Marvel Comics Exec Tom Brevoort Pushes Back After Fans Hope New ‘X-Men’ Event Ditches Ideology-Driven Storytelling, Claims Team Is Rooted In “The Message”
Spencer Baculi
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In dashing the hopes of many an X-Fan, Marvel Comics exec Tom Brevoort has pushed back against those who voiced concern that the publisher’s newly announced next X-Men event would see the team further subjected to the publisher’s current ideology, character subversion-driven editorial direction by claiming that the Merry Band of Mutants has always been rooted in “the message”.
Officially revealed by Marvel on December 20th, the aptly titled X-Men: From The Ashes event will serve as the follow-up to the currently ongoing Fall of X and see “the X-Men titles reborn” in July 2024.
However, outside of this brief tease of a line-wide reboot and a logo featuring the 1990’s version of the team’s logo, the publisher did not offer any additional information regarding the event.
Notably, while Marvel’s official tweet announcing the event drew little criticism, it would Brevoort’s own promotion of the event, in which he shared the above graphic and teased “Start the clock…”, that would see fans pour out to voice their concerns.
“Unless you retcon the past 10-20 years of X-Men canonical history so none of it ever happened, or reveal they were all damaged Sinister clones the whole time while the real X-Men were in stasis, it’s all pointless,” wrote Twitter user @Thor_Odinson. “The damage goes back way before the terrible Krakoa era. So short of a massive retcon, you’ve effectively broken these characters for good. Congratulations.”
Likewise, @crypto_count opined, “Unless Marvel cleans house…ridding themselves of the current writers, majority of artists and editors…it will be nothing but a countdown to more failure.”
“The industry hasn’t admitted the problem yet,” they added. “Until then, nothing will change.”
Taking note of the event’s use of the 90s logo, @inhumannation stressed to Brevoort, “The fans made the industry and took it from the counter culture to the mainstream. We’ve watched our beloved heroes get prostituted out for the last 30 years and for this to have any chance at recapturing any of the magic from that time, it has to be more than shoehorned DEI.”
Giving a cheeky take on the situation, noted comic book YouTuber @ComicPerch laughed, “Watching Twitter ‘fans’ throw a fit about the end of the Krakoa era after ‘three years of comic investment’ is quite something. I mean, can you blame them? Imagine collecting comics for THREE YEARS and then the tone of the comic changes dramatically? The horror.”
But rather than engage with these disappointed and hesitant fans in good faith, the Marvel VP instead responded to their concerns with a tired attempt to paint them as homophobes and bigots.
“Well, this X-Men graphic sure brought people out in force,” dismissed Brevoort. “One reminder that I thought wouldn’t be necessary: express whatever opinion you like, but if you show up with homophobia or bigotry or hate speak of any sort, it’ll be an instant block.”
Unsurprisingly, the Marvel Comics editor’s condescending flippancy was met not with applause, but rather further criticism of the publisher’s disregard for not only its own characters, but its fans.
One such frustrated fan was @GavinKnight, who responded to Brevoort’s dismissal by cutting through his attempts to run defense for Marvel Comics’ low-quality output and directly requesting, “How about you tell a good story and stop shoving the message down our throats.”
In turn – and in doing so inadvertently confirming fans fears’ that the X-line was set for even more years of ham-fisted social politics – Brevoort attempted to shut down both @GavinKnight and their like-minded critics by raising the popular-yet-false belief that X-Men were created as super-powered analogues to the 1960s American Civil Rights movement.
“It’s X-Men,” declared the editor. “The message is the premise.”
As noted above, despite this read of the X-Men having become a recent element of the team’s pop culture identity, it was not part of their original concept.
As explained by the team’s co-creator Stan Lee during a 2004 interview given to the Archive of American Television’s Lisa Terrada for the group’s Living Television Collection, “Well, there’s a funny a story, everything is a funny a story.”
[Time Stamp: 37:39]
“After I had done the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Spider-Man, I think the X-Men came next,” said the industry icon. “The X-Men and one other. I think Daredevil. They’re about the same time.”
“Anyway I wanted to do another group, another group of superheroes, but I was getting tired now of figuring out how they get their superpowers,” he explained. “I couldn’t have everybody bitten by a radioactive spider or exposed to a gamma ray explosion.
“And I took the cowardly way out,” he continued. “I said to myself, ‘Why don’t I just say they’re mutants. They were born that way.’ We all know there are mutants in real life. There’s a frog with five legs, things like that. So I won’t have to think of new excuses. I’ll get as many as I want and yeah, he’s a mutant, that’s all.”
Per Marvel’s preview graphic, X-Men: From the Ashes sparks to life on July 2024.
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