Here’s Sam Humphries, talking with our very own Albert Ching about Hank Pym’s role in Avengers AI:

Hank Pym is a fantastic character to write. It’s a little difficult for me to talk exactly about Hank, because a lot of it comes out of the end of Age of Ultron, and the Age of Ultron epilogue that Mark Waid is writing. Both of which I’ve read, and both of which are great. The Age of Ultron has got an incredible crescendo, and that leads right into what we’re doing.

Waid’s epilogue is great, because Waid loves Hank Pym so much. Waid really, really has this deep, genuine affection for Hank Pym the same way that he does Daredevil and Superman. Waid has this ability to tap deep into these classic characters in a way that nobody else does. Talking about the end of Age of Ultron, and the epilogue, and the beginning of Avengers A.I. with Bendis and Waid was fantastic for me. It was amazing. I wish both of those guys could re-define my characters before every book I do, because they’re razor-sharp at this.

All of which is a long way of saying that I can’t really say what my take on Hank is, other than I think this is a take that is firmly rooted in Hank’s history. It in no way ignores what came before, but I think it’s also a bit of Hank coming into his own.

How many times has Hank Pym come into his own?

I ask that seriously; the character seems to be one that just never works for fans, and undergoes constant revision. It’s always been the case, all the way back to his first appearances fifty years ago. He was Ant-Man, then Giant-Man, then Goliath. Back then, the character didn’t evolve, but his costumed identities did. Goliath, Yellowjacket…

Hank has no central personality traits that the creators who handle him can seem to agree on, and that’s plagued him throughout his existence – It’s also, I’d argue, why his hitting Jan has become the defining fact of his character despite numerous attempts to rehabilitate him; at least it’s something unique that people remember about him outside of “he messes with his size a lot and created Ultron.” But even since then: We’ve seen him suicidal and then come to terms with his position in life, then come to terms with it again and reclaim former identities to express that, and then again and again. Is he the (somewhat jerky, infallible) Scientist Supreme, still, or a (sensitive, emotionally aware) teacher at Avengers Academy?

I’ve said it elsewhere, but I suspect that the Hank Pym we’ll see post-Age of Ultron will himself be an artificial intelligence of some sort, giving him yet another reboot and attempt of definition. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see if the makeover he’ll get in Age of Ultron and Avengers AI is something that will actually stick, or whether we’ll see yet another redefinition of Hank Pym a couple of years down the line, as Marvel Studios prepares to release its Ant-Man movie.

Quick: What does Avengers mean to you, outside of it being the name of multiple Marvel superhero comics and an uber-successful movie?

We’re at, what, eight Avengers books right now? Avengers, New, Secret, Assemble, Dark (soon to be replaced with AI), Arena, Young and Uncanny… Plus, of course, A+X and whatever event series that are going on at the time. Let’s call it eight, to be charitable, and say that A+X doesn’t count because the title doesn’t actually contain the word “Avengers.” Now, think about what links all of those titles together, thematically.

It’s definitely not the old “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” idea anymore – Although, let’s be honest, that hasn’t been true since Hawkeye was allowed into the team way back when. It’s not that it’s one massive organization of superheroes dedicated to saving the world, as was the case even as recently as the Bendis era. The presence of Arena and Young really complicates matters in terms of definition, because technically, no-one in those books even is an Avenger.

It makes sense, from a business standpoint, to leverage the Avengers name as much as possible – It was a massive movie, and is definitely Marvel’s most successful/most familiar brand these days, and adding it to any title genuinely seems to legitimately provide a sales bump (See Thunderbolts‘ change to Dark Avengers last year). But long-term, it does damage to Avengers as a brand, because it makes it meaningless.

These days, Avengers seems to just translate into “superhero,” with the term becoming generic outside of that. And the more that fans realize that, the less valuable the Avengers brand is going to become.

