AXE: Judgment Day writer Kieron Gillen teases the battle ahead in Marvel Comics' premiere 2022 event

This summer, writer Kieron Gillen will launch his first-ever Marvel Comics event series with AXE: Judgment Day with artist Valerio Schiti, an epic clash that will feature the Eternals bringing the fight to the X-Men, and the Avengers caught in the middle of it all.

We've already heard from Gillen about the stakes of the event, what's coming up in the Eve of Judgment prelude issue, and more, but the creator behind books like Eternals and The Wicked + The Divine also had much more to say about crafting the massive crossover. So, here's out full, extended interview with Gillen, talking everything from his favorite event books to working with artist Valerio Schiti to what creator owned comics taught him about writing superhero events.

Popverse: Obviously you've been back doing Eternals for a while, but some of the stuff you're dealing with with this story, particularly in the Free Comic Book Day prologue, ties back to stuff that Jason Aaron was doing with the Avengers of 1,000,000 B.C. and things like that. Where does Judgment Day begin for you in terms of where the idea came from and how early on you started developing it?

Kieron Gillen: Honestly, for me, speaking as a reader as much as a writer, there's nothing worse than an event that comes out of nowhere. OK, that's not true. There are many things worse than an event that comes out of nowhere, like war. You know what I mean? Anything in the real world.

But in comics, it's so much better when an event naturally grows from the material. So, when I was asked [about event ideas], it was like 'It had to come from the books.' So yeah, I was looking at the Avengers, what Jason has built in the mythology there. I was looking at the X-Books, the secrets of Krakoa coming to light, and I was looking at these while I was doing the Eternals, which dances with both of them, the various tensions in Eternal society there. And now that stuff's going to blow up. It's just that kind of 'Oh look, these are three logical strains that are intersecting, let's then bring them forth and see what happens with them.'

Did elements of this in your head predate what you were doing in Eternals, or was it something that came once you were scripting that?

Good question. I couldn't quite give you an exact timeline because it came through naturally. I was asked to do Immortal X-Men beginning of last year, I reckon. I would have to check the exact day. Maybe even slightly earlier. I had already obviously been doing Eternals then, and I was already thinking, 'OK, there's an Eternal/X-Men crossover here. There's a war happening here because of this. All this stuff is