Saturday, May 10, 2014

Marc Guggenheim Named New "X-Men" Writer

Newsarama: Sometimes comic book writer and current Arrow Executive Producer Marc Guggenheim will take over the writing duties on Marvel's X-Men beginning with August's issue #18, the publisher announced Friday.

Guggenheim's first four issue story arc takes the all-female mutant team of Rachel Grey, Storm, Jubilee, Psylocke and Monet into space. Coincidence August is the month Guardians of the Galaxy opens? You be the judge.

"High above the Earth in the floating space station known as The Peak, extraterrestrial threats are monitored by S.W.O.R.D. – the planet’s alien counterterrorism and intelligence agency," reads Marvel's description of the story arc. "From the cold reaches of space, a familiar face returns. The ferocious Shi’Ar warrior Deathbird has landed on their doorstep, gravely wounded and inches from death. Unable to identify the who or what that caused her life threatening injuries, the X-Men are called in to investigate!"

“The idea really came from the fact I’d been jonesing for an X-Men in space story as a reader," Guggenheim explained. "I’d been re-reading the Brood Saga and it reminded me how much I love that concept of the X-Men in outer space. It’s a milieu that suits them really well.”

1 comment:

FSaker said...

Damn... why does Marvel think it is a good idea to replace Wood (who, despite some problems in the Sisterhood arc, did a good job in this book) with Guggenheim (the man who wrote Young X-Men, probably one of the most despised X-books ever)???

When X-Men was announced, it seemed that we would finally see a high-quality book featuring women for a change. It had every ingredient to succeed: a good writer, an awesome artist, four of the six iconic X-Women (Storm, Rogue, Psylocke and Kitty - only Jean and Emma are missing) and two other considerably popular X-Women (Rachel and Jubilee - remember, Jubilee was the point-of-view character of the most iconic X-Men animated series). The huge sales and unanimously positive reviews that issue #1 had showed that it could be one of the top comic books nowadays.

But it seems Marvel decided to sabotaged its own book, first by allowing Coipel to leave it (even if all the other artists that came after were also good - but none of them are as famous as Coipel), then by granting Bendis and Remender exclusivity over Kitty and Rogue (forcing Wood to replace them with the far less recognizable Monet and Karima), and now they're removing Wood. And replacing him with Guggenheim.

Well, at least he seems genuinely excited to keep the same characters and the same dynamics, and it's cool to know that Deathbird and Agent Brand will appear in the next arc. I really hope that Guggenheim will do a good job this time, but I still can't help being very frustrated with Marvel showing their disrespect for this book once again...