With both Craig Kyle and Chris Yost's X-Force Vol. 3 and Rick Remender's Uncanny X-Force consistently ranking among Marvel's top-selling books, it should come as little surprise that the publisher is electing to expand their X-Force focus for Marvel NOW! Two new X-Force books are being prepped for launch. Dennis Hopeless and Salvador Larroca are helming Cable and X-Force, while Sam Humphries and Ron Garney are launching a new volume of Uncanny X-Force.

The latter book was the subject of today's Next Big Thing press call. Humphries and editor Nick Lowe were both present to discuss the relaunch and what Marvel NOW! holds in store for this eclectic band of mutant assassins.Humphries started things off by teasing the impending finale of Remender's series. "Even though my issue doesn't come out until January, I'm on pins and needles for Rick's final issue to come out, because it's so good. So many great things happen in that issue that I've been privy to for so long now and I've had to keep my mouth shut... Rick's run is a complete story. It has a beginning, middle, and end. He really wrapped it up. He addresses questions and answers them. It's kind of the comic book equivalent of dropping the microphone and walking off stage."That said, readers shouldn't expect Humphries' book to be a simple continuation of Remender's work. "Rick's run is really its own thing. I love it and I respect it, but I love it and respect it enough to take it in a new direction. Which is kind of a proud tradition of X-Force throughout the ages, from the original extreme era in the 90s to the Peter Milligan and Mike Allred book to Chris Yost and Craig Kyle's and again into Rick Remender's book."Humphries continued, "I'm really excited to get back to the core of what X-Force is all about, which is telling stories in the mutant universe that you can't find anywhere else. This is not a book where you have Wolverine and Cyclops and Nightcrawler. This is not the marquee team-up you've seen a billion times before. These are not the same situations you've seen a billion times before. This is a new lineup of characters who have a complex web of personal interactions between each other. They have a lot of complicated history and a lot of layers together. And they're all thrown together for the first time. They're off on their own, exploring the dark shadows and deep crevasses of the Marvel Universe that don't get touched upon in books like Uncanny Avengers or All-New X-Men." Lowe later compared the series and Humphries' pitch as "Mission: Impossible or James Bond as directed by David Lynch."Humphries then briefly touched upon each X-Force member and their respective role in the book. Storm's resurgent punk mohawk was the first topic of discussion, as is only fitting. "Storm's mohawk was something that I pushed for at the very early stages. The first time she had a mohawk, it wasn't just about the punk look or the leather outfit or whatever. It was really about the transformation Storm had been going through in her life... It's about the mohawk as a symptom of the transformations in Storm's life. We are in another place in Storm's life where she's perhaps going through even bigger transformations. She's been the teacher, the goddess, the queen, and the wife for a while now. She just got unceremoniously dumped, in my opinion. She's finding herself in a different place where the future she counted on is no longer there. And she's going to have to find a new path."Psylocke is the one holdover character from Remender's series, and Humphries will be picking up where his predecessor left off with her character. “It's difficult to talk about where Betsy is in issue #1 and why she's doing what she's doing without spoiling Rick's last issue. Suffice it to say that this is a new era for X-Force. This isn't a blank slate. We're not ignoring what's come before. With a couple characters, we're picking up threads specifically that Rick has planted and so generously left dangling for us to continue. Where Betsy is in her life right now is definitely one of those strongest threads. I will say that she's dissatisfied with her life when the series begins. She's in a similar place as Storm. They have a lot to bond over.”As for Puck, Lowe said that the diminutive Alpha Flight member will be the "breakout character" of the series, comparing him to Fantomex in the previous volume in terms of his underdog status and his ability to inject humor into the book. Lowe also revealed that Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso had the original idea to include Puck on the team. Lowe said, "It's not a joke. He's not a little guy who bounces around like a bowling ball. He is a force to be reckoned with. This is a heroic take on the character."Next up was Spiral, or as Humphries referred to her, "the hero of millions of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 players. She's a badass character. She's a swordfighter and teleporter who comes from a crazy sci-fi world. When we first encounter her in issue #1, she is trapped on Earth. She's in a position where she has to come up with a way to live life on the fringes. She can't be a part of the whole Uncanny Avengers scene. She can't go to the school. She can't join Cyclops and crew. She's just one of those characters who doesn't belong anywhere right now. She's not a hero or a villain. She has to decide what life is going to be for her.” Humphries revealed that the antagonistic relationship between Psylocke and Spiral will be reflected in the book.The final of the five X-Force members revealed so far is Cluster, the female character wearing Fantomex's uniform. Humphries was reluctant to reveal much about Cluster, other than that Remender's final issue will shed more light on her. He also noted that a mystery sixth member will join the team a few issues down the road.With a cast comprised of four female X-Men and only one male, Uncanny X-Force is bucking the typical, male-dominated trend of most superhero team books. Humphries said that it wasn't necessarily his intent to focus on female characters, but that he wanted to reflect a larger diversity of characters that included race and nationality. "This is a book about outsiders. It wasn't a book to have a bunch of blonde-haired, blue-eyed dudes in it. But there wasn't any sort of affirmative action checklist we went down... [The roster] started coalescing when we started talking about the team dynamic and what the previous relationships were to each other." Lowe added, "It wasn't until I saw the first cover from Olivier Coipel that I was like 'Oh, wait a second. Puck is the only guy [laughs]. That's pretty awesome!'"While Humphries was reluctant to get into too many plot details, he did discuss Bishop's role as the central villain of the first arc. “He's a character who went to great lengths to try and murder a little girl. He went to great lengths to try to kill Hope Summers because he thought it was the right thing to do. Having failed to do that and also coming to terms to the fact that maybe he was wrong, that changes a man. Being stranded 4000 years in the future and having to find a way back – that's going to change a man. The things that you see and encounter and the things you have to do to survive in the future – that's going to change a man as well. We're going to see a Bishop who, at his core, is the same person, but has been through quite a lot since we last saw him. He's going to come into direct collision with Betsy and Spiral and Storm and Puck and the whole team. It's going to be explosive.”Humphries was reluctant to reveal too many plot details or other villains, but he did hint that the rivalry between Bishop and Cable would be a natural catalyst for a crossover between the two X-Force books at some point in the foreseeable future. He also downplayed the idea of another clash between X-Force and the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, as most of the surviving Brotherhood members will be otherwise occupied during Marvel NOW!As for the visuals, Humphries said that the tone of the series came together once he saw the distinctive character designs from artist Kris Anka (who rendered the issue #2 and 3 covers included in this article). As for interior artist Ron Garney, he said, "I love having Ron on the book because he's such a great storyteller. Everything he touches just kills it on the storytelling... The things we're bringing out of Ron are things you've never seen him draw before. Ron in some ways is really the anchor of this book, and I know that whatever I throw at him, he can nail it."Uncanny X-Force #1 is scheduled to ship in January 2013. Stay tuned to IGN Comics for more coverage of the series, and check back Thursday evening for a report on the next Marvel press call.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter , or Kicksplode on MyIGN