Michael Allred, Peter Milligan, and Laura Allred's X-Statix return, X-Cellent, finally has a release date: February 2022. Originally announced in 2019 for a 2020 debut, X-Cellent was sidetracked by the COVID-19 pandemic but never fully counted out from eventual publication.
"The ol' gang is back together again! Working with Peter Milligan is always a party," Michael Allred says in the announcement. "The future is looking brighter for 2022 as we get to show the world how we've been playing with our X-Statix Marvel mutants and their new adversaries, The X-Cellent! Love these characters! Everyone come play with us!"
The X-Cellent is an antagonist superhero team introduced in the trio's 2019 one-shot Giant-Size X-Statix #1 - the same issue where the X-Cellent ongoing series was announced.
Picking up from their early '00s revamp of X-Force and into its own name with X-Statix, X-Cellent continues what has been a long and strange story for this group of off-beat celebrity mutant superheroes. And while the X-Statix were celebrities in their day inside Marvel Comics, they've been succeeded by a new celebrity team: the aforementioned X-Cellent.
You might think this is a story where the good guys (X-Statix) somehow beat the new kids on the block (X-Cellent) and are triumphantly back in the spotlight, but you have to stop and think: this new series is called X-Cellent, not X-Statix. So it seems X-Cellent will be sticking around for awhile.
"I'm thoroughly X-Statix to be working with Mike and Laura Allred again," Milligan said. "And it's been truly x-cellent to discover that we've lost none of our alchemical fizz in conjuring up this new comic, this new title, this new beginning: The X-Cellent!"
X-Cellent #1 goes on sale in February 2022.
Keep track of this and all the new X-Men comics, graphic novels, and collections in 2021 and beyond.
