Bringing Sexy Back--Or, You Know, Just the X-Treme X-Men

If you went to any comic book store in the past month, you likely noticed that Marvel sure has a lot of X-Men related books on the shelves.

I mean, A LOT a lot.


Kind of like the difference between “like” and “LIKE like” when talking about the cute girl in grade school.

In March alone, I personally bought issues of Astonishing X-Men, New Mutants, X-Men, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, Uncanny X-Force, Wolverine and the X-Men, Wolverine and the X-Men: Alpha and Omega, Wolverine, Generation Hope, Age of Apocalypse, Magneto: Not a Hero, X-Club, and X-Factor.

Oh, and a little book called Avengers Vs. X-Men.

And to think the Scarlet Witch erased MOST of the mutants…

So with all the X-Books out there, Marvel decided there was something missing.

That something?



Another X-Book, this time a revival of the early 2000s X-Treme X-Men, originally penned by legendary X-Men scribe Chris Claremont.

The original X-Treme X-Men debuted in 2001 and revolved around a covert team of X-Men that were on a mission to track down the diaries of Destiny, the deceased precognitive former partner of Mystique.

Destiny’s diaries were believed to hold a road map to the future and the X-Treme X-Men team was determined to make sure the books didn’t fall into the wrong hands.

These were the right…hands. Sure, we’ll go with hands.

After butting heads with members of Marvel’s editorial team, Claremont’s return to the main X-Men books (helming both Uncanny X-Men and X-Men) was cut short in favor of bringing on Joe Casey and Grant Morrison, and Claremont himself was given X-Treme X-Men as a book rooted in overall continuity, but one that didn’t have to play in the same sandbox all the time.

Focused on a Rogue led team and featuring popular characters like Bishop and Storm, and bolstered by newer members like Lifeguard and Thunderbird, the book lasted 46 issues and a few minis before Claremont once more returned to Uncanny X-Men in 2004.

While it reflected events in the other X-Books of the time, such as Beast’s secondary mutation that was popularized in Morrison’s New X-Men, like Vegas, much of what happened in X-Treme X-Men stayed in X-Treme X-Men and the plot of Destiny’s diaries remains unresolved to this day, and several of the themes brought up were only mentioned again in the non-canonical future tale, X-Men: The End, appropriately also written by Claremont.

It’s like 40 years in the future and Wolverine STILL hasn’t gotten a haircut…

But this edition of X-Treme X-Men is far different than its predecessor and shares much more in common with the now defunct Exiles.

Spinning out of Greg Pak’s brief run on Astonishing X-Men (issues #44-47), the new book is going to feature alternate versions of Wolverine and Nightcrawler joined by our reality’s Dazzler, among others, hopping from reality to reality and fixing wrongs.

During Pak’s Exalted storyline, our Cyclops found himself fighting a twisted version of Charles Xavier and was forced to band together a group of misfit X-Men from across the multiverse to stop him and the new series will begin with Cyclops trying to reestablish contact for an as of yet unrevealed purpose.

Yee-hah! Wolverine’s a cowboy now!

The new take on Wolverine simply goes by the name of Howlett and appears to be a brash, older cowboy type whose bones aren’t just laced with ordinary adamantium, but a special golden version that remains a mystery.

Nightcrawler may be dead in our reality, but the new, younger Kid Nightcrawler will costar in this title, the second alternate Kurt Wagner we’ve got running around in the extended Marvel Universe—the Age of Apocalypse version is still a member of X-Force.

And of course, Dazzler is still the same disco singing, light power wielding Allison Blaire we’ve known since her debut during the Dark Phoenix Saga now getting more of a chance to, no pun intended, shine as a main player.

OK, so pun a little bit intended…

While not much has been revealed about the overall plot of the title, it appears that the team will be functioning much the way the Exiles did, encountering different twists on fan favorite X-Men and opening up a much more “anything can go” type atmosphere as Pak can do whatever he wants to characters without having to worry about forever altering the regular versions.

This new X-Treme X-Men team may be dealing with other universes, but Pak promises their adventures will reverberate in mainstream Marvel continuity so if you’re in the mood for another X-Book, one not completely constrained by the complexities of most of the others, give it a whirl this coming July.

In an alternate world, a version of you already has…

Yeah. I just totally blew your mind, didn’t I?