Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!
Marvel’s recent Sins of Sinister event may have only stretched across three mini-series and two one-shots, but it managed to pack countless concepts into just a few months. But that shouldn’t come as a shock considering three of the most inventive writers in comics masterminded this event.
Kieron Gillen already stopped by X-Men Monday to discuss Sins of Sinister #1 in February, but now that the event’s wrapped, there’s no better time to check in with Kieron (Immoral X-Men), Al Ewing (Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants), and Si Spurrier (Nightcrawlers) for a good old-fashioned eXit interview.
Al Ewing, Kieron Gillen, and Si Spurrier
AIPT: Welcome back to X-Men Monday, everybody! And congratulations on wrapping up Sins of Sinister. This week’s first X-Fan question comes from FifthDream, who said some of these SoS issues had single panels that contained incredible stories that could sustain entire series for years! How did so many huge ideas come out of just the three of you, and are there any you wish you COULD turn into entire book runs?
Al Ewing: Ideas are pretty easy to generate, especially from pre-existing ingredients — the hard part is turning them into those sustainable series you mention. So having the excuse to just do the idea part — to throw down a bunch of panels and balloons that suggest a story in the readers’ minds, allow them to build it themselves, without actually having to tell that story — is always super fun.
In my case, it was much easier to tell the story of Mystique’s last stand than it was to tell Jon Ironfire’s, because one of them actually had to be told in 20 pages, and hit a whole lot of plot and emotional beats, while the other was just a quick strum of a familiar chord and off the stage. It’s the comics equivalent of “You Suffer” by Napalm Death — or maybe Robert Sheckley’s “Zirn Left Unguarded, The Jenghik Palace In Flames, John Westerley Dead”, which creates an entire space-opera universe and merrily destroys it in about three pages.
Kieron Gillen: Al’s now got me listening to Napalm Death on a Monday morning. You should give it a shot. It’s a jolt to the system, like an auditory espresso.
As Al said — riffing is relatively easy. For those who followed me when I was active on Twitter, you’ll see that I was fond of really terrible puns. Puns are just re-arranging elements in unconventional ways. I tend to think the kind of memetic re-engineering which Sins of Sinister ran off is kind of a similar muscle? Taking elements, re-arranging, and letting them go.
That said, I think Al may be underselling the shivery brain joy of this approach though — sure, we’re evoking a bigger story with a few strokes, but that’s what Grant Morrison’s best work and things like the Metabarons run off, and they’re just great. Give the shiny toy to the reader and let them play around with it, for as long as they want. That feels democratic and magical. It’s your story now. The story lives off the page. And especially in a shared comic universe, you never know when something will be picked up and run with in future. God knows DC got enough mileage from picking over tiny ideas in Alan Moore short stories, right? Just because we didn’t go in great detail in many stories doesn’t mean they won’t inspire someone later.
To answer the question though — perhaps a little more about the Empire of the Red Diamond. We give nods of the structure of that, and an attentive reader can piece stuff together, but having more about Emma as Juggernaut-creator would have been fun.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Si Spurrier: Coming to this a little late, not much to add to the key points — splendidly articulated above. Musing sideways for a moment, it’s tempting to wax cynical about this sense that every fleeting idea ought to be unpacked, dwelt upon, given room to breathe. Does that expectation signify a diminishing return in comics? Like, have we got to the point that readers are so starved of the frothing febrile frenzy of ideas (which, speaking personally, I’ve always taken for granted in comics of this kind), that nowadays we worry it’s wasteful to include more than a single novel thought per issue? Maybe. We should definitely expect better, if so.
(I picture Mad Max, soaking up every last drop of gasoline with a rag, because there will never be more of this precious resource than there is right now. Except, er, in this vision you suddenly realize Max is played by Alan Moore, and he’s smirking whilst holding eye contact as he sets fire to the cloth – or possibly smokes it – because there will always be more, mate, and if you’re trying to hoard stories rather than planting their seeds then you’re missing the point.)
(Hm. Exhausted uncaffeinated Si’s subconscious is even stranger than usual today.)
Here’s the wonderful thing: each of those little evocative panels you mention — snippets of a fictional history — is literally a daydream in a box. An Eleusinian mystery that doesn’t take years, cult membership and ritual sacrifice to investigate. We give you a few pluripotent words and a suggestive image, and your mind is off to the races, wondering, weaving, working magic. If I subsequently sat down and wrote six insipid issues based around that one panel, it wouldn’t — couldn’t — compete. That formless, half-rendered thrill of intrigue you felt at first glance is, in a very real way, the building block of how and why comics are literally magic. Love your chosen medium, wallow in its rich petroleum gravy, and don’t put up with gruel.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
I’ll say this, mind you. The really fun thing is that when you’ve built this relentless idea-momentum, as Kieron and Al and I tried to do — just constantly tossing them overboard with a cackle — plop, splash, spume — then if one of them really does turn out to be a critical piece in the more carefully developed central plot then it blows everyone’s knickers right off. I’m thinking here of what I called the “mad bullet” idea: casually using the Juggernaut as a railgun shot in act 1 to kill Thanos, then bringing him back a thousand years later to deliver the coup de grace to the whole insane climax. That’s one of the other gifts a sustained torrent of ideas will get you, thinking about it: the rare chance to surprise even the most canny of readers. To put it another way, when your story takes place in a gun factory, you’re never quite sure which is the one Chekov put on his mantelpiece.
