Comic Books

X-Men Monday #317 – Tony Fleecs Talks ‘Omega Kids’

Plus, an eXclusive look at ‘Omega Kids’ #2!

October 27, 2025

Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!

After a short multiversal detour, we return to the Age of Revelation. Specifically, one of the darker corners of this twisted future: Quentin Quire’s spy network. I’m, of course, talking about Omega Kids. As the first issue’s already on sale, you’ve no doubt met Quentin’s sinister psychics, Ayla, Curtis, Nell, and Bailey. (And if you haven’t, go pick up a copy, as it was quite good!)

If you want to know more about this series, how it came together, and take a peek inside Quentin’s “disgusting” head (Phoebe Cuckoo’s words, not mine!), then you’re in luck. Let’s see what Omega Kids writer Tony Fleecs has to say.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: Welcome to X-Men Monday, Tony! Before we delve into Omega Kids, as this is your first time visiting the column, I was wondering if you could share your first X-Men eXperience.

Tony Fleecs: The first one I really remember having an impact was Jim Lee on adjectiveless X-Men #3. That was the first book I ever got from a comic book store. The one that made me want to come back and get more. I didn’t know it was Chris Claremont‘s last issue at the time, or even who Chris Claremont was or what he meant — I just knew Jim Lee was drawing stuff that I couldn’t even understand being made by human hands.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: So, Omega Kids — how did the opportunity to play in the Age of Revelation sandbox come about? Was a series focused on Quentin Quire’s spy network something you pitched?

Tony: I was in the middle of writing The Thing mini-series for editors Darren Shan and Tom Brevoort. Darren reached out to me originally, I think because he had been a fan of my creator-owned book, Local Man (available now in trade paperback and hardcover from Image Comics). They came to me for this one with a title (which I thought was really clever) and a loose idea — Quentin runs a spy network for Revelation, made up of psychic kids — which I think came straight from Jed MacKay.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: I devoured those Local Man trade paperbacks, so any collection gets my endorsement! Now, some Quentin questions. First, X-Fan Jay (Number 1 Quentin Fan) pointed to the fact that many of the characteristics that define Quentin are tied to him being a rebellious teenager. So, for Omega Kids, how did you approach writing a more grown-up Quentin? And then X-Fan Carl (with a C) said Kid Omega, the great (read: delightfully insufferable) rebel, is now running what’s basically Revelation’s secret police. What was the journey on your side of the page to reconciling the nature of a character like Quentin Quire with a version who has, for lack of a better idiom, “sold out”?

Tony: Figuring this part out… or what my take on it was, was my key to unlocking how to write grown-up Quentin. It was a lot of thinking about old punks or grown-up scene kids, moms and dads you see at the park, and you can tell they used to be trouble. And now they have kids and maybe a mortgage, but there’s still an edge to them… They’d still fuck up a skinhead if he showed up at Gymboree.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

And then the other part was — I just thought about, what does Quentin believe in? In his “Riot at Xavier’s” days, he was about mutant liberation by any means necessary. And through the years, he’s learned from a bunch of different teachers and mentors and grown and changed, But I thought about Doug coming to him, someone who’s around the same age and now nearly as powerful — after everything Quentin’s been through, Xavier’s School, he lives in a jar, Phoenix stuff, Jean Grey School, Krakoa, he dies a million deaths, now the X-Men — and Doug is saying, “This is how we do it. Mutant liberation. Mutant paradise.”

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

I feel like a mature Quentin gets on board with that idea. Now… is Doug being straight with him? Is this really a paradise? That’s for Jed MacKay to figure out. I’m just showing you Quentin as he is in this moment.

AIPT: X-Fan Isaiah Meehan wants to know more about the four titular Omega Kids. Anything you can share about what went into developing these four new mutant kids?

Tony: Hey Isaiah — So, I’m a writer AND an artist — before this part of my career, I was mainly an artist on licensed kids comics. So, I always think about stuff like this visually first. I’m not actually sketching (because we had an amazing artist in Andres Genolet, who I knew would do a much better job than I would), but I am thinking of silhouettes — if you stand all these characters together, I want them to be identifiable. I want there to be some variation.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

I knew I wanted there to be a little Village of the Damned girl and a goat girl… I knew one of them saw only with their mind, and I wanted there to be a boy who was husky… different heights — different shapes, and THEN I started thinking about who had what kind of personality and how they fit together. As for powers, I knew they were all psychic, so then it was just figuring out which kids had which kind of psychic powers.

And I’m a ’90s kid, so I knew one of them needed to have psionic blades.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: Of course. And who was your favorite Omega Kid to write?

Tony: Bailey is fun because she’s a cute little kid who says unhinged, violent shit. But I think I like writing Ayla best — whoever gives Quentin the hardest time… that’s who I like writing the most.

AIPT: Seeing psychic Quentin train and mentor young mutants makes me think of another famous psychic: Charles Xavier. As telepathic teachers, how would you say Quentin and Charles are similar?

Tony: Well, neither of them mind putting children into dangerous situations. But I think beyond being wildly irresponsible, they’re pretty different. For one thing, Quentin is much more concerned with whether or not the kids like him than Charles was.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: Speaking of psychics, Omega Kids also promises an appearance by Rachel Summers. X-Fan Nathan X asks what Rachel’s headspace is X years in the future.

Tony: I felt like, with Rachel — having her in a post-apocalypse where mutants hunt other mutants was really interesting. And with this being X years in the future — how far removed are we from her being used as a hound to hunt her own kind? What’s somebody who’s been through that doing in a world like this?

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: Like Sinister’s Six and X-Men: Book of Revelation, Omega Kids very much seems like one of the event’s villain-focused series, operating in the moral gray area of this upside-down future. As a writer, what do you find appealing about a series like this and its cast?

Tony: I don’t want to spoil too much, but it was an interesting problem for me to tackle: Writing someone who’s maybe fighting on the wrong side. And because it’s a tie-in — this isn’t necessarily the story about them figuring out that they’re on the wrong side… So, I’m just writing from the POV of someone who’s 100% sure that this crazy stuff that they’re doing is for the best. A true believer. And the kids have their own thoughts about it, and the rebels and the guest stars all have different ideas about it… But Quentin really thinks he’s doing the right thing for mutantkind: Teaching mutant kids to kill other mutants for a seemingly fascist dictator.

Courtesy of Marvel Comics

AIPT: Finally, how was collaborating with Omega Kids artist Andres Genolet? The first issue’s artwork was stunning.

Tony: A dream. I was a big fan of Andres already. Rainbow Rowell is a comic book writer whom I’ll read anything they do. And Andres drew big chunks of both her Runaways and her She-Hulk. So, I was psyched to be working with him before he turned in a single sketch. But then, when the pages he drew for this started to roll in — you could tell he was leveling up. More spot blacks, sharper angles — this feels like X-MEN ART! A little Stuart Immonen, I see a little Marc Silvestri, but it’s all Andres. And then Fer Sifuentes-Sujo on colors? Vibrant colors, bold cuts and grads, and textures… Big bright purple and blue Chris Bachalo-style knockouts… They just really sing together.

You saw Omega Kids #1. I can’t wait until you see what they do on the rest!

AIPT: And don’t worry, X-Fans — you’ll get a little taste of what comes next in a second. But first, Tony, thanks for stopping by X-Men Monday!

Now, as promised, here’s an eXclusive look at a few pages from Omega Kids #2, on sale November 19, 2025, featuring art from Andres Genolet and colors from Fer Sifuentes-Sujo, courtesy of our friends at Marvel!