Recently, Marvel announced that the future will take shape as all-new and all-different in July's issue of Marvel Previews. The future has been revealed and after SECRET WARS, Marvel is doing a reboot, of sorts, and reverting their issues to #1. According to Mashable, aside from issues starting back at "1," new characters will be introduced and some will be altered.
Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso talked about the relaunch and how long the planning has been going on for this large announcement:
"We've been planning it for years... We realized that ['Secret Wars'] would be a game-changing moment that would allow us to create a big white canvas. It’s an unprecedented chance for us to tell new stories across all titles with new No. 1s."
The All-New, All-Different issues will take place 8 months after the conclusion of SECRET WARS and Alonso explained this is a great jumping-on point for new readers and we'll see some stuff from the current Marvel event carry over.
"There’s no red sky, there’s no icecaps... But there will be new places on the map, there will be new characters that were just too cool to not bring back from 'Secret Wars.' There are new teams that are necessary to deal with new threats."
There will be somewhere between 55 and 60 books in this relaunch, which is a tad less than they currently put out. Some characters from pre-Secret Wars will still be around like the current incarnation of Thor, who turned out to be Jane Foster, and Sam Wilson as Captain America. Obviously, from the banner above, Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen will make their way over as well.
There's also a big change coming with Hulk and Alonso said that the folks who went crazy about a female Thor will "have a field day with this one." He also said Wolverine will return but alluded to it possibly being someone else. Does this possible mean that X-23 will take over or will Jimmy Hudson, the son of Wolverine from the Ultimate Universe, step into the spotlight?
Starting this fall, new number 1 issues will be staggered over the course of three to four months to ring in the new era at Marvel.
[UPDATE] In an interview with EW, Axel Alonso said this:
Secret Wars is planting the seeds or laying down the building blocks for the new Marvel Universe. Nothing we do in Secret Wars is irrelevant for how the Marvel Universe will be moving forward. So whether it’s characters, places, artifacts that are introduced in Secret Wars, all those are going to be a part of the blend of the Marvel Universe moving forward. So keep an eye on characters like Old Man Logan, the Maestro from Future Imperfect, keep an eye on key characters, key places, key artifacts—because it could very well be that they’re here to stay, to complicate things going forward.
Going back to the Mashable interview, Alonso mentioned Hulk being different and a change with Wolverine. Are these the changes? Could Old Man Logan be the Wolverine we should keep an eye out for? And is Maestro going to be the change with Hulk that is going to upset people?