The big announcement at the X-Men panel this year was that Marvel have finally decided to pass their Amazing adjective across to their merry mutants: Amazing X-Men #1 is coming out later this year, from the creative team of Jason Aaron and Ed McGuinness.

The main starting hook of the series will be the return of Nightcrawler, who died of severe arm-through-the-chest back in X-Men: Second Coming. It seems as though this will build off the similar return of his ‘father’ Azazel, whom Kurt is swashbuckling in the image above. Also a member of the team? Firestar!

This will likely be the book taking the place of the soon-departing Astonishing X-Men, harkening back to the ‘A-List’ squad doing their best to make mutants look great. Rather than being Cyclops in charge, Wolverine will be picking his own all-star team to help him track down Nightcrawler and bring him back to life. Firestar, Storm, Northstar, Beast (Beast?!) and Iceman will make up his team.

Now, it looks like the first storyline is going to basically pick up on the idea of Hell first seen in Aaron’s Wolverine run from a while back. It sounds very much as though the team are going to jump down into Hell, and pull Nightcrawler out – Wolverine’s pulled himself out, so now he’s going to do the same for Nightcrawler.

The book will start in November, after the X-Men: Battle of the Atom mini-event finishes. The press release also says that the Uncanny X-Men are likely to find out about Nightcrawler’s return sooner rather than later. Somebody get Kitty and Colossus in on this story, please! And where’s Amanda Sefton?