AIPT: Wow, I feel like your answers to that question were as epic as Sins of Sinister. Let’s see what this next one yields! X-Fan KSynch97 asked if we can assume the Dominion is actually a version of Sinister? Or is there a possibility of it being somebody else entirely?
Kieron: Well, there’s always a chance someone is someone else. It’s Marvel Comics. It could be Squirrel Girl in a mask.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
But the intent was that it’s a Sinister. The plot is complicated enough without opening it up any further. “Which of the Sinisters make it?” is the story, and what’s interesting about it. Who makes it? Because we know one of them does, which hopefully creates a real tension and dread. One of the baddies’ schemes will work. And what are our heroes going to do when they’re facing something more profound than a god?
I probably should have just said a ‘You’re a Sinister” or something clearly in the scene, which is on me. Brains!
AIPT: Kieron, X-Fan Justin from The X-Wife Podcast was wondering which character you think had the most fun while Sinisterized?
Kieron: Hah. Well, of the ones I wrote… I think Hope? Emma clearly also was having a lot of fun, but the time you get to the Sinister Wars of +100-+1000, she’s also having to do a lot of work as well. Can you imagine how tiresome it is to be trapped in a 900-year war with the rest of the Quiet Council, and having to deal with Beast as your court scientist? Hope just got to head-shot solar systems and not feel guilty about it, as that part of her was sheared away. She was having an amazing, terrible time until she got betrayed and murdered.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
The most fun thing for me was the person who had least fun in the timeline was Sinister.
AIPT: You mentioned Emma — X-Fan Dia said in Immoral X-Men #3, we were introduced to an Emma Frost who had essentially become Cyttorak the living gem. Dia was wondering what it was like to create such a unique version of a character and what inspired you to go that route with her.
Kieron: Thank you. This links back to what I was talking about earlier — it basically was a pun that got out of control. Emma can turn into Diamond. Sinister has a Red Diamond on his forehead. How can Emma possibly become a red diamond? Oh — the most iconic red gem in the Marvel Universe, the Juggernaut-creating Ruby of Cyttorak. It’s a Ruby, but I suspect people will just go with us if we turn Emma into the living gem of Cyttorak. So suddenly you have a red-diamond-form Emma, who can choose to enchant her most trusted followers as Juggernauts, right? That’s an interesting courtly set-up for a character who has a queen-archetype already.
All that climaxes as her being the literal red diamond in the forehead of a giant Juggernaut-powered clear-diamond Emma clone, which is about 4 puns piled on top of each other. In the end, Alessandro Vitti took the visual another way, making it a robot, which makes Al find another explanation, and another pun — a Mistress Mold.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
It was a long time coming too. I enjoyed teasing THE EMPIRE OF THE RED DIAMOND way back in Immortal X-Men #3, and everyone naturally presumes we’re talking about Sinister, when in fact it’s really Emma.
AIPT: Al, X-Fan ororoswind said Storm & The Brotherhood #2 showcased Ororo’s mystical abilities in a grand way. Is that part of the character’s heritage something we can expect to see more of moving forward in X-Men Red and the main timeline?
Al: I think Stephanie Williams should take credit here — I already had Storm opening a space wormhole with her powers in S&B #2, but when I first conceived of that it was largely a display of mutant power. (I say “largely” because when you’re using weather-controlling powers to manipulate space weather, you’re into the kind of metaphorical territory, with power dictated by the language used to describe it, that’s almost a form of magic in itself. Wiz Kid operates in this space.)
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
The on-the-page reminder of Ororo’s magical heritage in Scarlet Witch #2 really prodded my thinking, set the cogs whirring, and when I got to the nuts and bolts of writing the scene and making it work I decided to make Storm’s wormhole-creation more of an actual magical invocation mixed in with the omega mutant power. Anyway, with that treasure chest now open and on display, it seems a shame not to do more with the treasure inside. So the upcoming story will have a magical component enter proceedings at some point, with an emphasis on “mutant magic”.
AIPT: X-Fan Spin-off Sinister #41 said thank you for this really well-executed work, as always. Regarding Jon Ironfire: What made you want to introduce this new character during this very particular crossover, only to come back to a “1.0” version as soon as your normal run returns? Spin-off Sinister #41 gets that it’s far more interesting to do it that way, but what led you to think about that?
Al: One of the first ideas I had building off Kieron’s was to have Arakko fight a doomed last stand to save the universe — basically making hay from the understanding that this can’t be forever, by making that a tragedy. By S+1000, the effort was doomed, but quadrillions of people still got to live rich, full, and happy lives outside the growing Sinister influence because Arakko chose to fight on against the odds rather than push the reset button. I mean, I’d hate my entire life and all my hopes and dreams to be wiped out, never to have existed at all, because the situation got bad 300 years ago over in Alpha Centauri. That sounds like a bad ending. (Of course, that line of thinking also meant 900 years of Sinister expansion turning the entire universe into a corrupted hellzone… but that’s an argument I think people explored fully and came down on their own sides of when the issue came out.)
