X-Men Monday #325 – Tom Brevoort Talks ‘Shadows of Tomorrow’

Welcome, X-Fans, to the 325th edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!

I hope everybody had a nice holiday season — and apologies for the delay in new editions! That’s what happens when a mutant milestone runs up against the busy end-of-year period. But we’re back now with a GIANT-SIZE edition to make up for the past two Mondays.

I mean, you kind of have to go big when your guest is the Conductor of X himself, Tom Brevoort! Before we get started, let me just say that this edition received a lot of questions from more than 200 X-Fans, and even though Tom and I spoke for over an hour, we just couldn’t get through everything. So if your favorite character doesn’t come up in this conversation, just remember, you’ll have plenty more chances to submit questions about them as X-Men Monday spotlights each of the new Shadows of Tomorrow series in the weeks ahead.

For now, I hope you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation on all things X-Men with Tom!

AIPT: Welcome back to X-Men Monday, Tom! Following the Fall of Krakoa, the From the Ashes era seemed to be a period of reflection, self-discovery, and experimentation for many mutants. But based on what we’ve learned about the Shadows of Tomorrow era so far, it seems mutantkind is exiting the Age of Revelation with a desire to unify and fortify. Is that an accurate interpretation, and, if so, what are some big ways this era will differ from what we saw during From the Ashes, editorially and on the page?

Tom Brevoort: Well, I think to start, while there’s a branding slogan — Shadows of Tomorrow, following Age of Revelation — people have maybe taken more from that than was intended. Really, everything is a continuation of things that have been building up since we took over the books about 18 months ago. We’ll also see a bunch of storytelling that revolves around aspects of things that we saw come to fruition, in a good or a bad way, in the Age of Revelation. 

So that doesn’t have anything to do specifically with the larger question of mutantkind uniting, which I’ll get to in a second, but I just want to set the table. This is not really intended to be a total reset in the same way it was going from the Krakoan era to a post-Krakoan era. This is still the ongoing, continuing soap opera saga of the extended X-Men family. 

Now, in terms of a drive toward unity, it’s kind of an inevitable thing over the course of time. It’s a natural evolution, I think. We very specifically decided to come out of a period where pretty much all of the X-characters lived in one central location, clustered in a big group, and spin them out into various locales, status quos, and different situations to try to create a little bit of disunity, chaos, and interesting story opportunities in having characters with different perspectives sort of push against one another, as the group as a whole tries to figure out what’s the way forward for mutantdom in a post-Krakoa landscape. That sort of played itself out over however many months it’s been, so there’s a natural rejoining of people who have long-established histories, friendships, relationships, rivalries, and antagonisms built in between them. 

I don’t think it’s going to be everybody coming back together into one place again, whether that place is an island or a school. But it does reflect the fact that, yeah, we’re going to see some of our characters begin to come back together in arrangements we haven’t seen up until now, simply because we were working in contrast to what had come before, and now, it’s far enough along that we can start to play with those pieces a little bit more and bring people back together. 

AIPT: From an editorial point of view, did the From the Ashes era produce any learnings you’ve applied to Shadows of Tomorrow, or how you introduce new series into the mix?

Tom: Well, I think there’s nothing but learnings. And it’s not even just learnings about the X-Men — it’s also learnings about the current state of the industry, what people are responding to, what they like, and what they think. I’ve felt from the beginning, and I’m kind of continuing to push in this direction, that the best sort of X-line is an X-line where most of the books function relatively independently and have their own particular direction, ethos, character situations, conflicts, and whatnot, rather than everything kind of being facets of one thing. We do that more or less successfully, and some books are better at it than others. 

Naturally, you’re going to get that no matter what approach you try to get to, but that certainly has seemed, at least for some X-readers, as not feeling good to them. They like a little more connectivity. So, trying to rightsize that and find the balance of that is an ongoing process. And I don’t know that there’s ever any one answer, because as soon as you get something the way one group of fans likes it, another group of fans is unhappy because it’s not the way they prefer it. 

Now that we’ve gotten to the other side of the Age of Revelation and I’ve seen a bunch of the reaction, I think there’s a lot that can be taken from that in terms of event comics. With events, there are always kind of two schools of thought, and the two schools of thought tend to boil down to, “Oh boy, there’s a big event. I want everything to fit together with LEGO-like precision and every single comic to be lockstep with every other comic, and every event to matter and be consequential to every other event.” And that’s just an impossible task. There’s no event that’s ever been done that way. Some of them have been more that way, and some have been less. 

