The Marvel villain Nightmare returns from the dead in X-Men #4 preview

X-Men #4 excerpt (Envision course credit: Marvel Comics)

October 13's X-Men #4 will be a selfsame special Hallowe'en-themed installment of Marvel's mutant flagship title. From the looks of the trailer released to us past the publisher, IT's a little of a haunted house tale - with the business firm being the X-Men's room recently-created New House of York City headquarters, the Treehouse in Seneca Gardens.

It all starts with some bad dreams for Cyclops and Jean Grey, and then a storm Marvel scoundrel appears - backward from the dead and a ii-year absence. Check IT a preview of X-Work force #4 by writer Gerry Duggan, creative person Javier Pina, and colorist Erick Arciniega:

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X-Men #4 prevue

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That's Nightmare, which roughly call Marvel's suffice to DC's Sandman - but with a villainous bound. 'Lord of Dreams,' just wish Sandman/Dream, but he's been more of a night affright than a sage.

X-Men #4 will represent his apparent return from the deadened, as he definitively died in 2019's Loki #4 - losing a bet with the god of mischief for his immortality, with the drama plane showing Nightmare arriving in Marvel's variation of the afterlife and a meeting with their top deity, the One-Above-All.

Nightmare will apparently be one of two villains returning after a long absence - the other beingness a literary image - the Headless Horseman from Washington Irving's 1820 short story 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' (as seen happening the main cover to X-Workforce #4). That news report has been modified numerous times in film and television, just even comics - as a matter of fact, the Headless Horseman has been a Marvel character for nigh 70 years.

The Brainless Horseman made his Marvel debut in 1954's Uncanny Tales #22 with the story 'The Legend of Sleepy Vasiform.' That Stan Lee and Dick Ayers story ISN't an adaptation of Irving's short story only instead concerns a modern-day human World Health Organization tries to scare an enemy by impersonating the Headless Horseman and ends up meeting the historical Headless Horseman, who comes to penalize him for the impersonation.

Atomic number 2 popped up again in 2020's Ruins of Ravencroft: Sabretooth #1, disclosed to give birth been an actual Ghost Rider in the early 1800s - shut up headless, but carrying a lit skull (as befits a Ghost Rider, of course!).

Now it's likely Wonder could be qualification the two characters one and the unchanged - after complete, NIghtmare likes to personate other people and already has a horse, Dreamstalker. That would certainly exist something.

Regular X-Men series artist Pepe Larraz has drawn the main X-Men #4 cover, and in that location bequeath be variant covers from Declan Shalvey, Russell Dauterman, and Joe Jusko. Check over those X-Men #4 variants here:

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X-Men #4 covers

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X-Workforce #4 goes on sales event on October 13. A collection of the early six issues, titled X-Workforce by Gerry Duggan Vol. 1, is available for pre-order with a planned February 22, 2022 release.

Keep track of this and all the new X-Men comics , graphic novels, and collections in 2021 and beyond.

Newsarama Senior Editor Chris Arrant has covered comic book word for Newsarama since 2003, and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Wonder Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Sketch Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comical Shop class News, and CBR. He is the source of the book Modern: Masters Drop Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Shadow Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted Eastern Samoa a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a phallus of the American Library Affiliation's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)