Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!
We’re back for the second (and final) part of our deep dive into the biggest mysteries of the Krakoan era — according to all the X-Fans who submitted questions. The online reactions to part one were very calm and completely normal, so I expect the responses to part two to be no different.
Let’s find out as X-Men Senior Editor Jordan D. White weighs in!
AIPT: Alright, Jordan, this was another big one. X-Fans Alex Pryor, Jace Lacob, Joel, Lovedxmenred, and Sinister asked: What did Reed Richards whisper to Charles Xavier at the first Hellfire Gala?
Jordan D. White: Oh, great question. I don’t know… something threatening. [Laughs]
We haven’t revealed it, obviously. My guess would be something to do with Reed saying, “Did you really think I would just sit here and let you steal something from my mind?” Maybe when we put that in, Gerry Duggan was thinking Reed already had the knowledge back. Or maybe it was something about Franklin.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: The fascination with those two panels is so interesting. It’s been years now and X-Fans are still wondering. But it’s also inspired funny memes and led to discussions — like similar moments in other media. The end of Lost in Translation comes to mind. I’m not sure it needs an explanation.
Jordan: The big one I can remember is Nick Fury whispering something to Thor that made him unworthy. Oh, and Mary Jane whispering to Mephisto. That’s a classic.
AIPT: She was asking Mephisto to set her up with Paul.
Jordan: Yeah, “Let me describe to you my perfect man.”
AIPT: [Laughs]
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Jordan: But this is another example where we put something down thinking this will be a tool we can use. And it turned out to be one that we didn’t come back to. That may be an answer you hear a lot, and with a batch of these questions in a row, you may say, “Whoa, what a bunch of idiots. They don’t ever do anything with their stuff.” But there are also a million more that we did use. But it’s not 100% of the time. I don’t even know if it’s 50% of the time.
But so many of the times when something happens where you would say, “Oh, it all came together perfectly,” is us providing the opportunity to bring something together perfectly rather than arriving at an outcome and then retrofitting it. It’s more that we go, “I’m going to make sure that I have access to all of these threads so that when it’s time to tie a knot, I’ve got all the threads.”
That’s part of the skill of being a comic book writer in long-form storytelling. Because here’s the thing, you’re going to be using your threads, but you’ve also got the threads from the previous run, and the previous run before that, and so on. Sometimes, those threads are even more important than the ones you’ve dropped.
AIPT: X-Fan Dabid K. asked: Is Darwin still in the Vault? He didn’t appear in the Children of the Vault mini-series and hasn’t been mentioned.
Jordan: Presumably? Not too much I can say about that. But presumably, yeah. Or somewhere. He was in the backup that went with Forge at one point, so maybe he’s in the Cradle. He could be in any number of places.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: X-Fan PoundsOfLove asked: Kid Apocalypse/Genesis never made his return. Did the Quiet Council discuss his resurrection the same way they discussed Madelyne Pryor’s? And if so, who voted against his return?
Jordan: So this is very much one of those questions I was referring to where I said I’m not going to sit here and make up canon. I’m not going to write a scene for you. I think you have to assume that they must have. Who voted what? I don’t know, maybe Apocalypse filibustered going, “I will not allow this to happen.”
AIPT: X-Fan NeverLoseHope asked: Wayyyyy back in House of X, we learned Xavier overwrote his own mind with a backup. Twice. What’s the deal with that?
Jordan: That’s messed up, right? That’s the deal with that. Xavier’s a messed up dude.
But again, Jonathan Hickman was creating this idea of resurrection and how it works, what the backups are, and how that happens. This idea that we believe they are the same characters still, but also they’re missing their deaths and the part between the last time they were backed up. It was very interesting and weird and creepy. And then the possibility became that, well, if they have all these backups, you could bring someone back from an earlier backup. And, you know, Xavier is the only one who’s known about it. So the idea that he has backed himself up from earlier versions on purpose is kind of creepy and weird. And it does kind of invite you to go… why? What would’ve caused him to do that? And we did not answer that question.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
I can theorize. Did he go too far? Did he do something that even he regretted and go, “I not only wish I didn’t do that, but I also don’t even want to know I did that.” [Laughs] “I don’t even want the possibility to unlock that. I know that I did that, so I need to be a version of me who didn’t do that yet.”
That’s just me spitballing. But again, it’s another place where a story possibility was opened up and it was a door we didn’t open and a hallway we didn’t walk down. It doesn’t mean it can’t happen and it would be a flashback story. People could maybe do it in the next era or the era after that. Or you could do it when you become an X-Men writer, reader.
