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New X-Men Relaunch Announced; Multiple Man Anticipation is High
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.
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The X-Men Assembly Line
This is bugging me more than it should. It’s been bugging me all week as Marvel has slowly revealed the roster of their newest X-Men comic. I just want to write this down so I can refer back to this article as many times as I might need to as it keeps repeating in the years to come.
This week, Marvel unveiled the lineup of the new Astonishing X-Men comic by revealing two characters at a time over the course of several days — even though they didn’t do this when they announced the rest of the ResurrXion comics. For some reason, this one is super special.
The full title, lineup and premise was revealed on Thursday.
There are more details at Marvel.com.
The reason this has been bugging me is because of something I’m going to call ‘The X-Men Assembly Line’. This is where Marvel takes the X brand, adds any one of a number of available suffixes, adds a random adjective at the top and then assembles a random assortment of perfectly ordinary X-characters and calls it a complete comic.
Look at that roster and tell me that couldn’t also qualify as Uncanny X-Men or Extraordinary X-Men or X-Force or Uncanny X-Force or X-Factor or Wolverine and the X-Men or any other possible X-title?
They have been doing this like clockwork every year or two for what has probably been forever, but what feels really common in the past few years.
They already have it planned for 2017.
They did it in 2015.
They did it in 2013.
They did it in 2011.
They did it in 2008.
I’m pretty sure it’s been happening nonstop since at least E is for Extinction in 2001.
It’s the same thing, over and over again. Marvel just churns them out. Slap a bunch of characters together, call it an X-Men comic and let a writer or two putter around for a year or so. Throw in some classic villains. Maybe a random romance while they’re at it. Remember when Iceman and Kitty Pryde were a couple? Remember when we had two, simultaneous versions of X-Force? Remember when Rogue put together a team with Mystique, Sabertooth and Lady Mastermind?
I just want stability. I want team rosters to matter and character relationships to exist beyond a single writer’s whims. When was the last time we had a new character relationship as interesting or as exciting as Scott and Emma? When was the last time any of the X-Men characters actually developed a fun and meaningful friendship with another?
I just want X-Men comics to be good again.
I also wouldn’t mind if Multiple Man and/or Mimic showed up in one of these random rosters for once!
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