Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: #xmenmonday, jordan white, marvel, x-men

Jordan White Trashes X-Men Event Decimation

Published Mon, 03 Jun 2019 15:30:11 -0500

Power-mad Marvel X-Editor Jordan White returned from his two-week break to hold court at Adventures in Poor Taste for X-Men Monday today, and though AIPT's Chris Hassan was once again afraid to ask when Chris Claremont will be allowed to write an ongoing series, he did supply White with a question that allowed him to go off on a previous Marvel event.

Asked about what X-Event he would change if given the chance, White at first appeared hesitant to answer, but soon went all in on criticizing Decimation, not referring to Matthew Rosenberg's rampant killing off of characters in the current Uncanny X-Men book, but rather the follow-up to House of M in which the mutant population was reduced to just 198 mutants. White said he didn't think eliminating so many mutants was "ideal" and led to "a lot of things I was not keen on."

Harsh words. Read White's full comments below, and see the full interview at Adventures in Poor Taste.

AiPT!: Speaking of alternate realities… if you could go back to any X-Event and change one thing as an editor, what would it be and why?

Jordan: Oh man, you are going to get me in trouble. OK… I am going to go for broke and give you the real answer.

I would not have done "Decimation." Maybe "Decimation" itself isn't an event, but then I would not have done "No more mutants" at the end of House of M. I understand the criticism that people were creating mutants too freely, that it was too easy to just create a character and when coming up with a backstory just say "they are a mutant" … but I think you solve that problem internally by telling the writers to stop doing that. Actually wiping out the large bulk of mutantkind was something I didn't think was the ideal choice and led to a lot of things I was not keen on in its aftermath.

To me, having mutantkind reduced to 198 people means they are not a minority anymore, they are a statistical zero. Hating and fearing mutants goes from being small-minded to nonsensical–you will never meet one, there are less than 200 in the world. It would be like hating left-handed people from Europe with the middle name Stefan–there are probably a few out there, but wasting your time thinking about them is silly.