Huge news for Marvel comics as a few of their plans for the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015 were released. Some of these releases work in tandem with rumors and leaked information coming out of the last couple months.
Most prominent is the announcement of The Secret Wars by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic. Set to feature characters from every universe, much like the Spider-Verse event ramping up currently, this story is quoted by Brevoort as being “…The biggest thing [Marvel has] ever done.” Coming out of the events of the New Avengers and Avengers crossover “Time Runs Out”, we are promised an event that has been built up to run through every current ongoing, this includes the Ultimate universe.
A nice image done by the masterful Alex Ross shows us that indeed, this series will include characters from every universe, from the Ultimate Universe, to the 1602 universe, to the 2099 universe (despite the last one being part of the 616 as seen in Spider-Man 2099). Interesting enough it seems we are missing a few of our favorite teams, namely The Fantastic Four and any of our favorite mutants. This brings us to the other announcements from the show.
In a brief slideshow, we got a nice image that refers to the events of House of M. Words uttered by Scarlet Witch herself, “No More Mutants”.
While this seems like a very daunting future for our favorite outcasts, we have been reassured that this does not mean the mutants will be fading away as recent leaks have stated. Tom Brevoort assures us that this is more a story for the Avengers, spiraling out of the current event, Axis. He also stated that despite the lack of mutants in the Secret Wars teaser, they will be “massively involved” in the story as it unfolds.
Another group of characters seen missing from the Alex “Ross’ter” (see what I did there) were the Fantastic Four. It was recently leaked that the Fantastic Four would be ending soon, when a solicitation from Hachette was posted. Now it has been confirmed. Another slide in the same show as “No More Mutants” sees to the end of one of our favorite families.
With the recent events of “Time Runs Out”, we see that Susan Storm is trying to find her husband after he disappears, after what I assume is the public outing of his activities in the Illuminati. While this hasn’t happened yet, I can only assume the worst.
At the end of the day, nothing is permanent, and while plenty of people are speculating all this action towards these properties is due to the fact that the film rights are owned by other studios, I don’t think this is solely a grudge match. I trust Marvel has had these stories in the works for a while, that being said, it is a little strange how close together this is all coming. What do you think? Is Marvel pushing out their properties whose film rights are not their own, or do you think it’s all coincidence? Either way, its fun watching it happen.
