Comics The '07 X-Event: Endangered Species, Messiah Complex, & Disassembled

[Snikt 6]

^Yeah, but I think change can be good. I am looking forward to the changes. I think that it is a GOOD thing that all the X teams are banding together to fight a major foe, its been way to long since something like that has happened to our X teams.

 

[04nbod]

Isn't that what he does anyway?

i think it means he can control the power as in switching it on and off but when its is on he needs the visor to restrain the beams intensity

 

[javon]

^Yeah, but I think change can be good. I am looking forward to the changes. I think that it is a GOOD thing that all the X teams are banding together to fight a major foe, its been way to long since something like that has happened to our X teams.

Agreed. But is their gonna be just ONE major villain? I mean, those are a lot of X-teams And this will effect their staying in other runs isn't it (Astonishing, Xmen, etc.)?

 

[usagicassidy]

my main problem with this is the apparent shake up of all the teams afterwards... didn't we just do that?

The way I see it, is it's not so much a shakeup of the teams, as it is a shakeup for every X-character as we know it, so that's different...

Oh, wait, we just had that in House of M...but THIS TIME everythings happening to the X-Men, only the X-Men, and it's really happening, not some lame alternate dimension where everyone just wakes up the next day and realizes they don't have powers and then is killed on a bus.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

my main problem with this is the apparent shake up of all the teams afterwards... didn't we just do that?

Let's see:

Uncanny was never meant to be permanent as it's just a space mission
Adjectiveless was bound to change soon. The villains had to go.
X-Factor hasn't really been a "team" as of late
NXM could use a shake-up
Astonishing needs to be involved in continuity so I'm up for any change to that book.

 

[CaptainCanada]

AXM is just continually shunted forward in continuity until the story is done, at which point it's said to have taken place; it's lucky that the NXM guys didn't off Rockslide like they originally planned to, or his appearance in #13 would have been a glaring continuity error (of course, he's still with his pre-#31 appearance, so that's a more minor error). At this point, a story arc that originally began just after "House of M" will be taking place post-"World War Hulk."

 

[Specter313]

Extinction.

The word is thrown around a lot. With more than 1,000 animal species endangered worldwide, the problem seems so big and distant that it's easy to ignore the threat.

But what if it was your species being wiped out?

That's the focus of June's X-Men: Endangered Species, a one-shot issue by Mike Carey and Scott Eaton that kicks off a crisis that will continue in stories running through X-Men books as part of this summer's X-Men event.

X-Men readers found out in January's X-Men Annual #1 that the fateful words "no more mutants," uttered by Wanda Maximoff at the end of the House of M event in 2004, were even more devastating to mutants than originally realized. Not only did the majority of existing mutants lose their powers, but there has also been an end to any new mutant births.

As Marvel E.I.C. Joe Quesada revealed in his weekly New Joe Fridays column, the writers behind the company's various X-Men comics met for a January summit and put together an event that Uncanny scribe Ed Brubaker recently told us "will rock all the X books back on their asses."

Friday, Quesada debuted the cover to Endangered Species, naming the creative team - Mike Carey, writing, Scott Eaton on pencils, and a cover by Marc Silvestri.

We caught up with both Carey and project editor Andy Schmidt to talk about the upcoming one-shot – as well as what may follow.

First off, Schmidt:

Newsarama: To start with Andy, give us the big picture, what is Endangered Species, and where do its roots lie?

Andy Schmidt: Technically speaking, an endangered species is one on the brink of extinction. You know, like mutants in the Marvel Universe. This came about from House of M, when the Scarlet Witch said, “No more mutants.” Since then, there have only been about 200 mutants left on planet Earth.

What we’re doing now is taking that situation and really examining what it means, scientifically and emotionally. No mutants have been born since that day, and so the X-Men, and in fact all mutants, are beginning to realize that they are it. They are all that’s left of the mutant race. Forever.

NRAMA: Mike Carey told us a little bit about this, and that the Annual’s story would be leading towards this, but can you point out things a little bit on just what led the mutants to this point?

