This year, Marvel Comics celebrates their 75th anniversary. While they have a number of things happening to commemorate the occasion throughout the years, one thing that we definitely expected was some sort of special comic book. After all, that’s what they’ve been doing for decades, so why stop now? And though they’re only turning 75, the House of Ideas is choosing to mark this landmark by looking to their 100th anniversary.
During the Next Big Thing panel at C2E2, the company announced the ‘100th Anniversary Special’, a weekly series of one-shots catching up with various heroes like the Avengers, the X-Men, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the Guardians of the Galaxy one hundred years after the start of the modern day Marvel Universe in 1961’s ‘Fantastic Four’ #1. Not many details were revealed at the panel except some key phrases like Silver Galactus, Richards-Banner twins, Techno-Symbiote suit, and America lost in the Negative Zone, but we did get some preview art from the limited series. You can check them out in the gallery below, followed by the lineup of creators being tapped for these issues:
‘100th Anniversary Special – Guardians of the Galaxy’ is written by Andy Lanning & Ron Marz and drawn by Gustavo Duarte with a cover by David Lopez.
‘100th Anniversary Special – Spider-Man’ written by Sean Ryan with interior art and cover by In-Hyuk Lee
‘100th Anniversary Special – X-Men’ written by Robin Furth with art by Jason Masters and cover by Jason Latour
‘100th Anniversary Special – Avengers’ by James Stokoe as writer, artist, and cover artist
‘100th Anniversary Special – Fantastic Four’ by Jen Van Meter with art and cover by Joanna Estep
There are certainly some surprising names on those creative teams, but senior editor Nick Lowe stands by the choices of the one-shot editors at Marvel. He also weighed in on this special series while speaking to Newsarama by explaining how the time progression works in these books that originated from a tongue-in-cheek suggestion by former Spidey editor Steve Wacker:
“Well, the characters themselves won’t be 47 years older any more than Peter Parker isn’t over 50 like he’d be if he were aging in real time, but they’ll have aged a little bit. So imagine 47 years from now (I’ll be a ripe 81 years old) when you’re picking up your favorite Marvel comics. I sure as heck better be retired by then collecting ‘Nextwave’ theme-song royalties after that franchise becomes the biggest movie hits of the 2030’s and 40’s.”
What do you think about the ‘100th Anniversary Special’ series coming from Marvel Comics in July? What do you think that your favorite heroes will be like in 2061? What do you think you’ll be doing in 2061 for that matter? Let us know in the comments.
