X-Men Gold And Blue Rosters And Creative Teams Revealed

Marvel Comics has revealed the team rosters and creative teams for the two flagship X-Men books of the ResurrXion publishing relaunch, X-Men: Gold and X-Men: Blue.

X-Men: Gold will be written by Arrow-creator Marc Guggenheim with artist Ardian Syaf. True to the promises made when the ResurrXion titles were first announced, the X-Men: Gold roster is a callback to days of Chris Claremont's classic, revered run on the franchise. The team features Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Old Man Logan, and Rachel Grey, and - in a case of the student become the teacher - Kitty Pryde as the team leader. X-Men: Gold will mark Kitty's return to the X-Men after spending time in space with fiancee Star-Lord and the other Guardians of the Galaxy.

"Kitty is the right person to bring the X-Men into the future, to herald in the next era of the X-Men," Guggenheim tells IGN. "We are post the war with the Inhumans. The X-Men are sort of at a crossroads. They're at a point where they are trying to decide, is there a future for the X-Men? And Kitty is very much of the mindset that there is a future for the X-Men and it's a bright future. That there's more work that the X-Men still have to do. Not just for mutants, but really for humanity. What Kitty's leadership does from a storytelling perspective is that it really positions the book for its mission statement, which is we really want to tell stories that get back to the idea of just the X-Men as superheroes. Not all of the stories that we're doing are based on mutants or the problems of mutants or the conflict with the Inhumans. It's very much a team superhero book."

X-Men: Blue will be written by Cullen Bunn with art by Jorge Molina. The series will reunite the time-displaced original X-Men who were previously the stars of All-New X-Men: Angel, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, and the returning Jean Grey as the team's field leader. In a twist that calls back to the days of the original New Mutants series, the team will be under the tutelage of Magneto, a character that Bunn should be accustomed to writing for after penning the Magneto solo series and the most recent run of Uncanny X-Men, which featured Magneto as the team leader.

"He almost takes the role of a Professor Xavier for the original five here. That's really what I thought was interesting with putting him in the book is that Magneto is the oldest enemy of these X-Men. This was the first 'evil mutant' that they battled way back in X-Men #1. And now here he is taking on this mentor role with them," Bunn said of Magneto's role in the series. "That immediately raises a lot of questions. Why would these X-Men be working with him? What is he trying to accomplish now? Do they feel that he's changed his ways? And that really is what I was excited about. It opened up a lot of really interesting questions for us. There's some mystery involved in terms of why the X-Men are working with him and what they're trying to accomplish. There's a little bit of intrigue there because knowing Magneto, you know he's got ulterior motives. He's Magneto. The original five X-Men aren't stupid. They know this. And maybe they have some ulterior motives of their own."

X-Men: Blue and X-Men: Gold will both launch in spring 2017, following the Inhumans vs. X-Men event series.