AS: The X-Men Annual cemented the idea that no new mutants have cropped up since M-Day. Mike’s been leading into this story for quite some time and dancing around it. Now is the time to really dive in. The X-Men now have certainty that they are dying. Now they have to deal with the reality of that knowledge and the weight of it.

NRAMA: So what gets the ball rolling in the one-shot?

AS: In the one-shot, we open on a funeral.

NRAMA: Who died?

AS: I’m not going to lie to you, this isn’t about who died, it’s about the significance of one more mutant’s death in the Marvel Universe. It’s interesting to see who shows up to the funeral and why. What are they after? Is there tension when a villain shows up? Does the House of M event shake Wolfsbane’s faith? How does a school dedicated to new mutants cope with having no freshman class? What do any of them do?

That’s what Endangered Species is about, and it all starts in the one-shot.

NRAMA: From the looks of reader response to date, it looks as if Mike's really surprised a lot of people with his X-Men work. In your view, what's he bringing to the table, and thereby, made him work for this one-shot?

AS: He’s got great ideas, and that has been more than evident on his X-Men run. But Endangered Species comes from his heart. This is bar none, Mike’s best and most heartfelt and tense script thus far. It’s really going to surprise a lot of people, even his X-Men fans!

NRAMA: How encompassing is it? That is, will the allies in the Marvel Universe know or realize that this is going down, or is it an X-Universe-centric event?

AS: There will be Marvel Universe guest stars where appropriate. The mutant race dying off is a big deal.

NRAMA: So – from the one-shot, things go to X-Men #200, right?

AS: Right. Endangered Species back-ups start in X-Men #200. They will run through four titles (X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, New X-Men, and X-Factor) for 17 parts total. They will be coming out weekly.

As for what content is in them, the Beast is our point of view character as he tries to track down the cause and then reverse the effects of the disappearance of the mutant gene. It’s a tough story, and it will have plenty of guest stars. It’s intense.

NRAMA: Why Beast?

AS: Nobody else is going to do it. It’s him or no one.

NRAMA: Who are the creative teams for the back-up stories?

AS: There will be announcements made about this later, but Mike Carey is locking in the structure for the overall 17-parts. We’ll have some great writers and pencilers on them.

NRAMA: The backup stories run through October - any hints as to what this may mean for the X-Men in November?

AS: Only that Endangered Species is the X-Men story to watch for the next few months. And in November, you’ll finally understand why.

And now, moving over to Mike Carey…

Newsarama: Mike, was this part of the X-Men event something you suggested, or was it a result of the X-Men summit in January?

Mike Carey: It was something that came out of the X-Men summit, so it was something that all the X-Men writers came up with, brainstorming together when we were all together in January in New York. And as with the X-Men Annual, it's a way of bringing forth the implications of what's already happened in the X-Men universe in House of M and Decimation. It's kind of exploring the aftermath.

NRAMA: In the X-Men Annual, you revealed that no new mutants have been born since we heard Wanda Maximoff say, "No More Mutants." She effectively put an end to any mutants ever showing up in the future?

MC: In the X-Men Annual, we established that there hasn't been a single mutant birth since Wanda uttered those words. She not only suppressed the effect of the X-gene on current mutants, but she also put a end to the birth of mutants. There hasn't been a mutant birth since.

NRAMA: In the Endangered Species one-shot, you'll be kicking off a larger story, right?

MC: Yes. Endangered Species is not just a one-shot. There's a one-shot, and then there are going to be a number of short stories following it. The one-shot is a powerful and disturbing statement -- a sort of snapshot -- of the new status quo. And then coming out of that, there are going to be a number of short stories which we'll feature in Uncanny, X-Men, X-Factor and New X-Men between July and November. The story will be going off in different directions, and we'll be getting a sense of the enormous scale of this crisis and the number of things on every level -- from the very small and personal picture to the macro-cosmic -- the number of things that are going to be left broken by this and the number of things that are at stake here.

NRAMA: And the short stories that follow the one-shot -- are they going to be completely different, self-contained stories, or is there an ongoing storyline running through them?

