Kieron Gillen on the morning after scene that launched his Young Avengers with Jamie McKelvie:

I think you’re right, basically. I think mainstream American Superhero comics lag a little behind other expressions of teenage life in culture, and if you don’t do that, you’re risking writing comics that appeal to the parents of teenagers rather than the teenagers themselves.

In terms of blocks, I suspect a good chunk of it comes out of comics being a visual medium. Text is a great obfuscator of content. You can read a book, and your parents will never know that it contains matter they’d have trouble with, because they’re never actually going to read it. But comics, being visual, are transparent. At a glance, they can judge it — and so often judge it at a glance, without actually reading it.

So you walk a line. I started “Young Avengers” with the scene for a number of reasons, but one of them was certainly seeing if Marvel would let me do it. If I weren’t able to write that, I’d have had to bow out of the gig, because there would be no way of doing anything I thought worth doing.

Marvel didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

I think the biggest blockade to the creation of the content is creators not choosing to create the content.

That last line sticks with me, especially in light of Rick Remender’s comment about not being afraid to “bend” iconic characters in his interview on the mothership. I wonder what comics we’ve missed out on because creators self-censored or were too afraid to push ideas that they initially wanted to do, but felt would never get published…?

Colin Smith takes on Age of Ultron #8, and suggests that there’s more going on than meets the eye:

Bendis and Peterson have reduced their narrative to a sequence of  exceptionally familiar cliches. No attempt has been made to use this material in a way that’s either innovative or informing. Quite the contrary is true. After all, Helicarriers crashing onto cities, and in particular onto New York, have been an exceptionally familiar sight since the Eighties. That Peterson has lent this alt-timeline’s version of a flying aircraft carrier dramatically larger engines hardly passes for ingenuity. This is storytelling reduced to nothing but the regurgitation of the genre’s most familiar, and most-mined out, traditions. As such, it seems to represent the belief that the superhero book works best as a literal-minded, dead-hearted trawl through the most obvious and hackneyed aspects of its own past. As if these were religious icons representing eternally vital truths, their very presence is presumed to be implicitly inspiring. Why then spoil the purity of the experience with anything more than trace elements of a story, let alone the contaminants of character and feeling?

As either a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the avant garde celebration of fashionable banality or a demolition of the current state of the superhero mainstream, Smith’s look at just one page of AoU #8 is really, really worth checking out.

Alas, the Marvelman we never saw, courtesy of Padraig O Mealoid:

Briefly, what the [Dave] Elliott group intended to do was to licence Marvelman from Emotiv – rather than buy the character from them outright – and with the consent of all the other copyright holders – Moore, Leach, and so on – to produce three films based on the three books of Moore’s run on the character; to publish the three volumes of Moore’s run with new artwork, all done by a single artistic team, possibly with Garry Leach involved; to also republish the books in Moore’s run as they had originally appeared, with the original artwork; and to then go ahead and produce two new mini-series, both set in the time before Moore’s story started.

I love the Moore Marvel/Miracleman series a lot, but the idea of seeing the three volume run re-illustrated by Garry Leach is something that I really, really wish had happened. Marvel, consider this the baseline for your eventual Marvelman plans…

The wonderful Tom Bondurant ponders the Legion of Super-Heroes in light of the cancellation of the most recent series:

For someone who’s been a part of Legion fandom — perhaps even casual fandom — Legion lore may be best acquired gradually, one issue at a time. It only feels like five, ten, twenty, or forty years if you step back and realize how long it’s been since you started reading. (That story about the Nightwing/Batgirl wedding produced a similar feeling in me, when I realized Dick’s been Nightwing for almost 30 years, and it’s been 25 years since The Killing Joke.) The great irony (for lack of a better term) of our current age of reprints is that if you wanted to, you could probably catch up on a good bit of Legion history, given enough time and effort. Like any other long-running series, LSH is now this big chunk of info-matter — a thing to be mainlined in marathon reading sessions, and not so much doled out issue by issue, month by month. The question then becomes whether there’s still a market for all that old material. Again, conventional wisdom seems to be that there will always be a Legion book, because there’s always been a Legion book. If that circular argument remains unbroken, it means simply having a Legion book isn’t as big a question as justifying a Legion book — which, again, goes back to all those relaunches.

