X-Men Monday #350 – Jed MacKay and Tom Brevoort Talk ‘Jean Grey’, ‘DNX’, and More

AIPT!: In the milestone 350th edition of X-Men Monday, AIPT welcomed Jed MacKay and Tom Brevoort to discuss Jean Grey’s return to the X-Men, the upcoming DNX event, her new limited series, and what readers can expect from the post-DNX era.

AIPT: Tom, Jed has said DNX will “transform the X-Men dramatically.” As far as events go, DNX seems pretty small and manageable—mostly impacting X-Men and Fantastic Four. But beyond those two series, should X-Fans expect any ramifications for the wider X-Line, just as “Shadows of Tomorrow” served as a launchpad for new titles and storylines?

Tom Brevoort: As you say, the intention with DNX was to keep things tight. It’s still an impactful saga, but one of the takeaways from Age of Revelation was the feeling among fans that it asked too much of people who maybe wanted to follow all of it. So in general, not just in the X-Line but throughout Marvel, we’ve been concentrating events around a smaller group of titles. Queen in Black and the upcoming Hulk War are both like that as well—grand-scale, Marvel Universe-shattering events that you’d come to expect, but playing out across fewer books.

And in terms of after-effects, you already know about one thing that’ll be coming straight out of it: Jean Grey. And it’ll have an impact on the launch of Maximum X-Men as well, though not to the point where you’ll have to read one to follow the other. The effects will also ripple out to some degree across the other books. But the biggest place it will hit is in Alaska and in Jed’s slice of the pie, where it will be relatively seismic.

AIPT: Very soon, Shatterstar, Rictor, Betsy Braddock, and Jean Grey—characters X-Fans have asked about in past X-Men Monday editions—all return to the pages of X-Men comics. First, I hope this means you get a lot fewer intense emails from X-Fans. And second, can X-Fans expect more characters who have been off the board for a while to reappear in the months ahead?

Tom Brevoort: Ha! There’s never going to be fewer intense emails from X-Fans because every single character in the franchise has dedicated hardcore fans who want to see more of them. We’d need an infinite number of titles to get to a point where that wouldn’t happen.

But in general, we’re trying to keep any number of characters in play while still having the room to service the ones who are already in active use. Sometimes that means sprinkling in a few obscure faces into places like X-Men United. But the casts of our ongoing team titles are all pretty huge already, so finding time and space for players that aren’t already actively in them can present a challenge.

As it is, I feel like we haven’t done enough with, say, Temper over in X-Men, and I worry about losing the Exceptional X-Men kids in X-Men United a bit, and poor Shogo still hasn’t reunited with Jubilee. But that’s the storytelling struggle.