MC: There is a thread running through the stories that has one of my favorite X-Men, Beast, very much at the heart.

NRAMA: Is Beast at the center of the one-shot?

MC: Not so much. There are a lot of characters from all of the X-books who come together on this significant occasion. And it's a strange mix of characters. Not necessarily ones you'd expect to see, and not necessarily the big headline-grabbing characters.

NRAMA: Such as?

MC: OK, you'll have Rictor and Wolfsbane there, and Madrox from X-Factor. And Mercury and X-23. And Xavier will be there, as well as Cannonball from the adjectiveless team. Wolverine will be there, and Cyclops, Emma and Beast will all be there. So will Iceman.

NRAMA: You have mutants who kept their powers and some who lost them, with, for example, Iceman having temporarily lost his powers and Rictor not having mutant powers anymore.

MC: That's true. And that comes up in the course of the story.

NRAMA: So all these characters come together, and what happens?

MC: I don't want to tell too much about the storyline in the one-shot, because it's a very, very different approach to storytelling. It's not like any X-Men story I've ever told and unlike any X-Men story that has been told in recent years. It's a vignette in a way. The focus is much more on emotion and relationship and character than on action. There is very little high-profile action. It's about the realization, the acceptance that mutants are past the tipping point and have become a red-line species and are heading for extinction. And it's possibly reached the point where it's irreversible.

And then the story continues with the Beast exploring a number of avenues and possibilities that might change their situation.

NRAMA: And of course X-Men fans will be left to wonder whether that situation will be fixed...

MC: Yes, that's going to become the central question in the second half of this year. That question is going to be hanging over every single character in the X-verse.

NRAMA: Going back to what you said about using a different approach to storytelling for the one-shot, if I asked who the villain is in this issue ... it's not that kind of a story, is it?

MC: It's not that kind of a story. There will be at least one major villain who will appear in the story -- not as an antagonist for the X-Men. He's there for the same reason that they are, and they don't fight him.

NRAMA: It also sounds like it's a story that focuses more on mutants in general more than any team of X-Men.

MC: Yes, because it's mixed and matched characters from all of the teams. So yeah, I think it has a wider concept than just the X-Men.

NRAMA: We saw Exodus and Sinister linked to this discovery in the X-Men Annual. Will they be playing a role in the upcoming story?

MC: They're not really integral to Endangered Species, although one of the two may get a cameo.

NRAMA: Does the threat of extinction cause mutants to unite? We've already seen some former villains and heroes working together somewhat in response to the O*N*E actions during Decimation, where they rounded up and interred mutants at the Xavier mansion, but does this threat of extinction bring them together even more than in the past?

MC: I think it will make some unlikely alliances, yes. It will make other people re-examine their priorities and perhaps come to conclusions that will be surprising. This is like a scourge in which every single character has to be tested. They each have to respond to it in their own way. Some of them will break, and others will discover strengths or aspects of themselves that they didn't know were there. They will all re-examine themselves in the light of this.

NRAMA: You showed in the Annual how shocking this was to the mutants who found out. Extinction is a word we use to apply to animals all the time, but applying it to a humanoid species is a whole new level of scary.

MC: Yeah, it is. And I think it has an analogy -- and I don't want to get too morbid -- but it has an analogy in this whole question of climate change and the fact that the human race is looking at a situation that within three or four generations, we may make the planet uninhabitable for our species. You can get into a mood where you do feel kind of apocalyptic. There is a movie, Children of Men, that explored the same idea where the human birth rate dropped to zero. No new children were being born.

But it's that staring into the future and wondering if the future is going to be there. It's a terrifying and haunting predicament.


http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=105460

 

[OutcryX]

As long as a pregnant woman doesnt magically appear carry a confirmed mutant baby and Cable has to become her protector with Siryn along for the ride (ie Children of Men: X-Men....)

 

[Mike059jig]

Yay for beast.......
I can't wait...children of men is a great movie.....who's the lucky X-baby

 

[Specter313]

Yay for beast.......
I can't wait...children of men is a great movie.....who's the lucky X-baby

No one said there would be an X-baby.

