jean sleeping with Scott. When Jean was attacked by Nightmare, we see Jean sleeping with Scott. She lived in the Tree House until she was killed during the Hellfire Gala 2023. She was resurrected again in the new issues. We have Scott and Jean Grey kissing after defeating Enigma in Rise of the Power of X # Issue 05. If Logan and Jean are an item, as you claimed, she didn't run to Logan. She kissed Scott Summers in her Phoenix Uniform.
The throuple exists in the comic. Scott and Logan has connections with Jean's room. They shared room with her. And Jean has sex with Wolverine in the hottub. It's not clear that Scott has something with Emma or with Wolverine. If there is not open relationship. she is infaithful to her husband since there are a lot clear evidences in the comics
As stated in the other comment. I'll just copy and paste what I wrote. I believe throuple existed but was short lived the moment Jean Grey left X-Force and help lead the newly elected X-Men team that won the Hellfire Gala vote. She moved to the Tree House with Scott, and there is no bed room in there. If you check all the X-Force issues, following Jean departure. The sex between them ended the moment she left. That is a hot spring in X-Force # 10 and it is safe to assumed they had going that. That issue was the last time we see Jean. In Hellfire Gala 2022, we see Jean sleeping with Scott. When Jean was attacked by Nightmare, we see Jean sleeping with Scott. She lived in the Tree House until she was killed during the Hellfire Gala 2023. She was resurrected again in the new issues. We have Scott and Jean Grey kissing after defeating Enigma in Rise of the Power of X # Issue 05. If Logan and Jean are an item, as you claimed, she didn't run to Logan. She kissed Scott Summers in her Phoenix Uniform. In regard to Emma Frost and Scott Summers, the sexual intimacy completely absent in any Krakoa Era X-Books. Emma even shut Scott Summers down after his fight with Jean Grey.
All comic book stories only exist in people's heads.
Very happy to see the Doctor Who quotes on your board, including one of my favourite’s: “You’re a beautiful woman… probably.”
That sounds so much like a Groucho Marx line…was the Doctor (or the writer at the time) cribbing that <i>bon mot<i>?
Wolverine by hickman and capullo is definitely the book I'm most looking forward to from any publisher. Only thing I'm mad at is that it's just a mini but hey I'm glad it's happening
Tom, I gotta know, what is the line where sales stops being the driving factor? For instance, back in the days of the CCA, there were times, such as the infamous Hobgoblin addiction arc, where someone would decide that they were willing to publish a major comic book without the CCA seal of approval, knowing full well it could lead to far worse sales because they felt it was a public good to tell that story for all the people it might help. A similar thing happened when the CCA was dropped by marvel, I believe it was an issue of X-Force having a gay kiss.
Both those cases ended up working out fine, and I believe the ASM issue actually sold incredibly well and led to the CCA changing their restrictions on depictions of drugs, but what would happen if that wasn't the case in a future similar situation? The CCA is defunct now but there are certainly things that some people who read comics just wouldn't be on board with. For instance, if you were presented with certain, unassailable evidence that having a character in a comic book of a specific minority group would lower sales significantly, that it simply wasn't what readers wanted to see, would you change a comic book featuring a character of that type to not include that character? Would the many people who that comic book could help be outweighed by the need for sales?
I always have this worry, when I see a business like this where sales are as high up there in importance as the story being told in any given run, that it could lead to people prioritizing sales over morals, over doing something that actually makes a difference. It's one of the reasons I've started drifting towards indie comics, especially ones by people like Kieron Gillen who have such powerful and amazing representations of diversity in their books to an extent unseen at the big two. I've especially noticed that despite marvel's earlier victories in that field that these days, DC is providing far more representation in a less tokenized form.
All of this is just meant to be food for thought. Some of it was posed as a question, so answer as you will, but I know a lot of this was posed in unclear or confusing terms so it's fine if you don't have a response. Have a great day!
Tom, in a telepathic battle between Xavier and Emma, who do you think would win? Many fans disagree on who is more powerful. What is your opinion?
It would depend on the story is what I would think.
Power creep has made Emma more powerful but not THAT powerful.
When you say something like “this is how the character was for the first decade of his existence” you seem to implying that the original conceit of a character is more important than the FORTY YEARS of stories that have happened since then.
What makes the initial design of a character more important than the way they’ve been written for the majority of their existence? What makes old comics that the majority of your audience hasn’t read more important than recent comics that your audience has actually read?
I hope the answer isn’t simply because how the character was when you were a child is most important to you and you’re in charge so you get your way at the expense of the last forty years of readers
Yes. This new direction is not going to go well.
I'm worried this job of resetting the X-Men is a poison pill. In order to lure back the people who left over Krakoa, they're going to have to alienate all the people who really responded to Krakoa. Ignoring the thruple stuff, and finding out that Shogo is going to be inexplicably absent just doubles down on the notion that if you are a current X-Men fan, the new books are assuredly not for you. Feels like a "damned if you do" assignment.