And on the flip side of that, there are people who go, “Oh my god, there’s an event, I just want to read my comic. Why are you getting in the way of me reading my comic by making me pay attention to all these other comics?” So going into the Age of Revelation, we sort of very specifically said, for the most part, we want the books to be able to do the business of their individual books. Some were more tethered to where the story was going and the climax, and others were less tethered. That was, almost across the line, an individual choice on the part of the creators who were working toward that. And Jed MacKay, in writing the event’s finale, had to write an ending that served his story. That was more important than making sure absolutely every tie-in book had some follow-up in the finale.

That having been said, I can understand readers who feel like they read three issues of X-Vengers, and then there was nothing for them in the Finale issue. But I feel like even going back to the source material of the Age of Apocalypse, as a reader and editor of the day, not all of those projects were super essential to the wrap-up in Age of Apocalypse Omega. The advantage that it had was there were fewer tie-in series, so it was maybe easier to get a greater percentage with some tangible impact than what we ended up doing. 

So, again, these are all kinds of walkaway learning things. In terms of launching stuff in Shadows of Tomorrow and moving ahead, I want to go forward with stories we think have merit and value to them. We want stories and characters where there seems to be a hunger or an audience for, and stories and characters being put forward for some demographic that’s not otherwise being served. You know, a different sort of book for every potential reader. 

But that, by definition, kind of means I don’t expect anybody to read every X-book. So inevitably, that means you kind of have to start to fragment the line a little bit more and go, “OK, this book is going to tell a story about Rogue — it’s a Rogue limited series. Will it have an impact on Rogue in Uncanny X-Men? Yes, in the global sense it’s the same character, and there may be things that happened there that Gail Simone, the writer of Uncanny X-Men, wants to carry forward and pick up on. Or it will impact in that it’s the same character, and it becomes part of her backstory and history as you go forward, and future creators can draw upon it as a source of story fodder. 

But I’ve worked too long and too hard to try to make all pieces fit together to no great return in other places to know that it’s kind of a sucker’s game. I would rather there are two or three titles that clump together and are really a network in such a way. But it’s not achievable to ask the audience to devote that much time and money, particularly to buying a whole line of books in the way that maybe was more possible in 1990 when the buy-in was cheaper.

AIPT: I’m reminded of how, in the past, we’ve talked about how no two X-Fans seem to want the same thing. I think Alex Paknadel’s upcoming Cyclops series reflects that. Alex has spoken about how, while Cyclops is set in the current continuity, it’s meant to be a standalone story anybody can pick up, which I think is exciting for Cyclops fans who maybe haven’t been reading the current series or Age of Revelation and want a clean entry point. But then, you see the fans wondering where it fits in and what ramifications it might have on Scott and the X-Men.

Tom: Right, and you can’t do both things. And again, the hope is that, hey, Cyclops just got a big — the way Alex puts it — a big ad for his solo project in the form of a movie trailer for Avengers Doomsday.

But the hope is, if people saw Cyclops in that trailer and wondered what’s going on with him these days in the comics, here’s a project they could check out that’s got a nice ease of entry and tells, hopefully, a foundational and quintessential Cyclops story without a ton of the baggage of what’s going on in eight other different places. I think there’s real value in that. 

My guiding star on a lot of these things, and particularly in terms of the Cyclops series — and I can’t really take a lot of credit for that as the editor on that project is Darren Shan. I’m only tertiary involved. But as Darren will tell you, I talk all the time about that first Wolverine limited series and how it’s one story you can give to anybody. You know everything you need to know about who Wolverine is, what he can do, how he does it, his background, what is known, what is unknown, how he goes about it, his particular code of honor, the way he lives his life, and the struggles that he has within himself. And it’s just four issues, and there are really no references to any other X-stuff in it at all, other than at the end when he sends the wedding invitation back home. 

So that’s what I’d like to get out of a Rogue, Moonstar, or Psylocke book. Characters who maybe haven’t had that spotlight so much, or have in the past or in team situations, but now we’re focusing more concretely on them specifically.

AIPT: Well, speaking of specific characters, X-Men: Age of Revelation Finale revealed that 3K’s Chairman has been the original Beast all along. What made the X-Office want to continue one of the most engrossing character arcs in the First Krakoan Age into this new era?

Tom: That’s been the case the whole way through. Speaking sort of bluntly, when Jordan D. White and Ben Percy were first laying this all out and revealed their resolution — essentially killing off the bad Beast and introducing a new, younger Beast who was from the past and never even involved with Krakoa, I didn’t love that. It felt like you let the character do all of this stuff and make all of these morally gray compromises, and then you’re washing his hands by going, here’s a fresh one who didn’t do any of that stuff, and it’s all OK now.

So when I was taking over X-Men, I started looking over the lay of the land and felt we had to do something with this, especially given that the specific world we’re entering into is a world that has itself already passed beyond the two poles of the X-Men — Xavier and Magneto. While they’re still there and around, we’ve kind of evolved beyond them in this new post-Krakoa landscape. The question is, who are the characters that are going to be the poles and the pillars of this new world? And it’s always easy to come up with characters who are heroic and positive, but who are the darker characters in this? And boy, the idea of Beast as a darker character seemed appealing in that environment.

