After Years Snubbing Spider-Man And MJ Fans, Marvel Comics Exec Editor Says He Won’t Break Up X-Men’s Gambit And Rogue Because “Readers In General Seem To Be Invested In Them As A Couple”
Despite refusing to listen to the exact same metric when it comes to the idea of reuniting Spider-Man and Mary-Jane, Marvel Comics Executive Editor Tom Brevoort says that while the marriage between X-Men mainstays Rogue and Gambit may have been conceived with the idea of eventually sending them down the road to heartbreak, he currently has no interest in following through on these plans after seeing the massive amount of investment fans have in their current relationship dynamic.
Brevoort, who also serves as the lead editor of the publisher’s overall X-Men line, offered this hypocritical argument regarding the continuation of Mr. and Mrs. X‘s union while answering fan questions for the latest entry of his weekly Man With A Hat Substack blog.
Pressing the X-Editor as to the publisher’s general outlook on their characters getting married, one fan opened his inquiry by referring to a past appearance by Marvel Comics writer Donny Cates on artist (and his former Venom Vol. 4 partner-in-crime) Ryan Stegman’s Steg-Man and His Amazing Friends podcast wherein he “revealed that part of the reason he pitched Rogue and Gambit as a replacement to the maligned Kitty and Colossus marriage [as seen in 2017’s X-Men Gold Vol. 2 #30] was because Rogue and Gambit as characters could handle getting divorced. So to me, that always signified that divorce was somewhat built into the narrative conceit of them being married.”
Moving to raise their actual question, said fan continued, “Now obviously, Gail [Simone, who is currently writing both characters in Uncanny X-Men Vol. 6] isn’t gonna break them up (although a little strife and drama would be fun), but if a writer in the future – after Gail’s run has ended, of course – came along and had a (good) story to tell that dissolved this marriage, is that something you would consider? Or are Rogue and Gambit the opposite of Pete and MJ and thus need to be married in order to ‘work’?”
In turn, Brevoort asserted, “I don’t think that Rogue and Gambit need to be married in order to work—them being married is still a relatively new thing in terms of their history. By that same token, I’m also not really looking to break them up. Readers in general seem to be invested in them as a couple.”
As noted above, Brevoort’s defense of Rogue and Gambit’s marriage on the grounds that ‘readers support it’ stands in stark contrast to his ongoing dismissal of the even more-overwhelming fan demand to see Marvel Comics undo One More Day and bring Spider-Man and Mary-Jane back together.
Asked by a fan for the March 9th edition of his Substack blog as to his thoughts on the “recurring idea that the success of the new Ultimate Spider-Man (with a married Peter Parker) is an indication that the regular 616 Peter’s marriage to MJ should be reinstated, and that it is a fault of the editor(s) over there for not recognizing that and thus reaping similar sales success”, the Marvel Comics exec pushed back, “Yeah, I’ve been hearing from a couple of yahoos whose idea of a good time is to send us the same form letter about MJ and Paul every single day. But here’s the thing: I think the point of view that you’re talking about is simply incorrect.”
“First off, the difference in sales between Ultimate Spider-Man and Amazing Spider-Man is relatively slim,” said Brevoort. “It’s not like Ultimate is doing twice or three times the business or anything. And secondly, I don’t think that the success of Ultimate at the moment is just down to Pete and MJ being married within it. I think it has a lot more to do with the quality of the work that Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto are producing.”
“So I get that people who want Pete and MJ back together are of course going to point to that series, but the truth is that it doesn’t really make a convincing argument to me at all,” he concluded. “I’ve been around this particular sort of block too many times over the years to mistake the signals.”
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