11:25
And we're in!
11:25
Panel moderated by Jim McCann, joined by:
11:25
Axel Alonso
Matt Fraction
Craig Kyle
Chris Yost
Marjorie Liu
Daniel Way
Peter David
Jason Aaron
11:25
Fraction on Utopia: "an ending nobody will see coming, that's for sure. things get worse before they get better, and even 'better' is relative."
11:26
Daniel Acuna is new ongoing artist on X-Men Legacy starting in September. Mike Carey still writing.
11:26
Magneto is back in Uncanny X-Men—slide says "Nation X Begins," September 2009. Loud applause for Magneto.
11:27
Fraction: "The slow train is coming. We're going to learn why he's back and what he's got up his sleeve, which is something we've actually not seen before."
11:28
Fraction also says Magneto is a "blast to write."
11:28
Way is talking about an upcoming Wolverine Origins story with Wolverine fighting Skaar.
11:28
Way on the current Romulus story. "He has to come up with a plan that's completely off the wall." He = Wolverine.
11:29
Earlier (playing catch-up due to wifi connection issues), David plugged the upcoming X-Factor #50, and said of the current issue #46, "You see how everything starts coming together and the threads draw tighter and tighter."
11:30
Quick mention of New Mutants.
11:31
Necrosha is up, an October 2009 X-Force/New Mutants/X-Men Legacy crossover. "This is an opportunity to bring back character's that's been lost to us. Some of them that we've killed," said Kyle. "This is the rise of Selene."
11:31
Yost: "Starting next issue, in #18, you're going to start seeing all of this kind of come together. In October, it just blows open wide."
11:32
More catch-up, Jason Aaron on Weapon X #6: "It opens with Logan in a place we haven't seen him before. He's locked in a mental institution in a padded cell."
11:32
Kyle says "16 million mutants" will be brought back in Necrosha.
11:32
Q&A time!
11:34
A fan told David that she thought the Jamie Madrox/Laya Miller relationship "creepy." David: "Some time did pass. If I wanted to be faithful to what my comfort level would be, the kiss would probably take place two years down the line. I don't have that kind of time. I tried to finesse it as much as I could, with Layla saying, 'even when I was a kid, I wasn't really a kid.'"
11:35
Some more catch-up, Aaron on Yanick Paquette's art in Weapon X: "He gets to draw some of the craziest stuff you've ever seen in a Wolverine book."
11:35
Way on Deadpool: "He's going to try to be one of the good guys, but he has no real idea how to do that. He tries to join the X-Men. It doesn't go well."
11:35
"Can he use that same insane skill set for good," pondered Way.
11:36
Liu speaking about Daken in Dark Wolverine: "He's going to be taken down a notch."
11:36
OK, catch-up done. Back to real time! David still talking about Madrox/Miller. He has clairfied that they have not slept together. Alright.
11:37
Yost on Domino/Wolverine miniseries: "The story has a little bit of action in it, a little bit of love. If you like X-Force, you're going to like this. It's really more lighthearted than what we normally do. It's going to be a fun adventure, with a lot of killing."
11:38
The fan: "People are going to die in your book?" Yost: "We're going to try something new."
11:38
No schedule yet for it, Kyle says.
11:39
"Are we going to see Wolverine breaking down in the future?" McCann: "Didn't you see Jason Aaron's cover? He's in a mental institution."
11:40
The piece of art on the top of this page is from Necrosha, by the way (you've probably figured that out).
11:40
McCann opened the panel by saying "welcome to the Blackest Night panel!" Teehee.
11:41
Fan thanks Fraction for "making Cyclops a badass."
11:42
He then asks if X-Factor and Uncanny are ever going to "go into each other." David says "it's not going to be, 'you know what, we should really do a crossover in order to help sales. It's kind of like, if Matt and I say, 'you know what would be really cool, if this happens, and we do this.' That kind of genuine excitement from creators is the kind of thing that gets people really stoked."
11:43
"It's got to be real with the characters, it's got to make sense with the characters," Fraction says.
11:44
A fan asked if we'll ever see Carter and Annie from Austen's Uncanny X-Men run again. Fractoin said "There's something to be done there, I don't personally have any plans right away."
11:46
More from Yost on Necrosha: "Because (Selene's) actions are so huge, you're going to see it bleed over in New Mutants and Legacy. You're going to see a lot of characters in this book. In all three books."
11:47
Well the zombie Deadpool head make its way to Deadpool proper? "Yes," Way says, likely facetiously. "He might just be in like, the corner of a panel."
11:49
How long were the plans for Magneto to return in the works? "At least since #500," said Fraction, adding that it's not necessarily a shock that Magneto would eventually come back.
