WAY OF X: announcement
Cover art by Cammo
“I hoped to learn what we ought to believe.
I learned instead how we ought to live.”
Quoth Marvel:
Since 2019’s HOUSE OF X and POWERS OF X, writer Jonathan Hickman and a host of amazing creators have revolutionized the X-Men franchise. Now begins the REIGN OF X, the latest chapter in Hickman’s grand vision for mutantkind. Acclaimed creators Si Spurrier and Bob Quinn bring fans a groundbreaking new series: WAY OF X.
Which: excite.
Expect some absofrikkenlutely enormous surprises along the way, and plenty more chatter about this right here on the blog as we get closer to launch, in APRIL 2021.
Mean time, here’s the full and unedited mini-essay spiel-blurb thingy I put together at Marvel’s request for use during the announcement:
I should probably just tell a lie for the sake of a neat elevator pitch, and say that Way of X is a story about the creation of a new mutant religion. But it’s not - not really.
That’s kinda where it starts, for sure. Nightcrawler realises something’s wrong with the hearts and minds of mutantkind and sets out to fix it. But as he quickly discovers, this isn’t a job for priests and prayers.
To use the obvious idiom: there’s a serpent in Eden. Someone with incomparable power and deep ties to Professor X himself is pulling secret strings. In the mutant paradise of Krakoa a sickness of the spirit is taking hold, urging mutants towards despair and violence. As Nightcrawler and his eccentric crew react to its influence, they realise what they’re really up against is nothing less than the self-destructive darkness in the hearts of mutantkind itself.
The question is, what do they have to become in order to fight it? Preachers? Cops? Executioners? Or something entirely new?
Way of X is a smart, psychedelic tale about faith, science, culture, love and law. And Bamfing. Bamfing just for the joy of it.
Interior art by Bob Quinn
Interior art by Bob Quinn
So, listen: the importance of Hickman’s X-Men work can’t be overstated. For the first time in a long time someone’s doing something genuinely and ambitiously different with the superhero concept. To me the whole Dawn of X canon drips with the lysergic experimentation of the best Big Idea sci-fi: Last and First Men... Barefoot in the Head… Foundation and Empire. It’s not just what if…?, it’s what if everything…? It’s nothing less than the creation of an entire epochal civilisation. That Jon and the rest of the X-team are telling stories in that framework of such humanity and heart is nothing short of magical. I want in on that.
And there’s something else. For decades the mutants of the Marvel Universe have allowed storytellers to speak to the ugly outcomes of Othering: of race, of class, of gender, of sexuality. I myself used it to explore mental illness in X-Men Legacy. I’ve been itching to return to some of my favourite characters and to change the wavelength of the metaphor...
That’s Way of X. It’s a comic about how mutants live. Not just as people, but as a People. It’s mischievous and sarcastic and a looong way from being holy. It’s a book about ethics and culture and growing fungus out of your own brain. It’s a book about rituals and thrills, sexytimes and casual death. Above all it’s about Ideas, in all their terrible beauty, and what they can do to the minds, hearts and souls of the people adrift on their tides.
In a way I guess -- I hope -- it’s the next obvious step in the grand reworking of the X-Men franchise. A brave new Empire has been built in the light: all hail Krakoa! But it exists on a knife-edge between an endless summer of peace and prosperity... and cataclysmic self-immolation . The Way of X is simply the path the Mutant Nation must walk if it has any hope of escaping its own long and hungry shadow.