Marvel Universe

[Diabolical]

My copy of Hawkeye Vol. 1 should arrive by Tuesday.

...and?

[anarky]

Only been able to read two issues of it so far, and it kicks quite a lot of ass.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Aha. So now we're 2 for 2 on recommending you top notch shit stuff. (Firefly and Hawkguy)

Now you need to go back and read Gillen's Journey into Mystery saga.

And, as always, Game of Thrones. Bitch.

[Ran]

Marvel is advertising their new issues on XM. The commercial said it was the time to get into the comics because they were starting out with a new #1 and made it sound like it had something to do with the next Iron Man movie. I found it strange because I've never heard a commercial for comic books before.

[anarky]

But... but... aren't all their reboots somewhere between issues 3-5 by now?

[Tom Foolery]

Iron Man 3 comes out the same weekend as FCBD, so maybe that's what they were promoting?
Anarky's idea that Marvel NOW wasn't the reboot, but it was setting up the reboot, is more plausible. Consider...

1. The orginal five X-Men have come into the present(their future). At some point they'll have to go back.

2. Something "SHOCKING" happens at the end of Age of Ultron.

3.(or 2A.) Post AoU, Gaiman's Angela is suddenly going to be in the Marvel U. As is MarvelMan(supposedly).

4. This is small, but the new Nova's "continuity" doesn't match up with the Marvel U and people noticed/bitched about it. People were just saying Loeb doesn't give a shit, but maybe it's on purpose.

5. Hickman's known for his big ideas and has been setting something up in his Avengers and New Avengers books. And...

6. Hickman's "Infinity" is the FCBD issue this year, as well as Marvel's Event Du Anneé. Which involves Thanos. And therefore probably some kind of Gauntlet which is known for "reshaping reality".


I realize at this point crying 'reboot' is the same as crying 'wolf' for comics fans. And the idea of Marvel doing anything remotely like New52 and/or Crisis on Infinite Earths reeks like a garbage barge. But there are signs they're up to something.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I'm back with what's left of that M thru P box I started awhile ago.

Onslaught Unleashed. This was a 4 issue mini from 2011. I suspect it was originally intended as an arc in the 2010 Young Allies ongoing, but since that book got canned after 6 issues, they made it a follow up mini instead. The Secret Avengers (Brubaker's original line up) and the Young Allies converge on a secret Roxxon drug plant in Columbia for different reasons to find everyone dead and a machine opening a rift to the Negative Zone. Onslaught pops out. In the end, it turns out the new young female Nomad was a 'tether' to Onslaught and she asks her friends to destroy her in order to save Earth from a more powerful Onslaught. So her buddy Gravity kills her. Pretty intense stuff from Sean McKeever.

Over the Edge. First, some backstory. In the mid 90s Marvel decided to fire EiC Tom DeFalco because he couldn't constantly produce perpetually unrealistic profits indefinitely. "Tom, X-Men 1 sold 9 mil copies. We expect EVERY issue to sell 12 mil. Even C-list titles like Ghost Rider and X-Man. What?! It can't be done?? That's it, fatso. You're fired!!"
And instead of replacing him with ONE EiC, they broke up the line into FOUR sub lines, each with their own Co-EiC. Gruenwald on the Avengers books, Harras on the X-books, Fingeroth on the Spidey books. And Bobbie Chase got all the 'leftover' stuff which was called "The Edge". This included Hulk, Daredevil, Doc Strange, Punisher, and Ghost Rider.
Okay, so at some point, each subgroup launched an "Introductory" title meant to draw in new readers at a bargain introductory price of only 99 cents. Thus we got Avengers Unplugged, FF Unplugged, Prof X and the X-Men, Untold Tales of Spider-Man, and...Over the Edge(and under a buck!)
(Yes, that was actually on the cover of the first issue.)
OtE was an anthology book that only lasted 10 issues and featured a different "Edge" hero. I only have issues 1 and 8 so far, but I read those. 1 was a Daredevil story only worth mentioning because a Robert E. Brown did the art and he had a pretty decent proto-McFarlanesque style to his art, so I looked him up on cbdb and he never really did too much mainstream work after this. The 8th issue was a forgettable Elektra story.
Anyway, that 99 cent series experiment eventually died, as did the dueling EiC thing. Gruenwald died of a heart attack, Fingeroth and Chase left and Bob Harras climbed to the top of the pile. And we know what happened next. Bankruptcy. Okay moving on.

