C2E2: X-Men Panel

As the inaugural Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo began to wind down Sunday afternoon, Marvel's X-Men panel was in full swing.

Whilce Portacio will be the new artist on "Uncanny X-Men" beginning in July, Singh announced. Leonard Kirk will be the new artist on "New Mutants," while Chris Claremont and Milo Manara's "X-Women" one shot will also ship in July and Claremont's "New Mutants Forever" begins in August. "X-Men Legacy" will continue with Mike Carey despite other changes to the line

"Wolverine: Weapon X" will be ending, with a new "Wolverine" #1 by Jason Aaron and Renato Guedes, with covers by Jae Lee shipping in September. In it, Wolverine goes to Hell. "His soul goes to hell, andwWe're going to see what happens when he's not around to be in control of his own body," Schaefer said.

"Dark Wolverine" will become "Daken: Dark Wolverine" in September, with Liu, Daniel Way, and Giuseppe Camuncoli returning. "The key words are intrigue, violence, exploitation, sex—more of the same."

An X-23 series begins in September, written by Liu with an artist to be named later. "She's basically on a journey of self discovery. It's going to be very dark, intense book, but hopefully along the way there will be a ray of light that she'll be able to find her place in the world," Liu said.

X-Men #1
Writer: Victor Gischler
Artist: Paco Medina
Marvel: Shocks and surprises await Marvel’s mutants in the new ongoing X-Men series

As the Children of the Atom step into the Heroic Age, they'll have writer Victor Gischler and artist Paco Medina leading the way with a new X-Men #1 this July launching a new ongoing series spinning out of the events of Second Coming.

"[Readers] can expect a lot of good action and a lot of good storytelling [for] the characters they know as the X-Men," says Gischler. "They're going to be going on some high-profile, high-energy missions. We're going to see the characters develop but with more focus on missions. Each arc will be an event or a mission. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be pretty entertaining I think."

The opening salvo of the new series pits the newly re-formed team against the bloodsucking undead of the Marvel Universe, a group the X-Men has some dark history with. "It's going to be a nice fresh look at vampires," promises Gischler. "I think people are going to be pretty impressed."

"There are going to be some characters that are going to be some lynchpin, popular characters," says the writer. "But we also want to bring in some faces we haven't seen. Who have we seen plenty of? Who do we want to see more of? And who do we always want to see because they're popular?"

Although some characters will almost certainly appear-don't be surprised to see some claws in the mix-many less familiar names have been thrown in for consideration.

"We got a lot of mutants auditioning for the part," teases Gischler. "But for the first arc, it's going to be kind of wide open. It's going to be a big event. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's sort of come one, come all X-Men. After the first arc, we're going to narrow it to a core four or five characters that are in the cast month-to-month. And also maybe rotate in some surprise faces that people don't normally see in an X-Men book."

New X-Force #1
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Jerome Opeña
CBR: Remender Unleashes "New X-Force"

A secret society is putting a plan into motion that would turn this age of heroes into the Age of Apocalypse! The only thing standing in their way is the cast of “New X-Force”, which begins in October.

The titular team is brought together because one of their number uncovers a shocking revelation. “One of the cast learns that Apocalypse has returned and that his followers, Clan Akkaba, have good reason to believe that the Age of Apocalypse -- the time their master takes total control of Earth -- will begin when everybody's guard is down. So it's starting to look like the Heroic Age is indicator that the Age of Apocalypse is about to begin,” Remender explained.

“With the exception of Wolverine this is an almost entirely new team,” Remender remarked. “Only one other has any previous connection to X-Force, but they're all A-list characters. They're big, heavy hitting characters and as the story progresses we're going to see more and more of them. It's a dream team. I wish I could talk about more about them. It's exciting as hell.”

“One of the themes of 'New X-Force' will be that duality of character. We have a lot of characters on the team who are the same in that sense. They have an inherent duality, people who very much want to do good and make the world a better place, but at the same time there is blood on their hands and they find themselves at cross purposes,” Remender continued. “These aren't characters who are going to go out and happily do murder.”