Jack Kirby

If Twitter had existed back in the mid-1980s, things might have turned out differently for Jack Kirby and, ultimately, his heirs. Perhaps Marvel’s demand that he permanently sign away the copyright to all his work for them in return for very limited rights to his original art would have triggered the sort of online firestorm that scotched the Bank of America debit card fees, SOPA/PIPA, and the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s brief moment of collusion with the hard right. Then again, maybe not—the internet can be fickle.

A number of creators criticized Marvel’s actions at the time, and in the end they did soften a bit and come up with a deal Kirby could sign. More recently, Kirby’s heirs tried to claim ownership of a number of copyrights for characters he created, but the judge in that case ruled in Marvel’s favor without even going to trial. Now Change.org is giving it a second try, with an internet petition asking Marvel to make things right with Kirby and his heirs:

We strongly urge Marvel Entertainment and its owner Disney to acknowledge Jack Kirby’s authorship and primary role in the creation of these characters. As well, we urge Marvel to pay Kirby’s family royalties or other just compensation for the use of these characters and stories.

The petition calls on the signatories to boycott Marvel until that happens. So far, despite appearing on The Beat, the petition only has 229 signatures, which isn’t likely to move the sales needle enough for Marvel to notice.

Not at all ominous...

Over what was most likely a perfect cup of Moroccan Mint green tea, Greg Rucka sat down for a discussion with Mark Waid and Steve Wacker about “The Omega Effect,” an upcoming crossover between The Avenging Spider-Man, The Punisher and Daredevil debuting in April.

In the story, the Man Without Fear will find himself in possession the Omega Drive, a file connecting five powerful criminal organizations — dangerous information that everyone’s going to want to get there hands on, right? That’s a well-used motive in our genre with the added twist of science; you see, Spider-Man is operating at the behest of Reed Richards, who invented the Omega Drive to begin with. So either Richards has been collecting dirty sheets on crime bosses in his spare time, or there’s something more delicate to what’s holding all this information in the first place. Remember all the math he used to keep in the basement telling him how to nudge society around? Yeah, this could get ugly.

That’s why we have the Punisher, who’ll go head to head with Spider-Man and Daredevil to put this information to good use — which, as we can guess, probably means shooting some fools. Waid and Rucka are more than willing to throw their supporting casts into the mix, as well as relevant story arcs that coincide with the trouble at hand. Spider-Man vowed that no one else would die on his watch, and that’s a hard vow to keep next to Frank Castle. Daredevil has had a long history with the Punisher, both falling on different sides of the very concept of justice. With his most recent fall from grace and return with a fresh attitude, how will the new Daredevil handle a man acting as judge, jury and executioner?

And the Punisher? Follow me on this one, guys, but what is Frank Castle going to get out of all of this?

(WARNING: Spoilers ahead for PunisherMAX #21 and Punisher #7, out this week.  Grab your copies and follow along!)

Yeah, he’ll get answers, information and his sticky little fingers into some Marvel Universe action. But really, what does a man like Frank Castle get from hanging out with the cape-and-tights set? Recently, I’ve wondered at the idea of the Punisher playing well with others, and I think that has a lot to do with the MAX line. The Punisher’s most modern character revival came at the hands of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, cementing the idea that the character comes along with some …. well, mature issues. Even Jason Aaron’s PunisherMAX #21, leaves one with a feeling of utter despair and the ugliest truth about Frank Castle’s ultimate destiny. If I could get a little spoilery for a moment — please read this series, it’s coming to a swift conclusion and is absolutely brilliant — through PunisherMAX #21, we see Frank experience flashes of his life before the Punisher; it was a lot of missed moments, a lot of actions taken that shied away from what would have been a happier, if not simply more normal, life. Being alive means something entirely different to the Punisher, like a means to an end — ab end that will never arrive.

from Punisher (2012) #7

Punisher #7 also came out this week and, in Greg Rucka’s own title, it’s very clearly stated to the readers and that one cop guy that “eye for an eye”-style justice doesn’t fly in a truly moral world. And, despite its grit and shades of gray, the Marvel Universe is a truly moral world because of the heroes that inhabit it. The Punisher works as a man outside the boundaries of where our heroes live. He’s a guest star at best, a morality tale for people who do have the luxury of friends, family and an alternate identity. Frank Castle works best when he’s not reined in or festooned with gimmicks, and he’s certainly not going to be joining the Avengers any time soon (please, dear God, no). His path is different and should certainly be less traveled by men like Daredevil and Spider-Man.

