Last year Marvel released a series of “New Champions” variant covers where they asked different artists to design new sidekicks for Marvel characters, following the debut of Spider-Boy. At the time I remarked that it seemed odd for Marvel to create all these characters just for a set of variant covers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some of them again.
And we have — in the pages of Spider-Woman (as The Assembly), Ultimate X-Men and the upcoming Ghost Rider: Robbie Reyes Special. And now we will see many of them again, as they assemble for a New Champions series by Steve Foxe and Ivan Fiorelli.
“As soon as I saw the New Champions variants, my mind started racing dreaming up possible origins and powers and codenames for these imagined sidekicks,” Foxe said. “Reverse-engineering the cast from the covers was unlike any other creative process I’ve ever been involved in, and I’m beyond stoked to debut a whole new class of Marvel heroes (and a few villains!) in New Champions alongside Ivan Fiorelli, who makes each and every one of these new additions feel like they’ve been part of the fabric of the universe all along.”
The group will form around the characters who appeared in Foxe’s Spider-Woman series earlier this year — Liberty, Hellrune, Moon Squire and Cadet Marvel– but will expand from there, with Fantasma, Amaranth and more set to join them.
“I’m really looking forward to diving into New Champions,” Fiorelli said. “What really excites me about this project is the opportunity to bring fresh faces into the Marvel Universe, and explore something completely new. These young heroes have their own stories to tell, and I’m looking forward to seeing how they’ll grow and evolve visually as the series unfolds. I hope readers will enjoy reading our pages as much as I will enjoy illustrating them!”
The first issue will feature variant covers by Paco Medina, Luciano Vecchio and Federico Vicentini:
The first issue arrives in stores Jan. 8.