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Take a dash of New Mutants, Flavor it heavily with themes of Family and Parenting, throw them in Space and mash them up with a mix of traditional Shi'ar Imperial Guard. Place this space faring super heroics under the umbrella of a galactic empire's political intrigue also dealing with the same concepts of family and parenting, and load it up with betrayal and drama.

It's the classic pitch of "Game of Thrones, in Space" but this time also good? Hopefully.

The book would largely be focused into two portions

This would be the A-Plot of the book, because it's Marvel, it's Comics, you need to have superheroes doing super hero things and this section of the book would cover a lot of it. Due to the intrigue and poltiical efforts of the b-plot, the Shi'ar Imperial Council has gone to lengths to weaken Xandra's rule and specifically the influence of Terrans on the once great Shi'ar empire. They can't out right kill or exile them, so instead a special brand of the Imperial Guard is created and the team is built with a mix of Terrans, Earth-adjacent sympathizers, and spies and schemers in place to keep track of the aforementioned concerns. Basically we build a decently sized team, of folks like Sam, Izzy, and other earthers, and folks like Warbird and Kid Gladiator who have in the past shown an affinity for Terrans, and would pose a threat to the agenda of the Imperial purists. The other half of the team would be a few council loyalists, and a few characters who may have their own complicated loyalties like the mysterious new Star Hawk, secretly (and unwillingly?) serving the bidding of the Fraternity of the Raptors. This version of the guard would be sent to the edges of the empire the most remote corner of Shi'ar space under the guise of dealing with threats to the empire and aiding the worlds under the Shi'ar control, while in actuallity removing them from being on the Shi'ar Throneworld frequently enough to have any sort of influence.

The guard get to fight 'Bad guys' trying to take over or raid and pillage Shi'ar world, fight off hostile alien threats, and even the occasional universal level threat as they try to 'do good' all through the eyes of our main POV character Sam Guthrie.

We also get to explore what it's like being a new father, being a new husband, and being so far from the rest of your family(s).

Big bombast space action, classic drama and melodrama.

As mentioned above in the seat of the Shi'ar Throneworld we get to follow the scheming and politics of the empire. Roberto isn't alone by any means as he tries to navigate the world of galactic politics, though his desires and ambitions may not line up with his former teacher Charles Xavier's who above all else is just trying for once in his life to be a part of one of his children's lives. Of course, a good man can't just sit by, and the desire to affect and influence the empire for what Xavier believes is the better, and to teach his daughter to be a just and good person, are exactly the sort of reason the Shi'ar council have wrested a significant amount of power from the throne in the first place. It's up to Xavier, Lilandra Neramani, and the only truly trust worthy member of the Shi'ar Royal Guard Gladiator to protect Xandra not only from the corrupting influences of those who would use her to further their own desires, but from those would would just as soon have her replaced forcefully and violently.

It's about bringing back that 'doing his own thing' chess master Sunspot from Hickman's Avengers, but also from Ewing's use of the character. Roberto working in the shadows to understand the scope and schemes going on around them while everyone else has their own goals and desires. Roberto is our main character for this side of the plot not just because he's the most fun to play spy games with, but also because as someone who isn't a member of the guard, or the royal family, he's a bit off the radar and has more freedom. He isn't stuck on the Throneworld like Xavier, or stuck at the fringes of Shi'ar space like Sam. He can be the go between, he can go visit various vassal planets of the empire and actually see what the empire is and isn't doing for them.

Sam and Izzy are our primary protagonists for a lot of things, they're meant to be our moral compass, and the characters who are most often challenged in the most ways. Their primary arcs together as a couple are things like, Izzy's ties and dependency on the Shi'ar for her powers coming into conflict with their responsibilities as parents, their morals as upstanding people, and their needs as a couple. Ultimately they should survive and endure all of this, conflict is important though because as they exist now their relationship is massively underdeveloped, and is a thing that needs to be fleshed out and explained. They should share values, and similar backgrounds being from small rural areas with large farms, but also share passions, to expand upon the Avengers World stuff, really explore their love of adventure and exploring, we should have them take moments to take in and enjoy the strange bizarre awesome spectacle that is space. Another touchstone for this should be Doctor Who, specifically in the area of presenting the universe as a place of wonder and beauty, Sam Izzy and Joshie should all get to take that in, and through them we can contrast that against how other characters who are normalized to these things. Ultimately, in the long run, towards the end of this book (whether that be their specific time in the book or the entire title) Sam and Izzy should angle towards being a new version of the Star Jammers by the end of it, taking that space faring family of rogue's and scoundrels along with Roberto.

Sam specifically should also have arcs focusing on his family both immediate, extended, and extra extended. While Izzy's family are all dad, Sam still has living family, he has a mother at home and for most of his life he's been fortunate enough that other members have stepped up to take care of the family as a collective, but he should still feel a sense of responsibility. We should still see Sam trying to check in frequently with different people, writing his mother transmissions with pictures of his wife and son and describing the wonders of space while ignoring the horrors of space. He should check in on Paige as his surrogate for the hard truths going on with the family, but also as his link to the larger mutant community. He should check in on Jay, never forgetting the depths of his depression and suicide and trying to be there for the little brother he left in charge of things who was crushed by his own heart. Along with the that, Sam shouldn't be the leader of the guard, that's a role for Izzy, Sam's role should be trying to be a secret pillar of support, not just for Izzy but for everyone. Sam should be the one who wants to treat everyone like family and look out for them, trying to fill the void people are missing, like acting as the person who paternally looks out for Kubark while he is away from his father, or trying to be another brother and link to earth for the Cameron's. Sam, along with Roberto will also eventually be our 'Empire's are bad, maybe we need to be more radical' people, calling back to their time under Cable's X-Force, and even a bit of Headmaster Magneto, while still putting a compassionate people first Xavier-ism behind all of it. Sam should ultimately be the one to drop our bit anti-imperialism cowboy speech. I wanna draw on the Guthrie name, in a giant space opera we still need to be comparable to the real world, Sam might not play guitar, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't have his own fascist killing machines.

Izzy obviously shares all of her arcs with Sam and Roberto, eventually being Star Jammers, being a bit rebellious, but even more than Sam Izzy should definitely play up the wonders of space, that was after all the initial core of her character. And playing up the compromises she has to make, being a tool of an Empire's military and how that tears at her and conflicts her should be a large part of it. Izzy should also have a unique and different perspective on Family, while Sam has spent his entire life surrounded by large families and found families, Izzy comes from small ones, ones that have suffered more individual loses without others to fall back on. Having to be a part of a large unit that Sam constantly wants to be a space family should be difficult for her, along with struggling to be a leader of what she sees as a unit and Sam sees as a family. The one thing she should never struggle with is being a mother though, having one child who she can pour nearly all of her familial long into should be the easiest thing in the universe for her, and her place of solace and respite from everything else. Izzy needs a lot of character definition, she's a Hickman creation that mostly server as a background flying brick, while a lot of stuff points to this being a Sam and Roberto book, Izzy is one of the characters that should secretly get a ton of panel time and be built up to be a draw in the future.

I want to continue Roberto's growth as a schemer, a string puller but someone who pulls strings for 'the forces of good', at the same time I want to play into the 'billionaire playboy' trope, but subvert it a bit because unlike a Bruce Wayne, for Roberto it really isn't fully a mask. It is a part of what he is potentially.

Roberto should love life, love exploring the galaxy, but in less of a 'standing on the precipice of a black hole is awesome' and more experience the different cultures of the universe is wonderful because people are wonderful and terrible and everything in between. Roberto should be the first person to realize that the Glorious Shi'ar Empire isn't necessarily so glorious, he should see the seedy underbelly of it all, how policies destroy lives, how planets and sectors go ignored and neglected even exploited, because Roberto should be the person most often talking to people. Roberto should be in intergalactic dance clubs and bars, listening to gossip at the bars.

I also want to finally give Roberto a romantic interest who can truly challenge him, specifically Cerise. Roberto has always been portrayed as someone who is attracted to wild ness and is aspirationally very open sexually, so giving him a romantic partner who isn't afraid to wrap her arms around him and make out with him for 8 minutes straight in front of literally any force in the universe, while also being a convicted war criminal fits the bill. It gives Cerise a character who can understand intent over the law as written, and forgive her in a way that Kurt never could, but also challenge things about Roberto. When he's actually met with a woman who is attracted to him back, and is actually not only willing to match, but potentially exceed his own intensity, will Roberto embrace it, or run at the idea of being overwhelmed by something he can't control and manipulate: Love.

