A few weeks ago an image circulated around the web featuring Wolverine fighting what looked to be the Age of Apocalypse version of Nightcrawler. At the bottom of the picture were the words “X-Termination: March 2013” with little to no explanation besides what was presented. Flash forward to now and we finally have the details behind this three book crossover, which is said to have huge ramifications going forward for all the books involved.
X-Termination is a one-month event detailing Age of Apocalypse’s Nightcrawler and his journey home. But since jumping through different dimensions is always tricky business, Nightcrawler is going to bump into a few people, most of which he’ll probably end up clashing with. Besides his own series, Nightcrawler will make his way into Astonishing X-Men (hence the aforementioned teaser picture) as well as the dimension hoppers that make up X-Treme X-Men (which has its own Nightcrawler). Newsarama talked to Age of Apocalypse writer David Lapham about the event and he had plenty to say.
When asked about who the book will focus on and what other characters we should expect to see, Lapham had this to say:
“One thing we all want to do is a bit of mix and matching, so it won’t just be the X-Terminated all go over here and take care of this element, the X-Treme team go over here, etc. I want to see what Prophet thinks of the 616. I want to see AoA Nightcrawler meet young X-Treme Nightcrawler. I want to see AoA Jean meet up with Wolverine again. The event which brings them all together is massive, fate of the multiverse type stuff. (On other main characters) We don’t have all those worked out yet. The Xavier heads have a big role. Wolverine, definitely. X-Treme Nightcrawler will be an important character.”
On working with the other book’s writers:
“I’m used to being the complete dictator of my projects, but this is surprisingly tons of fun. Throwing out a bunch of ideas and having others throw out theirs, or play off yours and you play off theirs. So far I’d say the collaboration has been very close. We’ve talked on the phone extensively and emailed like crazy. I’ll be scripting the Alpha issue off our collaborative plot…The nature of the threat comes from outside — it gets a bit cosmic. The trick here is to see how the characters handle the meeting. The Age of Apocalypse guys are pretty cool in their environment but can I still keep them being them in the face of a completely different tone, threat, and dynamic?”
While I haven’t had a chance to read Age of Apocalypse or a whole lot of Astonishing X-Men, I am an avid fan of X-Treme X-Men and it’ll be interesting to see how that Nightcrawler interacts with AoA’s Nightcrawler. Either way, it looks to be an exciting crossover and I can’t wait to see how everything turns out.
X-Termination begins with an Alpha issue in March 2013. Be sure to check it out when it hits stands.