Power Man and Iron Fist. A 2011 mini featuring All New Power Man Victor Alvarez being mentored by Danny Rand. Pretty good 5 issue mini by Fred VanLente and Welligton Alves.

And finally Power Pack. I read probably about 20 or so scattered issues of the original 1982 series. It was fun to go back and read Louise Simonson's first ongoing. I doubt a book about 4 kids between the ages of 5 and 11 having powers based on Energy, Speed, Mass, and Gravity could get made today. Much less make it 62 issues. I'm only missing six issues before I have a full run.

So that box is done(aside from a few unfinished minis like Mystery Men and Mystic Arcana I'm still hunting down issues for. And that Morrison One Million stuff. Still not in the mood.) Not sure what's next.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Back with some more stuff from the 'M' box. Sorry, I've been distracted by two video games for the last couple weeks. First AC3, and then Lego Batman.
Anyway, this is all stuff with "Marvel" in the title.

Marvel Assistant Sized Spectacular. This was a 2 issue mini series from 2009. The premise was each of the Asst. Editors at Marvel (after getting kicked out of an Editor meeting) pitch a story featuring a minor character. Then we get a short 10 page story by various creators. There were three in each issue and then readers voted for which character got a follow up Oneshot. The characters were D-Man, American Eagle, li'l Hawkeye, Luke Cage, Elsa Bloodstone, and Galacta daughter of Galactus. Galacta won the contest. But my personal fave was American Eagle by Jason Aaron and Richard Isanove. It was a good tryout book and I wouldn't mind seeing similar books in the future.

Marvel Atlas. A Handbook style 2 issue series that catalogues all the countries, both real and fictitious, in the Marvel U. It's striking to the point of silliness how many small fictitious countries there are. Somebody in Editorial should've reigned that in. Small banana republics in South and Central America and Eastern Bloc nations are numerous. And several small African countries as well. Everytime a writer just thought up a new fictional nation, somebody should've said 'oh hey, heres about 30 or so fake countries that already exist. Use them instead.

Marvel Boy. Ugh. This is the second time I've attempted Morrison's Marvel Boy series. Just can't get through it. I may give it a third go in the future.

Marvel Boy: The Uranian. 3 issue 2010 series featuring the Silver Age Marvel Boy, who was reintroduced in the Agents of Atlas books. Jeff Parker reimagined Bob Grayson's 1950s origins. Also reprinted the majority of Marvel Boy's orginal stories from his 1950s series. Not bad.

Marvel Comics 1. This is the 70th Anniversary Reprint of the Original issue introducing Namor, Human Torch, The Angel, and others. It's been recolored and remastered. Interesting to read it for its historical significance.

Marvel Comics Presents. 16 issues of the 175 issue biweekly series from the late 80s. These were all the issues I was missing from the entire run. Since the premise of the book was short serial chapters running across many issues, I couldn't read any one entire story. It was interesting to see the quality of creators in the earlier issues vs the dumping ground towards the end. Except for the final few issues. Keith Giffen created a character named Lunatik which was a Lobo ripoff who fights Silver Surfer. He then had a 3 issue mini later that year. And except for a small supporting role in Drax the Destroyers 2004 mini hasn't been seen since. But anyway, the series really bottomed out at the end.
However, the early issues in the series had a LOT of excellent stories by tons of great writers and artists.

