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Well, the news has finally broken, and we've all been shown the upcoming face of the Reload for the entire X-Line. And the big replacement for Grant Morrison is...Chuck Austen!!
Insert five minutes of laughter here.
Chuck Austen as the replacement on New X-Men, which incidentally be changing it's name to just plain old adjectiveless X-Men with his first issue of the reload. Chuck has two issues prior to that, before the Reload event, that will help set things up for the big changes come May. Chuck Austen, as the brilliant replacement to the top-selling Grant Morrison. I could just repeat that for the entire article, and still not be amused enough. It just kills me.
Meanwhile, Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, and Firefly tv shows, the Fray comicbook for Dark Horse), and John Cassaday (Planetary, Captain America) will indeed be doing an X-Book of their own, Astonishing X-Men. The third volume of that title, for anyone keeping track.
This smacks of "Oh crap, everyone's discovered our brilliant new writer, let's quickly give him a new title so we can deny him taking over New X-Men. And what the heck, let's give the book to that Austen fella. Oooh, and Whedon's title can be a brand new #1, raking in more cash for us!"
New Mutants is ending, but the writers and characters, with a few additions, will be continuing on in the highly unweildy New X-Men: Academy X. The title will bring the school under the care of Cyclops and Emma Frost, bring back costumes and codenames, and probably a bit more superheroics. I for one am all for this. I believe that comics need to evolve, and keep up with the times, but the pendulum has swung too far away from these basic things that have been part of the big comics for 50 or so years, especially for the X-Men. This is escapist literature, and should have elements that are bigger than life, while still reflecting that normal life.
Weapon X will be shifting focus, picking up the threads of the Weapon X projects of the past that Morrison hinted at, and did nothing with, to explain it, and theoretically tie everything together into a cohesive idea. Another thing Morrison had a huge problem with.
A new title, District X, will be focusing on Bishop doing his cop thing in "Mutant Town" a sort of mutant version of the ghetto. Not anything I'm terribly interested in, but at least it's something new, and branching Marvel's fanbase out, to try and grab the fans of the infinite Law & Order and CSI shows.
Exiles is getting a new writer with Tony Bedard, best known for his work at CrossGen Comics, writing Mystic, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and most relevant here, Negation. Negation and Exiles are both titles with high casualty levels, high action and adventure, while focusing on characterisation. The difference being, Bedard is an excellent writer, and Negation is an excellent comic, so Exiles should leap up in the quality levels. Which isn't terribly hard to do from Chuck Austen fill-ins, but even so, it should be majorly better.
Chris Claremont is effectively in charge of the X-Books again, writing Uncanny X-Men, and a new Excalibur title, featuring Charles Xavier going to Genosha with a team of mutants to rebuild the country after it's devastation at the hands of Cassandra Nova's Sentinels at the start of Morrison's run.
The major downside of the Reload, aside from Chuck Austen taking over X-Men, is that the ongoing X-Men title count creeps up to seventeen titles. This is more than in the pre-Quesada days of the X-Men, back when he said that the X-Line needed to be streamlined and trimmed down. Yeah, that sure lasted, didn't it? To Marvel's credit, at least most of the titles seem to have their own identity, purpose, and/or style, and it is far from necessary to buy every single one to enjoy the one or few a person may choose to follow, which is at least an improvement over those pre-JQ days.
Overall, I'm looking forward to the X-Men: Reload. Everything old is new again, but that suits me just fine. Good riddance, Grant. We'll be busy picking over the bones you left, Genosha, Fantomex, Weapon X, New X-Men, and assorted other things for awhile, trying to piece them back together into something that's actually good.
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