News as of July 30, 1997:
As if you havn't already heard, Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo have left Generation X, while Larry Hama, Wolverine scribe for seven years, and Mark Buckingham, former inker on GenX will be taking over. Lobdell will also be leaving Uncanny X-Men, leaving him completely mutant-less for now as he steps up to write Iron Man. Bachalo, however, stays within the mutant-verse as he moves over to Uncanny, taking Joe Madureira's place as feature artist starting with issue #352 for his run. Who will be the writer of Uncanny and who will be taking over as penciler for GenX when Buckingham finishes his four-issue stint is left unsaid.
Over in Hama's direction, much of the public are showing mixed feelings about this announcement. But Hama wishes to prove to everyone that he can, indeed, do something different than the tough-guy books.
"It's sort of a relief to move on and demonstrate that you can write something else," Hama said. And although he is still not completely familiar with the characters, he does have plans for them all. Mostly, he wants to bring the group together and tie up some loose ends. "I like to have things tied up. What needs to be done with this title is smaller stories, maybe only two or three issues in length," he said. "And more than anything, this team needs a strong reason to be around. The book has just been a strange breakdown of character interplay. I'm going to give them a mission."
Hama's run on GenX begins with issue #33 in October, where he will shed his typecast image hopefully and do the team justice. See Quality Time with Sidney X on Wednesday for my thoughts on the issue.
In the next issue of X-Men Unlimited, GenX will be the focus of the issue, as another mutant named Primal enrolls and Bastion brings in the possibility of the academy accepting non-mutants into their classes.
It is said that in the coming issues there will be some team shake-ups. More likely than not, Artie, Leech, and Franklin will not return. However, it is more definite in the case of Franklin because of the upcoming return of his parents in the Heroes Return event. There will also be an upcoming issue dealing with whether or not homo sapiens (that's non-mutants to you folks) will be allowed to attend the Academy. Among this shake-ups, it was not said that Daria or Tores will join the team. Daria will probably be around the Marvel Universe somewhere, but will not die.
Another fact taken from Wizard is that there will be a big hush-hush Generation X Special due out towards the end of this year. Apparently, it's something very big, different, and unexpected. However, Marvel will not comment as to what it is until later this year. Talk about suspense!
This years annual will focus around part of the story told in the recently released Generation X novel, as the ghosts of the Hellions seem to be haunting the Xavier Institute during the aftermath of Operation: Zero Tolerance. The art of Generation X '97 is done by Dan Fraga, a newbie at Marvel, who's previous work includes the Spider-Man/Badrock crossover.
The coming issues of Generation X will feature most of the kids in Skin's home turf down in L.A. Skin finally resolves the issues he has been running from since day one, and the team is reunited, as someone breaks free (can we say...Jubilee? I knew ya could). The team will be at full strength just in time to face the Sentinals.
Some new figures coming out in the next couple months will inlcude a Franlin Richards attachment with the Wolverine Unleased figure (wearing the real crappy thrown-together costume) in the X-Men: Onslaught series. There has been no complience of whether or not Wolverine has a nose in this toy or not.
Finally, the Generation X Telefilm is having an offspring. The movie, which aired in '95, is slated to premiere in September of '97. It is rumored that Synch might pop in there being played by Walter Jones, who played the original Black Ranger from the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (one of my favorites [can you hear the sarcastity in my voice?]). Most, if not all, of the actors that were in the telefilm are coming back for the series. Personally (oh god), I didn't like some of the actors in the telefilm. The one who played Mondo, to start, he wasn't even close to looking or acting like Mondo, and I didn't like how Skin acted. That's all I got to say about that. NOTE: IT IS NOW SAID THAT THERE IS GOING TO BE ANOTHER TELEFILM INSTEAD OF A SERIES. A SERIES WILL POSSIBLY HAPPEN SOMETIME AFTER THE SECOND TELEFILM.
Marvel is supposedly thinking about giving the GenX kids a new mentor (not one to replace, mind you, but someone to teach them a bit more). For some time a lot of people thought it was Iron Fist, but Marvel denied all that. They are possibly thinking about Forge (I don't see how, he's got his own team to worry about and it doesn't seem like Forge is the kind of guy to hang around kids). New News! Bishop is a prime candidate for the upcoming mentor. He will help teach the kids some battle tactics and this also may flesh out the rumors dealing with his connections to M. The main reason for him coming there was because of Emplate, who, in his past (our future), controlled a vast amount of minions which were some key villains in his time.
Keep yer eyeballs open for possible Refrax and Buff action figures in the next Toy Biz Generation X line. The characters first were made to fill in some empty space for the telefilm because they couldn't put characters such as Chamber because they would be too hard to handle (special FX wise, that is).