NYCC Friday: All New X-Men

I had the pleasure of attending several Marvel panels at NYCC on Friday, the first of which was the All New X-Men panel, where the panelists basically gave us all the low-down on what was going to be happening with all of our favorite X-Books in a post-AvX world.

The fantastic panel was attended by such big Marvel names as Peter David, Rick Remender, Marjorie Liu, Jason Aaron and Nick Lowe, senior editor at Marvel Comics.

 

Here is just a bit of what’s to come from the X-Men side of the Marvel Universe. Warning: there are mild spoilers.

All New X-Men (November)

• Creative team: Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen
• David Marquez filling in for Immonen on the book for a few weeks.
• Book will be available bi-weekly for the first six issues due to the sheer amount of story.
• Nick Lowe: “Kind of like Days of the Future Past” for the younger versions of the X-men.

Wolverine and the X-Men 

• Creative Team: Jason Aaron and Nick Bradshaw
• What happened most recently is the set-up for post AvX
• Ramon Parez will be coming onto the book.
• Storm will show up in the book.
• Wolverine versus Frankenstein!

Uncanny Avengers (First issue released this past Wednesday!)

• Creative Team: Rick Remender, John Cassaday
• Book is already headed to second printing
• Remender: Captain America is stepping up to the plate to try and do what Xavier planned originally. “That mandate and mission got lost through the years.”
• First arc: Red Skull, who has acquired the brain of Professor X
• It’s a study in what Prof. X could have done, had he been evil.

Cable and the X-Force (December)

• Creative Team: Dennis Hopeless, Salvador Larroca
• Dennis: Remnicent of 90’s X-Force
• Cable is cured of his virus and wants to retire, but everything snowballs
• The X-Force is going to be on the run (from the Uncanny Avengers) and the first arc shows just why they’re on the run.

Uncanny X-Force

• Current Creative Team: Rick Remender, Phil Noto
• Issue #35 will wrap up the series
• Will be trying match the quality of the ending of the Dark Angel Saga
• There will be big surprises for issues #33 and #35, teased as some of the biggest in the entire series.

Uncanny X-Force (January)

• Creative Team: Sam Humphrie, Ron Garney
• Mohawk Storm! But will not be the only book featuring Mohawk Storm.
• Chris Anka’s character designs are “As if David Lynch directed a James Bond movie.”
• Book will center on Psylocke and be “super weird with tons of great action.”
• X-Force has “always been about the moral grey area and moral issues coming to a head.”

X-men Legacy

X-Men Legacy #1

• Creative Team: Simon Spurrier, Tan Eng Huat
• The covers are both fantastic and trippy.
• Book will be primarily about Legion.
• He is “Kind of the most powerful mutant in the world, but broken in his brain in all sorts of interesting and amusing ways.” Legion is not sure of his place in the Marvel universe now that his father has died.
• Lots of family drama, explosions and wierdness.
• The book will be “the black sheep of the X-Men family.”
• Legion will interact with characters from Wolverine and the X-men.

Savage Wolverine

• Creative team: Frank Cho
• “Babes, Brawls and Bracheosaurs.”
• Wolverine vs. dinosaurs in the Savage Land
• “Crazy, pulpy adventure” with some awesome guest stars
• The book will change something fundamental in the Marvel universe.

Deadpool (November)

• Creative Team: Gerry Dugan, Brian Posehn, Tony Moore
• Deadpool #1 Cover: Jeff Darrow
• Evil necromancer resurrects former U.S. presidents as zombies.
• “It’s Deadpool versus Richard Nixon!”
• “Listen, you can’t have the Avengers go after a guy in a wheelchair.”
• Deadpool is “not the hero you want, he’s the scumbag you need to go after these guys.”

X-Factor

• There will be things in #245 that would normally get months of promotion and lead-up, but Peter David prefers them to happen without them.
• It will have ramifications into the next few issues of the book.
• Peter David’s 100th consecutive issue of X-Factor is coming up (“Was going to say 100th straight issues but didn’t want Victor and Shatterstar jokes.”)
• Future issues will bring about the “Hell on Earth War” where all of the Hell Lords in the Marvel U are waiting for the seven billionth human to be born for the Hell Lords to fight on Earth for who is the sole Lord of the dead.
• It will be a six issue storyline that will finally bring to culmination storylines that have been teased.
• Peter David will be trying to also make the book accesible to new readers.
• All of the Marvel U characters will be gunning for X-Factor at the end of the Hell on Earth arc.

Astonishing X-Men

• Creative Team: Marjorie Liu, Gabriel Hernandez Walta
• Warbird-centric story will kick off the next arc.

Gambit

• Lots of shirtless Remy has been planned.

X-Treme X-men (January)

• #9’s cover will be by the talented Kalman Andrasofszky
• Hercules will guest star, as well as an Alternate reality X-Force.
• The Brood will also be coming back to the 616-verse.

Audience Questions:

•  Q: “Is there a chance in Cable and the X-Force that he’ll hand Wolverine his ass for what he did to Cyclops?” A: “Well, sure.”
• Wolverine and the X-Men hardcover is due out in December or January.
• Q: Fanbase is fatigued with the constant renumbering and rebranding, how can we be sure it won’t happen again soon?
• Nick Lowe says that after Schism, a second rebranding hadn’t been planned. He’d like to promise that they won’t be renumbering again after Marvel NOW!. The plan is to build books that have staying power and will be around for along time to come.
• Peter David would do away with numbering all together if possible. He sees it as a lose-lose proposition that turns away new readers and makes long-term plans complain. If it were up to PAD, he’d number with the month and the year to do away with the “collector mentality.”