Roberto like everyone else in this book also deals with family as a theme, and his arc is very much intended to be the solidification of Roberto as an unofficial Guthrie, he's Sam's brother and everyone knows it, he's Joshie's godfather, and we should see a LOT of Roberto absolutely lovingly and PROUDLY toting his Godson along with him, when the Imperial Guard are on missions too dangerous to bring Joshie along, he stays with Roberto to ensure his safety, which of course means Roberto will bring him along with him as he strolls into an intergalactic Mafia den, entirely confident that he can protect himself and his godson and that there's no where safer in the universe than with him. The love for Sam and Joshie should be the gateway through which we develop a unique friendship with Izzy, they all care about the same people, but maybe most importantly Izzy and Roberto have a different relationship with family than Sam or Joshie will, and the fact that their ideas of singular small families revolving around a few people you absolutely hold on to desperately should be a thing that unites them.

Roberto should also fall into the 'hell raising, burn it all down, damn the empire' type mentality and arc, eventually causing massive shifts in the mentality of the Shi'ar empire, even at times finding opportunities to bend the ear of Majestrix Xandra herself. But he should also be a person who can present alternate takes to ideological monoliths like Xavier. Roberto should be our way of challenging the efficacy of Xavier, while also celebrating that the best part of being a student of Xavier's is that ultimately it allowed to to also be a student of Magneto and Cable, and to show that they aren't necessarily opposed ideologies at times, and that they all have their own strengths. Again, like Sam, when we see Roberto approach problems, we should see approaches that pull from all 3 of their teachers into something new.

Xavier and Lilandra's arcs are pretty simple:

Being parents, learning what being parents means, for Xavier this means actually being present for once in the life of his children having Xandra who is a child with an entire empire trying to have her time and attention and a culture who's morals and values are often in opposition with him, and Danger a child of his own actions who has has continually negelected, who now stands in a position to threaten his natural born child meaning he must actually choose how to apply his morals versus the choices he's made with her. Ultimately Xavier should win Danger over, truly apologizing for creating a being who existed only to try to kill his surrogate children, but it should be incredibly tenuous and dangerous Danger having lived enough of a life to be considered an estranged adult. For Lilandra Danger acts as a step child who wants nothing in particular to do with the woman and family Xavier is now choosing to actually take the time to parent. Reaching out to Danger serves as a way to remind us that Lilandra is not the cold hearted Shi'ar Majestrix that her empire would constantly demand her to be, and maybe even show us that that's why Lilandra failed and her tenure was so prone to being overthrown and coup-filled.

The other aspect is the conflict in their ideologies, Xavier is no longer on earth speaking his morals to wide eyed children who threaten to be lynched and find safety with him. He's speaking to the most powerful empire in the galaxy, and a Throneworld specifically of people who prosper and benefit from it. Unlike Roberto Xavier won't get to travel, he won't have access to the poor and exploited, only tales of them that folks may share to him. Xavier will have to make his pleas to people raised and steeped in the the culture of a brutal empire that has elevated and served them well. And he'll have to try to convince a daughter who doesn't know him that the system she's raised in is wrong, even as her mother and his wife defends aspects of that system and culture.

Ultimately, the end goal for this is for Xavier to find some peace, to be a person who will fight for the right thing, but who can also live his own life, have a family and is not stuck being the eternal figure head of a movement. He should be someone who inspires, and has inspired, but finally has a home filled with family that he can actually enjoy. This is Xavier's swansong in the marvel universe, and he we ultimately retire him to allow the students and people he has taught, to apply those teachings.

Xandra is a classic Coming of Age story, she is essentially a blank slate and the purpose here is to define her, give her depth, and create a character who can be an important part of the larger Cosmic landscape for years to come.

