The next wrinkle in the unfolding story of the X-Men is all about the newest mutant power: unlimited resurrection. Polygon can exclusively announce the next book to join Marvel’s expanding X-Men slate is X-Factor, and partly about the Five, a group of characters whose powers combine to create the miracle of mutant immortality.

But it’s mostly about a new team of Krakoan operatives, comprised of the speedy Northstar, one of Marvel’s earliest openly queer characters; the all-seeing Eye Boy; the telepathic Rachel Grey; the polymath Prodigy; the magnetic Polaris; and Daken, Wolverine’s disaster son. They are X-Factor, and their job is to investigate and confirm mutant deaths — but not to avenge them.

That’s because the Five resurrect a mutant by creating a new body for them, and telepathically implanting a backup of their mind and personality. In the new series, X-Factor will hunt down missing mutants to confirm their deaths, so that the Five never run the risk of creating a duplicate of a living mutant — because that’s a big no no.

Leah Williams and David Baldeón, fresh off of Gwenpool Strikes Back, will craft the series, due this spring. And while it was initially pitched as a missing persons mystery book, Williams jumped at the chance to dive deeper into the Five after noticing how interested fans were in how the resurrection process would change mutant culture.

“We’d already planned on having X-Factor report to the Five for obvious resurrection work reasons,” Williams told Polygon via email, “but I asked [Jonathan Hickman and X-Men editor Jordan D. White] if we could focus a significantly greater concentration on the Five to not only help develop their evolving group dynamic, but also how they come to establish each resurrection protocol.”

Williams also worked with Hickman and White to put together the X-Factor lineup. She chose Northstar after becoming attached to the character while writing this summer’s Age of X-Man: X-Tremists miniseries — and she says that one other character from that run, Blob (AKA Frederick J. Dukes), will return in X-Factor as well.

“His new role (thanks to Ben Percy and Josh Cassara!) is perfect,” Williams said, “and gives Freddy a bigger path threading through all our books.”

The rest of the team was chosen for their investigative capability: Eye Boy for his x-ray vision, Rachel Grey as the resident telepath (“She’s our team’s James Dean,” Williams’ says), Prodigy because “his powers make him an investigative Swiss Army Knife,” Daken because the team needed a “fucky thot enforcer.”

And Magneto’s daughter, Polaris? “Northstar may be the team leader,” Williams said, “but Polaris is the north star. For everything.”

Northstar is one of Marvel’s earliest openly gay characters, and his wedding to his husband Kyle was the first depiction of a same-sex superhero wedding in a main DC or Marvel continuity. His inclusion in X-Factor offers Williams and Baldeón an opportunity to unpack a different kind of minority relationship in the X-men world: A mutant married to a baseline human.

“Kyle is a human living in a world built for and by mutants — comparatively an outsider [...],” Williams said. “We’ll see a lot of their married life and will be exploring all the important nuance to their living situation in Krakoa. (We’ll actually see a lot of every X-factor team member’s romantic life...) Tini Howard [Excalibur, Thanos] and I might also be collaborating on a really exciting story involving human existence in Krakoa, so be on the lookout for clues about that in one of our books!”

Williams has been coordinating with other X-Men writers on the “X-Slack,” which she says became her “happy place,” along with the “‘trash queer squad’ Discord server where Tini Howard, Vita Ayala [Age of X-Man: Prisoner X, Morbius the Living Vampire], and I act like shitlord fangoblins freely.”

And true to the language of Slack and Discord, when Polygon asked whether Mister Sinister’s untoward interest in mutant resurrection protocols would come up in X-Factor, Williams merely replied with a “:)”

What she could share about the future of the comic was all about the mystery of it.

“In X-FACTOR #1 we present a kind of game via the data pages, and I want to encourage reader participation in figuring it all out because I love all y’all’s questions. [...] I made a love letter in the form of our new X-Factor Investigations; which is full of intrigue, action, sexiness, and secret bread-crumb trails for you to find.

“The entire series is layered with clues about mutant resurrection’s ultimate end-game,” she concluded, “but you’ll have to keep reading to figure it all out.”

Below you’ll find two unfinished pages from X-Factor #1. The 48-page issue will hit shelves in April, and feature variant covers from Otto Schmidt, Ema Lupacchino, David Baldeón, and Tom Muller.

Here’s the official summary, from Marvel Comics: