Jonathan Hickman has been taking part in within the Marvel Universe for 15 years now and nearly nobody can lay a higher declare to the universe’s make-up in that point than him. Not solely did he destroy the Marvel Multiverse (within the best superhero crossover of all time, Secret Wars), however he formed the now-dead authentic Ultimate Universe with epic runs on Ultimates, mapped the multiverse in Fantastic Four, and rebuilt the Ultimate Universe in its most up-to-date relaunch. Hell, he even sowed some seeds for the cosmogony of the multiverse in House of X/Powers of X (critically, when you haven’t learn what Al Ewing did to Secret Wars in his Defenders, it’s good to go test it out). But there’s one story he’s been chasing from the beginning: a guide concerning the Shi’ar Imperial Guard. And we’re lastly getting a payoff on this yr’s Imperial.
Marvel is pitching Imperial as an opportunity to see Hickman reshape the Marvel cosmos in the identical manner he did the Ultimate Universe. And whereas I’m excited to learn something he does, what has been most attention-grabbing is the truth that he’s been taking part in with these characters and concepts for a very long time. There have been rumors going again to his time with the Avengers that Hickman had a pitch for the Legion of Super-Heroes, DC’s futuristic house teenagers. And within the Legion is the origin of the Shi’ar.
Dave Cockrum was the artist who, with Chris Claremont, created the Shi’ar as a part of his work on the massive Phoenix story on the daybreak of the Claremont period. Prior to his work on X-Men, Cockrum had been a seminal artist on the Legion of Super-Heroes, and he made the Imperial Guard loosely analogous to his Legionnaires. So Superboy turned Gladiator of Kallark; Brainiac 5 turned Mentor; Saturn Girl turned Oracle; and so forth. So whereas their in-universe story was primarily based on imperial Rome, their look was very Legion, ceaselessly linking the 2 franchises within the minds of followers.
Hickman used the Imperial Guard a ton in his Avengers run, having Gladiator (a Superboy stand in from the planet Kallark) lead the coalition of house societies that included the Spartoi, the Kree, the Skrulls and the Annihilation Wave as they joined the Avengers to battle a military of Builders bent on destruction within the universe. And these tales rocked. He’s additionally revealed in post-X-Men interviews that his authentic plan on the daybreak of the Krakoa period was to place mutants Cannonball and Sunspot in an Imperial Guard guide, fleshing out Shi’ar society relative to the mutant establishment.
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