It was going to be difficult to follow the events of Uncanny X-Force #18, but writer Rick Remender continues to impress as the series enters the X-Men: Regenesis era. The X-Force team has been put through the wringer and the status quo for a number of characters has dramatically shifted. Issue #19 provides a coda for what’s come before and sets the cast on the next stage of their journey. It’s a good example of how the latest X-Men rebranding effort should be applied to a later issue of an ongoing series.

Spoilers for Uncanny X-Force #19 will follow.

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When Marvel’s May solicitations appeared earlier this month a group of books were very conspicuous by their absence. Four X-Men titles (Uncanny X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, New Mutants, and Uncanny X-Force) had no listings and it was clear that something was up. Last week Marvel released a set of teaser images for these titles and they’re giving more details all this week on Marvel.com. Every day at 3PM Marvel will host a series of “liveblogs” focusing on what they’re calling MMXI: Year of the X-Men featuring X-editor Nick Lowe and the creators behind each of these titles kicking off yesterday with New Mutants.

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There was a lot for this X-Men fan to be thankful for this week as all four major X-titles shipped on Wednesday. While in many ways this is great, I can’t help but recognize how much the publishing scheme for these books has changed after they had been coming out weekly for almost all of 2010. With this in mind, I thought it might be a good time revisit the state of the books post-Second Coming.

This will probably contain what some would consider spoilers, so keep that in mind if there are things you’d rather not know about these books.

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The various X-titles have always been a mystery to me. I’ve probably read hundreds of issues of X-Men comics and I still constantly feel like an outsider when doing so. I cannot read a single issue without having tons of questions. Uncanny X-Force #1 proved to be no different. Luckily we at MLD have a resident X-pert.

Spoilers will follow…

KevinMLD: So Archangel is now like an uncontrollable repressed personality similar to the Hulk? How long has that been the case?

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It’s like 1991 all over again. In July, Marvel launched a new X-Men #1 by Victor Gischler and Paco Medina featuring a mutants versus vampires story that’s still raging on. Tomorrow, Marvel follows up that launch with Uncanny X-Force #1 by Rick Remender and Jerome Opena. It’s hard to say that this merits its own “day” in celebration of its release, but its launch certainly makes more sense than X-Men #1‘s.

Back in 1991, Marvel released Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 in the same summer as Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld’s X-Force #1. Both were huge sellers with X-Men #1 at 8 million copies and X-Force #1 somewhere around 5 million in the heyday of speculative investment (X-Force also did it with only one cover compared to X-Men‘s five). While X-Force didn’t endure the way X-Men (now X-Men: Legacy) did, it was still a successful concept that was reborn coming out of 2007’s Messiah Complex storyline.

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