The Original X-Men Are Coming Back, but Only One Is Staying

The X-Men turn 60 this year, and Marvel is celebrating in style by killing a bunch of them in a horrifying terrorist attack, kickstarting the downfall of an age of Mutant progress, and now by returning to an idea they first did a decade ago. Sounds about right for the heroes forever fighting for a world that hates and fears them.

Today Marvel confirmed that writer Christos Gage and artist Greg Land will team up on The Original X-Men, a new one-shot comic that will see Charles Xavier’s original ‘60s team—Iceman, Cyclops, Angel, Beast (pre-fur, pre-warcrimes), and Jean Grey/Marvel Girl—plucked from time by the Phoenix Force itself for a multiversal adventure. Restoring the memories they lost when they were returned from the present to their own time after adventuring alongside their future selves and the rest of the Marvel universe in the pages of Brian Michael Bendis’ All New X-Men in 2012, the one-shot will set up a new ongoing X-Men title set to debut in 2024—which will see one of the five X-Men “trapped” in the modern Marvel world once again while their allies are sent back to their home timeline.

“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,” Gage said in an interview with AiPT Comics. “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.”

It’ll be interesting to see just who’s set up for sticking around—Jean could be interesting, given that her contemporary self is currently… let’s say about as mortally indisposed as Jean Grey can be, after the events of the third Hellfire Gala. The young Hank McCoy could likewise be a great candidate, considering his adult self is busy speedrunning his descent down darker and more villainous paths even more than usual as of late. But whoever it is, how Marvel will intermingle the current Reign of X with another crack at this idea of the original Five being thrust into the present remains to be seen—it’d better be worth treading familiar ground.

The Original X-Men one-shot will release this December.

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