Secrets X-Posed!
News!
Maaaaaaaaan, I’m so bad at newsletters. My goal was to drop this right after X-Men: Blood Hunt—Psylocke and X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse got announced, so I could make this all about ME, but I went and dragged my feet so long that South by Southwest came along and a whole new ERA of X-Men comics got announced. Them’s the breaks. Anyhow, congrats to everyone involved in the upcoming launch. After years of being spoiled (which preceded my time writing the books, since I had pals on the inside), it’s fun to have no idea what’s going on again).
But before Kate Pryde learns latte art, Jubilee acquires a taste for gumbo, and Juggernaut finds out how many seats he has to buy to fit on an Alaska Airlines flight, I am squeezing in those last few mutant-related projects mentioned above! With those two books public, all of my secrets are X-POSED.
As I said in the X-Men Monday when tossed a few questions about it, I never EXPECT anything, but I would have been pretty bummed not to be involved in Blood Hunt. I am a horror guy. Vampires fall under the horror umbrella. While I do not have particularly strong vampire feelings in particular, I do, in principle, love when the Marvel universe gets ooky-spooky. So I was over the (blood) moon when editor Lindsey Cohick emailed me about a Psylocke-centric Blood Hunt one-shot. Doubly so because, for reasons I won’t get into, I was very close to getting to write Kwannon on another project and it ended up not working out for super silly reasons.
X-Men: Blood Hunt—Psylocke, out in July, finds Kwannon and her lover, John Greycrow, unwinding in Osaka after the nonstop tumult mutants have experienced over the last few months. But when the skies darken, monsters flood the streets, and they’re all that stands between the innocent citizens and an ancient evil. It’s a very classic, heroic premise, and it was a lot of fun to just focus and spend the time with a character as rich as Psylocke, especially in collaboration with an artist like Lynne Yoshii, who brings so much of her own perspective and storytelling to anything she works on. This is our third Marvel collaboration and on every project, it’s been exciting to see what she’ll add to the script. Greycrow was my first ask because I also wanted to write a healthier relationship after Maddie and Alex lol.
X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse, biweekly launching in June, has actually been in the works for much longer. This four-issue mini-series, which I like to think of as a sort of epilogue to the Krakoan era, first came up last summer, via Jordan White, before switching hands to Annalise Bissa (under Tom Brevoort’s watchful eye). As I owe a great debt to Kieron Gillen for helping set up Dead X-Men in the pages of Rise of the Powers of X and X-Men Forever, so too do I owe a huge thanks to Gerry Duggan and Al Ewing for teeing up Heir in X-Men #700, and in the latter’s case, for being generous with Apocalypse questions in general.
The Krakoan era has been one of great change for Apocalypse, and that’s going to continue right up until the last pages. In Heir, he has assembled twelve mutant candidates to follow in his footsteps. But he has always had a very high bar for competency, and only the fittest will make it to the end. Not every mutant will survive the trials. And only one will become…the HEIR OF APOCALYPSE.
Netho Diaz is my collaborator on this book, and I am so thrilled we started early enough for him to draw all ninety pages. He is SMASHING it. This book contains, hands down, the biggest action I’ve written at Marvel. And every time I think I’m going big, Netho takes it and just blows it up that much bigger. I’m super grateful for this last go at twelve (plus a few extra) of my favorite mutants with such a bombastic artistic collaborator.
Out This Week!
And while my X-Secrets may now be fully X-posed, that doesn’t mean I’m totally bereft of surprises. Web of Spider-Man #1 hits shelves this week, promising to set up all of the fall’s biggest Spider-Man-related stories. I wrote three stories in the issue, totally 19 pages, so it’s probably safe to expect an arachnid surprise or two headed your way soon… Greg Land, Jay Leisten, and Frank D’Armata joined me for two of those tales and I had a HECK of a good time with those guys—hope we get to do it again. And the other short story came from Ig Guara and Arif Prianto, the second-arc team on Spider-Woman.
Spider-Woman #5 hits stores this week, and it’s incredibly bittersweet. This is Carola Borelli’s final issue on the title for now. I couldn’t have asked for a better launch collaborator and I’m thrilled we’re ending our opening run on a super-fun SPIDER-BOY team-up issue. This is one of Bailey’s first appearances in the wider Marvel U. and I appreciate Mr. Slott letting us borrow him for the issue.
While Carola will be deeply missed, I’m excited for Web readers to see Ig and Arif’s work and get a first look at how our second arc will be shaping up as we move into issues #6 and beyond. I’m having the time of my life writing Jess, and I hope the reader support sticks around for me to write her for a good while to come!
Out Recently!
In other recent news, Dead X-Men #3 came out last week, racing us toward our life-hopping conclusion, and debuting the last of our guest artists, Lynne Yoshii, Javier Pina, and David Baldeon (alongside the returning Bernard Chang and colorist Frank Martin). It was such an honor and a thrill to wrangle this powerhouse art team on this project, and to get to write these six mutants on this out-there adventure. Really, really proud and grateful of this strange big, little book. Also got to do one of my favorite things in this issue, which is (mild spoiler) imagine an alternate X-Men team. Since this is a prior Moira life, I didn’t go TOO WILD—none of her lives are supposed to have played out as drastically different as, say, Age of Apocalypse, at least during the same time frame as the current 616—but it was still fun to put a little squad together with some of my faves.
And speaking of X-squads, X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic continues apace. Orlando and I actually just wrote the penultimate issue, so we’re reaching our finish line. It’s really been the definition of a marathon—since we started working on the Sunfire story, it’s kind of felt like we’ve never not been doing an Unlimited. I think it’s possible we’re the longest consecutive Unlimited writers, and I slightly exceed him since I was on it six issues prior? But who’s counting? I mean it—I literally didn’t count. It just seems like we’ve done a lot.
Anyway, Nick Roche and Phil Sevy are legit miracle workers. The vertical format is fun, but our cast is HUGE, and they make it look easy still managing to be dynamic and epic and “widescreen” anyway. We’ve worked hard to make this digital “side story” feel important and big and like a really worthy spotlight for these B-level characters we love so much, so we hope folks have been enjoying it. And you can find three of us chatting about the run here on X-Men Monday, too!
Out Next Week!
Finally—NEXT WEEK, the HOTLY ANTICIPATED OFFICIAL PRELUDE to the LONG-AWAITED follow-up to the BELOVED ‘90s ANIMATED SERIES…
X-Men ’97 #1!
Man, what to even say at this point. The original cartoon (along with the toy line) set me on the path to who I am today. Reuniting with Salva Espin, now joined with colorist Matt Milla and cover artist Todd Nuack, to tell an officially sanctioned story set in this universe…talk about bucket list. I don’t think it’ll even sink in for a while.
Before you boot up Disney+ to dive into the new show, grab #1 at the comic shop to get the inside scoop on some of the changes between where we left beloved characters in the original series and where we find them now. And be sure to come back for the rest of the mini-series to see some absolutely bonkers action with some of the hottest villains of the early nineties.
Major origins and plot points that will play out in the first two seasons of X-Men ’97 get planted here first! And for me on the show’s impact on Young Steve, catch me on X-Men Monday.
Andddddd I think that’s it! I’d say I’d see you soon, but you probably won’t—catch you in six to eight weeks when I finally have a free day to bang one of these out!