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I posted a couple days ago about how Axel Alonso said in an interview that the X-Men that survive Secret Wars will be the ones Marvel considers “core” X-Men characters. There’s a big chance this means nearly the entire X-Men franchise will be destroyed while hardly any of the Avengers side will be affected in any meaningful way.

With that in mind, I feel like making a post with which X-Men characters Marvel is likely to keep, and which they’re likely to kill off. I’m not making any distinctions on whether they’re 616 or alternate universe versions.

Note, this is only a list of what I think Marvel will do. It is not a list of what I want them to do. This is especially true for Polaris.

Staying

Cyclops – historically iconic
Jean Grey – historically iconic
Emma Frost – made popular in the 00s
Beast – historically iconic
Angel – historically iconic
Iceman – historically iconic
Professor Xavier – historically iconic
Rogue – historically iconic
Storm – historically iconic
Havok – used a lot in Uncanny Avengers lately, included in amalgam covers

Maybe

Psylocke – famous during Claremont run and 90s, use waning since
Jubilee – famous during Claremont run and 90s, use waning since
Wolverine – Fox using him means Marvel may want to kill him off
Magneto – Fox using him means Marvel may want to kill him off
Gambit – Fox using him means Marvel may want to kill him off
X-23 – Was used in MvC3, lots of use
Apocalypse – Fox using him means Marvel may want to kill him off
Shadowcat – Joss Whedon likes her a lot
Juggernaut – Major villain, but not heavily focused on lately
Mystique – Fox using her means Marvel may want to kill her off
Sabretooth – Major villain for Wolverine
Hope Summers – only Maybe because she was a huge character recently
Magik – only Maybe because she was important in AvX

Gone

Polaris – Treated poorly historically, undervalued, history disregarded by Marvel
Sage
Rachel Summers
Dazzler
Domino
Cable
All other X-Factor characters unless Peter David has specific plans for them
All of Hope’s Lights

So this happened.

“House of M” was kind of a no-brainer. It was huge, controversial, and it had a long-lasting ripple effect across the Marvel Universe – especially in regards to the X-Men, who were suddenly an endangered species. So we penciled it in, and eventually, a writer
emerged with the right story – Dennis – and it became a final piece of
the map. In that zone, the House of Magnus, which exerts total control
over its domain, must contend with a very determined resistance
movement, and the lives of Magneto, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are
severely – one might say, fatally – interconnected.

In EVERYTHING Marvel’s putting out about House of M interview-wise, they’re acting like Polaris doesn’t even exist as part of the family. At first, it seemed like they were just not mentioning her, but we now have two interviews from Hopeless and one from Axel himself that all ignore Lorna.

At first, I thought maybe they were just not mentioning Lorna because of how big the controversy over Wanda and Pietro being part of the Magnus family is and how stressing that might boost sales, but these are interviews where they have no reason not to mention Lorna.

I’m also considering the difference between these covers.

There’s all sorts of things I can say here, but the one I notice is that Lorna is forced into the background, her father and siblings up front to emphasize them, while Lorna’s presence is diluted as just another face among various other faces. By contrast, Marvel’s perfectly happy with putting Brand front, center and large on Siege covers.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: I can’t properly judge yet because we only have interviews and one cover to go on. I know there have been times where I expected an X-Factor or ANXF comic to be good or bad, then I read the actual issue and it turned out to be the exact opposite. There have also been times where interviews suggest one thing, but the end product comes nowhere near what the interviews suggested.

All I’m doing at this exact moment is highlighting concerns, and why I have those concerns. Lorna actually being on the House of M cover like she should be is a definite plus, but given the Avengers books went so far as to redraw an iconic image from House of M during Children’s Crusade just to avoid acknowledging Lorna as part of the family, I think it’s perfectly fair for me to have concerns that Marvel may be trying to act like she doesn’t matter to the House of M and isn’t technically a part of it even though she sure as hell is.

The second thing of note.

Alonso: I tried to address that in one of my rare tweets responding to fans. [Laughs] No, we’re not segregating the X-Men into their own universe. The X-Men
are an integral part of the Marvel Universe. They play a big role in
“Secret Wars,” and those mutants that survive the event will be crucial
building blocks for the Marvel Universe moving forward.

On the one hand, this resolves the matter of segregating the X-books. I don’t think Alonso would explicitly say something like that unless it was true; people trying to be sneaky and sly about such things usually give themselves some wriggle room to avoid complaints in the future.

On the other hand: as a Polaris/Lorna Dane fan, I’m expecting that Lorna will get killed off.

This is Marvel. Since Disney took over, they haven’t placed much value in Lorna at all.

We’ve seen writers want to use her, from Marjorie Liu on Astonishing X-Men to Peter David with X-Factor and All-New X-Factor, and recently Cullen Bunn for Magneto. There’s plenty of writers that have storylines they can and do want to write that involve Lorna.

The problem is largely the editors and executives at Marvel. There’s only one editor, at the moment, that I’m aware for a fact doesn’t like or respect Lorna. The others don’t publicly say anything, whoever they are. As I’ve noted before, everything Lorna’s been in since Disney took over has either been canceled, not given any marketing or promotion (which leads to easy cancellation), or had Lorna’s role as something extremely small.

All of this, alongside a long long list I could (and have in the past) give, demonstrates a lack of appreciation for Lorna, her history, and her potential. Which is a shame, because when All-New X-Factor was announced and video games were coming out with Lorna in them, I was slowly coming to view Marvel highly.

I expect Lorna’s going to get killed off due Secret Wars because 1) she’s never died, meaning they have an excuse to do it and say “It happens to other characters, it’s about time it happened to her,” 2) they intend for any remaining X-Men characters to be crucial building blocks for the Marvel universe.

Crucial building block means “someone we respect enough to acknowledge as an actual character and use in events and major storylines, especially ones where she has a major stake in the events.”

Marvel has proven they do not view Lorna as such a character. They made her role in Avengers vs X-Men into a nameless cameo, one they allowed the Avengers books to care so little about that Magneto ignored Lorna completely when she needed his help. They completely excluded her from Axis even though that entire storyline heavily focused on Genosha, which Lorna had just as much of a stake in as Wanda, Pietro and Magneto.

If Marvel can’t even acknowledge Lorna exists and matters as part of THOSE storylines, ones involving characters and connections she was heavily involved in when the founding storylines of House of M and Genosha took place, then what are the chances Marvel will acknowledge she deserves to survive Secret Wars?

I’m preparing for the likelihood that I’ll be pulling out of both Marvel comics and all other Disney products I can, such as Star Wars. I don’t want it to come to that, in fact I’d really like Marvel to give me a reason to trust in them enough with Lorna to buy stuff like female Thor and Ms. Marvel. But if it comes to that, I’ll go down that path.

The next 3-4 months will be critical in deciding what I do when it comes to Marvel and Disney, perhaps moreso than any time before.