Marvel’s First Family are meeting Disney’s Defenders of the Night in Gargoyles/Fantastic Four, a seminal crossover launching from Dynamite Entertainment this October. Written by series creator Greg Weisman, with art by George Kambadais, and lettered by Jeff Eckleberry, the crossover will receive a preview in next week’s Free Comic Book Day issue, Gargoyles: Demona #0, due out Saturday, May 3.
Key members of the Manhattan Clan, including Goliath, Elisa Maza, Brooklyn, Katana and Nashville have been invited on a tour of one of the most impressive and technologically advanced buildings in their adopted home of New York City — the Baxter Building. Everything goes awry when a fearsome cast of foes from both mythos cross paths, including Coldsteel, the Gargoyle aka Yuri Topolov, and the deadly Annihilus.
The book marks the first official crossover for the Gargoyles universe, and the first between Marvel and Dynamite since 2007’s Spider-Man/Red Sonja (not counting some titles that were co-published because of Alex Ross was exclusive to Dynamite at the time). While the announcement does coincide with The Fantastic Four: First Steps‘s impending release, and the 25th anniversary of Gargoyles (which premiered on October 24, 1994), Weisman describes this as a logical pairing because it’s “a tale of clan and family. And it’s a thrill to get this opportunity to bring the first family of the Marvel Universe together with the Manhattan Clan. It feels right!”
Gargoyles and Marvel’s history has been intertwined for a long time, well before Disney acquired the latter in 2009 though: the publisher released the first, 11-issue Gargoyles comics series way back in 1995. When then Disney CEO Michael Eisner backed out of acquiring Marvel in the early ’90s, he pushed the Gargoyles creative team to develop their own shared universe with a series of backdoor pilots during the second season. Weisman himself previously wrote a radio play crossover between the show and The Spectacular Spider-Man (another series he oversaw) for a Gargoyles convention in 2009. As for non-Marvel crossovers, Weisman had planned to have the gargoyle Demona guest star in an episode of the unproduced Atlantis: The Lost Empire TV series during the early 2000s.
More details on the crossover will be released in the coming months, although Dynamite shared there’ll be covers by Lucio Parrillo, Fantastic Four veteran Mark Bagley, and former Marvel Gargoyles artist Amanda Conner. In the meantime, Gargoyles: Demona #1, written by Greg Weisman with art by Frank Paur, will kick off the next Dynamite Gargoyles series proper on May 28.
