Marvel NOW! X-Men title will feature the female members of the organization.
When the dust settles on Marvel’s attempt to relaunch and reinvigorate its super hero comics universe, there will be four ongoing X-Men titles. We’ve heard about Uncanny X-men, All-New X-Men, and Ultimate Comics: X-men, but so far the book simply titled X-Men has remained mysterious. This week, writer Brian Wood evealed the nature of this core title.
X-Men will, somewhat ironically, focus on the dynamic female presence in the X-Men. Women have never been underrepresented or a weak force among the mutants, even in the early days, but never has an ongoing book been exclusively dedicated to an all-girl team.
The story is slated to focus on Jubilee, primarily, but will also feature Rogue, Rachael Grey, Psylocke, Kitty Pryde, and Storm, who has apparently decided to return to her classic Mohawk. Wood also wanted to include Emma Frost, but the character is being used in Uncanny X-Men as a love-interest for the lead character in that title, Cyclops.
“I’m definitely an X-Men fan, but I’m not deep into the world,” Wood Explained in an interview with USA Today, “I’m not a writer who’s been writing it forever, so my natural instinct is to go basic and simple and to its core. Marvel takes a look at its spectrum of X-Men books and fills needs. This is the book that is like a traditional X-Men book.”
“I feel like as far as the X-Men go, the women are the X-Men,” says Wood. “Cyclops and Wolverine are big names, but taken as a whole, the women kind of rule the franchise… If you look at the entire world as a whole, it’s the females that really dominate and are the most interesting and cool to look at. When you have a great artist drawing them, they look so amazing and always have.”
Personally, I’m surprised that Marvel isn’t using this opportunity to put more female writers on the front-line along with the characters. The big comics houses have been getting a bit of flack lately for not bringing on as many female scribes and artists as they surely could.
For his part, Wood feels a bit precarious, but not because he’s male. The artist joked about not feeling like he was important enough in the comics industry to be trusted with such a core title. “It’s like any second, I’m going to get a call and they’re going to be like, ‘Oh, no, we’re giving it to [Brian] Bendis.'”
He goes on to talk about his desire to tear down a lot of the double standards that he sees in comics, and in what comics readers are willing to accept in their favorite stories. He plans to bring a lot of “love and sex” into the book, and will not shy away from allowing the characters to have mature sexual identities. “If Kitty or Rogue has basic human bodily urges, tough luck [to those who think this makes her a slut]. To me, that’s as much of the X-Men as anything else.”
X-Men #1 drops in April 2013.