 

[Mike059jig]

He mention Children of men...it was a lucky baby in that movie!!!....or a special baby, I should say.....it just came to my mind when he mentioned that movie

 

[DarthCyclopsRLZ]

AXM is just continually shunted forward in continuity until the story is done, at which point it's said to have taken place;

Wait, so you're saying the current AXM arc is happening AFTER the crossover?

Funny, I kinda thought every team would just catch up to one another in time for the big event...

 

[Specter313]

No, it will be caught up by then.

 

[DarthCyclopsRLZ]

No, it will be caught up by then.

That's what I thought.

It just would've been silly in restrospect. t:

"Yeah, there's this huge event that alterered the fate of mutants, but we can't be bothered to even aknowledge it. Because, yes, us Astonishing X-Men are that cool.' t:

 

[Banshee]

`The mention of Children of Men isn't "funny", it just confirms my suspicions that the movie is where they got the inspiration for playing up the extinction aspect from after the events of house of m.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

Good interview

 

[Charlie No-One]

I read on Comic Continuum that they plan on bring Jean back, but not as Phoenix. Any other news on this?

 

[DarthCyclopsRLZ]

I read on Comic Continuum that they plan on bring Jean back, but not as Phoenix. Any other news on this?

As in 'anything official'? No.

 

[Snikt 6]

Really really good interview. I really like where this story is headed. I hope that faith plays a big part in the characters besides Kurt and Rhane. Be cool at the end if either Emma or Kitty ends up "with mutant child".....

 

[Specter313]

Typically, when preparing for a line-wide crossover, comic publishers will drop a special lead-in issue or maybe a miniseries to get the ball rolling. This summer though, Marvel’s X-Men team is taking a different tack in unifying its titles with a backup story epic. Announced today at Marvel’s X-Men panel at Wizard World Los Angeles, “Endangered Species” will run throughout the major X-Men books over the summer months, and for the scoop on the characters, creators and conflicts involved in the story, Wizard Universe tapped Associate Editor Andy Schmidt.

WIZARD: So with the announcement of “Endangered Species,” the X-Office is doing something different in “event comics,” which is telling a story across the titles without necessarily disrupting any of the normal monthly stories. Where can fans find the story?

SCHMIDT: I think the week before [June’s] X-Men #200 hits, there’s an X-Men: Endangered Species one-shot, which is a double-sized one-shot. That’s not chapter one, but it sets the tone and puts you in the right mindset. “Endangered Species: Chapter One” is a backup story in X-Men #200, and then “Endangered Species” runs through 17 chapters, each chapter being eight pages, in the four core X-Men books: Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Factor and New X-Men. So there will be one a week for 17 weeks.

What was the inspiration for putting this together?

SCHMIDT: When you’re dealing with a line of books like X-Men or Spider-Man, there’s a tendency to look at them as all about the same thing. They’re all about the same thing, and they’re all running in line, and they’re all going down exactly the same paths and running into one another and sharing the same vision, but then they’ll splinter off and diversify. That’ll work for a year or two, and then they’ll come back together. For the last year and a half, the books have all had different directions. You could read X-Men or X-Factor and not read anything else, and that’d be fine. What we like to do every once in a while is say, “These are unified.”

These people, especially the mutants, are facing the same problems. They’re always connected thematically, but what we’re trying to do with “Endangered Species” is show what is on all of these characters’ minds and why it’s so important. After M-Day with the mutant race knocked down to 200 members...well, there’s a real problem. [Laughs] And we established very clearly in the recent X-Men Annual #1 that since M-Day, there’s been no new mutant born—or at least not one that’s been detected. It seems fairly concrete that there’s not been a single mutant birth or single mutant activation in adolescence since the events of House of M. So what the mutants are looking at is potential extinction at this point. When the current characters that we know and love die, there’s no one to take their place. And that’s what “Endangered Species” is all about. Not just the fact, because that fact just exists, but it’s about how that affects these people in personal and intimate ways. And to a certain degree it’s about investigating and attempting to find a way to reignite the mutant gene in the human species.

