Last week, the first issue of “X-Men ’92” was released on comiXology. As you’re surely aware, the book is co-written by Multiversity alum Chad Bowers (along with Chris Sims and artist Scott Koblish), and so Chad and I thought it would be fun to delve a little deeper into the book, so we are going to be doing a monthly commentary on each issue. Get prepared to enter the Striped Shirt Wars.
So, Chad, let’s get right to it: there’s no way that Jubilee could really win that laser tag game, right?
Chad Bowers: What? Why not? Did you not read those Claremont/Silverstri issues where she’s living in the mall? She’s in her natural habitat.
As someone from New Jersey, I understand the mall as a natural habitat. That said, I still think that she’d be outgunned in that battle. But hey, you’re the pro here.
CB: Look, her winning at laser tag was literally one of the first things we decided on. Knew right away that had to happen. And people seem to like it. Well, people who aren’t Brians.
So, like many of our readers I’m sure, when I first saw the teaser for this book, I presumed that it would be set in the world of the X-Men TV universe. But, as more information came out, it seemed instead that it was the Jim Lee-era of the X-Men comics. So, to you, where does the DNA of this book come from? What is the dominant trait in this universe?
CB: What makes the 90s, to me, is the aesthetic shift, at Marvel first, and then DC, and son on, to a true artist’s medium. I mean, before then artists are clearly integral to the process, because, let’s face it, it ain’t comics with out an artist. That said, the 90s are the last pre-Image ere of the industry, and the catalyst for so many creators’ coming into their own as not just pencillers, but true world builders, and the guiding force behind so many a property.
And it all starts with X-Men… even before Jim Lee, I’d say, when guys like John Byrne and Alan Davis, and some years later, Marc Silverstri become superstars. X-Men’s a star making comic.
So in the 90s, when Claremont leaves the X-Men after nearly two decades of steering the ship, Marvel makes a bold move — and a pretty brilliant one — to turn the books over to the artists, and bring in John Byrne — a guy who was THE original X-Men superstar artist — to come aboard as scripter, and suddenly, for the first time in a long while, you’ve got these very art driven properties that’re the most popular thing in comics.
All that to say, that attitude is a big part of what we’re doing on ’92. That unpredictability, and that anything can happen feeling are what really made me love those comics as a kid, and what I hope we are able to tap into.
As for how what was happening in the real world of comics feeds into the story of X-Men ’92, it’s pretty literal… when our story begins the X-Men have changed the way things were, and are the most popular folks in Westchester. Their faces are on t-shirts, and ball caps. There’s Wolverine lunchboxes. It’s the X-Men X-Splosion of the early 90s given life on Battleworld.
I would actually say that the same attitude [of anything can happen] did, to a degree, carry over to the TV show. I mean, looking back, obviously Morph was a red shirt, but at the time, when I was 10 or so, that shit broke my heart.
CB: What, Morph dying?
Yes
CB:Yeah, that got to a lot of people, I know. But even as a kid I felt like I could see through his death. I was like,”Of course they’re not going to kill a REAL X-Man.” So right out of the gate, the show felt like it was off track. Don’t get me wrong, I adore that show, then and now, but Morph’s a weird piece of it.
Continued belowWell, I am a bit younger than you – I was more impressionable
CB: Yeah. My condolences.
Thank you. In lieu of flowers, please send action figures.
CB: You know he comes back, right?
Oh yeah, and that seemed like a huge fuck you to me at the time.
CB: And actually, those episodes are super cool and push a lot of boundaries that, even today, I’m kind of shocked by. There’s one scene where he morphs (ahem) into Jean, and kind of hits on Wolverine. That’s not something you really saw back then, and that, along with some other stuff in those episodes is quite a lot to process. It’s great! I love those so much.
So how much of the overall arc of the series was laid out for you, versus what you and Chris brought to the table? Was stuff like the Westchester Wars already in the plan, or was that all you guys?
CB: Our editor, Jordan D White came to us with the idea of doing a 90s X-Men comic as part of Secret Wars, and that was basically what we had going in.
Our earliest outlines looked nothing like what we’re actually doing now, but they really helped us figure out how Battleworld and “Secret Wars” works, and by refining things down, we kind of discovered that even though these guys look like the team from “X-Men” #1 or the animated series, that there was just no way possible for them to be.
Initially, we had the X-Men kind of going on this globetrotting mission and stopping off in all the places you love to see them. The Savage Land. The Mojoverse. Japan. Canada. But then we got the word that those places don’t exactly exist in the context of Secret Wars — at least not in the way we know them. So now, all of sudden, we’re writing a Wolverine who’s never been to Japan, and might not even be Canadian, and what do you do with a guy like that?
And that’s where I came up with the idea of the Westchester Wars, basically. Out of necessity. Because for these characters to feel and read familiar, they’re going to have to have had, at the very least, some Battleworld version of their known pasts… so yeah, every major event and story arc from the X-Men’s fifty plus year history took place in Westchester, all part of this major war between Magneto and Charles Xavier. Each became a minor skirmish in the grand narrative.
I’ve got a notebook that’s just full of stuff that happened in those years that nobody but me and Chris will ever see.
Give us a little taste – break us off a preview of the remix.
CB: Ha! Well, okay, for instance… in Westchester, instead of the X-Men “dying” in Dallas, going through the Siege Perilous and being remade and dropped off in the Outback, they fake their deaths on Dallas Street, which is in South Westchester, duck into Siege Perilous Records and Tapes, and exit through an Outback Steakhouse which is directly behind it.