You have a paradigm that essentially boils down to Cyclops and Beast. Or even Beast and Beast. That’s super good fodder. So we talked to Jordan about it and told him early on we’re definitely keeping him around. But it’s been a part of Jed’s plan and our plan right from the jump. The Chairman’s been Beast all along, going back to that hidden QR code page in X-Men #1. 

A couple of people kind of figured it out. There were a few fans who were sniffing it even before we got into the Age of Revelation. And a few more certainly figured it out along the way that something was going on, even if they didn’t entirely know exactly what. That’s always going to be the case, because our fans are both smarter than we are and there are just way more of them than there are of us. But I was happy that so many people were surprised by it, even if it could never be a 100% sweep.

I think just the fact that that card is now turned over provides a whole bunch of promise. X-Men #23 is out now, and X-Men #24 is all about that original version of Hank McCoy. It’s 20 pages of 3K and exactly who he is, exactly what he’s about, and what 3K’s about. That’s the second of the two Age of Revelation epilogue issues before we put the gas down again and propel ourselves forward into the next bunch of stories.

AIPT: I love this twist because, to your point, you now have two poles who also happen to be the first (Cyclops) and fourth (Beast) ever X-Men and friends with so much shared history, similar to Xavier and Magneto. It’s great story fodder.

Tom: Right. And not just Scott and Hank — Beast has relationships with everyone. Not just all of the main X-Men characters, but also characters beyond the X-Men family. And while he’s become radicalized over the course of his life due to the experiences that he’s lived, those relationships still exist. So there’s just so much meat on the bone there for a character to have to grapple with the ethics and the ethos of the life he’s living. 

And it immediately opens up a whole bunch of doors and questions about the slightly younger Beast who’s walking around with the X-Men team with the knowledge that there’s another me in the world. And Hank and the X-Men will get there pretty soon because we’re not going to keep that secret from them for too long. I can’t imagine the existential crisis that would trigger in somebody. There’s another me walking around who’s a little bit older, who’s lived through a bunch of stuff that I don’t remember, and who made a bunch of choices that I think aren’t that good. But when you come down to it, is he me? If he is Hank McCoy, who am I? There are all kinds of angles on this that I think are very fruitful for fascinating storytelling.

AIPT: And before we move on, you introduced quite a few new characters in the Age of Revelation. X-Fan Alex wonders if present-day versions of any of those characters might appear in the Shadows of Tomorrow era or beyond.

Tom: I think it’s more than possible. It’s likely that some, if not a lot of them, will start to turn up as the months go by. It’s not going to be an immediate thing where it’s February and in issue 2, that person you saw 10 years in the future just walked into the room. But obviously, the new characters were created and crafted by their creators with care, and they weren’t designed as necessarily one-use things. Some of it, too, is going to depend upon what the reader response is in the short and long term. Who clicked with people? Who did they really like? Who did they really hate? Who do they want to see again?

Going back to X-Men history, Blink was a character that was designed to be a throwaway, but people just liked her and spent years campaigning for more Blink. Eventually, they had no choice but to find a way to bring another Blink into the modern universe and use her as a character. So this was kind of the same thing. We’ll do a bunch of stuff. Some of these characters, we have definitive plans for going forward. Others are more, let’s see how this goes. If there’s a thing, great. If not, you took a shot at something. That’s how it’ll play out as things go forward. But we didn’t just create a bunch of stuff to create a bunch of stuff and throw it aside. It’s all raw material in the ongoing churn of the world of mutants and the X-Men.

AIPT: Moving past the Age of Revelation, two questions about the upcoming X-Men United series from X-Fan Michael. First, how does Graymatter Lane grow and expand on the idea of what a school means to the X-Men? And second, Emma Frost seems to be somewhat of an anchor character in the Shadows of Tomorrow era — what made her the best choice for this role?

Tom: Well, I think Emma is an anchor character. Again, it sort of comes out of the earlier conversation we had where we talked about who the characters were that are most naturally going to pop up as leaders in this post-Krakoan world. Over the course of, not just Krakoa, but even the years before Krakoa, Emma had kind of come to the fore as one of the most prominent spokespeople for a particular part of the mutant experience. She had a long history as a mentor and educator. She’s somebody who took that obligation to the next generation seriously. For all that, she also presents a certain haughtiness and a certain coldness that’s, to some degree, a defense mechanism in the same way that turning into a diamond-hard person is a defense mechanism.

So planting her in the crux of that initially just made sense. Her role there will now expand in a big way. We had a discussion the other week about whether she’s now Professor X. Like, she’s the main teacher of the mutant world. She’s kind of just naturally gravitated into that position, and that’ll only become more apparent as we get into X-Men United.