Next up, even more Marvel books.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Marvel Comics Presents. This was a revival of the serial concept from 2007. It lasted 12 issues. I'm not sure if it was intended as an ongoing or a 12 issue maxi series. Each issue had four stories, like the original series. Two of the serials lasted for the entire 12 issue run. There were three shorter serial that lasted between 3 and 5 issues, and the remaining stories were all one issue standalones. As it was 2007, much of the book's stories are read with the context of the Civil War/Initiative in the background. Cap's forces are in hiding, and Iron Man's forces are all Gestapoesque Jackbooting everywhere. Here are my thoughts on the stories.

Vanguard. The first of the two 12 part serials. Stacy Dolan(you may remember her as Dan Ketch's ex girlfriend) is a NY Detective investigating a murder in which Uatu the Watcher is a person of interest. As the series progresses, Dolan gets framed for the murder she's investigating, and eventually leads to a secret ops team consisting of Blade, Yelena Bolova, MicroMax, and Dominic Fortune. Which is an absurd collection of characters. It turns out the victim wasn't really dead, but was yet another attempt at a Super Soldier from WWII dubbed Colonel America. The series started out great, but ended poorly. And it was never followed up on. Still, it was cool to see Dolan as the protagonist.

Weapon Omega. The other 12 part serial was a follow up to the Omega Flight mini, which was a follow up to the "Collective" story arc in New Avengers when all the M-Day mutants powers manifested in one man named Michael Pointer. And Canada's first instinct was to slap a superhero costume on him. The premise of this story is that Pointer's powers are decreasing, so the govt is secretly "feeding" his costume/powers fresh mutants with and without their consent. Since Pointer doesn't know it's driving him a little wacky. His fellow Omega Flighters USAgent and SpiderWoman(Julia, not Jessica) find events fishy and start investigating. As you know, I'm a USAgent fan. He's got a lot of potential and he really gets to shine here.

HellCat. The first 4-parter. Patsy Walker's psyche has split into various archetypes, the hero, the prom queen, the model, etc. All because her former teammate Gargoyle played with magic he shouldn't have. Humorous seeing all the different Patsy interact with each other.

Savage Land. In this 3-parter, Roxxon invades the Savage Land trying to get its Vibranium. KaZar unites the different factions to combat them. It's dinosaurs vs ManDroids!

Machine Man. In this 5-parter, Aaron Stack's quest for humanity leads him to artificially manufacture his own mental breakdown, just do he can deal with it.

And here are the one offs
Spider-Man. Spidey has a dream(or is it?) that he's invited to join the Galactic Alliance of Spider-Men from a multiverse of "neighborhoods".
The Thing. From Alicia Master's POV how the world sees Ben Grimm.
Taskmaster. Newly promoted SHIELD Director Maria Hill hires TM to break into the Helicarrier to test its defenses in exchange for a full pardon.
Magneto. In the days before the Brotherhood, Erik is recruiting mutants to his cause. He finds a telepath who could be useful, but then he discovers the man was a guard at Auschwitz and kills him instead.
Outlaw Kid. A tale of the Western Hero from the 1800s.
Wrecking Crew. The Crew breaks out of prison.
Captain America. We realize Steve Rogers caught a lucky break, as we follow another 4F reject in the 1940s.
Namor. Namor deals with his grief after Namorita's death in Stamford.
Cyclops and Wolverine. Logan helps Scott deal with the news of his father's death at the hands of his brother.
Hulk. Sort of a What If? I guess. After 20 generations of living on Sakaar, The Hulk gamma irridates his army to fend off an invasion by aliens. Then asks his soldiers to sacrifice themselves, knowing if they stayed on the planet, an army of hulks would destroy everything.
Deadpool. Deadpool realizes he's a douche creation of Liefeld and tries to end it all. Okay, I skipped this one.
Stingray. Stingray fights a big undersea monster. Like he does in every Stingray story. That guy has a cool costume, but damn he's a one trick pony.
Man-Thing. Some SHIELD Agents attempt to register Man-Thing in the SHRA. Good luck.

