The mighty Marvel tradition of pulling a bunch of characters to a strange planet and making them fight it out will return in September, as Christos Gage and Marcus To bring back Battleworld in September.
Battleworld is the term used to describe the hodge-podge worlds seen in the 1980s Secret Wars series and its successor, the Jonathan Hickman-led Secret Wars event that occurred in 2015. In both cases, pieces of different worlds were called together to form a new world, a “battleworld” where, as the name suggests, battles took place.
This five-issue miniseries will feature characters from around the Marvel multiverse, including Hank Pym, the New Universe’s Starbrand, Days of Future Past Storm, the Future Imperfect Hulk dubbed the Maestro and many more.
“I was a rabid consumer of the original Secret Wars when it came out in 1984, so a chance to revisit the Battleworld ‘destroy your enemies’ concept was irresistible. Then they offer me Hank Pym, one of my favorite Marvel characters to write, and the amazing Marcus To on art?!” Gage said. He wrote the character when he was part of the cast of Avengers Academy as well as in Avengers: The Initiative, with co-writer Dan Slott.
The pitch for the miniseries should sound familair to readers of the original Secret Wars or the sequel series that was spearheaded by Hickman:
The Battleworld from SECRET WARS returns! Heroes from across the Multiverse are thrown together on a patchwork world to engage in their own Secret Wars for the survival of their timelines! Who or what has created this Battleworld, and for what nefarious purpose? Enter Maestro. Is he friend, or foe?
“When Wil suggested that the fragments of Battleworld could come from different timelines, I jumped at that, because Marvel has so many awesome ones, from Days of Future Past to 2099. Using Hank gave me the idea to build a team of characters with mistakes to atone for or tragedies to overcome, so we added a very young Spider-Man whose guilt over Uncle Ben is as raw as his inexperience; a newly sober Carol Danvers; King Thor, who rules over a dead future Earth; a fugitive Luke Cage, Hero for Hire; Bucky Barnes, fresh from the front lines of WWII; and more,” Gage said. “But then, when I thought I was already in nerd heaven, they let me have Star Brand. The ORIGINAL Star Brand, Ken Connell! I still have the entire run of his New Universe comic that I bought personally between 1986 and 1989, so yeah, we’re gonna go a little nuts with this one. I haven’t even mentioned our Big Bad, Korvac and Hank Pym’s first encounter with Arcade since he kidnapped a bunch of Hank’s Avengers Academy students…”
Nick Bradshaw is doing wraparound, connecting covers for all five issues:
And the first issue will also include variants by Greg Land, Mark Bagley and Rod Reis:
The first issue will arrive Sept. 24.