Today at a live press conference in New York’s Midtown Comics with Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso and Senior Vice President of Publishing Tom Brevoort it was confirmed we’d be receiving a line wide reboot thanks to the forthcoming “Secret Wars” event. Alonso and Brevoort tried their best to avoid the dreaded “R” word but the implication was clear: The Marvel Universe as we know it is over.
“Secret Wars” begins with the standard Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe colliding. Issue one begins with the notice of that event, and of course the heroes fail. Their failure results in the creation of the battleworld, the setting for the event. Alonso reiterated that this isn’t a reboot, because the Marvel history isn’t something that needs fixing. But, that things will be very different going forward.
Now it seems that every event that tore the Marvel Universe apart these last few years has been building to Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic’s new event comic. Every creative team currently within the house of ideas knew the event was coming, and will be working on titles that tie into the event. They may not be working on the exact same titles, either. We’ll find out more about those over the next two weeks.
The live event concluded with talk of Marvel’s offerings possibly getting smaller as a result of the event, but only marginally. In any event the event’s effects will be felt over Marvel’s entire publishing line, and we’ll offer more as we know it.
The prospect of all these universes colliding together is quite exciting to be honest. I’ll have my reactions up to it tomorrow, but I think this is a huge step in the right direction for Marvel.
How do you feel about a soft reboot for the Marvel Universe? Are you excited for Secret Wars?