The world of comics and video games alike has been all aflutter with the launch of Marvel Rivals, the new team-based hero shooter that mashes together Marvel’s comics history with the mechanics of the industry’s latest hot-ticket Overwatch rival. But if you’re already eager to jump in and decide your main, except your Marvel knowhow leans a little more MCU than it does the comics Rivals is more keenly drawing on for its vision of the multiverse, we’re here to help with some answers to the biggest questions we’ve been fielding from our non-comics friends this past weekend.
Unless you’re a Punisher main. You guys go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.
Who Is Galacta?
First created in 2009 for a short-lived comic series, Galacta isn’t a gender-bent spin on Galactus, but his daughter. Not sired through traditional means, in her reality Galacta was birthed from a parasitic entity within Galactus’ own field of the Power Cosmic. Hiding on earth as a girl named Gali, Galacta used her similar abilities to her father—to combat her own similar growing hunger to fuel the Power Cosmic within her—to protect the world from alien threats in secret, consuming hostile biomass rather than turning on the planet itself.
The character hasn’t actually had many appearances since, but she’s started reaching more people through her recent gaming appearances. Aside from Rivals, where Galacta acts as the match commentator and the central figure bringing the myriad heroes together as a fighting force, she’s also recently appeared in Marvel’s other recent buzzy game, the card game Marvel Snap.
Is Marvel Rivals‘ Story Based on the Comics?
There isn’t a direct parallel to any particular comics storyline and Rivals‘ premise, but it’s definitely one that’s going to be familiar to both comics readers and anyone who’s up to date on where the MCU is going to start heading over the next few years. In Rivals, heroes and villains from across the multiverse have been drawn to a singular futuristic amalgam reality after its Doctor Doom and a past alternate managed to cross paths and inevitably attempt to undo each other. This created an event dubbed the “Timestream Entanglement,” which both threatened to collapse time itself as well as create a series of incursions where various multiverses collided, either depositing fragments of themselves (like the living island Krakoa, more on that later) or merging parts of them entirely, like Yggsard, a fusion of the realm of Asgard and the world tree Yggdrasil.
You can think then, in comics terms, of Marvel Rivals taking place in something akin to Secret Wars‘ battleworld, in particular the version of it from the 2015 comic event of that name, rather than the 1985 original. There’s a mixture of the multiversal collapse (which will become a narrative within the MCU, culminating in its next Avengers duology) and this idea of a fusion world while all these realities are in existential limbo as Rivals‘ characters race to stop the Dooms, but it’s otherwise an original setting for the game.
Is Jeff the Shark Really From the Comics?
Yes! One of Rivals‘ early breakout characters has been the adorable “Land Shark” Jeff, a support healer who is just a teeny tiny shark with teeny tiny legs running around and chomping up entire teams. He’s a more recent Marvel character, but he does indeed have roots in the comics rather than necessarily being created whole cloth for Rivals. Jeff was introduced in the pages of Kelly Thompson and Daniele di Nicuolo’s West Coast Avengers series in 2018, after the team dealt with a horde of Land Sharks created by Modok assaulting Santa Monica. Gwenpool adopted one of the sharks and named him Jeff, and reaction to the character saw him become a staple throughout the run. Thompson went on to bring the creature into various other stories, where he’s been “adopted” by the likes of Deadpool and Elsa Bloodstone.
Jeff has currently starred in one of Marvel’s most popular digital scrolling “Infinity” comics, It’s Jeff!, since 2021. Written by Thompson and illustrated by Gurihiru (who helped popularize the character even further by incorporating Jeff into their convention art), the series follows Jeff’s shenanigans within the Marvel universe.
Why Aren’t Iron Fist and Psylocke Danny Rand or Kwannon?
Every playable character in Marvel Rivals is rooted in the comics in some form or another, but not every hero is perhaps their most “famous” version. Iron Fist and Psylocke are two of the biggest in the roster who aren’t their usual alter egos, with Lin Lie and Sai respectively taking on the mantles. Neither of them are Rivals originals though; they both have history in the comics.
Lin Lie was introduced as the hero Sword Master in 2018 as part of the Chinese market-exclusive comic series Warriors of Three Sovereigns—part of a prior collaboration between Marvel and NetEase to bring the publisher’s comics to the region with official translations—before being introduced to Western audiences a year later as a member of the new Agents of Atlas during the War of the Realms event. Shortly after, Lin got his own short-lived Sword Master series, but rose to even greater prominence in 2022 when he became the latest inheritor of the Iron Fist mantle.
