By Marc Strom
The X-Men's world will soon get a little darker.
Kicking off Marvel Noir, re-imagining your favorite Marvel heroes in a pulp detective setting, X MEN NOIR #1 brings you Xavier's band of merry mutants like you've never seen them before on December 3.
Series writer Fred Van Lente describes the four-part saga as "a period murder mystery starring the X-Men characters, but re-imagined as a crime franchise.
"The murder victim is someone on the X-Men who dies a lot," he continues, laying a not-so-subtle hint. "And there are no mutants, no powers—just the struggle between the reform school students of Charles Xavier, 'The Professor of Crime,' against the corrupt police-within-the-police of Eric Magnus, known as 'The Brotherhood.'"
The series' origin goes back to Van Lente's relationship with his artistic partner-in-crime, though the two didn't always plan on tackling the X-Men.
"X MEN NOIR was a project that grew out of my friendship with artist Dennis Calero and a natural outgrowth of our wanting to work together," the writer remembers. "It was he who first proposed a period project, with a different Marvel character. But as these things often happen, after some back-and-forth with the editorial board they steered us toward the X-Men, which turned out to be more rewarding than our original idea, so I'm glad they did."
The writer also has a long-standing relationship with noir literature, as he lists the author of "The Big Sleep" as having a pivotal role in his development as a writer.
"[Private Investigator] Philip Marlowe's creator, Raymond Chandler, is one of the biggest single influences on my writing, I'd say," Van Lente tells us. "Certainly the biggest prose influence, and the biggest plotting influence."
When it came time to recast the X-Men in more noir roles, Van Lente says he worked from one simple premise, but that the project soon grew from there.
"The literal thought process was, 'What if Stan and Jack actually originally created the X-Men as a crime series?'" the writer posits. "So we started with the exact same cast they did—Xavier's original 'First Class' and Magneto's original Brotherhood. But quickly we saw opportunities to expand the cast into later eras of X-Men. You already saw the noir versions of Rogue and Gambit in Dennis' teasers we released earlier in the year.
"But there will be more. Oh, yes. There will be more."
At least one character will raise a few fans' eyebrows when they see the role Van Lente has placed him in.
"I think Quicksilver will surprise a lot of people," Van Lente predicts. "In many ways his arc is the most interesting in the book. And he has one of the best single monologues I've ever written."
The setting of X MEN NOIR will also differ greatly from the regular Marvel Universe, occupying an all new "Noirverse."
"One of the first decisions we made was that this was its own universe, both distinct from the Marvel Universe and from our own world," Van Lente reveals. "It's set in a nebulous noir period. The fashions and technology all appear to be just after World War Two, which was the golden age of noir in Hollywood.
"However, whether or not WW2 actually happened in this universe is an open question," he continues. "And there are plenty of things in the Noirverse that don't exist in history. One of the more obvious points would be that airships are still a popular form of mass travel, and the Empire State Building is the main airship terminal in New York City, as was originally intended by its conceivers."
While all this seems somewhat distant from the world and the X-Men which fans have known for more than 40 years, Van Lente also sees parallels between the two.
"The thing that jumped out at me was that earlier in the 20th century, people who were into a fairly phony-baloney science known as 'eugenics' attempted to explain criminality as a genetic problem, potentially solved by breeding," Van Lente prescribes. "So this DNA connection made grafting the X-Men onto the mystery genre may not be as weird as it sounds at first blush.
"And eugenics is the primary driving force to our science fiction pulp back-up, 'The Sentinels,' a pioneering novella from the Noirverse by anthropologist-turned-author Bolivar Trask."
As some readers have probably noticed by now, the "X-Men" in X MEN NOIR is missing a minor grammatical touch: its hyphen.
"Editor Nate Cosby, as one of his many endearing eccentricities—such as his never ending quest to invent a means for college football to be administered intravenously, thus allowing even more simultaneous consumption of college football—declared early on that one of the things that would make our series distinct from Original Flavor X-Men would be the absence of a hyphen," Van Lente half-jokingly explains.
"Whether or not this is a brilliant masterstroke or barely noticeable by the average person I will leave to better minds than mine to determine."
Van Lente makes no promises about what will happen or who will survive the four-issue limited series, however.
"Anything is possible in the world of X MEN NOIR, and don't forget—it's a rare noir story that ends happily."
Travel to the world of X MEN NOIR beginning on December 3. And for the original X-Men, check out Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited.
Check out the official Marvel Shop for everything X-Men!
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