X-Position: Bowers & Sims Bring Apocalypse to X-Men '92

CBR: This week in X-POSITION, “X-Men ’92” writers Chad Bowers and Chris Sims answer your questions about everything from Apocalypse’s arrival to the X-Men of 2099 and more.

Can you tell us a bit more about this secret cabal of mutants who have been conspiring against the X-Men since Alpha Red? When will we learn about their full agenda?

Bowers: The Upstarts. They’re a ruthless group of rich and powerful young mutants brought together by the mysterious Gamesmaster who’s challenged them to destroy the X-Men. Their membership consists of Fabian Cortez, Shinobi Shaw, Trevor Fitzroy, and the Fenris Twins, Andrea and Andreas Von Strucker. They’re each utterly despicable in their own way — the antithesis of what it means to be an X-Man — and they’re hungry to find out who the Gamesmaster’s working for, and win the ultimate prize… despite not really knowing what the prize is. The sad truth is, they’d all probably be trying to kill the X-Men anyway. All the Gamesmaster’s done is just turn it into a competition.

Since you’re writing versions of the characters that are sent in the ’92niverse, is there potential for them to grow and change in unexpected ways? Are there any X-Men right now that you’re writing that you feel growing in a different direction than their 616 counterpart?

Bowers: Mixing in the Gen X kids with the pre-X-Statix cast opens a lot of doors for us to explore some different outcomes, sure. Dead Girl and Chamber seem to be hitting it off, and I can’t recall them ever having a scene together prior to “‘92.” And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Doop’s hair.

But all kidding aside, there’s some things coming up that we can only do in “‘92” and with the cast we’ve put together. Already, our team is a team that never existed in the core universe, and that’s just naturally changed the dynamic quite a bit. Bishop and Psylocke are maybe our two most changed X-Men, as their histories already differ quite a bit coming out of the mini-series. Neither have ever been an X-Man before, so we not only get to see them figuring things out in a way we never have before, but they also share an interpersonal connection we’ve never seen them have before, and that’s going to continue to grow over the course of the next couple issues.

Sims: We’ve gotten a lot of questions about Cable, too, after we revealed his all-new (or at least all-’92) origin story in #5. That one was really fun for us to put together, just throwing in all the weird future stuff that we could think of in the far off year of 3992. Clearly, “our” Cable — the guy who shows up in the miniseries leading X-Force and may just be coming back pretty soon – is a little bit different than the main-universe version. But don’t worry, he still has a metal arm, a glowing eye, and a truly gigantic laser gun.