The upcoming X of Swords event will span across the entire line of X-Men books, covering 22 issues in total. X-Men editor Jordan D. White spoke about how the event grew in size from nine to 22 parts, revealing there were several factors in play.
"The first and foremost reason is that when we were digging into the story, there was a lot more we wanted to do than we thought we could fit in one month of comics," White told Newsarama. "We were pretty committed to a schedule though, at that point, so we would have made it work... except the publishing schedule being blown up gave us more time to develop things that we wouldn't have had otherwise."
The X of Swords schedule "being blown up" is a reference to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which halted the production of several comics. White also said that he wanted to give fans something to take their minds off of the state of current events, stating, "I don't need to tell you about all the strife and problems the world was facing, you were there, you know it as well as we do - but we saw all this and said 'Let's do something bigger and make a bigger splash! The world is bad right now. Let's give people somewhere else to be for a while.'"
X of Swords will feature the X-Men battling the Swordbearers of Arrako, the sister nation of Krakoa. The event begins with X of Swords: Creation #1 by Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard and Pepe Larraz, which goes on sale this Sept. 23.