Marvel to Cancel, Relaunch X-Men Line This Year

The current era of X-Men will come to an end in July to make way for something new. In March, Marvel announced that Jonathan Hickman will return to the publisher with the two new miniseries, House of X and Powers of X, beginning a new era for the X-Men. Today, in an interview with ComicBook.com, Hickman confirmed that the beginning of his era means the end of all of the X-Men titles Marvel is currently publishing.

“[I]n the spirit of ‘what works’ and also ‘what the market is used to’, I didn’t feel like just doing a new number one was enough,” Hickman says. “I also didn’t think that if we were serious about what we were trying to do we should have a mixed message in the market about what an X-book is. So I argued for cancelling the entire line: Why it would work, why it was a good idea, and most importantly, why it was what we needed to do narratively to return the X-Men to their rightful prominent position in the Marvel Universe.

“We needed to sell the idea that this is what we’re going to be doing for the next few years. So if you want to read X-Men books during the run from late-July through September, House of X and Powers of X are the only new X-books available and everything that’s going to follow is based on them. We wanted to be clear to the fans, to the stores, and just as importantly, to the creators who are going to be staffing these books in the future. We wanted the message to be very clear: This is a whole new era for the X-Men. This is what we’re doing now.”

On Twitter, current Uncanny X-Men writer Matthew Rosenberg confirmed that Uncanny X-Men #22 will be his final issue. “I can finally say that July’s Uncanny X-Men #22 is my final issue,” he tweeted. “It’s been an honor and privilege to tell stories with some of the greatest characters ever created…When Marvel brought myself, Ed Brisson, & Kelly Thompson to write Uncanny X-Men we knew that our time was limited and that Jonathan Hickman was coming in to blow minds within the year. I couldn’t be more proud of what we all did, and I couldn’t be more excited about what’s to come.”

From July through September, House of X and Powers of X will be the only X-Men titles published by Marvel Comics, but there are plans for a line relaunch in the fall, with Hickman writing the flagship title. The second wave of X-Men books tied to the Hickman era will arrive sometime in 2020.

Are you excited for the new era of X-Men? Let us know in the comments. House of X and Powers of X begin in July.

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