Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!
See? I never stopped using “uncanny” because I knew sooner or later, it’d become relevant again. (And if you don’t know what I’m referring to, click here for a recap of last week’s major X-news.)
But we’re not here to talk about what comes after Krakoa quite yet, because the Fall of X is far from over! X-Men Senior Editor Jordan D. White is back to dig into Fall of the House of X #3. And in case you missed our discussions about the series’ first two issues, you can catch up on those here and here.
Spoilers for Fall of the House of X #3 beyond this point.
AIPT: Welcome back to X-Men Monday, Jordan! Since we last spoke, a lot’s happened — including the announcement of X-Men #35/Uncanny X-Men #700 — the conclusion of the Krakoan era. What can you share about this mutant milestone?
Jordan D. White: It’s been our target goal for a while now. Well, let me start by saying, I know some people were questioning the numbering, like, “Is that math accurate?” “Are you guys fudging it?” We’re actually not.
If you go back to Jonathan Hickman‘s first issue of X-Men, the cover says “LGY #645.” Now, that was a mistake — not in that that’s the wrong number. That is the right number if you’re counting this as replacing Uncanny X-Men, which we had just wrapped up a couple months before. But it was a mistake in that I had intended it not to run on this cover. I was saying, “I know legacy numbers are a big thing right now, but we’re distinctly trying to say this is a new era with new things.” But I missed it on this cover and it ran. And that is the accurate number if you consider this a replacement for Uncanny.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Now, that’s also a slightly questionable thing. If I had gone with legacy numbers, I might have said, “Well, it’s called X-Men, not Uncanny X-Men. Though to be fair, the very first issue of Uncanny X-Men didn’t say “Uncanny.” It just said “X-Men,” right? So the argument could be made that this is the main X-Men book. Uncanny X-Men was the main X-Men book most of the time.
Anyway, if you calculate from that issue — which is what we did — it goes straight up to this, which is issue 700. And that is monitored internally at Marvel. It’s not me just going, “Hey, I think it’s about that.” It’s a thing that is checked on and accounted for in our systems. So this is legit issue 700.
Once we figured out that that was coming up — and this was a while back — we did sort of set that as a target goal going, “OK, that’s going to be right around the time we’re going to be wrapping up. So that would be perfect as our grand finale.” So it’s a big, oversized issue. Gerry Duggan, Kieron Gillen, and Al Ewing are all writing in it, and we have a slew of great artists lined up for it. Phil Noto, Joshua Cassara, Lucas Werneck, Stefano Caselli, Jerome Opeña, Leinil Francis Yu — Walter Simonson‘s going to help us out. We’ve got Mark Brooks and Sara Pichelli was very recently added to it. And then there are probably one or two more I can’t quite announce yet.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: So it’s not done yet.
Jordan: It’s still being worked on. We haven’t sent it to press yet. It’s really fun. There’s so much cool stuff in it. I think there are some surprises in there that people will not be expecting. And yeah, it really is the close of our Krakoan era, and I think it’s going to be a nice ending.
AIPT: And in Fall of the House of X #3, Apocalypse enters the battle. X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse was also recently announced. Does that spin out of the Fall of X or is that something else?
Jordan: Well, what I can say is that’s a project that started its existence before Tom Brevoort was lined up as the editor of the new line. It spins out of the stories that we were doing with Apocalypse, but it also hopefully sets up new stories. It’s officially coming out from folks in Tom’s office. I’m not editing, even though I kicked it off at the very, very beginning. But it’s sort of filling a bit of space between the two X-runs, and that’s what it was going to do back when I was going to be relaunching X-Men. It was so we didn’t have to launch X-Men the same month that we wrapped up this X-Men run. So instead, we said, “OK, what’s something fun and exciting we can do in the middle that moves the story forward and does an exciting thing?” We came up with Apocalypse and Steve Foxe is doing a great job of making it a really good book.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: Always a treat getting new Steve Foxe X-Men comics. OK, so in Fall of the House of X #3, we witness the X deaths of Dr. Stasis. It was quite… brutal. Have we finally seen the last of Dr. Stasis?