I was recently re-reading the latest Uncanny X-Men masterwork edition (with the Inferno crossover) and in the intro Chris Claremont states he (and the other writers) did the best they could with the convoluted continuity of Jean coming back at the time (he implies he wanted her to stay dead).
If you could travel back in time - what do you think the best creative decision would have been? Keep Jean alive (pre Shooter mandated death) with Dark Phoenix as a recurring foil? Not bringing Jean back as X-Factor and letting her stay dead? Having Madelyne as Jean reborn?
The Death of Phoenix is a seminal story but in hindsight I kind of like the original plan of keeping her alive better (considering she came back again and again).
Your thoughts (in hindsight of course)?
Tom, the vast majority of fans want Stilt-Man to be in every Marvel comic. When are you all going to give the people what they want?
Ha! Interesting that the X-Men column you reposted from 2003 ends with you saying that we wouldn’t want you editing the X-titles. Funny how things change. I’m curious to hear how your perspective on what you wrote about in that column has changed in the past two decades. I’m skeptical that we’ll be seeing Illyana’s fateful battle with a cinder block in the pages of Jed’s X-Men for example.
Thinking about some of the blood and thunder going on here and elsewhere about the shift in the X-line, I wonder if it has something to do with the way comics tend to handle status quo changes in the modern era. Back in the 70's or 80's, big shifts happened, but they tended to happen organically: a new writer would begin where the last one ended, and spend a few issues getting things set up the way they wanted them. And that, perhaps, made for a more gentle way of easing readers into the new order of things.
Nowadays, the changes tend to have much firmer lines in the sand: Krakoa ends one month, and From the Ashes begins the next, and never the twain shall meet. That makes things much more digestible in collected editions, but it also must be jarring and upsetting to those attached to the previous era. So my question, Tom, is: do you see any of this as a problem? And do you think there's any kind of approach that helps to address it?
Thanks as usual for your newsletter service.
interesting how Daredevil is the one title that seems to avoid this the most significantly over the past couple decades (and also is usually one of the least controversial titles)
Daredevil is a great illustrative example, since it's filled with cases where writers shifted the tone and content substantially, while still building it gradually out of the prior issues. Ed Brubaker was doing something very different from Brian Michael Bendis, but there's no hard break whatsoever when one writer ends and the other picks up.
Hi, Tom. Here's a break from debating X-Thruples: Do you know why the 60s Captain America series is generally referred to as Vol. 1 rather than the 40s series? Is it as simple as the 40s book technically being from Timely instead of Marvel?
I always assumed that it was because the 1940s series was called Captain America Comics. Sure, it's a minor difference, but that's how I as another fan justified it in my head.
Yep. It's a weird reality of renamed titles and transferred postal registrations. Captain America Comics briefly became Captain America's Weird Tales, and then was cancelled. The modern legacy Captain America series was originally Tales of Suspense before changing to Captain America at issue 100. So as far as indicias were concerned, the series are unrelated to one another.
As a child of the 90’s I was over the moon to see the Andy Kubert variant cover for Uncanny, I was wondering how involved in getting Andy back you were? And if it signifies him coming back to marvel full time? Because that would be rad 👍🏻
Hi, Tom!
It has already become a habit every Sunday to read your column and I wonder when you find time to write such a long and interesting document every week. In any case, that was not the reflection I wanted to share with you. Many comments this week allude to the hypothetical Scott-Logan-Jean relationship, and in one of your answers you mention that only one scene is what would support that it was an open relationship over five years.
What this comment has led me to think about is the small number of everyday scenes that exist in today's Marvel comics. I'm a reader who grew up reading in the '70s and '80s, and I really miss the everyday element in superheroes. Because at that time we knew Peter Parker's apartment inside out or what pizza he liked; and there were plenty of character treatment scenes in the Avengers and X-Men mansions or in the Baxter Building. In current times, I have the impression, probably subjective, that that element of everyday life has been lost a lot, that the Marvel characters are more iconic, but less close and identifiable in those aspects.
Recently, I was taking a look at my favorite scenes by Pepe Larraz, an artist who creates spectacular fight scenes, but the ones that stuck in my mind were not any of those, but small moments of characters talking in an everyday environment. I was thinking about a scene that is quite a few years old now: the conversation between Cyclops and the vampire Storm in a cafeteria, in X-Termination. If I remember it so vividly it is precisely because of the magical nature of these types of situations, and that for me they summarize the essence of the Marvel Universe: the way in which the fabulous and fantastic is introduced into the real world. When I remember what hooked me on X-Men, I remember a lot of that. Kitty and Doug playing video games, Peter, Kurt and Logan at a bar, Storm swimming in the Forge pool, or the usual baseball games in the mansion's courtyard. I really miss seeing those types of situations in comics in a more common way. I hope we have many of those in the new run that now begins, because that is also part of the X-Men lore.
It's me, I read that far! Always enjoy the newsletter, thanks.