As for the first part of the question, some of that you’re going to have to wait and see. What I can talk about is that it’s a different sort of school in that it’s not centrally located. There’s no building — there’s a mind palace. There’s a space you can enter from anywhere in the world and exist in commonality with other mutants. So it’s not as old-school and regimented as, you know, classes from 8 to 4 and extracurriculars after that and whatnot. It’s a much more free-flowing, almost community space. More like a new school than an actual school. It’s a learning environment, and it grows, changes, and adapts to the needs of what the various characters that inhabit it will require. So it’s a very different sort of experience. 

And again, it’s hard to define it until you read the first issue. I don’t want to give too, too much away.

AIPT: It’s basically the post-pandemic, remote education and work approach to X-Men.

Tom: Honestly, sort of, yes. But it gives a space where, because of the manner in which it’s set up, no matter where our characters are anywhere in the globe — and presumably, even beyond — they can be at Graymatter Lane. And that means immediately, that’s a hub where we can see characters interact with one another who don’t ordinarily interact with one another. 

We’re still on the earliest issues of putting that all together, but that’s a thing that’s immediately very interesting. We had the question earlier on about the X-Men uniting, and this series will be called X-Men United for that very reason. We’re now seeing scenes where characters that you’ve never seen before together are in the same place, or you haven’t seen them together for a while because they’re geographically in different locations, have a moment. And that’s cool and fun. And hopefully, it’ll be fun for everybody else, too.

AIPT: During the Fall of X and From the Ashes eras, a lot of X-Fans were anxious about the X-Men returning to the mansion. Was it a conscious decision to make sure the concept of a school was something we’d never seen before?

Tom: The big fear when Krakoa was ending was, oh, they’re going to knee-jerk back to the status quo. It’s going to be Professor X telepathically going, “X-Men, it’s nine o’clock, time for Danger Room classes.” And inevitably, there was going to be a shift toward a more classic model coming out of Krakoa into From the Ashes, but we wanted to immediately send the message that no, we’re not just going to be doing X-Men stories like it’s 1998 or whatever. This is actually going to be something new. Whether it’s successful or unsuccessful, we’re going to chart a slightly different course, at least, and try to draw from the great stories of the past while also not being beholden to just doing the same thing we’ve always done. 

More than anything, that’s why the first story we did in that Free Comic Book Day issue was, here’s the mansion — oh, it’s a prison now. I guess they’re not going back to the mansion.

So Graymatter Lane is set up differently. It’s not a central location. It doesn’t impinge so heavily on all of the other books because again, to me, at least, one of the drawbacks of the Krakoa setup was, I felt that once you got through the whole line of books, there was a lot of feeling of similarity. They all kind of took place in this same environment, and everybody was kind of on the same page. There were conflicts — it’s not like there weren’t any arguments or any differences of opinion on things — but it was all greenery all the time. 

So moving into a world where you could have some greenery, and you could have some red, and you could have some blue, and you could have some violet — that was appealing to me. Also, spreading them out so you’re not always looking at or dealing with the same environments, and you get them back into a world where they can interact with ordinary, regular people. 

I still feel like we don’t do enough of that. There’s a natural tendency, not just in X-Men, but in superhero comics right now, in general, to forget to feature regular people and just be superheroes dealing with their superhero problems. You know, telling their superhero friends about their superhero crushes and dealing with their superhero enemies and rivals. And at a certain point, it becomes Dynasty, where nobody has a problem I can relate to at all, because it’s all steeped in the superhero of it all.

And I feel like to make this stuff feel impactful and special, you have to present it against the contrast of the familiar, regular world that we all walk around in. The X-Men, by definition, are superheroes. And superheroes are only heroic when they’re helping or saving other innocent people who are in jeopardy. Whether those people are other mutants, regular humans, aliens, dogs — whatever it is — just fighting is not in itself heroic. It’s fighting to protect others or to defend others.

Also, just on the most fundamental level, if there are 400 mutants on that island, good luck attacking it. Good luck causing the problem. It’s just so overwhelming. So just on a basic level, having 10 of them is a lot easier to grapple with. Maybe if you sent enough Sentinels in, you could take that place, but if you’ve got hundreds of them, boy, the odds are stacked too well in the favor of the good guys. And for a window of time, that’s fun. You want to see the periods of time when your heroes are in an up position, on top of the world, things are going their way, and everything’s right. But eventually, you have to get to the point where they’re back to being, to some degree, the underdogs again and having to work for their victories. 

I’m sure I’ve drifted way off the question, but hopefully this is of some interest to somebody.

