The X-Men have spent decades trying to build a future for mutants, and the team from the ’90s animated series knows better than most how hard that can be. They’ve fought Sentinels, watched their friends become enemies, and kept fighting for Xavier’s dream even when the world gave them every reason to give up on it. Marvel’s next story for this version of the team puts that dream to a test that punching a villain won’t solve.
An incursion brings two Earths together, and neither survives the collision unless someone makes an awful choice first. Marvel has already lined up five one-shots exploring the final days before Secret Wars, each with a different set of heroes caught between their own world and someone else’s. The ’90s X-Men are about to discover that the people on the other Earth believe in the same future they do.
In X-Men ’92: Incursions #1, the team inspired by X-Men: The Animated Series faces the younger mutants of X-Men: Evolution. The one-shot, written by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost with art by Salva Espin, goes on sale January 6, 2027. Marvel announced the Incursions lineup in August, but its latest release confirms the full schedule and brings this particular matchup back into focus. The older X-Men must save their Earth knowing that victory could mean destroying a world inhabited by younger versions of themselves.
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Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which MCU Character Is Your Best Friend? Steve Rogers · Tony Stark · Peter Parker · Shuri
Pick where you meet, what they text you at two in the morning, what they hand you on your birthday and what the two of you keep arguing about. Four very different people are waiting on the other side: the one who never leaves, the one who is exhausting and worth it, the one who replies in four seconds flat, and the one who will roast you and then fix your life.
🛡️Steve Rogers(Captain America)
🛠️Tony Stark(Iron Man)
🕸️Peter Parker(Spider-Man)
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🐆Shuri(Black Panther)
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01
Where do the two of you meet? Nobody in this universe makes a friend somewhere normal.
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02
Your phone lights up at two in the morning. What does it say? You find out what kind of friend somebody is by what they send at that hour.
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03
It is your birthday. What do they hand you? The present is never really about the present.
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04
What does a good Saturday with them actually look like? Superheroes have days off, and this is how they spend them.
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05
You have your worst day in years. What do they do about it? This is the part of a friendship nobody puts in the trailer.
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06
Every real friendship has one fight it keeps having. What is yours? The thing you argue about is usually the thing you like most about them.
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07
The alarm goes off and you are both in the field. What is your job? You get one role on the team, and it says a lot about who you want next to you.
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08
Ten years on, what do you want this friendship to be? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who picks up the phone.
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The Line Is Ringing Your Best Friend Is…
Four people, four completely different ideas of what it means to have
somebody in your corner. Here is who picked up, what they would ask of you, and what you would get
back.
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Captain America · Marvel Studios · Since 2011
Steve Rogers
You want the friend who does not leave. Steve is the one who
turns up at the door without being asked, who remembers what you said you were worried
about, and who has never once made you audition for his attention.
His entire character is built on a single sentence, which is that he will not abandon
somebody just because it has become expensive to keep them.
He is far funnier than people give him credit for, and the joke is almost always at his
own expense rather than yours.
The friendship comes with a cost, since being close to Steve means being dragged into
fights that were never yours and being glad about it later.
You would get a friend who tells you the hard thing to your face and then defends you to
everybody else in the room.
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Iron Man · Marvel Studios · Since 2008
Tony Stark
You want the friend who is genuinely exhausting and completely
worth it. Tony will forget your birthday, then build you something at four in the morning
that you did not know you needed, and hand it over as though it were nothing.
He is bad at saying the warm thing out loud, so he says it in hardware instead, which is
why everybody around him ends up with upgraded everything.
Being his friend means putting up with the disappearing, the deflecting and the jokes
that arrive about ninety seconds too early.
What you get in return is somebody who will spend an unreasonable amount of money and
effort on a problem the moment it becomes yours.
He is the loudest person in the room and the one most likely to be quietly panicking
about all of you.
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Spider-Man · Marvel Studios · Since 2016
Peter Parker
You want the friend who replies in four seconds and apologises
for it. Peter is earnest in a way that is almost unfashionable, and he will take on far more
than he can carry rather than admit that he is struggling.
He is the only one on this list who needs looking after as much as he looks after you,
and that balance is exactly what makes it a real friendship.
Nobody in the MCU is better at the small stuff, from remembering the thing you were
nervous about to showing up with food you did not ask for.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrived in July 2026 and put him back where he works best,
which is broke, local and carrying the weight on his own.
You would get a friend who is sincerely, embarrassingly happy for you when something
goes right, with no edge to it at all.
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Black Panther · Marvel Studios · Since 2018
Shuri
You want the friend who insults your shoes, fixes your phone and
then quietly rearranges your entire life for the better. Shuri does not do soft reassurance,
and that is the reason you would believe her when she says you are fine.
She is the smartest person in almost any room she walks into and treats that as a reason
to tease you rather than a reason to lecture you.
The teasing is the affection. When Shuri stops making fun of you, something has gone
seriously wrong and you should probably ask her about it.
Her story is the one on this list that goes somewhere genuinely dark, which is what
turned her from a scene stealer into the emotional centre of the films.
You would get a friend who never pities you, never softens the truth, and never once
lets you take yourself too seriously.
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‘X-Men ’92’ Is Bringing an Old Fan Debate Into ‘Secret Wars’
It’s a matchup that invites fans to compare two animated teams, but the premise gives them a much worse question to argue about. The X-Men: Evolution characters are still young enough to believe Xavier’s dream can work, while their older counterparts know how much they’ve had to sacrifice to keep pursuing it. If the ’90s team chooses its own survival, it may wipe out the very hope it claims to protect. And if it refuses to fight, both Earths could be lost. They aren’t the only mutants facing that choice. The separate X-Men: Incursions #1 arrives November 18, pitting the mutant-dominated reality of House of Magainst the future of Days of Future Past. Alex Paknadel and Jim Towe’s story leaves Kate Pryde just eight hours to decide which world survives. It’s the first of the five one-shots, setting the stakes before the animated teams meet in January.
Marvel’s other collisions are just as personal. Spider-Gwen faces Mayday Parker when Earth-65 meets Earth-982 in Spider-Man: Incursions #1 on December 9. A gamma-powered Fantastic Four and cosmic-powered Bruce Banner arrive in Fantastic Four: Incursions #1 on December 23, while January 20’s Avengers: Incursions #1 sends Thanos and his Cabal against a world where the founding Avengers are still together. Those fights offer no easy way out, but the X-Men ’92 issue has an especially nasty twist: this team has to decide whether the mutants it once was deserve a future more than the mutants it has become.
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