Death of X Mini-Series Coming this Fall

[informationgeek]

It's time for another news update from Marvel and it's about the X-Men and Cyclops...



Entertainment Weekly brings us the following news:




“Right now things are not good for mutantkind,” says X-Men writer Jeff Lemire, who will co-write Death of X with Inhuman scribe Charles Soule. “On the flipside, Inhumans have been growing and becoming more prominent in the Marvel Universe. There’s a lot of tension between these characters about that, and also within the fandom.”

Any mutant/ Inhuman conflict is, by its nature, larger in scope than a scuffle between two different groups of Avengers. Both groups are large, diverse, and encompass villains as well as heroes. And this problem, too, is nearly impossible: the Terrigen Mists are vital to one species’ survival and deadly to the other. The stakes couldn’t be higher in this apparently zero-sum game. Though leaders like Medusa will obviously have big roles in how things unfold, don’t expect a uniform reaction from either side.

“For both sides of this, it doesn’t affect just a small group of them,” Soule says. “There are heroic Inhumans, but it also affects the bad guys and the psychotic ones just as much as it affects the nice love-and-happiness ones. It’s not just their livelihood and way of life but their very lives at stake, so they’re gonna react the way you think they would. Some people move to some kind of shared solution, but there’s a lot of superhero punching and blasting and stuff like that.”

Most of Death of X takes place at the beginning of the post-Secret Wars eight-month gap, and as a result will answer some burning fan questions. Perhaps most notably: what happened to Cyclops? The controversial X-Men leader has been missing and presumed dead since the All-New All-Different launch. Death of X will finally fill in some of those blanks, in ways that will have major ramifications for the current-day storylines.

“We’ll definitely see some characters who have been missing in action since the series launch,” Lemire says. “We’ll answer the question of where certain mutants have been, and what’s happened to them. Cyclops is the big one, he’s the one we’ve said was dead and that’s all we’ve really said. His death was very controversial, so obviously that’ll be a big part of the story we’re telling here.”


So this is where Aaron Kuder has disappeared to...

Comments

[doomedpatroller]

Too many mutants/ Inhumans I care to keep track of. I'm turned off by this in the comics and AOS. I get the mutant bashing as a result of the godawful Fox movies, but geez, it is ridiculously complicated.

[lordultimus]

To be fair, X-Men has been ridiculously complicated since the eighties. It's not my thing, but for many it's part of their charm.

[katefan]

Yeah, I guess things started getting complicated when Claremont introduced the New Mutants. It was a good idea because Xavier's School stopped being a school years earlier, really. I think things got ridiculous with the horribly executed X-Factor. One comic too far, imo.

[shadowpsykie]

at this point, scott could have drowned and set fire to some puppies and left them superglued to the Inhuman's door and i would still think the Inhuman's were at fault (they probably sent them the puppies with bombs attached... i am looking at you Lockjaw)

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

I tend to like this explanation.

[shadowpsykie]

heh

[icon_uk]

I like Jay and Miles idea that this should be the equivalent of Calvin and Hobbes' "Noodle Incident", something that can be referred to countless times as having been a complete disaster, but with no explanation being provided because no explanation that can be offered that would match whatever ideas you've made up yourself.

[nyadnar17]

I will say this, they are doing a very good job of making the audience understand the perspective of bigots.

I am feeling pretty comfortable with the idea of a race war right about now. If the Inhumans actually did kill Scott for realsies then sign me right up for a Brotherhood of EVIL Mutants book. I will pretty much be down for whatever.

[cyberghostface]

I really don't understand Marvel's mindset here. I can understand (even if it's petty) their reasons for no X-merchandise but there are plenty of ways to make the Inhumans big without tearing down the X-Men like this.

[captainbellman]

Mother of God...their secondary mutation is turning them into Pandas!

[featheredserpent]

The part of Beast will be played by Jack Black.

[starwolf_oakley]

I still find it hard to believe that Marvel is tearing down the X-Men to spite Fox Studios. Maybe I could buy it if Disney is making them, but why?

[cyberghostface]

Perlmutter is apparently the one behind it.

[starwolf_oakley]

That other medical examiner from Castle, played by Arye Gross?

I'm kidding. Although I have wondered if Perlmutter from Castle was named after Issac Perlmutter. And now I think Arye Gross should play a character named Issac Perlmutter on "Agents of SHIELD."

