Getting to the Core of a Character
Hi friends, hope you’re having a good week and had a pleasant couple of days.
December is always a weird month because half of it is spent scrambling and the rest is, ideally, spent trying to relax and enjoy the holidays with people you care about, or however you choose. I’m very much in the thick of that, trying to scramble on some deadlines (I’m doing better than I expected, to be fully honest) while also planning holiday stuff for the family.
I didn’t have a formal mini-essay in mind this week, but it ended up coming to me anyway in the form of Mike Carey’s X-Men run, which I’ve been revisiting over the last few weeks, usually right before bed when my brain is primed for escapist stories.
I won’t belabor this newsletter with too much historical background, but the context of Carey’s run is important - as it hit right around the time of the Decimation, i.e. House of M, which (spoiler alert, I guess) reduced the Marvel mutant population to a little less than two hundred. It also launched in tandem with Ed Brubaker’s Deadly Genesis, which recontextualized Giant-Size X-Men #1 by revealing that there was a rough draft team of “second generation” X-Men - including Vulcan, the “third Summers brother” - that Professor X and Moira sent to Krakoa to try and save the original five. Needless to say, it was a complicated, sort of controversial time for the mutants and their history.
At that point, Carey was known mostly for his Vertigo work - which is where I first met him, while doing publicity at DC. I didn’t work directly with Mike - our department was split by imprint, so I tended to handle the superhero press and there was a dedicated Vertigo publicist (the wonderful Pamela Mullin Horvath). That said, there were always events and emails so we all got to know each other’s assigned creators, and Mike was a very prolific part of Vertigo at the time - writing series like Lucifer, Hellblazer, The Unwritten, and lots more. I tried my best to keep up with that work, but I was also in the weeds on a lot of the books I had to promote, so I wasn’t as immersed in his Vertigo work at the time, but the one, lasting thought I had about Mike Carey was his endless kindness and professionalism. I don’t think anyone ever said a cross word about him or ever complained - he was just a pro, and I’m sure he still is. Anyway, when I heard he was taking on an X-Men series, I’d drifted from the franchise as a reader - it happens when you become a professional. You start to read the stuff you need to - either for research or just to stay up to date on your work. But I remember being really happy for him and being intrigued by the issues I did read, especially in the wake of stuff like Deadly Genesis.
So, fast forward to a few weeks ago - maybe a month or two back - and I’m listening to Carey’s appearance on CEREBRO (discussing Frenzy!), one of my favorite podcasts hosted by my friend Connor Goldsmith. If you’re an X-Men fan, you really need to add the pod to your rotation - Connor does these wonderful, immersive deep-dives into characters and his guests are always top-notch. I am not just saying that because I was a guest once, because I honestly think I bring the average down - but hopefully I can get another show down the line. Anyway, Carey’s interview was charming as he always is, but it reminded me about what I liked about his run, so I made a mental note to revisit. And here we are.
Now, I won’t get into the details of his run for those who haven’t read it, but it does segue nicely into something I think about a lot as a writer - especially when writing work-for-hire, or characters I didn’t create and don’t own: voice. Or, specifically, getting to the core of what makes a character work. I’ve read a lot of X-Men comics, and I can usually pinpoint when a writer is still trying to get their sea legs with a character, concept, or team - it takes a minute. That’s normal. Some writers never get there, and that’s fine, too. (That’s a whole other essay - how great, beloved writers have trouble nailing the overall vibe of the X-Men while others succeed…but I don’t plan on writing that one).
So, the big challenge, especially when writing in a shared universe with decades of continuity and opinions, is finding the character’s voice. That tone and vibe that clearly says THIS IS CHARACTER X. And it’s subjective, right? We all have our ideas of who these characters are, and have our own collection of stories and defining moments that feed into that perception. That’s where our voice comes in. Where we, as writers, curate the mass of “continuity” and create our own narrative. One that, ideally, doesn’t negate what came before - but amplifies the stories that matter to us and help make up a stronger character to write. Consistency over continuity, as many have emphasized.
I attribute this to Mark Waid, and I hope I’m not wrong - but he said something along the lines of, when you take over a character - you have to scrape all the barnacles off. All the stuff that’s collected and latched onto the core character to weigh it down. And then, once you’ve done that, that’s your character and you write them.
What impressed me about Carey’s run, from the drop, was the confidence and ease with which he wrote all the X-characters - not just his core team (which wow, talk about a great, complicated roster: Sabretooth, Mystique, Lady Mastermind, Rogue, Cannonball, Iceman!), but A-listers that, by the nature of the franchise, have to appear, like Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, etc. Rogue immediately sounds like Rogue, you get her conflicts, her foibles, and her desires immediately. Same with the rest of the team. Carey’s run feels rooted and organically connected to what’s come before (the good stories, at least), but also new and fresh - introducing great concepts that have stood the test of time, like the Children of the Vault. It’s a great lesson in how to make continuity work for you, and it accentuates my core belief about writing in general: characters comes first. If the people don’t matter, or aren’t interesting, no one will care about the big twist or the exciting action scene. You have to make people care. Carey made me care, and I was dubious - because at first blush, I did not vibe with the characters on his team. But I was happy to be wrong. And a lot of that is on me - as a reader when those books were first coming out, I kind of dismissed the core Carey title, X-Men Legacy, because it just felt secondary - like, these are stories that echo and amplify what’s happening in the big books that matter. But reading them again now, it’s quite the opposite. The lasting, deep character work that Carey does in Legacy is the stuff that, from my perspective, still resonates with readers and rolls on into the future work. You can see it now, with characters and ideas still in play during the Krakoa era.
So, give it a read - it works as a standalone binge if that’s what you’re looking for, and touches on many aspects and threads throughout X-Men history. Definitely worth your time. It’s also a great example of how a talented writer (not surprisingly, an acclaimed novelist as well!) can really drill down and make characters shine - using continuity as an amplifier instead of an excuse. These stories don’t feel navel-gaze-y, or insular, they feel like part of a bigger lore, and that’s usually the goal with work-for-hire comics: to make your stories matter as part of a longer, larger tapestry of work.
UPDATES
Tonight, if you’re in Brooklyn, I’ll be in conversation with Alexis Soloski about her delectable new noir novel, Here in the Dark, which is garnering all the raves. It’s fantastic. Come by Community Bookstore in Park Slope and say hi.
You have the new Amina Akhtar book on your radar, right? It’s so good. Please do yourself a favor and preorder it so you’re not left out in the cold, when everyone else is buzzing about it and you’re just staring off into space.
Denny Laine died, which hit me harder than I expected. As readers of this newsletter know, I love the Beatles, and that applies to their solo work - and Denny was a key part of the post-Beatles Wings era for Paul McCartney. I think he’s often underrated and dismissed, though I feel liken he added an essential cog to the Wings machine - the only other member aside from Paul and Linda McCartney to be part of every iteration of the band. A great songwriter and musician in his own right, he will be missed. Spin “Deliver Your Children” from London Town if you have a minute and you’ll see what I mean.
Henry Kissinger is also dead, and Spencer Ackerman does not miss.
That’s all I’ve got this week - I’ve cleared some big stuff off my writing plate but I’m still trying to outrun the speed demon of deadlines. More on that soon. Hope you have a wonderful week! If you have any questions for me, feel free to drop them in the comments.
Take care,
Alex