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Marvel reveals the winner of its fan vote to choose the newest X-Men team member

Christian Holub
·4 min read
Marvel reveals the winner of its fan vote to choose the newest X-Men team member

Election season is finally over for the X-Men. Back in January, Marvel conducted a public vote for fans to choose a member of the newest X-Men team that is set to debut at the much-anticipated Hellfire Gala in June's Planet-Sized X-Men #1. As with any election, there can only be one winner, and unfortunately lots of losers. But at least fans get to see how each of the candidates — Banshee, Polaris, Forge, Boom-Boom, Tempo, Cannonball, Sunspot, Strong Guy, Marrow, and Armor — responded to the results in a new series of mini-comics published to Marvel's social media accounts over the past week.

Written by Zeb Wells (Hellions) and illustrated by a variety of artists (including Rachelle Rosenberg who colored them all), each installment of these Twitter comics featured two candidates each reckoning with their loss. First up was Strong Guy and Forge, illustrated by Mike Henderson. Despite the fact that Forge has used his mutant affinity with technology to develop all kinds of bio-organic resources for the new mutant nation-state on the living island of Krakoa, Strong Guy points out that they're equal in defeat.

Next up were Boom-Boom and Tempo, drawn by Nico Leon. As Boom-Boom pointed out in the comic, these two used to be bitter enemies back in the '90s when Boom-Boom was a member of X-Force and Tempo was a part of the radical Mutant Liberation Front. But that's the thing about the Krakoa era: It's a great time for second chances. Old enemies can now reconcile, even if Boom-Boom's drunken attitude makes Tempo use her time-travel powers to skip through a sloshy conversation.

Marrow and Armor's conversation, illustrated by Emilio Laiso, revolved around their opposite powersets. As her name indicates, Armor's power is very defensive: She can create an energetic exoskeleton around her body (it's awesome). Marrow's power, by contrast, is very offensive: She can extract sharp bones from her body for use as weapons (for any X-Men: Evolution fans out there, Marrow basically has the same powers as Spike). Yet they both lost out to someone whose powers create opportunities for offense and defense.

Cannonball and Sunspot are old friends, dating back to their time on the original New Mutants team. Over the course of the currently ongoing New Mutants comic, they've decided to take up residence in the Shi'ar Empire, where Cannonball is married to Imperial Guard member Smasher and Sunspot is swooning over royal regent Deathbird. This X-Men vote represented a chance for one of them to come back to Earth and Krakoa, but instead, it just provided an opportunity for more friendly bickering in a comic drawn by Diego Olortegui.

Marvel Comics

That left only two: Banshee and Polaris. They are two of the longest-tenured X-Men, having both debuted back in the '60s. As we see in the comic illustrated by David Messina, they also both feel overshadowed by similarly-powered relatives: Banshee's daughter Siryn and Polaris' father Magneto. But it was Polaris who won in the end, prompting Banshee to grab a tray of drinks for himself and the other losers.

Even though there could only be one winner, the presence of more obscure characters like Marrow and Tempo in this race creates the possibility that they could be brought into other X-Men-related comics, since there certainly are a lot right now! After all, the current X-Factor group will need a replacement for Lorna now that she's moving over to the varsity team.

Check out all the election webcomics below, and stay tuned for the Hellfire Gala in June's Planet-Sized X-Men one-shot.

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