Marvel to Baltimore Con: Eat It!
I know I promised short, succinct discussion topics all this week, but...
The attention-grabbing headline of this post is explained at the end.
UPDATED: It appears that these announcements may in fact have been made at the Baltimore Con on Monday night. I'm still unclear on this, but to be fair my attention-grabbing headline may in fact be completely untrue and a vicious lie. Warrants mentioning.
Newsarama's Joe Fridays column finally spilt with breaking news from Marvel, and shockingly, it wasn't all bad!
As one of the six members of the blogosphere who still cares about Marvel, let's look at it, shall we?
GOOD NEWS! Alan Davis has renewed his contract with Marvel, and will be relaunching ClanDestine! That is good news; for those of you that don't remember ClanDestine, Dave's Long Box broke it down once. It was a decent comic, as I remember --- though I can only claim to having two issues.
GOOD NEWS! Marvel is launching a new line of classic novels in comics form. Hey, why not? I loved the Classics Illustrated stuff as a kid, and if it gets comics into the classrooms and in the hands of kids, then why not?
(Side Note: Apparently Last of the Mohicans is being adapted by Roy Thomas, which I'm pretty sure is only because there's a character named "Hawkeye".)
(Additional Side Note: Also, since Thomas is writing, look for the Natty Bumppo character to be secretly related to some high-ranking British general in a shocking twist!)
(Son of Additional Side Note: I kid because I love. Roy Thomas rocks.)
UPDATED: I'm a complete moron. The image used was from a 70's adaptation. No news yet on who's writing what. Jeez, I'm completely off my game today.
GOOD NEWS! Nova gets his own series by writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, who have been doing nothing short of miraculous work rebuilding the character and making him interesting in Annihilation.
BAD NEWS! Marvel's Mighty Avengers will have a crossover with Guiding Light. No, seriously. The soap opera. I'm not even kidding about this. The sad thing is we all should have seen this coming, as it's the logical extreme of Bendisizing the Avengers.
MYSTIFYING NEWS! The Spider-Man Family gets its own bimonthly series from Sean McKeever. Hmm. Will this last longer than 4 issues? Does the Spider-Family (which, correct me if I'm wrong, consists entirely of Aunt May, MJ, and maaaaaaaaaaaybe Flash Thompson) warrant their own book? How is this not just another Spider-Man comic? I'm baffled on many levels here.
PANDERING NEWS! Spidey's going back to the black costume for a "Back in Black" storyline, which Quesada assures us has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Venom is the villain in Spider-Man 3! I'm wondering if he managed to say that with a straight face.
GOOD NEWS! Marvel's summer 2007 event will be written by Greg Pak and entitled World War Hulk. (The title alone is cool on about nine different levels.) Apparently, it's a miniseries (not a crossover), and will basically feature the Hulk vs. the entire Marvel Universe, which in my mind should be the premise of pretty much every single Hulk comic ever, so...sold!
BAD NEWS! Thor will be written by... sigh... JMS. Using ideas from Neil Gaiman, Mark Millar, and --- oh, who am I kidding? This is going to be readable for the first three issues, then spiral down into a mess. Crap. Joe, if you're listening (and I know you're not): you do not need to "reinterpret the character and his universe". It's THOR! Just have the God of Thunder smashing skyscraper-sized holes in bad guys and spouting faux medieval syntax! This is not hard! I can't even talk about this any more.
JUST KIND OF 'EH' NEWS! The Dabel Brothers signed a deal with Marvel for, one assumes, some sort of publishing deal and a Wolverine/Alvin Maker crossover, not to mention the inevitable Blade/Anita Blake miniseries. Eh.
MIXED BAG NEWS! Joss Whedon will take over Runaways when BKV leaves. On the one hand, it marks Runaways as a real, viable property (by today's standards) that may be the first successful new character launch for Marvel in the last 10 years. On the other hand, it's Joss Whedon, which means you'll get 5 issues a year if he can manage to tear himself away from the Wonder Woman movie.
Finally, was any of this announced at the Baltimore Con? Because if it wasn't, I'd think twice about inviting Marvel back next year if they're going to break news on a website instead of at the convention...the day after the convention.
One-Liner of the day coming later.
7 Comments:
You know, reading a copy of Ms. Marvel # 1(the old school shite from the 70s, not this busted ass new school shite), I saw an ad for Marvel's version of Last Of The Mohicans, which I think Roy Thomas did....? Ima gonna hafta check it out and possible scan it for lack of a better reason to post something.
Nevermind. It was Doug Moench. Check out the Gil Kane cover.
I'm still not getting what's so bad about the GUIDING LIGHT crossover. Aren't all superhero comics pretty much soap operas anyway?
Yes, Evan. And at least soap operas remain predominantly silly fun, without every writer getting bogged down with taking the material too seriously and pretentiously.
I'm not excited about the crossover or anything, but I'm not bothered by it either. It's just wacky, goofy stuff, and there's nothing wrong with that. And I don't think it's at all fair to say it's Bendisyzing the Avengers- if anything, Bendis generally takes his writing faaaaar too seriously, and something like a Guiding Light crossover looks to me like him finally loosening up a bit.
Marvel's Mighty Avengers will have a crossover with Guiding Light. No, seriously. The soap opera.
I want to cry. I want to go and cry. I ... just don't understand how ... oh sweet god.
You know, crossing over with David Letterman was fine because it was tongue-in-cheek. If Janet Van Dyne is guest staring on the show and like, CAMERATOR! shows up to steal the leading lady and the Avengers fight him... but I have a feeling it won't be that funny. Or cool. Or anything. Because I read New Avengers #23 and I won't trust Bendis as far as I can throw him anymore.
Nova series? Must resist urge to give Marvel more money!
Spider-Man Family? Urge to give Marvel more money successfully resisted.
Mighty Avengers/Guiding Light? Hey, I ain't reading the book, Bendis can do whatever he wants.
Up to the point that Deadpool kills him for that awful Ultimate Deadpool.
As for me, I'll just go read some good Avengers stories. Like Chuck Austen's run.
Kidding!
I'm not kidding.
JMS/Thor? I was going to say "Well, it's OK, as long as Thor is portrayed well in Avengers comics." Then I remembered who's writing Avengers comics. Now I'm just sad.
I thought it bad enough that they'd put the writer no one likes on the Avengers book they've designed specifically for fans who don't like said writer, but now it's crossing over with a daytime soap. Gurgh. I just don't know what they think they're doing. The Liefeld/Loeb Avengers made more sense.
I'm pretty sure that the image everyone's showing of the new Last of the Mohicans is by 2000ad artist Steve Yeowell. It looks just like his work.
And thank you for spelling ClanDestine correctly. No one else seems to have managed it, including Marvel...
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