‘It Is Happening’: Milligan Provides an Update on X-Statix Spinoff ‘The X-Cellent’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Writer Peter Milligan and artist Mike Allred returned to their early 2000s X-team, the celebrity mutant X-Statix, last year in “Giant-Size X-Statix,” a one-shot that pitted a new version of the team, with a new U-Go-Girl, against a rogue splinter group led by famously dead former member Zeitgeist (Y’know, the one who died again on screen in “Deadpool 2”).

The end of that comic teased “The X-Cellent,” an all new series by Milligan and Allred, “coming next year.”

Art by Mike and Laura Allred

Well, next year has nearly come and gone (delaying many a comic along the way, due to the pandemic), but, in a chat recorded for an upcoming episode of Xavier Files’ WMQ&A podcast, Milligan assures us:

“It is happening. … Absolument.”

The writer said he and Allred have planned “The X-Cellent” as a 10-part maxiseries. Milligan is almost done writing it, and Allred is in the process of drawing alongside his colorist wife, Laura.

“It has everything you want from a Mike Allred and Laura … bit of artwork,” Milligan said.

He said the new series will find new things to say with the characters, pushing beyond the celebrity culture commentary that permeated the original version of the series, which famously drew heat for resurrecting Princess Diana and making her a mutant.

“There’s a new team, there’s some new characters, plus some old characters who have been dragged out of the grave and stitched together,” Milligan said.For more from this conversation, which also focused on Milligan’s current books “Happy Hour” at AHOY Comics and “American Ronin” at AWA, listen to next week’s WMQ&A podcast.

Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts WMQ&A: The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.