Spoils of War - Catching Up

Right, so I've a) missed a few comics and b) missed most news since the beginning of the year due to two modems breaking one after the other. So, I've got catching up to do.
Remember the Secret Invasion playing cards? The thing where they identified every card with a superhero important to Secret Invasion? Thy did four once a week on CBR. They're doing a similar thing with War of Kings, Except this time its chess pieces. So far we have:
White King - Black Bolt
White Queen - Medusa
Black King - Vulcan
Black Queen - Deathbird

I expect Ronan, Triton, Crystal, Karnak and Gorgon to appear on the white side, and Gladiator to appear on the black side. I'm not sure what they'll do with the Guardians and former Guardians, the Starjammers, Nova and Darkhawk.

Its an interesting and cool idea, as long as we remember that this has nothing to do with the Hellfire Club. Or cult. Or whatever it is these days. Oh, and by the way, it seems that Black Bolt has conquered the Kree. I missed that somewhere. Probably SI: Inhumans. But it seems to be quite a pleasant conquest, Black Bolt regarding the Kree as distant family, and them regarding him with the respect due a great warrior.It seems that Young X-Men is now cancelled - it ends with issue #12. This is not surprising. YXM was strangely handled. I'm sure having Donald Pierce posing as Cyclops to pit the Young X-Men against the New Mutants seemed like a good idea at the time, bit it didn't work. People accused the writer of writing Cyclops badly, when he was actually writing Donald Pierce posing as Cyclops quite well, but nobody knew it. The whole 'someone will die!' plot probably would have worked if Kyle and Yost hadn't already been killing New X-Men with wanton abandon. It may even have worked if the mutant that was killed had been Anole, Rockslide or Dust (or here's an idea - Cannonball) instead of….Wolfcub. People certainly would have been upset, but probably upset in a way that made them buy the book. Instead everyone lost interest, including me, sales dropped, and now its cancelled.

Except, rumour has it that a New Mutants series is in the work. Leading me to suggest that Young X-Men hasn't actually been cancelled. I have the feeling that the stories that were going to be told in #13 onwards will now be told in New Mutants #1 onwards. Natrually the stories will be somewhat adjusted, but essentially the same. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I think it’s a good idea - they are giving the series a second chance at a start under a name guaranteed to sell a few copies. Now they just have to make sure the stories are good, and work in context with stuff going on around them.
And then there is something called Timestorm. I have a strange relationship with the 2099 line. When I was younger, I watched a Black Panther TV series that took place in the future. I can't remember if it was called Black Panther 2099, but that's basically what it was. I had never heard of the Panther before this, so I will always think of this hero of a dystopian future as the original Panther, meaning I think of the one that hangs around with Storm in the present day as low-tech copy of the original Panther. I know its weird, but that’s the way it is. I doubt I'll get Timestorm, though, as I doubt it will be anything like the TV series.Psylocke is returning to the X-Men soon, at least that's what Sword of the Braddocks seems to indicate. This makes me happy. I like Psylocke. She has a psi-sword. Its cool. Its like Pixie's souldagger. Yeah, I know they come from completely different sources, but lets face it, they're both sharp things that get pulled out of the air, and mess with magic or mental abilities (which are often similar).