In the past, he used it to justify making entire classes of animals extinct, defining them as “excess deviation.” In AXE, Druig uses it to justify the mass slaughter of Krakoan and Martian mutants. Uranos’ heresy takes the Eternals’ programming to “correct excess deviation” to a logical, genocidal extreme. And sometimes they’re in charge.”Īs AXE dawns, Druig, who schemed his way onto the Eternal throne after manipulating Thanos (yes, that Thanos) into a near-extinction level event, tries to consolidate control through his genocidal, imprisoned uncle, Uranos. “The Eternals are a complicated group of people, some of which are as bad as Apocalypse or Sinister. “The Marvel Universe is in desperate need of good villains,” says Gillen. This discovery, in the pages of Gillen’s run, leads to a schism where the more heroic Eternals such as Ikaris (think Superman, but less subtle) and Thena (often mistaken for the Greek goddess Athena) abandon Eternal society, opening the door for their less scrupulous brothers and sisters, like the power-hungry cynic Druig or the imprisoned religious fanatic Uranos, to take control of Eternal society. They discover in the series, though, that there’s a catch to their immortality: each time one of them dies, a human is killed to resurrect the Eternal. Eternals are limited in number, vastly powerful, and also functionally immortal. The Eternals are superpowered beings sent to Earth ostensibly to protect it from the Deviants, an offshoot race subject to uncontrolled expansion and mutation. In AXE, Gillen tells us, “the Eternals are bad guys here,” a journey that started when he relaunched their book last year with Esad Ribic and Matt Wilson.
The question with hero-versus-hero crossovers like this is inevitably, “Which side is right?” Each team has its fans, and even the heroes on the wrong side need to at least look slightly sympathetic. They just occasionally disagree with each other,” Gillen says. “What I love about the X-Men is… the extended cast of mutantdom, they’re all the same team.
The book follows the ruling council of Krakoa, the heroes (like Storm and Nightcrawler) and villains (like Mister Sinister or Mystique) who govern all mutantkind.
There, mutants are at the pinnacle of their power: they control Krakoa, one of the most powerful nations on Earth they terraformed and colonized Mars with a million battle-hardened mutants from a hell dimension and they are, as the title says, functionally immortal-each time a mutant perishes, they are resurrected by the combined mutant powers of The Five, who are hard at work bringing back every mutant who has ever died. Gillen launched Immortal X-Men earlier this year with art from Lucas Werneck.
“The starting point is this is the book that emerges from the tensions between. “I’m just interested in writing consequences,” Gillen tells us when we ask about the crossover.
WAR OF THE GODS HEROES CHARGE SERIES
And yet, somehow, his first blockbuster comics crossover is out in 2022.ĪXE: Judgment Day is a six-issue series that ties Gillen’s work on the recently completed Eternals series with his story in the ongoing X-Men flagship title, Immortal X-Men, along with what Jason Aaron has been building toward in Avengers. Gillen wrote a couple of excellent Utopia-era X-Men books ( Generation Hope and Uncanny X-Men), as well as a beloved run with Kid Loki that helped inspire one Disney+ show and a relaunch of Young Avengers with Jamie McKelvie that is likely going to have an impact on the MCU further down the line. But even before that, he was part of that mid-aughts wave of Image writers who took over Marvel’s flagship books. Gillen is the writer behind Eisner- and Hugo-nominated comics such as perennial Den of Geek favorites Once & Future and The Wicked + The Divine. How the hell has Kieron Gillen never written a summer event comic before?