Cup 'O Joe: X-Events

CBR: This week, Tom Brevoort announces a project that will lead the way into next summer's big X-Men event! Read on!

On the other end of the event spectrum, I understand you have a new book coming in May to kick off the next X-Men event with the four issue "X-Men: Prelude" series by Paul Jenkins. Is this story a bit of a culmination of Axel's time leading the X-Office? I know he'd been hinting a big story in the works for a while before becoming Editor-in-Chief.

Brevoort: The X-Men event that's coming up is definitely not an ending or the close of an era necessarily, because by the end of it we'll establish a new situation that will project the X-Men into the next few years, potentially. That having been said, the day-to-day responsibilities for the X-Men have passed from Axel to Nick Lowe, and so Nick will be much more involved in the specific of events there and may guide them in a slightly different direction. That having been said, Axel is Editor-in-Chief and is going to be overseeing all of this stuff, so it'll still head down the path he's set for it.

But the incoming X-event is definitely a culmination of a number of the threads and story points that have been percolating since back in "Messiah CompleX," and maybe even a little earlier than that. Paul's story functions as an overture to the event. It's not connected so much on a plot level as it is on a thematic level. It sets the table for what's to come from July to October, which is when the next X-Crisis will hit.

In story terms, Axel has been talking a lot about the stories coming up dealing with a leadership struggle, and as far as I understand it "X-Men: Prelude" will focus each issue on a different character -- the first drawn by Robert De La Torre and the second by Laurence Campbell. Paul Jenkins often does stories for you guys that pull in tight on character work amidst big events. How does this project fit that skill set?

Brevoort: There are two different things. The story coming up focuses not so much on the finite question of, "Who will lead the X-Men?" as much as it does the broader notion of, "Where does the mutant race want or need to be led at this point? Who is in the best position to give that guidance?" Certainly within the books over the past couple of years, the X-Men have drifted away from Professor X's philosophy and onto another path that Cyclops has been forced by circumstances to take them down, along with some other folks -- Wolverine and Rogue and a few others. Paul's story specifically focuses on the four characters who are at the forefront of the leadership question for mutantkind: Professor X, Cyclops, Wolverine and Magneto. Each issue of the series -- because Paul tends to focus on individual 22-page stories even as they all connect in the larger whole -- will paint a picture and give you an idea of what the mindset, direction and directive for each of these guys is going into the next event. And as I said, that'll be less about who leads the team as it will be about, "Where do we go from here?" or, "What is the path we'll choose to follow?" Some degree of optimism has returned with the appearance of Hope and the Five Lights, meaning that maybe the mutant race is not as absolutely on a path to extinction as it seemed over the past couple of years. So what do they do next as a result of this sea-change? Paul's story is very much about who these four characters are as individuals and what their specific philosophies are as we dive into that epic.