AIPT: [Laughs] Well, to get us back on track, X-Fan Ana is curious about Cyclops’ apparent opposition to Graymatter Lane. It feels a little counter to Scott’s character — for him to oppose a school run by Emma and other X-Men, especially when Charles Xavier isn’t in the picture and, as far as we last saw, Scott and Emma were on good terms. Anything you can share ahead of the series’ release?

Tom: I think that’s one where I’d prefer people read the issue, because I could talk about it, but with anything that I say, one, it’s not going to assuage your mind. You’re still going to be afraid of the worst thing. Oh, they’re going to make Cyclops into a jerk and a stick in the mud and an awful person, like the X-Men always do. I kind of hope, maybe vainly, that we’ve earned enough credit with Cyclops’ fans over the course of the last 18 months to trust me that we’re not going to make him be a terrible person in this.

AIPT: He’s got that big movie coming.

Tom: Well, there’s certainly that, but you know, clearly, I like Cyclops. Jed likes Cyclops. Eve L. Ewing likes Cyclops, Gail… who can tell? But we’re not looking to do anybody dirty. That having been said, Cyclops will have a point of view that hopefully is valid and makes sense, at least to some people. 

And like I’ve been saying all along, I don’t feel like it’s a good thing when everybody, particularly in a large group like mutantkind or the X-Men, all goes, “Yes, that is exactly the right thing to do. You are correct. Let’s just do that.” Because I know from myself, getting any eight people into this office and trying to get us to agree on a lunch order is impossible, let alone decisions or questions that might have larger ramifications on people’s lives or deaths.

AIPT: Speaking of life and death — I’m not sure if you’re aware, but many Jean Grey fans are concerned about her absence in the Shadows of Tomorrow promotional image. What does 2026 have in store for Phoenix beyond her appearance in the upcoming X-Men Annual? X-Fans 123456, Andy, APhoenixFan, Arav Singh, Ashlyn, Bastarden, Ben, Benjamin, Benny Blanco, Bruno, Burner, Caio, Captain Amazing, Casper, Cemre TepecikChris G., Crystal, Cyclopian, Dozing Nightshade, @dreamlittleboat, Ebrahim, Eddy, Ella Carey, Elly, Emmanuel Cabahug, Felipe, Flame Keeper Kip, Firebird47, Gabriel, Guilherme, Hexodus, Imtheendofall, Immortal Luan, Iron, Jack, Jake Bronson, @jeannfyre, Jeannie, jeannation, Jes, Keitsune, Kent, Koury, Krissa, Kvetcher, Leo, Lucas Fellipe, Lucas Oliveira Santos, Mary, nema, Pedro, Rhyan Galdino, Rick, Ryzo, Sosy, snags, Tasneem, Tim, Valdemir Domingos, Valdemir Junior, Victória, Victor Vaz, we love you jean grey, and Wpotcx all want to know.

Tom: There are a couple of fans in Brazil who insist on bombarding my social media timelines with Jean Grey gifs of every sort, so yes, I am aware that there are people interested in Jean Grey stuff out there.

I can say with certainty that you’ll see Jean in the course of the year. It may not be as soon as you’d like, especially since as soon as you’d like apparently means last week. But it’s not like we’re not going to feature the character. 

The honest answer is a couple of plans shifted, and a couple of things didn’t end up where we thought they were going to be, and that means we have to reposition and rework some of what we were going to be doing. That happens from time to time. There are larger things going on both internally at Marvel in the story planning that we’re doing and in the marketplace, in general. So we’ve been shifting a bunch of things around, not just in the X-world, but in various areas, and that’s impacted some stuff that would’ve been here sooner, that won’t necessarily be there quite as soon — or even in exactly the same form.

But it’s not like we’re necessarily going back to a Greyless world. There will be plenty of Grey to be had. It just may take a little longer to get there than we had intended, you know, six months ago.

AIPT: The forecast calls for Grey skies. And do you still believe in your initial mission statement for Phoenix, that she’s more of a cosmic character than just another member of an X-Men team?

Tom: I think one of the things that we struggle with, quite honestly, is figuring out how to introduce her as an element into ongoing X-Men team storylines when she so obviously tilts the entire table in whatever direction she happens to be standing in, because she’s just so gosh darn powerful. And the solution to that in the past has always kind of just been, well, just knock her powers down. That feels reductive in a way. There may be some version of that we have to do to find a way to go, OK, she’s back with Cyclops and the guys in Alaska, and they still have a problem somehow. So that’s the most difficult challenge when it comes to Jean, where she is, and how she’s been set up.

Having said that, it’s one that we’re actively grappling with and trying to find resolutions for. I don’t just want her to be off by herself. One of the reasons I gave Ryan Stegman the OK to use her in the X-Men Annual was it felt like she kind of ended up inadvertently being a little bit stranded off by herself in space, dealing with some of the cosmic ends of things, but not a lot of X-characters. And again, there were one or two things there that might have hit it a certain way. She might have been involved in Imperial at a certain point, but it didn’t end up going that way, where we might have taken better advantage of that. But this is how the cards fell out, and so now we have to deal with where we happen to be on the board.

