Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Uncanny X-Men

It’s a walk on a tight rope. Even after House of M, there are too many mutants. New readers will drop the book the minute they hear about nearly 200 mutants living at the institute. But we can’t get permanently rid of them (through another Mutant Massacre) or the existing readers will jump ship.

So how to get them out of the picture? Time travel. There already is a mutant with the power of time travel, Trevor Fitzroy. He finds out that the X-Men will take away his powers in 2008. So at the day of Scott’s and Emma’s wedding, Fitzroy appears and teleports them all to another moment in time. A moment after 2008. Which moment? Readers will have to read the book to find out.

However, a few of the mutants present survive. Nightcrawler gets saved by Belasco (which creates a debt Belasco will be sure to cash in later), others were in the N’Garai dimension or otherwise out of the picture. Emma disappears. Scott doesn’t. Kitty disappears. Colossus doesn’t. The surviving mutants band together to fight Fitzroy. But Belasco is starting to pull Nightcrawler’s strings. Will he betray the team? Before the other members reappear?

With both time travel and demons in the X-Men’s future, Robert Weinberg seems to be the writer best suited for this run.

As an artist, I can’t believe that there still hasn’t been an announcement as to what Adrian Alphona’s next ongoing title will be. Before DC, Wildstorm or Image snatch him away, it’s time to put him on a big Marvel title. He’s the next big thing, so let him be that at Marvel. Let him be that on Uncanny X-Men. Just imagine what he could do with Belasco’s Limbo.

Marko Djurdjevic is my first choice for the cover art, since I think that it fits Robert Weinberg's writing style.

As for promotion, I wonder if Wizard would publish another X-Men special (side effect: This would cast the spotlight on Wolverine as well) that would exclusively reveal the new lineup. Ben? What do you think? Is this justified?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

We've shied away from doing one-off specials in recent years for various reasons, so that's probably not in the cards, but anytime there's a major shift in the direction of X-Men we're always listening.

The logical next question for Wizard is to ask what you can offer us in the way of exclusive content (announcement of creative team, team rosters, sketches, interviews, etc.) that we get before anybody else. Once we get that answer, we'll come back to you with how we can make it worth your while to debut that stuff with us as opposed to elsewhere (giving you the cover of the magazine, creating a longer rollout plan of coverage, tying in our web site and coventions, etc.).

-Ben

Michael Heide said...

Well, first of all I need Sean's (and Tom's) approval, of course. But I think the team roster (perhaps even with a few comments about each character by incoming writer Robert Weinberg), along with a few sketches (either by Marko Djurdjevic or Adrian Alphona, again pending on EiC-aproval) of the new X-Men uniforms should be no problem. If our marketing department (that's Tom again) has no problem with it, that could even be an exclusive deal. But I don't want to promise anything just yet.

Anonymous said...

Sounds good Michael, hopefully we can make it work. Looking forward to hearing back from you when you've got some solid details.

debbie said...

So, your uncanny team is basically three of the Astonishings plus Nightcrawler?

Plus time travel? Plus demons?
Hmmmm...

This is starting to remind me of the book I dropped when I was in 9th grade. Seriously.

I believe you should rethink this route and get to the core of what X-men are. Brood-killing, humanity saving pariahs.

Philip Schaeffer said...

I'll second at least a part of Debbie's comment; that it's always best to stack the odds and popular opinion against the X-Men.

And that fits in fine with your plans.

Michael Heide said...

The team is more than just four guys. It's still a work in progress. The final lineup will be revealed through Wizard.