The road to Avengers: Doomsday is getting shorter, and a major benchmark of that trip has arrived in the form of Empire Magazine‘s covers about the film. Ahead of the movie’s December 18th debut in theaters around the globe, the UK film magazine has revealed four collectible covers that will hit stands next week. As fans may expect, one of these four covers is reserved for Robert Downey Jr’s Doom alone, but the other three create a triptych image of some of the biggest superheroes that will be making their return to fight the titular antagonist.
In the first image, not only are we treated to the best look yet at James Marsden’s comic-accurate Cyclops costume (no massive optic blast can shield the pop of those colors), but he stands alongside Ian McKellen’s Magneto, plus Anthony Mackie’s Captain America, and Letitia Wright’s Black Panther. Each subsequent cover features similar levels of crossover, painting a specific image about Avengers: Doomsday that really cements its place in the MCU: This movie was once impossible to make, and now it’s here in just five weeks
The other two Empire covers for Avengers: Doomsday have a similar mixture of characters from across the many corners of the MCU. In the second, Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers (toting, what else, Mjolnir) stands front and center, flanked by Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm on one side and Channing Tatum’s Gambit and Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi on another. With the third, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor appears with Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, along with two of the New Avengers, Florence Pugh’s Yelena and Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes.
One could seemingly infer a bit of meaning from some of the pairings found in this image (the potential for Magneto to face off against a hero with a Vibranium-laced supersuit and another with metal wings almost writes itself), but the most striking thing about these covers is how, at one point, a lot of this would have been practically impossible. As many fans know, most of the film rights to Marvel’s characters were sold piecemeal to the Hollywood studios in the ’90s as the publisher fought bankruptcy, leaving the original MCU lineup as the only ones that Marvel had access to.
That in mind, seeing not only the Avengers standing alongside characters from the X-Men and Fantastic Four together, but the actors who have played them for decades, is something that a lot of fans once thought they would literally never see, partially because it was impossible. Naturally, much of what’s happening with Avengers: Doomsday wouldn’t be possible if The Walt Disney Company hadn’t absorbed 20th Century Fox, a $71.3 billion price tag that helped deliver something in live-action that Marvel fans have been reading in comics for years. Was it worth it so we could see Captain America with Sue Storm and Gambit in a movie? Maybe. The box office will tell us here in about five weeks.