AIPT: That’s a great segue to a question I wanted to ask. During the First Krakoan Age, when Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain ended at issue 5, I remember her fans being frustrated that there was a gap in Betsy’s appearances. Basically, there was no backup plan to ensure new Betsy stories are published. I’m seeing the same reactions now with Jean following the end of her Phoenix series. I feel as though many readers expect these characters to appear monthly, and when they don’t, the assumption is that the X-Office dropped the ball. Is there anything you can share about gaps in X-character appearances to clarify from an editorial perspective? Like, are there any X-characters that must appear in published stories monthly?

Tom: Well, just going to the most fundamental level, we probably have to have Wolverine appear every month because we have a comic book that’s called Wolverine, and therefore, if it’s coming out every month, it would be helpful if a character named Wolverine was in the comic called Wolverine. That said, in Amazing Spider-Man right now, we’re putting out two issues every month, and one of them doesn’t have Peter Parker in it at all, and hasn’t for the last few months this current storyline has been going. So on the most basic level, there’s no obligation for every character to be there all the time, or necessarily for any character to be there all the time. 

Wolverine was actually dead for about three years and wasn’t in any comics. We didn’t publish Thor for a bunch of years. We didn’t publish Fantastic Four for a bunch of years. Sometimes, that’s where events take you, either story events or publishing events or larger realities or whatever. So there’s no absolute obligation to feature everybody all the time. And that can be tricky, especially in a case like X-Men, because for all that, it’s a big line. It’s a far bigger assortment of characters. And you can’t service all of them all the time. 

We tried a bunch of books, and some of them succeeded, worked, and continue on, and some of them ran their natural course and ended. You can’t necessarily predict which ones are going to be which when you’re at the outset.

If we went, OK, we’re going to build this NYX book, and Kamala Khan is going to be a big part of that, and that book runs its course, we don’t immediately go, “Oh, we absolutely have to get Ms. Marvel into some other book right now — quick, shoehorn her into Gail’s title.” You end up having to take a breath. And while you’re doing that, fans of NYX, X-Factor, or X-Force are asking, “What about my favorite character who’s not in anything?”

What about Synch? Synch was a huge character in Krakoa right before this. Why is Synch not showing up everywhere? So, you know, it’s like spinning plates. You can’t keep every single plate spinning. So there are going to be times like in this particular moment with Jean Grey, where there’s a lapse and there’s a definitive dearth of Jean Grey stories because we happen to end up in a place where the thing we were going to do is not the thing we’re going to do right now, and therefore, we’re going to have to find another thing. And that takes a certain amount of time and a certain amount of real estate.

I could put any character in any book, but I can’t put every character in every book. My standard guideline to the X-writers when I started was that a team is five people. Put five people on a team, or five people in a book, and most of them didn’t listen to me at all. The only one who really did was Eve L. Ewing. Thank you, Eve, you’re my favorite. [Laughs] But it’s just natural because once you start writing, even if you start with just five, you then start to accrue other characters as you go along. 

The most obvious version of that is Uncanny X-Men. Here’s your team of five X-Men, and here are the four new characters that have just shown up looking for help. So now you’ve really got a cast of nine. And then you add to it as you go along and introduce other people, and suddenly these other characters need a little bit of time this month, and the family needs a little bit of time, and the Sentinel dog needs a little bit of time. 

So it’s a natural ebb and flow, and that’s cold comfort and no comfort to people who have a favorite character that they love and feel super close to, and they’re not around at that point. They want the thing that they want, and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

The people posting all of those Jean Grey gifs are not wrong to go, “We want our Phoenix. We love this character. Get her back,” any more than the Betsy Braddock fans who still write in and campaign. The challenge from my perspective, and Jordan before me, and Ann Nocenti before him, and on and on, is that there are only so many pages every month. There are only so many books every month. And even though it seems like there’s an awful lot of them, there really isn’t when it comes down to how many things there are to actually do and to be able to do them well. 

AIPT: Speaking of Betsy, X-Fan Nate Grey says Betsy Braddock will turn 50 in 2026. While Nate appreciates the Psylocke: Ninja flashback miniseries, her absence from the Shadows of Tomorrow teaser is concerning. Will Betsy eventually have a place in present-day stories? Beyond Nate, X-Fans Adrian, Alex Dorado, Amanda, Andre, Bambi, Burner, Caitlyn, Chris G., Eduardoi, Enyalist, Excalibur77, Grevling, HOXOR, Keith, Lance, Lucas, Mental Manipulator, MissingMyGirls, @purplehairedni1, Starlight, Stefano, and Theena all submitted questions about Ms. Braddock.

