In January Marvel invited readers to vote to choose one of the members of the new X-Men team, with the new team to be revealed during this summer’s Hellfire Gala event. All this week on social media, the publisher has offered readers a glimpse of the forthcoming Hellfire Gala in a series of short comics, and today’s strip has revealed the winner of the X-Men Vote as Lorna Dane, aka Polaris.
Voters could choose from a group of ten mutants: Armor, Cannonball, Marrow, Tempo, Strong Guy, Boom Boom, Sunspot, Banshee, Forge, and Polaris. The five short comics released this week, written by Zeb Wells and illustrated by different art teams, feature pairs of the eligible mutants both before and after the election results. Here are the comics:
“Equality” by Wells, Mike Henderson, and Rachelle Rosenberg
“Over Served” by Wells, Nico Leon, and Rosenberg
“The Best Offense” by Wells, Emilio Laiso, and Rosenberg
“Popularity Contest” by Wells, Diego Olortegui, and Rosenberg
And the reveal of the winner of the vote:
“New X-Man” by Wells, David Messina, and Rosenberg
Polaris winning the poll is not exactly a surprise for those who followed and participated in it. The character took an early lead in the voting, with support buoyed in no small part by fandom for The Gifted, the X-related Fox TV series in which Lorna played a large role. The result does mean that Polaris will be leaving Leah Williams and David Baldeón‘s X-Factor, though all of the mutants live on Krakoa and they’re always popping up in each other’s books, so she could still show up in that book every now and then.
The reveal of Polaris’s win is the latest tease from Marvel on their upcoming slate of X-titles. Earlier this month the publisher released a timeline, shown below, that includes what looks like a newly-relaunched X-Men series from Gerry Duggan and Pepe Larraz coming in July, as well as two other new titles following in August and September.
Fan voting seems to be all the rage right now, as DC has gotten into the act themselves, first with readers choosing a name for Nightwing’s new dog, and currently — and more consequentially — with a tournament-style vote for one of sixteen pitches to become a six-issue series.
The Hellfire Gala will unfold across all of Marvel’s many X-titles in June.
What? What Gifted stans? There is no Gifted stans. The show been dead for few years now because it has no popularity. I take it that Storm’s fans are mad because Polaris is now popular and not just in comics but in games too. How come no one talk about that? The “Gifted” are nothing but rumors and speculations. I heard Leah Williams was the master mind behind this rumor.
I’m just confused why Polaris is wearing BoomBoom’s costume in all the new artwork?? Replace the green jacket with a red one, make the dress black and yellow, and it’s BoomBoom’s outfit from when Pepe drew her in the eXtermination story line. Is marvel pulling a fast one on us and just recolouring the artwork to make us THINK Polaris won, and maybe BoomBoom got a dark horse win after all? Even in the gatefold cover where Polaris has an upper body pose by herself, if you look closely at her “powers”, you can almost even see a faded sphere under the green color… like one of BoomBooms time bombs painted over…
Comments are closed.