'X' Marks The Spot

Well... That was unexpected!

When the Topps Marvel Collect! app was first released there were rumblings of a lack of certain aspects of the complete Marvel catalogue, particularly in the form of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.

The releases for base cards and insert sets over the first month concentrated on the 'Marvel Universe' characters and 'franchises' - namely the Avengers, Spiderman, and a few other assorted odds and sods.

From a marketing point of view this was a no-brainer, tying these initial releases in with the Marvel Cinematic Universe that everyone is so familiar with. Cards featuring Cap, Iron-Man and Spidey are an easy sell, and the likes of Falcon, Black Widow and Black Panther fit in nicely beside them.

We even had coverage from the world of Marvel TV with the protaganists of the (sadly) now-cancelled Netflix shows - Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist.

However the Marvel portfolio is truly vast, with a cast of thousands who can be called on to fill out our digital card colections. The usual rumours of licencing issues, future wave releases, and other conspiracy theories were strewn over social media. Topps themselves made very little comment until yestarday when, completely out of the blue, we had this tweet land in our inboxes...

It didn't take a genius to figure what was coming neXt.

That's right, to everyone's delight we were being treated to our first look at the X-Men, with a 40-card based set followed swiftly by the orange bordered Week 1 release.

I can only assume that the Fantastic Four and the Cosmic Marvel Universe will be just around the corner. Sadly I feel that some of the shine from this drop was taken away by the Corner Boxes issue that occured not long after, but more on that another time.

The Marvel Collect! app suddenly got a little bit bigger, and with the addition of the Mutant Universe things just got a bit more exciting too.