Sai meanwhile was created by writer-artist Peach Momoko for a series called Demon Days, re-imagining several Marvel heroes through the lens of Japanese folklore. Debuting in 2021, Demon Days depicts Sai as a wandering psychic ronin, battling various demons throughout her travels.
Is Luna Snow From the Comics?
Like Jeff, Luna is another character that intrigued gamers, especially as she was one of the first characters revealed for Rivals earlier this year. But while, like everyone else, she does have a comics history, she is an original video game character… just not for Rivals.
Luna was created by Korean game developer Netmarble in 2018 as an original addition to Marvel Future Fight—a K-Pop idol turned into a mutate after an AIM attack on one of her concerts, where a malfunctioning fusion reactor gave her cryokinetic abilities. Like Lin Lie, Luna made her comics debut joining the new Agents of Atlas team in 2019. After a solo one-shot and the Agents of Atlas series however, Luna had largely been left having cameo roles in other books before Rivals put her in the spotlight once more.
Why Do All the Mutant Characters Talk About Krakoa?
One aspect of Rivals‘ worldbuilding—and perhaps a boon of the game being developed while it was relevant to then-current comics continuity—is that most of its mutant characters all hail from the mutant sovereign state formed on Krakoa, the living island. In Rivals, its version of Krakoa has been pulled by the Timestream Entanglement, depositing its versions of Magneto, Storm, Wolverine, and Magik, as well as the island itself, into 2099.
Although Krakoa has been part of X-Men comics lore since the pages of Giant Size X-Men #1 in 1975, it became a crucial element of the 2019 soft-reboot of Marvel’s X-Men line in House of X and Powers of X, by writer Jonathan Hickman. That duology established that, having developed a way to use the abilities of five mutants—Tempus, Proteus, Hope Summers, Elixir, and Egg—as well as the backup memory of Cerebro, Mutantkind became able to essentially resurrect the vast majority of deceased mutants. Relocating to Krakoa at the behest of Charles Xavier and Magneto, working alongside Moira MacTaggert (kept secret as a re-incarnating mutant), the latest attempt at a mutant nation was formed. Alas, no good thing for mutants lasts that long: Krakoa as a nation came to a fiery end in 2023 when it was assaulted by the Human-supremacist organisation Orchis, setting the stage for the latest line-wide reboot.
What Are You Actually Escorting in Marvel Rivals‘ Maps?
Just like Rivals‘ roster itself, it’s not just the playable characters in the game that have some interesting connections to the comics. Each of the game’s maps for the “convoy” escort mode are built around a series of fun nods to the comics, some more intriguing than others.
The cutest but slightest of the three, on Yggsgard, sees you fighting over a chariot pulled by two giant goats as you fight to either prevent or enable Loki from tapping into the power of the world tree. These are of course Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder, Asgardian goats who Thor has ridden into battle across the realms for the best part of the last 50 years, and most recently made an appearance in Thor: Love and Thunder. On Klyntar, the Symbiote homeworld, it’s the essence of Knull, the King in Black and creator of Symbiote-kind first introduced by Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman in 2018—who recently was teased in the post-credits sequence of Venom: The Last Dance, and may end up coming to Rivals in a broader capacity.
Lastly, in Tokyo 2099, players battle over Spider-Zero, as she attempts to stop the Master Weaver from harmfully restoring the Web of Life and Destiny with energy harvested from the Entanglement. Spider-Zero was created for the comics in the third volume of Spider-Verse in 2019, a spider whose home reality was lost in an incursion, leaving her wandering the multiverse, before she became the latest inheritor of the Master Weaver mantle, tasked with safeguarding the aforementioned Web of Life and Destiny.
What Is the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda From the Battle Pass?
Another element from the comics Rivals is putting front and center in its debut season is the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, providing the theming for several of the skins in Rivals‘ first premium battlepass. Again, it’s not just an excuse for a bunch of sci-fi skins, but inspired by the comics: the concept of Wakanda finding its way to the stars was first established in 2017, before becoming a major element of Ta-Nahesi Coates’ run on Black Panther. The Intergalactic Empire was established retroactively by a group of Wakandan Alpha Flight scientists sent on a mission into space by T’Challa to investigate the origins of the Mena Ngai, the meteor that brought vibranium to earth and ushered in the establishment of Wakanda as a nation.
When their vessel was hit by a temporal anomaly stranding them thousands of years in the past, the scientists utilized their knowhow to establish a new Wakandan Empire that grew to expand across multiple galaxies by the present day. Although distant from the Wakanda on Earth, it’s still active in Marvel’s grand scheme of cosmic things even now, ruled by M’Baku—originally a rebel who took on the name, rather than the M’Baku of Earth—as its regent after T’Challa himself returned to Earth.
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