Marvel.com is starting to roll out information on the upcoming Dark X-Men lineup, which includes Emma Frost, Namor, Daken, and Professor X.
Well, if you’re curious, keep reading: Marvel has unveiled some new profiles on some other members, as well, including Mimic and — perhaps most hotly contested — Cloak and Dagger.
Each of the profiles have had design pictures from Terry Dodson (such as the beauts above of Cloak and Dagger), as well as snippets from Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia writer Matt Fraction. Here’s a great highlight from the man himself, on these two runaways:
“They’re here presented with a chance to have their reputations exonerated and their records sealed [if they join the Dark X-Men]… Osborn presents it to them as the ultimate public service, [where] they can work off their past indiscretions—[such as] Cloak’s dealings with the Avengers during the [Skrull] invasion.”
And I think Fraction’s take on an underused character like Mimic especially is interesting. Broken heroes are always fun to watch:
“They’re Norman’s X-Men in the same way that the Dark Avengers are Norman’s Avengers, and at the moment [he] has a tremendous amount of political and popular capital. So as far as [Mimic is] concerned, he’s part of a winning X-Men. It’s not about [the idea that] these kids have made his life miserable, but rather a chance to get on a winning team.”
Pretty cool, right? I’m curious to see how all these Dark X-Men break down in the grand scheme of things, and I definitely dig Marvel’s differentiation between mutants and mutates, and discussing whether or not Cloak and Dagger fall into one category or the other. (And I love the Cyclops war diaries, sort of picking apart these heroes and antiheroes with a general’s eye.) What say you, Rama readers?
May 27th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Cloak and Dagger are concerned with their reputations?
Also, they’re not mutants, stupid retcon notwithstanding.
May 27th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Pretty bland. That Dagger is the opposite of everything good about Dagger’s character design. Just a boring lifeless Dodson chick in a white suit. Love those characters so I want to like this. We’ll see…
May 27th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
What’s with the Nike sneakers artists are putting superheroes in lately? That Dagger suit is awful. The Claok design looks equally bad. What happened to his scarred face? This duo is supposed to be orphaned outcasts and former druggies. Not super mutant bodybuilders. Geez.
May 27th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Them being mutants is a retcon? I did like their look in Civil War a lot.
May 27th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Them being “mutants” isn’t a retcon. Their first on-going was called “The Mutant Misadventures Of Cloak And Dagger”. Also if don’t want to call Cloak and Dagger mutants, than Lorna Dane and Havok shouldn’t be called mutants either as their powers needed an outside source to manifest. Some fanboys, you guys are.
May 28th, 2009 at 6:53 am
@AfghanAnt: “The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak And Dagger” was not their first ongoing– it was their third (if you count their half of Strange Tales v2 as an ongoing). In their original origin given, they were teenage runaways who had an experimental narcotic tested on them, and it reacted in their systems to give them their powers. Later it was “explained” that the drug merely activated their latent mutant powers. It’s a soft retcon, but a retcon nonetheless.
May 28th, 2009 at 8:26 am
I think Dodson’s redesigns are okay, but nothing spectacular. The real problem here is that their designs already so sleek and simple, that ANY modifications are going to be severe.
May 28th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
What happened to the Cloak & Dagger series that we were going to get? I’d rather that, honestly.
May 28th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I’m guessing that Marvel realized that the Cloak & Dagger book was really, really awful and decided not to release. Look at how many first issues they’ve been crapping out lately. For that not to make the schedule, it really had to suck.