Marvel is planning a full range of retailer support for its Monsters Unleashed event. “We’re going to have promotional items, and discounts though Diamond, and things like that, and I believe we’re doing a launch party promotion as well,” Marvel Junior Sales & Communications Administrator Chris D’Lando told ICv2 during a press call Tuesday.  “You can look for some information on promotional items and retail support for Monsters Unleashed, some really cool stuff, in the next few weeks.”

Senior Editor Mark Paniccia confirmed that the series will have ramifications in the wider Marvel Universe. “After this story, the Classic Marvel Monsters are big players in the Marvel Universe” he said.

Marvel Editor in Chief Axel Alonso revealed that there are “at least two series” that Marvel plans to spin out of the event.

“We tend to use the word ‘blockbuster’ a lot, but in talking about Monsters Unleashed it really feels like a big-budget summer action movie,“ said  D’Lando.

“It’s funny you say ‘big blockbuster movie’ because I think that to some degree I don’t think this is something that could ever be adapted to a movie. It could only happen in a comic right now,” series writer Cullen Bunn said.

The Marvel team compared Monsters Unleashed to old-school events like Infinity Gauntlet, with hero teams The Avengers, The Champions, The Guardians of the Galaxy, Inhumans and street level heroes all taking part.  Moon Girl and Elsa Bloodstone, Monster Hunter will play key roles in the plot. All the monsters involved will be large. “If you are shorter than seven stories, you need not apply to this event.” Alonso said.

While paying respect to Marvel’s classic monsters,  each of the artists on the series (Steve McNiven, Greg Land, Leinil Francis Yu, Salvador Larroca, Adam Kubert) as well as Art Adams, created a new monster for the series  (see “Preview: 'Monsters Unleashed' Variants and Monsters”).

In addition to the five-issue miniseries, there will be eight oversized MU one-shots that look at parts of the story from individual hero’s perspective (see “Marvel Unleashes The Monsters”), which do not interrupt the main story, but tie-in, similar to what happened with the Age of Ultron event.

See new cover previews for later issues, and interior art for the first issue in the gallery below.