X-Men Monday #223 – Jordan D. White Comes Clear About Betsy Braddock

AIPT!: How do you, as an editor, perceive what worked and didn’t work for Betsy Braddock in the Krakoan era? Despite headlining three different books, two of them were short-lived and didn’t make as much of an impact as other titles in the line-up. Consequently, Betsy has spent months in comic book limbo. What do you think could be done to course-correct this and elevate her once more?

Jordan: OK, do you want me to start with my joke answer? She’s just had a modeling gig and she’s been super busy. She booked a new gig and she was like, “I understand Orchis and all that, but this photoshoot isn’t going to wait. I need to go do this.”

OK, now that you hate me because I made that joke, I’m sorry. Yeah, listen, we’ve already talked a lot about how many X-characters there are. I’m going to kind of reiterate what you just said to make sure I understand it.

We tried three different series about Betsy. And if I’m reading correctly into your interpretation, you’re saying some of those books didn’t do as well as you assume Marvel would like, and your concern is that we are going to put that on Betsy and not other factors that could have made the book not sell well, which obviously also presupposes other things, like that Betsy herself does sell books in a vacuum and that we have to be honest with ourselves about the fact that we didn’t tell a good enough story about Betsy to give her the showcase that she deserves to sell the books that she needs to sell. And with a different creative team, with a different writer, with a different artist, we could make a book that will craft towards the purpose of highlighting and showcasing Betsy in the best possible way.

I mean, I’ve talked many times about how much I love the character of Betsy Braddock. So I hope that you know that I’m a fan of that character. That’s a character I like and care about. But I don’t know that your supposition, that she is a character that needs to be focused on, is necessarily accurate. Yes, she was focused on because we made a choice. We wanted to tell a story about her becoming the new Captain Britain. And we played that story out in Excalibur, then we played that story out a bit more in Knights of X, and then we played it out more in Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain. Obviously, our hope was that Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain, for example, would continue to sell, and that it would become an ongoing series that would be still running to this day. Yes, that is why we did not say, “Let’s make sure she’s in Realm of X, let’s make sure she’s in any of the Fall of X books,” because the hope had been, ideally that book will continue into Fall of X. And that’s where you’ll see what she’s doing. So you were correct about that part of it, but she had that attention on her because that was a story we wanted to tell, and we told it for as long as we were financially able to tell it. And now we are not currently.

I will tell you that, unlike some of the characters we’ve talked about today, I do know where Betsy is going to appear next. I know two different places where Betsy’s going to appear next. She is a character that we care about. And honestly, the fact that she was as important as she was for so many issues does make it a little strange that she has not appeared. But that’s how the cookie crumbled, unfortunately. I wish it had gone differently. We have plans for where she’s going to be next. We will see her again before the Krakoan age is through for certain.

AIPT: And it’s Steve Foxe writing Betsy. He talked about that here recently.

Jordan: Gerry Duggan did tease that Steve Foxe is doing something that will involve her.

AIPT: And Rachel.

Jordan: Yes, though Steve’s not the only one. There are other folks. Anyway, yeah, she’s going to be back. But with Betsy, like, I don’t know what you want… I mean, I think I do know what you want me to say…

AIPT: Based on some of the other questions I’ve seen submitted over these past few months, I believe there’s frustration that when a beloved character like Betsy’s series abruptly ends, there’s no backup plan to get her to the Hellfire Gala or worked into an event as important as the Fall of X.

Jordan: Of course, of course. I mean, we didn’t have a backup plan for Betsy, because again, as much as I love her, it’s Betsy Braddock. She’s not the most important character in the X-Men. If suddenly we had nowhere where Wolverine was showing up, yeah, we’d probably have a backup in place. If suddenly the book that Cyclops was showcased in stopped happening, then yeah, we’d probably go, “Well, we can’t not do Cyclops.”

I don’t think Betsy has reached that status. And this is a tricky one, because I’m extremely glad that we separated Betsy and Kwannon. But I also think it’s possible that the continued existence of Kwannon as Psylocke has hurt Betsy in the sense that she became most popular when she was Kwannon and the trappings of what she looked like and her ninja status. And I understand Betsy retains that, absolutely. I’m not taking anything away from what is great about Betsy. Again, I love Betsy. But to the people who aren’t die-hard Betsy fans, some of them are more interested in seeing Kwannon because that’s what they’re expecting.

And I know some Betsy fans would say that’s because she’s Captain Britain. I think they were more interested in seeing Kwannon than they were in seeing the “X-Men Disassembled” version of Psylocke as well. I still think it’s an extremely positive thing that we made her Captain Britain. I stand by it. And again, I know that’s not what you want me to say either, but I still stand by it and I stand by those books. I edited Excalibur for many issues of it, and I’m extremely proud of those issues. It was then taken over by Sarah Brunstad and she oversaw the rest of Excalibur and then the other two series. And she does great work as well. And it was a pleasure to work with Tini Howard and she does great stories for us.

So I stand behind the work we did. I wish that they had gone over better. I mean, with all books, there are things you could have done better. So I’m sure there are things we could have done better. And I’m not going to litigate those things here. I’m not going to enumerate things that I wish we had done right now. But I do stand by the work we did. It was what we did in the moment and I’m proud of it.