At New York Comic-Con, Marvel revealed that superstar comic book artist, Peach Momoko, will be writing and drawing a brand-new X-Men comic book series as part of Marvel’s new Ultimate line of comic books that will be launching in January following a sneak peek at the new universe in this week’s Ultimate Universe #1. Now, Marvel is revealing a special prelude story for the new series, along with the reveal a surprising new member of the team!
The initial cover of Ultimate X-Men #1 that was revealed when Momoko’s involvement was announced featured one of the members of the team, Armor, but now we have learned that Maystorm, Momoko’s “New Champions” character, will also be a member of the new version of the X-Men!
Who is Maystorm? What are the New Champions?
Last month, Marvel did a series of variant covers called “New Champions,” which was based on the idea of giving some of Marvel’s top artists the prompt of “Design a character that could serve as a young sidekick to a Marvel superhero the way that Spider-Boy is now Spider-Man’s kid sidekick.” For X-Men #27, Peach Momoko designed a character who could serve as a theoretical kid sidekick for Storm.
However, because Momoko was then designing the Ultimate X-Men, she took this character design and made her a member of the new Ultimate X-Men instead, making it the first New Champions character to move from being a cover character to being an actual comic book character! Here is Momoko’s design sheet for Maystorm…
Momoko note to Marvel, “I was very surprised, excited and happy that Marvel allowed me to introduce Maystorm in ULTIMATE X-MEN. She was made only for the New Champions variant cover program. I really liked her design and wanted to tell her story… but didn’t think I would get the opportunity this fast!”
Here is a design sheet for the Ultimate version of Armor, the main character of the new series…
What do the preview pages for Ultimate X-Men show us?
The special prelude story that Marvel released today sees Hisako Ichiki, Armor, having a disturbing dream where she pulls an armored creature out of her head. However, when she wakes up, she discovers the armored creature is next to her desk! She and her friend (who appears to be Maystorm) both receive bad grades on their assignments, which are marked with big Xs.
Marvel released the following as a general description of the new series, “Hisako Ichiki is a teenage girl who just wants to live a normal life—go to school, hang out with her friends, ignore the political strife broiling over after the events of ULTIMATE INVASION—but life has other plans for her. In Japan, urban legends have sprung to life and brought some unusual new powers with them… Meet Armor, Maystorm, and a group of new Ultimate X-Men the likes of which you’ve never seen before!”
Ultimate X-Men #1 is set to come out on March 6th.
Source: Marvel
