Soft-spoken, unassuming and filled to the brim with maniacally fascinating ideas, X-Men writer Mike Careys ready to reinvent the adjectiveless X-title. After making a huge splash at a recent Marvel editorial retreat with top-secret ideas that made guys like Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker sit back in awe, Carey sat down with Wizard to spill his guts on everything X-Men.
ON CREATING NEW VILLAINS: I wanted to create a new set of villains for the X-universe whod be natural antagonists both to humans and to mutantsand I wanted what was at stake to be, as it often is in the X-books, species survival. I also wanted to give these villains superpowers, but to have them work in a slightly different way [from] the way we normally see them. The [Children of the Vaults] powers arent either inherited or accidentalthey are transferable, though. Theres a lot more to the Children than we see at first, and every time you answer one question about them, you raise another.
ON HOUSE OF M AND M-DAY: Mutants are meant to be an oppressed minority. I do miss some of the mutants who were taken out of the picture with M-Day, but I still think House of M was an inspired idea because, like all the best crossovers, it has ripples and echoes that continue to be felt.
ON THE ONE MUTANT HE MISSES MOST:
The Blob! I miss him!
ON HIS FAVORITE X-MAN: My favorite X-Man is Cyclops because hes solid, sober-sided, strait-laced and duty-bound, but hes still this great combat leader. Even people like Wolverine, who despise his approach to things, have to respect him. Also, he gets to go to bed with Emma, so theres maybe a wish-fulfillment thing going on here too.
ON HIS FAVORITE X-VILLAIN: Magneto, because hes the only villain whos the X-Mens equal in every respectthe one who can beat them in arguments as well as in battle; the one with as much moral authority as Professor X. Id love to write Magneto. As a matter of fact, I almost certainly will, in some way, have Magneto popping in.
ON SABRETOOTH: Hes Wolverine without a conscience. Hes a true psychopath. Having him on a hero team is a fascinating proposition, and Im enjoying the whole process of playing that out.
ON MYSTIQUE [at right]: Mystique is fun because shes the manipulator and double-crosser par excellence. Also, shes a mature woman in a comics universe whose population is skewed towards the young and callow: a femme fatale. Gotta love that.
ON CANNONBALL: Cannonball is a great character, someone whose whole progressfrom raw recruit to battle-scarred veteranweve [gotten] to see. I like his transparent decency, his plain speaking and his balls-out courage.
ON DAYS OF FUTURE PAST: Days of Future Past was shocking and mesmerizing because it suddenly, dramatically showed you what was at stake. It said, Heres what happens tomorrow if the X-Men lose today. The scene that stays with me is the one in which Logan launches himself against a Sentinel and is hit in mid-air. In a later panel, you see the adamantium skeleton lying on the ground: Thats all thats leftstill invulnerable but suddenly, scarily irrelevant. Moments like that are built to last.
ON CLASSIC X-MEN STORIES: I dont make an automatic distinction between Claremont/Cockrum and Claremont/Byrne. It was all part of the same era for me. The action is amazing, and the pacing tooperfect build-up, perfect pay-off. But the character beats are [also] in there: The emotions are believable and the characters are changed by what happens to them. That was spectacular stuff.
ON THE FUTURE OF X-MEN: Rogues team [is] brought face-to-face with (in my opinion, anyway) one of the most terrifying X-Men villains ever created; someone whose return the X-Men thought was more or less impossibleand it probably would have been if there hadnt been outside interference from an unimaginable source.
ON MUTANT MASSACRE: I think Mutant Massacre did almost everything wrong. The build-up was fine, but then they got to the Morlock tunnels, had their battle and things just stopped. There was issue after issue of different teams going down into the Morlock tunnels, meeting each other, meeting survivors, meeting the odd Marauder. There was nothing organic about the storytelling. It was just an excuse for everyone to meet up, usually in inconsequential and confusing ways.
http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/wizard/001988564.cfm
