With Disney’s acquisition of Fox, the X-Men are officially heading over to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Outside of the pending release of The New Mutants and any possible Deadpool sequels, that means that Fox’s long-running X-Men film franchise has likely come to an end.
While this puts Marvel’s mutants in the trusted hands of Marvel Studios, it leaves unresolved questions for a franchise that offered beloved and even definitive takes on characters such as Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. Since those questions won't be addressed on-screen anytime soon, one way Marvel could wrap up these plot points could be to continue this timeline in comic book format.
While at first it may seem far fetched there is an existing precedent for this sort of adaptation. DC Comics recognized the popularity of its ‘90s Batman: The Animated Series and the Superman origin show Smallville by publishing the comics Batman: The Adventures Continue and Smallville: Season 11 respectively. Marvel even published X-Men ‘92, which was a loose continuation of the always-popular X-Men: The Animated.
This wouldn't even be the first time Marvel printed comics about the cinematic X-Men. Before the first two X-Men movies, Marvel released a handful of one-shots that filled in the gaps around the stories in those films, occasionally bringing other fan-favorite characters into the cinematic X-Men world.
At a time when the status quo for mutants has been entirely flipped in the regular Marvel Universe, the continuation of Fox’s X-Men franchise would provide a more traditional take on the mutants for readers who prefer X-Men stories to stick more closely to their classic tales. While the creation of the sovereign nation of Krakoa has provided a breath of fresh air, there’s a certain nostalgia that comes from watching Professor Xavier and his students try to make the world a better place for mutants from the setting of their school that Marvel's current X-books simply lack.
There are also still plenty of questions out there about Fox’s X-Men. The acclaimed Logan told the story of an aged Xavier and Wolverine in a world where the rest of the X-Men were somehow killed by what seems to be a lapse of control of Xavier's powers. However, we never get to see exactly how that plays out, or what happens in the time between X-Men: Days of Future Past and Logan. The latest entry in the franchise, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, wasn't well-received but also raised many questions about the X-Men timeline considering the Pheonix appeared some 10 years earlier than it was previously shown to in X-Men: The Last Stand.
If Marvel Comics were to continue the series there are plenty of routes and storylines that seem ripe for the taking. The post-Days of Future Past timeline where Xavier, Logan, Jean, and Scott are all alive could provide a canvas to explore the team's adventures in a setting where most of the X-Men's major figures still active before Xavier is destined to kill all of his students.
Whether it’s to tie up loose ends or revisit fan-favorite versions of the characters, a comic series based on the Fox X-Men franchise would see some of Marvel's most beloved cinematic heroes live on in the medium that inspired them in the first place.