We can now follow up on the teaser that Marvel released last week revealing a new title from writer Brian Wood and artist Olivier Coipel. As expected, it is a relaunch of the (adjectiveless) X-Men series, and will indeed feature an all-female cast. USA Today has an interview with Wood where he goes into details about the series. The team will be made up of Storm, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Rachel Grey, and Psylocke, with Jubilee acting as the main star.

Check out the cover here below of X-Men #1.

According to the article, the series starts with Jubilee showing up with an orphaned baby that may save humanity, as well as a return of Sublime (not the 90s band, but the grand villain from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run.) There will also be Sentinels, aliens, and an ancient war. The series will also have to deal with Jubilee’s current status of being a vampire, so there’s a lot going on.

Marvel continues to roll out new series as part of their Marvel NOW! initiative and the newest teaser image is for a new series by writer Brian Wood (Conan, Star Wars) and Olivier Coipel (Thor, Avengers Vs X-Men).

There’s not a lot that can be gathered from the image. Judging by the double X and the double helix, we can guess that this is a new X-Men series featuring a team of women. This is just speculation on my part, but it helps to know that Wood is the current writer on Ultimate X-Men, and just came off a run on the main Marvel U X-Men series. He’s also known for series that feature strong female characters, such as Local, New York Four, and the just launched Mara. From all this, it seems like a natural fit for Wood to write a series about a group of the female X-Men.

Pretty much every year, comic book publishers unleash a monthly event comic to boost excitement and sales in their comics. And this week Marvel Comics announced that event as The Avengers vs. The X-Men.

Now, I’m not quite sure how, but more on that later. Avengers Vs. X-Men will be a bi-weekly, six-month comic coming in at a total of 12 issues and features some of the biggest names in comics. Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Aaron, Jonathan Hickman, and Matt Fraction will all be on writing duties, while John Romita Jr., Olivier Coipel, and Adam Kubert will be working on art.

Siege #4
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciler: Olivier Coipel
Inker: Mark Morales
Colorist: Laura Martin
Letterer: Chris Eliopoulos
Marvel Comics
Price: $3.99
Release date: May 12, 2010

I’ve written about the previous three issues of this series, so I may as well go four for four. The first three issues of this series were great, and fortunately, the end of the series does not disappoint. Siege #4 wraps up the story well, and sets up the new status quo where our heroes can work in the light and we don’t have to see Norman Osborn in fifteen different titles each month. With this issue writer Brian Michael Bendis closes a storyline that basically started all the way back with Avengers: Disassembled. Now we get to see what he does next.

Since this is the end of the story, in classic comic book fashion, we get a big throw down of a fight, this time it’s between the Sentry’s evil side, and the assembled Avengers, Young Avengers, and Nick Fury’s young heroes. There are a couple of not really surprising deaths in this issue and each one is handled pretty well.

Siege #3
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Olivier Coipel
Inker: Mark Morales
Colors: Laura Martin
Letterer: Chris Eliopoulos
Marvel Comics
Price: $3.99
Released March 17, 2010

The march towards Marvel‘s Heroic Age continues, and with this issue of Siege we finally get the moment that many fans”¦okay, even that is saying too much. There are so many awesome moments in this book that you can’t turn a page without a surprise, and I don’t want to be the one to ruin those moments for anyone.

I will just say that Brian Michael Bendis pulls out all the stops, and fills the issue with a lot of great dialog. As I said with the last issue, the shorter story length is working very well for this series, forcing Bendis to cut to the chase and focus on the big moments. A problem I had with Bendis’ last two event minis, House of M and Secret Invasion, was that they dragged in the middle. This series does not have that issue, and is much better because of it.