Marvel’s Space War Heats Up in ‘Imperial’ #2 – New Covers and Story Details Revealed

Big changes are coming to Marvel’s cosmic universe! This summer, Marvel is launching a brand-new comic book event called Imperial. The series is written by Jonathan Hickman with art by Iban Coello and Federico Vicentini.

The story will shake up the entire galaxy and lead to many new space-based stories later this year.

Imperial is a four-part event series that begins with a shocking twist — someone is killing powerful rulers across the Marvel Universe. These assassinations create chaos, leaving no clear leaders in charge. Now, war is breaking out across space, and heroes must try to stop it before things get worse.

The second issue of the series arrives in July, and Marvel has just revealed some of its covers. Artist Marco Checchetto, known for his work on Ultimate Spider-Man, has drawn another action-packed main cover. It shows important characters like Deathbird, Nova, Gladiator, and Shuri.

There are also two special variant covers. One features She-Hulk, who will go on a surprising journey in the story. This cover was created by artist Gerald Parel. Another shows Lilandra, the former queen of the Shi’ar Empire, drawn by W. Scott Forbes. Lilandra recently came back to life in the X-Manhunt crossover and left Earth with Professor X to help their daughter, Empress Xandra.

In Imperial #2, Nova and Star-Lord try to figure out who’s behind all the killings. Their search takes them to the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, where even more trouble awaits. As battles begin, the Marvel Universe’s space factions face major changes.

Jonathan Hickman, the writer of the series, said he’s thrilled to be working on this project. “I’m very excited about this project as I’m obviously a huge fan of all things Marvel Cosmic,” Hickman shared when the series was first announced. “The goal here is to kind of do what we did with the recent Ultimate line for all of our space titles, except having the setup book (IMPERIAL) be more of an event than a world-building exercise (like Ultimate Invasion). The art team is killing it and we’re all just very excited for what’s happening in this special corner of the Marvel Universe.“

This story will bring major changes to characters like the Hulks, Black Panthers, Novas, Guardians of the Galaxy, and cosmic kings and queens. Imperial is shaping up to be the must-read comic of the summer and will lead into a whole new chapter of Marvel’s space adventures.

Imperial #2 hits comic shops on July 9.

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