Everything Old: All-New X-Men #1 Preview Art By Stuart Immonen

We haven’t devoted a whole hell of a lot of pixels to the Marvel Now! initiative of re-imaging and recasting some books, and restarting others, all with newly mixed up creative teams, partially because thanks to the sheer volume of teaser posters and creative team teases Marvel’s been putting out about the changes since SDCC, and partially because it all seems kinda familiar (but Marvel doesn’t reboot! And Spider-Man has always been an unmarried highly-paid research scientist! And we have always been at war with Eastasia!).

That said, a couple of the books that have been announced are exciting me more than others, and one of them is All-New X-Men, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Stuart Immonen. The concept is pretty interesting and somewhat novel: the original X-Men as created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby – Iceman, Cyclops, Angel, Beast and Jean Grey as teenaged school children – travel forward in time and space (and hopefully Bendis remembers the “space” part, otherwise the X-Men will wake up gasping with their blood boiling somewhere off the shoulder of Orion) to the current Marvel Universe and meet their modern counterparts. Meaning that these five idealistic teenagers who firmly believe they are on the side of the angels in trying to save the world will have to come to terms with the fact that they grow up to be the semi-psychotic angst-ridden spastics who started Avengers Vs. X-Men.

Part of my excitement for this title, despite not being the X-Men fan on the staff, is the sheer number of cool, obvious storytelling opportunities this crossover will provide. I’m no comic writer, but I’m guessing we’re going to be seeing:

• Wolverine seeing a jailbait Jean Grey and dropping a snikt! in his pants.
• Teenage Beast seeing adult, cat-faced Beast and learning to masturbate to furry porn in preparation for his creepy, creepy future.
• Teenage Cyclops seeing teenage Hope and beginning his long and illustrious career of chasing the most psychologically awkward pieces of ginger tail available at any given time.
• Adult Cyclops seeing a jailbait Jean Grey and adding Felonious Attempted Pederasty to his curriculum vitae of scumbaggery.
• Adult Beast saying, “Wait a minute! Matter cannot be created or destroyed! And have any of you seen Timecop?” just before the teenage and adult Cyclopses (Cyclopi? Cyclopae? Dicks?) punch each other while each shrieks, “Keep your hands off of my woman!” and the 616 explodes, leading to Axel Alonso’s triumphant announcement of new initiative Marvel Now, Now!

But the other part of my excitement is because of that creative team. Bendis and Immonen have done spectacular work together on the first volume of Ultimate Spider-Man, and thanks to some of his recent work, Immonen has become one of my favorite creators as Marvel. And this book looks to be no exception; yesterday, Marvel Comics released some uncolored and unlettered preview art from the upcoming series, and it looks just as good as I’ve been hoping it would:

All-New X-Men #1 drops on November 7th. There is no word yet as to when, after Angel makes out with Archangel and the universe is destroyed, when the inevitable All-New All-New Actually-Old X-Men might eventually be released.