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Man, and people called the X-Books confusing before? Get ready folks, things are about to get a whole lot more convoluted in May.
No, I'm not referring to the return of Claremont to a couple of core titles, and his trademarked convoluted storylines. What I'm talking about is the name shuffling and confusion behind a number of the books starting this month.
X-Treme X-Men ends a 46 issue run, and will be replaced with Excalibur. Hardly a renaming, but it's keeping the same writer, and almost kept the same artist. They gave Igor Kordey a rather unceremonious boot, and replaced him with Aaron Lopresti, a move which I wholeheartedly approve of. Aaron's an excellent artist who deserves to hit it big finally. An X-Book is the best place to do that, and I wish him the best of luck.
New X-Men, now by Chuck "What's a coherent plot?" Austen, will be reverting to just X-Men again, like it was prior to Morrison's arrival. That's simple enough, sure. New Mutants, on the other hand, wants to make things complicated. It was originally solicited as ending with issue 13, out the first week of May, but the writers and characters would be continuing on in New X-Men: Academy X. A bit hefty for a title, but not too confusing.
Now, however, it's just being solicited as simply New X-Men. I must say, I feel sorry for the folks looking to follow "New X-Men" who end up picking up the brand new number one out this month, and encounter some story about the kids, with some manga art. On the other hand, the alternative is following the right title, and getting Chuck "Random Characterisation" Austen. On second thought, maybe they'll be better off going with the other title. Chuck is mediocre at the best of times. Maybe that's the secret behind this strategy. Trick people into picking up one title, and hope they stick around.
While I'm on the subject of New Mutants, after reading issue 12, all the characters finally clicked together for me, as the group was finally pulled together as, if not a team, than as a group of budding friendships. This is really something that shouldn't take the first year of the title to do, guys. I've more-or-less liked the title, even if it's been mostly just 'there' and not actively bad. Everything shouldn't take a year to fall into place. The title was off to a slow start, and I wonder if that was part of the problem. With New X-Men: Academy X, they've got the group in place, and can hit the ground running. This sounds like another plausible reason to change the title, and kick things off anew, and hope it turns out for the best.
Finally, I want to give another heads up to a title that's also a bit of a victim of the name game, Cable & Deadpool. Both characters started in eponymous titles, which were cancelled and renamed to Soldier X and Agent X, respectively, and now they're teamed up together in a book combining the two names.
The good news is, the writing is smart, and clever, and in just the first two issues, there have been several moments where I've laughed out loud. The art is crisp, clean, and consistent, unlike the covers by Rob Liefeld. Don't let them fool you, the interiors are actually good. At the very least, C&D is definitely worth checking out. With Marvel being quick to drop the cancellation axe these days, I advise you do it now, before the chance passes by.
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