So why stand them all next to each other in this new story? Mark Waid in the discussion said: “I think we start with Spider-Man with something tonally that is very close to what Spider-Man is, but the moment the Punisher walks into the room, thanks to Greg, the tone shift. That’s part of the fun of collaborating on this thing; bouncing back and forth without it being jarring.”

These don't normally end well for others....

So we won’t have to change anyone’s M.O. to be there; Frank Castle won’t be held back, and Daredevil and Spider-Man get to be seen in a different light, one perhaps with a little more shadow. If anything, both Daredevil and Spider-Man are going to have to go up against (and possibly work with) a man who is the physical embodiment of some very personal issues. Spider-Man has shouted to the rooftops that “as long as he’s around, no one dies,” and that’s going to be challenged by the Punisher simply being nearby. Daredevil just got back from the darkest turn in his career, full of death and judgment. His recent brush with the dark side under the Hand and how far his own life had been pulling away from friends and family might bring some new facets in the relationship between Daredevil and the Punisher.

Sounds good all around until you wonder what the Punisher is going to get out of all of this. Sure, we’ll be seeing Spider-Man and Daredevil in the tonal shift that comes with having the Punisher guest star in your books. But how will their tone affect the Punisher? He’s going to give some different depth and development to the other two and, considering his co-star’s viewpoints, it would be easy to paint him as a villain (or more like … an anti-villain?) but there’s got to be something more.

The guys in charge are clearly thinking along the same lines, given what’s hinted at here:

I love Frank as a thinker, but the second we put him in 616, the second he’s not in a MAX world, he has access to 616 resources,” Rucka said. “In a couple of upcoming issues, he’s going to get his hands on a variety of resources. One of those is going to be incredibly useful to him. He will recover something from one of the people that he’s fighting that is going to make him — I don’t want to say bulletproof — but it will prove to be of great assistance.”

The story purposefully started small, but the reason ‘The Omega Effect’ story is placed so well is that Frank’s story is about to be big,” said Wacker. “He’s not only going to have to be bulletproof, he’s going to have to be SHIELD-proof as well.

Is he going to get a thing? Reed Richards’ famous mathematical sociology that charts the course of mankind? Some sort of terrible intel on S.H.I.E.L.D. that makes them look even worse that they did in “Dark Reign”? A device that bequeaths terrible cosmic powers?!!

Who knows (but I’m really not voting for the latter)? Most importantly, the Punisher will gain purpose in a world of gods, powered armor suits and super-humans. Maybe by getting him to play with others and socialize some, the grim future shown in PunisherMAX might change. From the plans they shared with us, fans will certainly find some new and fascinating corner of the character given light by two talented writers with a clear course into the unknown. April can’t come soon enough.

and that's when they asked Bendis to step back from the Avengers....

Did you know that there is a U.S. government website to help you complete common New Year’s resolutions? Seriously, take a look; it’s the “U.S. Government’s Official Web Portal” and there’s a lot of benign but helpful info about getting a passport or a story about a wedding dress made out of a parachute, but yeah, in the middle of that is a helpful list of the most common New Year’s resolutions with links to a website or brochure that could offer helpful information and suggestions.

Last year, when I carved my own New Year’s resolutions into internet stone, I was incredibly thankful for the comments left with the list. Helpful and commiserating readers shared ideas on how to succeed, suggestions on what to read and joined in fist-shaking at the lure of Apple products. So while I may not know how much your savings bond has gained interest, I can help out with some simple comic book reading resolutions and hopefully can inspire others to make their own. I also have a kick ass cosplay pic in lieu of a touching WWII wedding tale. So there’s that.

Want to know which resolution I miserably failed at last year? Keep reading, true believers!

