Month after month, I eagerly await my three-month ahead Christmas in the form of Marvel solicitations and each and every time I find myself thinking, “What on Earth am I going to talk about?”  I mean, these are three months away!  What could they possibly hint at that won’t have a big black CENSORED bar on it or be so tame as to let it loose upon the internet public?  Considering how thick we are going to get into Secret Invasion, what dare lay ahead for the True Believer that could be discussed?

And every month, I am floored by what can catch the eye, both good and bad.  Comics are a weird medium, folks.

So, let’s take a look at August, shall we?

First off, let’s just get this out of the way:  20 Secret Invasion books this month, 21 if you include Skrulls vs. Power Pack.  Man, that’s daunting.  Not only is the Skrull Invasion popping into a variety of titles with special issues scattered throughout the shelves, but it seems that the tiny little niche of the Marvel Cosmos gets its own links to this big summer event.  Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova both get tie-ins which logically makes the most sense since the fine folks at Annihilation Central have been handling the Skrulls back when this idea was still a glimmer in Brian Bendis’s eye.  The Guardians look to be playing “Who’s the Skrull Infiltrator?” game while the Super-Skrull himself will be in the pages of Nova (and eventually in the pages of She-Hulk), giving a good push to a couple of titles that really should be out-selling the Avengers at this rate.  The Avengers, meanwhile, continue to star in the pages of Secret Invasion or so I would assume seeing that their books are still being used to cover important storyhooks and plots that only loosely deal with the people who the book is named after:  New Avengers is going to be looking into the life of Captain Marvel (or Skrull-Vel I would assume) and Mighty is going to take us back to the darkest, darkety dark dark secret of the Illuminati.  Please let it be the Infinity Gems?

So, should you be on the outside loop of the Secret Invasion, never fear as Marvel’s got other books too. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, people are going to be snatching up Spider-Man books which won’t be all that hard since we got nine of them to choose from.  There’s the three Amazing Spider-Man books we’ve come to depend on PLUS Amazing Spider-Man Family #1, Spider-Man Summer Special, Marvel Spotlight: Spider-Man - Brand New Day, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane (finally!), Spider-Man Magazine, Amazing Spider-Girl and Venom: Dark Origins.  A veritable bonanza of Spider-Goodness in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors and prices.  Seeing as how both the Thunderbolts (run by a certain Norman Osborn) and Eddie Brock (formerly run by a certain Venom symbiote) will be showing up for an “all-new Spider Villain” (or hero), it’s going to be a big month for ol’ Web-Head.

I would also like to note that Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane is a mini-series, this being the first of five issues, and what a shame that is.  That’s all.

Anyhow, Skrulls and Spider-Stuff, anything else?  There’s a very disturbing solicitation for Marvel Adventures: the Avengers #27 that seems to suggest that it’s “Parker’s” last issue.  If this means we’re losing Jeff Parker (maybe to something Agents of Atlas-y?) on personally MY favorite Avengers title, well… my hats off to him for writing a fantastic team book that’s fun for young and old.

The Immortal Iron Fist is getting a really interesting possible reprint book called Immortal Iron Fist: the Origin of Danny Rand, a “re-presentation” of the original Marvel Premiere issues that debuted Iron Fist to the masses that will have “an all-new framing sequence” by writer Matt Fraction and artist Kano.  I’m really interested to see how this is going to go, whether there will be new material in the book (obviously) and if re-framing means changing up the original artwork and story to fit in better with Matt Fraction’s incredible revival of the character.  I think this is the first book of reprints that I’m really looking forward to.

Another note:  We can get two issues of New Exiles up for sale and yet still no Bruce Banner as the Hulk book is solicited for August outside of the TPBs.

The X-Books are stretching out their legs is seems as troubles haunting them all the way back to San Fransisco:   Warren Ellis is going the alien route (always works well for Marvel’s Merry Mutants!) in the second installment of his turn on Astonishing X-Men while Brubaker and Fraction are going to be filling Uncanny with secrets and societies as they hint at a “Hellfire Cult” and more machinations from Scott Summers.  These days, with CHANGE! all over the place, it’s hard to figure where these books are going to go somedays, made even worse by how fantastic X-Men Origins: Colossus was.  Really, did you all read that?  Fantastic story, incredible art, and a very back to basics style to the story that seems out of place on the shelves next to the rest of the X-Titles.  Like it’s an odd time to get nostalgic.  I bring this up because we’re getting an X-Men Origins: Jean Grey with SEAN FREAKIN’ MCKEEVER (hoorah!) and art by Mike Mayhew.  This delights me to no end.

What delights you?  The list of August books are here on the mothership, check ‘em out and see what you’ll be looking forward to.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Marvel, The Fifth Color, Version 1.0 Blog@. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.