Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!
If you haven’t been reading the latest volume of Marauders, you’ve missed out on… a lot. Threshold: a mutant society that predates Krakoa — and humans — by a few billion years. Fang: a new identity for Akihiro. And a new Marauder: Cerebra from X-Men 2099.
I told you a lot’s been happening!
With Marauders #7 on sale this week, it felt like the perfect time to check in with writer Steve Orlando about all these developments, as well as a few of his other upcoming X-related projects.
Courtesy of Steve Orlando
AIPT: Welcome back to X-Men Monday, Steve! So, when I started reading X-Men comics in the mid-’90s, I just bought everything with an “X” on it — including X-Men 2099 and X-Nation 2099. However, I was never very invested in them and don’t really remember the stories as they seemed so detached from regular X-Men continuity. But since you brought Brimstone Love back — and now Cerebra — you’ve made me feel like I need to revisit 2099. For X-Fans like myself, what was so appealing to you about the world of 2099 and do you think it deserves more praise and attention than it’s received?
Steve: I think, in general, with the 2099 line, you’d be shocked how much of it is — I think at least in its themes and commentary — ahead of its time. Does it magically look like a book that came out in 2022 when it came out in 1992? No. Is it told the way we tell things now? No.
It’s speculative fiction. I call it that because it wasn’t so far in the future, right? Like, even when it came out, 2099 was only a little over a hundred years away. Now it’s significantly less — one would say it’s 70 years away, because of math. But so many of the things that we cry for today in mainstream books were already presented back then. Here was an all-new cast, as you said, that wasn’t like, “Oh, it’s just old Wolverine.” Here’s an all-new cast and also 100 years of history in between. It’s a cast that is more diverse, where the leader is not a white man. And in fact, when they go back and talk about the people who have led the X-Men since Charles Xavier, going off at least the indicators of their surnames, you have a variety of people from outside the white sphere that have led the team. This is something that we’d be talking about — intersectionality and increased diversity in mutant culture — for 30 years to come. John Francis Moore and Ron Lim were doing it in 1992.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Look at the world of Spider-Man 2099, where paper money doesn’t exist anymore. All people have is a card or an implant with four different levels that signify your wealth. And the highest level, as you saw in Spider-Man 2099: Exodus, is the black cards, which is where you’re so rich that you can just buy anything and money effectively doesn’t exist and nor does the law. Again, in 1992 that probably seemed far-fetched. Now we’re living in a world where that’s all but true, and obviously, I keyed in on that in Exodus because it was an afterthought in the original ‘90s series. But to me, it was like one of the most evocative things that had been done in that original series, because again, it’s not 1992. At the time I was writing this, it was 2021, and we know that many of these things have effectively come true.
Is the world neon-soaked? Are we all getting cyborg implants and things like that? No. But in a practical sense, much of what these series wrote is a critique of society, and the things that the heroes of tomorrow would have to fight are things that our heroes are fighting today. So I think it’s worth a look because again, it gives us a lot of the things that we have always wanted. We say we want new characters, we want new stories — that’s what 2099 gave us. And you and I and all those readers in the ‘90s could not have known just how prescient a lot of it was going to be. We might not live in mega cities with irradiated wastelands, but the day-to-day life of 2099 is certainly something that we can now see that we’re on a path towards. I think that it was really, really impressive — just the creativity and thoughtfulness that the founders of that line had put together. And it’s always going to be worth a look.
AIPT: You’ve convinced me — now Marvel just needs to release an omnibus. Related, let’s talk Cerebra. You first teased the “mystery 11th Marauder” in X-Men Monday #140 way back in January and referred to them as “pretty historic as far as representation goes.” Can you talk about what made you want to bring Cerebra to the present and integrate her into the contemporary X-Men line?
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Steve: Well, there are a couple things. When I was talking about her being historic, Cerebra was one of the first, if not the first Indian mutant. Of course, I think people didn’t realize that for the reasons you said — it was in a future book that was still X-Men, but it wasn’t at the school in the ‘90s. That doesn’t change that she — to my knowledge, there could always be someone else, which is why I’m watching what I say — is one of the first, if not the first characters of an Indian background to be an X-Man, and how could I point that out? I could point that out by celebrating what is all but a tradition when it comes to modern X-Men teams, which are refugees from the future coming to the present.
