Marvel heads back to the beach this summer in ‘Marvel Swimsuit Special: Friends, Foes, Rivals’

The iconic special returns with a new story by Tim Seeley, Tony Fleecs and Nick Bradshaw — and a code for a ‘Marvel Rivals’ in-game skin.

A staple of Marvel’s summer comics line-up will return in July as the company resurrects its infamous Marvel Swimsuit Special.

The special will feature swimsuit pin-ups of Marvel characters by Nic Klein, Marguerite Sauvage, Luciano Vecchio and many more, along with a story by Tim Seeley and Tony Fleecs — the Local Man team — drawn by artist Nick Bradshaw.

Carla Hoffman revisited the classic Marvel Swimsuit Special back in 2021, noting that these would feature a whole bunch of cheesecake pin-ups as well as a story that explained why Captain America was wearing a bathing suit on Monster Island:

What was thought to be utterly salacious drivel by my mother when I tried to get a copy in my youth, the ‘93 Marvel Swimsuit issue has a story. Seriously: the Infinity Watch play a poker game, Pip the Troll wins, so he makes them all use the Infinity Stones to gather all the superheroes of the Marvel Universe to a party at Monster Island. When they are all suddenly transported there by the Space and Time Gems, they are forced into not fighting one another and having a good time by the Mind Stone, so a big beach party breaks out and Pip the Troll takes pictures of everyone in their swimsuits.

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Everybody out of the water: DC + G’nort revive the illustrated swimsuit comic

The world needed more G’nort. But maybe not this much.

I was a little surprised and very ashamed when I started this post and noticed we didn’t have a G’nort tag yet. “How is such a thing possible?” I asked myself, but then again, maybe the universe’s favorite Green Lantern just hasn’t had a high-profile role in recent years.

But that will change in August when DC releases the G’nort’s Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, which both raises G’nort’s profile and brings back a fun and somewhat cheesy idea that Marvel published back in the 1990s. The Marvel Swimsuit Special would showcase Marvel characters in various tropical locales — like Wakanda, Madripoor and the Blue Area of the Moon (transformed by the Inhumans into a tropical paradise) — in their swimwear. They were light on story and heavy on the cheesecake. But they were a lot of fun.

And now, we have G’nort bringing them back, for the Distinguished Competition.

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Slugfest | ‘Summer of Symbiotes’ leads to ‘Death of the Venomverse’

Plus: Marvel Artist’s Editions, Dark Horse graphic novels, Spider-Verse, variant covers and more!

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you. Hit the links for more information.

Marvel has revealed more details and a teaser image for Summer of Symbiotes, something they teased last October along with several other events for 2023. It’s less of a single-story crossover and more of a moniker they are using to describe a whole bunch of different symbiote-themed series, miniseries and events.

While many of the events teased on the image we’ve heard of before, like Carnage Reigns and Extreme Venomverse, there is one new one listed — Death of the Venomverse, which echoes the Death of the Spiderverse storyline we’re seeing in Spider-Man.

Here’s the description from Marvel:

It’s all leading to this! The epic adventures above are spiraling towards an explosive destination, and not all of your favorite symbiotes will survive the journey. The Carnage symbiote is more bloodthirsty than ever and heads to the multiverse for its greatest killing spree yet. But what is it after? Find out more when this upcoming limited series is announced at the Marvel Comics: Spider-Man & the Venomverse Panel at C2E2 2023!

C2E2 is coming up this weekend. Here’s the full teaser image:

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What Are You Reading? | ‘Monsters’ is ‘a beautiful reading experience’

The Smash Pages crew talks about ‘Justice League: Last Ride,’ ‘Write It in Blood’ and more.

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look at what the Smash Pages crew has been checking off their “to read” list lately — from older stuff like Crying Freeman and the Marvel Swimsuit Special to newer stuff like Justice League: Last Ride and Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters.

Let us know what you read this week in the comments or on social media.

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