Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!
X-Fans, you certainly don’t need me to tell you how bleak things have gotten for mutantkind following this year’s disastrous Hellfire Gala. But times like these call for a different breed of X-Men: Dark X-Men.
And X-Men with a horror tinge? Well, they need a writer who loves frights just as much as Marvel’s merry mutants. Fortunately, Steve Foxe of X-Men ’92: House of XCII and All Eight Eyes fame was up for the job. And fortunately for you, loyal X-Men Monday reader, Steve was up for answering a few X-Fan questions about Dark X-Men #1 and what comes next (even in the distant future). Steve’s always so thoughtful with his answers, so you’re in for a treat. Let’s get started.
Courtesy of stevefoxe.com
AIPT: Welcome back to X-Men Monday, Steve!
Steve: Thanks for having me back, Chris! Always a pleasure.
AIPT: So, since you can’t have the Dark X-Men without their fearless leader Madelyne Pryor, we’re going to kick things off with a few Maddie questions. First, X-Fan Megara Frost wanted to know what inspired your characterization of Madelyne Pryor. Dark X-Men #1 was exactly what Megara was hoping for in a Maddie-led comic — she was perfect (and Alex was there too), so Megara’s really curious where you pulled from for inspiration.
Steve: Glad you dug our debut, Megara! I was wildly intimidated when Jordan White hit me up about a Maddie-led team. This is a character defined by Louise Simonson and Chris Claremont, and then brought into the modern day by Zeb Wells and Gerry Duggan. Those are big demonic shoes to fill.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Because her characterization has evolved so much, from a seemingly “normal” pilot to a sorceress driven mad by grief and manipulation, I really wanted to build off of her more recent appearances, both the game-changing “Dark Web” and Vita Ayala’s work with Maddie in New Mutants. But the “Outback” era where Maddie really came into her own as a capable young woman is also an important touchstone for me. More than anything, I think Maddie is CONFIDENT. Even when the reader may think she’s wrong, Maddie is sure she’s right. She’s not someone who’s going to pause and doubt herself once she’s made up her mind, and that’s what helped me find a distinct voice for her among other powerful women in the X-line. I also just never wanted her to be hysterical. Some amazing storylines have come out of Maddie losing it, but we’ve been there and done that. This Maddie is in charge of herself, even though her ways may be a little wicked compared to most X-people.
AIPT: This next question touches on that confidence — X-Fan Alex_of_X wanted to congratulate you on a great, exciting, beautiful first issue and said, under your pen, Madelyne is confident, self-assured, and keeping busy. It’s very akin to Jean Grey, as your colleague Gerry Duggan writes her. In fact, the makeup of your squad: Maddie, a Summers brother, and a motley crew in a tall tower is an exact mirror of the treehouse X-Men team. Was this mirroring a conscious, structural decision of yours or something that came naturally as you wrote the series?
Steve: Thanks, Alex_of_X! I hope you don’t mind what we did to our Alex.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
The mirrored team was definitely in my mind, but wasn’t a deciding factor. In addition to a psychic redhead and a Summers brother, we’ve got a devilish teleporter and a hairy guy with claws. But I knew that theme would feel a little too labored if I tried to make it fit across the board (I did consider trying to get Dark Beast’s head into the book, though!), especially as it wouldn’t really make sense with Gambit and Warren there.
I haven’t said this elsewhere, but an initial way I built the team was actually based on monster archetypes: the witch (Maddie), the vampire (Emplate), the mad scientist/Igor (Zero), Frankenstein (Albert), the devil (Azazel), the werewolf (metamorph Carmen Cruz), and a role for Havok that would be a spoiler if I typed it out here. It’s not really important to how the dynamics played out in the story, but was a fun, useful way to guide my initial cast brainstorms. I guess that makes Gambit Van Helsing…?
AIPT: Gambit: Vampire Hunter? Blowing up vampires with kinetically-charged stakes? Make it happen, Marvel! Now, X-Fan Hedgewitch250 wanted to know how you feel Alex has changed in the time since he left the X-Men. Alex said he’s gone to see a therapist but it’s pretty clear his and Maddie’s relationship isn’t a very balanced or healthy one (at least, in Hedgewitch250’s opinion). What are your Alex thoughts, Steve?
Steve: Listen, I love Havok. I have always loved Havok, since I first saw his Larry Stroman outfit as a kid. But I also understand that Alex’s role is to strive to be better or more consistent than he usually is in practice. Even X-Factor, his defining run, features him freaking out and abandoning his team when things get really tough. He’s the archetypal Kid Brother, though I think he’s exceeded that role and had a lot of standout moments. If Alex stumbles in Dark X-Men, it’s not because I think he’s a lesser character — it’s because I think he’s fascinating to watch stumble and try to recover. And I think leaving the X-Men and moving into the Limbo Embassy has, against all odds, given him a bit more clarity and purpose. He’s not being held up against Scott and some of the finest X-Men to ever serve on the team. He’s helping shape a team of monsters into a somewhat stable approximation of the X-Men. He went from being the Varsity benchwarmer to coaching the unruly misfit team that can’t stop breaking things.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Alex and Maddie are a fun couple to me because it’s not particularly balanced or healthy, but I think it’s genuine. In their own ways, they really love and care about each other, but because of their different life paths and current stations, they’re not a couple who fit together as easily as, say, Rogue and Gambit often do. And for a book called Dark X-Men, we can’t have a central romance that’s uneventful and guaranteed to work out in the end. They aren’t Jean and Scott. Although, hey, which couple made it through the Hellfire Gala alive and intact? That’s right.
