After 61 years and 700 comics, Gail Simone is Uncanny X-Men's first solo female writer

Popverse's top stories of the day

• Marvel is bringing back the West Coast Avengers, starring Iron Man, War Machine and... Ultron as a good guy?
• Follow along to the official Alien: Romulus panel from SDCC 2024 Hall H with Fede Álvarez, Cailee Spaeny, and more!
• Glorfindel is coming to Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power - here's what you need to know

Today in a hyped panel at SXSW 2024, Marvel announced its plans for the largest scale overhaul of the X-Men line behind-the-scenes and in-front-of-everyone in decades. It involves cancelling all of its current titles and re-tasking its editors, in favor of the company's top editor taking over and bringing with him mostly new creators to the X-Men line to launch nine new ongoing series.

In the flurry of news coming all at once, there's one thing that sticks out to us: Gail Simone writing Uncanny X-Men. While she was already announced to be writing the revamp's kickoff story in one of Marvel's Free Comic Book Day titles, Simone now on Uncanny X-Men - the legacy main title of the X-Men line going back to the whole franchise's inception in 1963 with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's very first issue, is historic.

Why?

It's the first time a woman has been the main writer of Uncanny X-Men in its 61-year history (and 700 issues).

Yes, we checked.

The closest to this was Kelly Thompson as one of three co-writers on the book for ten issues in 2018 and 2019. And while women and other non-male gendered individuals have written other important X-Men group and solo titles, including the spin-off to the franchise simply called 'X-Men', Gail Simone is the first to unreservedly write Marvel's first, and most historic, and longest-running X-Men title.

Simone's first issue will be August 7's Uncanny X-Men #1 with artist David Marquez, and according to Marvel's math this is the 701st issue of the series across numerous volumes.

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out our guides to upcoming movies, upcoming TV shows, upcoming comics, and upcoming comic conventions. If you're looking for specific franchises or genres, we have all the upcoming MCU, upcoming Star Wars, upcoming Star Trek, and upcoming DC movies & TV for you. If you're a fan of superheroes and not specific to just Marvel or DC, we have overall guides to all the upcoming superhero movies and upcoming superhero TV shows (and new seasons) as well.