fajrdrako | FanExpo: The X-Men panel... (Reply)

On Friday evening I went to the X-Men panel at FanExpo. I sat behind a family costumed as X-23 and Logan:

I particularly loved the upsweep of the kid's hair at the sides, Wolverine-style. Before starting the panel, the speakers announced that they'd spotted a celebrity in the audience, and introduced the kid as Wolverine. He gave us a convincing snarl, and a wave of the claws.

For reasons I never did learn, the editors, writers and artists on X-Men who were supposed to be there, weren't, and the panel was handled by a senior editor at Marvel (Steve Wacker), C.B. Cenulski, Valentine de Landro, Arune Singh, and a few other people whose names I didn't get. They were annoyingly careful not to give away spoilers. The result was that it seemed oddly light on content - mostly telling us things we already knew.

I couldn't help remembering cons of my past, in San Diego and elsewhere, where I knew all the X-Men editors, writers, and artists by name and usually by sight, and a lot of them new me. It was a little disorienting - was it that long ago? I guess it was.

And that really came home to me when Steve Wacker asked members of the audience what their starting point for X-Men was - what the first stories they ever read were. Some said Generation X, some said Jim Lee's X-Men #1, some said New Mutants, some said more recent comics, and I started to feel like Methuselah. No one said X-Men #1 back in 1963, with Stan Lee's first issue, the beginning of it all. I remember that day so well. I should have got up and said something, the Matriarch of them all.

It made me think of my old friend Jerry Bails, who came on board with Superman back in 1939...

Anyway, the stuff they said about X-Men, for what it's worth:

They talked about the current crop of stories in the various mutant: the Curse of the Mutants storyline, the story of Hope, Wolverine going to Hell, Project Purgatory, Longshot going to Las Vegas
Generation Hope: "Wanda said 'no more mutants.' The Phoenix Force said, 'Yes, mutants.' We will learn about the 5 new mutants and why they are different.
Uncanny X-Force will feature a mission to kill Apocalypse, who will be ... different. Somehow.
Turns out Daken's name is pronounced "Docken". Who knew? I'd been calling him "Daykin".
Magneto will be well featured over the next while. (Yay!)
We haven't seen the last of Bishop.
Someone asked whether X-Men Forever will continue. They said yes, Chris Claremont is like the Energizer Bunny, unhampered by continuity. A guy in the audience responded, "unhampered by anything!"
They said it was a good time to be a Wolverine fan, and referred to him, X-23 and Daken as "the Wolverine family" - sort of like the Batman family, I guess, but smaller.
Regarding the new Generation X storyline: "We all had these huge smiles, because it's so sick and sadistic."
They said Domino would be 'firmly back' but didn't say where or when.
They said Scott Summers was at a crossroads. He's the general who won the war - what does he do now?
They will continue to tease us with hints of the Phoenix Force.
They said Avengers was the 'best-selling franchise in the world'.
They were asked about storylines in the movies. "Comics are comics and movies are movies and as long as we don't get another X-Men 3, we don't care." They expressed faith in Bryan Singer - which I don't share.
They said Scott and Emma are an item and will remain so. "It's done. She isn't turning evil, she isn't going anywhere."
2011 will be a good year for Mystique.
They recommended "X-Force: Sex and Violence" and promised more in that vein. Hmm: and explodedteabag keeps worrying about the Disneyfication of Marvel. I really don't see a problem looming.
A fan asked whether the members of X-Factor will be interacting more with the X-Men. They said 'yes'.
Someone asked whether Nightcrawler was really dead. The laughed and equivocated. Valentine de Landro said he wanted to draw the character.
There will be Gambit stories coming up. They asked whether we'd rather have Gambit on his own, or interacting with the other X-Men. "Both," I said. "Then he'd be like Wolverine," they said. Yup. No problem with that as far as I'm concerned!