X-Statix - Publication History

Publication History

In 2001, the X-Men family of titles were being revamped by the newly appointed Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, with the aim to make the titles more critically and commercially successful. Former Vertigo editor Axel Alonso hired writer Peter Milligan, best known for his surreal, post-modernist comics such as Rogan Gosh and Shade, the Changing Man, and Madman artist Mike Allred, as the new creative team for X-Force, starting with issue #116. X-Force prior to Millgan and Allred's first issue sold well but rarely had been the critical success Quesada wanted.

Milligan and Allred completely revamped the series, designing a team more akin to popstars or reality TV contestants than the gritty, violent paramilitary group originally portrayed in the series. The title was laced with Milligan's satirical take on the superhero team as well as general cynicism toward the entire genre. Milligan and Allred would regularly play with killing off the title characters: In their first issue, they wiped out the entire team with only two exceptions. This dramatic revision of the series was not universally accepted. Many readers wanted "their" X-Force back, a complaint Milligan later parodied in the pages of the title. However, the title was receiving mainstream media coverage in titles like Rolling Stone.

X-Force was canceled with issue 129 in 2002 and renamed X-Statix; it restarted with a new issue #1. X-Statix carried on the same themes as X-Force, but with an increasingly satirical tone. Milligan planned to deploy Princess Diana as a character in a story-arc beginning in X-Statix #13: she was slated to return from the dead as a mutant superhero. However, when news of this leaked out to the media, a series of objections followed, most notably from the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail. Quesada and Marvel announced that they would alter the character, replacing her with a fictional pop star named Henrietta Hunter.

Although sales of the title during this time were moderate, they soon began to decline drastically. After a story-arc that pitted X-Statix against The Avengers, low sales prompted the title's cancellation with issue #26, published in 2004. In the last issue Milligan and Allred killed off the entire team, serving up one last parody of the superhero genre, while tying up the remaining plot threads.

Marvel Comics published X-Statix Presents: Dead Girl in 2006. In the 5 issue mini-series, Dead Girl teams with Doctor Strange to combat a group of villains who have returned from the dead. The series is written by Milligan, with covers by Allred. The storyline (which features the return of The Anarchist, The Orphan, and U-Go-Girl) parodies the manner in which creators in the industry handle death in comic books, with popular characters often brought back from the dead.