Overall a pretty good series. Again, I'd like Marvel to try another book like this.

Also along the lines of an anthology book was 2003's Marvel Double Shot 4 issue miniseries. Each of the four issues had two separate stadalone stories. I only have the first three issues, but the stories were fantastic.

Hulk. Some guy is trying to narcoticize gamma rays. Both Banner and General Ross want to stop it for different reasons.

Thor. Told through the letters of a young girl writing to her hero, Thor, as she grows up, moves out, gets married, and eventually gets cancer. The last letter is from the girl's daughter. Absolutely brilliant storytelling.

Doom. Written by Chris Priest and gorgeous painted art by Paolo Riviera. Doom exchanges words with a journalist who snuck into Latveria. Wonderful character piece for Victor.

Avengers. Written and drawn by Bill Morrison, who does Simpsons comics. So basically the Avengers drawn like Simpsons/Futurama characters. Humorous.

Fantastic Four. Reed Richards explains science and religion to Franklin. Another brilliant story.

Ant-Man. Scott Lang deals with his daughter's first date. By Sean McKeever and Darwyn Cooke. Wonderful. And kind of a drag since Cassie is dead now.

I'm missing the last issue, but it's got a Dr. Strange story and an Iron Man story by Greg Rucka. And all four issues had Joe Jusko painted covers. A great series. There was also a Marvel Knights Double Shot series featuring street level heroes like DD, Punisher etc.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Remember when the incredibly popular Marvels series by Busiek and Alex Ross came out in 1994? Ever one to strike while the iron is hot, the follow up Marvels: Eye of the Camera was released...in 2009. Wow. Anyway, this 6 issue series by Busiek and new painter Jay Anacleto catches up with photographer Phil Sheldon. Phil gets lung cancer and decides to do a follow up book before he dies. The series was released in both color and B/W variants. I thought the B/W were just variant covers until I opened up my issue 3 variant and discovered the entire interior of the B/W variant is also B/W. I wish Busiek would've had a bibliography referencing the 'events' Sheldon is photographing. Some of them I recognize, like the X-Men's battle in Dallas, but there were plenty I didn't know.

Marvel Knights Double Shot. This mini actually predates the other DS mini. I got the first issue 10 years ago. It's in storage somewhere. It had DD and the Punisher in it.
The second issue had Nick Fury by Grant Morrison and a weak Man-Thing story.
Third issue had an Elektra story by Greg Rucka and beautiful Greg Horn art. A studio exec hires Elektra to kill a problematic director. And a Cloak and Dagger story that was just confusing.
The fourth issue had Iron Fist trying to get into Jonas Harrow's house because he had a heart attack and his cyborg sentries won't let anyone in to get him his heart pills. And finally, an ex SHIELD agent is robbing banks, so Black Widow tricks Frank Castle into stopping the guy, over DDs objections.

All the covers in the series were by Glenn Fabry.

Next up was Marvel Knights Vol. 2 The original MK ongoing series lasted 15 issues. This was the follow up six issue mini. In it, Widow, DD, Punisher and a North Korean double agent of SHIELD named Helen Kim go up against a vicious drug cartel moving into NYC led by the Grace Bros, Marco and Polo, and their main henchman, Mr. Tune. Hit and miss.

