Marvel Comics has shared details about the upcoming return of its Swimsuit Special, currently scheduled to go on sale July 9. This year’s installment is subtitled: Friends, Foes, & Rivals. Prior editions of the long-running special finds the men and women of Marvel Comics stripping down to enjoy some time in the sun, often with a loosely constructed story to connect the various art pieces. In practice, it’s a chance for a bevy of Marvel artists to show off fan-favorite characters at the beach.
This year’s installment is notable for video game fans because of plans to include new costumes for Marvel Rivals as part of the issue. Thus far, Marvel Rivals has often held back on revealing new character skins for the game often right up until the launch of those skins. It’s unusual to have news this far ahead of time with any level of specificity around what kind of skins will be on the way. Given the timing and content of Marvel’s Swimsuit Special, it seems probable that the swimsuit skins are aiming for a summer release.
The featured image above of Spider-Man and Psylocke is drawn from one of the variant covers for the Swimsuit Special; we still don’t know which new skins are on the way to Marvel Rivals, other than the high likelihood that they’ll be water-resistant.
Marvel Rivals launched its Season 2 content late last week, including the introduction of Emma Frost and the Hellfire Gala; we’ve been enjoying the new content drop so far.