Abhay Khosla explains why Angela’s appearance at the end of Age of Ultron makes more sense than at first glance:

Gaiman claimed to have created Angela, and, after the dust of the various ensuing lawsuits cleared, Neil Gaiman indeed owned at least 50% of Angela. So, this month, he’s turned around and licensed Angela back to Marvel comics. The company Todd McFarlane had made a big whole point of quitting in the first place. Marvel Comics had famously stolen all of their good characters from Jack Kirby, back in the 1960s; stole some other stuff, too, though– Blade from Marv Wolfman; Howard the Duck from Steve Gerber, etc. But gosh, it had been a while. It had been too long– too, too long.

Good news, though: Marvel can now say not only that they have their hands on an Image comic character, but that best of all, it’s against the obvious wishes of one of its co-creators, too!

Yay! Neil Gaiman has finally struck a real blow for… revenge?

This is all in the context of a Marvel comics crossover named The Middle-Age of The Ultron, which I think is about an evil robot, wearing a leather jacket and hitting on high-school girls at Denny’s? The crossover is only about half-over, but the Wall Street Journal or JAMA or whoever have already reported that the top-secret, ultra-secret, “no-one will guess” secret finale three or four months from now is, apparently, that an angel from heaven in a metal bikini will show up to hunt the 1990s Image Comics character Spawn? Sure, sure: exactly how a Marvel comic about a g-damn robot should end.

The crossover is written by Brian Michael Bendis, as is a subsequent issue of the new Guardians of the Galaxy series which will be co-written by Gaiman, and is said to feature Angela. Fun-fact: Bendis himself started his work-for-hire comics career working for Todd McFarlane … before also having a falling-out with McFarlane.

I hadn’t made the “Writers who’ve fallen out with Todd McFarlane” connection between Bendis and Gaiman before, but, great! I totally can see what they have in common that’ll make them such great collaborators now! I can only hope that the writing credits for that arc of Guardians read “The Todd McFarlane Revenge Squad.”

Wait, how many people are drawing the final issue of Age of Ultron? Tom Brevoort suggests more than we think:

I want to make sure that everybody understands that Joe is not doing an entire issue. He is doing a portion of issue #10; specifically, the Angela portion. In point of fact there will be material in issue #10 from Carlos, from Brandon, from Bryan, from Joe, and a couple of other surprise guys. Again it’s all based upon the content of the material.

Five artists? For a 40 page (including ads) issue? That sounds busier than a DC Comics event book. Still, at least we have confirmation that the Quesada portion that was so secret that no-one knew about it yadda yadda is just the Angela reveal. Oh, and we also have this:

Neil [Gaiman] and Brian [Michael Bendis]‘s “Guardians [of The Galaxy]” arc starts I believe in issue #5, and springboards directly out of that scene in “Age of Ultron.” It’s a much bigger commitment and involvement from Neil than people might have thought. He’s working with Brian on an entire arc of “Guardians.”

Interesting…

I keep coming back to the promised spotlight on the Inhumans that the upcoming “biggest event of 2013” Infinity is going to shine on the Inhumans, for some reason. I think it’s because the Inhumans are an oddity within Marvel for me, in that they’re a Lee/Kirby creation that has never seemed to “work” for the publisher in any real sense. Oh, we’ve had multiple attempts at series for the concept, both mini- and ongoing, but they’ve never really found their footing with the audience. Despite coming from the fathers of the whole shebang at the peak of their collaborative powers, the Inhumans have been weirdly… if not “forgotten,” then at least pushed to one side.

Oddly enough, I wonder if it’s because the Inhumans – like the Eternals, for that matter – have too much Jack Kirby in their DNA. Despite his place as the co-creator of the Marvel Universe as a fictional universe and a significant number of its inhabitants, Kirby seems curiously absent in Marvel Comics for me; not only the visual style of his work – replaced by prettier, more detailed, more “realistic” artwork as audience tastes changed – but the pacing of it, too, and the relentless invention and hunger for something new… Not to mention Kirby’s attempts, however flawed, to use superhero comics to say something about people and “the human condition” that went beyond bickering and soap opera.