Next up, I'm gonna skip over the assorted OHOTMU Handbooks and read John Byrne's Lost Generation maxi series. Apparently it can be read backwards OR forwards. But it was released backwards originally, so that's how I'll go.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Marvel:The Lost Generation. In 2000 co-plotters Roger Stern and John Byrne took a stab a dealing with the "Sliding Timescale" issue by releasing this 12 issue maxi series. Going on the premise that 2000 was "now" and the "Marvel Age" kicked off with the FF rocket launch about a decade prior, this ambitious series filled in the time between the end of the Golden Age characters in the mid 1950s up until the mid/late 80s. The series follows a time-travelling scientist who jumps further back in time with each subsequent jump, thus we follow the story from the "first" issue set in the 80s(which is actually issue 12 of the series) back through the 70s, 60, until the "final" issue(which is issue 1) explains the origins of the super team First Line. As you read each issue, you get snippets of the vast array of heroes and villains from this era. It's kinda like if you read issue 400 of Avengers, then skipped back and read 350, 300, 250, etc. You'd get a sense of the characters and mention of major events that had happened, but leave a lot of 'untold' story. Pretty groovy book.
And why haven't you ever heard of any of these heroes? Well, they all died in issue 12 stopping a Skrull invasion of Earth. And the govt covered it up.

Marvel Monsters Group. in 2005 Marvel released a series of oneshots and a Handbook style guide celebrating the monster books from the 50s and early 60s before the SuperHero age. Lots of clever stories by Keith Giffen, Peter David and others. There were four oneshots. Pretty good stuff.

Marvel Nemesis: The Imperfects. Also in 2005, EA Games released a fighting game which matched Marvel heroes up against the characters created for the game. This was the six issue companion series by Grek Pak and Renato Arlem. I'm missing the last issue, but it's better than you'd think. The heroes like Spidey, Thing, Storm, Wolverine, Human Torch, and Elektra get injected with a designer drug and spend much of the series dealing with withdrawal/addiction while trying to find and stop the evil scientist who created it and his own team of supers.

Marvel Pets. A Handbook that covers all the animal sidekicks in the Marvel U. And it's pretty thorough. Yes, it has Squirrel Girl's squirrels. And Daredevil's German Shepard. It even has a list of all the western heroes' horses. It even has Hellcow. Essential reading.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Some old issues of Marvel Premiere(although by definition, all issues of Marvel Premiere are "old"). Issue 43 is Paladin's first solo starring issue(and his third appearance overall).
Issue 55 was Wonder Man's first 'Solo' starring issue.
Issue 61 was an early Star-Lord appearance.

Marvel Riot. In the tradition of Not Brand Ecch and What The--?! this oneshot from 1995 makes fun of the Age of Apocalypse saga. By Hilary Barta and Tyler Rurik. Had some funny bits.

Marvel Romance Redux. A series of oneshots from 2006. Modern writers took old 50s romance stories and re-dialogued them to hilarious effect. I only have 3 of the 5 oneshots, but I'm definitely tracking the other two down. This was some seriously funny stuff. Highly recommended.

Marvel Shadows and Light. Marvel did a B/W anthology oneshot in '97 and followed it with an extremely shortlived ongoing from '98 that only lasted three issues. Various writers and artists did some pretty great B/W short stories of various characters. The highlights are a wonderful painted Black Widow story from Gene Ha. And a Werewolf by Night story from Jim Starlin and Tom Grindberg. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure the Iron Man story is Steve Ditko's last original work for Marvel.

Next up, Marvel Team-Up! An issue or two from the original series, and both the entire 1997 and 2005 runs.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Soooo... Nick Fury, Sr. has got to be turning 100 soon, right? Him and Dum Dum Dugan both? I mean both of them guys were 30ish during WWII right? Which means they were born in the 1910s. And Steve Rogers is in his 90s now. Something to think about. Anyway...

Back with some Marvel Team Up goodness. Only one issue from the original run. I mean, I have others, but this is the only one in my unread box. It's #86 featuring the original Guardians of the Galaxy. At some point they were trapped in the past after some big Avengers storyline. Anyway, some freelance photographer takes pics of them and they and Spidey have to find the guy and get the film back. I don't think it's that big a deal. I mean there all kinds of mutants and heroes running around. I don't think anybody is going to look at a crystal man and a chick with fire hair and automatically think "Holy shit! They're obvi from the future!!!" But anyway, hokey fun from 1979.

