Marvel Comics is returning to the multiverse-ending catastrophe that led directly into 2015’s Secret Wars — at a very interesting time for the MCU.
Marvel is running out of universes again.
The publisher has announced Incursions, a new series of five one-shots revisiting the final days of the Marvel Multiverse before Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić’s Secret Wars.
Beginning this November, the books will throw familiar Marvel realities directly into one another, with one fairly brutal rule:
Only one universe gets to survive.
And if the word “incursion” has started sounding increasingly important to MCU fans lately, that’s because it is.
Marvel’s New Incursions Bring Back the Road to Secret Wars
The new event begins with X-MEN: INCURSIONS #1 from writer Alex Paknadel and artist Jim Towe, which pits two of Marvel’s most famous alternate mutant realities against each other: Days of Future Past and House of M.
Caught between them is Kitty Pryde, who will apparently be forced to confront the kind of choice that defined the original incursion storyline — when saving one world can mean condemning another.
Marvel will follow it with four additional one-shots:
- SPIDER-MAN: INCURSIONS #1, by Christos Gage and additional creators
- FANTASTIC FOUR: INCURSIONS #1, by Ethan S. Parker, Griffin Sheridan and Paco Medina
- X-MEN ’92: INCURSIONS #1, by Chris Yost, Craig Kyle and additional creators
- AVENGERS: INCURSIONS #1, by Al Ewing and Fran Mariscal Mancilla
Each book will revisit the catastrophic period leading into Secret Wars, using alternate timelines, classic Marvel universes and even realities originating in other media.
In other words: Marvel is reopening the Multiverse and letting its worlds kill each other again.
You know.
Right before the MCU reaches Avengers: Secret Wars.
Totally normal timing.
What Is an Incursion in Marvel?
This is where the announcement becomes much more interesting than a simple batch of alternate-universe comics.
In Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers and New Avengers saga, incursions occur when two universes collide, with their respective Earths becoming the focal point of the collision.
If nothing stops it, both universes die.
The terrifying solution is simple: destroy one of the Earths before impact, and the other universe survives.
That problem becomes increasingly impossible to ignore as incursions begin wiping out realities throughout the Multiverse. Earth’s most powerful minds — including members of the Illuminati — are eventually forced into increasingly desperate decisions as they try to prevent their universe from becoming the next one erased.
And eventually, there aren’t enough universes left to save.
The catastrophe culminates in the final incursion between Marvel’s primary universe and the Ultimate Universe, leading directly into 2015’s Secret Wars.
From the wreckage comes Battleworld, a patchwork world constructed from pieces of destroyed realities and ruled by Doctor Doom.
Which, yes, is precisely why MCU fans should have their eyebrows somewhere near the ceiling right now.
The MCU Has Already Introduced Incursions
Marvel Studios didn’t invent the term for the upcoming Avengers movies.
The MCU formally introduced incursions in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where the Illuminati explains the danger of one reality colliding with another.
The movie doesn’t adapt Hickman’s storyline outright, but it puts one of its most important concepts directly onto the board.
Now Marvel Studios is heading toward Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, with Doctor Doom positioned at the center of the coming conflict.
Meanwhile, Marvel Comics has decided this is the perfect moment to return to the exact multiversal disaster that preceded Doom’s ascension in the comics.
That does not mean these new one-shots are secretly revealing the plot of the upcoming movies.
It does mean Marvel is making the concept of incursions very easy for audiences to become familiar with before Secret Wars arrives.
And we’ve seen this dance before.
If You’re Trying to Understand Secret Wars, Pay Attention to Incursions
The MCU’s Multiverse Saga has spent years introducing alternate realities, variants and worlds existing alongside one another.
Incursions are what happen when all of that stops being fun.
They’re the mechanism that turns “look, another universe” into an existential problem — and in Hickman’s saga, they’re what reduce an enormous Multiverse to almost nothing.
That’s the part of Secret Wars that matters.
Battleworld doesn’t simply appear because Marvel wanted every version of its characters playing in the same sandbox. It exists because the Multiverse died first.
And Doom was standing there when the pieces came back together.
So when Marvel Comics starts publishing stories about realities colliding, worlds dying and heroes deciding which universe gets to survive just as the MCU approaches Doomsday and Secret Wars?
No, it isn’t confirmation that Marvel Studios is adapting these books.
But it is one hell of a reading recommendation.
X-MEN: INCURSIONS #1 kicks off Marvel’s new Incursions one-shots this November.
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