Marvel Penguin Picks: March 2026
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
The Mortal Thor vol. 1: No Gods, No Masters
On one hand, it’s a little disheartening to see Marvel relaunch an ongoing run with a new #1 as it implies that what was going on before wasn’t quite working and that it really needed a sales boost. On the other, I appreciate that the publisher sees the value in trying to get a run to its intended conclusion as it’s clearly trying to do with Al Ewing’s tenure on “Thor.” His has been a run that has seen the God of Thunder attacked from all directions and forced into a confrontation with the Utgar-gods that saw him betrayed in the end by, well… even if you haven’t been reading this it wouldn’t be too hard to guess. However, death is not the end for the Asgardian gods – it’s not even the first time Thor has died – and now the title character has been reborn once again.
While this is billed as the follow-up to the shocking end of “The Immortal Thor,” it becomes less shocking when you consider this title’s new sobriquet. However, after five volumes that saw Thor being dragged down, it seems we’re finally going to see him take the fight to Roxxon in his new mortal form, even if he has no memory of who he used to be and the world at large no longer remembers him. That’s because Asgard and the Nine Realms have been cut off from Midgard and now have their own problems to deal with. It’s encouraging to see that Ewing has a plan for all of the things that encompass “Thor” and with Pasqual Ferry handling the art for this first volume – and Juann Cabal waiting in the wings for vol. 2 – this new status quo is going to have a stylish new look about it.
Wonder Man #1 (of 5): In case you’ve forgotten, there’s a “Wonder Man” limited series set to debut on Disney+ early in 2026. Regardless of whether or not it’s going to be successful or good, that means Marvel is going to put out a new comic to ride the increased profile the series will bring to the title character. Who is someone we haven’t seen a whole lot of lately – I think his highest-profile guest appearance was in the last few issues of Benjamin Percy’s “X-Force” where he teamed up with the newly-cloned Beast. Gerry Duggan is writing this new miniseries which promises to be a love letter to the character (and to L.A.) as his past catches up with him. Illustrating it is a surprising, but not unwelcome, choice in Mark Buckingham as even the superhero comics he’s illustrated recently (like “Miracleman: The Silver Age”) don’t really look like them.
The Sentry #1 (of 4): Now this is a surprise. The original “The Sentry” miniseries from writer Paul Jenkins and artist Jae Lee was a dark and engrossing mystery about a Marvel superhero who was forgotten for a very good reason. Though the miniseries ended with a definite conclusion, nothing successful ever stays finished for long at Marvel and the character was eventually brought back in the pages of Bendis “New Avengers.” To results that weren’t anywhere as good as the original, even with Jenkins writing a follow-up miniseries.
Now Jenkins is back writing another “Sentry” miniseries whose timing is more curious than anything else. The character made his MCU debut in “Thunderbolts*” last year, which seems like it would’ve been a better time to publish this. As for the miniseries itself, The Sentry’s dark half The Void has resurfaced and is threatening to unravel reality itself. Whether or not Robert Reynolds can get himself under control, and therefore control The Void, is anybody’s guess, but we can only hope that Jenkins has a story with the character he really wants to tell here and isn’t just filling a need by Marvel editorial. Christian Rosado illustrates.
Alias: Red Band #1 (of 5): Jessica Jones returns to her Mature Readers origins with this new miniseries from… writer Sam Humphries? With Bendis returning to Marvel, you’d think he’d want another crack at the characters he created, but I guess that’s coming later. Anyway, Humphries and artist Geraldo Borges, have Jessica on the trail of a series of grisly murders in New York City and forming an unlikely partnership with Typhoid Mary to do so. While unlikely alliances with supervillains isn’t anything new to the character, it’s certainly an optics problem when she’s married to the superhero mayor of NYC, Luke Cage. It’s a solid setup and Humphries has done some underrated work at Marvel over the years. I’m interested.
