Marvel is returning to Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić’s Secret Wars with a nine-issue facsimile reprint program beginning in January 2027. Secret Wars #1 Facsimile Edition is scheduled for January 20, with subsequent installments expected monthly through Secret Wars #9.
The project revisits the 2015 event in a format meant to reproduce the original single-issue reading experience. That means the reprint is not simply the story pages gathered into a new edition: Marvel says the first facsimile will include the period advertising found in the original release as well. For readers who arrived later through collected editions, that distinction is a meaningful part of the appeal. A facsimile edition is designed to approximate an earlier comic’s original presentation, including its issue format and non-story material, rather than merely reprinting the narrative in a new package.
Issue #1 is listed at 56 pages, rated T+, priced at $6.99, and dated for sale on January 20. Hickman is credited as writer, Ribić as artist and Alex Ross as cover artist. The issue reprints Secret Wars (2015) #1 in full.
What Secret Wars #1 sets in motion
The 2015 Secret Wars begins at the end of a crisis built around Incursions. In Marvel’s terminology here, an Incursion is a collision between universes—or, more specifically in this final situation, between two Earths—where survival for one world comes at the expense of the other. The premise has already narrowed the multiverse down to two remaining Earths: Earth-616 and the Ultimate Universe.
Earth-616 is the designation associated with Marvel’s main comic-book continuity. The Ultimate Universe is the parallel setting involved in the other half of the story’s last collision. Heroes on both worlds attempt to save their respective homes, but the central premise is deliberately unforgiving: neither survives the final Incursion. From that ending, Doctor Doom becomes the crucial figure in what remains.
That is an unusually large starting point for a first issue, but it explains why the series occupies such a distinct place among modern Marvel events. Rather than beginning with a local threat that grows over time, Secret Wars starts with the destruction of the larger setting itself. Its stakes are not about stopping a disaster before it happens; they are about determining what exists after the disaster has already become unavoidable.
The series also served as the culmination of years of Hickman-led storytelling and had a major impact on the Marvel Universe. That background is useful for a prospective reader, but the facsimile format makes the first issue a sensible entry point for someone interested in experiencing the event in its original serialized form. It places the reader at the moment the final collision arrives instead of asking them to reconstruct the story from later summaries.
Why the facsimile format matters
For comic readers, there is a practical difference between a facsimile edition and an original 2015 first printing. The announced edition is a new reprint, not the original issue. Its value is in access and presentation: it offers the complete debut chapter, its original ads and its single-issue structure without requiring a reader to hunt down an older copy.
For collectors, that distinction should remain clear. A facsimile can be attractive as a display or reading copy, particularly for people who value original-format details, but it does not become a substitute for an original printing merely because it recreates period material. The product is explicitly billed as a facsimile re-presentation of the 2015 comic.
The ads are more than dead space in that context. They help retain how a monthly comic was encountered at the time: as part of a publishing line, with promotions and other material around the story. Readers who only know event comics through digital editions or collected books may find that physical context as interesting as the paper-and-staple format itself.
Marvel’s decision to schedule all nine issues monthly should also make the project easy to follow as an ongoing run. Readers who want the entire story will need to account for a nine-month sequence rather than a one-shot compilation, while readers who only want the opening chapter can pick up issue #1 on its own. There is no indication here of a bundled facsimile collection, so the announced plan is centered on individual issues.
Doctor Doom at the center of the aftermath
The first issue’s description makes Doom’s importance unmistakable. When the two remaining worlds collide and everything ends, Doom is positioned as the answer to what is left. That framing puts one of Marvel’s most enduring antagonists at the center of an event whose premise has already swept away the normal rules of the setting.
It also gives the issue a clean dramatic hook. The story is not only about two groups of heroes trying to protect their respective worlds; it is about what kind of power can remain when both efforts fail. For readers who are curious about the event because of Doom’s role in broader Marvel conversation, the facsimile’s first chapter is where that question is formally placed on the page.
Secret Wars has been cited as inspiration for upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars films, as well as recent additional Avengers: Endgame footage. That does not mean a film adaptation must reproduce the comic’s plot point for point. Comics events and screen projects can share concepts, characters or broad themes while taking different routes through them. The reprint therefore offers a chance to meet the comic on its own terms: a story of collapsing universes, the last two Earths and Doom’s place after the final impact.
Spider-Punk’s first appearance gets its own January facsimile
January’s other announced facsimile heads into the Spider-Verse. The Amazing Spider-Man #10 Facsimile Edition, reprinting The Amazing Spider-Man (2014) #10, goes on sale January 13. It is a 32-page issue rated T, with a listed price of $4.99.
Dan Slott wrote the issue, while Olivier Coipel is credited for art and the cover. The comic is notable as the first appearance of Hobie Brown, the alternate-reality Spider-hero known as Spider-Punk. Its reprint arrives ahead of a new Spider-Punk comic in January and the delayed Beyond the Spider-Verse film, which is described as due next summer.
Within the original Spider-Verse storyline, the issue brings the larger conflict into sharper focus as multiple Spider-characters gather against Morlun and his family. Spider-Punk enters that setting alongside an unusual leadership question: Superior Spider-Man is presented as the figure who may lead the assembled Spider-heroes, a proposition that the Amazing Spider-Man of that universe is unlikely to embrace.
Like Secret Wars #1, this is not just an excerpt or a newly designed anniversary package. Marvel describes it as a facsimile of the original issue, including its ads. That makes it an accessible way to read Spider-Punk’s debut in the form of the single comic where the character first appeared.
Two different reasons to revisit Marvel’s event comics
The January pair gives readers two distinct entry points into Marvel’s multiverse stories. Secret Wars #1 is the opening movement of a universe-ending nine-issue event, with Earth-616 and the Ultimate Universe facing their final collision. Amazing Spider-Man #10 is a key chapter in the original Spider-Verse event and the debut of Spider-Punk.
Both are particularly relevant to readers who like to follow comics in monthly installments rather than only through later collections. Each retains the original issue framework, and each comes with an obvious reason for a new audience to investigate: Doom’s centrality in Secret Wars, and Spider-Punk’s first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man. For more comic-book coverage across other corners of genre publishing, see our report on the finale of Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures—Pathfinders.
Collectors and readers should keep the release dates straight: The Amazing Spider-Man #10 Facsimile Edition arrives first, on January 13, 2027, while Secret Wars #1 Facsimile Edition follows on January 20, 2027. From there, the announced monthly Secret Wars rollout will carry the event through issue #9.