Marvel Comics may have started with Kirby, and been beholden to Kirby’s genius for the first ten years of its existence, but when he went off to DC, the publisher shifted focus and moved towards Lee’s (great) schtick and belief that the Marvel Universe should be “the world outside your window,” despite the fantastic, amazing, mighty things happening in each and every issue of the series. You can see Lee in today’s Marvel Comics – Bendis and Fraction in particular feel particularly beholden to him, to me – but Kirby…? Maybe not so much.

The Inhumans, as I said above, feel very Kirby to me; they’re so outside the New York everyman norm of the rest of the Marvel U that I suspect that the audience and many of the creators can’t quite figure out how to get a handle on them. They’re taken to extremes – They’re like aliens! They’re like a regular family! They’re a superheroic Greek tragedy that gets cut short when David Hine doesn’t get to finish his storyarc because, hey, War of Kings! and so on – because the specific mix of the Unknowable and the Mundane feels so specific that it’s impossible to replicate, and when the audience doesn’t respond positively enough, they go back in the drawer awaiting another quiet relaunch.

I’m curious to see what happens with Infinity. Not so much to see what happens with the characters, because we’ve already seen Jonathan Hickman’s take on the concept in his Fantastic Four/FF run, but to see whether this is going to be the time when – like with Guardians of the Galaxy – Marvel’s PR and insistence that “THIS IS THE BIG ONE!” actually manages to convince enough people that this time, this is the time that they should actually pay attention and care about the Inhumans after all.

Padraig O Mealoid, likely the closest thing the Comics Internet has to a legitimate Marvelman expert, takes a leap outside of his ongoing Poisoned Chalice series at the Beat to wonder aloud: Could Marvelman really be close to a revival at Marvel?

I am starting to hear stories from sources I cannot possibly name that Marvel have bought out Garry Leach’s rights, not only to all his Marvelman work, presumably including any news characters he co-created with Moore along the way, but also the 50% rights share he has in the Warpsmiths property. And, as has been seen in the recent Superman court cases and, ironically, also mentioned in the context of Neil Gaiman bringing the Angela character to Marvel’s Age of Ultron, 50% is enough to allow them to exploit the property, as long as they reimburse the owner of the remaining 50% fairly for that use.

So, is that it? Do Marvel finally have everything they need to proceed with their exploitation of one of the most talked about characters in comics’ history? No, of course not, as there’s still a number of things for them to get control of. But they’re much closer to it than they were. Perhaps all those times when Marvel said that Marvelman was ‘coming soon’ will finally come true.

The possible use of Warpsmiths is fascinating to me. We assume that Moore is fine with Marvel using Marvelman because, well, he’s done with the character and gave his interest to Neil Gaiman. But how would he react if Marvel started using other characters that he’d written during the same period – characters that he’d co-created, for that matter – without his permission? (That’s assuming that it would be without his permission, of course…)

So, Iron Man 3 will have exclusive footage when it’s released in China, it was announced last week. That news led to this somewhat staggering animation from the people at Next Media Animation:

That American audition scene in particular is a little brutal, isn’t it…?

So, now that we know more about Marvel’s Infinity event, am I the only one who feels a little bit of deja vu? As Michael noted yesterday, Infinity sees the story unfold on two fronts as the Avengers go off into space to deal with one threat while another is revealed back on Earth… which kind of feels a little like Avengers vs. X-Men‘s early split of “You guys go into space to deal with the Phoenix while we go and fight with the X-Men” set-up.

On Earth, of course, things don’t go so well: According to the USA Today piece announcing the details, issues of New Avengers and Infinity “focus on Thanos’ secret agenda and the superheroes who are left to deal with him and his army running roughshod over Earth,” which… Isn’t the Earth already dealing with Ultron’s secret agenda and army running roughshod over the planet?