Jordan: He’s definitely dead, if that’s what you’re asking. But have we seen the end of him? I mean, listen, he’s a Sinister, right? He’s a Nathaniel Essex. How many times has Sinister died? A few, to put it mildly. Does he have contingency plans in place? You never know. This is a real death for him, but his existence only begins after the death of the original Nathaniel Essex, right? So I don’t think that we have to have seen the end of him. Will he be picked back up again? And if so, where?
AIPT: Somewhere in the world, four clones of Dr. Stasis are stepping out of tubes.
Jordan: [Laughs] That would be pretty great. Yeah, then the whole thing is exponential. Every time one of the four dies, four more take their place, and then one of them dies and four more take their place. Absolutely.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: Now, Firestar played a role in that gruesome death, and I wanted to use that as a chance for you to just weigh in on the incredible journey Angelica has had throughout the Krakoan era. She went from being an Avengers character X-Fans (and Gerry Duggan) called a “cop” to an elected member of the X-Men on a top-secret mission for mutantkind.
Jordan: We didn’t use her at all pre-election, right?
AIPT: She was in the promotional image for House of X and Powers of X.
Jordan: Well, lots of people were in that promotional image. [Laughs]
But I had hoped to use her and I had hoped to use Justice as well, because they both are interesting mutant characters. So when we did House of X, I was very much like, “Oh yeah, let’s get both of them on Krakoa.” But none of the writers gravitated toward using them, so they just didn’t get picked for the teams. So they sulked back off to the U.S. No, that’s not true, obviously, but because they just never got picked, we never quite used them. I think maybe Firestar appeared in the background of a scene one time in a group shot or something like that.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
So, because we never used them, when Marvel started cooking the “Outlawed” story, they wanted the New Warriors to be a big part of it. The Avengers Office decided to use all the New Warriors, including Vance and Angie for that. And I’ll be honest with you, I was kind of scandalized by it, not because I thought those were my characters, but because they positioned both of them against vigilante heroes, I think making them really come off badly a bit, in the sense that it was trying to duplicate a little bit of the debate in things like Civil War.
But even with Civil War, pretty much all the readers came down on Captain America’s side, right? And I think something similar happened here. The way that I like to phrase it for why that is, is that most readers are not going to side with the side that thinks the comic they’re reading shouldn’t happen. They want to read the comic. So if the other side is saying, “No comic,” they’re going to go, “Well, I like the version where I do get to read the comic.” So the fact that the readers all sided against them was really sad for them.
And so when the idea came up of her being in the second X-Men Election, we all immediately did bring up that the last time we saw her, she was anti-superhero in some ways. So that whole cop thing came up and I think it was interesting. But I think if you look at Fall of the House of X, it’s also interesting that all three of the election winners are important. Firestar both for helping tip them off to what’s going on in Orchis at the beginning of the series and then here she shows up, they save her, and she kills Stasis. He’s already dead, but she double-kills him. She kills him better. [Laughs]
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
And then you have Juggernaut helping Krakoa and Polaris obviously having a big moment last issue as well.
AIPT: Did you have any sense of how popular Firestar was?
Jordan: Well, I mean, yes and no. I didn’t think the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends vote would make her the clear winner. That was a show from a really long time ago. [Laughs] And X-Men fans aren’t necessarily Spider-Man fans. So even if they do remember it, I was surprised that she took it so easily.
AIPT: Well, we’ve learned from X-Men ’97 that people not only remember their cartoons but they want them back.
Jordan: But in my experience as a person who likes to talk about Spider-Man in an X-Men column, X-Men fans are not Spider-Man fans. [Laughs]
AIPT: OK, let’s discuss Cyclops and Dr. Gregor’s unlikely bond. Early in the issue, Scott says, “You and I have almost everything in common.” What did he mean by that?
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Jordan: Well, the essential truth, I think of much of the history of mutants — and the message of mutants — is that mutants and humans aren’t that different. Mutants are treated terribly by humans because of the differences they have. But at their core, they’re just a different kind of human, right? Like, they’re just humans. For all the talk of, you know, human thinking, human clothes, or human names at the beginning of Krakoa, that’s not because mutants and humans are essentially different at their core. It’s because humans have done so much hurt to mutants that in order to be safe and happy, mutants felt the need to remove themselves from the human’s power and influence.