Much more in the link. Speaking as a hardcore Legion fan for decades now – Yes, I am old – I have to shamefully admit that, as much as it pains me to say this, I’d be very interested in seeing a new writer take over the book following the last three + years of Paul Levitz handling the team for a third time. The Legion needs something to get people interested again, and it’s clearly not what’s been on offer for the last few years. I’m only hoping that, whatever replaces Legion of Super-Heroes as a title this time around, it’s more upbeat than the past storyline…

As Gabe Roth considers the problems we have separating art from artists, he suggests something that stuck with me for some time after initially reading the piece:

As for someone like John Byrne, the vitriol and negativity that seem to be associated with him seem to me to taint anything he puts out into the world these days. Knowing what people know about John Bryne and his reputation essentially sullies anything he puts out there. I’m not saying he’s doing his best work now, but I have my doubts that a great “return to glory” creation would ever gain any traction because of the negativity associated with the John Byrne name.

This really got me thinking; even if Byrne’s work was somehow back in style – which is something that I can’t see happening for some time, if ever, to be honest – would his reputation really put him beyond critical and commercial rehabilitation? I remain utterly unconvinced of that, to be honest; with enough of a push from a major publisher, I fully believe that any creator could be at least partially redeemed on a sales level, at least, and with that would come some level of cultural and critical re-examination. Is any creator really beyond redemption in that way?

Thinking about Age of Ultron this weekend, a realization occurred: Could this one-up DC’s Flashpoint and end up being a series that features no mainstream version of any characters? Flashpoint, you’ll remember, featured the Barry Allen Flash in an alternate world that ended up being his own creation, and in the process of trying to undo that mistake, he ended up creating the New 52 universe, and we had a scene of New 52 Flash and Batman at the end.

Age of Ultron, meanwhile, started In Media Res in an Ultron-ruled world that – at this point – everyone seems to agree will end up being retconned out of existence, and only existed within the Age of Ultron series and tie-ins, out-of-synch with everything else in the Marvel line. From there, history was changed and we jumped to an entirely different version of the world as a result, but one that again is out-of-synch with the Marvel line. Assuming that we’re going to see that timeline undone by the end of the series, two issues from now… Is Age of Ultron going to end up featuring only alternate timeline versions of the characters, instead of those from the same timeline as the rest of the Marvel books? Or should we expect a Flashpoint-esque epilogue (or epilogues, plural) featuring the heroes we know and love?

You may remember that memorable panel in Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye #3 where an old-school Hawkeye head covered a naked Clint Barton’s private area:

Well, now you can recreate that scene yourself — sort of — with a t-shirt from We Love Fine:

It’s part of a three-shirt collection from the site, celebrating the critically acclaimed and Eisner-nominated cult favorite series. The line is curated by Fraction himself, and the shirts go above and beyond your average wearable tie-in and celebrate Hawkguy’s bro-filled nuances. Plus, Fraction is donating his curation commission to Futures Without Violence, which works to prevent violence against women and children.

This is pleasantly unexpected, from Tom Brevoort’s Tumblr:

Coldmoon and Dragonfire, there’s still a chance we’ll see you again, too…!

(Seriously, if you look back at Marvel Point One from 2011, it’s a very strange book now: Previews for an event comic that didn’t come out for more than a year, a Defenders reboot that only lasted a year, an X-Men spin-off that was just cancelled, Avengers vs. X-Men, Scarlet Spider and two strips that apparently didn’t lead anywhere at all. As a historical artifact, it’s weirdly compelling in its oddness.)

With the cancellation of Red She-Hulk, it’s worth looking at Paul O’Brien’s latest Marvel sales analysis to take a look at how Marvel’s other female-led titles are doing. The publisher has historically been weak in that area – There was a point, not too long ago, where Marvel had no books with a solo female lead – and, oddly enough, it looks like we might be headed that way again: Both Captain Marvel and Journey Into Mystery are selling less than the just-cancelled Gambit and Winter Soldier, which doesn’t bode well, and even Fearless Defenders is already selling less than Matt Fraction’s shortlived Defenders redo was twelve months earlier.

