The next big comic event for Marvel’s heroes to get caught up in is Judgment Day. It’s a three-way fight between the Eternals, Avengers, and X-Men that has each team’s heavy hitters beating the actual hell out of each other. But unlike other events where the good guys clash, this event is about the various lies being kept and tensions that have been bubbling between the teams for quite some time.
Speaking to CBR, Gillen talked about what sets his and artist Valerio Schiti’s event comic apart from other Marvel events. Because several of the good Eternals have left Eternal society, the new Prime Eternal — who was recently Thanos, but is hinted to be someone else as the event starts — is making bigger moves. And while those good Eternals will try to stop their people, there’s still “a sense of overreach of what the Eternals should be doing,” said Gillen. “At the start, I very clearly say the Eternals are the bad guys.” To him, painting the majority of Eternals in that wrong gives Judgment Day “hero versus hero elements,” but doesn’t make it a full clash between heroes like Avengers vs. X-Men or Civil War II.
“The Eternals are in a place where they’re aggressive and want to establish their dominance for a variety of reasons,” Gilled added. While he admitted that the Eternals may just decide to fight the X-Men on an average day and there’s a “much bigger” reason for this war, the fact that the mutants have fairly recently dabbled into immortality doesn’t help matters. This isn’t a war where either side will “fight fair,” but it’ll be particularly troublesome for the mutants. They’ve been keeping various secrets that are in real danger of coming out and changing the world’s already concerned view of them.
As for the Avengers? They’re here because they’ve been lied to by both sides. That definitely stings for the Earth’s Mightiest heroes, but the writer joked that living inside the body of a dead Celestial meant they were already looped into this, whether they wanted to be or not. “They’re trying to catch up and do the right thing…from there, it’ll only get harder for them.”
Throughout the interview, Gillen noticeably pointed out that so far, he’s been talking about “act one” of this event. He was naturally vague about what awaits in act two, saying it would slightly change the approach of the entire event. But act three is where things would get “more eventy…The third act really has some of the deepest and most Starlin-esque philosophical stuff in there as well some of the biggest explosions you’ll ever see.”
Marvel’s Judgment Day kicks off its six-issue run this July.
Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.