What's Up With Marvel's 'ResurrXion' Teasers?

The future of the X-Men has been in question, especially by fans, for quite a while, and answers --- or at least the beginnings of answers -- are now emerging.

All week, Marvel has been taunting us on its official Twitter account with teasers labelled "ResurrXion," which reveal the titles for X-books that come after this winter's Inhumans Vs X-Men crossover. Marvel has confirmed to ComicsAlliance that these are all new ongoing series, but aside from an interview on Marvel.com with editors Mark Paniccia and Daniel Ketchum, the publisher hasn't said much else so far, and no creative teams have been revealed.

While we wait for more details, let's look at these teasers to get an idea of what's coming for the X-Men line in 2017.

On Monday came the teaser for Iceman #1. A lot of people, myself included, were excited to see some attention paid to Bobby Drake, who came out as gay last year, which will make him a rare queer hero with his own title. Of course, there's some question about whether the book will star the younger Iceman of All-New X-Men, or the older Iceman of Extraordinary X-Men. I'm fine with either, but personally I'm rooting for the older version.

My first question about the Weapon X #1 teaser, which came on Tuesday, is why is Sauron in there? Deadpool, Laura Kinney, Logan, Sabretooth, and so on all make sense under the Weapon X banner, but Sauron seems like an odd fit. Also, the presence of Laura as X-23 rather than Wolverine concerns me, because as we all know Laura is the best Wolverine, and I'd hate to see her lose the title.

Wednesday's Jean Grey #1 teaser is really exciting, because the teenage version of that character is easily my favorite take on her, and I'm interested to see her grow and develop out of the shadow of the other X-Men.

I'm assuming that's the version of Jean that this book will focus on, even though there are other incarnations on the teaser, because resurrecting the older Jean just doesn't make much sense with this more interesting younger version running around. Plus that older Jean went through a lot in her life (lives?), and she really deserves some peace.

Thursday brought a Generation X #1 teaser, which features such a wide swath of characters that there's no telling who will be in the actual book. It's just about everybody who's ever been part of one of the younger generations of X-Men. Dani Moonstar appears twice, however, which makes her being in the book seem pretty likely, and we now know from the Marvel.com interview that Jubilee, who also appears a couple of times, is definitely in the cast.

A book focusing on the young X-characters is a great idea, since there are so many of them who get so little to do, and it's something of a convention of the X-Men line as far back as the original New Mutants. Generation X is a pretty weird title for such a book, however, since the real Generation X is well into middle age now.

Friday morning, Marvel unveiled the teaser for Cable #1, which will be Nathan Christopher Summers' first solo book since 2010, although he's headlined books like Cable and X-Force in the years since. Given the prominence of gun-toting '90s-style characters like Solo and Foolkiller in the recent Marvel Now launch, it shouldn't be a surprise that this series is happening. Cable can definitely be more interesting than just that stereotype, of course, but we won't know what sort of book to expect until we learn who is on the creative team.

And finally, on Friday afternoon, came the reveal of two X-Men team books, X-Men Blue and X-Men Gold, taking their names from the two teams that made up the X-Men in the early 1990s.

From the teasers, it looks like Blue represents the original five X-Men, and the Gold is the classic team of the early Claremont era. The recycled images in the Blue teaser clearly highlight the classic five of Jean Grey, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, and Angel, while the Gold teaser focus on characters like Nightcrawler, Kitty, Storm, and Colossus. Old Man Logan is also there, implying that he may hold down the Wolverine spot on this team while Laura Kinney takes the lead in Weapon X. But the extent to which these images are actually meant to be clues to the teams' rosters remains to be seen.

The interview with editors Mark Paniccia and Daniel Ketchum offers a little more insight about what we can expect from the new X-Men line-up, with Ketchum offering this particularly encouraging take:

These new titles won’t cast the X-Men as members of a species fighting for their survival but rather as big, bright, colorful super heroes who want to demonstrate to the world that they want to walk with them hand-in-hand into the future. They’ll have costumes with capes, a school, and softball games. Oh, there will be softball games. The goal is to tell exciting new X-Men stories while keeping an eye on the tropes and touchstones that longtime X-Men fans cherish.

As a lifelong X-Men fan, this sounds like exactly what I want. Some drama is great, but a break from existential bleakness is more than welcome.

Hopefully soon we'll learn who the writers and artists for these books are, as that will play a big role in telling us which books are really worth getting excited about. For now, all we can do is speculate, worry, and hope for things to be awesome!

As for the state of the Inhumans after X-Men Vs Inhumans, perhaps we'll get details on that next week.