There’s an upcoming issue of Marauders where Bishop even jokes that he, Rachel, Cable, and Cerebra just take bets on when things are going to go extinct, right? Because they’re all from four different alternate futures. It almost seems like a right of passage if you’re from a dark alternate future in the X-Men world to come to the present and try to avert it somehow. Now Cerebra is actually not here to avert it, because little does she know 2099 is now part of the multiverse and not just the timeline, but the point stood that I wanted to spotlight her both for why she was historic and bring her to the present, because things are different now, and we do want to know that things “matter” and connect.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
So it was sort of like planting an anchor in the present and saying X-Men 2099 matters and the team does exist. At the same time, why does she come? Because for a team like the Marauders, who are a rescue team and not always on Earth, not always even our time, and not necessarily around a Cerebro helmet or the Five, Cerebra, being a biometric telepath lets her function sort of like a field Cerebro. And we talk about that in the book. The capacity is not like a Cerebro helmet. She can maybe hold one or two people and scan them and things like that, but at the same time, she had utility for a team and it was just a nice opportunity to do this 30th anniversary of 2099 event and send someone back to the present and get more out of them and spend more time with them and just sort of create a little bridge from what had happened and what we were celebrating into what could be.
Now she has a whole new perspective and she can function in the present and with a relatively unique power set. So to me, that’s an exciting moment. And of course, for her, Captain Pryde is one of her heroes. So you have someone who is extremely wise and a leader in her own right, and at the same time, she’s standing side-by-side with one of her heroes. So she’s almost excited all the time just to be here.
AIPT: You packed a lot into your first Marauders story arc — including the return of Warbird and the introduction of the Zzxz-Warbird combo. What can we look forward to from this lethal twosome?
Steve: The answer is that it all depends on what happens with the line in the future. One of the things I like to do is seed story. At the same time, we all know there are a lot of variables in comics. How long can we tell these stories? What things are going to get the focus?
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Is there a ready-made story to dive into with symbiote Warbird hunting down the remaining Kin Crimson on the behalf of Xandra? Of course there is, I hope we get to tell that story, but if not, you also kind of know how it goes, where she is, and what she’s doing. So it sort of tells you where a character is going to be and then yeah, I would love a chance to check in on them. But things like that are all about where we want to go with the X-Men line and what type of books we are going to be working with.
AIPT: I view the work you did with Akihiro similar to what Tini Howard did with Rachel — a new codename and breathing new life and purpose into a beloved character who’s been through a lot. What made you turn to the Fang identity and costume?
Steve: Well, it helped that we were going into space with the Shi’ar for sure. Again, a lot of what Akihiro is about is tradition, right? History tends to rhyme and yes, Fang is obscure, but also arguably — and I know I’m going to light up the comment section here — arguably the best Wolverine costume that the brown and tan was based off of. I mean, he even wore the Fang costume during an early interaction with the Imperial Guard. So it kind of felt weird for me, as someone who looked at Akihiro and saw exactly as he says in Marauders, he’s had a name that people use to put him down. He’s had a name that his parents gave him, but he has never really had a codename other than “Dark Wolverine,” which is derivative. And I don’t know if his name was literally Dark Wolverine. Probably just “Wolverine.”
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
So he wanted to earn something. And as a character who, since Leah Williams had been working with him before, has sort of been trying to figure out how to rectify all that he’s been through, all these toxic emotions, having a name that is really his, felt like the right moment. So it’s a confluence as always of history and story, but also it’s what felt right for the character. He doesn’t want to be Wolverine’s kid anymore. He doesn’t want to be Wolverine’s arch enemy. He needs something that is his own and making this an honorific within the Lupak culture just felt right. Specifically calling it honorific is something we did that was additive, but it’s already been established that when someone in the Imperial Guard is killed, they get replaced by someone who suspiciously looks almost just like them. So what we did was build off what was there to give Akihiro something that was truly his own.
AIPT: The Fang suit is pretty iconic because there was that Wolverine Toy Biz action figure. If you squeezed his legs together, his arms moved.
