brianwood:

Announced over the weekend, and well documented in several places, I am the new writer on X-Men and Ultimate Comics: X-Men.  The first time in history, according to Marvel, that a person has written two ongoing X-books, one in each universe.

That’s Kitty Pryde, from Ultimate, with a new costume I created (and Jorge Molina made into reality) to reflect some significant changes to her character.  I can’t get into a lot of story detail, at least not beyond what’s in those links, but I’ll bulletpoint some of the key stuff:

• In the Ult title, Kitty becomes the focus of the title, and puts her front and center of a sort of mutant resistance relative to the troubles they’ve been having in that story to-date.  I’d call her a Joan Of Arc character if that didn’t suggest all sorts of religious connections that don’t exist.  Maybe an atheist Joan Of Arc.  Wait, but Kitty’s Jewish.  Ok, moving on.

• On the X-Men title, I’m taking the “security team” label to heart and pushing it as far as it’ll hold.  On the Marvel panel over the weekend Arune called it an espionage book which is pretty accurate, although perhaps not so literally a “spy” book.  It uses a lot of the trappings of that genre.  If I had to define it in broad, simple strokes I would say it owes something to the legacy that books like The Authority and the (original) Ultimates created.  

• Wow, do a lot of fans hate Colossus and Pixie.  Also, a lot of fans hate me.  One of these was a surprise, the other I already knew.  You decide which is which.

• My 5yo daughter knows literally nothing about The X-Men but its her new favorite book because there’s a cute faerie in it.  

• I get asked a lot already if its hard to keep the two universes straight in my head.  Not at all, not any harder than it is to keep Northlanders and Conan separate.  I keep a lot of notes and ask my editors a lot of questions.

• For at least six months I’ve been pitching aka pressuring Marvel to let me write a Mutantes Sans Frontières series.  Possibly the least commercially-viable book ever.  It’s not going to happen, but I’m working some of the ideas into the X-Men in sneaky ways.

• more to come at some point soon.  I think a bunch of art and story info will be revealed at C2E2.

This puts me at writing five books.  Not counting Alpha&Omega since its basically done, and not counting Mara since its not on a publication schedule yet.  Gonna be a busy 2012.  Wait, five?  Massive, Conan, X and Ult X… what’s the fifth one?  Don’t ask, you’ll find much, much later, towards the end of the year.

Hmmm. Persistence and deviousness are two qualities I admire in a writer… ;) I’ll keep an eye on the Ult. X stuff to see if anyone I like crops up.