SAN DIEGO — Nobody likes to see loved ones fight, unless those loved ones are groups of superheroes. Because that is definitely a thing right now.

Next up in the history of Marvel’s “versus” canon: Inhumans vs. X-Men, an all-new, standalone event series coming this winter, Mashable can exclusively report.

Charles Soule, whose Marvel writing credits have included Daredevil, Death of Wolverine and several Star Wars titles, will team with Jeff Lemire (All-New Hawkeye, Extraordinary X-Men, Moon Knight) for the six-book series.

The Inhumans, who’ve recently risen to prominence in the Marvel comics, and X-Men have been allies for decades. But the release of the Terrigen Mist, the substance that has infected a whole new generation of Inhumans (including Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, and the characters on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) is toxic to those who carry the X-gene.

Mashable caught up with Soule and Lemire to chat about this monumental clash between superhero races, and what it might mean in the bigger Marvel picture.

Why can’t Inhumans and X-Men coexist peacefully? What’s the underlying beef here?

Jeff Lemire: The Terrigen Mist, which gives The Inhumans their powers, is also toxic to Mutants and as we have seen in the past couple of years, it has been released into Earth’s atmosphere, essentially making Earth inhabitable for Mutants. Also, X-Men are fundamentally much cooler.    

Charles Soule: In the very first question, Jeff? Apparently, it is on.

This is being billed as a standalone, but surely its implications must cross over into Civil War II and other Marvel books?

JL: IvX will be contained in the X-Men and Inhuman universe of books. The main series will be co-written by Charles and me and it will tie in to the individual X-books and Inhuman titles. The consequences of this story will, however, impact the entire Marvel U for years to come.   

CS: Exactly. This story will rewrite the landscape of the Marvel Universe and, moving forward, its effects will ripple out into other stories.

We saw the X-Men battle the Avengers in 2012, which set into motion events that reverberated throughout Marvel Comics for years. Can we expect similar consequences here?   

JL: Absolutely. This is a huge story with wide-ranging implications and consequences. It will set up events in both the Mutant and Inhuman worlds for years, but also the wider Marvel Universe.   

CS: Part of the fun of an event like this is that all the stories we’ve been telling in our books (and by “we” I mean not just Jeff and myself, but all the Inhuman and X-Men writers over the past few years) are essentially a big line of dominoes we’ve been setting up. We get to knock them over in IvX, but then we get to start setting up the next big thing. The circle of comics life!   

Is this a fair fight? Aren’t there significantly more Inhumans than X-gene carriers?   

JL: Like any large group of people, neither the Mutants nor Inhumans act like they have a hive mind. Meaning they are a diverse group, with many points of view and many agendas. So it’s not so black and white. There are not simply two sides to this battle. So, for the Mutants, not everyone will agree with the conflict. And there will be factions within even those groups. So we really tried to draw in as many characters as we could, but to give them all a different voice, agenda and purpose in the story. You can expect to see the casts of Extraordinary X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, All-New X-Men as well as many other Mutants, some of whom we haven’t seen in a while.   

CS: The Inhumans work exactly the same way. There are several main factions — the “royal” Inhumans like Black Bolt and Medusa, the NuHumans, which include characters newer to the Inhuman world like Iso and Reader, and of course bad guys like Maximus and Lash — but they all have their own sense of how the IvX crisis should be handled. As far as whether it’s a fair fight … sure, there are more Inhumans than X-Men. But most of them aren’t trained warriors like the X-Men, many of whom have been fighting various battles for years. I think it’ll be more balanced than you think.   

If someone wanted to prep for this series, what should they be reading right now?   

JL: They should check out the DEATH OF X mini-series that will be published right before this. It is also written by Charles and I and drawn by the amazing Aaron Kuder. That story will really be the primer for IvX and set the stage. And of course all of the current X-Men and Inhumans titles have been and will continue to build up to this conflict.   

CS: Agreed. On my side, I would suggest folks check out the Uncanny Inhumans series, as well as All-New Inhumans, Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur and Ms. Marvel, but also the new Mosaic series. And certainly Death of X. Aaron Kuder is just doing incredible work there. There’s a lot of good stories to check out and, to reiterate, we’ve been planning this for a long, long time. You can read just IvX and have a great time. But if you read everything, then you’ll get a rich, layered experience. Up to you… but read it all.