AIPT: Ouch! X-Fan echo was wondering, given the theme of the book and this team, if the discussions of “respectable minorities” and the queer people that completely break the mold of heteronormativity and are sometimes seen as “a shame to the community” played any part in the writing these specific characters given their status within the mutant community.
Steve: I appreciate questions like this, and it’s something I’ve talked (and thought!) about at length before. Carmen Cruz may be the only explicitly queer cast member, but I am a gay man and my life experiences are always going to inform my work, whether I’m writing a “gay book” or not.
However, I’ve always held that mutants are an intrinsically imperfect metaphor for marginalized people because real-world bigots hate and fear us irrationally; anti-mutant bigots really could get blown up if a mutant tween sneezes wrong. There’s no way to map that 1:1 over real-world communities.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
But what I think so often resonates with marginalized readers, and queer readers in particular, is that the X-Men push back against a world that hates and fears them, and they find joy and catharsis and chances to feel exceptional while doing so. And I can certainly see why someone like Maddie appeals to queer readers, since she’s an outcast due to the circumstances of her birth but she fought the world to carve out her own way to be a queen. I mean…hello.
And yeah, most of the cast of Dark X-Men have visible mutations or were out of place on Krakoa (or initially not even allowed, like Maddie). I think Krakoan society is a noble project and we’re not tearing down the idea of it here, but it’s undeniable that “everyone has a chance to belong” plays out differently in theory than in practice — ask any queer person who’s ever felt unwelcome in a queer space for one reason or another. You’ll see some of that tension very directly with Emplate in Dark X-Men #3.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
I think there’s something to the idea that Maddie’s team is unabashedly itself, monstrousness and all, but I hesitate to say Dark X-Men is particularly inspired by themes of bucking assimilation or respectability politics. Yes, Maddie and co. are unafraid to treat Orchis the way they deserve to be treated, but the same is true of Shadowkat and Captain America right now. Azazel and Emplate aren’t misunderstood — they’re horrid. And horrid monsters are a lot of fun to write and, hopefully, read about, but I don’t want readers waiting to see their buried hearts of gold. Some mutants are unfairly marginalized. Some are eeeeeeevil. And this marginalized person loves writing the evil ones, too.
AIPT: Speaking of hearts of gold, X-Fan Kristen said you’ve mentioned that Gambit is one of the golden hearts of the Dark X-Men story. What about him and/or his history made him a good fit for that role on the team?
Steve: Part of it is just how the scales balanced out once the cast was assembled. If you were comparing Remy to most X-Men lineups, yeah, he’s still the edgy street rat at the fringes. But compared to the hell-raisers on this squad, he’s practically a saint. And it helps set the tone for Dark X-Men if we come out of the gate establishing Gambit as the upstanding one.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Part of it was also just wanting to be true to his evolved portrayal over the years. Much of Gambit’s last couple of decades, or at least since his early-2000s stint as Death, have been about rounding him out as a character, whether that’s giving him adorable cats (who are off-panel and unharmed during Dark X-Men) or finally having him and Rogue tie the knot in what I consider one of the more successful, sensible, and stable comic-book couplings. It would be a disservice to years of stories, some as recent as a few months ago, if I suddenly had Gambit be an amoral jerk here. He’s proven himself as a reliable X-Man and that’s something this squad — and the impressionable young Carmen Cruz — badly needed.
AIPT: X-Fan, X-Writer, and X-Men Monday alumnus Alex Segura, as you know, loved the first issue. Alex thought that while Dark X-Men #1 felt very NEW and evocative, it also felt like it nodded to the past in really meaningful ways. Is there a specific X-era that you felt this book was riffing off? And are there runs/periods of the X-books that resonate with you as a reader and writer?
Steve: HEY ALEX! If folks reading this haven’t checked out Alex’s Polaris serial on X-Men Unlimited, scroll over there ASAP. And look out for an announcement in the next few months that involves both of us…
Superhero comics are soap operas, and there’s a degree to which you want to acknowledge what came before you to reward and reaffirm for the reader that it “matters” and their continued investment is a smart one. You don’t want to get bogged down in nodding to the past, though, and you certainly don’t want to end up creating a story in the present that requires readers to have perfect recall of decades-old ephemera.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
On a conscious level, I was really just trying to firmly situate this in the landscape of Fall of X, and to communicate the dire tone of the current era. While the Outback era was an important touchstone for Maddie and Alex, I don’t know that I was trying to evoke it in any particular ways while writing Dark X-Men, though I suppose that was also an era where the team wasn’t welcome in their normal turf and had set up shop in an unusual locale, with some weird new teammates. Hmm, is it too late to add Longshot to Dark X-Men…?
