What to know about Extermination, the end of X-Men’s time-traveling odyssey
What you need to know about X-teams new and old before this grand finale
By
Kieran Shiach
Over 50 years ago, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced us to these five teenagers with amazing powers gifted to them by a quirk of genetics. Dubbed “mutants” by the general public, but molded into the X-Men by their mentor, Professor Charles Xavier, they dedicated their lives to protecting a world that hated and feared them; then, they grew up and grew apart. In the pages of X-Men comics, readers got to see these heroes grow from teenagers to adults and students to teachers. They fell in love and were married. They died and were reborn. Decades after their introduction, each character was significantly different from their original incarnation.
Five years ago, Marvel Comics brought the original five teenage X-Men to the present through time-travel hijinks, and there have been two sets of founding X-Men running around the Marvel Universe ever since. This week’s Extermination #1, by Ed Brisson, Pepe Larraz, Marte Gracia and Joe Sabino. is billed as the end of their story, but as is often the case with X-Men comics, the continuity and the history of the stories that got us to this point can be daunting to say the least. Before you check out Extermination, we’ve put together a crash course on the time-displaced mutants so you know who they are, why they came to the present, how they’ve changed while there, and why it’s such a big deal that they’re going away.
