EDITOR EXCLUSIVE
After the Krakoan Age flamed out, the X-Men are rising from the ashes with a whole new line of books
WITH FALL OF X HAVING brought the Krakoan period to a devastating close, the X-Men are now entering an all-new epoch. Written and drawn by an entirely new line-up of writers and artists, From The Ashes heralds the launch of a new range of comic books, which see the Children of the Atom leaving their island home and settling among various human populaces.
“Our new run is certainly going to be different from the Krakoan era in that mutantkind will once again be fractured and scattered across the globe rather than operating as a singular and united world power,” says Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort, who has now taken charge of the X-office.
“The fact that mutants have spent the last couple of years telling regular humans that they don’t need to obey human laws and that they’re the inheritors of the Earth is going to come back to bite them a little bit, given that their fortunes have changed. Dealing with prejudice and being an outsider is the core theme of X-Men, so we’ll definitely be getting into that. But a new world has new rules.”
Written by Jed MacKay and illustrated by Ryan Stegman, From The Ashes begins next month with X-Men itself, before the Merry Mutants’ two other flagship titles, Gail Simone and David Marquez’s Uncanny X-Men and Eve L Ewing and Carmen Carnero’s Exceptional X-Men arrive in August and September.
“I started out by mapping out a sense of the world, where I thought certain characters would fall in the aftermath of Krakoa and who would naturally gravitate towards leadership roles,” says Brevoort. “Once I had a sketch, I began looking at creators who might be good at fleshing out those ideas and bringing them to life and embodying them.
“The idea was for each book to do its own thing and have its own approach, so I wasn’t looking for three sets of creators to do the same thing – just the opposite. With Uncanny X-Men, there is a natural pull towards that title, as it’s the one with the history that goes all the way back to the beginning.”
While Cyclops, Beast, Magneto, Psylocke, Kid Omega, Juggernaut, Magik and Temper make up the line-up of X-Men, Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Jubilee and Wolverine join the ranks of Uncanny X-Men, while Kate Pryde, Emma Frost and young mutants Bronze, Axo and Melee are Exceptional X-Men. “I placed a couple of the characters initially and from there the individual writers and artists determined who they were interested in using,” explains Brevoort.
“So, for example, Rogue being at the forefront of Uncanny X-Men was a beat I started with, and that implied Gambit as well. But from that point on, it was up to G