It raises the question: Why don’t Marvel readers seem to support female-led titles? After all, both Captain Marvel and Journey Into Mystery are good books – as is/was Red She-Hulk – and at least Red She-Hulk and Captain Marvel featured characters who were fairly central to the Marvel Universe. Why the low sales, especially in comparison to books like Thunderbolts or Scarlet Spider? I genuinely don’t understand; DC can seem to find a readership for its female-led books, so why are Marvel’s audience so seemingly resistant? It’ll be fascinating to see how Brian Wood and Olivier Coipel’s X-Men performs in its first year; that’s an amazing creative team, and a collection of fan-favorite characters. Surely that book will do well over a sustained period?

(Also interesting/surprising in O’Brien’s analysis: Seeing the rapid descent of Fantastic Four and FF. Was Hickman’s success on the franchise a fluke?)

So, now we know: the mysterious Age of Ultron #10UC solicit from last month that had no final title, no synopsis and no creative team information – It was all “classified” – is actually a comic called Hunger by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Leonard Kirk, and also a four issue mini-series. While the solicit suggests “a dangerous rift in the universe,” suggesting that maybe theories about the UC standing for Ultimate Comics isn’t too far off, I’m sticking with the “Universal Constant” theory. After all the new title for the series is Hunger and, thanks to Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers, we know that “Universal Constant” is just another name for Galactus, AKA the hungriest character in Marvel’s back catalog.

Nonetheless, now that we’ve been given the creative team and new title for the series… Why was this “classified” information in the first place? Given that the announcement of the title and team came via solicits and without any fanfare – not to mention, still before Age of Ultron #10 – what was so secret that we couldn’t know last month, but can know now…? It almost seems as if plans for what is now Hunger just weren’t fully together when last month’s solicits were compiled, and “Classified” with used instead of “To Be Announced” for the credits, doesn’t it? “Classified” is the new “We can’t tell you because we don’t know, but we don’t want to tell you that we don’t know,” it seems.

Well, if true, this is unexpected:

Now, per The Daily SuperHero’s Hollywood source Renner is done as Hawkeye mainly due to his negative comments after The Avengers… Even though nothing official has been said about Hawkeye’s involvement in The Avengers 2, Whedon has said he will introduce a new brother/sister duo to the superhero ensemble team. More reasoning that Renner’s days are over because the hero depth chart is filling up fast and there might not be any room for the archer.

The source hints that there’s the tiniest chance Renner will reprise his role in The Avengers Sequel but the source also said there is a greater chance Hawkeye will be recast (like War Machine and the Hulk have been recast before). Finally, the source said if Hawkeye is to be recast there is a solid chance he could be incorporated into the new television show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as a primary character.

This is, of course, just a rumor with only an anonymous source to back it up – In other words, hardly the most credible of reports. However, coming after the Deadline Hollywood story about Avengers actors reportedly falling out with Marvel over the sequel, it’s becoming oddly believable that, whenever Avengers 2 comes out, at least one actor won’t return…

Brett White thinks about a subconscious lesson of the X-Men’s success:

There’s a misconception amongst comic book fans that feminist creators and characters means that their comics will change for the worse. There’s a fear that women reading comics will fundamentally change some ill-defined something. The truth is, the X-Men prove that feminist creators and characters lead to success. Having a team composed of strong men and women doesn’t dilute the action. As a kid reading these comics, I didn’t realize how feminist they were. I just knew they were awesome.

I’m not sure that all X-Men creators are feminist, per se, but it’s true that Chris Claremont created a culture in that series where women were treated as equals at the very least, unlike so many other superteams. It’s odd to think that, although so many comics and creators attempted to copy Claremont’s soap operatics (and moral corruption storylines) in an attempt to ape Uncanny X-Men‘s success, none really thought to also adopt his approach towards female characters.

Prompted by the news that the CW’s Wonder Woman project is still in development, here’s a question: Is the problem in adapting Wonder Woman to other media her origin story?

Origins, after all, have particular significance in modern superhero adaptations; they’re where most (if not all) adaptations begin and, in the case of Smallville and Arrow, the space where some stay for the length of the entire story. And yet, Wonder Woman’s origins remove a lot of agency from the character; it ultimately boils down to “She is created and raised by her mother, and then decides to leave her home because of a boy.”

That’s not to say that there’s not a lot of good stuff there to play with – Her mother is, after all, the Queen of the Amazons, and you should be able to spin out enough drama from that alone to fill an entire TV series – but it lacks a moment where Diana does anything particularly dramatic or worthwhile, leaving those responsible for the adaptation to come up with what’s still referred to as “the hero moment.”

