Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged:

Secret Empire, Properly Announced, By Nick Spencer And Steve McNiven, Andrea Sorrentino And Leinil Yu To Start In April (UPDATE)

I was just wondering when Marvel were going to confess that Secret Empire #0 was coming out in April, given they were telling retailers that there was going to be a retailer exclusive variant for it.

Well, they have now told ABC, part of the great and glorious Disney empire. Secret Empire is by Nick Spencer, who has been writing the Captain America books in recent years and made Captain America an agent of Hydra, and Steve McNiven, of the original Civil War series, of Old Man Logan and now not doing Nemesis Returns for even longer.

UPDATE:  The artists will rotate and include Andrea Sorrentino and Leinil Yu.

A 9 issue series starting in May with a 0 issue bonus in April. It will run until August,  9 issues over 4 months, May, June, July and August. Oh and the Free Comic Book Day issue too.

They quote Tom Brevoort talking about Captain America "Steve has been kind of lining his dominoes up around the Marvel Universe to be able to make his move and bring about a Hydra revolution, a takeover. At the point of 'Secret Empire,' they are ready to go. That's the moment we hit as we go in."

And everyone will know that Cap is Hydra early on.

"We are done with the covert portion, the buildup portion of the program, 'Secret Empire' if the pyrotechnics, the big Michael Bay blockbuster, huge colossal struggles and battles across the Marvel Universe, with all of our key characters and players taking on a big role."

"Where not one, not two, but three separate events break out all at once. Cap, as head of S.H.I.E.L.D., is able to mobilize forces to all three of those situations. And those three situations represent Hydra's first move. It comes off the blocks explosively right from the get-go,"

"If you are going into this story not knowing how it's going to go, yeah you should have some misgiving about [a happy ending], because it's a really ridiculously awful situation he is in. It might not all be fine."

"We'll definitely see an impact on our new, younger generation of heroes, a huge turn for them, a Watergate moment for them,"

"They will have to grapple with what this means and reset their heroism… You don't want it to be bleak and miserable, you always want to have hope and be uplifting, and that's the aspect of this story where the other characters in the Marvel Universe have to kind of come together for."

Axel Alonso also has things to say.

"This story is going to be told through the perspective of multiple characters, who are dealing with the threat this poses."

"Some roles and characters will come to the foreground at different moments in the story and play a big role in saving the day,"

And the result will be a united universe rather than the superheroes fighting superheroes of Civil War, World War Hulk, House Of M, Secret Invasion, Avengers Vs X-Men, Inhumans Vs X-Men and Civil War 2…

"We've just come off of 'Civil War 2' and 'Inhumans vs. X-Men,' two big, dark events that had heroes fighting against heroes, over somewhat defensible positions. This is very much more an old school story. You will know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. This is not heroes fighting heroes, this is heroes fighting a bad guy,"

"We saw this moment as our chance to rally the entire Marvel Universe, which has been fragmented of late."

"We saw this as the rallying cry, where we could have everyone — Avengers, Guardians, Defenders, X-Men, Spider-Man, Deadpool — all rally against this thing and unify the universe into the future,"

"When we made the decision to have Cap's memory rewired, thus that he would be come a Hydra agent. You would have the most trusted superhero in the Marvel Universe become a super villain. You don't do something like that without considering what a huge story it is. You understand you're teeing up a huge story and that's what this is."

With Breevort adding

"We are already planned out two or three moves beyond [an out to this story]. We are always planning a year, 18 months into the future. We know exactly how this is ending, we know what's coming after that and after the thing that's coming after the thing,"

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!