Marvel have revealed X-Men: Outback, a new five-issue series by Steve Orlando and Stephen Segovia revisiting the time the X-Men relocated to Australia in the late ’80s. Set after 1988’s “Fall of the Mutants,” the comic will explore how a supposedly dead Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Colossus, Dazzler, Havok, Psylocke and Longshot “choose the Outback as their home base,” how “tensions between them almost [tore] the team apart,” and “which of their old enemies threatened to expose their secret?”
X-Men: Outback #1 cover by Russell Dauterman
Orlando states, “It’s a rare thing, something you logically don’t expect, to get the chance as a creator to work in the time period that made you love a comic, a team, or a character. For me, picking up issues where I could at flea markets and spinner racks of the late ’80s and ’90s, the outback was the first place I met the X-Men on the page. And they all but leapt off it! The tension, the struggle to carve out a new life, the explosive personalities…and the NEW! It was such a bold era, enough to make me a fan for life. Now, to get to work in that time period with X-Men: Outback? That’s not even something the young me would’ve thought possible.”
He adds, “We’ve got an incredible team with Stephen Segovia and [cover artist] Russell Dauterman — and we’re cooking up stories that celebrate and elevate the era. And in its spirit, you’ll of course be seeing some familiar faces… but just the same — there’ll be all new threats, connections, and secret exes on the way!”
The X-Men’s Outback era, which ran in the pages of Uncanny X-Men from 1988 to 1990 under the management of writer Chris Claremont and artist Marc Silvestri, saw the team strike from their secret base with the help of the indigenous teleporter Gateway. At a 2023 X-Men fan convention, Claremont commented, “I wish we could have stayed another ten years there [in Australia]. Marvel kept saying, ‘You’ve got to get them back [to Westchester].’”
Issue #1 will be released on June 24. It is the latest in a number of X-Men comics revisiting the team’s past, including Emma Frost: The White Queen, Rogue: The Savage Land, and Psylocke: Ninja (the second issue of which releases this week.) Orlando, meanwhile, is busy continuing to write the Scarlet Witch’s latest adventures in Sorcerer Supreme (issue #3 of which also drops this week), while issue #9 of Segovia’s New Avengers run will arrive on March 25.
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