G. WILLOW WILSON on X-MEN

X-Men #23 courtesy Marvel
X-Men #23 courtesy Marvel

A Seattle writer’s comic book success keeps soaring as she takes on one of the most famous teams in comics.

G. Willow Wilson launched a brand new Ms. Marvel to critical acclaim and sales success in 2014.  The book was named the number one series of 2014 by Comic Book Resources.

Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel’s real name) was the first Muslim character to to lead their own mainstream comic book. Wilson is now a Marvel exclusive creator and writing the all-female X-Men book.

X-Men #23 arrives in comic shops this week. The Burning World is the name of Wilson’s first arc as Storm, Psylocke, Rachel Grey and Monet investigate a mysterious event at a “Burning Man” style concert.

Will the mutants be outmatched by what could be a natural phenomenon?

What it’s like to write an iconic superhero like Storm (as played by Halle Berry in movies) and will a mutant connected to mother Earth fight the planet?

“I was thinking about Storm in particular, who’s been a big hero of mine since I was a kid. I was thinking about her particular power set and what kind of effect, if any, there would be on her due to the fact that all over the world because of climate change, weather patterns are changing. Things are shifting. They’re not as they were. Things are very unstable,” Wilson told Comic Book Resources.
“Then, I was reading about the gigantic sinkhole that appeared in Siberia. They couldn’t figure out why it was there. It was huge and deep, almost like a bomb had gone off, and nobody could figure out what it was. Then another one appeared in a different part of Russia.

Ms. Marvel #5 courtesy Marvel
Ms. Marvel #5 courtesy Marvel

For a lot of my stories, I like to use real world touchstones as a jumping off point for the more fantastical adventures that the characters are having. In this story, there’s a giant sinkhole in the Black Rock Desert like the one in Siberia, that has caused a huge amount of destruction and kind of changed the weather in that particular area.

Very quickly, the team finds out that there’s more than meets the eye. This is not just about weird geological phenomenon. There’s something more sinister going on that not only challenges their ability to make things right, but it also challenges their sense of what you fight. It’s very easy to fight a bad guy. It’s less easy to fight the Earth. So it’s very interesting.”

The Burning World begins in X-Men #23 out now. After this four-issue arc Wilson is moving on to a brand new book. After creating new heroes like Kamala and writing classic characters like X-Men, Wilson’s Marvelous comics career keeping flying high.

What super heroes will this Seattle writer chronicle next? Stay tuned!

By Editor