Dead X-Men #1

History

The series was announced at New York Comic Con in October 2023 as one of several limited titles spun out of the interconnected Fall of the House of X and Rise of the Powers of X event. Writer Steve Foxe, who had already been embedded in the Krakoan line on Dark X-Men, coordinated the story closely with Kieron Gillen and editor Jordan D. White to ensure the team's mission carried genuine consequences for the line's conclusion. Foxe has noted in interviews that the villain of the series — the cyborg Moira of timeline II.4, whom he informally called 'Ahab Moira' in his scripts — grew out of his consideration of Ahab as an antagonist; finding that character a poor thematic fit, he pivoted to one of Moira's past selves and used Ahab as a visual design inspiration, with the character ultimately realized on the page by artist Vincenzo Carratù. The deliberate choice to rotate a different artist through each distinct spacetime locale within every issue — with Jonas Scharf, Bernard Chang, and Carratù each handling a separate timeline in issue #1, unified by colorist Frank Martin — was baked into Foxe's scripts from the outset as both a structural and thematic device.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Written by Steve Foxe with interior art by Jonas Scharf, Bernard Chang, and Vincenzo Carratù; colored by Frank Martin; lettered by VC's Cory Petit; edited by Lauren Amaro and Jordan D. White; cover by Pere Pérez.
• Published January 31, 2024 (cover-dated March 2024) as part of the Fall of the House of X line-wide event; a four-issue limited series, concluding in April 2024.
• Features the resurrection and first active mission of the five mutants killed at the 2023 Hellfire Gala — Frenzy (Joanna Cargill), Prodigy (David Alleyne), Jubilee (Jubilation Lee), Dazzler (Alison Blaire), and Cannonball (Sam Guthrie) — who had been elected to the X-Men roster only to be slaughtered by Nimrod before serving a single mission.
• First appearance of the alternate-timeline X-Men team designated X-Men (Moira II.4), including that timeline's versions of Blink (Clarice Ferguson-II.4), Random (Marshall Stone III-II.4), Abigail Brand-II.4, Armor (Hisako Ichiki-II.4), and the fused entity Rootfire (Shiro Yoshida-II.4 & Redroot-II.4), as well as the Starjammers of timeline II.4.
• Confirms Rachel Summers (as Askani) as one of the previously redacted crew members of No-Place X — Professor X's hidden base outside conventional time and space — a mystery first seeded in Rise of the Powers of X #1.
• The issue visits two Sinister Moira Engine dead-end timelines: a demonic Darchilde apocalypse (previously glimpsed as a vision for Destiny in Immortal X-Men #3) and the Moira II.4 timeline, where Abigail Brand's scheme triggered an Orbis Stellaris invasion that rendered Earth uninhabitable.
• Prodigy's role as the mission's key operative is established here: his mimic-power allows him to passively absorb Moira MacTaggert's memories and experiences, giving Professor X a psychic map of all her lifetimes to use against the Enigma Dominion.
• The series was collected in two TPB editions and all four issues were made available on Marvel Unlimited.

Cast · 35 characters

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Variants (4)