Popverse's top stories

• Fast & Furious tokyo drifts into the one place it hasn't gone before - live-action TV
• Ngozi Ukazu's Check, Please! was first on/last off on the queer hockey romance craze; here's how it's coming back in this Heated Rivalry era
• The Boys S4 left Karl Urban restless, so he signed up for Mortal Kombat II

There are a lot of reasons why we love reading X-Men comics, and one of them is the drama. I mean, what's juicier than the clone of Jean Grey, Madelyne Pryor, going bad and unleashing a demonic horde onto New York City? And that's not touching on the messiness of Madelyne and Cyclops's son, Cable, returning back to the present from the future as a massive, grizzled man with more pockets than one could feasibly ever use. How do you even parent your son who is now twice your own age? And while all of this has been going on, one of the original X-Men, Beast, has quietly violated the Geneva Conventions. It's just another Tuesday in X-Men comics!

One of the writers of Marvel Studios' upcoming X-Men film, Lee Sung Jin, revealed in an interview with Men's Health that his love of Marvel's Merry Mutants runs deep. For Lee, the X-Men film marks a reunion with screenwriter Joanna Calo and director Jake Schreier, both of whom he collaborated with in last year's Thunderbolts* film. 

"I wasn't planning on doing another Marvel thing because I do have a lot I want to explore in my personal projects. But [director] Jake [Schreier] is one of my best friends, and when he comes calling with X-Men…come on, you drop everything for that. I grew up waking up every Saturday morning and turning on the cartoon. I watched every single episode. When they came back with X-Men '97, I devoured that," Lee began. 

"The original Claremont run of the comics is near and dear to my heart. What I'm excited about with Jake's vision for the X-Men—and [Marvel president Kevin Feige and co-president Lou D’Esposito] are fully aligned with his vision—is that he wants to get back to focusing on the characters first. These are amazing characters with very rich backstories full of so much emotion. There are so many intra-team dynamics and relationships. There's soapy stuff. And sure, there are political themes baked into the DNA of X-Men too, and those are evergreen, but we want to get back to character-first storytelling."

Hopefully, there is a place for Forge and Storm's dynamic (as told in Uncanny X-Men #186's "Lifedeath" story) in Shreier's X-Men film. 

To me, my X-Men fans. Want more about Marvel's mutants? You don't need Cerebro to find what you should read next... we made a list!

• The best X-Men comics
• Every Omega-Level X-Men mutant ranked by power
• How to read the Marvel Comics' X-Men in order following the Krakoa era
• Why the Krakoan Age of X-Men was ended by Marvel
• How to watch the X-Men movies in order