Friday, July 10, 2015

SDCC: Inhumans & Mutants Collide in All-New, All-Different Marvel

CBR: When "All-New, All-Different Marvel" arrives this October, the fates of the Inhumans and the X-Men will be intertwined more than ever before. Paralleling the upcoming plot development, the characters also shared a panel at Comic-Con International in San Diego, taking place towards the end of the day on Thursday.

"That's a mean looking team of X-Men," pointed out Cullen Bunn when the cover for his series, "Uncanny X-Men," popped up on the presentation. "I've been living in the head of Magneto for twenty issues and I couldn't escape. I wanted to put together a team that, really, is upholding Xavier's dream but don't have any business doing so."

"This book invites comparisons to 'Uncanny X-Force,'" said Alonso. "These are a bunch of bad guys. The reformed Sabretooth has a moral compass but he has a problem there."

"Sabretooth is sort of the good guy on the team," said Bunn with a laugh. He said that the roster -- which includes Magneto, Psylocke, Fantomex, Mystique and Sabretooth -- will expand some.

"I feel like when I went into this, I made a list of characters I want to have in 'X-Men,'" said Bunn. "Jeff took Magik and Nightcrawler. He's sort of a miser and a jerk. [laughs] You have to look at the characters that give us the most emotional impact. Certain characters work best with the story I'm trying to tell. You'll see new characters and new takes on existing characters."

A longtime X-Men reader asked how these new ongoings will honor the history of the franchise. "The X-Men mean a lot to me," said Bunn. "The thing me and my dad did together was collect 'Uncanny X-Men.' I love those comics. My dad passed away a few years ago so he didn't get to see this happen. The team in my book is very different from a team you've seen before, but the stories I'm wriitng will reflect that legacy. These characters reflect the things I love about 'Uncanny X-Men.' Characters in a role you haven't seen before, but they will live up to Xavier's dream in a different way."

"Jeff took Nightcrawler and wouldn't give him up," said Bunn. "I knew Jeff's team and the book I was putting together and roster kept changing. One of my rosters at one time had Rachel Grey and Nate Grey on it because I love both those characters. But I really wanted to do a book that could easily be differentiated from what Jeff's doing. This was the team, where we landed with Magneto and this group, these are two different X-books that show different sides of the world."

"There's nothing redundant about these two books," said Alonso. "There's also nothing redundant about the two Wolverine books, which hasn't always been the case."

1 comment:

FSaker said...

You know, I kinda like this idea of exploring the interactions between mutants and inhumans. And the funny part is that many X-fans (me included, I admit) accused Marvel of throwing the X-Men under the bus to promote the Inhumans. While Marvel really seems that it couldn't care less for the X-Men, putting them to interact with the franchise they're clearly trying to promote can indirectly work to promote the X-Men as well.

It's cool to see two "super-minority groups" interacting: there could be mutual prejudices, there could be war, but there could be an identification of how they're both discriminated by humankind (...inhumans are also discriminated, aren't they? I'm not sure) and forming a bond to grow together. I really liked when, in the Utopia days, Fraction brought the Atlanteans to live underneath Utopia - unfortunately he barely showed them after that, when he could show both groups interacting with each other and explore how they felt about sharing the same place as home.

However, there's always the possibility that the interaction between both parties will be conducted like in AvX - that is, mutants treated and viewed as the bad guys to make the other party look good. I hope this is not the case this time.