Wizards of the Coast invents a Marvel character for Magic's 2027 Darkhold Destiny set

A reader who buys the Darkhold Destiny comic in February will meet Magic's new Marvel character before any player opens a pack. Gizmodo reported that the comic gets a digital release in February and a print release in April, the month the cards arrive ^[18][19]. That puts the comic about two months ahead of the set ^[14]. For this one character, the comic will be its only prior appearance. It was created specifically for the set, and neither Marvel nor Wizards is sharing much about it yet ^[3].

Wizards' description of the set reads, "This is a new kind of Universes Beyond set" ^[7]. In practice the change is narrower. Wizards' narrative team wrote an original story inside the Marvel universe ^[1], but the story Wizards describes unfolds across nearly 30 dimensions around four main characters: Doctor Strange, Thor, Hela and Dormammu ^[8]. The original character is not one of the four ^[15].

The set is pitched at two audiences. The card design is aimed at people who already play Magic. Aaron Forsyth, the senior design and creative VP, said the set sits squarely in Magic players' territory and that the team wanted to go all out on it. He called Darkhold Destiny "maybe the most complex Universes Beyond set we've made" ^[6]. "It's not just wall-to-wall legendary creatures fighting each other," he said ^[6].

The original character is aimed at Marvel's publishing. Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly are writing the comic adaptation of the Darkhold story, and Gizmodo reported that this comic is how the character will live beyond the cards ^[4]. Neither company has said how audience response to the character will be measured.

Co-creation covers one of the four Marvel releases Wizards promoted at its New York Comic Con panel. The other three are built on characters or moments Marvel already has ^[17]. The Doomsdrop is a multi-drop collection inspired by Marvel comics and led by Doctor Doom ^[11]. The Secret Lair kit uses more than 30 artists to illustrate iconic moments from Marvel's comic history ^[13], at about $6.67 a card ^[16].

Social posts about opening the new character's cards will be easy to cite once the set is out. We would count something else. Put any licensed product on two axes. One is who created the character, the licensor or the licensee. The other is where the character lives after launch: only inside the licensee's product, or in the licensor's other channels too. The Secret Lair kit is a licensor's character that stays inside the game. The Doom card for Avengers: Doomsday ticket holders is a licensor's character carried across a film release. An original that never leaves the set is the third box. Darkhold Destiny is aiming at the fourth: a character Wizards created, carried by Marvel. The Lanzing and Kelly comic ships alongside the set as part of the launch, so in our view it does not count ^[4][18]. We would put Darkhold Destiny in that fourth box only when Marvel uses the character in a story announced after the April launch.