X-Men United #1: The post “Age of Revelation” relaunch for the “X-Men” titles continues apace with “Exceptional X-Men” writer Eve Ewing leaving that series behind as she goes bigger for this new series. While The Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters may have been a foundational part of the line, it’s been a while since we’ve seen anything involving a school from the X-titles. So this will be a nice change of pace and Ewing surprised me with how good her character work was in the first volume of “Exceptional.” Hopefully this series will give her even more to work with and that new artist Tiago Palma is up to the task of delivering on this title’s bigger scale.
Imperial Guardians #1: Spinning out of “Imperial” and the one-shot of the same name comes this new cosmic title involving an unlikely group of characters – Gamora, Captain Marvel, Amadeus Cho, Darkhawk, and Cosmic Ghost Rider – doing the dirty work necessary to protect the new Galactic Union. While any team that includes Cosmic Ghost Rider would seem to have the odds stacked against them, let alone be able to work together at all, the real issue is how much the person who recruited them can be trusted. That person being Maximus of the Inhumans, who’s still trying to live down “The Mad” nickname he’s had for so many years. Dan Abnett is writing this and he’s done a lot of good work in and out of the Marvel Universe, so I’m interested in seeing what he can do here alongside artist Marcelo Ferreira.
X-Men Annual #1: It’s been a while since we’ve seen one of these as they’ve mostly fallen out of favor due to delivering nothing but extraneous filler or event tie-in stories over the years. That looks to be the case here again as the X-Men find themselves up against a foe known as the Creationist who’s forcing talented artists to visualize monsters that then tear through the real world. While that doesn’t inspire me to pick this up, anyone who likes good superhero art may want to give this a look as it’s going to feature work from Ryan Stegman (who’s also writing this), Steve Skroce, Sanford Greene and more. Even if the story is going to underwhelm, it looks like it’s just here to give some great artists a chance to cut loose here.
Star Wars: Shadow of Maul #1 (of 5): Captain Brander Lawson and his droid partner Two Boots are the law on the neon-lit cityscape planet of Brandix. It’s a thankless job that’s about to get a lot tougher as a certain lord of the criminal underworld is reported to be moving in on his territory. Brandon Percy writes what looks to be a story about a well-meaning lawman getting in over his head with one of “Star Wars” most notorious villains. That sounds fine enough, but I’ll admit that I’m more intrigued by the fact that this is being illustrated by Madibek Musabekov, who did killer work on the issues of Charles Soule’s “Star Wars” that he illustrated. No, I didn’t check out his “Jedi Knights” miniseries because Marc Guggenheim has effectively exhausted his credibility to me, but what I’ve read from Percy so far implies that this might be all right.
X-Men: Age of Revelation – Overture, Book of Revelation, and World of Revelation: The titular event gets collected into three volumes and… I’m not sure if they made the right call in how these miniseries are being collected. They’re collecting entire miniseries in each of these volumes, except that “Overture” collects the “#0” and “Prelude” issues with “World” collecting the “Finale.” Ideally you’d want there to be some kind of momentum carrying the reader through these volumes (and the implication is that the Jed MacKay-written issues are meant to provide that), but I’m not sure how these volumes are going to manage that. You’d think a better way to go about doing that would be to have each volume collect the #1’s, #2’s, and #3’s in succession, but that would also require the reader to keep the events of sixteen different miniseries straight while reading through the whole thing. That said, I’ll likely be reading the event that way on Marvel Unlimited since while the core of the event appears to have done well for itself, there’s an unsurprising amount of chaff in all of the ancillary miniseries.
Predator Kills the Marvel Universe: Benjamin Percy again, reaching the culmination of his “vs.” miniseries with Wolverine, Black Panther, and Spider-Man here. I’m fairly certain we’re in alternate universe territory here as there will be no way to establish the threat posed by the Yautja without several heroes getting killed in the process. That said, involving these alien hunters in this large-scale really risks them running into the issue posed by the Inverse Ninja Theorem: One is an elite, nigh-unstoppable fighting force, many are just cannon fodder. Whatever the case is, it won’t be too much skin off my back to find out as I’ll likely just read through this and the miniseries I didn’t buy on Marvel Unlimited.