Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artists: Iban Coelo and Federico Vincentini
Marvel Comics, 2025
The promotional copy of this new title, Imperial, is set out below:
JONATHAN HICKMAN, FEDERICO VICENTINI AND IBAN COELLO TAKE ON THE UNIVERSE! A sweeping Marvel cosmic event! Imperial is a story of intrigue, mysteries and war, which takes place against the backdrop of the formation of new galactic order in the Marvel Universe. Featuring HULKS, BLACK PANTHERS, NOVAS, GUARDIANS and COSMIC KINGS and QUEENS. It’s the must-read book of the summer!
Events in this science fiction / superhero title kick off with a board game, reminiscent of the pink alien villain Despero’s odd chess-themed machinations from early Justice League comics. Neither of the players is revealed, but it is clear that they are behind an unfolding political catastrophe.
This manifests in a series of assassinations of leaders of various intergalactic factions. This includes the estranged son of the Hulk, named Hiro-Kala. A hive-mind of alien doctors are dispatched by the Galactic Council to investigate how these various tyrants are being killed, but while they can identify the poison and its catalyst, they at least initially do not know the identity of the people behind the murders. Various superheroes, including Star-Lord, Nova, Hulk, She-Hulk, Brawn (as Amadeus Cho is now known – see The Totally Awesome Hulk #4: A Korean-American Hulk – World Comic Book Review ), are thrown into the mix with other well-known players – Gladiator and the Imperial Guard from the pages of X-Men, Skrulls and Kree (including Ronan the Accuser), Korbanites, and the Spartoi. An apparently-Wakandan sniper thins the ranks of the gathered Galactic Council during Emperor J’Son of the Spartoi’s dramatic “gotcha” moment. Unfortunately for J’Son, he catches a vibranium bullet in the chest.
It is not the inevitably superhero melees which are appealing about this title. We were instead intrigued by the rapid assassinations of imperial figures. None of the intergalactic governments featured in this title, or, thinking about it, generally in superhero universes, are models of democracy. Back in the mid-to-late 1800s and early 1900s, assassinations and attempted assassinations of autocrats were very common. Take Russia’s Tsar Alexander II: on April 1866, a nihilist assassin shot at Alexander and missed. In May 1867, the tsar visited the French emperor Napoleon III in Paris, and was almost assassinated when two bullets were fired at him but missed. The tsar survived another attempt in April 1879. In November 1879, a terrorist group blew up an imperial decoy train. In December 1879, another terrorist group planned to bomb the Winter Palace but were arrested. Another group successfully bombed the Winter Palace in February 1880. When the czar was returning from a military parade on 1 March 1881, another assassin threw a bomb and missed. A final effort was successful: an assassin threw a second bomb at Alexander’s feet, killing twenty and fatally wounding the tsar.
Efforts at assassination of heads of state were not confined to Russia. An Italian anarchist assassinated Elisabeth, Empress of Austria-Hungary, in 1898. US presidents William McKinley (1843-1901) and James Garfield (1831-1881) were killed by assassins with anarchist leanings. Abraham Lincoln was killed by a Confederate sympathiser. Italian anarchists also assassinated French President Sadi Carnot in 1894. In Korea in 1895, the Daewongun collaborated with the Japanese to remove the pro-Chinese moderniser Empress Myeongseong from power leading to her brutal murder. And then, the most famous and consequential of political murders, the Sarajevo assassinations in 1914, whereby Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were killed by a Bosnian nationalist.
In this title, Hiro Kala, the Warrior Regent of the planet Sakaar en Nevo, has been poisoned and died; Empress Victoria of Spartoi has been poisoned and is on death’s door; “the Throne Guardian of the Empty Orion Chair, and the Last Witch of the Xartan Deviants” are also described as poisoned and dead. Victoria’s father Emperor J’Son dies, and we are told “three more heads of state”, including the Skrull emperor Dorrek VIII and his consort, have been blown into space by a bomb used by the sniper.
Writer Jonathan Hickman gives us a possible motive in his introduction to the galactic hub: “…some believe the true reason for its existence is the formation of a centralised political power structure and an origin point for what is suspected to be a formalised “union” of the galactic council systems. All council members have denied such rumours.” That possibility of union might be the cause of sci-fi nationalist or anarchist anger. Mr Hickman’s attention to detail in his plots is well-known. Are we looking at an effort to stop the creation of an intergalactic Austrian-Hungary Empire?
Artists Iban Coelo and Federico Vincentini do a wonderful on the art. There is a lot of action and movement, especially by the Hulk, and the team more-than-adequately contrast those busy moments in the story with the silence and presence of the gathered council members. We particularly liked the renditions of the Imperial Guard, characters with a long pedigree, two of whom are depicted idly sitting about and having some sort of alien alcohol in a shady bar. Some talent goes into making an incendiary alien superhero look like he is leaning into his beer.
We enjoyed this title. We expect in the next issue to see the unexpected, angry alliance of alien races descend on the planet Wakanda Prime, just as we expect to see someone other than a Wakandan in the sniper’s faceless suit. Sic semper tyrannis.
