2024 is a year of major change for the X-Men franchise. The animated series X-Men ‘97 revitalized the merry mutants on the small screen, while the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine brings Hugh Jackman’s Logan to the MCU at long last. And on the comic book side of things, Marvel is marking the end of one era of the franchise while also ringing in the new. The bold new status quo introduced in 2019’s House of X and Powers of X has come to a close, paving the way for a new line-wide relaunch called From the Ashes.
Among the many new comics launching as part of From the Ashes, there’s the flagship monthly X-Men series from writer Jed MacKay (Avengers) and artist Ryan Stegman (Venom). Here, Cyclops leads an eclectic team of mutant heroes out of an abandoned Orchis facility in Alaska. The world may hate and fear mutants more than ever, but that won’t stop our heroes from fighting to uphold the dream.
How does this new status quo build on the ruins of Krakoa? How did MacKay and Stegman choose their mutant roster? What’s the deal with the enigmatic Inmate X? IGN spoke with both creators about their plans for the new series. Check out the slideshow gallery below to see exclusive new art from X-Men #1, and then read on to learn much more about how the series will reshape the X-Men this summer.
Moving Forward From Krakoa
Things had been really looking up for the X-Men in the Marvel Universe. Thanks to House of X, mutants had their own nation on the living island of Krakoa. They even achieved the power of immortality via resurrection, reviving some of the many mutants lost due to stories like E Is for Extinction and House of M.
But all that came crashing down in X-Men: The Hellfire Gala 2023. There, the mutant nation was dealt a crippling blow by the human scientists of Orchis and the super-Sentinel Nimrod, eventually leading to the climax of the Krakoan saga in Fall of the House of X and Rise of the Powers of X (both of which wrap up this month). From the Ashes explores what happens next, as mutants return to the outside world and confront a new reality where their beloved paradise has been lost.
“This is very much a series about rebuilding,” MacKay tells IGN. “It’s a series about finding your place in a world that you thought you’d left behind, and essentially taking the wreckage of something and trying to build something new from it, which we see sort of thematically and also quite literally. I mean, the X-Men are flying around in the Marauder, too. They’re living in a Sentinel factory that they have salvaged – a former Orchis facility that they now live in. So this sort of scavenging and repurposing of what came before in order to construct a place for oneself in the world is very much a part of what our X-Men book is about.”
It goes without saying that not all X-Men readers are happy about the end of the Krakoa status quo, given the strong fan following that storyline built up over the past five years. We were curious if MacKay and Stegman felt any pressure in trying to win over readers who might be dubious about the next phase of the X-Men line.
“It’s something you’re always going to be mindful of any time you’re doing a relaunch of anything,” McKay says. “There’s going to be people who really love what came before us, there’s going to be people that didn’t like what came before, depending on what the book was. Coming after a very popular period of X-Men history, it’s a little daunting, but it’s also kind of good because you know where you stand. You’re going to have to convince people that this is a book that they’re also going to like. This isn’t something that we cancel the thing you like in order to make room for this. Instead, this is just the natural evolution of the lifespan of these characters. And that’s kind of what we’re working with.”
Redesigning the X-Men
Given his dynamic, detailed art style and his stylistic similarities to iconic ‘90s X-Men artists like Jim Lee and Joe Madureira, Stegman was a natural choice for this relaunched X-Men series. That being said, Srtegman is also an artist who constantly pushes and evolves his style with each new project, and that trend continues with X-Men.
“I have to draw a lot more stuff, so that makes you automatically slowly get better because there’s so many characters in every panel,” Stegman says. “I kind of think of myself as a figure artist to begin with, meaning I draw the human form in motion pretty well. And this has given me a lot of opportunity to do that. And then another thing that I don’t often get the chance to do is draw women. I mean, if you think about it, most of my work that I’m known for is Spider-Man or Venom. It’s almost like I got a little bit rusty at it, and I’ve sort of rekindled that ability in this book. So basically I just want to draw the best possible action scenes. And also, I mentioned this on Twitter, but Jed’s got great character interactions. So I’m trying to really push myself on the acting in those scenes.”
Like many great artists before him, Stegman is tasked with redesigning the look of the X-Men and creating a new set of costumes to match the new era for the franchise. As he explains, Stegman wants to reemphasize the X-Men’s superhero trappings, especially in the wake of the X-Men ‘97 animated series.
“I wanted them to be colorful and sort of diverse,” Stegman explains. “I feel like sometimes we get into this place with comic books where they’re almost embarrassed to be comic books and I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to say, these are comic book characters, these are superheroes. Let’s make them big and bombastic and exciting. And truly, it was kind of serendipitous that the X-Men ’97 cartoon hit so hard because there was no directive about anything to do with that but that was probably my biggest inspiration for what I wanted to do. I just remember them being colorful and just exciting looking and with just super bright palettes, so I was trying to lean into that. And then luckily that show hit pretty big, and now I feel like we definitely have a through line between the designs that I came up with for this and that look from that period.”
Stegman continues, “I didn’t want to do the thing where they all have a uniform that makes them all combined. I wanted them to be individuals that are on the team… just to show that they’re all their own person, but then they come together and they’re the X-Men. So that was kind of my philosophy – the thing that ties them all together is the X, obviously, I think that they all have an X on their uniforms, but really that was it. The color schemes on all of them were going to be whatever it needed to be to represent the character.”
The New X-Men Roster
The new team roster is certainly eclectic, featuring a mix of traditional X-Men like Cyclops, Magik, Magneto and Beast, younger recruits like Kid Omega and Oya and even the reformed villain Juggernaut. Interestingly, MacKay and Stegman revealed that the roster wasn’t chosen based purely on story needs, but also on what would make for a visually dynamic lineup.
