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Van Lente and Calero Talk X-Men Noir on IGN
Posted by (kiplingkat) on Sep 17 2008
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Excerpt (entire interview can be found here):

NRAMA: Just the term "Noir" itself is a pretty hefty concept by itself--what are the two of you attempting to evoke by injecting the X-Men into this hard-boiled genre?

FVL: Not sound too terribly pretentious (too late, har-har), but we're deconstructing all the things that make the X-Men tick by looking at them through the conventions of this completely different genre. There are no super powers here, no mutants. Instead we're in a world of cops, private investigators and gangsters.

But in another way, it's not really all that different. Back in early 20th century, a lot of people believed that eugenics--heredity--determined whether you were a criminal or not. So to make the X Men lovable crooks and rogues instead of mutants isn't all that of a stretch--you're dealing with a lot of those same issues of evolution and genetics. The Noirverse's Charles Xavier, the so-called "professor of crime," has some very ... unique theories about what separates the criminal from the normal mind. He ran his Xavier School for Wayward Youth in upstate New York to perfect those theories--until the mysterious death of one of his students forced the Law to shut it down, and now his "X Men" are in the wind, freelance operators pulling high-stakes jobs all over the City...

DC: For me, Noir, especially period Noir, is ultimately about individuals, often heroic ones, trying hard not to get crushed by the at-large social structure as well as trying to get a little justice in a world that's often not conducive to fairness...our own world! Upon reflection, what Marvel characters fit that theme more securely than the X-Men?

NRAMA: Who are your key players in this story? How does the nature of this period piece alter the natures of these characters stylistically?

FVL: At the heart of X Men Noir is a murder mystery, which plunges our detective-hero into a dark world of corruption, vice and greed, in which the heroic rogues known as the X Men have taken it upon themselves to oppose the corrupt forces of Chief of Detectives Eric Magnus's police-within-the-police, The Brotherhood.

We start, as the Marvel Unvierse X-Men do, with the Lee/Kirby cast--Professor X's "first class" of students--but very shortly plenty of X-characters from other X-eras filter in there...a certain demonic club, for example. My love for Alpha Flight is well-documented and exercised here.

The main character, however, is our most mysterious one, and I won't tell you who it is. It should come as a surprise. You won't be able to guess who he is. No, trust me, you won't.

But that doesn't mean he's not a new character...

Last changed: Sep 17 2008 at 9:22 PM

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