Geoffrey Thorne Talks Betsy Braddocks, Addresses Fan Concerns

Geoffrey Thorne, upcoming X-Force writer, recently joined the CBR Forums to discuss Betsy Braddock and address fan concerns.

Addressing concerns regarding fans' dislike of Betsy's status as Captain Britain and recent characterization:

Thorne: I like Betsy more and more as I write her more and more, and I really liked her already. The Captain Britain thing was a wrinkle I never saw coming as a fan and, frankly, to me, is a much weirder deal than her being with Rachel now. I've given serious thought as to how, if and when the CB aspect of Betsy's life will come into play. I have a sneaking suspicion you will enjoy how we play it (even if you DON'T like her as Captain Britain). I always play the cards I'm dealt by editorial, but I play to win. I never thought I'd ever be on any X book, and the fact that it's THIS one with THIS story and THIS team? Cake, baby. All cake. 

Addressing concerns regarding Betsy being reduced to Rachel's girlfriend and token bisexual:

The problem, at least in this sort of fiction, is, unlike gender or "race," which are passive presenting attributes, to be seen as bisexual or any sort of queer, you have to demonstrate your status via behavior.

It's doable, but if the character isn't in a relationship with someone (who is present in the book) or the sort of constantly flirty sort (that rubs a lot of folks the wrong way), there are limited means of expressing queerness without making the whole thing political and lecturing. As Rachel and Betsy are both empowered heroes and both in X-Force, I don't have to take time out to remind folks they're queer. I just write two people in a relationship that has ups and downs who spend a lot of time fighting aliens, monsters, and evil super scientists (not a spoiler). If these were novels, it would be cake to write these sexualities even when no one is flirting or dating because we can go in and out of a character's head without screwing up action. A 20-page comic isn't a lot of room.

I don't really think in terms of "inclusion" or "diversity" in any case. I live in a world with people in it, and that's reflected in my work. I think a lot of folks have defaulted to, "well, she likes girls now, so that's it for any hetero relationship." Not so. I think this is a self-limiting view and, in fact, doesn't apply to bisexuals at all. BOTH these characters are established as having intimate long-term relationships with men in the past with which they were, presumably, happy. NOW, they are with each other. Seen as some sort of symbol, and only that way, I suppose one would assume neither will ever be with a man again. I think that's too narrow. I see them as people. Love is love. Bisexuals are not limited to falling for their own gender or to the other one. All choices are on their table. I am hetero, so I'm with the ladies. If I were gay, I'd be with the boys. Rachel and Betsy are BIsexual, not HOMOsexual. Seems to me, being bisexual means they can fall for anyone they think is worthy of that love. Which is how we got here. Since comics are always in some sort of flux, it's doubtful that ANY relationship could be called permanent. Reed and Sue? Nope. Clark and Lois? Nope. So, I think Rachel and Betsy could have a long run but, should a great story come along that breaks them up, that would be allowed too. Just so long as it's emotionally "true." Make sense?

I have no interest in feeding anybody's girl-on-girl fix. Betsy and Rachel are going to be played as a real couple, not softcore porn. Also, they will be spending an awful lot of time fighting monsters, supervillains, and crazy cosmic disasters. Like nearly ALL their time doing that. So... don't worry. I'm not using X-Force to make political statements about bisexuals. Or any sexuals. Couples act like couples. Superheroes fight bad guys.

I know you guys are wary, and it's understandable. All I can promise you is we will not be falling into stereotype and that I will not be using bisexuality as a shield to deflect some idiot's dislike of lesbians. I am doing my best to write people. Just two people who are in love and having to save the world every five minutes.

Addressing concerns about X-Force regurgitating Tini Howard's formula and mistakes:

There is no regurgitating old plots or formulae going on. I pitched something new. Marvel said, "Go!" and we're going. Will you like it? No guarantees there, of course, but we hope so. What it will not be (aside from the team members) is anything you've seen before." I'm excited. Marcus is excited. We think we've got something fun here. It will be, for sure, NOT a bunch of soul-broken mutants standing around whining about their shattered hearts and spirits. Nor will it be a slice-of-life story about Lady Braddock and her commoner American lover tidying up things around the manor and having Upstairs/Downstairs intrigue.

Sharing his favorite Betsy stories:

I do [have my favorites]: All CAPTAIN BRITAIN (Marvel UK) appearances, all original EXCALIBUR Vol. 1 etc. appearances, the Psylocke & Archangel: Crimson Dawn miniseries, recent Krakoa era stuff, as well as fun bits here and there over the last decade.

