X-Terminators #1

History

Louise Simonson — who had co-created X-Factor and many of the characters appearing here — wrote the entire four-issue miniseries, with Jon Bogdanove on pencils and Al Milgrom sharing inking duties alongside Al Williamson on the first issue. The book was edited by Bob Harras under editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco; Harras is documented as having maintained roughly twenty pages of character timelines to keep the sprawling Inferno crossover coherent across all participating titles. The series was produced as a companion to Simonson's own X-Factor run, and its story directly picked up threads she had been seeding in those pages — particularly N'astirh's earlier baby-snatching activities — giving readers a ground-level view of the Inferno crisis from the perspective of the youngest mutant characters rather than the adult X-teams.

Trivia · 9 facts

• Written by Louise Simonson, penciled by Jon Bogdanove, inked by Al Milgrom and Al Williamson; edited by Bob Harras; cover date October 1988, on sale June 23, 1988.
• First appearance of Takeshi Matsuya (Wiz Kid), a Japanese-American mutant with technopathic/technoforming abilities who uses a self-designed wheelchair; created by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove.
• First collective team appearance of the X-Terminators as a group: Boom-Boom (Tabitha Smith), Rictor (Julio Richter), Rusty Collins, Skids (Sally Blevins), Leech, and Artie Maddicks.
• The 'X-Terminators' name had previously been X-Factor's public costumed identity, first used in X-Factor #8 (June 1986); this series transfers the name to their adolescent charges.
• Issue #1 is the opening chapter of the Inferno crossover, which ran October 1988–early 1989 across Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, and Excalibur; the cover carries the Inferno crossover trade dress.
• The story's central premise — N'astirh's demons mistakenly abducting bald Artie and Leech thinking them to be infants — sets up the conflict linking Limbo's invasion plot to X-Factor's young wards.
• The four-issue miniseries concludes with the X-Terminators merging into the New Mutants, resolving a years-long narrative question about where the X-Factor-trained teenagers properly fit in the X-Men line.
• Reprinted in: X-Men: Inferno hardcover (2009), X-Men: Inferno Vol. 1 paperback (2016), X-Men Milestones: Inferno (2019), New Mutants Epic Collection Vol. 6 (2018), New Mutants Omnibus Vol. 3 (2023), and the comprehensive X-Men Inferno Omnibus (2021); select pages also appeared in Marvel Firsts: The 1980s Vol. 3 (2014).
• Several X-Terminators members — Boom-Boom, Rusty Collins, Skids, and Wiz Kid — later appeared in the X-Men: The Animated Series episode 'No Mutant Is an Island,' though in substantially reimagined form.

Cast · 14 characters

Full credits

Variants (1)