Meanwhile, the Inhumans are coming to save the day, which is great for everyone who wanted to see what Jonathan Hickman could do with the Lee/Kirby creations and had skipped the creator’s earlier Fantastic Four/FF issues featuring the Inhumans.

I don’t know; there are only so many stories that fit into the “event” format, ultimately, considering the scale and scope this kind of thing demands, and so perhaps the familiarity shouldn’t feel so surprising. And yet… Am I wrong to find myself hoping that there are some details that’re being kept back right now that will make this feel a little bit less like a mash-up of things that have worked out well in the past?

It took the 2011 Captain America four issues before artists Steve McNiven needed assistance to finish an issue. For the much-heralded Guardians of The Galaxy…?

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #2 will be drawn by Steve McNiven with Sara Pichelli, not just McNiven as previously solicited.

Two plus sides: Firstly, Pichelli (who was already on board the book as artist for #4, and presumably will alternate with McNiven on the series if not become the book’s primary artist with #4, a la Daniel Acuna’s taking over Uncanny Avengers with #6) is a great artist, so it’s not as if the book will suffer for her filling in to help out on the dreaded deadline doom. Secondly, GOTG #2 is actually the third issue of the series, considering the #0.1 issue. Nonetheless, three issues…? What, did he think this was a DC book or something…?

The Disney corporate synergy is working out pretty well for ABC and Marvel, isn’t it? The former gets two new non-superhero franchises to play with – The Once Upon A Time announcement yesterday feeling like the bigger deal if handled correctly, because it gives Marvel an immediate Fables competitor to play with – and the latter gets a prime-time TV show, if SHIELD goes ahead (Which, come on, it’s clearly going to).

When Marvel was bought by Disney, the synergy fear was one of the biggest one for fans; that Marvel would somehow be dragged into some Disnified mess or forced to add Mickey, Minnie and the other House of Mousers to stories, or something similar. Three and a half years later, it’s clear that things haven’t gone that way at all – and, in fact, have worked out pretty much perfectly for the publisher, all told (Could there be a Marvel Universe animation block without the Disney connection?). I wonder if there are any out there who find themselves wishing that Marvel and Disney had stayed separate at this point?

Thinking about the Uncanny Avengers/”Don’t Call Me A Mutant” thing a little more, two things become clear:

1. Marvel needs to release some kind of official press statement on the issue, and not leave everything to Rick Remender who may not be helping things despite his best intentions (Then again, Tom Brevoort kind of called it a stupid response over on his Tumblr, so maybe Marvel shouldn’t release some kind of statement just in case).

2. Whether intentionally or otherwise, there’s now a really interesting dynamic between the two Summers brothers in the X-Books, with Cyclops being a militant believer in – for want of a better phrase – a mutant agenda, and Havok being… what, a mutant apologist, of sorts? “Having an X-gene doesn’t bond me to anyone, it doesn’t define me,” Havok says during his speech, undercutting 50 years of X-Men books but also offering an alternate view to the dominant “We must stick together because we are Other” of the franchise. Ignoring, for a second, the tone-deaf nature of “I am not defined by what I am” – Steve Morris sums up my feelings on that nicely, and it’s telling that it’s a white, straight male mutant whose power is not visually obvious from the way he looks that gets that speech – there really could be some interesting plot potential here to be mined.

Over at Tom Brevoort’s new Formspring-esque Tumblr, someone takes exception to his mention of Avengers Vs. X-Men having “few tie-ins”:

How can you say AvX had few tie-ins?  It had 48 tie-in issues, plus Consequences, AvX Babies and now a What If.

Brevoort’s response is to clarify that it had “relatively few” tie-ins. Here’s the thing: Both Brevoort and the questioner are correct with this one. Sure, 48 tie-ins is a lot of comics, and that’s only counting the books that actually tied-into the series during the series itself. However, it could’ve been so, so much worse.

