Marvel Announces Weapon X

Old Man Logan has been quite busy since he made his way to earth 616, but the reemerging of an old threat leads the grizzled X-Men to enlist the services of some surprising characters.

Marvel has announced a new Weapon X series, which will pair writer Greg Pak (Kingsway West) with fan favorite artist Greg Land (Uncanny X-Men). The Weapon X program has resurfaced, and this time they have expanded their misuse of mutants from experimentation to extermination. That leads Logan to put together a team of heroes and villains from X-Men history to combat this new threat.

The team includes longtime enemies Sabertooth and Lady Deathstrike, which is surprising in itself. To balance things out he’s brought along allies Domino and Warpath, and part of the intrigue will be to see just how these characters all get along.

Pak spoke to Marvel about the new book, including the great time he’s had writing Logan and Sabertooth for the same book. “It’s a blast. You’ve got an older Logan, who’s been through a whole different set of experiences teaming up with this Sabretooth he doesn’t really know. It’s always fun to have these two characters tangle with each other, particularly when they have to team up for any amount of time. But this time, you have the added dynamic of an older, wiser—well, potentially wiser, anyway—Wolverine teaming up with a younger Sabretooth. They’re a blast to write together; you can put those two characters together and fun things will just happen. They’re so similar, and yet have different ways for dealing with the world and totally different sets of morals and ethics. So for them to find common ground and fight alongside each other instead of against each other, it’s a fun challenge.”

Characters like Deathstrike and Sabretooth aren’t really the heroic type, but in this case, it’s more about self-preservation than anything. “Lady Deathstrike, for instance, she’s not been like that (heroic), traditionally,” says Pak. “But Weapon X is out to exterminate everyone, so there are certain points where you set aside your qualms about the people you’re working with to fight the thing that has to be fought. These folks are going to be at that stage, but as the story goes on, you’ll see who’s willing to do what when it needs to happen, and who’s not. There will be points where the job at hand requires genuine heroism, and there may be points where the job requires something else altogether. This is a story that will test how villainous our villains are, and how heroic our heroes are. And on the flip side, it will show us how heroic these villains can be, and how villainous our heroes could become. It will push both sides to their breaking points. Our characters are going to find things out about themselves that they may not like, and that may be good or that may be terrible.”

The personalities at are what attracted Pak to the project, and no matter who the focus of the issue is, it should always be entertaining.

“I’ve inherited a lot of teams on different books over the years, and the best thing is when you can get to the point where you put any two members of a team in a room together and the scene practically writes itself, just by the virtue of the dynamics of those characters, little points of sympathy and conflict just present themselves naturally. I feel like we’ve got a really fun, focused group with these five characters. Each one of them makes total sense in the team, given the mission, but they all have their own distinct ethical codes and backgrounds, even speech patterns, that are all different in very fun ways. Jeff Lemire did great stuff with Lady Deathstrike in OLD MAN LOGAN that’s going to be incredibly fun to build on. We’ve already talked about Logan and Sabretooth, but then you think about Sabretooth and Domino, or Sabretooth and Warpath, or Warpath and Domino, and the different kinds of relationships these heroes are going to have. Warpath and Sabretooth are going to have a very different dynamic than Warpath and Old Man Logan. It’s figuring out who’s going to be friends, who’s going to even feel comfortable around each other, who’s going to be watching whose back, and who might be secretly sharpening the knives. It’s going to be a blast playing with all those dynamics.”

You can check out the cover for Weapon X #1 in the gallery.

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