Arrow Executive Producer/Writer Marc Guggenheim take over the all-female X-Men book this week and sends the team into orbit.
Deathbird shows up at death’s door at The Peak. Abigail Brand of S.W.O.R.D. calls in the mutants. It’s part of the new X-writer’s plan to take the Women of the Atom to new heights.
As Guggenheim explains the new story is inspired by the X-Men’s history with the Shi’ar Empire.
“You know, I pitched several ideas, and the one that [editors] Mike Marts and Daniel Ketchum far and away responded to the most was the space story. You know, I’m a longtime X-Men fan. The first issue of X-Men that I ever read was Uncanny #139, which is the one where Kitty Pryde joins the team. Relatively shortly after that, they had The Brood Saga. Thanks to ComiXology, actually, before I started pitching on this, I happened to be rereading a lot of the Claremont-era X-Men books, including The Brood Saga. I was sort of struck by just how long it’s been since there’s been an X-Men in outer space story. There was Ed Brubaker’s really fantastic Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire.” Guggenheim told IGN.
“Since then, the X-Men really haven’t been in space all that much. There was a little bit with the Breakworld in Joss Whedon’s run. There’s been little things along the way, but nothing that really sort of grabbed me in the same way The Brood Saga grabbed me as an early reader. I just found myself getting nostalgic. I didn’t want to do another Brood story, because Chris Gage had done Children of the Brood, which was fantastic. But I liked the idea of taking this all-female team of X-Men and putting them in outer space. In doing something that was a little different than “The X-Men meet Star Wars,” this was more along the lines of “The X-Men meets Aliens.” It’s darker, it’s a little more mysterious, and it’s scarier.”
The X-Men are known for championing mutant and human rights on Earth but but more many fans, the X-Men’s sci-fi adventures are among the favorites as Guggenheim explains in a later interview.
“The idea really came from the fact that I’d been jonesing for an ‘X-Men in space’ story as a reader,” says Guggenheim. “I’d been re-reading the ‘Brood Saga’ and it reminded me how much I love that concept of the X-Men in outer space. It’s a milieu that suits them really well.” Marvel.com.
“Those early years with Byrne and [Dave] Cockrum and [Paul] Smith were my seminal reading experiences,” Guggenheim recalls. “What was cool about the ‘Brood Saga’ was it was more like ‘Star Wars’ than anything we’d seen from Marvel cosmic. It was more like ‘Aliens.’ It had a darkness to it. It opened a new corner of the Marvel Universe that was more mysterious and scary. My goal here is to do something in that vein, to do something spooky.”
Storm, Psylocke, Monet, Jubilee and Rachel Grey will continue to be the roster as the new writer takes over.
Gugggenheim’s run begins with X-Men #18 this week with artist Dexter Soy.
By Editor