X-Men 'Blue' And 'Gold' Creators And Rosters Announced

After a series of collage teasers and plenty of speculation, Marvel has revealed the creative teams and rosters for the two X-Men books that start in April 2017, as part of the ResurrXion relaunch that follows Inhumans vs. X-Men.

According to a report at IGN, X-Men: Gold will be written by Marc Guggenheim with art by Ardian Syaf, and features the veteran team of Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Old Man Logan, and Rachel Grey, joined by team leader Kitty Pryde, who's back on the X-Men where she belongs.

In addition to the new costume you see above, Rachel also has a new superhero name: Prestige. Speaking to IGN, Guggenheim explained that he felt Rachel needed a new identity that didn't relate to her family's legacy. That argument makes sense, but the mini-cape is going to have to win me over.

It's also interesting to see Kitty and Rachel on a team together after Chris Claremont's J.K. Rowling-esque reveal on Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, in which he said that he intended their relationship to be romantic. I think we'll all be pleasantly surprised if anything comes of that.

Guggenheim also offered insight into why Kitty is the new team leader, and what it implies about the future of the X-Men:

Kitty is the right person to bring the X-Men into the future, to herald in the next era of the X-Men. We are post the war with the Inhumans. The X-Men are sort of at a crossroads. They're at a point where they are trying to decide, is there a future for the X-Men? And Kitty is very much of the mindset that there is a future for the X-Men and it's a bright future. That there's more work that the X-Men still have to do. Not just for mutants, but really for humanity. What Kitty's leadership does from a storytelling perspective is that it really positions the book for its mission statement, which is we really want to tell stories that get back to the idea of just the X-Men as superheroes. Not all of the stories that we're doing are based on mutants or the problems of mutants or the conflict with the Inhumans. It's very much a team superhero book.

X-Men: Blue, written by Cullen Bunn with art by Jorge Molina, is basically an All-New X-Men relaunch under a different name. It's the time-displaced team from that title: Jean Grey, Cyclops, Iceman, Beast and Angel, although Jean is now the team's leader.

In the absence of Professor X, much like the New Mutants in the 1980s, this team has become the students of Magneto. This is unsurprising considering Bunn's role on the book, as he's made a special project of Magneto in the last few years, first in a solo book and then in Uncanny X-Men.

As Bunn discusses with IGN, the question of why the founding X-Men would team with the guy they remember as their worst enemy is central to the book:

Why would these X-Men be working with him? What is he trying to accomplish now? Do they feel that he's changed his ways? And that really is what I was excited about. It opened up a lot of really interesting questions for us. There's some mystery involved in terms of why the X-Men are working with him and what they're trying to accomplish. There's a little bit of intrigue there because knowing Magneto, you know he's got ulterior motives. He's Magneto. The original five X-Men aren't stupid. They know this. And maybe they have some ulterior motives of their own.

The other X-books will almost certainly be revealed in the very near future, and after that we'll be able to better discuss which characters are nowhere to be seen, and what the overall scope of the line will look like. But there's already plenty to speculate about between now and the April launch.

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