Who’s the creative team for the one-shot and then into the weekly installments?

SCHMIDT: The one-shot is written by Mike Carey, penciled by Scott Eaton and inked by John Dell. It’s also got a cover by Marc Silvestri—a very cool cover. Then for the backup stories, Carey has done a story structure similar to what Keith Giffen had done for me on Annihilation where we worked out overall what each book was going to do but left it up to other writers to do the writing. So other writers will be involved in the weekly stories, and Carey will write six of them. None of that’s set in stone yet, so I can’t throw any names out. I’d hate for guys to find out they got the job by reading it in Wizard. [Laughs]

Is there going to be a lead character or a focal-point character that we’ll follow along through mutant-dom during the story?

SCHMIDT: That’s one of the reasons why the one-shot is set apart. For the 17 parts, Beast is our main character, and he is involved to one degree or another in all 17 chapters. In the one-shot, that’s not the case. The Beast is in it, but he’s just one of the characters. The one-shot centers around one event that draws many of the major mutant characters to one place at one time and explores what they’re all going through.

The smaller chapters sound almost like a relay race where we start with Beast and then the story is passed along a bit.

SCHMIDT: It’s like that bar in Sin City that everybody passes through at one point and you’ll see the other characters in the background. It’s all interconnected. Some of the stories are about the Beast going out and talking to someone or fighting someone, but in other stories the Beast might not even appear until the last page, or just be on the first page or be getting a report about an event. So he’ll always be there in some form or another, and it’ll all relate to what the Beast’s mission is, which is to identify the cause of and solution to the problem of “No more mutants.”

Are there any other characters or villains you can talk about?

SCHMIDT: I think we’re going to keep it tight for now, but when you read X-Men #200, which should knock you on your ass by itself, the backup story should end with a fairly familiar face.

http://www.wizarduniverse.com/conventions/la/003895976.cfm

 

[Specter313]

Despite what the movies would have you believe, being a mutant isn't all about being super model good looking and possessing awesome super powers that inevitably bring you into contact with other good looking mutants. Every so often, you find yourself hunted, tortured and likely murdered for simply possessing a unique strand of DNA that gives you these powers, and Marvel Comics' X-Men are about to go for that ride once more. After the mysterious M-Day (in which Scarlet Witch reduced the mutant population to 198), X-Men and X-villains alike have been worried about their future as a species. As announced earlier at Wizard World LA, this June brings readers a new X-event entitled "Endangered Species" that deals quite squarely with the future of mutantkind. Spearheading the event is writer Mike Carey, who spoke with CBR News about the "Endangered Species" one-shot and the basics of the extended story that follows it.

"The 'Endangered Species' one-shot ships in June, and then from July to October we'll have the 'Endangered Species' back-up stories in 'X-Men,' 'Uncanny,' 'New X-Men' and 'X-Factor,'" explained Carey to CBR News. "And what it's about... well, it's about death, basically. One of the few things we've all got in common, but something which, when it comes, we all face alone. In the one-shot we join the X-Men - and I'm using that term in its inclusive sense, because there'll be characters from most of the X-books present - at a funeral. It's the funeral of a mutant. And we get to see their reactions not just to this individual death but to the species extinction they're now facing. It's a double-length story, and it had me exploring some aspects of these characters and their relationships that had never come up in the monthly book - I mean, not when I was writing it anyway.

"The back-up stories – also collectively titled Endangered Species – function as a lead-in to the X-verse crossover event that’s coming at the end of this year. They're setting the stage, in a lot of different ways, and moving the crisis that we've finally acknowledged in the X-Men Annual and the one-off on into a new phase. I think readers will have a sense of gathering pace and momentum as the start of the crossover gets closer. Then in November the crossover itself gets going-- and it comes up like thunder."

