The Pros and Pros of X of Swords, the X-Men Summer Event

The goal with this article is to analyze a comic book event. Release schedules will be discussed. Marketing copy will be analyzed. We’ll gaze at teaser art. All very basic stuff.

This comic book event happens to fill a need for X-Men fans, an obvious market that has existed since Chris Claremont made the X-Men the best thing ever in the 80s. Then Jonathan Hickman came along last year and again made the X-Men the best thing ever, after decades of, eh, sometimes the X-Men were a fine thing and often a great thing but rarely the best thing ever. But they are now again the best thing ever.

The X-Men event this summer is called X of Swords and I don’t know a thing about it, other than it’s hard to imagine it as a failure considering Hickman is killing it right now with the X-Men. So, it’s hard to analyze X of Swords dispassionately because of the excitement I have for the X-Men now and I’m just going to say it’s all pro, no con. Excitement makes it hard to analyze comic books you haven’t read and don’t know anything about.

Here’s what we do know: Society will be threatened and “ten mutants will rise up to defend their home,” according to a Marvel press release.

How will they defend themselves? By “arming themselves with legendary blades, both new and familiar ones from Marvel history…”

The result? “Mutantkind will finally meet its mystical destiny.”

It’s X-Men with swords! There is no downside here and Jonathon Hickman’s imagination is clearly the purveyor of the unorthodox comic arts. He has my attention and my $3.99, at the very least.

If you’ve read House of X / Powers of X (HOXPOX)–and good gracious, if you haven’t, why have you not??!?!–then you’ll spot that X of Swords is a play on the Ten of Swords tarot card, which was referenced in the HOXPOX storyline.

It’s a 15-part crossover that will hit shelves in July. It will feature all the X-Men titles and those that are solicited in July will include Cable, Children of the Atom, Excalibur, Hellions, Marauders, New Mutants, Wolverine, X-Factor, X-Force, and X-Men.

So let’s analyze this like we’re pretending we know more than it’s X-Men, but with swords. I’ll start and end with why you should be optimistic.

Every new comic that is released comes with marketing copy like “this will change everything” and “nothing will ever be the same” stories. You read that marketing copy with a fanny pack filled with salt and you take a new grain of salt out with every word that Marvel PR feeds us.

But Hickman takes those salt grains and forms them into incredibly compelling and imaginative comic books stories, plus they also coalesce into a sentient salt monster for some reason, I think due to the power of Krakoa.

I don’t know, I’m veering off track here. I’m trying to pad my word count because I’m so darned enthusiastic about Hickman’s X-Men right now that I want to share any scrap of detail about every upcoming X-Men storyline as wide and as far as I can. Because the X-Men will now have swords.