LWW: Was it difficult for you to come on to a book like New X-Men that was so closely tied in peoples minds to the previous writers, the creators of most of the cast?
CK: I'd say it was harder on the fans than Chris [Co-writer Christopher Yost) & I. The wonderful thing about comics is that people follow them for various reasons. They follow them because they love creative teams, they follow them because they love artists, they love characters, they love different kinds of stories. There's a lot of different reasons why an audience stays with a book or goes to it in the first place, and this was a series that had a really dedicated fan-base, and I respect that, and Chris does too, of course.
What Marvel wanted to do was to really
DeciMation was about to begin, House Of M was just wrapping up, and they just wanted to take the book in a different direction, I think to bring it closer to what a lot of the other X-books were offering, which was a lot of action, a lot of adventure, a lot of darkness surrounding mutants in a world that fears and hates them and that's the kind of stuff that Chris & I really love. We love putting wonderful characters up against horrible, unspeakable dangers because we think in those kind of moments and situations you get to see the best of who these guys are.
We looked at the cast, we thought they were incredible, we thought these characters could easily be the New Mutants today, the New Mutants I grew up with and fell in love with, that Chris loves so much we both just gush about those years in the 80s when the New Mutants were there, and we really wanted to bring back that feel. It was a
re-birth is painful [laughs]. I'd say the characters in the book had it worse, then the fans who really enjoyed the teen social drama of the series and we never wanted to remove that and lose sight of that, but this first year for us, when we first came on, was like
we were smashing what we didn't want to deal with, what we didn't want to keep, and we wanted to rebuild it after that, and I think a lot of people who are very angry have come around and said you know what, they don't kill in every issue close, but
' and we do care about the interaction, we do care about having quiet scenes and fond and fun exchanges. It's not just about death and destruction for us, we just needed to shake things up before we could get it back to a place where we thought the book could really thrive.
How did working on X-Men Evolution prepare you for writing a book like New X-Men ?
Going back to the original fans of the series, I think they all wish it had prepared us a lot more because that's the kind of storylines that I think mirror the book before we came onboard, and they're wonderful. We did that show and I'm very proud of that show before Chris & I ever wrote for it I was the creative exec. for Marvel that oversaw the project, working with Greg Johnson, and it was a really fun way to re-invent the X-Men, put them in a situation that was relateable to the young audience we were aiming for, and
it was a great reinvention.
Was it a classic? Not quite. Every season we were getting closer and closer to what the real hardcore fans wanted to see and I think in the last couple of seasons we really hit a beautiful middle ground, but I think working on moving picture does a lot for you to help tell good stories in comics because if you think about an entire story from every second that would move through a television show or a film or what have you
what you do in a comic is just find the hot moment, the ones that matter. You can lose the walking up to the door and reaching for the knob and instead you enter right as the door's opening into the room and right into the action. You learn what's fat and doesn't really play well in comics, just focus on the important stuff that matters just to tell this story in 22 pages.
Chris and I tend to run a little long on the page count because we try to say less and I think some fans, their biggest complaint is that it's a fast read Chris and I, we really want the artist to be able to do their job, which is to bring that mood, that emotion, stage it so beautifully, we give them enough so they get what the meaning of each scene, what the meaning of each panel is, we don't say there's a glass right in the foreground covered in fingerprints, there's a lace
'
it's amazing the writers who can visualise every panel down to which way the woodgrain panelling is going, that's incredible. We just, we err on the side of less and if the artist has questions we're there to give more.
For Chris & I it's really about getting honest communication between characters and really letting the artist bring that emotion out through beautiful visuals and we've been very fortunate with incredible talents, so I guess my short answer is I'm sorry, I'm very long-winded, I can't help it, ask anybody working in movies helps you tell a fluid story. That's not to say guys who started in comics aren't incredibly talented but for me, I think I would have had a terrible time coming in cold and learning the business of how to write without some experience in a different medium. Geoff Johns, he's a guy who can give you a rich read but it doesn't feel like a novel. I'm envious of guys like that; Chris & I just have a different way of telling a story.
This was your first gig on a monthly comic, right?
Our first comic was the origin of X-23 mini-series, Innocence Lost . They're connected because we were three or four issues in on the mini when Dan Buckley and Joe Quesada came to Chris and I and said all this stuff's happening in the X-Universe, we think you've got a feel for this kind of storytelling, what do you guys think of trying to add a little of that to what's going on in New X-Men ?' and at the time they were also thinking that a way to give the series a shot in the arm was to bring X-23 into that book.