Fans have also learned someone, or something, is leading a strike force to eliminate mutants, which brings to mind the classic "Mutant Massacre" crossover, in which Gambit led the Marauders to slaughter lesser mutants. The Marauders were lead by Sinister and Gambit has been recently seen in his company, so…Mike, got some answers? "Well, we know that Sinister is somewhere off in the wings, plotting something big. But we don't know even the shape of what that something might be yet," Carey teased. "I've always liked Sinister as a villain. I prefer him to Apocalypse by a long way, because (appearance aside) he's more understated, more subtle, and therefore more genuinely scary. I also find his backstory genuinely fascinating, whereas Apocalypse's is maybe a bit over-involved now. And anyone who could put together a team like the Marauders, and then ride herd on them, has just got to have the baddest ass in ass-dom. I like the way Sinister weaves his way in and out of everyone else's story - there in the background, not noticed until you start putting two and two together. He's very much the grey eminence of the X-verse.

"Gambit is a very cool character, too, and one that I'm very much looking forward to getting my hands on. I think his personal odyssey has taken some curious turns in recent years, but what we're going to see this year and next is a restatement of what made him such a fascinating character in the first place. Kind of a rebirth, in some ways at least. But not a ret-con or a re-invention."

Also playing a major role will be Beast, one of the original X-Men and their own resident scientific genius. Carey says that Hank McCoy is one of his favorites and when asked why, explained, "I can give you an answer, but it's only going to be a partial answer. There's just something about Hank that really works for me. Maybe it's the tension between his animal strength and appearance and the fine, cultured mind that lies beneath. Or maybe it's just that I can get behind the idea of a scientist hero (I'm a big Reed Richards fan too). You know, now that I think about it, it's probably because of my atheist, rationalist world view: Hank is the post-Enlightenment superman par excellence.

"And having said that, oh man are we going to put his cool detachment to the test. In Endangered Species he's pushing himself to the limit trying to find a solution to mutant extinction - and 'the limit' is going to lie way, way outside his comfort zone."

This event has been planned for quite some time by the editors and writers in Marvel X-Office, growing out of the previous event ("House Of M") that led to the reduced mutant population. Carey explained, "It began in June of 2006, on day two of the Marvel retreat. We were talking about the X-books crossover and how we wanted to approach it, and the seeds were planted there for some stories that would bring out and explore some of the darker consequences of House of M. I started to nudge these things into the light in the Annual back in January, and 'Endangered Species' brings them right to the fore."

However, the rest of the Marvel universe aren't going to be sharing the spotlight. "This is an X-Men only event, by invitation," said Carey. "There will be some MU guest stars in the 'Endangered Species' stories, but not in the crossover itself." v While Carey is no stranger to epic stories, as his DC Comics/Vertigo series "Lucifer" proves, this is his first superhero crossover and they're quite a different beast from anything else in the industry. The scribe has no complaints thus far and even offered a tale of a chicken sandwich gone wrong. "It's been great - but I don't know if that's a typical experience. It's worth pointing out that this is a very self-contained event as crossovers go. It only involves four books: it has no tie-ins to other monthlies, no manufactured spin-offs. So the five writers - me, Ed, Craig, Chris and Peter - along with our respective editors, have been in the driving seat throughout the planning stages. I think sometimes with bigger, company-wide events, for logistical reasons the coordinating role has to be taken by someone higher up the ladder, and individual creators can find themselves having to incorporate story elements that don't make a huge amount of sense in terms of their own book and their own characters. This isn't like that at all. And the beauty of it is that because we started planning so far in advance, we've all in our different ways been converging on the big story, so that when we launch into the crossover it's going to seem like the most natural, most inevitable thing in the world.

"As for embarrassing stories, well, for some reason all the jokes that come up at these things are spectacularly obscene, and I wouldn't want to offend your readership. I remember talking about the movie 'Brick' with Ed Brubaker, while Jim McCann was eating stuffed chicken right next to us. Ed made a reference which was, well, unfortunate in context, and Jim sadly pushed his plate away with the remark that he'd never be able to look at stuffed chicken in the same way again.

"I also remember hitting a question about X-Men continuity that nobody in the room could resolve. So we called Tom Brevoort, who just came up with the answer off the top of his head. Scary. I think in his teens Tom was bitten by a radioactive Wikipedia."