Old Resolution: Give Fear a Chance

I had some serious misgivings about Fear Itself last year. There was no way someone offering me a “nice Hawaiian Punch” wasn’t going to end without a big sock to my face, so there was very little chance of another event book not spinning out into a bajillion titles, leave me feeling empty, and promising the moon only to find readers holding little of substance. Especially after Siege, the event book as a genre seemed so futile, and Fear Itself could have been just more doom and gloom situations for readers and characters alike. But I promised that I would give the book a fair shake and leave my judgments for when I had something to judge, rather than the grudges of yesteryear.

This was the right thing to do. Did you read our Top Ten lists this year? I love Fear Itself. I love it more than is probably reasonable and will defend it with my own Uru-enhanced hammer at all opportunities. Rather than focusing on fear, it focused more on how our heroes respond to fear, whether that’s with bravery, abandon or loss. There are still some vestiges of the storyline affecting out comics today and while I can’t know if they’ll stick around, I know the emotional impact that I read will linger.

She bothers me because I've read too many comics and that's not fair

New Resolution: Ease Up on Continuity

The hardest part about new ideas is that they are different, and I fear them. Let’s put it this way, when I heard that Moira MacTaggart wasn’t going to be a scientist or Scottish or have been Xavier’s college sweatheart or help Xavier discover the X-Gene or be the best example of how humans can come to understand and aid mutants on a personal level without having to be a mutant herself- okay, I’m reaching and could write a whole different article on how important Moira MacTaggart is in the X-Men legacy (2012!), but that’s my point. With a little thought and honesty, we all have an OTP or a classic element of our comics we’ve come to know and love since reading. It’s healthy for comics to stretch our imaginations and push the borders of our understanding, but those borders are there for a reason. Keeping to the traditional elements of our heroes and villains makes them long-lasting established icons of popular culture. On the other hand, challenging our conceits and providing new ideas are what make those icons interesting. So, for my part, I’m going to work as hard as I can to give changes a fair shake. I’m not going to judge the Avengers movie on what isn’t in it or AvX by House of M; it’s time to take things as they come and show no fear.

Old Resolution: Pick and Stick

Seeing the incoming deluge of Captain America and Captain American-accessory comics planned to hit the shelves ahead of the movie for the highest amount of market saturation, there was an inclination to try and get everything, or perhaps even be frustrated by so many tie-ins and features–enough to revolt and stubbornly buy nothing. The idea to combat this was to find a title I liked out of the incredible variety and stick with that one rather than be distracted by different reprints or mini-series and feel overwhelmed by the amount of choice. I was going to pick a title I liked and stick with it instead of having four #1 issues of Fear Itself events and feel like nothing was gained.

Again, can’t say this one failed me, but it didn’t work really well either. My heart was in the right place, but I’m going to be honest and admit that Captain America got away from me once we split to the new #1 and the Captain America & Bucky ongoing. I had picked and stuck with Fear Itself when it came to my “what is Captain America doing now” question and missed out on Brubaker’s ongoing narrative for the new hotness. On the other hand, I didn’t get a lot of Fear Itself side stories and enjoyed the the ones I did read. So it’s a 50/50. Now, how do I catch up on all the issues of Captain America I missed?

New Resolution: Read All the Comics

Take a moment and decide for yourself if you bought a comic in 2011 that you didn’t read. At any time have you looked at your weekly stash and thought, well, I’ll wait until I have three or four to read at once, only to forget which was the last issue you bought and then there’s suddenly holes in the story so why bother reading them anyway? Or have you ever (gasp!) bought doubles? As per above, Yours Truly eschewed the (probably) more important Captain America storylines for the larger picture of Fear Itself. I continued to get issues and still have them, right over there, waiting for me. It’s a hard thing to picture in today’s wrathful economy that one might have comics that weren’t immediately consumed upon purchase, but it’s something I’ve seen over the years with pull customers and more dedicated readers. The more you love a character, the more you want to know everything they’re doing and the next thing you know, Deadpool is in ever book.  If there’s a book on my pull list that I’m just not reading but buying out of habit or a hope that it “gets good again” (you know what I’m talking about), maybe it’s even time to let go.  Sometimes you might want a break from the drama of it all and that’s reasonable. Trades are fairly common by now for all the major titles, at least, so it’s easy to catch back up and get back in the game.

