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By Brett White
With mutantkind bouncing back from the brink of extinction, one man has shown the willingness to do whatever it takes to ensure their survival.
That man? Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, the former figurehead of the mutant race whose recent actions have taken him from messiah to pariah. Now the self-appointed leader of a revolution, Cyclops has gathered a team of X-Men with one purpose: recruit the next generation first.
UNCANNY X-MEN, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Chris Bachalo, marks the return of the long-running, flagship X-Men series, just in time to chart the course of mutantkind’s future.
Cyclops and his team have already recruited a number of new mutants in the pages of ALL-NEW X-MEN, and they will be front and center in the pages of UNCANNY X-MEN. Among them: a healer named Christopher Muse, a time manipulator named Eva Bell and a shape-changer named Benjamin Deeds.
Brian Michael Bendis tells us just how eager these new mutants will be to jump into battle.
Marvel.com: These new recruits been whisked away to this world that has Magneto and a demonic sorceress and all these controversial people in it. How much are they going to be looking back at their former lives?
Brian Michael Bendis: An excellent question. They’ll be doing that right away. “Can I go get my stuff? Can I go talk to my mom?” A lot of Australians seem to be very happy that Eva’s from Australia. I wasn’t aware that there was such a dearth of Australian heroes. I got so much happy mail and tweets from Australian people. We will be going back to the Gold Coast in issues #2 and #3 of UNCANNY X-MEN to find out what the deal with Eva is. I like Eva a lot. I like writing her a lot. For people who liked Jessica Jones and Maria Hill, I think they’re going to get a kick of out of Eva and where’s she coming from. She has a very unique power that will cause a lot of trouble for her and the X-Men.
Marvel.com: Are we going to be seeing these new mutants powers in a combative way?
Brian Michael Bendis: Yes.
Marvel.com: For a guy like Christopher, whose healing power is not very combative, will he be hanging back more?
Brian Michael Bendis: Well, for those of us who played “City of Heroes,” you know your healer can’t just sit back and heal. They have to do more or they’ll just die on the battlefield. We also don’t know the extent of their powers. We don’t know how much they can do or how often they can do it. Someone who has control over time, even on a limited scale, can be a very dangerous thing. How much time, and where does this time come from? All these things will be examined.
Marvel.com: These new mutants that we’re seeing are older and more established. They’re not like Kitty Pryde who was very young when she was recruited.
Brian Michael Bendis: They’re mostly in college. There’s a new one who’s young and scared out of his mind. He’s the version of mutant that I imagine if you were an X-Men fan for real, and the X-Men came and got you, you’d never stop [expletive] your pants. He has these cool powers that manifest these solid gold balls that fly out of him and smash the [expletive] out of everything and then disappear. We’re going to look at that and find out how he does that too.
Marvel.com: You mentioned that we’re going to see a proposition made to the teachers at the Jean Grey School. Is the same going to be done from the staff at the Jean Grey School to the students at the Xavier School?
Brian Michael Bendis: I wasn’t just talking about the faculty; I was talking about the students as well.
Marvel.com: So there’s potential for everything to get shaken up.
Brian Michael Bendis: Yes. I’m working very closely with Jason Aaron on this.
Marvel.com: Is there anything you’d like to add about UNCANNY X-MEN?
Brian Michael Bendis: There’s a group dynamic that’s holding them together. It’s a very prickly dynamic held together by an ideal. The ideal is that this race has to survive. We almost died out and there were only a couple hundred of us left. We have a chance now and we just need to hold it together. Otherwise, every punch we’ve taken and mistake we’ve made will be for nothing. All we’ve fought for and all the mistakes won’t matter.
I look at it like a rock band. If they can just hold it together for a summer, they’ll make a million dollars. It’s like Guns ‘N Roses. They just can’t get it together. They can’t get on stage together. If they got it together, they’d be the biggest band in the world. They just hate each other so much they can’t do it. This group is obviously not in that situation and Cyclops is not Axl Rose. Some people might think he is, but he’s not. I see it that way. If these guys can just hold it together, they’ll have such a great thing here. If they can get over their issues, they can do something really special. I think that idea is something a lot of people can relate to. It’s a little different from where the X-Men have been before. I think the X-Men need to be in a different place from where they were before.
The X-Men need to get over all their personal [expletive] to save their race. It’s such a great, noble cause. It’s worth Cyclops taking all the [expletive] in the world from Logan and everyone else to do this right. It will be worth it if he can save these kids.
All of this is building up to next fall when we have the 50th Anniversary of X-Men. I tweeted that the other day. Nick Lowe, myself, and Jason have gotten together and started to craft a very large, very X-Men related celebration that we think is worthy of this anniversary. That’s coming fast and furious and we’re very excited about that.
Pre-order UNCANNY X-MEN #1 now!
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