And we’re back! Thank you for bearing with the Fifth Color’s sad absence due to bronchial infection last week, but now we’re medicated, semi-rested and rarin’ to go!
Look how rarin’ it is! Please note the new title, as we are trying Marvel’s best tactic to revive an ailing title: NEW! Yes, yes! All new, all different, same peek into the future with the first look at next year’s books! But now: NO FORMATTING! I have finally seen the light that it’s only going to look good on this screen and really, it’s just not helping the incredible selection of books I want to point out to people as the best and brightest of the oncoming Marvel onslaught of titles.
And what an onslaught! New #1 issues! New conclusions to story lines years in the making! New powers for characters! New costumes! And one solicitation goes so far as to break the NEW Sound Barrier with the most uses of the word in one single sentence! What is this super new book? What could the future look like? What will this advanced solicitation review look like?
Read on, True Believers!
NEW Costume! - CAPTAIN AMERICA #34
Yeah, if you’ve been living under a rock, you have no idea that there’s a major suit change for Marvel’s previously dead hero, mostly likely as someone (Winter Soldier) will be filling (his former partner) Steve Roger’s bucket boots. Enough has been said about this detail to a much bigger picture story and as I’ve said my piece, you fine people can continue to ponder the ramifications of pistol packing and shiny metal innards.
(Small aside: while the solicitation for CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE CHOSEN #6 says that Steve Rogers will be alighting his hand on a successor from his deathbed, and that mini-series lead James Newman might be taking up the burden… I just don’t think that they’d do that kind of thing to Mr. Brubaker and his ground-breaking work on the Captain America title. Sure, they’ll dangle it to get us to tune into their Marvel Knights tale, but to introduce a new character outside the main title’s a little sketchy.)
NEW Powers! - MIGHTY AVENGERS #8
A little surprising as you’d think the idea of Avengers fighting Avengers WHO ARE IN FACT infected by a symbiote virus (thus making it NEW) would be enough to bring people to the issue, they also added that Janet will be getting new powers. Unless something happens in Mighty Avengers between then and now, Janet Van Dyne is the only Janet within arms’ reach and the last time she got new powers, well… it wasn’t pretty. So, hopefully, these are new NEW powers.
NEW #1 Issue!
Actually, there’s quite a few of these: YOUNG AVENGERS PRESENTS #1 (of 6), THE TWELVE #1 (of 12), WWH AFTERSMASH: DAMAGE CONTROL #1 (of 3), HULK #1, SPIDER-MAN: WITH GREAT POWER… #1 (of 5), ULTIMATE HUMAN #1 (of 4), NEW EXILES #1. Now mind you, a lot (if not all) these new books are fresh coats of paint on older stories, characters or titles. I’m not complaining, I’m just as glad to see some new (NEW!) Young Avengers comics as anyone and the idea of Warren Ellis writing Ultimate Hulk and Iron Man is pretty cool. As much as these are looks back, they are also mini-series which Marvel has been strong in supporting; some of the best stories of this year were minis with clear beginning, middles and ends. A fine way to start off the new year.
NEW Idea for a What If? - WHAT IF? SPIDER-MAN VS. WOLVERINE
Recently, What If?s had been ways of taking a new look on major events in recent Marvel history. This one is going all the way back to 1987 to a possibly forgotten meeting between Wolverine and Spider-Man (shock, I know!) and one wrong turn. I like this, personally, as the old What If? series had all sorts of these gems buried within it and this particular tale turns on an accidental death at Spider-Man’s hands. Intriguing stuff and with Jeff Parker and Paul Tobin writing, it’s got a good chance at gem material.
NEW Death!
Oh, you didn’t think anyone wasn’t going to die this month, did you? HULK #1 and AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #9 both promise the death of someone you like as Hulk #1 foretells the murder of one of Hulk’s oldest cast members and Avengers: the Initiative just calls its storyline “KILLED IN ACTION (Part 2 of 4)” with this chapter being “The First Casualty”. Despite capitalized words and censored text, take these claims as seriously as you wish.
