However, the comic wanted to push forward while keeping its eye on the past. Nevertheless, there is a clear sense of forward momentum for most of the characters involved, with the addition of new elements like the Acolytes and the sense that alien colonisation was advancing yet again.

Believers hinted at the idea of a family reunion with William, although that thread was quietly nixed once the television revival became a possibility.

It longs to continue the show’s mythology plot and to push it in new directions. Part of the appeal of The X-Files: Season 10 is that it promises to push the characters forward. Negotiations were taking place, compromises were being made. Even as the comic book enters its second story arc, there are already forces at work behind the scenes that render it all redundant. However, that was already changing, even as the opening issues hit the stands. Believers had positioned itself as the legitimate heir to the mantle of The X-Files, the “real” continuation of a franchise that many considered to be dead in the water. In a broader sense, The X-Files: Season 10 finds itself positioned between the past and the future of the franchise. It is no wonder that the rest of the run feels so compressed. That is three-fifths of the “season” given over to three mythology stories.

However, it tells far fewer stories, with the run dominated by epic sprawling mythology stories like the five-part Believers, the five-part Pilgrims and the five-part Elders. Quite cleverly, The X-Files: Season 10 runs for twenty-five issues, evoking the length of a classic television season. This causes issues in structuring a comic book season of The X-Files. At best, it seems like a creative team might get away with seven stories in a year, six two-parters and an annual. Given modern comic book narrative conventions and the lower page counts of modern comics, “done-in-one” standalone stories are increasingly uncommon. They might also get an annual, if the comic is popular. Comic books are released once a month, limiting the creative team to twelve issues in a given year. That is not really possible with a conventional comic book release schedule.

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