Today, Marvel rolled out their X-Men Panel that was filled to the brim with announcements and Q&A delights galore. Attending this panel from Marvel were Arune Singh, Axel Alonso, Nick Lowe, Rick Remender, Kieron Gillen, Matt Fraction, Marjorie Liu, Daniel Way, Peter David, Victor Gischler, Chris Yost, and Craig Kyle, a veritable who’s who of X-Men writers and editors.
With that said, let’s get to all of the news, which is contained after the jump (via CBR).
- Kieron Gillen will be writing a new X-Men ongoing in November titled “Generation Hope” – it will focus on Hope and the other new mutants to come onto the scene and will spin out of Uncanny X-Men #526. It will also be awesome due to the aforementioned Gillen writing it. Nick Lowe said it really reminded him of the early New Mutants issues from back in the day.
- In case he wasn’t busy enough already, Wolverine will spread his wings into the previously announced Jason Aaron penned reboot of “Wolverine” as well as December’s “Wolverine: The Best There Is” from Charlie Huston and and Juan Jose Ryp. Not only that, but “Daken: Dark Wolverine” and “X-23” will launch, both of which will tie closely in with the other Wolverine books.
- “Uncanny X-Force” will bring back Apocalypse right off the bat, much to Archangel’s chagrin Remender assures us.
- Starting in January, the X-Men will now be teaming up with other superheroes. This is exciting news, as it seems that the X-Men are finally getting some respect, Rodney Dangerfield style.
- There was another “Man Without Fear” presentation at the X-Men panel, this time with Gambit instead of Nova.
When the floor was opened to questions, things started to get very snarky and fun…as well as a little enlightening.
- Fan: “Who decided to kill Nightcrawler?” Craig Kyle’s snappy response: “Bastion.” Priceless. Alonso also added that it was a natural storybeat, and that they couldn’t ignore it.
- A woman comes up, starts off with “Matt Fraction, thanks for giving Cyclops his balls back.” (Fraction’s response: “Wait’ll you see the action figure!”) Question is “When will Havok return from space?” Response from Lowe: The properly vague “he will return, but I can’t tell you when.”
- Arune Singh and Nick Lowe both hinted that clues to Sabretooth’s status could come in Wolverine #1.
- A fan asks about how the writers/editors decide who to kill/dismember/maim/whatever. Peter David: “We don’t target characters and say, what story can we tell to utterly annihilate them. Killing Nightcrawler means we don’t get to write him. We like writing him.” Evidently they are also sad about Nightcrawler going.
- Another response to the question came from Alonso, in which he let everyone know that when they discussed Cable dying and how it would go down, the whole X-Team fell to pieces and cried. He alleged that he yelled at a crying Jason Aaron to deflect from his own tears.
- Fan asks about Rogue and Gambit getting back together. Lowe’s response: “We’ve seen a lot of Rogue and Gambit together in the past. You might want to look to other suitors.” Even better response from David: “I want to see Rogue get together with a vampire, just to confuse the ‘True Blood’ fans.”
- It was confirmed that Kyle and Yost will be taking a break from the X-books post “X-Force: Sex & Violence.”
- Peter David stated that he would not be blowing up the status quo anymore on “X-Factor”, but then added that Rahne Sinclair’s return will lead to one of the characters from the Rictor/Shatterstar couple leaving the book in #214. Much to the chagrin of Ricstar ‘shippers.
