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Come March 2010, there will be a second coming, but it’s probably not what you would expect. A messiah will return to the current timeline. However, this young lady is a mutant messiah. X-Men fans should know what I’m talking about. Since the 2007 X-crossover event Messiah Complex the X-universe has centered around a mutant infant, now an attractive late-teenager named Hope, who is the prophesied messiah or destroyer of mutant-kind. Cable was given the role of protecting the young child after Messiah Complex and time-leaped into the future to hide her from renegade X-Man Bishop. In 2009, black-ops team X-Force time-jumped into the future to aid Cable with the burden of protecting Hope from Bishop, which resulted in the mini-event Messiah War. Second Coming will have Hope’s journey come full circle when she returns to the present and must materialize in her role as an uncertain messiah.

Second Coming will cross into four X-titles, Uncanny X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, X-Force, and New Mutants. Like its predecessor Messiah Complex, each issue will be schedule to ship in weekly installments. With Messiah Complex, this well organized scheduling was perhaps the series greatest strength. If Second Coming can be equally coordinated, it should be a fantastic conclusion for the Messiah trilogy.

Writing duties will fall on Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost (X-Force), Matt Fraction (Uncanny X-Men), Mike Carey (X-Men: Legacy), and Zeb Wells (New Mutants). A full lineup of artist hasn’t been entirely announced, but David Finch is scheduled to illustrate the Second Coming one-shot that will kick off the series. Second Coming will also see the departure of dream-team (and two of my personal favorite writers) Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost from their mighty relaunched X-Force. However, the writing team will go out with quite the bang, not only delivering Second Coming but also X-event Necrosha this fall.

The major players in Second Coming are looking to be the obvious Hope and Cable, X-Force, villain Bastion, and a newly confident Rouge. Though the big question remains whether or not Hope will be a reincarnation of Jean Grey or not. Hope’s mutant ability hasn’t manifested yet, but, aside from appearance, she is closer to a guerrilla fighter than Jean Grey. If it turns out to be Jean, it will throw in an interesting wrench into Scott Summers and Emma Frost’s romantic relationship.

I’m looking forward to this event probably more than anything else in mainstream comics. It’s remarkable impressive how well Messiah Complex was planned since the beginning. It launch a very distinctive and rewarding line of X-books. Second Coming is long-awaited and should be a fitting conclusion. It will be X-citing to see how it launches the next chapter in X-history as well.

-Jon

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