The relaunch is still some months away, but the next generation of Marvel’s X-Men franchise is already taking shape, according to the man responsible for bringing it into the world.

At the end of October, Tom Brevoort — Marvel executive editor and the man who will take over stewardship of Marvel’s mutant comics at some point next year — shared in his Substack newsletter that the first script for the new era of X-Men has been competed, and is currently being drawn.

The experience of reading the first script, he shared, was “weird,” because “the scale of the venture is so great in scope. This is a far cry from building a new relaunch for Avengers or Fantastic Four, it’s relaunching an entire line of titles — creating the infrastructure between them that will make up the new parameters of their world and how they’ll all interact (and to what degree) as well as deciding what characters will end up where, in whose hands. I’ve done a lot of things in my years on this job, but I’ve never had to think so broadly about so many characters and books at one time.”

So far, he continued, “I’ve made a couple of non-traditional choices that have made some of the folks around me a little bit edgy. And I can’t even say with a certainty that they are the right choices. All I can go on is that my gut tells me that’s the way to go. But it really is working without a net.”

That’s as much as Brevoort was willing to share at the time, for good reason. “I’m going to continue to hold back from saying much of anything about the specifics for some time yet, as really the spotlight should be on the efforts of the current crew as they build the ending to their time on the franchise,” he wrote, after revealing that the first script “needed a revision to its finale, the last two pages or so” before being handed to an artist.

What writer is on the title? What artist? Brevoort is remaining quiet for now.

"Please be patient and try not to ask me too many questions about what costume Wolverine is going to be wearing or what book you can find Rockslide in or anything. It’s not my time yet," he explained. "And by the time we get there, like it or not, we’ll be ready. We’re just not there yet.”

When will we get there? Marvel hasn’t given anything resembling a timeline just yet, but given that the publisher recently announced the four issue X-Men: Forever series - the final final chapter (for real this time) of the Krakoan era of X-Men comics - to launch in March 2024, it would seem a safe bet to assume a summer 2024 launch. Here’s hoping everyone survives the experience.