Some of the important questions to ask and explore are:

Xandra, like most children should grow up with the influence of her parents contributing to who she is, but because her parents are also developed characters with existing histories, and Xandra is a rapidly aged person, she's also around the area of development where we should start to see her learning and accepting the flaws of her parents. This should pretty naturally play into her larger thoughts about political ideologies and rulership and how those things come from her influences. This doesn't mean we need to establish more new terrible things about Xavier, in fact things like that should probably be avoided. There's enough existing history, and enough greater political understanding that we can explore the flaws and limitations of Xavier's philosophies without making him a secret triple murderer or anything like that.

At the start of the series, the main things to explore for Kubark would be the massive disparity in confidence between teenagers either being the most confident creatures in the world, or the most insecure being ever often in the same conversation or moment. I think having that lets you just have fun little scenes that can still have tension or drama even with a Gladiator level character.

But the real first arc for Kubark would be establishing his respect for Sam. I think despite the fact we have no scenes of it in Aaron's run, it makes sense that while Kubark has an affinity for Earth and the X-men, that doesn't necessarily mean that he has respect for them, and Sam is an example of that. You also get to double down on this because his father Kallark absolutely has respect for Sam, and can have tried to impart that on him, much to Kubark's refusal and rejection because what teenager listens to their parents.

I'd love to also create some interesting visual parallels, go back to the original Bachalo design of Kubark where he's taller and leaner, not filled out, and at the start of the run distinctly just a few inches shorter than Sam. He should always be forced, when not using his powers to look up at same, and that should kind of feed into the resentment of the idea of respecting him. And only after Kubark finally understands why his father respects Sam, and he begins to respect him himself should we finally let Kubark grow and actually be taller than Sam.

I think there's something really clever, probably more clever than I actually am in the idea of having Kubark's height and size tied to his emotional growth. You already have Strontian's powers tied to their mental confidence, so why not have their physical growth literally tied to their narrative character growth?
And the longer the book goes on, the more Kubark can fill out as the character is fleshed out.

Gladiator's arc is pretty simple and stays true to his simpler origins, Gladiator's views on many things come back to the central idea of protection. Parents should protect their kids. Rulers should protect their people. And Gladiator's should protect everyone, including their Majestrix. Gladiator often ends up used as a power of politically powerful people rendering his physical might useless, and that won't change here, Gladiator knows that flying into the high council's chambers and just killing or even trying to arrest them all will cause massive problems. He's been a part of too many seemingly endless Shi'ar Coups to believe in being an accelerationist Kallark knows that ultimately his priorities have to be protecting the people he can immediately protect in the ways he can, and that he has to rely on other people like Sam, who he has a great deal of respect for, and Roberto who he has absolutely no respect for but who Sam vouches for. Along with that, while Kubark gets to have an surrogate father figure in Sam, Kallark will have a surrogate child in Xandra, but will serve in a different way. Xandra will have endless people trying to speak to her, and as a telepath the infinite capacity to hear the thoughts of all of these people, but they all, for better or worse have agendas, even her parents, who both have their own political goals that they believe are in the best interest of their daughter. Kallark will serve as a mostly silent figure who acts as someone Xandra can speak to. Kallark doesn't have specific ideas about empires, democracies or any of that, he only cares about protecting people, and specifically Xandra, he is the unbiased figure for her to express her own thoughts to, and to help her make up her own might about her choices.

The Star Hawk is going to be introduced to us as The Shi'ar's ultimate secret weapon. A long held secret by the empire, only to be used in event of a rampant and dangerous Phoenix incursion, this would be corrupted and manipulated by the Shi'ar Council as reasoning to have The Star Hawk be active and patroling the borders of Shi'ar space to act as a deterrent for the Phoenix. Star Hawk would function as the council and the Raptors dirty work. The most extreme moments of violence and evil should be reserved for Star Hawk to carry out. If we're using the Game of Thrones touchstone, then the Fraternity should be a little finger or a Varys, and Star Hawk is the active agent that enacts these heinous acts.

Historically Deathbird has kind of been all over the place, most often as a traitorous sister trying to usurp Lilandra in the Shi'ar tradition of endless coups, but sometimes she's also Vulcan's fawning wife (At some point Vulcan will make appearances in this run he's too relevant to many characters and too useful as an antagonist), sometimes she's trying to save her sister and work with the X-men. We need to get to the bottom of exactly what character she is that motivates her to make all of these choices, and what her actual thoughts and ethics are. Does she care about Lilandra? Xandra? Is it all a power grab, if so why? She needs a full build up in reality, sewing together the mess of appearances. Among the mess of appearances is the other element, with Deathbird having two sets of children that she does not claim.

