Did Marvel Just Tease a New X-Men Headquarters?

Uncanny X-Men is bringing the X-Men back to greatness, despite Marvel editorial doing everything they can to put the team back in the ’90s for that nostalgia pop from older fans. Gail Simone and David Marquez, along with several fill-in artists like Javier Garron and Luciano Vecchio, are using the the story structures of those old X-Men books to tell X-Men stories that are reverential to the past while also going new things. This seems to be anathema in the current X-Men office, but Simone and Marquez are pulling it off. This book is heavy on character and it’s allowed it to soar. This new team of X-Men started their tenure in New Orleans staying at Haven House, a place that was revealed to be extremely important to the history of mutantkind in the story “Dark Artery”. However, Uncanny X-Men #19 may be introducing a new headquarters for the team.

Uncanny X-Men #19 is a perfect one and done story. This has become extremely rare in comics, as most comics are usually just single parts of bigger four to six issue stories. The issue kicks off with the team meeting with the mayor of New Orleans, who has an idea for the city. She wants to create the “Uncanny Village”, a sort of tourist attraction based upon this team of X-Men, with businesses based on Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, and Jubilee. The New Orleans setting has been very important to Uncanny X-Men so far, and this leads to believe that we may be getting a new headquarters for the X-Men in months to come. Uncanny X-Men has been nearly perfect, using the past to build the future. While the X-Mansion is the most well-known X-Men headquarters, the team has had several other major homes over the years.

The X-Mansion Is Not the X-Men’s Only Base Despite What Movies and TV Have Shown

Most people know the X-Men from the Fox movies, X-Men: The Animated Series, and the recent X-Men ’97. In all of them, the X-Men are at home in the X-Mansion, so in the minds of the vast majority of people, that’s the X-Men’s base. However, that wasn’t the case. The X-Men lived at the mansion until the ’80s, when circumstances drove them from the X-Mansion. The X-Men faked their death in battle against the Adversary, and took up residence in the Australian Outback, at a base of the cybernetic Reavers. The X-Men stayed there until 1991’s X-Men reboot, and then went back to the X-Mansion. They stayed in the X-Men until 2007. After an attack by Mister Sinister and his Marauders destroyed the X-Mansion, the X-Men moved to San Francisco and took up residence in the X-Center. During a battle with Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers, they created Utopia, using Magneto’s original Asteroid M. They added onto it, and it became the home of the entire mutant race (which at the time was 198 people). However, a schism between Wolverine and Cyclops led to part of the X-Men moving back to the X-Mansion.

Wolverine and his mutants rebuilt the Mansion from scratch and transformed it into the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. It was a completely different design from the original X-Mansion, bringing in more sci-fi elements because of the X-Men’s technology. Meanwhile, after Cyclops became the Dark Phoenix (which happens in Avengers Vs. X-Men, and there’s a lot there), Utopia was abandoned and Cyclops started a new Xavier School out of an old Weapon X facility. Eventually, everyone would move to the Jean Grey School and that was put into Limbo to protect mutants from poisonous Terrigen Mists. After the battle with the Inhumans was dropped into Central Park. Most of the X-Men disappeared into another universe and Cyclops, recently returned from the dead, brings together a new team operating out of Harry’s Hideaway, a bar that the X-Men spent a lot of time. This led to the Krakoa Era, where the X-Men lived on Krakoa and established the Treehouse in New York City. The end of Krakoa would see Cyclops’s X-Men move to Alaska to an abandoned Orchis Initiative base (an anti-mutant organization from the Krakoa Era and, again, there’s a lot there), and Rogue’s team went to the aforementioned Haven House. So, them moving to the middle of New Orleans wouldn’t be all that weird.

The Uncanny Village Could Become a New X-Men Base and It Would Fit the Team’s History

Uncanny X-Men‘s current volume has shown the X-Men becoming heroes in New Orleans. Uncanny X-Men #18 saw them helping save people from a fire in the city on a special day that the mayor made for them because of their heroics. Could this be a move to being the X-Men into the city? The answer is maybe.

Haven House is sitting on a rift to a hellish afterlife for mutant bigots, protected by a family of mutants. This is an extremely dangerous place to be, and the Outliers, the new mutants the X-Men are teaching, have almost been taken by the dark forces that rule this dimension. This might be leading to the X-Men having to abandon Haven House, and that could lead them to the Uncanny Village. It certainly has the look of a place where the X-Men could be at home. They have lived in places like this before — hello, Harry’s Hideaway — so this could be an interesting place to take the team.

Uncanny X-Men #19 is on sale now.

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