Marvel NOW!: Major changes due from October
Because you demanded it, maybe! CJ brings us the rather refreshing news that Marvel aren't rebooting...
As we reported last week, the comics press had begun to jangle its collective keys at the thought of a Marvel reboot.
Today, ahead of next week’s San Diego Comic-Con and as Amazing Spider-Man relaunches its biggest franchise in the cinema, the House of Ideas confirmed that it would be altering its superhero line from this October with an event dubbed Marvel NOW! Still no justification for Namor's foot wings though.
In an article, printed on paper and at a noticeable distance from the Internet, in the Comic-Con edition of Entertainment Weekly - seriously bro, it’s not like there’s a specialist online press or anything - Marvel spilled the beans and teased you all with the promo image from the pencil of Joe Quesada that's proudly posted above. Teased you they did, and the announcement seems to have cracked the Internet in half as per usual.
So, to ask the question everyone has been mulling ad infinitum: is this a New-52-esque revamp that shatters the Marvel universe that's persisted for decades? No, they’re not going there. While Entertainment Weekly commented that NOW! would “radically alter the Marvel universe as you know it”, Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso said - and you can hold him to this - “This ain’t no reboot, it’s a new beginning!” Yay! We don’t know what that means!
NOW! has been announced as a way of easing new readers into comics, because apparently kids would catch leprosy if they bought cheap back-issues. Beginning in October Marvel will start to publish at least one new series every week until February 2013. Of those series, just three new ongoings with rockstar-riding-on-top-of-a-cop-car creative teams have been confirmed so far:
Uncanny Avengers
Written by high-concept deity Rick Remender and begat by the hand of John ‘Joss and I collab’d before Avengers’ Cassaday, the first series out of the gate is an original-Odd-Couple scenario. Pushing the remaining members of the Avengers and X-Men teams together this October after AvX wraps up, expect fireworks - and maybe even a little romance.
All-New X-Men
All five original founding X-Men will be brought forward in time to the present day Marvel universe this November by the pairing of Brian Bendis and everyone’s third favourite Canadian, after Wolverine and bacon, Stuart Immonen. In Entertainment Weekly's interview Bendis went as far as to describe the new series as “like Pleasantville”. Oh yeah, and 616 Jean Grey is back once again like a renegade master. Cyke!
Avengers
Yet more Avengers, lest ye be struck sightless by lack of Vitamin A. Cosmic-level threats and standalone stories are the order of the day for Jolly Jonathan Hickman and Jazzy Jerome Opeňa in a biweekly series launching this December. Apparently there’ll be a cast of around 18 Avengers, for some arbitrary reason we’re not yet privy to. Roll call!
You probably have a lot of questions. For example: "Is that the new stealth armour or is Rhodey Iron Man again?", “Why is the Hulk wearing armour like a wuss and has a floating head for a keychain?” or “Why does Cyclops’ face look like an Xbox that died and went to lobster hell?” Rest assured that all of these will be answered in time, True Believer.
Oh well, at least it wasn’t Heroes Reborn! Let us know what you think in the comments, and don’t be afraid to unleash your primal scream therapy ramblings or deep intellectual musings, contemplated whilst wearing your smoking jacket and ensconced in the study.
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My biggest gripe about this is how many news sites are reporting that this is Marvel's answer to new 52 and how it's such a massive shake up. Really? I'm not seeing anything remotely shake-up about it. They're just playing musical chairs with creators and characters. How is that a major change? It isn't. It's what comic companies DO you morons (Not you guys at Den of Geeks, but the other comic news ppl). They put new creative teams on comics ALL THE TIME. It's no where NEAR the level of DC's new 52 at all. Nothing here suggests new teams, new concepts, or anything other than MORE X-Men/Avengers/Spider-Man/Wolverine.. which is pretty much everything Marvel does except what? 4 titles? Oh huge shake up, seriously.. DC has new genres that they haven't touched in decades and idiots in the comic news media are going to compare Marvel creating new X-Men and Avengers titles and shifting writers to DC having horror, magic, westerns (WESTERNS), war comics, sword and sorcery, and more (some comics don't even have specific genres). Someone needs to stop drinking the Marvel Kool-Aid.
I couldn't be more pissed at the new 52. It could have been great if not for DC actually having 52 new books being released in the same month. They killed half their own books by forcing them to compete against each other from the start.
Right off the bat DC saturated the market and forced most readers to start skipping titles. Sorry, I'm not dropping all my other Marvel and independent titles and doubling my weekly comics budget just to check out Hawk & Dove or Omac...
Most of this new stuff won't make 24 issues because they flooded the market and fans are already migrating back to the same 5 or 6 titles.
DC should've chopped the stories up and released them bi-monthly double-sized anthologies like the early days of comics. Let readers get 10 pages of two or three new titles at a shot for a year or two and build some interest.
They also should've at least kept Detective Comics and Action Comics running as usual. No harm in letting them hit 1000 issues naturally and then you got a nice escape pod ready for when all this 52 crap fails.
Jean Grey is back? Surely thats a big old spoiler for how Avengers vs X men ends later in the year! That black Nick Fury in the picture is actually the son of the original Nick Fury introduced in a mini series recently who lost his eye and got promoted to the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. even taking on the name Nick Fury so now the mainstream Marvel Universe has a black Nick in charge to match up with the films, that prettymuch sums up Marvels attitude towards its older fans.
If DC had done what you're talking about, it would have been just as bad. By doing what Marvel's doing, the slow trickle there will be titles that come out in February that people won't BOTHER checking out because they're bored and done with the whole thing. Also, while DC saturated the market and it was so "horrible" EVERY DC title started with solid sales. So let's not play that game.
Second, if DC hadn't relaunched all their titles at once,there would have been confusion about what is new or not new. What was in continuity and not in continuity, even more than now.
Third, letting a book hit 1000 does deter new readers. That makes you think you have to read 1000 issues to figure out what's going on.
Fourth, your idea wouldn't fly because people don't buy Anthology comics. It's too much commitment for too little. They're also more expensive.
Fifth, Hawk and Dove failed because it SUCKED. As various titles have failed in the past by both companies. Liefeld had too much control over the title and he's NOT a fan favorite anymore. OMAC just didn't work for people.
Sixth, No people are NOT returning to their regular 5 or 6 titles, many people are buying MORE DC than ever. You may not, but that's you, not the vast majority of people.
So now we've got the slow bleed of Marvel NOW that'll take 6 months to release 20 titles all of which will really not change anything and at least some of them look like minis. And the first 3 titles announced are all more X-Vengers, which leads people to believe that that's all there is to this.. more X-Men/Avengers/Spider-Man/Wolverine. So yeah, DC failed by relaunching their entire line b/c a few titles failed (but DC has had many to replace them with EVERY TIME, some that have been in planning for over a year) but Marvel's got it beat by playing musical chairs.
You should read George Perez's recent comments on the new 52 relaunch, its been quite the mess behind the scenes, I was sucked in by the hype but after a few months stuck to the titles I was already buying Batman, Green Lantern and now Batman Incoporated and just choose to ignore the mess around them. I really wish DC had been brave enough to do a full on reboot and I would have gladly said goodbye to the stories I was already following to see it, now Marvels doing a big relaunch which is clearly a reaction to the new 52 I just wish they would focus on good stories Avengers vs X Men has been pretty weak so far, only the Winter Soldier title and Ultimate Spiderman one are really hitting the spot every month and they wont be involved in all this Marvel NOW hype, thank god!
Well, let's face it, like many "major changes" that get heavily hyped, there is a strong possibility that all will be reverted back to status quo after a certain amount of time.