Steve: That’s actually still how you get Logan to open his arms. You squeeze his legs.
AIPT: [Laughs] The next Marauders arc is “Here Comes Yesterday” — what can X-Fans look forward to?
Steve: Well, for all the people that said, you better explore Threshold more than in a page, I have good news for you: we’re going to be exploring that. We have this Shi’ar time drive that has these people trapped inside of it and we don’t know how to open it. So it shouldn’t be any surprise that we wouldn’t put that there without trying to open it — and we’re going to. But once that gets open, the question then becomes, what really can be done with Threshold? If this is the first generation of mutants, there are mysteries around it. Things that people have pointed out online and the characters themselves have pointed out is, how can there be mutants before there were humans? How could all this exist without us knowing about it?
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Now, this is one of those scenarios where real life is actually the answer. It’s just so mind-blowing. When speaking with Jonathan Hickman about the first generation of mutants, this is based on real science. There’s an article in The Atlantic about how the planet is incredibly old, obviously. And this article was about how we think we matter. It makes sense for us to think so because we’re alive right now. But for all we’ve done as a culture, there could have been a culture just as advanced and was just as industrialized as us in Earth’s history.
And if it was long enough ago, especially before this massive extinction-level event that happens to have occurred in real Earth history 2 billion years ago, there would be no evidence of it. You know, like even archeology only goes back hundreds or thousands, maybe even millions of years in the case of dinosaurs. But there could have been an entirely different culture as widespread as ours. And if it was that long ago, we would have nothing. Even the things we think are permanent would just be dust. So when speaking with Hickman about it, this was a thing we started talking about with the first generation. And like with anything else, we shouldn’t be bound by human perceptions. That’s what goes on with Krakoa. We shouldn’t do it just because it’s the human way. We really wanted to blow people’s minds. And the fact that it is a real fact may be mind-blowing, but that’s what we’re here to do.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Bishop will eventually say what I just said, because he has a time traveler’s perspective. That’s just how it is. There could have been something that long ago. As to how there are mutants before humans? Well, you know what, again, we do sometimes have a plan, so stay tuned on that.
I’m going to be honest with people, like it’s almost all new characters, but what I’m most excited for is the perspective of the Threshold. Their society is very different from ours, and if we ever get these people out of the time drive, characters who might have been looking for some romance may finally find it. My favorite scene and my most heartbreaking line I wrote in the book was with Tempo, so people should be excited for that. But that comes later. That’s in issue 10.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
But the trip back to Threshold is really exciting. As I said, it’s nearly all new, but you will get the secret origin of some of the most iconic X-Men villains of the past 25 years starting in Threshold. So that’s a pretty big tease.
AIPT: So you’re saying they’re from that first generation mutants?
Steve: Am I saying that Chris? I guess you’ll have to read it.
AIPT: Pivoting to another one of your current stories — X-Men Green ended on a rather bleak note. Especially for Curse. Can we expect more X-Men Green from you?
Steve: I think it’s safe to say you can. I don’t know if I’m breaking news there, but there you go. X-Men Green has been a blast. I’m extremely excited and honored that I was the one that they picked to come on and keep it going. Because the thing is, in some ways, for people who think the main Krakoa books are maybe a little too strange — which I don’t agree with, but I understand — if you want a different flavor, X-Men Green is kind of a classic X-Men story.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
It’s villains misbehaving who are so sure that they’re right, but are tragically wrong. If you want to talk about the end of the arc that just finished up, yeah, it’s heartbreaking. But also, I think that it was a nice way to rectify that what Nature Girl’s been up to was certainly a swerve from where she was before. So we looked at that when we were coming on and just seeing if there’s a way we could make that part of the story. Like, now she’s only going to become more hypocritical. She can only get worse. And that’s the sad thing about Curse’s power.
Curse is incredibly powerful unless she wants to do something good and then she just can’t. And that’s the tragedy there. She tried to solve the loneliness that came along with her gift, so to speak, if you think that her powers are a gift. Ultimately, that led to her own undoing. We also know that Nature Girl is at least somewhat contradictory in her actions. You know, she attacks an oil rig and spills burning oil into the water where animals live, but she’s avenging the planet.
