Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Marvel Comics, X-Men | Tagged: joe casey, Weapon X-Men

Joe Casey Would Like Everyone To Know He Came Up With Weapon X-Men

Joe Casey would like everyone to know that he came up with the title Weapon X-Men, even though someone else published it a year ago.

Joe Casey writes on his Substack about the origins of his upcoming Weapon X-Men series, as well as another that was published eaerlier this year that he didn't have anything to do with.

"The most recent successes… the Logan film… the two Deadpool films… the Deadpool & Wolverine film (at that point, still over a year away from release in theaters)… were fairly good — if not painfully obvious — indicators of what was considered commercial. Given that, and given my lifelong love for superhero team books, my thoughts started moving in that direction, trying to come up with something that would best take advantage of all of the available data. And then it struck me, like one of Storm's lightning bolts, right through the center of my brain — "Weapon X-Men"!"

"I wrote up a quick pitch, fired if off to Jordan, and a couple of months later, we met in person at the fabled San Diego Comic-Con to discuss it. Needless to say, Jordan was into it. I mean, of course he was. Who wouldn't be? We shook hands, both of us intent on getting the ball rolling on this series as soon as we got home from SDCC. About a week later, I checked in with Jordan, who informed me that he'd discussed my WEAPON X-MEN pitch with Marvel EiC, C.B. Cebulski, and that he was into it. Again, no surprise. It looked like we were full speed ahead. Then things got weird."

"Literally the following Monday, I heard from Jordan again. Apparently, things had changed. He couldn't say how they'd changed, only that plans that had been in place the week before were no longer on solid ground… "

What happened was something Bleeding Cool referred to as the Ten Days that changed Marvel Comics. At the time, Bleeding Cool had already run news about the then-coming Fall of X, and a comic book teased as New X-Men with an Age Of Apocalypse logo. That comic was never published. In his Substack newsletter, Tom Brevoort, Executive Editor and SVP at Marvel, and new Group Editor of the X-Men, revealed "honest answer here… is that this would have led into something that Jordan White would have been putting together in the post-Krakoa period had he remained on the X-Line—he had started to develop some thoughts as to where to take things next before we made our editorial switch. So it's a casualty of me taking over. Sorry about that." That decision was made at the end of July/beginning of August. But the San Diego Comic Con panel with New X-Men was on the 20th of July. The question I might want to ask is, what happened so drastically in those ten-to-twelve days that saw Marvel abandon their then nascent post-Krakoan X-Men plans by editor Jordan D White, only for Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley to totally flip things up in the air, and replace White with Brevoort. In his latest newsletter Joe Casey continues

"I figured there was a chance that WEAPON X-MEN could still have a life. I confirmed with Jordan that my pitch had been passed on to Tom, after which I quickly got in touch to see where things were at. Tom assured me that he did indeed have the pitch, he saw its commercial merits, and that he would get back to me once he'd settled in and figured out how he was gonna tackle the X-franchise, in general. Cut to: about two months later. I received an e-mail out of the blue from Jordan White, still serving out his term now as a lame duck X-editor. Very matter of factly, he let me know that Marvel was about to announce a brand-new series… … called WEAPON X-MEN. Not the same series I had pitched, of course. Jordan preemptively assured me that this was an entirely different idea (in language that, to me, kinda smacked of corporate ass-covering)… So I did what any borderline sane professional comicbook writer would do and got in touch with Tom Brevoort right away to find out what happened. And, to his credit, Tom did a quick bit of investigating on his end and soon came back to me with the real story. I won't go into too much detail here, because I suppose it's probably Tom's story to tell… but the long and short of it is as follows: the mini-series in question had a different title originally. Tom wanted that title as part of his upcoming relaunch and informed the editor involved that they should simply find a new title for their mini-series. Without Tom's knowledge (or Jordan White's, for all I know), the WEAPON X-MEN title was lifted from my pitch and haphazardly slapped onto the mini-series. Even the writer of said mini-series (an amazingly standup guy, btw) didn't even know what had happened (or where the title had originally come from)."

Indeed, a year ago, Bleeding Cool scooped the news that Marvel would be publishing a Weapon X-Men series, which they did back in March by Christos Gage and Yildiray Cinar, featuring Wolverines from across the timeline, and starring the one from Age Of Apocalypse who also appeared in Deadpool & Wolverine. Could this have been the title originally annoucned as New X-Men? Or was that X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse? Either way, it fills in a few gaps and confirms the big change at Marvel regarding the X-Men we previously reported on. Joe casey continues;

"Tom was sympathetic to my frustration. We talked about still going forward with the series concept I had pitched… but maybe under another title. A different title. I told Tom specifically that, if my pitch was eventually approved, I definitely wanted to keep the title I'd thought of. If, for no other reason, so I could tell this behind-the-scenes story when I did press for it. I'm like Dustin Hoffman's movie producer character in the film, Wag The Dog, and his exasperated motto… "I want the credit!" Three months later, we got the greenlight."

Weapon X-Men #1 by Joe Casey and Chris Cross is published by Marvel in February 2025 as part of One World Under Doom.

WEAPON X-MEN #1 (OF 5)
MARVEL COMICS
DEC240639
(W) Joe Casey (A) Chris Cross (CA) Alex Ross
WOLVERINE! DEADPOOL! CABLE! CHAMBER! THUNDERBIRD! Together on their very own X-team for the very first X-time – all in an X-tra-sized first issue! When a high-stakes mutant rescue mission from the ultimate global hot spot exposes the true enemy – possibly from within – an all-new team of all-action icons suddenly find themselves forged in fire. And the official membership policy is…no  $4.99

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