AIPT: Surely, the greatest X-Men story X-Fans have never read! Now, for those who are learning about What If… Kitty Pryde Stole the Phoenix Force? for the first time, what’s the elevator pitch?
Rebecca: We meet Kitty Pryde in a future without Jean Grey, and thus, without the X-Men, who died decades ago when their space shuttle was torn apart by a solar flare. Now they’re nothing more than a cautionary tale told to Kitty by the White Queen, her mentor and boss, to drive home the lesson: mutants cannot count on the goodwill of humanity. They have to be stronger, smarter, and above all else, stick to the shadows to survive.
So when Betsy Braddock, a near-stranger and minor employee of RCX, shows up claiming that something is wrong with the world and that the psychic trail leads right to her, Kitty wants to brush her off. But Kitty has been seeing flashes of a different world, a different life, since her powers first manifested. To discover the truth, they’ll have to follow Betsy’s trail back to the past, to the glory days of the X-Men, and to the future Phoenix herself. But they’re not the only ones searching for Jean Grey.
AIPT: The Phoenix Saga, Kitty Pryde, Betsy Braddock, America Chavez, Doctor Doom, the Watcher, the Multiverse — you’ve managed to pack a lot into 336 pages. I’m curious, how does this unique twist on a classic X-Men story come together?
Rebecca: It was a lot, juggling classic versions of beloved characters, canon versions throughout history, and AU versions that never existed. But I think they’re all tied together by the fact that they’re searching for something they care deeply about. Kitty, for the hero she might have been in a better world she’s not even sure she believes in; America, for what it means to be human and to be in the world, rather than to exist as an observer from afar; Betsy, for the pieces of herself she’s lost along the way, with the hope that it’s possible to feel whole again. Even Doom is searching for something he feels he needs desperately. The places where their needs intersect, and where they oppose one another, are the heart of the book.
AIPT: What can readers expect from the Kitty, Betsy, America — and, maybe Jean? — dynamic? I feel like this isn’t a combination we’ve seen explored in the comics.
Rebecca: It was really fun to put them all in one place, as adults and strangers, and figure out which parts of their innate Kitty-ness and Betsy-ness and so on came through despite having grown up apart, and under very different circumstances than they should have. Betsy, Kitty, and Jean are also missing an extremely important hinge point between them all. But I think some things are true about these characters in every world, as America says in the book, so I hope they still feel familiar to readers and fans.
“For so long, my life has been out of control. Chaos and serendipity, wrapped in insanity. I have suffered, I have lost. Not just my life, but my very soul, my self. But no more. Now I know who I am.” – Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Braddock, daughter of Otherworld, mutant, telepath, telekinetic, defender of the realm and, above all, X-Man.
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