Marvel’s biggest teams join forces one final time before they go to war against each other in Avengers Vs X-men. Kieron Gillen talks with Marvel.com about the significance of this 2 part Uncanny X-Men arc.
“It’s the final compare and contrast,” Gillen says. “It’s showing everyone involved as the greatest super heroes on Earth. It’s about showing how we hope they’ll never fight. It’s about showing why they’re going to.”
Earth’s first line of defense against aliens cracks. The S.W.O.R.D. facility, The Peak, fails.
“There’s a catastrophic failure aboard the Peak’s brig and all its prisoners are dropped,” says Gillen. “The main villain of the arc is actually UNIT, who I introduced in [the S.W.O.R.D. series] as a cross between CP-30 and Hannibal Lecter.
“Many [prisoners] explosively decompress. The ones who don’t, who fall to Earth—well, you’re talking about the sort of number of threats that would make up a year of stories if we were to tell them all. There are some elements of the approach that do remind me of S.W.O.R.D. That was a book which moved at enormous pace. For a story that’s only two issues, we manage to fit an enormous amount of actual story in here. If there’s one part of S.W.O.R.D. which crosses over well to Uncanny X-Men, it’s that. So it’s a case that there are so many things happening, the Avengers and X-men talk to each other [and decide] ‘If we mobilize and act together, we can pull this off.’”
“It’s all about saving the world,” Gillen declares. “That’s all that matters. Generally speaking, Captain America seems entirely on the X-Men’s side. Cyclops is a little more cautious, but that’s just in his personality. The team-up works spectacularly. And then something changes, which, even if it doesn’t go to blows, really does show that the teams are in different places.
“There’s obvious tension in Cyclops having to be even vaguely in the same area as Wolverine,” he notes. “It’s at the level of a glance. The story’s mostly about the team in action and throwing them against the threats, and seeing what they can do. Do several people not like Magneto? Sure. But that takes a back seat. This is them all pulling together.
“Until they don’t.”
Uncanny X-Men #9 is out April 11th. It looks like Terminus was on board the Peak. I don’t think he’s been seen since The Evolutionary Wars back in the 90’s Marvel Annuals.
For the entire interview and more preview pages by Carlos Pacheco here’s the Marvel.com link.