AIPT: Inspiring! This next one was funny. X-Fan KrakoaForever asked: I am very impressed by Woofer who was introduced in X-Men. And trust me, there have been very long discussions and arguments (in Wikipedia and Marvel fandom) regarding whether he really is an X-Man. Or is he just an honorary X-Man?
Jordan: Well, I don’t know that I’m going to give a definitive answer to this, but I will give a conditional answer to this, which is to say, if Woofer is an X-Man, then that means the thing that made him an X-Man, this idea that everyone who is helping to fight Orchis, is also an X-Man. So if Woofer is an X-Man, then every mutant character who appears in Fall of X helping to fight Orchis counts as well. it becomes an enormous list of characters. But if you want to say all of them are just honorary X-Men, that’s fine.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: I just think it’s funny people are apparently arguing about Woofer.
Jordan: You guys fight it out. Or, don’t fight it out — have a vote.
AIPT: OK, now it’s time for one of those power-level questions. X-Fans Iron and Nana7606 asked: Why are both Jean Grey and Quentin Quire omega-level telepaths when the definition of omega-level implies that only one omega can exist in one specific power field?
Jordan: Says you!
Let me look at the phrasing of the original definition. I know Jonathan wanted to come right out of the gate going, “I’m going to clear up this omega nonsense right away.”
AIPT: [Laughs] He tried!
Jordan: So, I disagree with this question. The definition says, “A mutant whose dominant power is deemed to register or reach an undefinable upper limit of that power-specific classification.” That’s how Jonathan defined it. That does not say anything about there only being one person who can reach that level. There’s a note that if a mutant has multiple powers, probably only one of their powers is omega-level. So talking about Jean Grey not being an omega-level telekinetic and just being an omega-level telepath, which was one that I definitely thought really hard about — which of her powers do we want to say is omega-level? Because as the Phoenix, she does things that, over time, shifted from being basically super telekinesis to being more manipulation of reality. But in those early issues of her using it, it was very much her rearranging atoms with telekinesis.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
So yeah, I don’t believe there’s anything in the definition that says there can be only one. It just means that Quentin and Jean have the same upper limit, which is the highest upper limit that there could possibly be. Does that mean there could be others? Sure. Maybe in time, Polaris will be an omega-level mutant alongside Magneto, you know? I think that in the interest of simplifying and trying to combat power creep, an effort was made to try to say there’s only one person. Because we don’t want to say, “Guess what? The X-Men have like 50 omega-level people on their team.”
But we had a lot of fun conversations later on about omega-level powers because the powers that he’s choosing to showcase here are the ones where it’s most simple to imagine an omega-level mutant. But what’s omega-level claws? Like, is Wolverine an omega-level claw guy? Well, no, you could have bigger claws than him. Oh, OK. [Laughs] Which we kind of talk about too, when we look at Kobak Never-Held, right? He’s the omega of prickly quills. You can’t be more prickly quill than him, man. That’s the upper limit. Is Colossus omega-level metal skin? I don’t know. When you get to those kinds of things, it’s very unclear what omega would even mean.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: Best not to dwell on it and move on to more questions instead. X-Fan Nandes asked: In Giant-Size X-Men: Fantomex, was there any symbolism in the fact the kids in the World were marked with a diamond shape on their foreheads? Also, were there any more plans with Fantomex and Ultimaton?
Jordan: Nope. This is another place where it was putting toys on the table in the hopes that we would come up with something for him. Then we never had anything we wanted to do.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: And while we’re talking about Giant-Size X-Men issues, X-Fans Comicbookfan, Emmanuel, Hank, Jay Sweeney, Lovedxmenred, and Noah Z, asked, will we ever find out about the newly formed AI and Doug in the World at the end of Giant-Size X-Men: Storm? Was that meant to be followed up on?
Jordan: Jonathan has talked about this a bit. So first of all, this is another one of those cases of going, here’s the thing that we could maybe use and us not using it. But Jonathan has also talked about this one specifically because he has revealed that this is something he kind of came up with last minute because he had intended for there to be a very different outcome to this story.
His intention when we started those Giant-Size books was to have Storm be pregnant and have Black Panther’s child. So this was a pivot. This was him going, all right, well we can’t do that. So instead, we’re going to do this. And it seemed like cool stuff. It just never ended up going anywhere.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
The key from Giant-Size X-Men: Magneto was followed up on just recently in Resurrection of Magneto. But even that was Al Ewing kind of making something out of what he had at hand. Because that wasn’t the intention. I mean, I think the intention was that the key had something to do with that entity at the end of Giant-Size X-Men: Storm. But again, that never became a thing.