Old Resolution: Read Something New

This was a resolution mostly to get me out of my comfort zone. There are so many comics out there in the wide world that to simply draw a 5×5 square around Marvel’s 616 just doesn’t give the best understanding of what comics can do. So I vowed to read a wider variety of comics than I had the year before and I suppose I did. I can’t say much stuck out for me, nor can I say that I really went all that far away from my home stomping grounds. I found Batwing, previously thought to be doomed in the nu52, to be fantastic and Echo, despite some complications towards the end of the series, to be a marvelous example of how profound Terry Moore can be as a creator when handling his own self-published stories. I never did get around to Powers or Omega the Unknown, though, and I regret not taking some of your advice (and plugs!) for new comics to read in the coming year.

New Resolution: Jump Out Of Genre

Did you know that right here, on this very incredible news blog, are comics I have no understanding of in the slightest? The top ten list from 2011 is a Smorgasbord of creativity in a cornucopia of topics ranging from the esoteric to the intellectual. Some of them don’t even have superheroes in them! And while I normally eschew the hardcover, black-and-white, navel-gazing tropes of the indie comic, that’s just a bad bias to have as the world of comics gets larger and larger. It’s time to make time for one out of genre piece and see how it goes; luckily, I know a great place to start for recommendations.

Old Resolution: Keep Up My Pull List

I resolved to make sure I was direct and forthcoming with my own comics establishment and revise and review my pull list for added titles and changes as Marvel rolls me along. It wasn’t easy, but oh man. My pull list is tight as a drum, with only the comics I have dedicated my hard earned dollar towards. I have gotten caught off guard a couple times by a spare trade or a release that slipped my eye, but the diligence of ordering has left me room to squeak a copy into the mix or know that I’m going to have to wait. It takes a lot of paper and some clean fresh starts but keeping up a pull list is easy and fun, so I cannot recommend this brushing and flossing routine enough. Since my phone runs on Android, I found a helpful app that keeps track of what’s coming out when, will offer to track favorite titles and authors plus give you and handy dandy comic shop locator if you’re on the road. Living at my store takes care of most check-ups, but I found this kind of cool so I thought I’d pass it along.

New Resolution: Keep It Up!

To a toned and lean comic pull list in 2012!

Old Resolution: Read a Digital Comic

More honesty: This is my ‘lose weight’ resolution. The resolution that seems like such a good idea and you psych yourself up for, then it gets to be hard, it’s not fun, you give up and resent the institution of resolutions afterwards. My brother owns the iPad I thought I’d be able to read my first full digital comic on, and for some reason, we couldn’t get it to load. At Marvel.com there’s a web browser application that gives you access to their collection but it’s a clunky interface that I’ll feel awkward using. Reader Matt Duarte couldn’t have made it simpler for me and even wrote a review for the free comics available through comicxology.com! But despite some weak attempts, this is the resolution that just never got off the ground.

this comes with a free digital copy! the best of both worlds!

New Resolution: READ A DIGITAL COMIC

So this time, I’m going to do it! On the whole, this list helped me out a lot to give me some clear goals and an idea of what I want out of my comic reading experience. If I’m a smarter reader, I can be a smart shopper and this can only be a better experience for everyone. Sure, I missed my chance in 2011 but digital comics aren’t going anywhere in the new year. With day-and-date comics hitting comic stands and the interwebs all at the same time, it’s starting to get competitive and that’s going to make sure that the digital comic itself will get stronger and more refined so that even dunderheads like me can take advantage of their availability and convenience. I may not like them, but it’s only fair to give them a chance.

Like I said last year, these are just mine, but you may want to come up with your own Comics Resolutions for the New Year. When we get better as readers, open ourselves up to this new evolving world of comics, and we can understand it all in more detail when we hate things that don’t speak to us or a story turns out to be an utter sham. We can also appreciate what we like more and receive it readily. Feel free to face front and list your own resolutions below in the comments.

Excelsior!

Hulk Vs. Superman

[Previously on The Grumpy Color's 2011 roundup: Tom and Carla sat down to discuss DC and Marvel's corporate movements, how much cat-burglars love underwear, and how DC events progressed throughout the year to tumble right on into the New 52. Join us, won't you, as Tom has asked if, in light of the success of DC's reboot, Marvel will follow that lead with "Season One" and the Point-One projects, or perhaps something more... drastic?]

