York: Genogoths
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Come September, Generation X: Genogoths by J. Steven York will be released, the continuation of the Generation X novel series. Recently, I was given the opportunity to speak with York about what the novel will be about and the circumstances which caused it to constantly be delayed.

Can you tell us a bit of what Genogoths will be about?
The book should stand alone just find, but there's some continuity from Crossroads.  If Crossroads was "Mutants on Summer Vacation," this is more like "Mutants on spring break."  As it is, they only make it half-way to Florida, but... <g>

Elements from the first book are back, such as M.O.N.S.T.E.R., the campus mutant organization founded by Beast and Iceman back in The New Defenders #142 and not seen in the comics since.  I'm using some of the original elements too, the Xabago (which turns out to have blown a head gasket fifty miles from home, and has been quietly rusting off-panel somewhere behind the biosphere) and the guys from M.O.N.S.T.E.R., Chill, Recall, and Dog Pound. A character only glimpsed in the party scene at M.O.N.S.T.E.R. house in the first book plays a VERY important role, and I pull in a number of elements from what Kurt Busiek calls his worst work of all time (it isn't that good, but I'll read third-rate Kurt Busiek before I'll read half the people working in the industry today), the Spider-man/X-Factor miniseries.

Basically, Chill, Recall and Dog Pound are captured before the book begins by a secret government organization that plans to expoit mutants with "lesser" powers to hunt other mutants.  The technology to boost their powers comes from Kurt's mini-series (and has a connection to Synch's powers too), as does the man in charge.  The mystery character from Crossroads shows up on Gen-X's doorsteps just as they've been left "home-alone" by Emma and Sean and told to stay home and stay out of trouble.  So naturally, she tells them their friends are in trouble, and they fire up the Xabago and head off cross-country to effect a rescue.  Unfortunately, our mystery character is a renegade member of a secret organization call the Genogoths.  Since the time of Darwin, they've been the secret guardians of the X-gene.

Seems that most people who carry the gene don't have showy, useful powers like the X-men.  They have weak or useless powers, and the Genogoths have been watching over them and working to keep their profiles low, hiding them from the government, Magneto, Sinister, even Xavier.  They're a pro-mutant organization, but one with a very narrow agenda, one that puts them at odds with any mutant that draws attention to themselves.  That includes the X-Men, the Brotherhood, and because of his radio talk show, Recall.  Gen X is probably on the cusp as far as they're concerned.  They think the rescue will draw too much attention to mutantkind and they'll do anything it takes to stop the rescue and guard their secrets.

Before Crossroads had even seen print, you were already talking about this book. What drew you to writing a second Gen X novel?
I just had a great time with the first novel.  I didn't know Gen X very well going in, but I really came to love the characters and the concept as I read through all the back issues and started working on the book.  That and all the great fan response I've gotten off the book.  I've gotten more fan mail off Crossroads than all my science-fiction published to date, including the computer game work that probably shipped ten or a hundred times as many copies.  I love the feedback.  I love the way the fans feel so strongly about the series and the characters, and that I get to be a little part of that for a while.  I could write ten more of these things and still be happy.  Circumstances aren't going to allow it through, and this will likely be my last Gen X book.  Sigh.

Why is it this novel wasn’t published when it was originally supposed to?
I could bore you for hours with the dirty details of this.  It comes down to this.  The Generation X characters are owned by Marvel.  The books (to date) are published by Berkley Boulevard books.  But the LICENSE to print those books was held by other companies, that were acting as packagers.  They found the authors and artists, did the editing, wrote the cover copy, etc. The publisher printed and sold books, paid the packager, who in turn were to pay the authors, the artists, and of course, Marvel.  Somewhere in the course of doing the current run of Marvel books, the license was passed from Company A to Company B.  Books packaged under company A continued to sell and royalties were paid.  But they apparently didn't go to Marvel, and Marvel (quite justifiably) went to court and yanked the license.

