Joss Whedon

ASTONISHING ADDITION

5 Questions With...Joss Whedon

Wizard caught up with the man behind the biggest X-events of the summer: X-Men Reload. The Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel creator sat down and gave us the dirt on the upcoming Astonishing X-Men.

1. Who will be on your Astonishing X-Men team? You’re kind of picking up where Grant Morrison left off in New X-Men, right?

My team will be Scott [Summers, Cyclops], Emma [Frost, White Queen], Hank [McCoy, Beast] and Logan [Wolverine], all holdovers, and the one new person on my team will-not surprisingly to anyone who knows me-be Kitty Pryde. The first four were really the mainstays of the New X-Men. I wanted the continuity of whatever had been going on with certain changes, obviously, and those changes mostly involve sort of pairing it down.

2. How did you decide on that team?

The thing that I like about the characters that I focused on the most is that I have a very specific rule: no powers that I categorically don’t understand. This team is very, very grounded. I don’t even have anyone on it who can fly, which I love. Not that I don’t want to tell epic science fiction stories because I do, but at the same time, I want to understand when I open a book, “Okay, that guy has got claws. That guy’s got eye beams.” That kind of simplicity is important to me.

3. The X-fans are rabid; do you check out negative feedback on your run, even though it hasn’t started yet?

People are just going to come out against anyone who gets this gig and you sort of have to set yourself against that while at the same time telling yourself, “They’re probably right.” [Chuckles]

4. What’s one of your favorite X-Men solo stories of all time?

I would say Frank Miller’s Wolverine mini-series would go on this list because that was part of his changing the way stories are told in comics, just stylistically. It was beautiful. It had great integrity and Wolverine is getting married? He’s a loner. It was such a shock that he would go there; I loved that.

5. How are you going to play Scott and Emma’s relationship?

Obviously, Scott and Emma have a very different kind of romance than Scott and Jean [Grey] had. It’s still kind of a new thing, and one of the things that interests me about Scott is, because he’s such a stiff, and that’s kind of his defining principle. I always thought that Superman should just fall in love with the wrong woman once; that’s how I feel about Scott. And how difficult and unseemly, and yet kind of potentially beautiful that relationship is, fascinates me.

For more from Joss Whedon, plus a preview of Astonishing X-Men #1 check out Wizard 152 - on sale this Wednesday!