Published Mar 5, 2026, 7:31 PM EST
CBR senior staff writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for over fifteen years now at CBR (primarily with his “Comics Should Be Good” series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed). He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House – Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia! and one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post, Vulture and Gizmodo. He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed and other pop culture features at Pop Culture References. Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you'd like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!
The following contains spoilers for X-Men: United #1, out next week from Marvel Comics
After the Age of Revelation, the X-Men books are entering a period called "The Shadows of Tomorrow," where our favorite mutants are all haunted by the revelations of, well, you know, the Age of Revelation, which showed a dark period for both mutants and the world itself ten years in the future.
With such a drastic sight, the X-Men are trying to adjust in the way that they do things, and Emma Frost and Kitty Pryde are stepping up with a brand-new school for mutants that will take place on "Graymatter Lane" (a reference to how Xavier's school was located on Graymalkin Lane), a school within each mutant's mind, created by Emma Frost. This will all take place in a new series, X-Men United, which will take the place of Exceptional X-Men, with the writer of that series, Eve Ewing, writing this new series, and CBR has an exclusive preview of the first issue by Ewing and artist Tiago Palma...
X-MEN UNITED #1
EVE L. EWING (W) • TIAGO PALMA (A) • CONNECTING COVERS A & B BY STEFANO CASELLI
VARIANT COVER BY EMA LUPACCHINO • VARIANT COVER BY PEACH MOMOKO
VARIANT COVER BY DERRICK CHEW • VIRGIN VARIANT COVER BY DERRICK CHEW
VARIANT COVER BY W. SCOTT FORBES • VARIANT COVER BY SKOTTIE YOUNG
GRAYMATTER LANE VARIANT COVER BY TIAGO PALMA • VARIANT COVER BY TBA
FOIL VARIANT COVER BY MATTEO LOLLI
WELCOME TO GRAYMATTER LANE, LEARN TO SURVIVE THE EXPERIENCE!
“Build a school,” Charles Xavier told them, and the X-Men have done so – but in a manner nobody saw coming! Welcome to Graymatter Lane, a place where mutants anywhere in the world can come together in unity to teach one another the skills needed for their survival! With instructors including Wolverine, Beast, Prodigy, Magneto and more, and a campus unlike any before seen, it’s the crossroads of the X-Universe as a student body from across the globe works to take mutantkind to the next step in their evolution – and to cope with a brewing threat to all of their number!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$4.99
In the preview pages, we see Emma Frost telepathically connect herself to every mutant she can find, and reveal that the gate to Graymatter Lane will now open. She accompanies it with music in everyone's mind. Suddenly, telepathic "gates" pop up around every major mutant in the world.
Once the mutant enters the "gate," they will find themselves in a telepathic construct created by Emma Frost which will allow all of the world's mutants to be taught by various X-Men legends. This will all be done in a school with Kitty Pryde as the headmaster.
We see Kitty talking with Nightcrawler about how Emma has surprisingly allowed Kitty to be the headmaster of the school instead of her. As she arrived, Iceman noted that Kitty was very conspiciously late for Emma's first speech to the new students.
As the preview ends, Cyclops is ready with a question for Emma, and it sure doesn't seem like it will be a POLITE question. To see what Cyclops has to say, you'll have to pick up a copy of X-Men United #1, out next week!
English (US) · 