2023 is the 60th anniversary of the debut of the X-Men, and Marvel is making sure to pay tribute again to that anniversary before the year is up, as this December, we will see the return of the five superheroes who made up the X-Men in 1963’s X-Men #1 – Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel and Beast, only now the heroes are being pulled through time once more to help save the Multiverse itself.
This oversized one-shot, written by former X-Men Legacy writer, Christos Gage, and drawn by former Uncanny X-Men artist, Greg Land (with a cover by former Wolverine artist, Ryan Stegman), will be setting up major stories to come, as one of these five X-Men won’t make it back to their time by the end of this story, and what they will do trapped in their future will obviously be explored in future stories.
Didn’t the original five X-Men already travel to the future?
Fans might recall that the plot of Brian Michael Bendis’ hit series, All-New X-Men, from 2013, was based on the idea of the original five X-Men being pulled into the future by the adult Beast, hoping that the young X-Men could be used as a tool against adult Cyclops, during a period when Cyclops went rogue following the events of Avengers vs. X-Men. They even briefly had their own spinoff series called X-Men: Blue. However, ahead of Jonathan Hickman’s revamp of the X-Men line of books, the original five X-Men were sent back to their own time with their memories wiped of what happened to them in the future.
Now, the Phoenix Force is pulling them BACK to the future, and restoring their memories of what happened to them in their last trip to the future, so this is very much a follow-up of those earlier adventures from All-New X-Men and X-Men: Blue. The original five X-Men have been chosen by the Phoenix Force to go on a mission throughout the Multiverse, but the only catch for them is that they are possibly going to be odds with their own older selves!
What does Gage have to say about the story?
In the announcement of the new comic at AiPT Comics, Gage explained what is at stake for these young mutant heroes, “It’s up to them to find a way to either convince their older selves that they’re making a horrible mistake, or somehow defeat these far more powerful versions of them. Basically, it’s about your younger, idealistic self coming into conflict with your older, jaded self who’s made compromises and given up dreams in order to survive and do what they think is best, even if that means making hard choices along the way.”
The Original X-Men #1 is due to be released on December 20.
Source: Marvel