Carla: Oh Tom, you are adorable.

You see, Marvel did this thing, you might have heard of it: the Ultimate universe? It’s our having our reboot cake and eating our rich continuity other cake too. Two-fisted cake, sir! We can renovate and innovate to our heart’s content, rework the Avengers into the Ultimates, recostume everyone on the X-Men into a slicker, movie finish and draw readers in with a fresh setting and start. Meanwhile, business as usual can continue in our regularly scheduled books, and everyone should be fat and happy on delicious comics cake.

No matter what, the Ultimate line should give readers a definable training-wheels set of comics that will introduce ideas from yesteryear in a fresh modern setting. I do not hand Avengers books to people peeking inside for a glimpse at what the new movie is going to be like; I hand them the Ultimates (but only the first two). Once the basic idea is down, then they can move on to other Ultimate titles, try out some of the classic Avengers stories or pop in with a Bendis-penned issue of the current stuff. It’s the best of both worlds and, while it’s had some ups and downs, it’s worked out pretty well. And it’s why I hope that you’re right and that all this newness will generate a nostalgic miasma that repowers the old Earth-Whatever.

Season One is pretty much a response to Earth One and a fleshing out of the previous Origins or Mythos titles that come out from time to time. When someone asks, “Who’s Ghost Rider?”, I should be able to give that person a full explanation and a story that puts that explanation into entertainment. Point One is more for current comic readers who want to branch out into something new but haven’t read, say, Uncanny X-Force before. It gets good reviews, they want to give it a try, but starting from issue one seems expensive. The Point One issue should be a quick start into the regular line and a chapter marker for what is to come. These I will live with.

Tom: See, I didn’t think the Ultimate line was that drastic a move, mostly because it ran alongside the main Marvel U. At DC they called that Earth-One and Earth-Two and it worked out pretty well — at first….

Carla: It seems that way now, but back in the day, the Ultimate line was a fairly risky move that paid off in a unexpectedly brilliant way.

Tom: Actually, it did take me a while, but I am reading a couple of “rebooted” Marvel books, Amazing Spider-Man and Daredevil. Each made a big show of downplaying (if not outright rewriting) big chunks of continuity in favor of a new-reader-friendly tone, and the results have been pretty enjoyable.

Carla: See? Nice and easy. Marvel skins their knees on tone shifts and fresh new restarts all the time and bounces back at the best of times. At worst, we call it the Clone Saga and it becomes something of, err, legend. I hope for all of our sakes that the New 52 is the former.

Tom: I should have mentioned this back when we were talking about big events that didn’t seem to go anywhere, but nevertheless — Fear Itself was certainly a comic book published in 2011, right?

Carla: Hey now! I love Fear Itself like I love warm blankets, purring kittens and delicious chocolates. Fear Itself is a masterpiece of comfort food and compelling storytelling! This is the best Event book Marvel has put out in years and easily my favorite over Civil War. Tread carefully.

Tom: From what I understand it wreaked havoc on the Marvel U., which was then undone with a handful of decimal-point specials, and now there will be some spinoffs.

Carla: *sigh* It’s all amazingly simple and beautiful. Heroes fight Fear Itself personified. Fear comes in a bunch of different shapes and sizes, from mild to moderate to OMG WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE. Heroes take losses, get scared but overcome the terrible dangers and their own personal fears as well. Fear Itself #7 ends as the heroes win the day, the world saved but not without its price. All the heroes are shaken and need some time to work on what they just saw.

That’s where the epilogues begin. I’ll agree that the decimal label needs some… fine tuning and time to get into our heads as something more than an awkward gimmick, but the content in each issue was amazing. Fear Itself #7.1 couldn’t let Bucky just perish after all of Brubaker’s hard work, so Steve gets to go back to his job and Bucky gets to go back to covert ops. The best of both worlds once more. Fear Itself #7.2 reminds us all that this is fiction and no one really ‘dies’ in comics or in mythology or in storytelling. It’s a cycle, a story and it never really ends. A phenomenal issue that is pretty much my favorite comic of this entire year. Fear Itself #7.3 had Iron Man facing down the nasty, horrible part of this kind of war, the causalities, the senselessness of it all and how mortal man deals with things beyond his understanding. Tie-ins like Fear Itself: the Fearless are just making sure that the end of it all, the villains and concepts of Fear Itself don’t just disappear like so many Skrulls.