I've got a bit of a grasp on the character right now and Chris has been wonderful to work with me to keep her as safe as I possibly can. I think Joe Quesada did a tremendous job writing her in her first appearance with Josh Middleton doing the most beautiful artwork on her I say that as I stare at the original artwork of the cover on my wall so for me it was important to follow her journey a little longer because I wanted to give her a good base in comics before I handed her off to other people.
She's not mine, she's wholly Marvel's, I really have very little say as to what happens with her, but I
I know she's a clone but to me she's so much more. I think a lot of fans would say she's a different creature to Logan. She's almost like a What if?' what if Logan had been this, had not escaped, had been raised in this programme, had never been shown kindness or love or compassion or found Xavier's institute, what if he'd always been a weapon and known nothing else, what would his life be?
At the time Logan didn't have his memories back so she was someone who when she closes her eyes is faced with every face of every person she's ever killed, the horrors of that to me that's a lot of baggage. Wolverine has in some ways got it easy in not knowing those people, not seeing the faces of the people you've killed, that's a big get out of jail free' in that it allows you to choose another direction whereas she's always haunted by that stuff and I don't know if she'll ever be human. I know that's what she wants out of life. In all honesty, everyone who loves and cares about her tells her she's not a weapon but I don't know if that's true.
She was really a celebration of a perfected ideal, Logan, Wolverine, so when I made her for Evolution
Marvel wanted to see more wolverine in the series but she became a solution to the problem because wolverine was an adult and the kids were much younger than him and you couldn't just say Season 2 ended with him as an adult, Season 3 here he is with the kids, young, it just would have been horrible.
As you labour over that problem, the thing I kept facing was that I'm not going to make this thing better, I'm not going to be able to further perfect what was done so well and made such a hugely popular character. Looking into his past there was a way to simply re-create him. Basically every time his story took a right, I made a left. He's older than anybody knows, she's just a kid; he's a man, she's a woman; he escaped, she didn't; he was dragged somewhere further on in his life, she was raised there
it was simply that a yes was a no for me and at the end you had a very different kind of character and she's not a feral, not a beast, not a savage monster like that, she's really a robot. She's got programming and she executes that programming and she has a leash on her that Wolverine thankfully doesn't, this trigger set which causes her to kill it is a bit of a feral rage but it really is an instinctual uncontrollable blood rage that's attached to this chemical and it basically assured that anyone was put in front of her, she'd kill, and that happened to her mother, it happened to her sensei, and it happened to anyone she loved because the facility refuses to let her move on and develop into a unique individual. As far as they're concerned, she's just property.
All of that kind of stuff that we did in X-23 was something that I guess Marvel thought would be interesting to weave into New X-Men and you've seen the kind of destructive results of our
all Chris & I ever say is that we're just not kind and loving gods, we may care for these characters but we don't promise a sweet loving existence, that's for sure. Is that about the longest answer you've been given for a question?
Oh, not at all, I had Peter David last week [both laugh]
Peter David's great, Chris & I met him for the first time just a couple of months ago in New York for the X-summit and he was great. He was quite a hoot.
What kind of preparation did you do in advance of writing your first issue of New X-Men ?
We had to figure out who we were dealing with, who was in the cast, get a sense of their personalities and really
first and foremost we made a hit list who do we like, who do we not, who do we want to work with and what do we think would make the most cohesive team? The first plan was thin the herd' for us it was too many heads to worry about and to make sure that blue kid #7 was running in the background so you see they're still alive, so for us
the world had changed, it was gonna be a different place, the world was 99.9% less mutants.
As far as we could tell, if there was ever a time for villains and humanity to unite it was now, and we need to quarter up the kids who weren't ready for it, who would suffer heavy losses but who would in the end rise above the destruction and war headed right for their front door, so we ended up with a core group.
We also wanted to bring them together because having two lead teams didn't allow enough conflict within the group so if you picked some of the bad guys, more of them than the good kids, and fuse them into one team then you've already got problems among the team because they don't like each other and they're forced together, so it just allowed more interaction, more anger, more emotion, and so for us it was a pretty easy choice.
We also wanted someone so that if you through someone at the audience, they knew right away who they were looking at that's Rockslide, that's Surge, that's X-23, they all have a pretty unique look and feel. Some people were thrilled with the choices, some people hated it, and what we love is that everyone despised Rockslide they couldn't hate a character more, unless it was X-23 and we loved that, we loved that they hated Rockslide. How could get rid of blah Wallflower and keep Rockslide? you could feel the heat as soon as you turned the computer on. We didn't care. We really had no attachment to her so the anger, the venom, the and DJ!'
