New X-News: Brian Wood gets 2 X-titles!

Greetings O ye geeks a-gathering!

I've got big news and even bigger laughs in store for you today!

As many of you know, it was recently announced that Marvel superstar writer and unquestionable (Trivial Trivia: thats the only word in english that has every single vowel in it!) master of the Avengers line of comics, Brian Michael Bendis, would be wrapping up his time with Marvels main superhero team franchise and be taking on some X-Men. Well I'll just say that on hearing it I was both elated and scared because I like the guy but Marvel has a tendency to give him EVERYTHING to write and that kills it because he's stretched too thin.

BUT now more news has come and given me a big sigh of relief for starters and a big whoop of joy to follow!

 You see at the recent WonderCon that was held, It was announced by the House Of Ideas (as Marvel like to call themselves) at their Next Big Thing panel that star scribe Brian Wood would (ok, can't help that, sorry) be taking the reins on
the book known to fans as "adjective-less X-Men" a.k.a. X-Men v4 - currently under the scripting of Victor Gischler - as well as the recently relaunched Ultimate Comics X-Men which was being scripted by Nick Spencer (Morning Glories, Action Comics, T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents).

 

Click for hi-res version: X-Men cover art

Wood as some of you may know, is a brilliant writer who has been the creator and writer of critically acclaimed and fan-favourite series such as Northlanders and DMZ from DC's Vertigo imprint and has even written some superhero comics in the past such as the acclaimed Generation-X soft reboot with superstar Warren Ellis, the off-beat DV8: Gods & Monsters from Jim Lee's Wildstorm publishing house and is currently penning the crazy (and most excellent!) Wolverine and the X-Men: Alpha and Omega mini-series right here at Marvel Comics.

Is this great news? Yes and no. You see on the one hand we have X-Men, a book which was always the flagship of the X-franchise of comics with Astonishing... and Uncanny... and others being part of the family but not the parent, so to speak.
Ever since the debacle that was the Curse of the Mutants event some time back (which most of us have tried very hard to forget) - which was an extremely low-point in an otherwise great series of events in the franchise starting from House of M way back in 2005, leading into Messiah Complex  and going through stuff like Nation-X and Necrosha-X before culminating (somewhat) with the awesome blood-bath that was Second Coming in 2010 - this book has been nothing but a one-note joke that many fans have never tired of deriding.

Click to enlarge! New Mutants sketch by Lopez

His skills and talent not being in question, Gischler clearly lacked something in his writing because the sales of this title dropped to half that of most any other main X-book and was laughed at for being just a cheap gimmicky book that became like an X-Men team-up title with no point, no direction and nothing of interest in its story-lines. Worse still, for some reason they beat that dead-vampire-horse on and on and on for no reason.
It is for this reason that I'm overjoyed to see this book go into the hands of someone as capable as Brian who I hope will jettison the junk-heap that was this book until issue #30 when he takes over and according to reports, will have Storm, Colossus, Psylocke (WooHoo!), Domino (Double-Woohoo!!) and Pixie as his new team who will be facing a new threat and apparently a new race of mutants! And making all this happen in style will be artist David Lopez who some of you may know as the artistic talent behind Peter David's Fallen Angel and the recent Hawkeye & Mockingbird miniseries which was a bundle of fun!
Excited? I know I am.

Ultimate Comics X-Men #13 cover sample!

The other book he's taking over is the lesser known but far superior (though that doesn't say much considering how bad Gischlers' X-Men is right now!) and written by rising star Nick Spencer whose awesomeness is self-evident. This is a divisive book for some fans, myself included - you see Spencer has been crafting this very detailed but also very sprawling mutant story following multiple story-lines and characters all over the place in the wake of a devastating incident that has scattered mutants (no spoiler here, promise!) and while its been well-crafted, not everyone has the patient to see it through.
So it remains to be seen how much of the focus will remain on Spencers developments and plot-lines from issue #13 onwards and how much Wood will go make the book his own and bring in his own storylines and how soon. That makes this book anticipated for me, but still somewhat suspect as to whether I'll like it more, less or about the same because I've been liking the build and spreading of detail and story that has been done thus far.
Master artist Paco Medina will be staying on as the books artist and for anyone familiar with his work, you know he is a very talented fellow and will definitely do the book justice in his part. You can check out his work in a number of titles starting with New X-Men and all the way to the his hilarious turn drawing the Deadpool series in 2008 and various titles like Venom, Suicide Squad, Exiles, Superman: President Lex and Cable to name but a few.

Wicked are for New X-Men #30 by Medina

Expect to see both these titles comic out in June - should be an interesting experience to see how he handles writing two X-books at the same time while having them both set in different universes don't you think?

In closing, I leave you with a brilliant short video made by the one-of-a-kind Dorkly whose parodies are some of the cleverest and genuinely funniest of their kind I've seen.
I hope you all enjoyed all that, do let me know what you think about this news and the creative talents involved!
Till next week's wayfaring folks, cheers!