Last month Marvel Comics announced Judgment Day, a crossover storyline from writer Kieron Gillen and artists Valerio Schiti and Marte Gracia that will find the X-Men and the Eternals at each other’s throats, with the Avengers caught in the middle. Today the publisher revealed the full title for the storyline – A.X.E.: Judgment Day – and unveiled a new prelude one-shot, A.X.E.: Eve of Judgment, written by Gillen and illustrated by Pasqual Ferry, which will arrive in stores in June to set up the six-part event series.

Cover art by Mark Brooks

Here’s how Marvel describes A.X.E.: Day of Judgment:

The Avengers have become a more powerful global force than ever from their base inside a long-dead Celestial. The X-Men have achieved a form of immortality on their utopian island nation of Krakoa. And the Eternals have begun a new cycle of life as they continue their sworn mission to eliminate the Deviants. But when the Eternals learn that mutantkind itself is a form of excess deviation, a vicious assault on Krakoa ensues – with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes trapped in the middle. Years of tension lead to a volcanic eruption as two worlds burn!

Marvel also released a teaser trailer for the event:

In a statement accompanying the new details about the event, writer Kieron Gillen described how it feels to write three of the Marvel Universe’s biggest groups of characters in one series:

“There’s a classic metaphor to describe the Marvel Universe – a toybox, which creators take toys out of, play with and put back. I get it, but it’s never quite how I’ve seen it – I think ‘play’ in another way. I think of a music shop, with all these instruments with their different qualities suggesting different songs, different stories,” Gillen explained. “For all the Marvel instruments I’ve played, I’ve never written an event. Writing an event is something different. It’s not like playing an instrument. It’s having all the instruments in the Marvel music shop. That’s not like writing a song. That’s like writing a symphony. I looked at everything in Eternals and Immortal X-Men and everything else all the X and Avengers writers have done and thought… yeah, this is an event. In fact, an event is the only way to do justice to this.”

The A.X.E.: Judgment Day event will kick off in May with one of Marvel’s Free Comic Book Day offerings before officially launching in July. A.X.E.: Eve of Judgment will arrive in stores and digitally on Wednesday, June 29th.