The Marvel Creator Behind the X-Men’s Krakoa Relaunch Is Working on a Secret Project

Marvel is teasing a 2025 project from superstar creator Jonathan Hickman. With only a few days left in 2024, it’s time for publishers to look ahead to 2025 and begin to tease some of the storylines and events they have in store. That’s why Marvel has dropped a teaser image for something called “Imperial,” with Jonathan Hickman named as the creator attached to the project. Hickman is behind some of Marvel’s biggest storylines in the modern era, including runs on Avengers, Fantastic Four, and X-Men. We’ll have to see if “Imperial” stacks up to those three, but at least we have some marketing materials to speculate on.

“Coming to Marvel Comics in 2025… Imperial!” the press release from Marvel reads. “Stay tuned next year for news about IMPERIAL, a new saga from visionary writer Jonathan Hickman.” The piece of promotional artwork has the word “Imperial” in its center along with the phrase, “Jonathan Hickman presents the end of the beginning,” and “Nature abhors a vacuum” with a Summer 2025 release window. So we know a name and time frame for when the next Jonathan Hickman epic will hit comic book stands, but that doesn’t mean we can’t toss out some theories on what it could be.

[RELATED: A Fan-Favorite X-Men Character Just Got an MCU Variant]

Marvel may have already dropped clues to Jonathan Hickman’s secret project

The release of the “Imperial” teaser comes the same week that Marvel released Timeslide #1, the end of the year one-shot that replaced the previous Timeless entries that offered first looks at the future of the Marvel Universe. Timeless features a team-up between the time-traveling X-Men Cable and Bishop, who are tasked with saving mutantkind from being eaten away by the timestream. The villain behind this is Vacuna, a member of the Children of the Vault. Vacuna can jump through the timestream and consume critical moments in mutant history, so you can see how that would be problematic for the X-Men.

Cable and Bishop’s journey takes them to Washington, D.C. in the near future. They’re confronted by a War-Lock drone that serves Revelation, the heir to Apocalypse and former Doug Ramsey. Bronze, one of Kitty Pryde’s new mutants in Extraordinary X-Men, stops the War-Lock and tries to fill Cable and Bishop in on how Revelation came into power. Bronze displays key events that may or may not happen in 2025, with one of them revealing how galactic leaders are going to be assassinated. Galactic leaders are very similar to imperials, meaning this may be the project Jonathan Hickman is working on.

[RELATED: Marvel Teases Major New Ultimate Universe Crossover (But It’s Too Soon)]

“Nature abhors a vacuum” is another clue that points to a galactic assassination. If these leaders were truly killed, then that would leave a vacuum of power open for opportunists to exploit. The only question is who are the executioners and who are the assassinated? Hulkling of the Young Avengers is currently known as Emperor Hulkling, having brought the Kree and Skrull together during the Empyre event. There’s also the Galactic Council that consists of different alien races who work together to keep the galaxy from tearing itself apart.

With March 2025 solicits already out in the wild, it won’t be long before we get to the summer solicits and the big reveal of what “Imperial” actually is. That wait won’t be too long, and then the wait begins for “Imperial” to officially begin.