Discussing the apex fighting styles available to a telepath:

Essentially, it's this (have any other writers done this? I dunno.) Have done anything with this in 60 years. Unless you have psi training to resist them, any telepath you fight knows everything you know, if they want to. That means ANY telepath of sufficient strength (it maybe wouldn't be true of a low-level TP) would acquire any fighting style and the expertise of any opponent in about a second. That means EXPERIENCE too. Just like NEO in the Matrix. "Hey, I know kung fu." And, once learned, a skill is kept. So, do the math on how many martial artists and swordsmen Betsy has fought in her storied career. Not to mention Rachel and Sage.

Homo Superior Podcast: Creator Crush - Tom Brevoort Talks X-Books

How would you describe X-Force?

Tom Brevoort: X-Force, in terms of description, is probably closest to Warren Ellis' Planetary. On the surface, it looks like a typical X-Force team, traditionally defined as the X-Men's kill squad. I'm kind of of the belief that the X-Men shouldn't have a kill squad, you know, for all that, our good guys go to Wolverine and say, "Hey, we need you to get a bunch of guys to, like, kill a bunch of people so our hands are clean and we could pretend to be moral while knowing about it and sanctioning it." That doesn't make any sense to me. Anyway, X-Force is centered around Forge. Forge has had a vision, and it's caused him to build something. The thing he's built predicts fracture points, moments and places in the world where a crisis is going to occur if something isn't done. Forge has assembled X-Force as the machine to deal with those crises. So the membership, who's in it, what they do, how they do it, is all built almost on an unconscious level because it's an outgrowth of Forge's maker power to put together the right elements to deal with the situation.

We'll also, fairly routinely in that book, have extra characters as guest stars and hangers-on in the way that Deadpool is in the first issue. But, you know, there's a larger thing going on. In that "Planetary" sense, not only are Forge and the X-Force characters getting involved in all these weird happenings around the world, but they begin to suss out the pattern behind them Da Vinci Code style. There's something bigger brewing behind all of that that we will slowly peel the onion layers back from and get to. But it's, you know, like, literally, they don't have headquarters. Their headquarters is a self-repairing Blackbird that they fly around on. They don't do wheels down unless something's going on. They're just on the go constantly.

X-Men Monday #250 – ‘From the Ashes’ Era Preview With Tom Brevoort

AiPT!: Marvel’s Senior Vice President of Publishing and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort was game to return to X-Men Monday and discuss how the “From the Ashes” era came together, answer X-Fans’ pressing questions, drop some character teases, and more.

AIPT: Welcome back to X-Men Monday, Tom! First, X-Men is a franchise with over 60 years of history, hundreds of characters, and a passionate fanbase transcending comics. So I’m curious — once you accepted the reins of the X-Men at Marvel… what did you do next? Where do you even start?

Brevoort: [...] Then I went hunting for people to make these books. And casting wasn’t me alone — I should mention my office team: Annalise Bissa and Martin Biro, who worked with me on Avengers stuff before this. And Annalise goes back to working on the Krakoa books at the beginning of that era. Then the wider team is editor Darren Shan and his assistant Noah Sharma, who came over with me from the Avengers world where they had been doing Invincible Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and a bunch of things. And then Mark Basso and his assistant Drew Baumgartner stayed on in the X-Office where they had been doing Wolverine and X-Force and are now doing Wolverine and X-Force.

AIPT: Before we get into some X-Fan questions, I’ve been wondering about something. I’ve been an X-Fan for most of my life, and five of those years have been spent writing X-Men Monday and sorting through countless fan questions. In that time, I’ve received a crash course in the many things that matter to this fandom — from the minuscule to the significant. So, since you’ve been working on the X-line, is there anything you’ve learned via X-Fan interactions that’s surprised you?

Brevoort: [...] I saw there were a lot of people who were really invested in Betsy Braddock being Captain Britain, and there were a lot of people who were really invested in Betsy Braddock not being Captain Britain. So that’s a divide where it’s going to be difficult to make everybody happy.

X-Men Unlimited Infinity #138 Art

X-Men Unlimited Infinity #138 Spoilers

Spoilers: Outside Nova Roma, Saul, in his dragon form, grabs Captain Britain and takes flight. Meanwhile, Rictor and Shatterstar keep fighting against Absalom and Nicodemus. Inside Nova Roma, Mirage leaves Thunderbird to deal with Crule as she heads towards the cells where Selene keeps the mutants imprisoned. Mirage encounters Cerebra and warns that more allies are arriving to join them. Thunderbird and Crule engage in a brutal and fierce yet balanced fight. When Crule gains the upper hand, Warpath shows up and chops off Crule's arm, freeing his brother. Despite Crule's contempt, he decides to face them both, but he's no match for the Proudstar brothers and ends up defeated. Shatterstar and Rictor join the Proudstars in Nova Roma, assessing the losses: with Crule, Absalom, and Nicodemus defeated, Gideon and Burke handled by Sunspot, and Apocalypse and Candra out of the picture, only Saul remains. Betsy continues riding Saul, soaring through the air, and orders him to land. With no choice, Betsy uses her psychic knife on Saul, knocking him out until he falls unconscious to the ground. Betsy informs Mirage that the Externals have been defeated and it's time to bring in the strike team.