She isn’t unique in this, of course (Green Lantern’s origin is similarly happenstance when it comes to Hal’s participation, as is the Flash’s), but Wonder Woman also faces the strange problem of lacking a single, successful (in terms of fan reaction) narrative in any incarnation that provides a framework to build around; whereas Geoff Johns altered Green Lantern with the introduction of the multi-colored Corps, Wonder Woman still lacks that one story for adaptations to… well, adapt. Is the reason we’ve not seen a Wonder Woman TV show or movie so far that those responsible for the adaptation just don’t know what to adapt yet?

With the future-gazing Wolverine and the X-Men #29 freshly on sale, series writer Jason Aaron is set for Wednesday’s Marvel “Next Big Thing” conference call with the comic book press. We’ll be on the line and updating live, so keep hitting refresh for the latest details. Here’s an album with lots of new art from the series.

Call starting now — on the line, Aaron and Marvel senior editor Nick Lowe, talking “The Hellfire Saga.”

“It certainly is something that’s been building for quite a while,” Aaron says of the story. “The Hellfire Club kids first popped up in Schism. I think this is what their story has been building towards this whole time.” Aaron says “Hellfire Saga” involves more characters than he’s written in a single story in his career. “I’d say it’s the biggest, craziest arc we’ve done in Wolverine and the X-Men, and if you’ve read Wolverine and the X-Men, you know that’s saying something.”

Read the rest of this entry »

There comes a time when the characters are so stupid, you have to stop thinking, “Yikes, they are stupid” and start thinking, “I’m reading this; am I stupid?”

“It’s comics,” they will say to me when they see this. We expect our comics to be serious-as-a-dead-child stories about open-mouthed dum-dums who could still believe in the Tooth Fairy. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature. That “Joker fell in water; guess he’s dead” thing alone has been done so many times this most recent one was probably a “reference.” But maybe we have put so many spins on that classic story (from the forties, for eight year olds) that we have upped the ante past the maximum safe ante height. Any more, it’s just rubbing our noses in the mess we’ve made. Imagine the next poor sap who has to write a Joker story. For Batgirl.

Jim Mroczkowski is finding himself wondering whether or not taking certain genre conventions for granted is a good thing or not. My general rule of thumb is pretty much, when you start thinking about this kind of thing too much, it’s time to give yourself and the story a break for a bit; otherwise, you will start to realize that, no matter how good Superman is at hunching over, someone would realize that he’s really Clark Kent.

Of course, there are times when the stories involved make ignoring the ridiculousness of some of these things particularly difficult; any time a story focuses on the importance of the secret identity, for example – as Scott Snyder’s been doing over in Batman, the book that Mroczowski is talking about – there is that moment of “You’re just reminding us how ludicrous this actually is, you know that, right…?”

The always-wonderful Evan Narcisse at Kotaku talked to Greg Rucka about comics, video games and the value of treating creators well:

You treat talented creators poorly, you get shitty comics. It’s as simple as that. If you’re happy reading shitty comics, then I suppose you shouldn’t worry about it. If you want to read good comics about the characters you love, then you should damn-well care. You don’t get the best work from people who feel they’re under fire, that there’s no security in their job or trust in their work. Respect the talent, respect what they bring to the characters, and collaborate. Comics is, by nature, a collaborative medium. When writers and artists are treated as disposable and interchangeable, the work will suffer.It all comes down to what you want to spend your money on. You continue to pay for crap, then the message you’re sending is that crap sells, and more crap will come to market.

Well worth reading, as most interviews with Rucka are. And talking of Rucka, there’s still time to donate to the Lady Sabre Kickstarter, if you’ve been meaning to but haven’t gotten around to it just yet…

Despite online reports citing a Marvel subscription newsletter, a representative from the publisher tells Newsarama that ongoing series Avengers Assemble is not cancelled.

Various sources including The Beat and Bleeding Cool passed along word Tuesday of an email to Marvel subscribers stating that the Kelly Sue DeConnick-written title was ending, and that subscriptions would roll over to the main Avengers book.

Last week, DeConnick talked to iFanboy about an Avengers Assemble tie-in to Infinity, starting in August.

Update: Marvel’s subscription service has sent out an email clarifying the situation:

Whoops! Has Kang been messing with the timestream or have we just been getting confused?

