Marvel 100th Anniversary Event Cover Gallery

Marvel is trying something kind of different; they’re celebrating their 100^th anniversary a little early. At C2E2, Marvel announced that they will publish five “100^th anniversary” issues this July. Now I know what you’re thinking: this is insanity! Marvel’s centennial is in 2061! Well, you’re right. The idea is that Marvel is trying to predict where their characters will be in 47 years of publishing. In an interview with Comic Book Resources Marvel senior editor Nick Lowe explained that while planning future events, they thought it might be fun to mess with some of their best loved characters.

All five of the issues will be written by teams that will approach the story as though it is part of a larger arc. They will throw the reader in with some clues to help them establish context. We can look forward to future versions of Guardians of the Galaxy written by Andy Lanning and Ron Marz with art by Gustavo Duarte, note the female Star Lord (Editor’s note: That looks like Gamora!) and the return of the original Guardians Major Vance Astro and Captain Charlie-27.

Spider-Man will be written by Sean Ryan and illustrated by In-Hyuk Lee. Ryan is a former Marvel editor who is now pursuing a writing career. Fans may recognize his name from a short story in A+X.

X-Men is being handled by Robin Furth known for her work on Dark Tower and the art will be done by Jason Masters who was an artist for DC and working on Batman up until recently. The cover by Jason Latour maybe simple, but with the suggestion of Scott Summers marrying Emma Frost, I’m more than a little intrigued.

James Stokoe will write and draw the Avengers special single-handedly. Is anyone else excited to see Beta Ray Bill?

Finally, the Fantastic Four issue will be written by Jen Van Meter with art by Joanna Estep. While the stylized cover doesn’t really hint at that many changes to the famous superheroes, Lowe says that Van Meter has “embraced this idea almost more than anyone else”.