Tom: Betsy turns 50 along with Captain Britain, so we’ll definitely be doing something for Captain Britain’s 50th, and Betsy will definitely be a part of that. Beyond that, it’s kind of wait and see.

I like Betsy Braddock. But Betsy Braddock is hard and kind of a messy situation.

Everybody was well-intentioned throughout all of her storytelling, but that whole thing is a mess. And in coming to the table where it was set when I got here, I made what, to me, felt like the only choice I could make at that point, which is, Kwannon is Psylocke, that’s the state of play. That’s what we’re going to commit to. Psylocke is Kwannon, and she’s in X-Men. Betsy is Captain Britain, she’s with Rachel Summers, and she’ll be in X-Force. 

And X-Force ran its course, but it’s not as simple as just putting Betsy in the other book, or the name is really hers, and the Psylocke history is really hers. It kind of is, but 30, 40, 50 years later, here’s where we are now. 

And the other problem is, even among the Betsy fans, when you actually listen to what they say, they’re all over the road, too. We want her back, but we want her back in this iteration, and we want her back, but not like this. So even they’re trying to figure out what’s the right thing for the character and the story. What’s the story that somebody walks into my office, shows up in my email, or calls me on the phone and pitches me about Betsy Braddock that makes me go, “That’s a great story. I want to see that. I want to make that.” There’s no point in just bringing her back into a book if she’s going to be furniture.

So it’s kind of all of that, which again, is cold comfort and no comfort to people who love that character or any of the characters that haven’t gotten as much spotlight as we’d like. Over the churn of history, every character gets their day or gets their moment. So it’s not that there isn’t a genuine effort, it’s just that the genuine effort isn’t necessarily dedicated to just that one character, but to all the characters that people like or have ideas with.

AIPT: Alright, one more character-specific question. X-Fans Beth Baucom, Carol, John S, PunkerDuckie, Suellen, and Tana all wonder if we might see a Gambit solo series in the not-too-distant future.

Tom: There’s more likely to be a retro project than a present-day project, at least for the moment. And part of that is for storytelling reasons that will eventually become apparent. We want to do a Gambit book, but we kind of can’t do a Gambit book until we get to a certain point. And we’re not at that point yet. 

Gambit seems like a prime character to have a solo project, but where we happen to be in a couple of story things is just inconvenient to try and launch him at the moment. So until we get clear of all of that and get to a springboard point, you need to wait.

AIPT: Looking ahead, X-Fans Feral Fan Club and Reese wonder if the X-Men line or X-characters beyond Wolverine may get involved in the upcoming Armageddon event. 

Tom: Because it’s not really my event, I don’t really want to talk about it because I’m not so up to date on exactly what has been said publicly and what has not been said publicly. I edited the Will of Doom one-shot that helps to kick things off in that direction, but I’m not the person shepherding it, so I feel like I shouldn’t say anything.

You’re just going to have to watch the skies. That having been said, on Comics Giveaway Day, we’re releasing an Armageddon/X-Men one-shot that will have both an Armageddon story and an X-Men story that sets up a particular thing — and also, there’s a little bit of Doom in there, too, for a thing that’s coming up. It’s the first Saturday in May for free. But buy some other comics to make your retailer happy when you go to your comic shop to get your copy.

AIPT: Can X-Fans expect more new series announcements in the weeks ahead? And when can they expect to encounter the next major X-event?

Tom: We’ll certainly always be coming out with more and new stuff. Not everything has come out yet. We’re not done.

AIPT: X-Men isn’t finished forever?

Tom: Yes, my job is done. I have completely exhausted every possibility in the X-Men. No, there will be another X-Men event coming up. You might even see something about it on Comics Giveaway Day.

But we’re going to have a little more space, again, due to the way some things fell. We got a little choked on event stuff early on, and a certain number of X-Fans have not been shy about saying that. The “You keep putting your events in the middle of my books” crowd has been louder than usual because it’s happened a little more often than we might’ve otherwise intended. So we’ll probably go a somewhat longer period of time between the end of the Age of Revelation and the next thing. It probably won’t seem like that long to people because there are 12 months in a year, but it’s not going to happen in March. But it is coming. 

We know what it is. It’s got a name and everything. We haven’t told anybody the name. That Armageddon one-shot is actually not really called Armageddon/X-Men. It’s called Armageddon/something else — we just haven’t released what that something else is yet. 

AIPT: Finally, as this has become something of a tradition for us, I ask that you share how far ahead you are with the X-line and what three characters readers will be talking about once they read those stories.

