Senior Vice President, Creator and Content Development CB Cebulski, Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso and writers Jason Aaron and Rick Remender kicked off today's Welcome to the X-Men panel at WonderCon by teasing "vengeance" with images of two mystery characters. The images were skimmed quickly before the panel moved on to its biggest announcements. Coming in July Aaron and rotating artists Carlos Pacheco, Frank Cho, Daniel Acuna, Alan Davis and Adam Kubert will helm X-Men: Schism, a five-issue miniseries capitalizing on what Marvel's calling "The year of the X-Men."2011 is MMXI, the year of the X-Men, according to the publishe. The panel discussed the success of Mike Carey, Steve Kurth, and Clay Mann's Age of X crossover event/alternate universe, and teased Carey's return to the mainline Marvel Universe, which will potentially include several new characters.

Remender proceeded to shed some light on the upcoming "Dark Angel Saga" in Uncanny X-Force. The arc will explain why Apocalypse chose Warren Worthington to be his herald, and show the result of Worthington's struggle dealing with the Archangel lurking inside him. It will feature a crossover with the Age of Apocalypse universe as illustrated by Mark Brooks before returning to the mainline Marvel universe with art from Jerome Opeña.

The panel then switched gears, announcing the X-Men: Schism storyline. Leading up to the event, Marvel is launching Prelude to Schism, a four-issue mini by Paul Jenkins and four interior artists featuring covers by Giuseppi Camuncoli.

X-Men: Schism promises to explore what happens when Cyclops and Wolverine completely stop getting along. Their Butch & Sundance relationship will go south in a major way, causing a possibly irreparable rift between the two. Under Aaron's writing, each issue will spotlight a different artist. Pacheco, Cho, Kubert, Davis and Acuña each get an issue to show what happens when the rivalry between the two men escalates to an untenable level.

According to Marvel, they've been building to this story for years now. Scott Summers has been carrying a huge burden, in part due to the death of Jean Grey and in part due to having to shepherd the remaining mutants, with his word essentially being law for the X-Men. Wolverine, presumably, will finally have enough, and disagree with Cyclops a major way. Alonso said that this story "Will change the trajectory of the x-men for quite a while."

Also announced on the panel was a digital one-shot starring Wolverine set in and around San Francisco. Food Network mainstay chef Chris Cosentino is writing Wolverine: The Fifth Quarter, with art by Hack/Slash creator Tim Seely. The story will see release online this June on "every digital medium." Cosentino spoke fondly of his time as a child, when he wished he could be like Wolverine, and promised that the book will be very much about San Francisco and its cuisine.

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