Carey also doesn't feel intimidated launching the very first crossover of his career, complete with arguably the biggest franchise players in comic, one of the most devoted group of fans in comics and… well Mike are you feeling pressured now? "Nah, I'm beyond being pressured or intimidated now," said Carey. "I'm in a dangerously over-confident stage. Tomorrow I'll be a quivering wreck again, but for now... look on my works, ye mighty, and give me props."

The latter hasn't been a problem for Carey, as his work on "X-Men" has been well-received by critics and fans alike, an oddity for any X-Men writer. It's not unreasonable to wonder when the other shoe might drop, but Carey isn't worrying about the bad—he's enjoying the success. "Yeah, I do feel like I've had a spectacularly positive journeyman year. And it's true that I was scared at the outset as to how my frankly weird take on an X-team would be received. X-Men fans are passionate and vocal and they maintain a large net-presence. But as yet, very few of them want me dead, and my 'hate mail' folder remains empty except for those occasional notes from my mom-in-law."

Joining Carey on the "Endangered Species" one-shot is artist Scot Eaton, hand picked by editor Andy Schmidt and a perfect choice in Carey's book. "Scott was the first artist Andy approached, and we were all really delighted when he said yes. His range and experience are so huge, I don't think there are many projects he couldn't roll up his sleeves and take on, but this book in particular - because emotional and character beats are so much at the heart of it - requires an artist who can handle the nuances of facial expression and body language without dropping a stitch. Well, Scott's go to be high on the shortlist, hasn't he? I think he's going to be absolutely stellar on this."

In many ways, "Endangered Species" goes back to the core of the X-Men's origins—people feared and mistrusted simply because they are different. People struggling to define themselves as more than just outward differences or in spite of existing prejudices. "Well I was talking a while back about 'Children of Men,'" explained Carey. "In that movie, the human birth rate has dropped to zero and people are having to cope with the fact that they're the last generation of homo sapiens. Nothing to come after them but a long, strained silence. And when I watched it, I was struck by the analogy with global warming. We're all of us looking now into a future that might not have people as a part of it. Okay, we're talking five or six generations rather than one, but there's a real possibility now that our own actions may change the planet in ways that make it too hostile an environment for us to survive in.

"You could, if you wanted to, see Endangered Species as another exploration of that same set of ideas. On a personal level, our own mortality is a conundrum that we can never quite get our heads around. You know, on one level, that you're not going to live forever, but you cope with it by not thinking about it. Or you brood on it, occasionally, but it's impossible to imagine your own consciousness snuffed out. Now try to multiply that by seven billion. Imagine this world-spanning civilisation shutting up shop. The lights going out all over the world. It beggars the imagination.

"But maybe somewhere in between the one and the seven billion it finds a level where we can face it. Two hundred unique beings, staring into the abyss. And the abyss staring right back at them."

With some fans feeling burned out by all the "events" of late, they may be tempted to only buy "core" titles from this crossover, but Carey maintains they're all essential—and affordable. "There aren't very many chapters at all, in absolute terms, and every one is part of the core story. I repeat - no tie-ins, no spin-offs. It's all meat. And it's the culmination - the climax - of everything that's happened in the X-verse since 'House of M.' This is where it all happens."

The issue of procreation has come up in the X-Men titles since "M-Day," as no mutant children have been born, leaving the existing mutant population quite worried about their future. Some readers wonder if two mutants could still give birth to another—such as Cyclops, the X-Man who seems to have lots of mutie kids from other realities— and while another Summers hellion might be cool, Carey said not to expect anything. "There's no guarantee. Human genetics is a lot more complicated than Mendel's model (which I think was based on the flowering pea), and it's often very hard to know in advance which genes are going to be expressed in any one child, even if you know the complete genomes of both parents.

"More importantly, though, there's a little-known fact about "red-line taxa" - the environmentalists' term for endangered species. Once they die out past a certain point, it's not just a numbers game any more. Even if all the surviving members of the species start reproducing like mad, there isn't enough diversity left in the gene pool to resurrect the species. Their decline has become irrevocable. Well, two hundred is way past that point.
"Of course, in the case of human mutants, you could in the past rely on a certain number of mutant children being born to human parents. But Wanda's 'no more mutants' edict has suppressed that. It's not going to happen. Homo superior has hit the wall."