The Avengers keep on assembling! Avengers Assemble is not ending, it’s carrying on its merry way, and its loyal subscribers will stay right where they are.

Marvel Universe Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes will also be keeping on track.

We’re so sorry about the confusion! Avengers forever!

Sincerely,

Your friends at Marvel

Marvel’s superheroes may rule the movie theater, but DC can at least claim the… supermarket?:

In a first-of-its-kind partnership, Target Corp.  and Warner Bros. Consumer Products, in partnership with DC Entertainment, have teamed up to introduce an extensive summer collection of exclusive Justice League merchandise. The summer collection was inspired by “DC Comics – The New 52” comic book character designs and holds surprises for fans young and old. Featuring the full lineup of DC Comics’ iconic Justice League Super Heroes – Aquaman, Batman, Cyborg, The Flash, Green Lantern, Superman and Wonder Woman – the summer collection will launch at all U.S. Target stores and on Target.com beginning May 19.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “I hope this means that I can finally see my favorite superheroes re-imagined as furniture!” Well, you’re in luck:

And that’s not all!

In addition to the exclusive summer collection, Target will be part of a broader partnership with Warner Bros. Consumer Products that will offer more traditional Justice League licensed products. The broader partnership will span more than 20 categories including home, stationery, toys, apparel and accessories. All Justice League licensed products will range from $1 for Justice League temporary tattoos to $59.99 for a Justice League Rocker Chair.

The next time someone claims that superheroes haven’t penetrated the mainstream, just point them to the fact that there’s going to be a Justice League Rocker Chair.

Colin Smith considers the opening pages of recent issues of Astonishing X-Men and Wolverine, and why one works for new readers while the other doesn’t:

The beginning of a monthly book needn’t involve a hysterical measure of world-threatening hype, and unfamiliar readers can certainly be intrigued by situations and characters they know nothing about. But this page’s lack of visual distinctiveness, key information and, most deleteriously, liveliness does undermine the scene’s appeal. For all that the art is careful and competent, and for all the undoubted craft that’s evident in the script, this really isn’t a particularly enticing introduction.

The marketplace is saturated with super-books. Some of them are excellent. Why would either the casual browser or the uncommitted consumer opt for Astonishing X-Men #62 on the evidence of this opening page?

We very often get so dedicated to our viewpoints as established readers that understanding how something would/could appeal to someone not as well-versed in the mythology of a fictional universe can seem difficult; for my money, this was the same problem with Marvel’s Infinity preview for Free Comic Book Day this year. For the faithful, it was a well-done book teasing something they were likely to read anyway. But for new readers, what was really there for them…?

I was surprised to see the upset online yesterday at the news – via DC’s latest round of solicitations – that Legion of Super-Heroes has been cancelled. What was surprising wasn’t that people were upset that the book was ending, but that there seemed to be this feeling that this was the first time that DC had cancelled the book, which… didn’t really make any sense, to be honest.

For one thing, the current volume of Legion was the seventh, and at 23 issues (24, once you include the zero issue), it lasted eight months longer than volume 6, which was cancelled to make way for the New 52 relaunch. That previous volume launched with a cover date of July 2010, meaning that it had been almost a year and a half between volumes 5 (which ended with #50, cover date March 2009) and volume 6. In the meantime, there had been the three issues of the seemingly-permanently delayed Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds mini and four issues of an abortive back-up run in the revised Adventure Comics (The Legion were theoretically headliners in the Adventure tie-ins to the “Last Stand of New Krypton” storyline, but that was more of a Superman event that featured the Legion than any attempt at a Legion book).

Even if seven headlining appearances in sixteen months falls within your definition of “continuous publication,” it’s still odd to see people assuming that DC cancelling the current series means the end of the Legion as a whole. Even the final solicit suggests an imminent reboot, with talk of the future of the DCU future looking different… In an era where, just in the last few years, we’ve seen the cancellation of long-running titles like Action Comics, Detective Comics, Fantastic Four, Uncanny X-Men and so many more, just to be relaunched months (in some cases, just weeks) later, surely the idea of a classic book ending “forever” seems ludicrous or at least amazingly naive, doesn’t it? Is there really anyone out there who doesn’t think we’ll see the announcement of a new Legion title – even if it’s not called Legion of Super-Heroes (We have, after all, had replacements with titles like Legion Lost, Legion Worlds, The Legion etc. in the past) – within a few months at most?