I hesitate to even say this, because good GOD do I not need this kind of comparison held against me, but when I finished writing Dark X-Men and was reading back several issues at once, it did dawn on me that my love for Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, and co.’s New X-Men unconsciously guided my hand quite often. Morrison is my favorite writer and I don’t actively try to mimic or channel them — the number of folks who’ve fallen flat on their face trying is easily in the triple digits — but there are qualities I recognized looking at Dark X-Men as a whole that I could see I had internalized from New X-Men, including a fondness for freaks, casual power flexes, downplayed emotional beats, etc. I had to stop myself from thinking about it too much, but on some level, the resonance is inescapable.
AIPT: X-Fan Jeff said THANK YOU for bringing back Phantazia! Will we get to find out her “reasons” for being there, and to see her do more as the series progresses?
Steve: HEY JEFF.
No.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Listen, if I had known how much X-readers were going to enjoy Phantazia and a one-panel joke about the Mastermind sisters, maybe the Dark X-Men cast would look different, but I can’t in good faith mislead anyone. Dark X-Men #1 is the most you’ll see of our wonderfully mysterious Phantazia. At least this confirms she’s back in mutant action, so maybe other writers will pick her up.
But hey, once you see what happens to some of the other mutants on that spread, you may be glad I didn’t keep her around…
AIPT: I thought that was the mutated Nightcrawler from Dennis Hopeless and Javier Garron’s Battleworld Inferno series (and later, Dennis and Mark Bagley’s New X-Men and Cullen Bunn’s X-Men Blue) on the cover to Dark X-Men #3. What makes this other Goblin Queen the perfect foil for your seemingly more stable and respectable Goblin Queen?
Steve: I think a lot of readers had no idea who that was on the final page! Which is fine, because the visuals make it clear what she is, if not who, and Dark X-Men #2 fills in anything else anyone would need to know to appreciate her role in Dark X-Men.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Honestly, we went back and forth quite late into the game on who Maddie’s foil would be for this series. I don’t want to say who else we considered, because there are other plans for some of those characters, but no one felt right and the book wasn’t working. Both on a thematic level and on an in-universe level, finding someone who could give Maddie a run for her money without feeling too random was TOUGH.
Ultimately, the only character I could fathom standing up to Maddie was… Maddie. And as you said above, we’re looking at a Maddie who’s more stable than she’s ever been since learning about her origins. She got to (briefly) make peace with Jean Grey and carve out a space for herself in the 616. So coming face to face with a version of herself who took a very different path will challenge that in ways that are hopefully exciting and illuminating.
Jonas also pushed her design into more demonic territory, to reflect what she’s been up to since we’ve seen her last. But I can’t stress enough that readers absolutely do not NEED to track down three or four other books to understand Dark X-Men. If you read those series, great, hopefully, this was a fun pop for you. If you haven’t, everything you need to know about every cast member will be explained in the course of Dark X-Men itself.
Plus: BAMF DRAGON.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: So, aside from a Bamf Dragon, what comes next in Dark X-Men?
Steve: A lot of carnage, truthfully (and that’s not coded — there are no symbiotes). I’m extremely lucky to be working with Jonas Scharf and Frank Martin on this book, and each issue ups the horror factor. Once I saw what Gerry and Stefano Caselli had freaking Kitty Pryde doing to Orchis, I knew we had to turn up the trauma.
Dark X-Men #2 reveals the fates of some of the characters we saw previously wounded (or worse) in #1, reveals much more about the foes facing Maddie’s upstart X-Men, and also sees them going on their first rescue missions as a full “team,” if you can call them that. Plus a character gets a new codename! Let’s see if they survive long enough to enjoy it…
AIPT: Finally, it’s become something of an X-Men Monday tradition for you to tease X-projects on the distant horizon (Dark X-Men was teased in December 2022 and then again in March 2023). SO, for all the curious — and patient — Betsy Braddock and Rachel Summers fans hungry for information, what can you say about this juicy nugget from Gerry Duggan’s X page?
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Steve: Gerry who? Sorry, I have no idea what this is referring to.
I kid, I kid, though Gerry did tease this PRETTY early compared to publishing plans. What I can say is that neither character appears in Dark X-Men, though I am writing both… and not in the same place. (They are NOT splitting up, so don’t start harassing me!)
I’d guess we have a few months still before I can say anything more concretely here — and a few X-surprises BEFORE then that no one’s going to guess, like my chance to finally write one of my lifetime favorites and a story involving a character I got asked about quite a bit last winter…
AIPT: Some good teases, and now I need X-Fans to ID that character Steve got asked about a lot last winter. But on that note, I’ll let you get back to writing, Steve. Thanks, as always, for stopping by X-Men Monday!
And speaking of teases, here’s an eXclusive look at what’s coming our way, courtesy of X-Men Senior Editor Jordan D. White.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Domino — clearly in search of more X-scoops. But you’ll have to wait until next Monday, Domino. Sorry!
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.