Tom: You know, I’m not sure whether I’ll read Winter Soldier, because as much as I want to, it somehow reminds me of that show Renegade.

Carla: Really now.

From Wikipedia: “The series stars Lorenzo Lamas as Reno Raines, a police officer who is framed for a murder he didn’t commit. Raines goes on the run and joins forces with Native American bounty hunter Bobby Sixkiller, played by Branscombe Richmond. The series was created and produced by Stephen J. Cannell, who also had a recurring role as main villain, crooked police officer Donald ‘Dutch’ Dixon.”

You are so just mad because Brightest Day turned up empty. If anything, Winter Soldier will be more like The Fugitive!

Tom: I didn’t say the Renegade thing was a fair comparison. It’s just that when I see a guy on a motorcycle with his soap-opera hair blowing in the breeze — which I swear I saw in regard to WS — it triggers a certain association.

Carla: James Buchanan Barnes’ hair is a mane of glory.

Tom: Moving on….

Since 2012′s big event will be Avengers Vs. X-Men, Marvel’s tradition of annual events continues — but despite my own prediction, DC might not put forth its own Crisis-style crossover. If Marvel has the only Big Event in town, does that automatically give it a leg up, or is the proverbial fatigue finally setting in?

Carla: You know, last year I would have said that we’d be fatigued to all get out and that this too would pass. Now? Nah. As long as people love trade paperbacks and as long as we are here to discuss the impact and record it for the history books, Event books aren’t going away. They might not be as pop culturally impactful as they once were, there might not be as much pomp and/or circumstance, they might be a bump in the road like so much Shadowland, but they will be. DC will find a way, even if it’s just a refurbish of an old classic storyline.

Tom: Well, to me a big DC event for next summer could go in a couple of different directions. Either it’s some mundane threat which legitimately affects the entire line, like a Daemonite invasion which spins out of Grifter and Voodoo or the vampire apocalypse of I, Vampire; or it’s the payoff to the Hooded Woman cameos and we find out whether the old-look DC has a place in the New 52.

We’ve been talking about the Ultimate line without mentioning its new headliner, Miles Morales. I know he represents the spirit of innovation and progress for which the Ultimate line was created — and I’m glad for that, don’t get me wrong — but how’s he working out as a going concern?

Carla: I can’t say the identity change has hurt the book, but I can’t say it’s made it fly off the shelves. Readers love NEW, and NEW in the digital age is difficult to keep a grasp on. People want to read the start, the inception, the moment someone becomes a hero rather than the long journey it takes to get to the more natural evolution of a character. Miles Morales is a genius move and I want readers to want him based on the quality of his character, not by his attention-grabbing headlines. I wish he got more press. I wish I knew what the new Ultimates’ M.O. was; but only time will tell. In the meantime, I have a whole other universe to keep me company while the newest newness can sort itself out.

Man, I hope they bring back the old continuity to DC for you, sir.

Tom: What about the overall state of both companies when it comes to diversity? I’d say DC has at least paid lip service to the idea, with Batwoman, Batwing, Mr. Terrific, Static, and Blue Beetle; but overall it looks like the same old faces producing the New 52. Marvel seems to be pruning its superhero line to make room for Avenging Spider-Man and other high-profile spinoffs. One in four New 52 books features some version of (or connection to) Batman, so it’s a popular strategy — but how sustainable is it?

Carla: We’ve been slapping a Deadpool, Wolverine or Spider-Man on random books for years. Popular guys are popular guys, and that’s what people want to buy. Now, when we had a glut of Deadpool books, we eventually had the market drop out on that and scaled back the ‘Pool to a point where we have some clearly defined stories for him to be in rather than everywhere all at once. But then you look at Wolverine, who writers reluctantly admit gets frequent flyer miles from being on the Avengers, X-Men and his own titles. So, it’s sustainable to a point? With a certain “Q Rating”? Who knows.