Tom: In this case, again, it’s all sketchy, and a bunch of it is sketchier than it has been in the past. There’s still stuff that I can sort of point to 12 to 18 months down the line — maybe even a couple of little nuggets around 24 months from now — but it’s much more jittery than it has been the last couple of times we’ve talked simply because we are recalibrating. 

As I said earlier, it’s not just for X-Men, but for the whole of what we’re publishing at Marvel that’s shifting some things around. I’m not telling tales outside of school, but as we looked at our 2026 calendar, there were a bunch of different events that were happening in different families, and they were going to be in the same month. That was a bad idea. So then you have to kind of go, OK, what goes where, and how do we separate these, and how do we naturally have things happen either faster or slower without it looking like we’re not getting to the thing.

AIPT: Well, in X-Men Monday #300, you called out Emma Frost, who we’ve discussed, and Bishop, who appeared in Longshots.

Tom: Yes, Emma’s there, and Bishop is still coming. We’re just not quite there yet, and depending on a conversation I’ll have later today, we might not be there still for a little longer, but we’ll see how that goes. 

The most obvious character here who will be big going forward is Beast. Both Beast A and Beast B are going to be pretty important and central. 

And it’s not a character, but a thing — within the next six months, I would say we’re going to ramp up dealing with the Graymalkin Prison situation. So you’ll see things exploding on that end. 

AIPT: In addition to Emma and Bishop, you also mentioned Dani Moonstar, and obviously, we had X-Vengers and now her own solo coming up.

Tom: We’re doing the Moonstar series, and we’re going to call her Moonstar. She’s had at least two, maybe three different codenames — like Psyche and Mirage, but nobody seems to call her that. They all call her Dani Moonstar, and that’s a good name. Just call the series Moonstar. They pay me for this, they really do.

Let’s see… we’re still hammering down on the specifics of it, but we’ve got the concept figured out for this year’s Hellfire Gala. So we know what that’s going to be about now, so you’ll be seeing that around the same time in a July window. Again, that’s not a character, but it’s something.

There’s definitely a bunch of Jubilee stuff coming in a couple of places, including one spot that’ll be unexpected. I think that almost gets us to three.

AIPT: Any wildcards? The first time we did this, you said Stevie Hunter.

Tom: Yeah, I regret the Stevie Hunter thing, because we had been just talking about that literally that day, her being in the Dazzler series, and then it ended up that Jason Loo, as he was blocking out that issue, didn’t have as much space for her as he thought he would. And she ended up getting like two panels, and I was like, oh, they’re going to kill me for this. 

AIPT: That’s the danger of X-Men Monday. You might not survive the experience.

Tom: It is what it is. Also, we’ll certainly see some more Magneto stuff coming up. Obviously, we started to drop a big hint that some people seem very obsessed with in Age of Revelation. So we’ll see what that’s all about and get some more Magneto back into the mix as 2026 goes on.

AIPT: Alright, I think we can leave it there. Is there anything else you’d like to say to the X-Fans before we wrap?

Tom: I’m still very thankful to all the X-Fans, including all of the ones who don’t like me and what I’m doing 80% of the time. I kind of understand and know that what this job is really about is me taking the blame for everything people are unhappy about. And that the best thing I ever did for Jordan D. White was take it over, just as whoever comes after me will be my best friend and be the guy that wrecks it from me.

But the X-Fans are super diverse, they’re super impassioned, and they’re super interesting. I like seeing them interact, speculate, and do their thing. Hopefully, we’ll have some things coming up that will surprise, delight, and entertain them. And the things that we do that we foul up — feel free to let me know about those, too. We like to hear from them. 

There’s been a little lag in reader mail for the X-books, largely because the Age of Revelation books did not have space for a letters page. When we’re not running a letters page for three months, people stop sending us mail. So if you have thoughts, opinions, responses, reactions, clever bits of business, funny things — anything — all the other letter pages are coming back now. So I genuinely do want to hear from people and want them to send me stuff. 

You know, I like it when they like what we’re doing. I also like it when they don’t like what we’re doing, but they’re intelligent and reasoned about how they express that. Because those are the letters I can print. And I’m happy to do so. 

So consider this your call to arms to have your opinions printed in an X-Men comic. Send them to the X-Office email address, please.

AIPT: And that email address, X-Fans, is [email protected]. Be sure to mark your message “Okay to Print.”

But on that note, Tom, as always, thank you for taking the time to talk all things X-Men! Hopefully, we’ll get to hear from you again before X-Men Monday’s next mutant milestone.

And hey, it wouldn’t be an anniversary edition without eXtra-special eXclusives, right, X-Fans? Check out these eXclusive images from upcoming Shadows of Tomorrow series, courtesy of our friends at Marvel.

Next X-Men Monday – January 19, 2026

In the next edition of X-Men Monday, writer Eve L. Ewing returns to discuss X-Men United!

Until next time, X-Fans, stay eXceptional!