Some experience, right?
That sounds harrowing.
CB: And people worry about this book being too campy.
Of everything I’ve seen about the book online, the strongest reactions have been all about Jubilee returning or, at least the ‘classic’ Jubilee. Few characters better represent the era better than Jubilee – why does ’92 Jubilee just work better than any other era?
CB: Because that’s where she was born. Like Kitty Pryde before her, Jubilee is a firmly tied to the time period in which she first appeared. For Kitty it was Star Wars and Elfquest, bur for Jubilee it’s food courts, and bad fashion.
You can take the kid out of the 90s, but as far as I’m concerned, you can’t take the 90s out of the kid, y’know?
But no one thinks that ’39 Batman is the best Batman? Why does her character not evolve the way so many others do?
CB: Batman never had those shades, Brian.
He copped his look from a masquerade party! You don’t get much more 1939 than that. People were so poor they had to have parties in masks because there wasn’t enough food to go around.
Continued belowCB: Sure, but your question is why not Batman? And the truth is, Batman’s not beyond folks having their preferred version of his character, or look. I mean, look how many things have been retroactively influenced by “The Dark Knight Returns?”
But no one is advocating for 2004 Jubilee. No one.
CB: That’s not quite true. I just think folks miss this particular version of her, because it’s what they first encountered. She’s kind of us, right?
We certainly are closer in mutant power levels than we are with most X-Men.
CB: Kids a few years older than us connected with the New Mutants, and again, Kitty Pryde, but I was slightly too young for those guys. Just a few year behind, but Jubilee was my age (mostly), and my window character. And once the X-Men stop being teenagers, I mean, you really have to have that character, and she, more than any other X-Man, epitomizes that era.
Now, one of the more curious aspects of the book – which turned out to be my favorite bit, actually – was your inclusion of a Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely creation, Cassandra Nova, as the director of Clear Mountain. This was a nice bit of misdirection, as I spent the whole issue trying to think of an era specific villain and then you blindsided me. So, two questions: what made you want to go so outside of the (clearly quite important) time frame to find a villain, and is she an anomaly in the book, or will we be seeing more ‘out of time’ characters?
CB: From the beginning, we knew we didn’t want a villain we’d seen these X-Men face before. Another Magneto story, or even something more era specific like Stryfe or Bastion, to me, would’ve felt like rehash. And considering the title and tone of the series, a greatest hits story would’ve been very easy to do, too. But it wasn’t something we were ever interested in doing, because we definitely want ’92 to be more than just a nostalgia trip.
Touching on the show again for just a minute. Season five kicks of with an adaptation of The Phalanx Covenant, which was a crossover that had run through the X-titles just two years prior. The animated version of Phalanx was pretty different from the comics. Honestly, the two shared mostly the title and that was about it. Prior to that, most of the show’s adaptations had been of stories from the 70s and 80s, but here they were now, adapting a story from comics published just a year or so before, and it’s almost like the show’s trying to outrun the comics, and I sort of became obsessed with that idea. One, adapting something in such a way, that gets it so wrong that inevitably becomes something new, and two, the X-Men running up against an obstacle that the 90s versions are tonally unprepared for. And that’s Cassandra Nova.
As a franchise, the X-Men were kind of lost and directionless at the end of the 20th Century, and it took Morrison coming on and radicalizing the book, and giving it a new mission statement for it to rediscover its voice. Our story, in a way, is the fictional account of that era. When ’92 opens, the X-Men are a popular and as successful as they can get, but in some ways, they now lack purpose, and then along comes Cassandra Nova…
As for seeing other characters like that, I don’t think so. Not yet, at least. Sorry Ord from Breakworld fans.
At some point, I lost count of all of the subtle (and – at times – not so subtle) references to X-history in the issue. What are your two favorite nods/goofs in the book?
CB: Hands down, Jubilee’s “Bang, you’re dead” is my favorite. I just love how it lands, and that little smirk Scott gives her on that page. Too funny.
There’s also a nice nod to Carol Danvers on page one, where Scott’s drawn Rogue directly underneath Captain Marvel’s symbol on the window of the Laser Hut. That one’s pretty cool, too, and probably not one a lot of folks notice.
Continued below
But there’s a ton in there, and my gosh, so many more to come.
I can only presume a Free Range Sentinel is one that sells for a slightly higher price and isn’t fed corn. Am I correct?
CB: Something like that.
That’s another callback to Morrison’s New X-Men where we’re introduced to the Wild Sentinels.
Ok, I have four rapid fire questions to close with.
1) Which of your co-conspirators on the book would be the best at Laser Tag? You can answer yourself if you’re an ego maniac.
CB: Well, Scott Koblish is by far the quickest artist I’ve ever worked with, so I imagine he’s got both me and Chris beat on speed. But I’ve played Magi-Quest with Chris before, so I’d like to think that might give us the tactical advantage, and — nah, Scott still would win.
2) Settle the eternal debate once and for all: Blue or Gold team?
CB: Tough choice. Uncanny X-Men #281 — the premiere of the Storm-led Gold Team — was my first subscription comic, so it holds a special place in my heart. But as much as I like that team, it’s really devoid of any heavy-hitters, and if we’re being honest, B-Team’s probably a better call sign for that crew. I have to go with the Blue Team.
3) Best song from 1992?
CB: You have to ask?
4) Tease the next issue in 9 words or less.
CB: Toad and the Blob play basketball!