11:50
A fan in a Northstar costume asked David about the Rictor/Shatterstar relationship: "It wasn't a big deal," David said. "I thought, 'this would be a really good time to stop dancing around it. To me, it wasn't a big deal. It was panel five of a six panel page."
11:50
"That was pretty much that," he continued. "It didn't seem like a big deal. The reaction was big, and positive, for the most part. I think we will eventually reach a point where two men being romantically involved in a comic will get no more of a surprised reaction than a man and a woman involved in a comic book." Applause for that.
11:51
"Some people actually accused me of that for shock value," David said. "I think someone saying, 'two men kissing is shocking,' says a lot more about the speaker than the event does."
11:52
Liu on Daken's sexuality; "He's past that sort of identification. He's beyond it. It doesn't matter him." Way: "it's something we want to explore later on, but it's going to be an exploration of the character, not his actions. He's no more homosexual than he is heterosexual. It's not sexual, it's control." "And power and manipulation," added Liu.
11:53
"We didn't want people to think that we were doing it to be shocking," Way continued. "That's why we danced around it at first, then ran right into it."
11:54
Fraction on Northstar's role in Uncanny: "To me, it's as relevant as hair color, or, flight." He then repeated his comments from yesterday's Mondo Marvel panel that he added Northstar to the team because the X-Men had no ground speed.
11:56
A fan commented that it seemed that "each book was kind of in its own solid universe." The answer was in the form of returning to the "Nation X Begins" slide. Hmm.
11:56
"What does 'Nation X' mean?" Fraction said he can't explain at this time.
11:58
A fan from Greece asked about the Milligan/Allred X-Force/X-Statix. Alonso said that there are plans, and that both Peter Milligan and Mike Allred are intersted in doing something. And we'll see Doop soon.
12:01
A fan asked the panel who they'd want on their "dream X-Men team." Aaron mentioned Fantomex, David said he'd love to use Nightcrawler in X-Factor. Yost said he loves Cyclops, Kyle said that Deadpool will be "coming into the mix" in X-Force. Fraction said he can't say because that character is coming back.
12:02
Way didn't pick a character, saying that "you can't completely just dump on one character because it's going to be someone's favorite character. You just treat them with respect."
12:04
A fan just asked Peter David to bring the Pantheon to X-Factor, but the writer said that he didn't think they'd fit in, even though they'd "look good in fedoras and trenchcoats." The same fan asked if Strong Guy would have more of a role, and David said he would, and that he's a bit "skeeved out" over Rictor and Shatterstar, which is a surprise to the character, who considers himself a liberal intellectual.
12:04
The same fan asked Aaron about John Wraith. No plans right now.
12:04
Next person up asked to bring back Jubilee. Not much of a reaction, but Fraction seemed to indicate that it was possible.
12:06
10 minute warning!
12:06
Fan thanks Fraction for bringing Psylocke back to the X-Men. Fraction said the fan should look forward to Terry Dodson drawing the character.
12:07
"Is there going to be in the future, kind of a return to the blue and gold, spearate books, separate teams kind of thing?" Fraction said he hated that, and never understood that. "If it made sense for Nightcrawler, Dazzler and Colossus to get in a car and drive together, I would want to do that."
12:08
Fraction on Iceman, who the above fan specifically asked about: "Bobby's got stuff coming. There were only so many stories we could tell, and so many things we could handle at once."
12:09
Alonso: "I think right now, with the titles we have right now, are independent but run parallel, and compliment each other. Our goal here is to give you a lot of options, and our best case of scenario is that you buy all of them."
12:11
McCann is asking for yes/no questions. Five minutes!
12:11
Fan asked for favorite X characters. That's not a yes or no question.
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Liu: Jubilee, Aaron: Longshot, Yost: Cyclops.
12:12
McCann picked Dazzler, of course.
12:13
Favorite X-Men stories (also not a yes or no question). McCann: Mutant Massacre. Way: "I couldn't really pull one out." David: Days of Future Past. Liu: Operation Zero Tolerance. Fraction: "I like the one that, despite living in a world that fears and despise them, the X-Men team up and overcome incredible odds. I think Paul Smith drew it?"
12:13
Any plans on addressing the suggestions that Shatterstar is the son of Longshot and Dazzler? "Whether I'm going to address that squarely, I haven't made up my mind," David said.
12:14
Will the finale to the Messiah Complex trilogy involve Jean Grey? "What? Jean Grey's dead," said Fraction. "And you call yourself a fan."
12:14
Panel over! Stay tuned for live coverage of DC's Batman: New Dynamic panel in 15 minutes.
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