I have to give it to Bunn, he’s doing something that is very hard to do in any franchise: bring in a new original character. keep them in the front, and make it work.
Right now there is a lot of new mutants popping up, especially in Bendis’ Uncanny X-Men you have a whole group of original characters, but they tend to just be more of a story device than actual full characters. The stories still revolve around the core group of mutants, Scott, Wolverine, Kitty, Storm, Emma, etc… characters that have at least been around since the 80s. Even in Wolverine and the X-Men , most of the story revolves around pre-existing characters like Quire and Idie, with of course a heavy dose of Wolvie. It’s like no one is really trying to shake things up and do new things.
Part of the reason is because readers will only spend so much money on the comics, it’s purely economics, there are a lot more titles to choose from and only so much money to spend. Marvel feels safer giving us known characters rather than risking new ones. Granted, that’s probably the best idea when it comes to Solo’s, but for team books, you think they would let the writers experiment more, freshen things up?
That’s what happening here in Fearless, not only do we have some of the B-List characters who are kicking butt, we’ve also been introduced to Annabelle, a brand new character who literally shares the spotlight with Valkyrie and holds her own as a character. Through her life, death, and weird body time-share thing, the reader is made to care about her and see her as a hero even if she doesn’t weld a big sword. She’s not a story device, she’s a main character along with all the others. Even if you’re not a fan of Annabelle, you’re not overwhelmed with her presence any more than, say, Misty.
This is what we should be seeing in all the X-Titles, new characters alongside the characters we already love as equals. Someone give Marvel the memo…
X-Men: The (fan fic) Series 
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