Late last week, several key players at Marvel confirmed they’d be leading a panel this Thursday at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. While they didn’t directly confirm this would be the official unveiling of the title lineup of the next era of X-Men comics, the panel includes new X-editor Tom Brevoort and Gail Simone, a writer all but officially confirmed to be writing one of the new titles. (It also was made incredibly obvious when Simone tweeted about the panel with a capital X-filled message.)
Immediately, a rumor cropped up on Bleeding Cool about what titles would be announced, with supposed creative teams. While a few outlets picked it up, even the most unreliable of them voiced skepticism about it. So we wanted to take a few minutes to look at those rumors and make some broad guesses of our own.
Firstly, the title lineup included seven series: X-Men, Young X, Sentinels, Cyclops, Phoenix, Wolverine and Mystique. The creator lineup included Simone, David Marquez, Alex Paknadel, Eve Ewing, Jed MacKay, Ryan Stegman, Stephanie Phillips, Saladin Ahmed, Greg Capullo and Declan Shalvey. (It’s worth noting that the attendee list for the SXSW panel includes Blood Hunt writer MacKay, who also could have also been dropping a hint with this tweet.)
So here’s what we see:
Title not found
To a corporation like Marvel, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company (aka the largest entertainment company in the world), branding is important. The X-Men is a heavily established brand, with several extremely well known sub-brands.
Beyond the fact that Uncanny X-Men is missing, Marvel isn’t going to relaunch the X-Men line without some combination of X-Force, New Mutants/Generation X and/or X-Factor. Is it possible that one or two of those may be missing on launch of this revamped “From the Ashes” line? Absolutely — Krakoa didn’t have an X-Factor title or a Wolverine title until its second wave, after all.
Are we saying all of those potential title names are wrong, though? No. There’s room for new franchises. Look at Marauders. But without at least one of the traditional B-titles, it feels extremely unlikely.
Simone is coming?
Talent is key, and often in a publishing line as prominent as the X-Men, that does mean an extremely high-profile creator at the helm. The creative teams are very believable, and each has a strong profile within the industry. Frankly, I would be interested in this title lineup from the creator list alone. They don’t automatically push me into “must-buy” territory, but it’s close.
However, there’s a flagship-level talent missing, someone the level of Jonathan Hickman, Grant Morrison or Joss Whedon. I could be wrong here, and I’m not even going to begin to guess who it could be if there is a new “Head of X,” but it definitely seems to be missing that flagship — again pointing to a missing Uncanny X-Men. (Barring June’s X-Men #35, which Marvel marketing says doubles as Uncanny #700. I’ll let you do the math on that.)
Solo we can’t hear them
Marvel editorial has been very open that unless Wolverine is in the title, X-Men solos don’t sell. They’re not going to launch a soft reboot with four solo titles, even if they’re featuring some of mutantdom’s biggest names. Now, could I see each of those non-Wolverine titles — Cyclops, Phoenix and Mystique — being team series headlined by those characters? Absolutely.
So what does the future of the X-Men hold? We’re not sure. But we’re at least moving more and more into the territory of cautiously optimistic.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
