With two X-Men films at varying stages of production right now, there’s tons of news coming from that corner of the Marvel Universe. The one that’s on it’s way to theaters first is ‘The Wolverine’ from director James Mangold. Fox has recently released another official image from the film that features star Hugh Jackman as James Howlett, the hero better known as Wolverine, in a battle-ready position complete with adamantium claws ready to snikt. The new picture can bee seen below thanks to Screen Rant.

‘The Wolverine’ starring Hugh Jackman, Will Yun Lee, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hal Yamanouchi, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima, and Brian Tee will be in theaters on July 26, 2013.

Speaking of Wolverine, Fox’s Marvel creative consultant Mark Millar, who wrote one of my all-time favorite Wolverine stories, ‘Old Man Logan’, recently spoke to SciFiNow about the dangers of using the character too much in the X-Men films. Aside from appearing in his second solo adventure this summer, Logan has appeared in all the X-Men movies to date and has signed on to appear in the upcoming ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’. Here’s what Millar had to say about too much Wolvie:

“I don’t think it detracts having individual Wolverine adventures from the X-Men. He’s like a lone wolf character, he disappears and does his own thing sometimes and then he comes back and hangs out at the mansion, so it does feel quite natural to for him to be in these movies.

[But] you don’t want to have him out there all the time, because I think if you’ve got him in X-Men and Wolverine movies and they’re all running at the same time, it’s a little bit too much but as long as you’re smart with it and there’s a lot of other characters to explore as well.”

Millar certainly has a point, and who knows what this could mean for Jackman’s appearance in ‘Days of Future Past’, but we’ll just have to wait and see how these things play out. Wolverine is one of the most popular and marketable members of the team, so it’s understandable why the studio would want him in so many things. We’ll just see if they continue to do so. I mean, if that Deadpool movie ever gets made, I don’t see why they need Logan in that one, you know?

Finally, in regards to the follow up to Matthew Vaughn’s ‘X-Men: First Class’, director Bryan Singer mentioned when he joined the project that his costume designer Louise Mingenbach would be joining him as well, however, the black leather suits from the original X-Men trilogy will not be making a comeback. When it came time for Charles Xavier and his team to suit up in ‘First Class’, Vaughn adapted the classic blue and yellow colors into more practical suits that were inspired by the era’s military and NASA uniforms. It’s unclear how the team in the new film will dress, but recently some concept art from ‘First Class’ featuring Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Professor X (James McAvoy) by artist Thomas Whitehouse recently surfaced to give us a glimpse of what the team could have been wearing. You can check them out in the gallery below:

I’m a fan of the color blue, but it looks like Whitehouse may have given us a bit much of it. After looking at what could have been, I’m very satisfied with what we got onscreen.

‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ is scheduled to be released on July 18, 2014.

That’s a whole lot of news to get through, and each has varying degrees of excitement. Do you think we’re getting too much Wolverine? Do you like the newest shot of Hugh Jackman as Weapon X? Would you have preferred the concept designs to what we saw in ‘X-Men: First Class’? Share your thoughts on it all in the comments below!