To borrow a turn of phrase from a certain cinematic mad Titan, dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same—a sentiment perhaps shared by Magic: The Gathering players fearing 2026’s onslaught of crossover “Universes Beyond” sets. Marvel, as one of those crossovers, has something to prove coming into round two of its Magic presence after this year’s lackluster Spider-Man set. But while we don’t have a full picture of just what the new set is going to do to potentially overcome all that, we now know one thing at least: Doctor Doom is getting a very silly card.
Today Wizards of the Coast began lifting the lid off of Marvel Super Heroes, the summer set that marks phase two of Magic‘s grand plans with Marvel Comics next year. Unlike Spider-Man, Super Heroes will have the whole rest of the Marvel comics universe to play with, which should go a long way to mitigating some of the fan concerns that emerged from the former set, given a lack of scope and variety to create meaningful cards once you get past a few iterations of Spider-People and Peter’s gallery of rogues. Marvel’s broader world is much weirder than, well, Magic-ier than Spider-Man’s specifically is, and that’s even putting aside the whole swath of Actual Magic Users that are part of that world, so there’s plenty of opportunity to give players a much healthier variety of card archetypes and mechanical connections, whether they’re familiar with all the characters or not.
But one thing that Super Heroes will continue on from Spider-Man in particular is its style of alt-art variants. Although Wizards is teasing there will be more opportunities for other special card variants in the set, the Classic Comic (leveraging classic Marvel comic covers for art and stylized framing), Panel Card (Saga card variants recounting themselves in, well, the style of comic book panels), and Source Material bonus sheet (utilizing classic comic art from Marvel’s history for reprints of prior Magic cards) formats will all return for the new set. It’s in that final one that Super Heroes is branching out into having some fun.
There are some smart, obvious choices in here, like House of M Scarlet Witch emblazoned on Chaos Warp, or Thanos’ Infinity War snap on Extinction Event. It’s also appropriate and very silly that the bonus sheet has not one, but three versions of Heroic Intervention, because what are superheroes going to do other than heroically intervene? But the best of the reveals has to be Horn of Greed, which is getting its first reprint outside of Secret Lair since 2016’s Conspiracy: Take the Crown with arguably the most famous horn in all of Marvel Comics history:
Yes, the infamous panel from 1981’s Spidey Super Stories #53, in which Doctor Doom, working with a mind-controlled Namor the Sub-Mariner to defeat Spider-Man, steals the “sea horn,” defiantly tooting it to summon a massive sea monster to destroy New York with. Given that creature summoning is fundamental to Magic, could it have been used on something a bit more exciting than some basic card draw? Maybe. But the fact that Wizards is willing to lean into some sillier options this time around and embrace some meme history as well goes a long way to reassuring doubters that this set will deliver a stronger feeling of theming after Spider-Man failed to click with Magic players.
Magic: The Gathering—Marvel Super Heroes will launch in June 2026.
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