Marvel announced Exiled, its upcoming five-part, weekly-shipping crossover story spanning Asgard and Earth during a live-blog PR event on Monday. Following the Exiled #1 in May, two issues apiece of New Mutants and Journey Into Mystery will be devoted to the multi-realm storyline. Regular Journey Into Mystery writer Kieron Gillen and New Mutants' co-writer Andy Lanning will script, with Carmine Di Giandomenico on art duties.

While the two titles may seem to have little in common -- New Mutants being one of the original X-Men franchise spin-offs and Journey being devoted to the ongoing adventures of Thor's recently reincarnated brother/ally Loki -- longtime New Mutants fans are versed in the history between the team and Thor's otherworldly stomping grounds, which goes back decades.

Usually, the New Mutants journey to Asgard, as they did recently during 2010's New Mutants #11, a Siege tie-in adventure penned by Gillen. In Exiled, Lanning and Gillen are having Asgard come to the New Mutants, so-to-speak, for a change.

This particular outing will feature familiar Asgardians like Loki, Thor, Sif, Tyr, Hela and The Warriors Three, plus Marvel Universe Satan analogue Mephisto (You remember, the guy who rewrote Spider-Man's continuity in exchange for being allowed to eat his marriage or whatever), who has been appearing in both books recently.

Also included: zombies.

Both writers used the word "fun" a lot when describing the story, and had a lot of praise for artist Di Giandomenico.

"Carmine's image of Hell...is unlike any other hell I've ever seen in a Marvel book," Gillen wrote in yesterday's live chat. "I stared at one of his panels for 10 minutes."

Lanning pointed out that this crossover is meant to be something of a palette cleanser to "the big, universe-changing stuff" that will be going on in Marvel's other big crossover event this year, Avengers Vs. X-Men.

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[Via Marvel]