Kieron Gillen has resurrected old villains on the new Uncanny X-Men title featuring Cyclops and his Utopia based Extinction Team.

  In a new interview by Comic Book Resources featuring fan questions – the British writer tackled classic villains and upcoming events.

  Why did Gillen kick off the relaunched title with Mister Sinister?

   “I wanted a classic heavyweight X-Men villain and Sinister was simply the only one with the appropriate level of gravitas who wasn’t already elsewhere in play. Magneto is with the team. Apocalypse is busy over in “X-Force.” Sabretooth was already involved in plans you’ll be aware of now (and would be annihilated in a millisecond if he went up against the Extinction team, to be honest). Who else but Sinister? No one, that’s who. So I tried to work how I could do something that was entirely new yet true to what I sawa as the core of the character (mutants as research material, Victoriana, scheming and manipulating, upgrading of self, sinister-ness), and ended up with Sinister is a System — Sinister is a species and someone whose idea of an escape route is to blow off his own head.”

  On Cyclops becoming the Magneto of the 21st century?

“I think his current position is that he’s willing to pretend to be more like Magneto to get what he wants — which is no one to fight and kill each other. It’s a specific tactic for a specific situation for a specific timeframe. From Cyclops’ position, it’s a case of keeping mutants alive until Hope does whatever Messiah-y things she’s born to do — if embracing the fact they are feared is a short-term compromise he thinks is the best solution. Cyclops is synthesizing various philosophies. There may be more Magneto in there than previous, but it’s not the dominant strand by any means.”

  This is an excellent question: Would Cyclops recruit Daken to replace Wolverine?

 “It’s certainly something that could happen — but I don’t think Scott would trust Daken. He’s got a lot of reformed villains on his team, but he’s more convinced by their reasons for being there than the ever-sociopathically manipulative Daken.”

   Gillen says Storm and Namor will play big roles in the Avengers Versus X-Men tie-in issues and Magic “comes under hard focus in my AvX issues.”

  For the entire interview click here.

 Uncanny X-Men #5 is out today featuring a new threat to the mutants: Tabula Rasa.