Marvel Studios Rumored To Be Developing A Live-Action Captain Britain TV Series For Disney+

ComicBookMovie.com: Comic book fans have been waiting for Captain Britain to step into the spotlight in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a new rumour claims the character is finally coming to Disney+.

A new rumour shared by scooper @MyTimeToShineH claims that a Captain Britain TV series is in the works for Disney+. The project is a series centered around Captain Britain, potentially replacing the previously rumored MI13 show. That's all we have to go on for now, though we'd be shocked if Marvel's MI13 and Excalibur comics don't influence what we see.

The last significant update on Captain Britain came from Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige nearly seven years ago when he said, "We have discussed it. There are a lot of actors that come in and ask about that part, so we’ll have to see." It's unclear what's taken so long, particularly as there have been several opportunities to add Braddock to the mix.

One actor who may have asked Feige about the role is former Superman, Henry Cavill. "I’m never going to say a Marvel character that is already being played by someone else because everyone’s doing such an amazing job," he said in 2021 when asked about possibly joining the MCU. "However, I have the internet and I have seen the various rumors about Captain Britain and that would be loads of fun to do a cool, modernized version of that - like the way they modernized Captain America. There’s something fun about that, and I do love being British."

Captain Britain was created by Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe and debuted in 1976. Endowed with superhuman abilities by the mystical Amulet of Right, Captain Britain is a patriotic hero who defends the UK and the Multiverse; however, it's Alan Moore's work on the character which put him on the map.

MyTimeToShineHello is a Tier 3 – Somewhat Reliable Source as decided by the community. For Marvel, they had a 67.06% accuracy rate from 236 leaks that we can currently verify out of 528 total.

Geoffrey Thorne's Q&A on X-Force -- Round 5

Geoffrey Thorne recently made a return to the CBR Forums to engage with fans and address questions about his highly anticipated X-Force run.

Some people have raised concerns about the portrayal of the "Native American with red headband" imagery, considering its origins in Hollywood rather than specific cultural attire. I'm curious if you and/or Marcus To have delved into this aspect while developing Forge's character.

Thorne: Hm. We had a lot of discussions about Forge. A LOT. I did considerable research on Cheyenne history, traditions, and current status. None of that will make it into these first issues. Once I'm done writing X-Force, I'll tell the backstage stories and post pages from my first drafts. I make a point of almost never describing how the sausage is made while I'm on a book because there are scumbags who will use frank discussions to gin up controversy in order to get clicks. I'm aggressively anti-scumbag. Bottom line: Forge has a few established looks, and in these first issues, we are using a variation of one of them. That said, THIS time, at least, there's a story reason for the headband.

Could you provide more insight into the concept of X-Force having a revolving cast of guest heroes?

Thorne: Heh. Normally, I wouldn't do this, but I got hammered on the Green Lantern run with covers that revealed plot twists, blurbs that were literally false in their descriptions of what the books contained, and covers that sometimes depicted scenes that never occurred and were never even proposed by me. I'm going to caution everyone, once again, about putting too much stock in these marketing blurbs about our book. I didn't write these marketing blurbs and have no input into them. SOME of what they've said is accurate. Some, like this "rotating guest star" thing, is not. I'm not looking to have to defend myself for failing to fulfill promises I never made. This book will absolutely not be a revolving door of mutant guest stars. Nor will it be a plug-in "mutant of the week" book. This is not Mutant Marvel Team-Up. This is X-Force. Our playing field is the entire Marvel universe. Not saying what it WILL be (SPOILERS), but it will not be either of those things. At all. Put that entirely out of your mind.

I find it particularly exciting to hear that there won't be a revolving door of guest characters in this series.

Thorne: We will be FAST. We will be GLOBAL. We will be RUTHLESS. We will be CONTENTIOUS. We will LIE. We will BETRAY. We will ROLL THAT COASTER as hard as we can. Because we are about winning, about solving the problem for good, not slapping a bandaid on it. And we will, most definitely, be STRANGE.

Will Deadpool be a permanent team member or just a guest star for the initial arc?

Thorne: Wade is 100% a guest. He is not on the team on anything resembling a permanent basis. Whether you love Deadpool or hate Deadpool, you will enjoy what we do with Deadpool.

The issue I have is with Betsy retaining her role as Captain Britain. It seems unrealistic for Britain's top hero to be involved in killing. Personally, I much prefer Betsy as Psylocke. Her transition to Captain Britain doesn't sit well with me.

Thorne: Wait and see.