Fear Itself, for example, had 118 tie-in issues before you got to the epilogue books (There were 22 of those), up from the previous high of Civil War‘s 87 before epilogues. Considering just h0w amazingly successful AvX was for Marvel, the temptation to add the banner to more comics must have been vast, so maybe we should applaud the self-restraint that it took to keep things at “only” 48 tie-ins.

(If you think of things like this, Age of Ultron barely feels like an event at all. Its tie-ins are barely in the double digits…!)

After a bit of a layoff, Marvel’s “Next Big Thing” conference calls with the comic book press are back, this time focusing on the latest with recently launched Marvel NOW! series Nova — and based on the images released to press, it looks like artist Paco Medina is joining the book. This page will be continually updated, so keep refreshing for updates!

The call hasn’t officially started yet, but Zeb Wells is on the line, so it looks like he’s joining Nova — possibly as a co-writer with Jeph Loeb?

Loeb is on the line, so we are officially starting, and with news: July’s Nova #6 brings a new creative team of Zeb Wells and Paco Medina.

(more…)

You know, the more I think about it, the less happy I am that Batroc the Leaper is going to appear in the next Captain America movie. It’s not that I’m not a Batroc fan; just the opposite, in fact. I think he’s a great character, and I’m always glad to see him, but I worry that a great deal of what I like about him – Mostly, that he’s a ridiculous, comedy character with an over-the-top accent – is likely to be lost in translation to the movie, which will in turn lead to an overly-serious “re-interpretation” of the character in the comics.

I may be worrying about nothing; Rick Remender is the writer in charge of Cap’s comic book fate these days, after all, and if there’s one thing he has shown in his career so far, it’s that a lack of subtlety is hardly something he has a problem with. But Marvel always strikes me as somewhat conservative with the characters that turn up in movies, in the sense of “those versions gradually – or less than gradually, in the case of Nick Fury – end up becoming similar to the movie incarnations for synergistic purposes” (Hey, remember the new Whiplash created to mirror the one in Iron Man 2?) In that we’re unlikely to see a comedy Batroc in The Winter Soldier, how long before we end up with a depressingly serious take on Batroc in the comic books?

From last week’s Axel in Charge column:

There are plans for a Marvel NOW! Wave 2 — a new wave of titles that will generate the same amount of excitement amongst retailers and fans that the first wave did. From “Uncanny Avengers” to “Thanos Rising,” Marvel NOW! has been a hit, and we’re far from done. Look for exciting new series, starting in July and carrying through next year.

I’m kind of fascinated by this quasi-announcement, in part because I don’t really see how it’s possible to do a Marvel NOW! Wave 2 that will “generate the same amount of excitement amongst retailers and fans” as the first one. Didn’t the first one use up almost all of the big names in terms of characters and creators? We had relaunches for all of the X-Men books with the exception of Wolverine and The X-Men and Astonishing X-Men, all of the Avengers books (including solo titles), the Fantastic Four titles, Spider-Man… Are there really enough crown jewels left for Marvel to be able to have a similar successful relaunch again? Is the post-July date – which means after Age of Ultron is finished, with whatever changes it’ll bring – important, and does it mean we’ll see re-relaunches of some titles?

Axel Alonso works in a DC-directed zinger in his latest Axel In Charge column over at CBR:

Each Marvel NOW! title starts with a writer who has a long-term vision for their series, and an artist — or complementary rotation of artists — who brings that vision into focus and then some. In certain cases — like John Romita Jr. on “Captain America” or Mark Bagley on “Fantastic Four” — we’ve been able to concoct a system that allows for one artist to do virtually all the issues. In others — like “All-New X-Men” — we’ve managed to put together a solid core rotation, with Stuart Immonen and David Marquez. But there are times when the unforeseen happens: When ["Deadpool" artist] Tony Moore decided he wanted to take a break from the daily grind of sequential art, we had to adjust our plans.