At one point, an idea was floated that involved the X-Men using the world as a means to battle the Children of the Vault. Because they both have similar time-warping capabilities.
Also, the idea at one point was going to be the World being where Sinister creates Chimeras, because that way he could have hundreds and thousands of years to create Chimeras. But instead of using that, we ended up using Sins of Sinister. So that was a Jonathan suggestion, but then when Kieron Gillen came in, we got the Moira Engine and he ended up using that to do it instead.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: As we wind down, I’ve of course got several questions about Moira MacTaggert. So first, X-Fan Josh Link asked: One thing that has been eating away at me ever since the launch of the current era is what were the redacted portions of Moira’s journal all the way back in Powers of X #6?
Jordan: It was just cool, dude. [Laughs] It was both cool and a way to go, “Guess what? You’re not getting the whole story” so we can add more to it later.
AIPT: Redactions have never been cooler. Next, X-Fan Alex Pryor asked: Was there a planned story that would answer why Moira had the Destiny Diaries at the end of X-Men #20?
Jordan: No, that was a surprise to me when Jonathan wrote that. I was like, “Oh.” [Laughs] That was just him again, kind of throwing in a thing from X-Men history that was a big deal that seemed to fit and make sense. And it did. Moira and Destiny have this whole standoff back-and-forth thing. So the idea that Moira would have them and be using them or be using them as some guidance to augment her own abilities or use them to help thwart Destiny in various ways just seemed to make sense. But it wasn’t like there was a plan for, “Then in this key moment, she should pull it out and read it.” It was just she already knows way more than she should. And guess what? Now she knows even more than she should.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: And then X-Fans Nicholas and Sinister’s failed clone wanted to follow up on something Jonathan said to our friend Connor Goldsmith on his CEREBRO podcast. Both mentioned how Jonathan shared that Moira was not meant to be the Krakoan era’s main villain. No one would have seen the main villain coming.
Jordan: I’m not going to reveal who was going to be the villain. It’s a character that readers would be extremely surprised would become the villain because you really would not have expected it. But we’re not at the place where I think it’s appropriate to talk about that yet for a few reasons. One of which is I believe strongly that it would not have been a good idea to continue with the plan as it was very first conceived. And I know saying that is just going to make people desperately want to hear it, but I don’t think that now is the time to talk about it. This is like a 20-years-from-now kind of thing.
AIPT: OK, so X-Men Monday #1,000.
Jordan: You know what? 1,000 is probably too soon. You can get there — it comes out every week.
AIPT: Maybe you can talk more about this next Moira question. X-Fans Mark and Sinister’s failed clone were curious about the original plans for Moira, pre-her transformation in X Deaths of Wolverine. Anything you can share?
Jordan: So Al seemed like a really great choice to write the Moira book. And at one point, he did want to call it X-Men Forever. When Jonathan pitched it to him, it was very much to do a book that would have secrets revealed from her past lives. And I think at one point Al was talking about what he wanted to do, and he really wanted to set it in one of her lives. And I forget which one — if I had to guess, it was life four. That’s the one that seems fairly similar to our universe. Not quite, but it was close, right? I think that was the one he was going to spend most of his time in.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
She’s an interesting character. She’s gone really bad and she was pushed there. I think she was a flawed character to begin with. I mean, you saw before she became pro-mutant, she had to be threatened with extreme pain and death to become pro-mutant. And that’s the kind of thing that makes you go, “Well, hang on. So then is she really pro-mutant or is she just really anti-pain and death?”
But regardless, she still did a number of good things over the years, obviously. And maybe if it weren’t for Mystique and Destiny, she wouldn’t have gone bad. And I know, I blame them but then you go, “Yeah, but isn’t it her fault that they were so mad at her in the first place?” Yeah, sure. 100% She prevented Destiny from being reborn for a long time. But again, they’re really bad people. They’re not good people most of the time. Anyway, she got pushed too far and she ended up going very, very bad.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: Alright, and finally, we have three questions that essentially ask the same thing.
X-Fan KingdomX asked: Were there any pitches that came your way during the Krakoa era that you would have liked to see come to fruition?
X-Fan Uncanny X-Drew asked: Were there any concepts that didn’t make it past the pitch stage, or wound up differently from the original pitch?
