I guess it was only a matter of time; less than a year after Blackest Night proved that bringing characters back from the dead can bring big sales and fan excitement for DC Comics, Marvel has announced that, hey! Their characters can return from the grave as part of a crossover event as well! I know, I know; Marvel has already done a Blackest Night-esque event with the X-franchise’s Necrosha last year, but apparently you can’t keep the dead dead for more than a few months over on Earth 616. I mean, repetition may be part of the superhero genre gene, but this is a little ridiculous.
The news came with the announcement yesterday of Marvel’s Chaos War: Dead Avengers, a spin-off from the five issue Chaos War series that itself spins out from the Incredible Hercules series, and was described at the time of its June announcement as “a cosmic big-budget disaster movie set in the Marvel Universe with all the major players [including the] Avengers, X-Men, Hulks, FF, the cosmic folks, and of course, Hercules playing major roles.” Now we know that it’s also, in part, Marvel’s answer to Blackest Night, as Dead Avengers writer Fred Van Lente explains:
The Chaos King is systematically destroying all the dimensions of the multiverse to make himself the sole thing in existence once again… Among those planes destroyed are the afterlives, dumping everyone who used to be dead back onto the mortal realm again. Six of these dead are former Avengers.
Of course, this plot development will open the door for multiple “dead no more!” crossovers and spin-offs (Spider-Man can meet Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacey! Cyclops can meet Phoenix! Captain America can meet Bucky… No, wait, never mind that last one), although it doesn’t look as if these returnees will be zombies who want to eat your heart and power up. Personally, I’m hoping that undead lightning will strike twice and that this will be so successful that Marvel follows DC’s Brightest Day lead with a biweekly spin-off called Chaos Peace. I can always dream, right…?
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