By Brandon Pascall
On Saturday at New York Comic Con, Marvel held its Dawn Of X panel, which revealed more about their new, highly-anticipated line of X-Men comics. C.B. Cebulski, Jordan White, Ed Brisson, Tini Howard, and Benjamin Percy took the stage to share new information about their books.
Before getting to the rest of the X-Men line, White discussed the ending of House of X, which wrapped up this week, and Powers of X, which ends next week and wraps up the 12-issue epic by Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, and R.B. Silva. White talked about Hickman’s initial pitch and how Hickman seemed to reinvent the X-Men and not just reboot them. He assured fans that Krakoa is the new status quo and that the revelations in House of X will mean that mutants will no longer stay dead. This got a huge cheer from fans, and it’s just the start of everything that will be happening for the X-Men in weeks (and months) to come.
Following this, a video featuring Gerry Duggan and Jonathan Hickman played, since both couldn’t make the con but wanted to show off their new books. Hickman was up first. He explained how the main X-Men book will follow one-and-done stories with a monthly, rotating roster that follows Cyclops and the mutants he handpicks for each mission. He teased that every mutant will appear in this book in some way or another, and that any mutant he chooses can become a member of the X-Men if Cyclops wills it.
Marauders is a pirate story that Gerry Duggan has been dying to tell. Duggan revealed that the Hellfire club has become the Hellfire Trading Corporation and will follow Kitty Pryde as she leads a team to deliver the Krakoan drugs that were introduced at the start of Hickman’s X-Men epic. Duggan also promised that Emma Frost will play a huge part in the book and Hickman said that Marauders is playing the deepest into the mythology that he started in HoX and PoX.
Tini Howard was up next with Excalibur. She talked about how the mutants finally have an opportunity to grow their culture by making art and exploring who they are as a people. Apocalypse has a big journey in this book, along with Betsy Braddock, who was recently divorced from Kwannon. Betsy will feel out of place on Krakoa and will take on the mantle of Captain Britain, but before diving into spoilers they switched it over to Marcus To’s amazing artwork, where Howard compared his work to Alan Davis‘ original artwork on Excalibur.
X-Force with Benjamin Percy was up next, and he explained how the X-Force is the mutant CIA of Krakoa and no longer just a black ops team. Beast is the intelligence head while Wolverine is the wet works operative. “Crazy shit” happens in this book, but it wasn’t Percy’s only announcement at the Dawn of X panel.
Before he could go further, the panel segued into New Mutants, a team-up between Hickman and Ed Brisson. The New Mutants and the Star Jammers get to go after Cannonball, who is in space, and bring him home to Krakoa where he belongs. The team is playing around with the idea of bringing in the newer, younger mutants to give them their time to shine. They act as a welcoming committee for the mutants and at the end, Boom Boom was also announced as a member of the team.
Not much new information was revealed for Fallen Angels, though White said that book will focus on Psylocke after being separated from Betsy Braddock and a young Cable, and X-23 will also be featured along with the Bling and Husk who were announced at the end.
Before we end things: remember when I said Benjamin Percy had one more announcement? Well, he will launching a brand new Wolverine series along with Adam Kubert and Victor Bogdonavic starting in February.