X-Fan Blondechyna asked: Can you mention any ideas for books that were ultimately scrapped due to changes in the X-Office? Miss you already!
That last bit’s nice. But what have you got for us?
Jordan: I mean, there were definitely things we wanted to do that didn’t happen. I get hesitant to say all of them because the creators may still want to try to do them.
I’ll say Vita Ayala had a pitch for a New Mutants book for the Fall of X that I think would’ve been really great and I really wanted to see happen. I’m sad that it didn’t happen. I don’t want you to bother Vita, but if you’re at a convention, maybe you could say, “Hey, what was the Fall of X book you were going to do that didn’t get to happen?” Maybe they’ll be willing to tell you. But again, maybe they’re going to do that book somewhere else — which is totally their right.
AIPT: [Quick side note, X-Fans — Jordan did talk a bit about Fall of X series that never were in X-Men Monday #223, in case you missed it. Put those puzzle pieces together!]
Jordan: Here’s another one that I’m going to tell you to go talk to the writer about. But Ben Percy, upon hearing about resurrection, had an idea for a story right off the bat that we were like, “Oh, Ben, that’s a really awesome story and we love it. But that is exactly the kind of story we don’t want to do with resurrection at the beginning of this. Like, that is the kind of story that maybe you can do like two or three years into it once we’ve already established the rules of how that works.” This was an X-Force story he wanted to do. And as we moved forward through it, that story morphed beyond all recognition into X Lives and X Deaths of Wolverine. So basically, it was completely unrecognizable. The actual thing that he pitched was super cool, it just never ended up being used, and instead, a totally different story happened. I’m sad we never got around to it. Ask Ben about that.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
And also, X Deaths of Wolverine — that name came from a pitch that I think was from Jonathan, going, “Hey, we should do a story like this.” But again, it morphed into something completely different. That initial story was the 10 deaths of Wolverine being the 10 secret kill missions that he was sent on that he doesn’t know about because he was killed and resurrected every time. That would’ve been a really fun story, but again, it never fit with what we were doing at the time. Jonathan wasn’t going to write it — he thought Ben should do this story. But yeah, it just never fit in with the plans.
And, I mean, I really wanted to do more Exterminators. [Laughs]
Finally, I can say we were going to do the transition into Fall of X very differently than we ended up doing it. The first Hellfire Gala was a crossover, not a one-shot. The second one was a one-shot. I wanted it to go back to it being a crossover, but I wanted it to be this fakeout where we would go, “Hey, guess what? There’s a new Hellfire Gala crossover — look at all these beautiful costumes.” But then, either in a one-shot or in X-Men, we do the thing we were already planning at that time, which is Orchis strikes and they have to send all the mutants off the planet.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
And therefore, all of the crossover issues were billed as Hellfire Gala crossovers, but they’re actually the beginning of the Fall of X. Maybe they start with a page or two at the Hellfire Gala, but then suddenly this book is thrown into this dark and devastating era. And we wanted to continue them with the actual titles of the books rather than do mini-series and stuff. Like, here’s New Mutants in that time, and here’s the book in this time. That would’ve been really fun.
AIPT: That sounds cool. But you know what? I think you’ve solved just about every mystery.
Jordan: Again, I’m sorry that so many of the answers were, “Yeah, we thought maybe we’d do something with it and we didn’t.” But that’s really how so much of this works. It’s an important lesson and an important skill to take away. When the writers of Breaking Bad talk about making that show, it’s the same kind of thing. They tried to set up really useful and exciting things that they could pay off later, but they don’t always know what that payoff is going to be until they get there.
A show I never watched is called Justified. But I used to listen to a podcast called The Writers Panel — Ben Blacker’s podcast. And I remember they would talk to the writers of that show and it was always fascinating because that was a show where the people would praise it for that very thing — going it’s so well planned out and everything comes together so perfectly. And then they would have the writers on and they’d be like, “Not at all.” [Laughs] It’s not planned out — it’s about the execution. They were able to set things up and then the viewers were saying these people were doing such a good job that it seems like everything was planned out. That’s all execution.
AIPT: A good note to end on. Jordan, thank you very much for your transparency in fielding all these questions and, hopefully, bringing some closure to X-Fans’ lives. Especially anybody getting into arguments about Woofer.
Hey, rather than arguing, check out these eXclusive preview images, courtesy of Jordan!
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Until next time, X-Fans, stay exceptional!
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