While Comic-Con might not be held in person in 2020, that hasn’t stopped the fine folks of Marvel from hosting the occasional panel or two. Today the comic book juggernaut took the occasion to announce several of their upcoming projects and to offer some other information on their current Marvel project, Empyre. Marvel Comics: Next Big Thing panel was hosted by C.B. Cebulski and began with writers Al Ewing and Dan Slott talking with editor Tom Brevoort talking about Empyre, which is underway in the main Marvel continuity.
Empyre is a watershed moment in comic history with the Kree and Skrull races joining forces for the upcoming battle against the Cotati, who survived their ancient competition in the blue area of the moon. Now led by Quoi, the Celestial Messiah, the Cotati are seeking revenge not just against the newly-formed army of Kree/Skrull warriors, they intend to strike down Earth and take the planet over as a new habitat for their growing population ranks. Without giving away any of the secrets in this recap, there was plenty of Empyre content within the first half of this panel.
After the Empyre panel, editor Jordan White and writers Tini Howard and Gerry Duggan discussed the upcoming next big X-Men crossover event known as ‘X of Swords,’ which is a twenty-two chapter event beginning with X of Swords: Creation #1 by Johnathan Hickman and artist Pepe Larraz. The entire event is scheduled to begin in the month of October, per CBR. Depending on what happens with Empyre, X of Swords could be one of the more interesting X-Men events they’ve had since House of X and Powers of X. They’ve yet to do much with it, but Empyre has the chance to quite a bit with the primary method of communication and transportation for the mutants, not to mention their largest bargaining chip in their pursuit of peace began.
The X-Men team eventually gives way to Marvel executive editor Nick Lowe and he is joined by Amazing Spider-Man writer Nick Spencer and Amazing Spider-Man artist Mark Bagley. The team get super psyched and animated to talk about a particular upcoming issue of ASM, issue #850 (#49), which promises the return of the great Norman Osborn complete with his Green Goblin personality. For fans of the wall-crawler, it doesn’t get any better than this. Peter Parker faces off against his most famous phone for another milestone issue. With Nick Spencer at the helm and Mark Bagley in the artists’ chair, fans are surely in for the very best. Lowe also teased the introduction of a new villain in the upcoming issue #45 known as Kindred in an upcoming storyline called Sins Rising, which begins with the aforementioned issue.
The panel then gave way back to Lowe, who was joined by Ben Jackendoff and Taboo to talk about the upcoming Werewolf by Night series. They got the chance to keep working on the story following their one-page contribution to Marvel #1000 and never looked back. They plan to do the series as an homage to horror, but they’re going to be mindful of the fact that not everyone can handle full-on horror. As such, they do want to try to make them as PG-13 as possible for everyone, including his own kids. The series will be drawn by Scot Eaton and Scott Hanna and promises to be a throwback to what made the character great.