THE END IS NIGH!
Look ahead folks and let’s see the finish line as the month of November means the very last book in the Secret Invasion saga! Everybody give yourselves a hand for making it this far and know that in three months’s time, this will all be behind us.
But what will be in front of us?
Let’s face it, all of these events swear that no really, REALLY, this time the Marvel Universe will NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!! And they are always right.
Let’s take a look at what Marvel has in store, shall we?
First off, it wouldn’t be the end of a summer mega-event if it wasn’t the start of a WHOLE NEW ONE! Yay? Ultimatum starts this month, two issues released on the first and third weeks of the month, Loeb’s work for the Ultimate universe now exponentially faster than his owrk on the Hulk. Not that I’m bitter or anything. Anyhow, this big cross-title shakeup has been years in the making and looks to be hitting all of the books, though Ultimate Spider-Man possibly a little indirectly; whatever is bringing Venom, Carnage and Gwen Stacy back to the book could be tied into Ultimatum, or it could simply be the Parker Luck, so to speak. I’m not ruling anything out, not even a lot of cancellations at the end of all this.
So while one Earth-shattering catacylsm goes down, another one comes to an end as Secret Invasion swears we’ll never be the same again. There’s a lot of fallout to work through as (hopefully) we’ll know who was a Skrull and who wasn’t a Skrull by now, leaving a lot of empty holes in the ‘continental’ Marvel Universe. The Avengers are going to need a new lineup for certain, not to mention the Initiative needing some repurposing and all of them seem to be getting some sort of wrap up in their respective books. Punisher: War Journal is getting in one last Skrully shot while three minis come to their final issues.
Interestingly enough, did anyone else catch the lack of ‘post-banners’ put up on books? Civil War had ‘The Initiative’, House of M had ‘Decimation’, but Secret Invasion missed out on their aftermath label so far. A lot of books seem to be untouched by the Skrull invasion as the cosmic books are doing their own thing and a lot of solo books getting back to business. I know ‘nothing will ever be the same again’ but I think that it’s kind of refreshing to see it self-contained in the books that logically make sense.
While main storylines chug along, we’re still getting Special to fill in the blanks and provide a variety of story for our favorite characters. Secret Invasion might have challenged the Initiative kids, but that doesn’t mean we won’t learn a little more about the characters in a Avengers: the Initiative Special that promises to wrap up one of their longest-running plotlines. Sure, Ms. Marvel is still doing her look back at her secret agent days to solidify her turn as soldier-first-superhero-second, but that won’t stop Brian Reed from revisiting a character from her last Special. Ms. Marvel: Storyteller comes back to Gavin, a an interesting character (a reality manipulator compared to the level of the Scarlet Witch being trained by AIM if I remember correctly) and it looks like he’s going to be an Elseworlds vehicle as well as a major plot device. From the cover alone, it looks like this Special will be told in the key of ‘ARRRR’ as everyone’s a pirate. Why? Well, if Daredevil can have ninjas, why can’t Ms. Marvel have pirates?
There’s a couple awesome returns to the four color page this month that I would be remiss if I didn’t point out. First, as the sun will rise and set, Ed Brubaker will continue to write thrilling Captain America tales that will delight the senses and blow the mind. His consistancy in awesomeness is well documented and the fact that November’s Captain America #44 brings us “one of Steve Rogers deadliest foes” and the cover quite clearly shows one Batroc the Leaper (excuse me, ‘Batroc ze Lepair!’)? I’d kind of like to see a new take on the noble French thief, hopefully without the outrageous French accent.
The other return I wanted to give a shout out to is the rather humble little story of Doctor Strange in the pages of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes. A character nearly declared too powerful for the Marvel Universe at large, maybe it will take a simpler imprint to get to the heart of the Sorcerer Suprme and give us the kind of tales of mystery and magic we’ve been missing. I’m just glad to see him back anywhere.
Technically a ‘return’ as well, Kevin Grevioux from the New Warriors and Mat Broome from Dark Horse’s The End League are coming aboard with Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel, the mini dedicated to a lost superhero of the ’60s who’s heroic costume hid the color of his skin to avoid prejudice in an uncertain time. Rather like the Sentry, he’s the only man who can face an ultimately powered threat and, also like the Sentry, he has lost his way from his heroic origin. However, with it’s socio-political backdrop, it will be interesting to see what direction they take this new-but-not-really-that-new hero and see what comes out of the mini-series.
Meanwhile, the X-Books seem to be a little all over the place, each book having some sort of of signature character in some sort of signature peril: Colossus fights villains from the ‘Old Country’ in Uncanny, Xavier fights his past in X-Men Legacy, Wolverine fights the same thing in Origins, Manifest Destiny, even Old Man Logan. Storm chooses between family and duty in X-Men: Worlds Apart, Madrox loses control in X-Factor, even Young X-Men takes some time to tell us about the new character Ink they added into the mix. An interesting time to be reading Marvel’s merry mutants as there is no unifying factor right now outside survival. No bigger goal, no alien threat or banner for them to fall under besides ‘Hey, let’s not get killed this week’. And we all know how well that goes.
If I had talked about everything in this big beautiful month of November, we’d be here all week, so go take a look for yourself at the full solicitation list for November 2008 and see what catches your eye, floats your boat, or lights your fire… and hope it’s long time before we see another Skrull again.
