Marvel Will Bring Us To Battleworld Two Years Before Avengers: Secret Wars

Secret Wars is a major storyline within the Marvel Universe, but it’s only truly been explored twice in the comics. While it creates the perfect excuse to bring fan favorites from different times and universes into one sandbox, managing a crossover of that scale is not for the faint of heart.

Marvel Studios may be learning that the hard way with its own take on the event. After a few shaky years of multiversal stories, the MCU’s latest saga will culminate with Avengers: Secret Wars. In all likelihood, it’ll be the crossover to end all crossovers; it might even reset the MCU, allowing dearly departed characters to return, or heroes from other universes to remain in the Sacred Timeline. Anything goes with a story of this magnitude, though fans will have to wait a few years to see that vision unfold on the big screen.

Secret Wars was originally set to hit theaters in 2026, but was recently pushed back to premiere a year later, in 2027. That delay makes some sense: Marvel still has a ways to go before the MCU is ready for a crossover of that caliber. Fantastic Four: First Steps, for example, has to do a lot of heavy lifting where the eponymous group is concerned, and Robert Downey Jr.’s take on Doctor Doom still has to make his big entrance in Avengers: Doomsday. Patience will be a virtue these next two years — but fans will get a consolation prize on the pages of Marvel Comics. A brand new take on Secret Wars is on the way, and it might even set the stage for the adventures in the MCU.

Marvel Comics just announced its plans for Battleworld, an upcoming five-part series that will explore a new Secret War in the multiverse. Written by Superior Spider-Man’s Christos Gage, with art by X-Force’s Marcus To, Battleworld is poised to transport a new group of heroes and villains — some fan favorites, some deeper cuts — to a realm beyond space and time. Instead of the Beyonder or Doctor Doom, the cosmic entity known as Korvac will serve as the story’s main antagonist. He’ll use his powers to create the latest incarnation of Battleworld, a “patchwork world” made up of disparate, cobbled-together universes. Gage is pulling characters from the franchise’s most iconic parallel universes, from the Storm of the Days of Future Past universe to the version of Hank Pym from Gage’s Avengers Academy run.

“Using Hank gave me the idea to build a team of characters with mistakes to atone for, or tragedies to overcome,” Gage told Marvel. “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.” Battleworld also marks the return of characters who haven’t been seen in the comics for years, like the original Star Brand, Kenneth Connell.

Gage’s story probably won’t have much connective tissue with the MCU’s version of Secret Wars, but it’ll definitely help in bringing novices up to speed on the eponymous event. If nothing else, it could certainly tide us over until Doomsday and Secret Wars finally launch the Multiverse Saga into a higher gear. Marvel has a lot of work to do before something as big as Secret Wars makes sense on the big screen. Even if these two stories aren’t connected, a comic series can go a long way in priming audiences for the crossover.