But I think Scott here is referring back to the fact that in many ways, they are not different, and especially in the context of what he’s talking about in the larger scale of Orchis, that they are not different because they are fleshy bits that are about to be incinerated by the AI, who basically looked at this and said, “Oh, we hate them all. But there’s more of these ones. If we join up with the larger group and just stamp out those mutants quickly, it’ll make our lives so much easier in the long run.” So I think Scott is referring to that. And also, I think he sees her as another person who is driven to protect their people.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Orchis is wrong. I don’t want to be ambiguous about that. Orchis is wrong in every way that matters. Mutants are deserving of all the dignity that all human beings deserve. But also, Dr. Gregor is under the erroneous belief that they are different and that mutants pose an existential threat to her people. And based on that belief, she’s willing to fight and do huge things for her people to protect them. And that’s one of the reasons she created Nimrod. I mean, she was already working on creating Nimrod before her husband died, but her husband dying became a second piece of it. And I think that Scott can understand that part of her as well, even though she’s basing her entire life at this point on false premises. He recognizes something kindred in her in the way she acts on those premises.
AIPT: And then she’s dead by the end of the issue. Based on the shocking death of Dr. Gregor by Nimrod’s robotic hand, are we to assume we’re in the endgame now between AI and humanity that was teased in Inferno?
Jordan: Yeah. I mean, she pushes the issue. She starts asking questions and Nimrod specifically says he is not willing to lie to her, so he’s like, “Instead, I’ll just murder you.” She learns the truth in the worst way possible. The error of her calculations and — part of me wants to say hubris — but also it’s tragic because again, she based the most important part of her life on this extremely false narrative that humans and mutants are different at their core, and it can only be one or the other. And to that end, she created the means of her own death. For Nimrod, there’s no difference between humans and mutants. They’re all beneath him and deserving of death.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: What a nice guy. As we wrap up, what’s coming next in Rise of the Powers of X #3 and Fall of the House of X #4?
Jordan: Rise of the Powers of X #3 features an important meeting between Xavier and Moira MacTaggart, as you can see on the cover of that issue. Although, it happens a little differently on the inside than it appears on the cover.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: It seems like a pretty hostile meeting based on the cover. [Laughs]
Jordan: Well, let’s just say it’s a little different. You’ll see in what way it’s different. Then over in Fall of the House of X #3, things get even bigger from there. They’ve launched a big assault coming from Sentinel City, and we’ll find out more about that. We’ll see if Apocalypse and the cavalry he’s leading can successfully save Krakoa.
And let me clarify one point about that because I’ve seen some confusion there. So that’s on us. I’m sorry that we were unclear. I see that people were interpreting that scene as the mutants of Arakko moving back to Earth, and that’s not what we intended. So I apologize for not being clear enough on that. The intention there from us was, like I said, the cavalry was coming to help with the war — not to abandon Arakko and move back to Earth.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
The Arakki people still live on the planet of Arakko. They are just helping out Earth in its time of need, which shows a big development for them because it shows how much influence Storm had on them and how they look at helping others now.
AIPT: Thanks, Storm! Finally, a variant cover to Fall of the House of X #4 featuring a new Phoenix design was making the rounds last week and causing quite a stir.
Jordan: Yeah, that’s a foreshadowing cover.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: Is that foreshadowing for further along in the Fall of X or something after?
Jordan: I didn’t work on that cover, I’ll tell you that.
AIPT: All right, there you go.
Jordan: Wink! Yeah, the last two issues of Fall of the House of X and Rise of the Powers of X were solicited with foreshadowing variants.
AIPT: So we’ve got more of these to look forward to. Well, on that note, Jordan, thanks as always for stopping by X-Men Monday! And thanks for these eXclusive preview images.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
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! (And yes, after writing this sign-off every week for several years, I’m extremely happy we’re finally getting Exceptional X-Men!)
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