X-office. Day one. 500 words.

Uncanny X-Men

We start with Emma and Scott’s wedding. All X-Men and ex-X-Men are present. If Astonishing and the adjectiveless X-Men book are still around, those characters will be away on a mission. Before the two are wed, a huge energy portal swallows almost everyone present. Trevor Fitzroy has taken them away to another time. Why? Where? That will be one of the two main subplots.

Nightcrawler gets saved by Belasco (the other subplot), other mutants were too much for Fitzroy’s portal (he has to kill somebody for every person he wants to transport and underestimated the number of guests? Something like that). Those are the last X-Men left – until the missing members reappear in the timestream somewhere down the road. If readers like this direction, later. If not, sooner.

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

Before another publisher snatches Adrian Alphona 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.

Marko Djurdjevic is my first choice for the cover art.

I offered Ben Morse a Wizard-exclusive First Look at the new lineup and costumes (pending your approval) , with a couple of cryptic words by the writer for each team member. This, along with the Summers/Frost wedding should lure in a couple of readers. And then we hook them with Fitzroy and Belasco.

Wolverine

For people who want classic superhero Wolverine, there's New Avengers. For the scruffy mutant, there's Uncanny X-Men. For his dirty past, there's Wolverine: Origins. So what to do with Wolverine? Put him out of costume.

After losing so many friends in Uncanny X-Men, we play Logan as a Charles Bukowski kind of character. Drinking alone in a bar. (Is the no-smoking rule still active?)
Add a few Femmes Fatales (Madame Hydra? Yukio?), a damsel in distress or two (Amiko?) and more bad guys than you can shake your claws at, and you’ve got the perfect Noir book set in a superhero world. That being said, I’d like to have Ed Brubaker as the writer. With his track record, I can’t think of a writer better suited for this direction. And he just ended his run on Uncanny X-Men, so this assignment would replace that.

Ed has a great chemistry with Mike Perkins, so he should be the artist. For the first four or five months, we’ll have done-in-one standalone stories with a subplot setting up a larger arc. They set the mood, but readers can always join the ride. Then, the larger storyline sends Logan around the world (Japan, Madripoor, Genosha…).

Dave Johnson is my first choice for the cover art.

Could we have in-house ads for this on other books (X-Factor, Criminal, New Avengers) so readers will be reminded of the new approach? Oh, and a Newsarama interview would be nice once the creative team is approved/signed.

Mike