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In 2025, Marvel Comics had big plans for the Guardians of the Galaxy; in fact, marketing the upcoming series Imperial Guardians as "a bold new evolution of the Guardians of the Galaxy." That evolution is apparently being stunted by Marvel, less than two months before it was to begin.

Announced in late 2025 as an ongoing series, Imperial Guardians plans have been truncated to be a five-issue series as revealed in the advertisement for its second issue. The series by writer Dan Abnett and Marcelo Ferreira will still happen in a five-issue form, showing essentially a government-led version of the Guardians under the newly formed cosmic political system known as the Galactic Union. The team features Gamora from the most popular rendition of the Guardians team, joined by a rag-tag crew made up of Captain Marvel, Amadeus Cho, Darkhawk, and Cosmic Ghost Rider.

The publisher hasn't given a reason for the change, and this decision comes before February 9, when orders for the series' first issue were due from retailers. It seems improbable that Marvel could have mistakenly announced this as an "ongoing series," leading to the impression that something happened after that initial announcement and late January to change Marvel's hopes for the series. This is a trend that has happened before at Marvel for over a decade, leading to the term 'stealth mini' being coined in the mid '10s to describe it.

This decision to turn an ongoing series into a five-issue run seems to be at odds with Marvel Comics' publisher Dan Buckley's comments from 2024 about canceling ongoing series after four or five issues. 

"I'm not going to say there won't be limited series, but I am at the moment approving some series for 10 issues at a time, not 4 or 5.  Hopefully I can get to 15 or 20," Buckley told ICv2's Milton Griepp in 2024. "That is the intent. Because, to be honest, it's a lot of work on our editorial staff, too, to restart books all the time; there's a lot of work on our marketing staff, to re-market a book coming out.  It's to the benefit of everyone to figure this out."

Imperial Guardians #1 (of 5) goes on sale March 11.

Get ready for what's next with our guide to upcoming comics, how to buy comics at a comic shop, and our guide to Free Comic Book Day 2025.