Friday News Bites for 10/3/08

Here's a quick round-up of the news from around the web this week related to Rachel Summers, Kingbreaker and War of Kings:

IGN talked to X-Editors Nick Lowe and John Barber about the future of X-Books, and the Starjammers and War of Kings came up. Unforunately, it doesn't seem like any of the other X-Men will be helping the Starjammers:

IGN Comics: Unsurprisingly, Havok and the rest of the Starjammers are going to be playing a large role in War of Kings next year. Outside of the main event and the Kingbreaker prologue, will the X-Men be caught up in this storyline? Will the main team be reunited with these castaways anytime soon?

Lowe: The X-Men won't play a role in War of Kings. They've got enough on their plates. But definitely check out Kingbreaker. You'll get to see some of the best Havok/Polaris stuff in years.

Y'know, if Scott's brother was captured and on the verge of being executed, and Rachel, Lilandra and Korvus are the only remaining Starjammers fighting the whole Shi'ar empire, you would think Scott might actually be interested in sending someone to help??? It's not like the X-Men have that much on the plates in San Francisco...

The X-Editors go on to talk about future crossovers, which hopefully the X-Jammers and Rachel will be back on earth for:

IGN Comics: Outside of these two events are there any big, encompassing event books that the books are building towards, a la Messiah Complex. Given the success of MC, is a follow-up at least being considered by the various writers and editors?

Lowe: There certainly are. We have a big plan for the summer of 2009 that will have big ramifications with the rest of the Marvel U, and then we have a huge "Messiah Complex" style crossover coming in 2010.

Speaking of War of Kings, on Marvel.com, there is a video interview with Cosmic writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. Marvel has also opened their War of King hub, but there isn't much there yet.

Comic Book Urban Legends brought up the never published Phoenix Limited Series:

COMIC URBAN LEGEND: Rick Leonardi and Chris Claremont began work on a Phoenix mini-series that never saw the light of day.

STATUS: True

Reader Jonathan Nathan suggested this one, and yes, apparently Chris Claremont and Rick Leonardi began work on a Phoenix mini-series spun out of Uncanny X-Men that was canceled after pages were already finished!

You can read more about it this site's Phoenix Limited Series page.

To wrap up this week's new bites, here's some fun fan art done by Carly Monardo, which is "What if Rachel was drawn by Gary Baseman":