‘Black Vortex’ Will Suck In Lots Of Cosplayers

Marvel Comics has kicked off its latest multi-title crossover comic book event, under the overall rubric of “Black Vortex.” The first issue hit the stands today, Guardians of the Galaxy & X-Men: The Black Vortex Alpha #1 (yes, it is a God-awful name, seemingly inspired by the ridiculously long names of some modern anime series). Without giving anything away, let me tell you why you might want to buy it — cosplay source material.

So, I do need to describe a bit of the story to explain why Black Vortex will create a storm in the cosplay community. The Black Vortex itself is an ancient artifact that supposedly imbues the user with immense cosmic power, and seems to make people evil. And of course one of the keys to being evil is having a new evil costume or armor or look.

Black Vortex will cross over into all of the galactic-level comic book titles at Marvel, as well as the X-Men books. So anticipate many of your favorite characters getting all new (one assumes temporary) outfits, along the lines of the Phoenix Force Five in the Avengers vs, X-Men crossover — or the multi-colored Lantern rings in DC, which may or may not have influenced the decision to do Black Vortex at Marvel. New costumes, good guys becoming evil, focused on the outer space-based titles? Sounds kinda familiar.

Marvel teased Black Vortex in released images like the one at the top, showing altered versions of, from left, Drax, Jean Grey, Beast, Angel and Captain Marvel. In addition it put out a teaser video featuring some motion animation, which you can watch on our Facebook page. So you get to see some of the upcoming redesigns in advance. But it will be in the actual comics that the full, detailed looks will be found, and in this first issue we get to see a potential version of Storm and an actual new version of … well, someone in the two title teams.

So far, unfortunately, the new costumes are the only reasons to read Black Vortex, although that opinion is based on just the first issue. Original Sin, which turned out to be so disappointing, started out much stronger. Let’s hope the Black Vortex story line picks up.