[shadwing]

Pretty sure it's not Disney's doing as the Film Divisions are now firmly in Burbank and do not have to answer or work with the NYC Offices anymore.

My pet theory on why the Inhumans Movie was shoved to the back burner is that the MCU writer teams actually started researching the comics...figured out the Royal Family was a bunch of jerks and couldn't find out a way to reconcile the AoS Inhumans with the Comic versions and caned the whole thing for now.

[ebailey140]

Doesn't mutants being on the verge of extinction just mean it's Wednesday? They've been about to be extinct for over two decades, now.

[long_silence]

The head of the Inhumans books and the writer of the worst X-Men book are in charge of writing an explanation for why Cyclops is the most hated man on Marvel Earth who isn't a living Nazi. I'm completely sure this is going to be satisfactory and won't sling even more mud at the X-men franchise. The Death of X variant covers showing literal and symbolic deaths of various X-Men wasn't already enough of a slap in the face and aren't a manufactured narrative to make X-Men fans angry to drive up sales and get them to read Inhumans books.

[mrstatham]

But Dennis Hopeless isn't involved.

*rimshot*

[long_silence]

That's just how bad Extraordinary X-men is. Even a book about the O5 written by Dennis Hopeless is still better.

[mindsweeper]

I'm sure they're going to try to avoid the mistakes of AvX where pesky fans read the book and didn't embrace the approved narrative of Cyclops being the evil villain. This time, they'll leave no doubt. However, they've poisoned the well so much on Inhumans that it won't matter to me.

[cyberghostface]

Fortunately the latter isn't working as the Inhumans aren't selling well.

[byc]

“Right now things are not good for mutantkind,” says X-Men writer Jeff Lemire.

Has things ever been good with mutantkind?

[featheredserpent]

Let's see: Hated and feared by the MU public...giant Sentinel progroms...Nimrod...Marauders...Cameron Hodge...Demons...Louise Simonson...Legacy Virus...M-Day...literal concentration camp...exiled to an offshore island...yeah, everything has pretty much gone downhill since Byrne/Claremont.

If I were Magneto, I'd be finding an alternate dimension and moving everyone there. Like Asgard. They got along *great* on Asgard.

[malitia]

As Asgard (the dimension) is pretty much empty currently (some monsters, and an imprisoned Odinson) that's not even such a bad idea.

[silverhammerman]

Yeah, the thing is that the X-Men and mutants as a whole have been doing the edge of extinction thing ever since M-Day, ten years ago. When writers talk about things being bad for mutantkind as though it's not played out I just roll my eyes.

[silverhammerman]

Any excitement that I could feel about this is overwhelmed by exasperation at the fact that this is so very overdue. Having Cyclops get labelled as a villain during the timeskip and leaving the reasons vague was a bad idea from inception, full stop.

There's nothing wrong with referencing events which happened off-panel and using that to further the story, but here it was misconceived and poorly done. It wasn't a fun mystery for fans to piece together, it was vital part of the puzzle which was kept from the fans, an especially poor choice given how over the past few years Cyclops has been characterized, first in fandom and then in canon, as a pretty reasonable guy who's been made into a scapegoat.

[starwolf_oakley]

Given fans didn't like Cyclops due to his crime of "not being Wolverine," being a "reasonable guy" just wasn't enough.

[long_silence]

Funny, him "not being Wolverine" was a big selling point for me

[trobadora]

Anything's better than Wolverine.

[ebailey140]

I think it's more his characterization for, well, a lot of years now that's made him unpopular. I, for one, enjoyed the scene in Secret Wars where Doom shut his arrogant, mutant supremacist, ass up, right in the middle of his usual master race speech.

[trobadora]

His death was very controversial

I'll say. It's been Godwinned before we even got to find out what the hell even happened. That's some talent right there. *headdesk*

[remial]

so, let me see if I have this right...
Cyclops doesn't want the Inhumans' cloud to kill mutants, he tries to stop it and he is the bad guy.
Beast breaks the universe via time travel and we all love him?

[kamino_neko]

Wait...since when are the Terragen Mists vital to the survival of the Inhumans? I thought it was just a 'coming of age'/'here's your powers (or horrible mutation, whichever)' thing.

[malitia]

If they don't have the Terigen Mists they'll be just like normal humans... THE HORROR! :3