Marvel.com: What can readers expect from the new character, Moneta?

Leah Williams: She’s trouble, and not in the fun way.

Georges Jeanty: Your guess is as good as mine. I have never met this character before so I'm not sure what her origins are. I can tell you she is a bit of a rabble rouser! She is definitely the character who stirs things up!

Marvel.com: Considering this book is set in the AGE OF X-MAN event where Professor Xavier’s utopia is achieved, and the solicitation for this book calls love “the most insidious threat,” what hints can you drop about this idyllic reality where love is a threat?

Leah Williams: Hatred is what happens when love is left to rot. If you distill most conflicts down to their most basic components, you’ll find love or an inversion of it at the root of the problem. Love is a kind of variable that would open up this crimeless, utopian society to far too many potential avenues for conflict to enter. All love is forbidden love--not just romantic love.

Georges Jeanty: I certainly wouldn't want to give away too much, but I would say read up on your Orwell! Utopia in fiction for the last 50 years or so has almost become somewhat ironic, and this setting is no different. The X-Tremists are there to serve and protect... even when it's from yourself!

Marvel.com: How do each of you go about maintaining the utopian atmosphere, which implies a paradise, with anti-love sentiments? It seems like quite the juxtaposition to manage.

Leah Williams: It is exceptionally difficult, and X-TREMISTS has canonically gay characters in addition to writing them in this utopian world were love is forbidden. The biggest potential for failure that I see for myself, as the writer, is telling a story that is complicit in its erasure of all love instead of examining the consequences of assimilation and erasure. This world, and this setting--it’s difficult for each character, and for different reasons.

Georges Jeanty: That is a hard line to follow because all of the literature and art is still there, it is just outlawed. So, as you might think, any of this 'deviant' contraband must be kept in the shadows or locked away. Leah had expressed [a desire that] the architecture resemble the Brutalist Architecture that was the fashion from the 1950s to the 1970s. I was particularly interested in this because it gave me a chance to some interesting backgrounds and interiors. I love architecture and always try and incorporate the “texture” in the things I draw whatever they may be.

COVER & CHARACTER DESIGNS