Here we see one of my greatest fears should I return to Marvel. How, how, how can I make the work idiot-proof??

I'm not aware of Marvel ways of dealing with books like this but isn't it possible for you to have complete control of the storyline and concepts you create for "Elsewhen" as this series would be completely outside the current X-Books storyline?

By the way, thank you so much for sharing these wonderful pages!

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Outside the current X-Books this may be, but these are still characters owned by a big, powerful corporation. They don't want them messed up.

There's also the experience I've had of editors assuming they know more about the characters than I do--which would be extremely dangerous on a book like this. On HIDDEN YEARS there were editorial screw ups even tho I was referencing existing material. Here, I will be MAKING IT UP, so plenty of opportunities for various gnomes to "fix" stuff.

The truly annoying part, as I have noted, is that these gaffs most often happen because nobody bothers to pick up the phone. Imagine this simple exchange:

Editor: John, you've got Sauron referring to himself as having shared a lab with Xavier. But Magneto is in the panel, so I guess you meant that dialog to be his, right?

Me: It was established in his first appearance that Sauron was once Xavier's lab partner. Chris added Magneto to the equation decades later.

ED: Oh, I didn't know that!

See? Simple. Yet didn't happen, and the scene was messed up.

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One of the things that has perplexed me since my earliest days on the interweb is how many people DON'T think "Oh, surely somebody must have commented on this already?"

Honestly what could be worse than that?

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Somewhere along the way, there grew among certain segments of fandom the notion that I don't LIKE the characters. After all, if I LIKED them, why would I do all these terrible things to them? (Well, for one thing, you'd be BORED if I didn't!)

So every time I am handed a new project, there are those who will assume I am going to do what I can to break the characters.

It's the old fanboy trifecta: "I don't like this! Therefore it is bad! Therefore it must be bad on purpose!"