A real world phenomenon is part of the inspiration for G. Willow Wilson’s upcoming X-Men arc guest starring Gambit.
Storm, Psylocke, Monet and Rachel Grey investigate a mysterious event in The Burning World starting in X-Men #23.
This will be a four-part arc by Ms. Marvel writer Wilson and artist Roland Boschi.
Will the powerful mutants be outmatched against what might be a natural phenomenon and how will a mutant like Storm react to this mysterious enemy. Wilson explains the unique challenge she’ll throw at the X-Men and how real world events inspire her story.
“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.
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 this January.
By Editor