In a new interview, Jordan D. White – the Senior Editor in charge of the X-Men comics franchise – has confirmed he didn’t agree with a hugely controversial Fantastic Four lore change, and has revealed how it changed X-Men’s story in a big way. The change deals with one of Marvel’s most powerful characters and explains why they were only a small part of X-Men’s 2019-2024 Krakoan Era, despite early teases they’d play a big role.

At the beginning of X-Men’s huge ‘Krakoan Era’ relaunch in 2019, Franklin Richards (the son of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman) was referenced multiple times, with House of X #1, Incoming, and X-Men/Fantastic Four suggesting that the X-Men’s newly established mutant nation would recruit Franklin and that evil geneticist Mister Sinister had plans for his powers. However, these teases didn’t come to anything, and in 2020’s Fantastic Four #26 (from Dan Slott and R.B. Silva), Professor X revealed that Franklin wasn’t actually a mutant and wasn’t welcome on Krakoa.

In a recent interview with AIPT, White was asked about Franklin Richards and whether plans for the character changed because of this decision. White reveals that Marvel’s then-‘Head of X’ Jonathan Hickman had wanted to use the character, and that there were “1 million percent” plans to use him. However, Marvel’s Fantastic Four creative team had their own plans for Franklin, erasing his mutanthood and making it impossible to use the hero as intended. In the interview, White also claims there were bigger plans for other characters including Namor and Sunspot which sadly didn’t come to fruition. White states:

But again, as much as we wanted to use him because he’s a mutant, he’s clearly a Fantastic Four character. And they made the decision that I – sorry, guys, do not agree with – to make him not a mutant. And he’s their character to do that with. And that’s the direction they went. And as a result, he was not on the table for us anymore.

X-Men Had Big Plans for Franklin, But Fantastic Four Changes Made Them Impossible

X-Men’s Senior Editor Makes It Clear He Didn’t Approve of the Change

Able to warp reality to godlike levels, Franklin was revealed as a mutant in 1981’s Fantastic Four #238 (from John Byrne), and has had a connection to the X-Men ever since. However, in 2020’s Fantastic Four #26 (from Dan Slott and R.B. Silva), this lore detail was reversed. Franklin, who had recently lost his powers, asked Professor X to help him, only for the X-Men’s leader to reveal that Franklin had never been a mutant, but had subconsciously altered his own biology due to his desire to join mutantkind.

Now, fans know that this decision was made exclusively for his story in Fantastic Four comics, scuppering plans for him to play a role in X-Men’s celebrated revamp. Over the last five years, the X-Men have constructed their own nation where every mutant is welcome, hero or villain. Existing on the world stage has confronted mutantkind with more dangerous threats than ever before, and current X-Men titles have converged into a gigantic war against the anti-mutant group Orchis and the godlike artificial intelligence known as Enigma. Having a reality-warper on the X-Men’s side would have inarguably changed these events.

During the Krakoan Era, Xavier and Mister Fantastic began a feud after Reed designed a device which could nullify mutant powers (in Chip Zdarsky and Terry Dodson’s X-Men/Fantastic Four: 4X.) Xavier erased the concept from his mind and made it impossible for him to think of again, adding some major tension between the two Marvel icons. With Franklin’s loyalties pulled between the two, it seemed that Marvel was setting up a very personal question of how Franklin’s identity as a mutant would conflict with his love for his family. Indeed, 2022’s X-Men: Hellfire Gala #1 hinted that Mister Fantastic might even have re-formed the Illuminati as allies against Xavier.

Sadly, fans will never know how X-Men would have used Franklin. In the interview, White claims that plans for Franklin weren’t set in stone, and future stories would have drawn on earlier seeds at the judgement of the creative teams. However, White does confirm that whatever part Franklin played in the X-Men’s Krakoan Era, it would have been big, saying:

With Franklin, whether Sinister would have gotten his DNA, I don’t know, but he was thought of as the most powerful mutant or one of them because he deals in whole-cloth reality manipulation kind of stuff. So, had he been a tool in our toolbox, we would have probably done a big story with him. But he wasn’t.

Why Fantastic Four’s Franklin Change Was So Controversial

X-Men’s Mutant Metaphor Added Layers of Meaning to Franklin Change

Removing Franklin’s mutant status was incredibly controversial among fans for a variety of reasons. Many were irritated by such a dramatic swerve from what had seemed like major plans in X-Men titles, especially because it involved losing a detail which gave the Fantastic Four texture as part of the larger Marvel Universe. Others felt that Franklin was being wasted as a character, especially since he had recently lost his powers, stripping him of two major aspects of his characterization.

Some detractors cited the moment as a loss of representation, with Franklin’s mutant status adding themes of identity and oppression to Marvel’s richest, least diverse team. Indeed, some fans read Franklin’s mutant status as a metaphor for being transgender and felt that Marvel had badly mishandled the storyline on this level.

Not only was Fantastic Four’s lore change controversial, but White’s interview itself is drawing heat from many commentators. The two-part interview had fans submit questions about the Krakoan Era, asking after plot threads that have yet to come to fruition. Almost uniformly, White has confirmed that for each of these plot threads, there were apparently no real plans in place, admitting most were a case of “putting toys on the table in the hopes that we would come up with something.”

With the growing sense that the ‘Fall of X’ phase of the Krakoan Era has failed to live up to expectations, the suggestion that Marvel editorial let so many interesting ideas slide has compounded existing discontent. That’s especially the case because X-Men’s Krakoan Era was launched by writer Jonathan Hickman, who is famous for meticulously planned stories where little is wasted. Many readers invested in X-Men‘s new era (which has included dozens of new series) specifically because of this implicit promise of a cohesive, long-form epic.

Marvel’s Big Franklin Change May Not Even Last

Marvel Has Already Altered Franklin’s New Status Quo

Ironically, while Franklin’s new status quo caused such outrage among readers, Marvel altered it soon after. This year’s Fantastic Four #18 (from Ryan North and Carlos Gomez) confirmed that not only does Franklin still have his powers but he never actually lost them, instead repressing them as a conscious choice. Crucially, however, the story doesn’t go so far as to reinstate his mutant status.

Franklin Richards is powerful enough to create entire new realities (indeed, he recreated the multiverse in 2015’s Secret Wars), so it makes sense that creative teams would struggle to account for his power level. The idea that Franklin is repressing his powers allows him to technically keep his ‘Marvel’s most powerful hero’ title without that actually factoring into any of the team’s stories, creating a halfway house where longtime readers at least feel less cheated.

It’s fascinating for fans to get a look behind the curtain after five years of this ambitious new direction for the X-Men franchise, even if they don’t like everything they’ve seen. Many tantalizing details were apparently introduced with no future plans, while characters like Namor and Franklin were set up for major storylines that didn’t come to pass, revealing hints at what might have been for this still largely beloved and well-received era. White’s comments are likely to leave X-Men fans even more annoyed that Fantastic Four‘s Franklin Richards was stripped of his mutant status, but they can at least rest assured that even some of the people working at Marvel feel the same way.

Source: Chris Hassan, AIPT