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With Kitty planning on reviving Xavier’s original Dream in ‘X-Men Gold‘, it seems like writer Marc Guggenheim has decided to bring back the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to oppose it. One of the lamest named yet deadliest enemies of the X-Men is going to have a new face and agenda as it fights our heroes who have freshly returned to Earth.

While Guggenheim is pretty quiet on the driving force behind this new Brotherhood, he is open as to who is a part of it. Not only that but he feels that the name is a bit off as many villains don’t see themselves as evil, and it sounds as if the members of this group won’t either.

This new team will be another case of mutants, and others, who have ideological differences in how they see the world from the X-Men and that will put them at odds with the team.

On the team itself? This is where he really gets descriptive by saying:

“Let’s see. Well, we have Avalanche and Pyro. We’ve got Magma who is a former New Mutant who, as far as anyone is aware, is not an evil mutant, so her inclusion in the group is a bit unexpected. I don’t want to spoil much about what she’s doing there, but given what Dan and I were discussing about the origins of this Brotherhood, we thought it would be fun to include someone who everyone knew but did not necessarily know as this bad guy.

I’ve always had a fondness for Magma. I like her look, I like her power set. She struck me as someone who would be fun in that role.

After Magma we have Cleevus. Cleevus is this really strange alien looking character who, hopefully, no one has seen before because he’s a brand new character who is getting his first appearance in X-MEN GOLD. This character is going to prove to be far more important than it looks like at first blush. He’s hiding some mysteries to him.

Actually, with Cleevus I’m laying seeds for some stories that we probably won’t get to for another year or at least another six months. Forgot about that double shipping.

Then there’s Masque for the Morlocks. I included Masque because, in this group of evil mutants we’ve got two guys who are new incarnations of previously established characters, a brand new character, we’ve got an established character who’s never been established as a bad guy in Magma. I wanted to round out the group with just one honest-to-god evil mutant who you had seen before being evil.

I’ve always liked Masque. First of all, when I was growing up, I could never tell if Masque was a man or a woman and I liked how the character was written to be gender ambiguous and drawn that way as well. The power is not a very useful power in terms of battle, but it’s very cool visually and creepy as hell. Masque just struck me as really evil.

Mesmero is, essentially, revealed to be the leader of the team.

First of all, I’ve always seen Mesmero as a…well, not a D-list villain but certainly on the C-list and I’m a fan of seeing villains level up as antagonists. I think Mesmero is ripe for an upgrade or a makeover.”

That is quite an extensive lineup, but as stated above he doesn’t see them as evil. In fact, Marc jokes that “They should probably just call themselves the Brotherhood of Self-Aware Mutants.” That being said, they do pick up the mantle of evil for a very specific reason though we won’t find out what that is until the near the end of the first story arc.

As you may have noticed a couple of the members of the team were previously deceased in the 616 Universe. New mutants were brought into play here specifically because Marc’s first view of the team was in “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and he wanted to stick as close to that route as possible. As to the alien, we’re six months to a year away as to finding out what his deal is.

I’m curious as to if Magneto will have anything to say about this new team of mutants though suspect that he’ll be too busy to be involved here in a significant capacity.

What did you think of the return of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants? Any thoughts on the lineup or why they are taking up the mantle of Evil? Share your thoughts below True Believers!

‘X-Men Gold’ #1 is currently available at your local comic shop!

Source: Marvel

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Stuart Conover is an author, blogger, and all around geek. When not busy being a father and husband he tries to spend as much time as possible immersed in comic books, science fiction, and horror! Would you like to know more? Follow him on Twitter!