Next up is Marvel Team Up '97. This ongoing only lasted 11 issues and is indicative of how Harras was flushing Marvel down the shitter. It was written mostly by Tom Peyer with art mostly by Pat Olliffe. The first six issues are Spider-Man teaming up with GenX, Hercules, Sandman, Man-Thing, and the Watcher. A quasi-bad guy called The Authority(which predates the Morrison/Hitch super team!!) is making Spidey jump through hoops to find a cosmic flash drive thingy.
Issue 6 is Spidey and Namor fighting the Wrecking Crew and Spidey symbolically handing the book over to Namor.
Issue 7 is a fill in issue by Marv Wolfman that has Spidey teaming up with Blade.
Issues 8-11 are Namor who has just returned from the Heroes Reborn universe with amnesia and without the ability to breathe underwater. He teams up with Doc Strange, Cap, Thing and finally Iron Man trying to get his undersea kingdom and his mojo back. I'm missing the last issue, but presumably it all worked out okay. I've seen Namor under water since then.
The book didn't suck perse, but the whole thing is forgettable. Oh and Spidey and Herc fought a bad guy called Dr. Zeus. Uh huh. Exactly.

Finally we have Marvel Team Up '05, the 25 issue run by Kirkman, presumably before he started his anti-Marvel YouTube jihadist rantings. Art was by Scott Kolins until 10, then Paco Medina from 11-18, and Andy Kuhn finished the series.
The first arc had an evil Tony Stark enter our dimension and Spidey, Wolvie, X-23, Cap, and Black Widow(with helping cameos from Doc Strange, Hulk, and the FF stop him.
The second arc had Ringmaster steal a cosmic cube powered ring that formerly belonged to the Mandarin and Spidey, Moon Knight, Daredevil, and Luke Cage end up fighting him. Eventually Frank Castle snipes Ringmaster's finger (and the ring) off thus saving everybody.
The first two arcs also had a evil Skrull, (who'd been skulking around during the first arc and beat up Sunfire) named Tight Anus (okay it's spelled Titannus, but it's obvious Kirkman is pulling one over on Brevoort) destroy Tokyo, and a bunch of heroes stop him.
Issue 14 was a one off with some shitty fanfic character named Invisible or something. He's a Superman ripoff or some shit. I wasn't paying attention because he sucked. I don't think he's been seen since, but if he had somehow managed to star in his own comic for 100+ issues, it's the same reason According to Jim stayed on the air for as long as it did.
Anyway, the next arc had a time traveller named Chronok come back and kill all the heroes. Only Darkhawk, Speedball, Dagger, X-23, Sleepwalker, Gravity, and Terror Inc survive. They head into the future and meet up with Mutant 2099 and Reed Richard's brain to stop Chronok before he even leaves. Which they do. But then Reed explains they didn't fix their timeline, just prevented the disaster from happening in a divergent timeline. So they all stay in the future and become the Avengers 2099.
In the last arc, the cosmic cube ring finds its way into the hands of an ordinary guy who becomes the hero Freedom Ring. Abomination cripples him the first time out. Then the evil Tony Stark breaks out and becomes Iron Maniac and kills Freedom Ring before the rest of the heroes can stop him.
Finally, in the last issue, Kirkman wraps up all the loose plot threads and the heroes defeat Tight Anus a second time.

I'm getting close to the end of the 'M' box.

[vynsane]

thw cool thing about the Imvincible cameo is that it is official canon pn his side. there's an issue of his book where he's sucked through a transdimensional portal amd you see spidey's hand.

damn, typing on my phne is like a flornbi translator.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Yeah, he exposits a bunch about his father, and the villain who sent him into the multiverse.
He also makes fun of Spider-Man's name, and then when he meets the Avengers, based on Spidey's meme, identifies them as Robot-Man, Claw-Man, Flag-Man, Fabio-Man, and Black-Man.
Ironically, he and Spidey teamed up to fight Doc Ock. Who, of course, is now Spider--ermm-- sorry. Can't call him that.