Broken Frontier

With Marvel's mutants now able to fit into a large auditorium, they're more vulnerable than ever to the machinations of Norman Osborn and his Dark X-Men. Osborn seized the opportunity, and a titanic clash played out in the recent Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men crossover that had significant ramifications for the mutant status quo. Broken Frontier spoke with Uncanny X-Men scribe Matt Fraction about the X-Men/Osborn showdown, and what's ahead in the mutant battle for survival.

BROKEN FRONTIER: How far back was the Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men crossover planned? How did you end up writing all the parts, rather than Brian Bendis writing the Dark Avengers issues?

MATT FRACTION: As far back as I’d been involved with the book-- and this is a couple years back at this point-- I’d wanted an X-Men/Avengers dust-up to fall this summer.  Structurally it kind of fit; I knew where we were going and it made sense... and then the more I learned about where the Avengers books were going to be this summer it just made more and more sense.  So what started as a... I don’t want to say pipe dream, but a hoped-for best-case scenario just became more and more logical and meaningful as time went on.  And then more people started getting excited and we had momentum and there you go.

When we very first spoke about it Brian and I were going to write it together, then I got up, went to the bathroom, came back, and it was all me so that Brian would be free to do some damn thing or the other.  It was no big deal.  Brian and I talked an awful lot the whole time and I appreciate that he let me play with his toys as long as he did. 
 
BF: What kind of coordination have you had to do with Brian and other writers, in order to sync up with the Dark Reign storyline and the other X-books? Is it tough to write your own stories, having to juggle it with what other writers are doing?
 
MF: Well, it’s not like we’re writing a show like 24 or something-- these books don’t take place in real time. There are broad-stroke levels of coordination and a high level of general awareness but it’s not like we’re trying to craft and catalogue what happens every second of every day... the short, and wholly uninteresting, answer is that we’re all pretty aware of what’s going on and everyone tries to help everyone else out.

And it would be tough if I wrote as if the toys in the toybox were mine all mine but I don’t.  It’s a really collaborative atmosphere and there’s been a lot of advanced warning as to what’s going on so everybody had ample time to plan accordingly.

BF: How did you decide who would be a "Dark X-Man"? Dark Beast has always been thoroughly evil, but Cloak and Dagger have been heroes, and went with Emma towards the end of the crossover, though we haven't seen them since. Michael Pointer seemed to be on the path to redemption during his recent Marvel Comics Presents appearances, but went nuts in this story, and Mimic just seemed confused.
 
MF: Axel Alonso, Nick Lowe, and I all started thinking about who would look cool.  Like, imagining a cover in silhouette and wanting to ape the original X line up somewhat... we had a long list of candidates and we went back and forth and got ‘em into shape.  So it started with a visual aspect, and then shifted into strategic thinking.  Like, if I’m Osborn, who do I put together and why?  And it just grew out from there.

And you’re looking at them knowing what YOU know, as a reader, and not what the world at large knows in the Marvel Universe.  To the world in general, Osborn is the man that won the Skrull War.  There’s a high level of trust in him at the story’s onset.  He came to Cloak and Dagger with a choice to clear their records and they took it.  Pointer has always been a psychotic-- how do you kill that many people and be redeemed?  And Mimic is a wannabe that saw this team as his shot at greatness.  Everybody had their own character reasons to be there above and beyond the strategic value Oz saw in them all.

BF: With regard to Pointer, Brian Bendis established in his first appearances that he was possessed by the mind of an evil mutant, and that caused him to go on the rampage; the later MCP appearances showed him plagued with remorse, and doing his best to atone for it. Do you think he works better as an out and out bad guy?
 
MF: Clearly, yeah. And profoundly, profoundly formidable. We need more guys capable of that kind of carnage.

BF: Do you have future plans for any of them?
 
MF: Yes. So do others.  They’re not going away.

BF: Whose idea was it originally to have Namor join the cast, and how do you like writing him?
 
MF: Mine, and I love it. It’s because I love writing him so much that he’s come over.  I always liked that he was a mutant AND an Atlantean... and the idea of this regal, arrogant, stuck-up king having to... I mean, he’s never going to be a “team player” or anything but... but do you really think he’s going to follow orders from Scott? He kind of has to now...

Anyway I love him. He’s great.

BF: Cyclops seems to be the fulcrum of the team in a way that he hasn't been in years; he's more confident and take-charge, and seems now to be relishing the role of leader. Do you think the Decimation crisis has brought out the best in him?
 
MF: I think Messiah Complex, and the birth of Hope, is what did it.  I don’t think it was the catastrophe that made him a man, but his faith in its resolution.

BF: What is Charles Xavier's role, now that Scott has so completely taken the lead? Will he have to give up on his dream, and just accept this new separatist society that Scott has created?
 
