I wish I had been at New York Comic-Con for all the cool stuff I’m reading about, even as I don’t miss the New York weather at all. There’s lots of X-Men-related news that makes me unexpectedly happy, so here it goes:
- First, on the Mutant Cinema front, an interview I did with the blog Four Color Commentary is now posted for your reading pleasure. Check it out here.
- As you may have noticed from the image at left, the 1990s X-Men animated series is finally getting an official and complete DVD release! The details on the first two volumes have just been released, and they include 32 episodes in all. Read more here.
- On the comics front, The New Mutants is back with a new series starring the original lineup of characters. If they’d get Bill Sienkiewicz and Chris Claremont back on the book, I’d be completely sold. Since there have been a few other revivals along the way that haven’t worked out, I may reserve final judgment until I’ve read a few issues. Zeb Wells, who I just saw win an Annie Award as part of the Robot Chicken team a few weeks back, will write with Diogenes Neves (an artist whose work I’m not familiar with) will be on art.
- Lastly, and perhaps most potentially cool of all, is news of a new comic series titled X-Men Forever, in which Claremont will continue the series from where he left off in 1991 as though all the intervening years never happened. While it sounds like he won’t do all the cool stuff he had planned at the time, I think it’ll be really fun to play What If? in this way. Tom Grummet is on the art, which I think is a solid choice and should be able to evoke the feel of the book back then and take it somewhere new. Now, if only they could talk Jim Lee into drawing an issue or two, my 1990s comics flashback would be complete. IGN talks to the mutant master about the series here.
Amadeus Feldspar
Thanks for the news on X-Men Forever and the New Mutants. I enjoyed New Mutants up until the Liefeld era, and I still enjoy Claremont’s run on X-Men up through about the Australia period. I will be interested to see both of these comics and see if they can recapture some of what I enjoyed back then.
Brian
While I'm not sold on New Mutants yet, I'm psyched out of my mind at the idea of X-Men Forever. I quit the X-Men during the horrid Grant Morrison run, and haven't looked back. But this will get me to pick up a regular X-Book again. Claremont & Grummet sounds like an amazing team to handle this.
Rob
Cool news. I, too, would be sold if Bill Sienkiewicz and Chris Claremont would be back on New Mutants, but that’s not likely to happen. Besides, in looking back, there’s just something about Sienkiewicz’s artwork, with that sketchy, scratchy inky quality that’s just seems to work best on newsprint. And that format is a thing of the past.