That said, I want to remind readers of this column that all the Marvel NOW! launches are going strong — none have been cancelled or RE-relaunched in a whole new direction after 3 or 4 issues — which is a testament to the talent and coordinated effort of our writers, artists and editors.

That’s true; it took six issues for Savage Wolverine to be relaunched with a whole new direction and creative team. Much better.

This is just… I have no words.

Well, I have some: Given Neil Gaiman’s new involvement with Marvel and the fact that he’s letting the publisher use one of his McFarlane-related characters, this has to mean that Marvelman is forthcoming, right?

I missed Paul O’Brien’s latest look at Marvel’s chart placings in Diamond’s sales rankings earlier this week, unfortunately. It’s particularly interesting in the wake of the various Marvel NOW! launches, because you can clearly see the relaunches that have worked – Superior Spider-Man and the Avengers books by Hickman – and those that, for whatever reason are struggling. To see Iron Man, X-Men Legacy and Avengers Assemble all at or below the order level they had pre-relaunch is surprising, and also depressing, as those are books I enjoy. One day, someone will work out a formula for what the audience does and doesn’t want…

When I read Age of Ultron #2, I joked that the only thing that happened in it was that Captain America stood up. It turns out, I just wasn’t thinking hard enough, as Colin Smith demonstrates:

Its provocatively empty-headed, stone-hearted, valueless pages must have been intended to serve as a blank canvas, upon which the obvious absence of worth will compel the reader to ask what’s missing. As such, we ought to celebrate Bendis as a conceptual superbook scriptwriter of the very first rank. A straight-faced prankster, a hype-wrapped agent provocateur, a long-embedded mole apparently playing for the other side while feeding us the secret information we desperately need. Yes, Age Of Ultron: Book Two must be the ultimate critique of idly deconstructed, carelessly decompressed Event storytelling, and it ought to be treasured for its ironic challenge to the very system that’s made BMB what he is. Long before Bendis’s promised textbook on how to write comicbooks appears, and reveals him to have been the nemesis rather than the enabler of pap anti-pop storytelling, here’s the evidence which reveals his true purpose.

Bravo, Mr. Smith. You’re rarely sarcastic, but when you are, it’s amazing.

I wonder, two issues in, whether or not Age of Ultron‘s accelerated release schedule is less a function of “We’re trying to give you as much Hitch as possible as quickly as possible!” as has been said, but more one of the story’s speed of development. If this were a monthly book, the glacier-slow unfolding of the plot would be even more apparent, and allow readers and retailers more chance to jump ship; as it is, there’s more chance that something of note will actually happen in the series within the first two months of release when all but one of Bryan Hitch’s issues will be released during that period. I mean, how could it not?

Rich Johnston wants you all to know that he knows something that he’s not supposed to:

Everyone seems to think I love to spoil stories but it’s just not true, when I discovered one aspect to the ending of Age Of Ultron after the Marvel Summit, they asked me not to run it, so I didn’t (even though it screams at me from this month’s solicitations- could only eight people really know this one?)… Later, however, I was told a different aspect to the ending, which caused Marvel to properly panic when I shared with Marvel that I knew it – or at least a part of it – and I was told there were all sorts of legal implications if this story got spoiled by me.

Of course, saying “I know the ending but I can’t tell you” means that (a) Rich gets bragging rights without having to actually prove that he knows anything, and (b) all those who care about guessing the ending go wild at the tease, and try and decipher the clues (In addition to the “It screams at me from this month’s solicitations,” Rich also adds later the phrase “An unexpected guest star joining the Marvel Universe,” which would suggest someone who’s never shown up in a Marvel Comic before. Finally, Marvelman?), which seems to be a win-win scenario for all involved – including Marvel, who essentially get PR for Age of Ultron at no risk, because nothing actually gets spoiled. Everybody wins?

Hey, maybe I should start boasting that I know the ends to stories. I know how DC’s Trinity War en – Nah, I don’t even know how that even starts, yet.