NEW Villain! - AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #549
Probably one of the more interesting selling points for January, Marvel promises to show us “the villain from the fifth Spider-Man movie today”! Ambitious? Yes, but you have to admit, there’s a pretty good chance this Menace guy just might make it to Spider-Man 5. Amazing Spider-Man #549 also debuts Jackpot into continuity and not just the Free Comic Day teaser. Villain herself? Hero? Kind of anti-hero romantic interest? Time will tell.
NEW Gigantic Tome! - THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN OMNIBUS VOL. 1
And why not? With the Iron Man movie on the horizon, the previous works of the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man remastered into large omnibus format, it seems only natural that an Iron Man collection would be on the way. And in January, you can get Tales of Suspense #39-83 and Tales to Astonish #82 in big heavy book format in the traditional slip jacket cover by Jack Kirby, the variant cover by Adi Granov, plus an “Iron Man Movie Image” cover as well. At least there wasn’t a zombie cover.
NEW XXXX!
I hoped we had gone past the days of censored solicitations since Civil War’s finale, but both Hulk titles won’t tell us a thing about where they are going this month. Incredible Hulk even threatens to change its title on us and bring on a whole new gamma-irradiated man and/or menace. Big changes are really the bread and butter of the House of Ideas, but just flat out blacking out text or X-ing out words seems more a grab for attention than trying to keep the reader from an exciting new development in the book. Character silhouettes are one thing, but taking out the description that a lot of retailer use to order the book seems a little extreme.
NEW Newy McNewerson for Newtown, Newania! - NEW EXILES #1
Now I’m just being mean (blame the lack of formatting). The solicitation for what I’m guessing is logical combination of New Excalibur and Exiles is really all new and won’t let you forget it. New leader, new members, new worlds, new adversaries, new era, new team, new mandate… that’s a lot of new. But, if you think about it, the new mandate is to safeguard the fate and future of the Omniverse, which sounds a lot like what the Exiles were doing originally. And the new team is most likely a mix of characters from the original Exiles team and New Excalibur, seeing how Sage is mentioned (along with her new psychic curse development). Plus, Chris Claremont is still writing and his style is certainly a throwback to the books that made him famous.
Wouldn’t that be a better selling point for the book? Considering how popular he was back in his heyday, saying that Claremont is bringing back the kind of stories, character driven and wide in scope that pu the X-Men on the map might actually attract more people that making everything new. An alternative to the big Messiah Complex event, some back-to-basic stories for familiar characters traveling across the Omniverse in the mighty Marvel manner.
I understand why they do it, to an extent; Marvel probably has seen proof that putting ‘New’ on the cover makes the book more accessible to new readers and/or generates interest from long time fans looking for a change. But if you start to use the word too much, people get jaded. Look at us the moment a character dies in a book, there’s enough eye rolling to give the Earth an extra rotation. I’m not saying these all won’t be new changes, but the question remains: for how long? It worked for the Morrison run on New X-Men because it really was new and changed the book a great deal, but eventually the ‘new’ went away and now we’re heading into an old school mega X-Book crossover. Isn’t there a better way to get interest in a story besides saying it’s ‘new’?
The full list of January’s solicitations is here. Here’s to the new year, folks.
October 17th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
The last time Jan really got new powers was actually in Chuck Austen’s run…and that wasn’t pretty either. Given a giant-size Wasp-dressed symbiote on the cover, I think it’s safe to say that it might be Austen’s giant-girl powers that are making a comeback.
October 18th, 2007 at 8:17 am
I dropped Exiles 3 issues into Claremont’s run. I was heartbroken to do it because I had read and loved Exiles since its very first issue. I know I’m probably in the minority, but I think that Claremont lost whatever magic he had 20 years ago (and I would also argue that he never had it.) Now, he’s still gumming up Exiles with his crap, and they’re giving him a new #1 to throw more dirt on one of the coolest teams that ever came out of Marvel.
October 18th, 2007 at 10:48 am
New Exiles! how about dropping the title all together…the writing is terrible…lame stories…whatever happened to Genext?…