X-Men: Gold Rush

Staying gold has never been a problem for the X-Men, but then no iteration of the team ever had to survive a titanic tussle with the Inhumans, as chronicled in IvX. Once past the conflict, the mutant community must reorganize and X-MEN GOLD will tell of one group to emerge from the tumult.

While the X-Men Gold squad will feature many a familiar face, readers should not expect them to be exactly as they remember. Writer Marc Guggenheim took a moment from putting gold in his chain, in his rings, to reveal the state of the lineup as the title launches on April 5.

KITTY PRYDE
“The new leader of the X-Men,” Guggenheim states. “The thing about Kitty is she has returned to the school like as a head teacher but never as the leader of the X-Men. So, in many ways, this is the story of the young recruit who goes on to become the general.

“She’s got a lot of good qualities to be the leader. She’s learned a whole lot by basically spending her entire life as an X-Man. I’ve enjoyed writing leadership Kitty enormously.”

OLD MAN LOGAN
“I’ve written Logan before,” points out the writer. “I love writing him; I love his voice. This is the ‘Old Man’ iteration so my goal with him is to make him even more crotchety and gruff. That’s been a real blast.”

NIGHTCRAWLER
“Nightcrawler, to me, is the heart and soul of the team,” asserts Guggenheim. “He’s the team’s conscience in many ways. I think he’s the one many look to for that moral clarity.”

COLOSSUS
“Peter is morally clear, I think, in a slightly different way,” the writer argues. “He’s less complicated than a lot of people. He tends to be the strong, silent type, but beneath that steely exterior beats the heart of a poet.

“That’s the thing that Kitty is attracted to, that Kitty is in love with. That’s not to say that he and Kitty are going to get back together, but I’m definitely enjoying playing their attraction to each other, their chemistry, their romantic history.”

STORM
“Without spoiling IvX, Storm probably has the most to atone for,” reveals Guggenheim. “She was the wartime consigliere, she was the one who led the X-Men into the fight and the consequences of that conflict really weigh on her. She basically is punishing herself for doing the thing that she believes made the state of mutant-human relations worse.”

PRESTIGE
“The codename change is really meant to encapsulate the approach I am taking to Rachel [Grey],” Guggenheim explains. “Pretty much for her history, she has been written as a legacy character. I am very interested in approaching the writing of her from the standpoint of ‘if we don’t lean into her past but rather lean into her future, what kind of stories can we tell?’

“I think it is interesting to explore a character who is trying to forge their own identity out of the shadow of their history.”

Go for X-MEN GOLD #1 by Marc Guggenheim and Ardian Syaf, headed your way on April 5!