She would say those are willing soldiers in the fight to avenge Earth but isn’t that kind of sad? Tragic villains are often the most compelling villains. And at the same time, environmentalism is not bad. So it was important for us to sort of find something that was compelling in her that we’ve been building to for a long time. And I think some of the greatest villains are the ones that you can relate to and are sort of broken, but think they’re right and that’s where she is. That being said, in upcoming arcs, things will still get wild and brutal and strange.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
We have probably my deepest of cuts ever in that book, but it’s not just because she’s only appeared in one book before this, it’s because from a character standpoint, she’s the perfect counterpoint to Nature Girl. This is a new member of the team that’s going to show up in a future arc and I’m super, super excited about it. She’s someone Nature Girl thinks she can control, someone she thinks that she can manipulate. And the tragedy is if she would’ve just listened to this person, which we know she can’t, because of Curse’s curse, this whole book would’ve gone differently.
And so I’m really excited to have her be there and she does debut in one of my small but favorite non-plot related things that I’ve done in an X-Men book, which is she’s working at the type of yuppy restaurant I used to sell wine to. And it’s a restaurant that does Krakoan food, but does not hire mutants.
AIPT: How dare they?! OK, finally, Marvel announced that you’ll be writing a Scarlet Witch series starting in January. We’ll talk more about it as the release date gets closer, but right now, I wanted to ask… Wanda has become a very divisive character among certain parts of X-Fandom. The whole “Pretender” bit from characters like Exodus certainly didn’t help. But I feel like you’re an X-Fan who also loves Wanda. So my question is, do you think it’s time for X-Fans to give Wanda a second chance?
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Steve: Well, I would never tell a fan what to read and what not to read. That’s their prerogative. I can say that I hope that they will, because in canon, the actual people on whose behalf they’re offended, rightfully so if they are, by the way, I’m not here to denigrate that, but the point remains, she’s been forgiven in story, after prostrating herself in multiple attempts to undo what she had done. Like, need we bring up the zombie Genosha of it all? So it is far beyond my purview to tell people how to feel about a thing, but I can say that I hope they do because the characters that they connect with and love have come around and forgiven Wanda. I mean, she literally died to make up for it.
And now she’s given a pathway to life for exponentially more mutants than whose life she touched before, which is not like one balances out the other, but she has done good, and she’s paid the blood price for what she did in the past. So that’s my hope. You know, if people are still feeling the scars of that, who am I to tell them otherwise, you know? But I hope that they’re willing to give her a chance because the characters have. I mean, Exodus himself has come around, and if Exodus can come around, so can you.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
This is someone who’s looking forward, and who knows she’s made mistakes, but who among us doesn’t know we’ve made mistakes and builds that into our present-day personality. Of course she’s a superhero and an incredibly powerful character so that the mistakes are maybe on a scale other than like getting our boyfriend or girlfriend or partner’s latte wrong, you know? But that’s comics. Sometimes I forget how many characters in Marvel or DC books have just quietly committed atrocities that we just forget about.
So that’s all I would say. I hope you give us a try. I mean, if anything, Sara Pichelli is doing amazing interior work. Russell Dauterman is doing incredible cover work. You might see some of Wanda’s Krakoan family in the book. And by might, I mean you will. So there’s a reason. But beyond all that, like I said, she’s turning a page. I hope that readers can turn a page with her and we already know that on the page, Krakoa has moved on and forgiven. So hopefully people can too.
AIPT: Well said. Steve, thanks so much for taking the time to catch up on all your projects! Before we go, here’s an eXclusive first look at Marauders #8 — illustrated by Eleonora Carlini — and on sale November 9!
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
In the next edition of X-Men Monday, we hit our latest mutant milestone: X-Men Monday #175!
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Until next time, X-Fans, stay exceptional!
Join the AIPT Patreon
Want to take our relationship to the next level? Become a patron today to gain access to exclusive perks, such as:
- ❌ Remove all ads on the website
- 💬 Join our Discord community, where we chat about the latest news and releases from everything we cover on AIPT
- 📗 Access to our monthly book club
- 📦 Get a physical trade paperback shipped to you every month
- 💥 And more!
You must be logged in to post a comment.