Chicago Comic-Con Part 3 – Marvel: X-Men Panel
By: John Gustafson
Jason Aaron, Chris Yost and Craig Kyle concluded Marvel’s convention attendance with a panel devoted to the X-Men.
The panel began with the new series S.W.O.R.D. The organization originally created in Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men as Earth’s galaxy equivalent to S.H.I.E.L.D. will see a renewed focus on the home world. Agent Brand, Beast and Lockheed will be running the primary duties concerned with alien monitoring and intelligence gathering. The tone of the book was clearly set when it was announced that Henry Peter Gyrich would be in charge of S.W.O.R.D. The audience was told that the grand mission directive will surprise readers and it was then explained that the first goal is to remove all alien presence from the planet, it became clear how serious S.W.O.R.D. is playing.
Dark X-Men was next, with a banner motto which read, “Forget Xavier’s Dream, This is the World’s Nightmare.” Nate Grey (X-Men) will return to the 616 universe in some capacity, much to the audience’s delight. Little else was announced for Norman Osborn’s mutant squad.
A Wolverine/Mr. X mini-series will release January 2010, by Frank Tieri and Paco Diaz Lugue. Mr. X’s first appearance was in the pages of Wolverine in 2001, and he is a serial killing mutant with telepathic abilities and a martial arts master of every form. When killing his victims, he feels their deaths and gets a telepathic “high.” He just recently joined the Thunderbolts team.
Aaron then went into his new four-issue mini-series Wolverine Unhinged. Wolverine is mysteriously captured, and awakens in the Dunwich Sanatorium with no recollection as to how he got there. The resident chief doctor discovers the wonders of Wolverine’s healing abilities and turns him into his mutant guinea pig.
“This is a place he’s [Wolverine] never been before,” a smiling Aaron said.
Aaron also said it is a story readers have never seen before, with Wolverine never seen in such a bad way.
Yost and Kyle then discussed the October event Necrosha. X-Force, New Mutants and X-Men Legacy will see the return of characters Seline (Black Queen) and Wither, with their newly created inner circle of similarly powered mutants. From the two writers known for their run on New X-Men and the amount of character deaths, kids no less, Necrosha promises to be full of unpredictable character developments and a death or two.
“Yes, we killed a lot of kids,” Kyle joked. “And that hasn’t stopped with X-Force.”
Readers can also expect characters from both sides to return.
