Is there any chance some sort of romantic relationship will eventually develop amongst the New Mutants? It is a wonder that Sunspot's charm hasn't won over any of the girls so far, and he's been a pretty close companion to Moonstar lately. There's also Cannonball's never-ending attraction to Magma. And how about giving Karma some lady love?
ZEB WELLS
I like where your head is at, Toboe. You can’t have proper Soap Opera without a little romance. Stay tuned...
Besides Magma's feelings towards him, Empath's also got an interesting dynamic with Magik and quite a history with the rest of the team that would be cool to see. Will Empath stay on the book as a supporting character for a while?
ZEB WELLS
He’s going to play heavily into the story arc playing out in issues #5-8. After that, there may be a new team he wants to join (wink!).
Do you worry that calling the book "New Mutants," having them wear matching costumes, and isolating them from the other x-characters (especially the X-Men) regresses the New Mutants in the eyes of readers and makes this book a “hard sell” beyond the initial arcs?
ZEB WELLS
I’m trying to keep the stink of “regression” off the book, because I don’t think that’s what anyone wants. I know I don’t. However, for the first arc I wanted to focus on the New Mutants in a relative vacuum, so I could define the characters before throwing them back into the larger X-world. But, as I’ve said before, these characters are X-Men, so they’ll be returning to X-Men HQ in issue #5, and you’ll begin to see exactly how they fit into the X-Men’s world – but it has to be a balancing act.
I want the book to “matter” in the larger X-universe, but I never want to find myself in a position where I sacrifice a character moment with Karma to come up with another cool way for Wolverine to stab something. I believe in these characters and I don’t want to use the X-Men as a crutch.
As far as the costumes go, they’ll be evolving over time. When they cooked them up they didn’t have time to add flair.
The title will take on a whole new meaning come issue #9. Believe it.
