Marvel Announces new Secret Wars Event, Release Alex Ross Promo Image
Idol Threat: Warning Shots at the Mainstream 4:49 PM Comic Books, Comics, Movie, NERD ALERT, News, Wizard World
Looks like Marvel made a pretty big announcement yesterday at their New York City Comic Con-related event at Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. in Times Square. Starting in May 2015, Marvel will publish a new year-long "Secret Wars" event with writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Esad Ribic. The original Secret Wars crossover in 1984 was one of the most popular and influential comic book events ever that lasted over 12 issues with several tie-ins bleeding into existing titles over the course of the year. The original Secret Wars also had heavy merchandising support in the form of a toy line from Mattel. Marvel plans to follow that tradition with three of their merchandising partners - current Marvel toy license-holder Hasbro, Gentle Giant and retail chain Hot Topic well into 2016.
This announcement was also followed by the reveal of a gorgeous promo painting done by Alex Ross. The first Secret Wars followed a cosmic entity of immeasurable power named "The Beyonder" who teleported both heroes and supervillains against their will to "Battleworld", a planet created by the Beyonder in a distant galaxy. He was fascinated by the heroes of Earth and pitted them against villains promising their heart's desires to the victors. This storyline also introduced the wildly popular Venom symbiote suit into Spidey-lore.
From the looks of the painting it seems that this new Secret War involves superheroes and their future, past and alternate-Earth counterparts. Featured prominently are the past Thor, Iron Man and Captain America fighting the current female Thor, Sam Wilson Cap and Iron Man (in a new suit!) Surrounding them we see the alternate-future daughter of Steve Rogers -The American Dream, the Earth X future version of Daredevil, Iron Man's evil brother Arno Stark from the year 2020, the Miles Morales Spider-Man from the Ultimate universe and many more variations of Marvel Heroes.
What we DON'T see are any Fantastic Four or X-Men characters, or the regular 616 Earth version of Spider-Man (Peter Parker.) This comes as no surprise when we take into account recent rumors that Marvel is pulling out any comic support of characters owned by other movie companies besides their own (FF and X-Men are owned by 20th Century Fox with the Spider-Man franchise being owned by Sony Pictures.) The rumors go so far as to suggest that the Fantastic Four comic will be canceled and no new X-Men characters will be created in the foreseeable future lest they become property of Fox as well. Stay tuned to Idol Threat for more news to come. -GodzIL
Check out a high resolution version of the painting here: www.comicbookresources.com/
Labels: Comic Books, Comics, Movie, NERD ALERT, News, Wizard World