The other day I was wondering what might have happened if X-23 had been put on Academy X after making her comics debut in NYX, rather than being taken by Claremont on Uncanny X-Men. In particular, which of the training squads she would have been assigned to, and how that might have affected her relationships with the other New X-Men (IE, would she and Hellion have still developed their mutual crush, leading to a love triangle with Wind Dancer? Would she still have befriended Mercury and Dust? Would she still have scared the hell out of the other kids?).
When I posted these musings on her subreddit, someone responded that there actually was plans for this, and that Laura would have been placed on the New Mutants squad. However, Marvel changed plans due to House of M, and New X-Men was handed over to Kyle and Yost before this could happen. The comment was unable to provide a source for this, however, only purporting it was something that came up in an interview or forum post.
Is there any truth to this? Was Laura really meant to join Academy X as part of the New Mutant squad before the Decimation era shook up the X-books?
Yes, her joining the book was the plan, but no, she was not slated for the New Mutants squad, because the squads likely were on the verge of being abolished.
When we were told about House of M, we initially were asked to reshape the book, post-crossover, with fewer kids at the school.
We were asked to reduce the number of kids to under a dozen at the school. And the central kids would transition to active heroing. In that conversation, we were asked to include X-23 as one of the featured kids.
This request put to bed any of our planned miniseries for the other squads, and scrapped some of our future plans as well as meaning the end of the squad system at the school.
But it also allowed us to finally hone in on the one story we'd really been building towards - the story centered around Sean Garrison. Which meant three of the kids we'd have focused on would have to be Laurie, Josh, and Kevin. That much planned story would have taken on a frantic urgency in a "No More Mutants" world.
Key to figuring out the new version of the plans, was figuring out who else would be central to the story, and using those choices on a plotting level to shape what kids would be the center of the new incarnation of the book. This meant first and foremost, with their request, figuring out what major role to give X-23. We also knew we'd likely put some of the Hellions front and center on the heels of our Hellions miniseries (which we were writing while we got this directive).
But before our planning was done, we got a call that we were off the book, and that Marvel was opting to turn the book over to X-23's creators. Since we hadn't talked about our plans yet (and X-23's role was not yet figured on our end), it wasn't about what we had planned.
It was, as we've speculated elsewhere, much more likely the result of Marvel having run out of patience on our style of storytelling on the book.
We knew the teen-drama-with-superpowers approach was not to the liking of the powers that be. And we had tried in the HOM arc and the Hellions mini to go a little more superpowered in the storytelling to prove that we could shift gears post House Of M.
But we guess they didn't feel like taking a chance on that when the new guys had a more established track record on those types of stories, and especially with a character they wanted front and center on the book.
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