Not only did it freeze books in the works like Genogoths, but they couldn't sell any of the warehouse stock of books like Crossroads.  Books already on store shelves were okay, but as an unfortunate result, all the Marvel books were listed in the computer system of the largest chain in the country as "out of print."  Apparently their policy is to yank all such books, strip the covers to return for credit, and pulp them.  Thousands of copies of Crossroads and other Marvel titles were needlessly destroyed.  And all the while, the terms of the injunction also kept us authors from getting ANY unmade payments.  My final payments on Genogoths were a year late.  It was a real mess for those of us doing the books, and I had it easy compared to many authors.  I did get paid and my book is coming out.

It wasn't a classic "evil publisher" situation though.  Marvel was justified in what they did, and there were some really good folks on the other side, including Keith Decandido who was then the editor for the Marvel book line, and Ginger Buchanan at Berkley who I think did their best to fix the situation and play square with us.  But boy did a lot of innocent creators get stuck in the middle.

What is this we heard of a Generation X: Mutant 911? Amazon.Com had a listing for it a while ago with you as the author.
As if I wasn't having enough trouble with the book, just before the Marvel injunction I get a call from the packager.  This was just after the Columbine school shooting, and the media briefly latched onto the "goth" aspects of the shooters.  The packager wanted a new title, and fast.  I gave them a short list of alternates that I could live with.  They dumped them all for "Mutant 9-1-1" which I absolutely HATED.  I guess the idea was that it was a mutant rescue call, and therfore "9-1-1"  I started referring to it as "Mutant Nine-eleven," or even "Mutant Nine-eleven, the Plastic Eaters" a joke that about three people in the world will probably get.  It got solicited to the bookstores under that title just before Marvel dropped the boom.  As it turned out, the whole "goth" thing faded out in about three days and the Marvel injunction delayed things for a solid year.  Also turns out that Marvel and the packager weren't communicating very well before the end, and THEY hated "Mutant 9-1-1" as well.  So back to Genogoths we went. The two versions of the book have the same ISBN number (the code number bookstores use to order books), so if you order from a listing for Mutant 9-1-1, you should get a copy of Genogoths instead.

When I contacted you about this interview, you mentioned a “retro-X-Men/Gen X cross-over.” What’s happened to this plot?
At the time I turned in Genogoths, the packager seemed very happy with me and I was told they could hardly wait for a third Gen X book for 2000 (this was when Genogoths was still a 1999 book).  So I pitched a cross-over plot that would take Gen X back in time to meet the original X-Men, when they were brand new and barely older than the Gen X kids.  I was shooting for a time when Xavier was missing or presumed dead (this happened a couple times in the original series) and were on their own the first time.  If you've read the old books, they were a more studious bunch than the Gen X kids, and in many ways not as mature.  So there would have been this cool dynamic where, on one hand, Gen X is up close and personal with these guys who are heroes to many of them, but on the other hand, the Gen X guys become mentors to the X Men.

The one scene that I was most looking forward to, and that really sold the idea, was of Paige, Jubilee and Monet doing a make-over on Marvel Girl. Then Paige, learning from her own mistakes with Jono, was going to tell her to get over this whole angst, loving-from-afar thing in her relationship with Cyclops.  So there would be this wonderful moment when Cyclops is standing around doing his "I care so much for Jean, but how could we ever be together when I can't control the terrible power of my optic blasts" angst thing, and Jean was going to just walk up and put a serious lip-lock on him. Oh, it would have been a moment!

I had all sorts of crazy ideas, stuff that I think the fans would have really loved.  For instance, for a while when Xavier was gone, the Changling replaced him without the X-Men's knowledge, and he later died in Xavier's place.  But Gen X would know that, and they'd expose him and save him from getting killed.  So he'd join the X-Men as yet another alternate universe version of Morph.

But the situation with the packager got rather murky (I suspect that, behind the scenes, Marvel had told them they couldn't do the book unless all the payments were made on the first one) and then the legal ax fell.  So, don't hold your breath that you'll see that book any time soon, or ever.

