Due either to a desperate desire to sell more books or a genuine desire to provide some decent fan-service, DC and Marvel Comics have announced that for the first time in more than two decades, their respective rosters of costumed characters are set to once again join forces for another multiversal adventure.
The Big Two’s upcoming crossover plans were first announced by each publisher’s respective Editor-in-Chief, Marie Javins for DC and CB Cebulski for Marvel Comics, while making a speaking appearance at the 2025 edition of the Comics Professional Retail Organization’s (ComicsPRO) annual retailer summit.
Per recaps of their talk provided by BleedingCool‘s Rich Johnston, following a reflection on the success of the recent DC Versus Marvel and DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age omnibus printings, Cebulski teased, “We really enjoyed working together. This was a really good project to have done, but I think there’s another white whale that we got.”
Playfully asked “There’s another white whale?” by Javins, the Marvel EiC then asserted, “Another crossover, a modern crossover. Are you up for it?”, in doing so drawing a roar of applause from attending crowd.
At current, exact details regarding the nature of the upcoming crossover, such as its plot, involved characters, and creative teams, are unsurprisingly being kept under wraps.
But in providing one bit of relevant information, according to ComicsBeat‘s Heidi MacDonald, Cebulski and Javins did confirm that the event would play out sometime in 2025 across a set of two one-shots aptly named Marvel/DC and DC/Marvel.
Notably, when said issues finally hit shelves later this year, it will mark the first time since 2003’s Kurt Busiek-penned, George Pérez-illustrated JLA/Avengers series that the two comic book publishers have worked together to produce an official crossover between their lines (While the Amalgam universe Spider-Boy, a mash-up of Ben Reilly and Conner Kent, has made a few background cameos through Marvel Comics’ various Spider-Verse books, these exist more as ‘nods to the audience’ than actually endorsed appearances.
Interestingly, this news comes just a little under four months after current Marvel Comics Executive Editor Tom Brevoort told fans that the reason for the publisher’s ongoing drought of DC collaborations was due to the fact that, simply put, the Disney subsidiary “isn’t all that interested in doing a lot of crossovers”
“DC for the last several years has seemed much more open to doing them” wrote Brevoort in the November 4th edition of his Man With A Hat Substack blog. “But whenever Marvel does participate in one, there tends to be some reason for this internally, some objective that making a crossover helps us to achieve. But each circumstance is different, so I can’t tell you why we do each and every one, nor which instances came from Marvel reaching out to others and which ones were the result of others reaching out to us.”
At present, neither Marvel nor DC have announced an official release date for their upcoming Marvel/DC and DC/Marvel one-shots.