X-Men Editor Explains Why Marvel Is Hiding Bonus Scenes Behind QR Codes

Tom Brevoort says "bonus scenes" will continue throughout Marvel's X-Men: From the Ashes relaunch.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Jed MacKay and Ryan Stegman's X-Men #1 launched the X-Men's From the Ashes era with a new X-Men team and new villains known only as 3K — revealed not in the issue itself, but in a comic book version of a Marvel post-credits scene. After Alaska-based X-Men Cyclops, Psylocke, Kid Omega, Temper, Magik, and Juggernaut battled a team of Orchis-made new mutants, the issue snuck in an extra sequence: a scannable QR code redirected readers to a one-page "bonus scene" accessed through the Marvel website.

The trend has continued across Marvel's just-relaunched X-Men comics with Phoenix #1 and this week's NYX #1, which introduced major characters or plot points in online bonus scenes accessible only by third-party QR readers.

"It was a bonus page to begin with, an extra page — we didn't scale back the contents of X-Men #1 in order to do it,"  Marvel Comics VP Executive Editor Tom Brevoort explained on Substack. "And it gave us a page whose contents we could conceal until the day of release, thus avoiding any early spoilers. You'll find that we're doing similar pages in most of the new X-launches."

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"They're a little free bonus, a little extra — sort of a modern day equivalent of that 'Things To Come' page that ran in the first issue of the [Chris] Claremont/[Jim] Lee X-Men #1," the editor added, referring to the single splash page that ended the X-Men's '90s relaunch. 

In a subsequent Substack post, Brevoort reiterated Marvel's anti-spoiler strategy and clarified that the bonus scenes would be inserted into the eventual collected editions.

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"In this era of early spoilers, I love that this approach gives us the opportunity to hold onto some plot points right up until the day the title ships," Brevoort wrote. "So you'll see the pattern repeated in most of the other X-Launches of this era. We will include those pages in the eventual collected editions, though, for those who don't own a phone."

Upcoming X-titles include the relaunched Wolverine #1 (from new creative team Saladin Ahmed and Martin Coccolo) and Dazzler #1 (by Jason Loo and Rafael Loureiro) in September, followed by the previously announced Storm #1 (by Murewa Ayodele and Lucas Werneck), Sentinels #1 (by Alex Paknadel and Justin Mason), and Mystique #1 (written and drawn by Declan Shalvey) in October.

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