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There is always a lot of discourse happening in the Magic: The Gathering fan community, and for good reason. Magic is a hobby, in most cases, that you need to buy into, and continue buying into, if you're playing standard at least. So when you're dropping your hard-earned adult money on fancy cardboard that requires you to interact with other people for a few hours, it's only natural to have an opinion or thirty about the state of the game. 

Now, I'll admit, I'm a New Yorker raised in the Fran Lebowitz school of being judgmental about arts and culture (allegedly). I have thoughts and feelings on just about everything because I can't help myself, or rather, society can't help me when it does things like have Jeff Bezos sponsor the Met Gala and allow MrBeast to exist in perpetuity. All of this is to say that I have standards, and I don't like lowering them. But I sure as hell love it when things exceed them. 

This latest thing is the upcoming Marvel Super Heroes crossover set from Magic: The Gathering. While we've only been given a small group of cards as a preview of the larger set thus far, they've melted my cold hater's heart. I was left underwhelmed by the recent Spider-Man crossover set from Magic, even if I enjoyed seeing that the company worked with comic book artists like Jim Cheung for the cards' artwork. As a comic book reader who always enjoys seeing Jim Cheung's work, for instance, the Spider-Man set made me realize that I prefer seeing his art blown up to the scale of a comic book page than shrunk down to the size of your average Magic card. In other words, I didn't feel like Marvel's Spider-Man showed me anything I hadn't already seen before, printed on a larger and more cost-effective surface. 

Thus far, Marvel Super Heroes has given me the sense that Wizards of the Coast put a considerable amount of resources into the art direction for this set, properly reflecting the level of talent working behind the scenes in Magic. Part of why Spider-Man was such a bummer was that it came on the heels of a gorgeous Universes Within set from this summer, Edge of Eternities. I felt like Edge of Eternities expanded my appreciation of the space opera genre by showing me something new with its art direction, and now Marvel Super Heroes has achieved something similar but with, well, Marvel superheroes. 

Take, for instance, Tommy Arnold's double-faced card for Bruce Banner and The Incredible Hulk. We've all seen little ol' Banner transform into the Jade Giant hundreds, if not thousands, of times, but Arnold's artwork takes advantage of the fact that it doesn't have the responsibility of telling a sequential comic book story. That is, its only objective is to represent, visually, what it means for a bespectacled scientist like Bruce Banner to give into the gamma-powered rage monster within him. Arnold's art for the Bruce Banner side of the card creates a sense of dramatic tension without any text: we see the tails of Banner's collared shirt pulled taut as they're tucked into his pants, the leather belt beginning to strain around his hips, the eyeglasses being crushed in his fist, his coffee mug toppled over, and Banner's eyebrows arched with such aggression that would make The Rock blush. It's topped off by the lens flare effect Arnold has painted that elevates the whole image. With just one image, Arnold is telling a whole story. 

The other side of the card, The Incredible Hulk, had me fully won over for this set. I am one of those people who thinks that if he ever saw the Hulk in real life, he wouldn't scream or freak out, but Arnold's Hulk has humbled me. Because the Hulk here is freaking terrifying, and I've never seen him look so goddamn angry before. Arnold's choice to light one of Hulk's eyes, rendered a sickening shade of light green here, brings a sense of unbridled chaos to an image that doesn't even show off the rest of the character's physique. Instead, we're viewing the Hulk through a lens of infernal anger on par with what Dante Alighieri wrote about, and it's going to haunt me for the rest of my life. You just don't see images like this in the pages of Marvel Comics. 

There is a lot more that I could say about each of the cards revealed for Marvel Super Heroes (and I haven't even gotten to all the interesting gameplay mechanics at work, either), but I'll stop here. Hopefully, Wizards of the Coast won't let me down when they reveal more cards before the set's release in June 2026. I'll be watching, waiting, and judging. 

Whether you are a Commander player, a regular at your local game shop's FNM event, or simply love collecting Magic: The Gathering cards, you've landed in the right place. From Universes Beyond to the furthest reaches of the Magic Multiverse, we've got you covered here at Popverse. 

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