Both Heather & Davis and Black Light and White Noise have at different points been said to be the children of potentially Deathbird. We should ultimately just firmly cannonize this during this run, there isn't a need to have either of these having been fake outs or misunderstandings, making them all related just allows for them to have a stronger web of relationships for writers in the future to work with. Making the Lifeguard Slipstream / Black Light White Noise duos both be Deathbird's kids immediately sets them up to be interesting parallels of each other, which again is a great starting point to develop these under developed characters. We can explore the differences the two sets of siblings have developed growing up in their different environments, and what their emotional needs and desires from Deathbird would ultimately be.

The reality is a lot of this book is using earth characters, particularly Mutants and former X-men to build an interest in Marvel Cosmic, but among the other characters explored we should also be building the Shi'ar characters into a cast that are interesting on their own eventually. We want to be able to have 'random' Guardsman show up in books and actually help tell stories. We should examine what it takes to be a member of the Imperial Guard, what it means to a citizen of the Shi'ar Empire to be given the rank of guardsman, and how their interests and loyalties manifest themselves.

Warbird should be a character who believes in certain individuals of the Shi'ar more than any particular larger entity. Oracle is a dyed-in-the-wool willing be part of the machine and aid in espionage and subterfuge pawn of the Council, but her beliefs will be challenged and maybe by the end of it changed. Neutron is a zealot, a single minded Nuetron star powered brute force instrument in service of 'the empire'.

While there are a lot of themes to explore across the initial stretch of this series, one of the most densely layered ones is Family. We have multiple interpretations of the theme, characters who explore multiple variations themselves and stack on top of others.

Sam has the dull longing of occasional homesickness missing his kin while also having to be a father to his son and husband to his wife. He's also dealing with all of that while also dealing with his some times tag-a-long best friend / brother-from-another-mother Roberto, who is also the godfather of his son. And back home on the Shi'ar Throneworld the defacto mutant father figure of Xavier is also concerned about Sam and vice versa. Oh, and there's also the whole thing with Gladiator entrusting his son to Sam's care, because we didn't have enough going on so why not also throw in a "you're not my dad" angry teenager who is one of the most powerful characters in the book.

And as mentioned with all of that, you have Xavier trying to raise Xandra and be an active father for the first time, Gladiator dealing with his unwavering loyalty to Lilandra and now to her daughter who he is protective of while also having to worry about whether his son is safe out on the reaches of space where he can't be there to protect him.

Look, the reality is the Shi'ar Empire is, in fact an Empire. And in this book and the setting we're going with we're going to lean in to that. While perhaps Xandra and Lilandra before he had ambitions of being benevolent rulers, the Shi'ar empire is built on top of a history of righteous conquest across the galaxy, and they will be returning to that. We may have times where the Guard go out to 'Liberate' a planet from some terrible tyrant, only to have Roberto find out months later that the Shi'ar army came in after and colonized it. Characters will have to reconcile the consequences of their actions, well meaning or otherwise.

We will see the planets on the fringe of the empire who never wanted to be and haven't assimilated and regularly resist and despite being under Shi'ar rule. We'll see planets who benefited from it and others who were exploited by it.

Almost every super hero comic at some time concerns itself with teaching reachers about the ethics of the world, and this is no exception. It's not necessarily a major theme, but often the messages about morality will be woven into the larger themes. Part of being a Parent is teaching your kids right and wrong. Part of leadership is doing what's right for the people you're leading. Part of politics and governance is also justice and morality or the lack there of.

What makes a good leader. Do you have to be a good person to be a good leader, can a good person even be a good leader. How is parenting like being a leader and how is it different. How is leadership different from ruling.

There isn't a title that shouldn't have this as a minor theme and this one is no exception.

While directly we're talking about character growth, as parents grow from raising their kids, kids grow from the passage of time, we're also talking abut character growth as people over come various challenges before them. We're also talking about the seemingly endless hunger of empires to continually grow and what that looks like.