XX-Men: Marvel Gives Details on Wood’s and Coipel’s All-Female Book

Y’know, for a guy that had his DC exclusive contract politely allowed to expire about a month before the New 52 relaunch (and after DC announced, and then unannounced, that he would be the writer on the Supergirl relaunch in September, 2011), Brian Wood has had one hell of a busy – and big – year. Between the launches of Mara for Image, Conan and The Massive for Dark Horse – not to mention the big success of Star Wars for that publisher just last week –  the guy has a lot going on… including that new book for Marvel that they teased last week with a one-word poster reading only “XX”.

These’s been a lot of speculation about what “XX” means, from the idea Amanda floated to me that it was an X-Treme X-Men relaunch, to the one I insisted upon to my bartender that it was about Dos Equis. Actually, I was just ordering a Dos Equis, but that’s not important right now.

What is important is that Marvel has revealed what it’s all about. It’s an X-Men book. Titled X-Men. With no, you know, men in it.

The book will be drawn by Olivier Coipel, who most recently did a couple of issues of Avengers Vs. X-Men, and will feature Jubilee, Rachel Grey, Kitty Pride, Psylocke, Rogue and Storm. There will be some other crossover with other X-Men – Wood teases that we’ll see Pixie and Bling! in the first issue – and that the first story arc will be a battle with Sublime.

So what’s the draw to writing an X-Men book with no, well, X-Men in it, Brian?

Personally, a high comfort level in writing women. I’ve always written female characters, going all the way back to my first book ever, and I’m known for it. But that aside, the X-Men are full of truly excellent female characters. I would say that on balance, the women rule the men in the x-world, hands down. It’s a real anomaly in comics, and I think it’s what makes the X-Men both special and successful—and appealing to all genders and all types. You can see this reflected in the fan base. So I get great women to write, complicated, complex, multi-faceted, flawed, wonderfully relatable characters, and here is this series where all that can shine. It’s a no-brainer, I think, and anyone ready to dismiss it is missing what the X-Men is all about.

Sure… although I still maintain that Jennie 2.5 could kick Kitty Pride’s ass.

I must admit, I have fun reading between the lines of these PR-heavy interviews with comic creators, because you can learn things about their projects’ backgrounds almost by accident. For example: is X-Men a magnum opus, carefully crafted and sprung fully formed from the head of Wood?

Marvel.com: In terms of building the cast, how did you go about selecting the characters and did you consider the potential character dynamics you could explore when making that decision?

Brian Wood: This lineup came with the job, actually, and honestly, this is a good thing. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask for a line-up like that, and it’s my nature to want to seek out the D-list underdogs…

Okay, so this book is straight-up work for hire… not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. After all, Wood didn’t invent Star Wars, and rumor has it that that’s a pretty good book. Hopefully X-Men falls along the same lines.

X-Men #1 drops in April.

(via Marvel.com)