New 'X-Men' titles announced
Word Balloons #1207: New mutant era kicks off in July
New X-Men titles and creative teams were announced by Marvel at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
“X-Men” and “Marvel” both became trending topics on X.com, formerly Twitter, in the moments after the announcement.
The three new core team titles will be:
X-Men, by Jed McKay and Ryan Stegman, launching July 10
Uncanny X-Men, by Gail Simone and David Marquez, on sale Aug. 7
Exceptional X-Men, by Eve L. Ewing and Carmen Carnero, on sale Sept. 4.
Additional titles were teased in a slideshow shown at the panel, including X-Factor and X-Force.
The first look at the new era will come on May 4’s “Free Comic Book Day,” as a prelude tale written by Gail Simone will be featured in in “FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2024: BLOOD HUNT/X-MEN #1.”
The June issue “X-Men” #35, which is being treated as the 700th issue of “Uncanny X-Men,” will feature stories by both Simone and MacKay.
Simone’s X-Men will focus on the team’s outsider status, according to a story at Marvel.com, and will be set in New Orleans. The team lineup will include Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Jubilee, and Wolverine.
“I think X-Fans are special in that we identify with having something different about us...and you're going to feel that in this book, and what it means to have that thing about you that's different, or exceptional. We go deep into the emotional part of that,” Simone told the SXSW crowd, as quoted at Marvel.com.
“David Marquez is the perfect artist for this book,” she said. “He does amazing action, amazing character work, and he’s really excited about getting into the characters appearing in this book. I knew from the very first panel that this book was going to be super exciting and gorgeous. He just knows how to knock it out of the park!”
The McKay/Stegman title will be the first out of the gate and will feature the team of Cyclops, Beast, Magneto, Psylocke, Kid Omega, Temper (formerly Oya), Magik and Juggernaut, now based in Alaska.
In “Exceptional X-Men,” Kate Pryde and Emma Frost must train a trio of new mutants in the Chicago area.
“The X-Men are fractured in the aftermath of the end of Krakoa, scattered across the globe without a central base of operation," Marvel Comics VP Executive Editor Tom Brevoort said at Marvel.com. "What that means in practice is that all three titles carrying the name X-MEN are core X-MEN series—they all center around one of the major aspects of what the team has been about at different points. This is very much by design. We want to field a wide assortment of X-titles with different styles and tones and approaches, an X-MEN book for virtually any taste.”
Matthew Price, matthew@matthewlprice.com, has written about the comics industry for more than two decades. He is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman.