The WOMEN of the Children of the Atom take the spotlight in the latest Marvel Now X-book! Brian Wood left the (adjectiveless) X-Men book a few months back after a thrilling arc with Storm leading Psylocke, Domino, Colossus and Pixie in a modern story that still reminded me of the Chris Claremont/Paul Smith era. David Lopez was the artist on this Proto-Mutants arc.
Wood is back with a brand new X-Men #1 with Olivier Coipel on art this April. The new book will have an all-female cast: Jubilee, Storm, Rogue, Psylocke, Kitty Pryde and Rachel Grey. Wood tells Comics Newsarama why the new book features an all X-Women cast.
“It’s impossible to say what’s going to happen way down the road, but there has been zero talk of changing the lineup to include a male character, not from my editor on up the chain of command to [Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso]. But while the core cast of the book is these six women, this is not a title designed to be devoid of all men. I’m sure they’ll be some appearing as guests in arcs as needed… it would be sort of boring without it, and sort of a waste of chances for good character moments.
And the title… I’ve been talking about this quite a bit online, because there are fans who can’t wrap their mind around the fact this book is called X-Men. I sorta can’t wrap my mind around that, that the absence of some alpha male somehow invalidates these six women’s identities as X-Men, identities that go back decades through continuity. As my editor told me early on, these women are X-Men. They just are, period, always have been. So we sometimes get accused of “segregation,” a truly ugly word, or whatever, but I truly feel that to call this book X-Women or something like that, only suggests that these characters are a subset, or a spinoff, or even just off to one side, when I think any X-Men reader would admit that these women have more than earned the honor of being called X-Men.
I’ll defend this all day long.”
Jubilee is the focus of the book after finding an orphan with a genetic secret. Wood explains how he found a way to write the “classic” Jubilation Lee yet still include how she’s grown up and changed. She’s a vampire now!
“Well, yeah, as someone who wrote Jubilee a long time ago, I wanted to use those classic powers of hers… the vampire thing was just something I wasn’t sure I knew what to do with. But my editor gave me some great advice, which was to thing of the vampire stuff as a mutant power set. So, instead of thinking of her as “vampire Jubilee,” think of her as “Jubilee with vampire powers.” Which seems like a minor distinction at first, but is actually quite a profound difference. The vampire thing can’t and doesn’t define her… she’s Jubilee! That defines her. The vampire powers definitely are a twist, but in no way does it change her personality or her core character traits.”
X-Men #1 arrives this April. Sublime is the villain but he (or should I say “it” since he’s technically a bacteria strain) will ask the mutants for help!
For the entire interview here’s the Comics Newsarama link.
By Editor