You also mentioned a cover for Genogoths that we’ll never see. What happened to that?
I've already mentioned the Mutant 9-1-1/Genogoths, and the fact the Marvel and the packager didn't seem to be communicating well.  So the packager designed a cover with the Mutant 9-1-1 title, no mention of the word "Genogoth" anywhere on the cover copy, even through they're a huge part of the book.  Also, Joe Jusko, who did the fantastic cover for Crossroads and who was supposed to do the Genogoths cover, was somehow unavailable.

So they hired a different artist, who I won't name here, to do the cover art.  Not that the art is bad, but it's very generic, just Monet, Paige, and Synch in costume against a white background.  And Paige is in the middle, back to the reader, legs spread, arms over her head, supposedly forming a "X."  But the costumes took "painted on" to a new extreme.  We are talking a major butt-shot here.  This wasn't a comic-style line and color piece, this is a very realistic painting.  So, naturally, after the injunction was lifted, we discovered that Marvel had never seen the cover, and wouldn't approve it when they did.  I don't know specifically why, but I'm guessing it was just too spicy, especially for a character that's maybe 16 or 17!

But anyway, I have on the bulletin board behind me in my office a color copy of the cover you'll never see (unless you show up and see it in person). The naughty art, the white background, the ugly mustard-yellow with gangreen-green highlights on the back cover, the title I hate, and cover copy I wasn't happy with.  Getting the new cover is the one major upside to all the trials this book has had getting to print.

Anyway, Putnam hired a new artist to do a new cover, which is why it will be one of the last Marvel books coming out from Putnam, instead of first out of the chute when the legal tangles were lifted.  The new design has a split down the middle, with the dark "Genogoths" characters on the left, and the Gen X guys on the right.  Very cool, and I'm secretly delighted that my original characters are given equal billing, even first billing if you judge the value of left to right, with Marvel's on characters.  Vince Evans is the new artist.  I haven't seen the final, but I'm really looking forward to it. I think it should be cool.

Were you given more or less reign this time around with the Gen X characters?
I felt like a had a lot more freedom, though it wasn't in the sense of the editor or Marvel standing over me and saying "you can't do that!"  There were restrictions, there always are, but as long as I was careful not to contradict what had been done, or what might be done, in the comics, I never had a problem.

But writing Crossroads, I went in with a REAL vague idea of who the chracters were.  You have to remember that, when I started the book, I think the comic was still somewhere in the teens, and I was given no inside information about what was being done in the book.  At that point we didn't have a clue what was up with Monet and the twins, Skin's background was pretty shrouded, and poor Synch was so underused that you forgot he was in the book half the time.  It wasn't clear at all what the extent of Monet's powers were, or how Synch's powers worked, or Chamber's either.  It was a mess.  We knew more about Jubilee and Paige, which is probably why I singled them out for heavy use in the first book.  With Chamber, I felt like I had a handle on his character, if not his powers, and I sort of took the cypher that was Synch at that point and ran with him.  I had my take on Skin by the end of the book, and M I just kept as a character of mystery, and a foil for everyone else.

By the time I was writing Genogoths, it was Hama's time on the book.  The Monet thing had been resolved, much of Skin's past had been revealed, and some of the powers were a little clearer in how they worked.  So I wasn't dancing around all these unknown factors, and that made it FEEL like I could do a lot more with the characters.  I could get into Monet's character a lot more, for instance, and make better use of Synch.  Then about half-way through writing, it was announced that Jay Faerber would be taking over the book.  We exchanged some e-mail, and I was headed up to Seattle, where Jay lives, on other business, so we got together for a drink and talked over the book.  We exchanged our frustrations over some issues (like the details of Skin's powers, or Synch's, or Husk's) and he gave me some idea of the direction he'd be taking the book.  So for once, I was slightly ahead of the curve in writing.

Naturally then, the book had to sit on the shelf for a year.  So for sure this isn't going to be the grim-n-gritty Gen X you've got in the book now. The school won't be trashed, in fact, the biosphere is still there.  Penance and Artie and Leech are still around (though they don't do a lot in this book except wave good-bye).  Nor is the school full of huan students, nor are they wearing uniforms.  (I did like those uniforms though.  In fact, I liked them so much that I built a custom Chamber action figure in Xavier school uniform.)