I'm curious about the mechanics of Betsy's role as Captain Britain. Captain Britain is typically seen as the British equivalent of Captain America, a symbol of heroism. Seeing her on a hit squad feels out of place. Additionally, revealing mutants' involvement in killing could exacerbate existing tensions between mutants and humans. This development has dampened my enthusiasm for the book; I'd prefer to see Betsy return to her Psylocke persona.

Thorne: Wait and see.

My concern about the portrayal of killing ties back to Betsy's identity as Captain Britain. As England's premier hero, it's challenging to reconcile her involvement in lethal activities. X-Force traditionally comprises anti-heroes, so integrating a traditional hero like Captain Britain seems discordant. However, I'm open to seeing how this unfolds in the series.

Thorne: The past won't help you. New deck. New dealers. New game.

What are your thoughts on Betsy's psychic weapons? Are there plans to introduce more medieval-inspired weaponry, or will she predominantly stick to the classic sword and shield?

Thorne: Heh. Lady Braddock will be doing some new stuff, for sure.

Are there any unresolved X-issues that you will be revisiting? Additionally, will there be brand-new villains introduced in this series?

Thorne: New villains, yes. And some [I hope, engaging] spins on old ones. I don't plan on revisiting anything, not the way I think you mean. That said, while the Krakoa era will have come to an end by the time we debut, the ripple effect from all that will have ongoing consequences on the characters in the book. The rise and fall of Krakoa is a significant and, I think, traumatic event to many, many mutants in the X-verse. It would be poor storytelling to ignore that.

Is there any possibility of Cable showing up in X-Force?

Thorne: I have no problems with Cable. He can be fun. But he's got too much gravity for the stories I tell. Any book he's in becomes a Cable book and I'm not here to tell Cable stories or have the story I want to tell transformed into a Cable book. I can't speak to what anyone else is doing with ANY of the characters people want to see but there are a bunch of us with a bunch more series and minis to be announced and a LOT of mutants unaccounted for.

Will Betsy's history with Warren be addressed in this series, or will there be any interaction between them? I'm not a fan of Betsy and Rachel as a couple.

Thorne: I dunno about other writers but nobody controls my narratives but me and, to some degree, the editor. Betsy's with Rachel now, that's the canon. Every character carries their personal history with them just like we all do. MANY queer people go through years or even decades pretending to be straight for their own reasons (usually tied to self-preservation in a hostile society) before coming out. Some, tragically, never do. I've got a sibling who went through this and it was extremely painful for them and for me be unable to help them through it beyond just being supportive of their struggle and their decisions. Betsy and Rachel are now canonically bisexual and, currently, in love with one another. Betsy and Warren certainly did happen and, should they meet up again in X-Force, or elsewhere, I like to think they would remember that time with warmth and happiness. But Betsy is in her own body now and Kwannon's back in hers. When Marvel accepted my pitch for what is now X-Force, Betsy and Rachel were already a couple and a couple they will remain unless there's an EXTREMELY compelling reason to break them up (and I mean EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEMELY compelling). I don't see it happening, frankly. Betsy's romance with Warren will not be rekindled or revisited on my watch. Also, while I love the canon, I hate nostalgia like cancer. We will be moving forward, not backwards.

X-Men Unlimited Infinity #137 Art

X-Men Unlimited Infinity #137 Spoilers

Spoilers: Saul warns X-Corps that they shall not trespass any further, with Absalom and Nicodemus by his side. Betsy orders Mirage and Thunderbird to move forward, while she, Rictor, and Shatterstar stay behind to deal with the three Externals. Betsy attacks Saul with her psychic sword, but he stops it in midair. Saul transforms into a dragon, and Betsy jokes that in a fight between knight and dragon, the knight always wins. Meanwhile, Rictor and Shatterstar decide to switch opponents, with Rictor facing Absalom and Shatterstar against Nicodemus. Saul warns that Betsy falls short of her responsibilities and doesn't understand her potential as a vessel for magic. Betsy retorts that she's used to old mages questioning her worth, referring to Merlyn, and defends herself from Saul's attack with a large butterfly-shaped telekinetic shield. With a surge, Betsy climbs up the dragon's body and thrusts her psychic sword into its scales.

Further into Nova Roma, Mirage and Thunderbird encounter Orchis zombie soldiers and take them down one by one. The duo finds the pens where the kidnapped mutants are being held. Before they can free them, Mirage and Thunderbird are confronted by Crule, who seeks a rematch against Thunderbird.

Captain Britain Graces the Cover of "X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic" #141

The cover of "X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic" #141 features Captain Britain, signaling a continuation of the External Saga. Initially planned as a 20-part story from issues #121 to #140, the arc has been extended to 25 chapters, as confirmed by Steve Foxe's newsletter. Issue #145 is set to conclude the saga on June 24.