We Have No Chill About Leah Willams & David Baldeón’s X-Factor

As announced on Polygon (by former HoxPoxTox editor Susana Polo), there is a new X-Factor book coming from Leah Williams and David Baldeón. Here’s the pretty cover from Ivan Shavrin.

As you can tell, the X-Men portion of Twitter is losing their dang minds. As are we here at Xavier Files. It’s Leah, she is the people’s champion. We can’t even begin to pretend to be objective. Buy this book or I’ll personally fight you. How are we even having this conversation?

But wait! What is it even about? Well the short answer is that X-Factor now works for/with The Five, the mutant resurrection engine where Fabio Medina makes new mutants out of his eggs. They confirm mutant deaths, based on the laws of Krakoan resurrection, and then tell Hope, Tempus, and all the other crazy kids in The Five to get on with the hatching.

Now the team here is exciting. Prodigy, Eyeboy, Prestige, Polaris, Northstar, and Daken make up X-Factor and it is exciting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that there are three explicitly queer characters on the roster. Leah got a chance to explore queer identity in X-Tremists #4 last year, an issue many readers held dear. Hopefully, Leah will be able to channel that tight character work into this series. But we know she will because we cherish her.

Over on Twitter, Williams has been spoiling her own series telling folks that:

  • Prodigy has his powers back, it is is important how
  • Monet and Madrox were unavailable for this book
  • X-Factor will touch on nuanced topics like suicide, and gender identity
  • Blob is gonna show up
  • Human’s living on Krakoa will be important
  • Leah threatened Jordan D White with putting Maggot in the team so that she could get Daken, and so personally betrayed me

We couldn’t be more excited for these first 48 pages in April. Till then, here’s part of the solicit.

MUTANTS HAVE CONQUERED DEATH! By the grace of The Five, the resurrection protocols can bring back any fallen mutant. But such a huge enterprise isn’t without its problems and complications… When a mutant dies, X–Factor is there to investigate how and why to keep the rules of reincarnation. Writer Leah Williams (AMAZING MARY JANE, X–TREMISTS) and artist David Baldeón (DOMINO, WEB WARRIORS) take Northstar, Polaris, Prodigy, Eye-boy, Daken and Prestige into the world of murder and missing persons…

Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.