I'm sorry, we weren't feeling it; although we loved the passion people had for these characters it wasn't going to sway us on who we kept and not, and really the triumph for this book and I think Chris would agree is that we have so many people now that love Rockslide. This really goes to Chris' credit he does a lot of Rockslide's moments. He's just this great dim-witted piece of rock and people love him, he's so stupid and he's so funny and he breaks up the most intense moments with a line or a gag and for us it's just he's a great breath in the trauma that's in every issue that we put out there and again, that's really all Chris.
I focus more on the Emma Frost's, the Stryker's, the dark gnarly stuff, the funerals. I kind of like the
that's where I thrive, the darker, more emotional stuff. Chris has got this great flair for humour and fun and big action and that's why together we work really well for a balanced story, that I think you'll see more of as we move into the next year. It's been great. We love our choices. We love that David's on the team and he has no powers, we think he's more interesting without them at the end of the day we didn't think his powers were all that great, y'know? and again, this is just our opinion.
The last thing we want to sound like is we didn't like what the previous team did'. They wouldn't have had that hardcore fanbase if they hadn't brought so much to the series. It's different to what we're bringing to the title but I hope, I think we have kept a lot of the fans and the ones who wanted a little more [Beverly Hills] 9021X, that's always a piece of what we're doing but it's not the focus. To us, yes, it's a teen drama, but they're X-Men first and foremost.
Having made those decisions about the cast members you were keeping and killing
were you then prepared for the strength of the upset that the massacre caused?
[pause] Yes
well, yea
I think the first couple of issues went pretty smooth and then when they could see the tide turning, that it wasn't as light as
I think everyone gave us the first issue because it was crazy, the first day of decimation, the day after the end of House Of M , but I guess some people started to sense the wind shifting, and we knew
we knew if we're mad now, they're really going to be mad this issue, and then it was a bit of a rollercoaster, and then Wither ate it and oh boy, and then
the only point that was frustrating was that at a certain point people started to ignore the story and they'd only focus on the kids who were no longer in the series, and there really was a point to it all. We really were mapping everything we think
this is a major event in X-history, and it's was really trying to restore Stryker to that great place Claremont put him at at the beginning of his life as a character he has such a wonderful motivation, this righteous man of God, and then Nimrod and his past was our future and we couldn't see that story until now because we'd not even reached that point
we had these things that we were really trying to bring to all the new fans, and show that these kids were worthy of these stories and that it didn't have to be Cyclops and the core guys from Uncanny and Astonishing .
Did we lose any sleep over it? No. It was frustrating at times, when some of the loudest fans would only focus on some of the roster losses and not the story we put forward, but, again those same events earned us a fanbase that's just as loyal as the previous team had and for that we're grateful because they had to fight pretty hard against their peers on the internet, which we kind of avoid because we're always drowned out.
I can see some of their frustration and understand why it takes a long time to get over, in the sense that if you've had a big loss in your family, in your personal life, when Christmas comes around and everyone's together again, especially the first Christmas after the bereavement, that's when you really notice who's not there.
It's interesting you bring that connection. It's a two-fold answer for me. I'm a huge Colossus fan. When I started reading comics he was my favourite, from the first time I picked up an X-Men book, which was my first comic ever, and I just loved that character and I was enraged when someone killed him. It didn't matter that he was saving all these lives, I just didn't care about that, this is Colossus, he's
it's my favourite character, and I was angry; but then I was thrilled when Joss Whedon then found a way to bring him back and I would say to anyone that's upset that any of these characters are gone now, this is the Marvel Universe, this is comics, people do walk off death like a Charley horse, and it only takes the right guy, the right gal, the right people to come back, find that story and find a way to bring them back in. To me, we took them out but if somewhere else down the line someone else come sin and says you know what, we can bring them back just like this'
that's what I say to them. Be angry at us, because we're the ones that took them out, but I don't ever see this as the end of the line for anybody. Very few characters don't make it back.
Well, that's true, but it's much more likely to happen to Colossus than it is to DJ or Network.
That's true, but in fairness what I would say is if they don't make it back, besides some people who just had a deep love for the character, for whatever reason, maybe they weren't absolutely necessary; and again, maybe that's not fair for me to say but I would say if they're meant to come back they will, if they're not then I guess you get to stay angry at us.
We had a funny experience, we put this character, Nezhno in the book, and the stories started to move in a direction that meant we couldn't use him as we had planned initially, so he's still floating around there, and we do have plans for the guy, but there are some people who did Top 10 list of whose your favourite New X-Men ?' and in fairness we eliminated a lot of characters and if they did a Top 27 they'd probably be short but he ended up making it on some people's Top 10 and I don't think he'd even said a word yet so it is amazing how some characters even at a glance make a connection with the fans and I think that was the case for some of these guys. There's a really hardcore fanbase for Preview and I don't know if she ever said anything, but people love what they love, right?