While the announcement of "Endangered Species" caused a lot of excitement among fans, some have wondered when Marvel's Merry Mutants will catch a break. It seems as though mutants are always facing some new threat each day and one has to worry about their resultant mental state. "They get their moments in the sun," said Carey. "But it's true that the moments mostly tend to be separated by danger, pain, imminent death and many different flavours of fear and loathing. Let's not forget Chris Claremont's recipe for a good team book. I'm paraphrasing here, but I think he said 'take a bunch of basically likeable people and put them through hell.' But there's a sense in which you don't go to superhero comics to learn about human nature in the ordinary range of situations: you want to see what human nature is like when it's tested almost all the way to destruction."

With few exceptions, X-Men fans are known as some of the most devoted and passionate readers around, with a voracious appetite for continuity and their characters. So CBR had to ask Carey, as the devoted X-Fan he is, what would be his complaint about the one-shot? "Probably 'Damn it, why hasn't Wolverine killed anyone yet?'" he laughed.

Finally, with all this talk about death and extinction, CBR News decided to lighten things up, appealing to the inner geek and posed Carey some classic X-Fan questions.

If Wolverine and Sabretooth fight to the death, who wins? "Got to be Wolverine. If he's the best there is at what he does, then Sabretooth can only place second or lower. That's just logical."

And if the same occurred between the Summers brothers Havok and Cyclops, "Havok wins because Cyke stops fighting at the crucial point - but Cyke gets the moral victory, as always." Why aren't there more ugly mutants? "Someone came up with a great explanation for this on my blog. It's because of sexual selection, which runs parallel to natural selection and modifies its effects. A gene that makes its owner drop-dead gorgeous has a much better chance of spreading through a population. Of course, ideals of beauty change over time, so the human race as a whole hasn't been evolving consistently towards movie star good looks - but the X-gene expresses itself in a spectacular array of different traits, and one of its subtler effects is that it makes mutants measurably hotter than homo sapiens. Except for Mammomax, god rest him."

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=10031

 

[usagicassidy]

Okay, after reading about 10 or so Panels, Interviews, and explinations from the past day alone...my brain is so filled with excitment. But I'm still a bit confused.

SCHMIDT: I think the week before [June’s] X-Men #200 hits, there’s an X-Men: Endangered Species one-shot, which is a double-sized one-shot. That’s not chapter one, but it sets the tone and puts you in the right mindset. “Endangered Species: Chapter One” is a backup story in X-Men #200, and then “Endangered Species” runs through 17 chapters, each chapter being eight pages, in the four core X-Men books: Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Factor and New X-Men. So there will be one a week for 17 weeks.

Okay, so this Endangered Species thing, it's not the main storyline in each title? Like for each of the 17 chapters within the books...the books will continue on with their story and then in 8 pages, like at the beginning or the end, they'll have the "Endangered Species" segment? That seems a little rediculous, disconnected. And also, I thought the X-Crossover was the big summer event...but now they're saying that all of this Endagered Species stuff is leading up to the X-Crossover which happens at the end of the year?!

I am really confused.

 

[Snikt 6]

^My take on this is that 1) the 17 part "endangered species" story will be the forerunner tot he big X-event in October 2) all the "back up" stories will tie in together but the the main comic itself will still deal with the issues of the upcoming big tie in. 3) I feel that althought the 17 part story is dealing with the extenction aspect of the story, the big X event will deal with how they are going to fix it.

I really have enjoyed Carey's vision in X-Men, and feel like he is the perfect X-writer to head this up.

 

[usagicassidy]

hmmm. I don't know how I feel about individual titles going on, but the material being cut short by some sort of "prologue" stories that all tie together. Something like that works in a vignette title, like Front Line, but not in the X-books.

 

[Snikt 6]

^I guess well see......but I do feel that with Carey leading the way the story is in good hands. I am glad to see New X-Men getting love in this storyline also.