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Anyway, a last stand needed heroes, and I liked the idea of a legend being formed across those 1,000 years that we hadn’t met yet. The original idea was to introduce Jon Ironfire as an established, adult superhero, show him evolve into the Last Arakkii, and then introduce him as a scrappy teenager, so any readers who fell in love with him (and it’s my understanding that there have been a few) could see how he got to be that person.
As it stands, I ended up throwing in a couple of hints at a mysterious Genesis War and a horrible mistake he made because he didn’t trust Storm. And I don’t think anyone except Mother Righteous knows about that… and she doesn’t seem very interested in saving him from it. Too bad.
AIPT: Speaking of… X-Fan JS said Mother Righteous’ trick with the “thank you’s” is so delightfully insidious. How did you come up with it?
Si: Ha, thanks. She’s pretty great, isn’t she? (Worth paying tribute here to Jamie McKelvie, who nailed the design brief and even snuck in some clever hidden details everyone should’ve noticed but didn’t, like the carefully arranged cleavage-collar combo which forms the shape of a heart.)
As for her modus operandi, yeah, it’s pretty ick. Like, it probably won’t surprise anyone to learn I spend way more time than is normal or healthy thinking about social contracts, shared abstractions, the Dunbar number, etc. It’s amazing how many things which we regard as forces for good secretly levy a very high psychic cost. As the old saying goes, if you think you’re getting something for free then you’re the product.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
I’ve always enjoyed using the “turn-it-up-to-11” element of superhero powers to exaggerate unexpected stuff. That’s how I ended up with Forgetmenot, whose “power” is to be forgotten the moment he’s out of sight (because we’ve all worried that that’s true of ourselves at one time or another, haven’t we?), or Santi Sardina, from back in X-Men Legacy, cursed to inadvertently take credit for everyone else’s successes. Mother Righteous is an expression of the same trend.
There’s a personality type I’ve always found particularly poisonous. It’s a person who might come across on the surface as perfectly charming. They’re interested, they ask questions, they don’t appear to be egotists or narcissists in the standard pattern. They might even seem unfathomably generous. It’s just that whatever interaction you have with these people, however much of yourself you pour into the relationship, somehow they will always be the center of the story. Only their feelings matter. You can feel loved by them, supported by them… and hence never quite stop to realize that the emotional spotlight has never once been pointing at you.
That’s Mother Righteous. You might think she’s a supporting character in your story, but the moment you thank her? The moment you acknowledge that you wouldn’t be where you are, if not for her help? Suddenly she’s the starring role, and you don’t even get a credit.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
As she herself put it: “I am the worm that eats your heart.”
(I wonder what would happen if anyone was ever foolish enough to say “sorry” to her.)
AIPT: X-Fan Citizen M said in X-Men: Before the Fall – Sons of X, it’s revealed that the Spirit of Variance was retroactively erased from existence because of the spell Mother Righteous cast in the aborted timeline of Sins of Sinister. Does that mean Vox Ignis’ presence in Legion of X is now only canon in that timeline or is this something more complicated than that?
SS: Yes.
AIPT: There you go, Citizen M! Now, obviously, Rasputin IV was one of the breakout characters from Powers of X that X-Fans immediately fell in love with and wanted to see more of right away. But the X-Office took its time. I’m wondering if you could share what went into finally pulling the trigger on Rasputin’s reintroduction and the decision to bring her to present Krakoa in the grand X-tradition of characters like Rachel Summers and Bishop.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Kieron: I don’t want to say too much about this, but a lot is as where we are in the story, we want to start to reintegrate elements from the start of the story (because that’s how story structure works). Even aside from that, Sins of Sinister is highly informed by Powers of X, in how it shares a +10/+100/+1000 structure. Rasputin makes a lot of sense as someone to bring in, especially as she was someone who existed because of Sinister anyway. It’s very Powers of X. Powers of Sinister was one of the possible titles for the book, which was struck off the long list due to it being an unfortunate but character-accurate acronym. Sinister really is one.
AIPT: Finally — completely unrelated to Sins of Sinister but very important for comics journalism in general — X-Fan Neddie Bro said Al and Kieron alluded to being hooked on Marvel Snap in their X-Men Monday #200 interview. Are there any cards or combos in the game that have added inspiration to stories you’ve written or plan to write?
Kieron: I’m planning to start bringing America Chavez into every single story in the last panel.
Al: I never expected the most important character I ever created for Marvel to be the Infinaut! Expect him to team up with Sunspot, She-Hulk, and Psylocke in the near future. You can skip issue #5 of that, though — nothing happens.
AIPT: And on that note, thanks as always for stopping by X-Men Monday, Al, Kieron, and Si!
Before we wrap, how about a few eXclusive Joshua Cassara preview images from X-Men #23, courtesy of our friends at Marvel?
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Until next time, X-Fans, stay exceptional!
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