Chris & I have worked real hard on this upcoming storyline The Quest For Magik and Chris has taken on the bulk of the writing chores on this one, I worked with him on the plot and the story, but I needed to take little bit of a break because my animation duties are so heavy right now I can't give it my full attention, and we're trying to wrap up X-23: Target X so right now the two books have been a real struggle for me so I'm taking a break for Magik and coming in right after that. That's a storyline that will allow us to bring some of those second-tier characters into the mix. They've kind of had to wait their time and allow us to focus on the kids that we picked in the first place and I think you're gonna be thrilled because none of them die, I'll tell you that now. There's a spoiler alert [laughs], none of the kids die at least in these next four issues and we really found a neat way to use them. We have some great ideas for some of them, some of the characters that people just can't say enough about. I think you're going to be thrilled.
There's more great things coming. The first couple of scripts are in and Chris is doing a great job of bringing in the fun, that great character stuff that he's done in so many of our issues. I think it's going to be fantastic, and having Skottie Young come onboard brings a nice new energy to it, where [series artists] Paco and Juan did a fantastic job on the series, it's gonna be great, I think those that have hung out are really gonna enjoy this next ride.
One last question about the bus deaths looking back, is there anyone that you think maybe I should have just written them out instead of killing them off'?
[sighs] I guess
I have to
I just, I
I wanna be the guys who say we thought about it, we were wrong', we don't feel that way. Chris & I, we really don't rush into our decisions although I'm sure people would disagree but we don't, we really thought about it, who's great? Who's exciting, who's got a wonderful personality or a great backstory or just kick-ass powers and we really made some great choices and
the question we have posed many time son message boards when we just can't take it any more is okay, I'm gonna name three, you name ten more and we'll undo it all' and you can't. I think it's DJ, Wallflower, Icarus, Tag and
Rubbermaid
[pause] Dryad
Very nice.
But most of them were un-named characters in the first place, weren't they?
That's the thing, you can't tell me Skull Boy #9
don't tell me he had potential. I could say that about that couch, someday that couch could become sentient and kill the X-Men, I don't know, but I don't wanna hear that. What I've got to do is, who matters right now, who could matter more, who can go on to something fantastic. I don't want to figure out how to give characters the potential that you see because you see them in nine panels over 30 issues. Chris & I really scrutinise our decisions, we labour over these scripts. Chris is incredibly fast, he's a brilliantly fast writer, I'm envious of how quickly he can turn out pages. He's really remarkable, I can't say enough about that; whereas when I get into a den
it's literally like trying to digest knives for me, I go I don't know!!', I go back, rip out a panel, put it back in, then I flip the two, and I'll write three pages forward, go back, read it again
it's really a painful painful process for me. I love it, it's a great feeling when I hit send' on the e-mail, but together we don't let anything slide. He questions my decisions, I question his, and that's why I really think we bring together a nice rounded story because it should be the best of both of us. Anything that's not so great that I'm putting out there, he's calling me on and vice versa.
We're thrilled with the decisions that we made. There are probably 20 people out there that are still mad, and they'll stay mad, and I get it, because they loved the old team, they loved the old series, and we're never gonna deliver that and that's totally cool. What's important is that those people then follow that team and keep supporting them and be there for them and Chris & I would love the same kind of support.
We hope that when we move on to another title that the people who love the kind of stories that we've done here follow us on to the next thing because New X-Men is not X-23 and X-23 is not gonna be what we do next. We really just wanna bring whatever we feel will do the most for the characters and the story and the world that we've been given and what we hope is
you know, they did the same thing in the first year of New X-Men , they're gonna destroy this' we just don't want that feeling; and that's why we think it's okay if you say we loved X-23 but we just don't get New X-Men . That's okay, it's a very different book. If we had these kids going through torturous murder on a daily basis that X-23's going through not that it doesn't have some of that pain well, forget it, we'd be down to one character. It might be Anole but
we really try to bring whatever kind of voice is right for each property. If we don't do that then we really shouldn't be having these gigs, and Marvel's been very supportive, they are trying to find some great new projects for us there are some things on the table that have been discussed, and who knows how it's gonna pan out they've been awesome to us.
We're just two fanboys who do this out of passion. We both have full-time animation jobs that keep our families fed but this is something that is more special than those and
all I can say is that in the most fanboyish ways, and I mean that with all the respect I can possibly give it. We're the same kids that collected comics at 12 and 10 years old and still get giddy when we see the artist doing sketches and we still have books that we give our friends and for us, we're still those guys.
