Henchman-4-Hire

Once again, like the dawning of the sun, the X-Men have reached another relaunch. I’ve been writing about this phenomenon for years, and I call it the X-Men Assembly Line. Every two to four years, the X-Men do a full, linewide relaunch that involves taking classic team names and jumbling random mutants into their rosters.

This time, the relaunch is called From The Ashes and it sees the X-Men splinter off into different teams around the country/world in the wake of Krakoa falling apart.

The full details are available at Marvel.com.

To sum it up, Jed MacKay and Ryan Stegman will be doing X-Men, about Cyclops, Beast, Magneto, Psylocke, Kid Omega, Oya (now Temper), Magik and Juggernaut being mutant superheroes in Alaska.

Gail Simone and David Marquez will be doing Uncanny X-Men, and will send Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Wolverine and Jubilee down to New Orleans to get up to various shenanigans.

Eve L. Ewing and Carmen Carnero will be doing Exceptional X-Men, in which Kate Pryde and Emma Frost train a group of three new mutants in Chicago.

All of these comics sound pretty good to me. I love most of the work I’ve ever seen of these creators — especially Gail Simone — so I’ll be checking out every single new issue. They launch in July, August and September, respectively.

I’m disappointed that Krakoa has come to an end. I thought that was a really neat idea with a lot of potential, but I don’t think Marvel ever really embraced that potential. They resorted to a lot of business as usual instead of embracing an entirely different world for the X-Men. And now we’re back with some pretty classic X-Men styles, which is fine. I’m not complaining. I will gladly see what these new comics are like.

The biggest question for me, of course, is what about Multiple Man?

He is my all-time favorite comic book character, but he’s been pretty C or D-list for years now, and before that he was dead. But every new relaunch is a chance to him to actually have a role in comics again. He wasn’t around at the start of the Krakoa Era, but he eventually showed up and I was grateful. So where is he new?

Well, the new From The Ashes relaunch will also feature six supplementary comics: Wolverine, Phoenix, Storm, NYX, X-Force and X-Factor! The creative teams and rosters have not been announced, but Multiple Man is a pretty popular guy when it comes to X-Factor comics.

So it looks like I’m going to be in a perpetual state of getting my hopes up for the foreseeable future until I know where — if anywhere — Multiple Man lands.

I’m also going to keep my eyes peeled for Blob, to see if he reverts back to his villainous ways or the keep him on the straight and narrow. And, as always, Mimic, who made one single appearance in the entire Krakoa Era. It happens.

——————