“I had put together a preliminary pitch with a team, and then Ryan came on board and just really pointed out how sort of artistically uninteresting it would be because I’m a writer,” MacKay says. “Like Ryan says he’s a figure artist and he’s an action artist and is one of the most physical artists out there and pointed out all these characters have the same silhouette, all these characters move the same way. And then that really opened up a conversation for what I think is a much more interesting and dynamic lineup.”
“I just have theories on what works with a team book,” Stegman says. “Cyclops was in there. I don’t know who all was in there, but they were all kind of ground-bound. So when you can’t have characters flying around that makes a team shot really difficult. And I personally subscribe to the fact that you have to have a big bruiser on every team, somebody with just a giant silhouette, which was how Juggernaut came to be on the team. And we just worked together to come up with characters that we thought would have, well, first of all, interesting interactions as well as visually that would look as cool as possible.”
MacKay adds, “It’s a mix of characters with hopefully a wide appeal to readers and retailers as well as characters that are perhaps less served recently that could use more spotlight, more exposure to hopefully develop into the point where they are also the kind of characters you think of when you think of the X-Men.”
Beast is among the most notable X-Men members, given the character’s controversial arc during the Krakoa era. As seen in Benjamin Percy’s X-Force run, Beast became thoroughly corrupted during his efforts to protect Krakoa from outside threats. The version of the character that exists now is resurrected from an earlier backup of Beast’s mind, forcing the new Beast to come to terms with the crimes his former self committed in the interest of the greater good. That’s something that will continue to play out in the post-Krakoa era.
“I think there’s always going to be surprises,” MacKay says. “To begin with, we certainly see a Beast that perhaps people are more familiar with, but it’s not to say that we just went back to the previous save and going to ignore everything that we erased. That’s a kind of pass that isn’t easily expunged. It’s something that haunts quite easily. So that will be taken into account moving forward, though Ryan draws him much sexier now than he was looking previously.”
Magneto is another character still haunted by recent events in the Krakoa era. This iconic X-Men foe-turned-ally only recently returned to life in the pages of The Resurrection of Magneto, with Storm having to convince the disillusioned Master of Magnetism to rejoin the land of the living. That all sets the stage for a surprising new role for Magneto in the From the Ashes era.
“Magneto, as we see him in X-Men, he’s not a member of the field team,” MacKay teases. “He’s not out there going on missions, but instead is in many ways the spiritual center of the X-Men. He provides a particular viewpoint as defined by his recent experiences as well as things that have happened that perhaps aren’t fully clear at the beginning of the book. It’s a mystery that will unfurl as we move on.”
Connecting the X-Men and Avengers
MacKay now has the distinction of being the writer on both Marvel’s flagship X-Men and Avengers comics, which is certainly a daunting challenge. It also means that the two teams will inevitably become more intertwined than they have been in recent years, particularly with one of the world’s most powerful mutants joining Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
“We’re still feeling out exactly how that’s going to be, especially with upcoming events and feeding out the back end of Blood Hunt. But it would be a missed opportunity not to have some crossover,” MacKay says. “Like in Avengers #17, it’s been revealed Storm’s going to join the Avengers. So having an iconic mutant voice on the Avengers is by necessity going to bring in some sort of X complications. In #18 we’re going to see the Avengers and our X-Men interact and see what happens from there. So I think it’s a really interesting position to be in, an interesting opportunity to have. Normally the idea of taking on X-Men while writing Avengers would be a nightmare, but how often does that opportunity come around? And so now it’s just a matter of figuring out the best way to make that work in a way that’s interesting and exciting for both books.”
MacKay notes that the decision to make Storm an Avenger was motivated by the fact that she didn’t have a clear place among the X-Men in the post-Krakoa era. This is a character who became the figurehead of an entire planet of mutants in Al Ewing’s X-Men Red series. Having her revert to playing a supporting role in an ensemble X-Men book simply wasn’t going to cut in.
“It’s Storm. I feel like you’d be hard-pressed to look at another X-Men character who has sort of achieved this kind of iconic status that she has,” MacKay says. “But putting her on our X-Men team kind of ran up against some difficulties with the idea that this is going to be Cyclops’s team and I can’t see Storm on an X-Men team without being the leader. So Tom [Brevoort] later came up with the idea saying, “Hey, well, what if we put her on the Avengers?” I’m like, “Well, that seems to make a lot of sense.” Because it’s kind of a whole other arena for her, given that the Avengers are not one thing, it’s aliens and Gods and synthetics and now mutants coming together as a unified, whole team to represent the Earth. So it seemed a good fit and we’ll see how it goes from there.”
As for how X-Men will interact with other new X-books like Gail Simone and David Marquez’s Uncanny X-Men and Eve Ewing and Carmen Carnero’s Exceptional X-Men, MacKay teases that readers may see a new X-Men crossover sooner than they’re expecting.
“I think we’re going to be looking at a crossover fairly early in our run,” MacKay says. “I don’t think I can say much more than that, but we’re trying to remain pretty closely informed with one another. The scripts go out to all the different creators on the books to figure out what’s going on, to make sure things line up, make sure no one’s using a character that someone else needs and trying to ensure… not like a difficult or restrictive sense of continuity or connectedness, but just enough to make something feel lived in and feel real.”
X-Men #1 will be released on July 10, 2024.
For more on the X-Men franchise, learn about the ways in which X-Men: The Animated Series changed the franchise forever, and learn about the time when X-Men was the biggest comic on Earth.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