That's why this is so awesome, you're allowed so much freedom and if it doesn't work, it's only on you and if people don't like it there's no-one else to blame because no-one was saying don't do this, don't do that'. They give you so much freedom in these worlds, if it doesn't connect with audience, it's your fault, it's nobody else's fault. Chris & I love that challenge, we love that freedom. In our day jobs we normally aren't given that not to poo-poo animation for children, it's amazing, but it does need to be created for that audience so it's not about doing Afro-Samurai for ages 6-11. That's an amazing project, but that's definitely where it belongs, after ten o'clock, for adults. When you're doing stuff for kids you want that series that they're gonna look back on and go 'when I was a kid I loved that series' and so it has to be appropriate for them. Hopefully it's entertaining for everyone, for all the family, but
we're just used to writing our stories, like in Evolution , for an age appropriate younger audience, so comics for us is a nice little break.
One of the things that I appreciate that you've brought to New X-Men is that
well, I loved New Mutants first time around, in the 80s, and I've always enjoyed those kind of teen team comics, but as superhero comics in general have got darker it felt to me that it was ready for the teen team comics to grow up as well
it's a dangerous world and these are inexperienced kids playing an adults game and sometimes there are going to be horrible consequences to that. I'm reminded in some ways of The Walking Dead , and Robert Kirkman's approach to that which is to say actually, any member of the cast could die at any time because these are ordinary people in a horrible situation in which anything can happen and none of them are safe. Is that how you approach New X-Men ?
Yeah, you know, in the beginning it really is. We still have that mentality to be honest, like I said, in The Quest For Magik everybody's safe but I can't tell you after that if anybody is, and I guess
it's tough. In many ways it can make for an exciting and engaging story.
There's a series that was on HBO for years called Oz . It's a really dark and gritty series and had some of the best character development I've ever seen on television and it would just turn my stomach because I don't know if the guy I love comes out of this episode. It was brutal, but I had to watch, God forbid I didn't watch that one and I lost it and I didn't see what happened; so there was that element to where you've got invested fans, you got to see these guys go from a lawyer to a murdered to a victimised subservient of a Nazi in jail
there were characters that just went back and forth and this jagged path and it was just incredible how well it was done and how quickly it was done and Chris & I saw that for this book they've had such a safe world, they've had a few fights in their lives, the X-Men have always been there to clean up their mess if it got out of hand no! No more! Forget it.
If you're gonna come out there, you're gonna collect heads, you want the X-Men gone, you hit them where it hurts, you take out those children, you kill the ones who are not ready to defend themselves yet and you get them now because if you let them grow, let them train, let them get strong, we're gonna have another Wolverine, another Emma Frost, another Cyclops, another Jean Grey. You can't let that happen. You must kill the children while you have a chance; and so they were the targets; and as much as it's hurt and as much as people and some people may have felt that they could have pushed back harder, there's just no way. You had death at the door of the mansion and the ones protecting them did a bad job.
So for us, yea, it raised the stakes, it torments the kids. I'm very proud of the funeral issue, when the bus strike happened and you got to see where these kids were mentally. Here they are at the grave of one of their friends and where they are is not here, not now, saying goodbye, all they are is in that war, that fiery wreckage where their friends are surrounding them, on the ground, in pieces. It was hell, and they were changed forever in that moment, and I think a lot of them are still in that place.
Now you can't have every issue where they just sit in their rooms whimpering but that's part of their lives now. What they've seen has changed them forever, it's changed their attitude towards their leaders in the school they're much more hardened, they're not as trustful, they're not as ready to just follow the rules as they're handed to them. They're like look what happened to us. Fuck this, you don't know best.', excuse my language. Forget it, you didn't keep us safe, you don't know best'; and they ended up saving a very important X-character, which is Forge, and they did that by themselves.
We absolutely wanted to bring in that feeling of it's never safe', but as time goes on we want these kids to have moments of life and have some fun, have some love. That's why when we had David and Surge together I think up until our run they had had a little bit of romance here and there but it was never really consummated but for us it was like forget this life's too short. These guys are teenagers in the middle of a firefight, please, let's be honest teens here and get down to it. They're doing what teens do, especially in a heightened existence where it's all or nothing and it could be over in an instant. We really want this very hot world where it's love, hate, anger, war, passion we want to keep it at the height of a person's existence so that it's always engaging, on many levels, whether it be fun or romance or addiction or what have you. Your love for New Mutants ? We share that. You look at the early adventures of those kids and they weren't ready for it neither are these guys.