MF: This is addressed in Nation X.  Needless to say, it’s a big-- a huge!-- question and one that a lot of our characters will be asking themselves and each other.  Magneto has a line in Uncanny #516-- “Homo Superior isn’t the future of man-- we’re its vestigial tail.”  And if that’s the new standard operating procedure for mutants... where does that leave Charles? Or Magneto?  Where does that put Scott?

BF: Emma Frost used to be a selfish, sociopathic individual, but in recent years we've seen her undergo a radical transformation, and she's reached new levels of self-sacrifice in fighting for her fellow mutants and for Scott himself. What do you think caused this change in her character, and are there still some of her old ways underneath?
 
MF: I humbly and respectfully reject the premise. Go back and reread her life: Emma always did whatever she had to do to protect and train mutants, for as long as she’s been around. Selfish, maybe; arrogant, rich, spoiled, bratty, bitchy, yes; but her core has remained unchanged. She’s always allied herself with whomever she needed to above all other things keep her people safe.  And I think she’s a bit like a shark-- she’s just swimming to where the food is. Is that selfish or focused?  Is that sociopathic or single-minded?

That she’s in love with Scott Summers is a layer of complication.

BF: The stuff that strikes me as especially sociopathic is her days with the Hellfire Club; she participated in the kidnapping and torture of the X-Men with relish, and seemed like her main focus was the acquisition of power. Even in her early days with the Massachusetts Academy, it seemed like her goal was to acquire and manipulate young mutants to further her own ends. You don't think there's been a reinterpretation of the character over the years?
 
MF: I don't think anyone's the villain of their own story. And for Emma, her means are always justified by the end, no matter what lens we view her through. That's what's changed: the lens, not the subject.

BF: Greg Land and Terry Dodson have been the rotating art team on Uncanny for some time now; do you write your scripts differently depending on who's slated to draw the issue?
 
MF: Yes.

BF: Can you elaborate on that? In what way do your scripts differ for each of them?
 
MF: Um... it differs for Salva, for Gabriel, Fábio, or anyone else no matter what the book, or the character.  It's like writing music not just for different instruments but for different players.  One size doesn't fit all.

BF: In Uncanny #515, the mayor of San Francisco assures Scott that he and the rest of his team aren't fugitives, and are welcome back in the city. But having battled with duly-appointed law enforcement agents in the form of Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers, and having been declared a threat to national security, how can this be so?
 
MF: Osborn isn’t the final word of law in the United States-- and show me where they were declared a threat to national security? That’s a very specific phrase that was not used to describe anything in the events of X-MenDark Avengers. There is no marshal law on the streets of San Francisco. No warrants have been issued for any mutant, nor are any mutants accused of any crimes.   Nobody quite knows what’s what right now other than everyone is certain they don’t want a mutant war. 

And Osborn brought us right to the brink of it before stopping. 

Nation X is about exploring the delicate balance humans and mutants now find themselves in... what’s it like to be a living timebomb in a world on the brink?

BF: I'm not sure the exact phrase "threat to national security" has been used, but in Brian Bendis' Dark Reign: The List - Avengers one-shot, Norman Osborn is said to have declared the establishment of the mutant utopia "an act of treason" and it's mentioned that he has a "one-strike policy against any and all threats to the United States." Is he just kind of spewing hot air? So far it seems like he's been given a lot of leeway in terms of trampling on civil liberties and using excessive force, since, as you said, he's the hero of the Skrull Invasion.
 
MF: He's not a legislator, he wasn't elected, and he doesn't get to declare what is and isn't treason. To be treasonous unto Norman isn't necessarily to execute an act of high treason against the state, no matter how grandly Osborn views himself.

BF: Also in #515, we're introduced to a new team of mutants, which include Lobe, a psychic, Thug, who's invulnerable, Burst, a superfast martial artist, Verre, an invisible ecdysiast, and Bouncing Betty, who, uh, bounces. How did you and Greg come up with these characters, and is there room for new mutant creations in the post-Decimation world?
 
MF: I dunno, I just made ‘em up.  Lobe isn’t psychic, he’s got prescient hyperintelligence... meaning he knows everything that’s just about to happen.  He’s named after Jeph Loeb, because I think it’s funny to have actually turned Jeph Loeb into a supervillain. Burst is a kung fu speedster.  Hardcore readers of my work know we’ve seen one more of them in my corners of the Marvel world... I don’t know if I’ll ever get to tell their stories but for now, he’s kind of an easter egg like that... more on the rest of Lobe’s gang will be revealed over the course of Nation X.

And who said they’re mutants?

BF: Finally, we see the return of Magneto. It seems to me he's been used relatively sparingly in recent years, which is probably an indication of the "deep bench" of villains the X-Men have. Any teases about what's in store for Magneto, and the book in general, in upcoming issues?

MF: His timing is deliberate, impeccable, and rife with meaning and importance. All is revealed in Uncanny #516.