Creating new characters should be up to the old guard; bear with me on this one: guys like Mark Waid, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, etc. have an established readership. They write great Marvel stories and are some of the most well-versed writers on the subjects in their wheelhouse. Why not let them try out a new idea or two? They know the history well enough so that the new character won’t seem so jarring and, with some Wolverine guest-star training wheels, we as an audience will be more ready to accept them. Whether they get their own title is kind of up to management and financial anxiety, but if it works…

I know they’ve already sort of done this (Bendis’ Miles Morales, Brubaker’s version of Bucky might as well be a new character, X-23, etc) but we’re still missing some essential key that makes this a sustainable monthly book. This is a difficult industry, Tom. I am so glad we’re in the bleachers. =)

Tom: I’m not sure that asking a Mark Waid to create a new Marvel (or DC) character, which Marvel (or DC) is then free to exploit, would be the best way to go — especially since the more established creators are just as free to get a better deal from some other publisher.

Carla: But they have [created new characters]! I mean, Bucky is nothing like his original concept now, he’s practically a new character! It saves all the guesswork and if you really want to do something weird and removed from the official capes-and-tights world, well, Marvel has Icon, DC has Vertigo … try it out in some new ground. Eventually, Jessica Jones comes to meet Spider-Man, John Constantine stands next to Zatanna; there’s a way to do this.

Tom: I know what you’re saying about skittish readers needing that extra push to try something different, but maybe everyone would feel more comfortable with a big name on a lesser-known (or underachieving) title. Doesn’t that describe Waid’s Daredevil and, back when it relaunched, Brubaker’s Cap? (Wow, that sounds depressingly close to explaining why Marvel and DC don’t seem to create anything new….)

Carla: Yes! Yes yes yes. I would read the Towing section of the Yellow Pages if it was written by Matt Fraction and, despite better judgment, I’ll read whatever has the Hulk smashing about. It’s scary not to do the safe idea of matching big names to big characters for the biggest buck, but if DC’s 52 have told us anything, change is possible.

Don’t be depressed, Tom! It’s a brave new world! Yes we can, change is good! Let’s get some signs and a tent, we can make a difference! (for those keeping score at home, that was the obligatory Occupy movement gag)

Tom: So speaking of which, how much are you looking forward to selling Watchmen 2 to the apathetic and the downright hostile? I don’t know whether I’m more excited about Watchmen 2 or the 3D re-release of Phantom Menace.

Carla: Oh. Way to bring the room down there. Yeah, it’s a bad idea, not much more needs to be said. If they release it, people will rant and rail and buy it to complain even more. Such is the biz.

Tom: I was trying to think of some equally sacred Marvel story which no one wants sequelized, but Marvel may have done that already with JMS’ Osborn/Gwen hookup.

Carla: Oh! Oh uncalled for, ew! (and that was Quesada’s idea! JMS wanted them to be Peter and Gwen’s babies!) Yeah, we revised our bad ideas, it was called “One Moment in Time” and now we don’t talk about it. Yuck.

Tom: Okay, in order to burn that image out of my brain, I have looked at some Kate Beaton Wonder Woman comics. I’d love it if Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang’s work on WW were popular enough for a sequel to their classic “Architecture & Mortality,” but I doubt that’ll happen. Do you have some dream Marvel project you’d love to see in 2012?

Carla: Actually, I would buy the heck out of another Bizarro Comics volume, throwing in some Beaton and other indie guys to take some of the edge of all the 52-ness of it all. What dream project can I think of for 2012 from Marvel, though. Gosh. I guess it’d be some sort of Wasp revival; she’s a fantastic character and, in a beautiful world, I and Phil Noto would hammer out a mini-series about a fabulous, fun and fashionable gal who would go on exciting international crime-fighting adventures. Also, I’d get a pony and a rocketship.

Realistically, maybe they’ll find a big enough pile of money to bring Brian K. Vaughan back to the Runaways? I dunno. Maybe I’m too sated on Fraction being on Thor. That’s the gift that keeps on giving, sir.

Tom: Come to think of it, if you’re involved with any comics project, I hope it’s a guest-shot in IDW’s new Abramsverse Star Trek book. Surely by now your cadet character has become a senior officer on some high-profile starship! I’d be thrilled beyond words if the Enterprise met up with Captain Hoffman of the USS Defiant (or whichever…).

Carla: May you hang a star on my dreams, sir. =D

Tom: I think it’s about time to start wrapping up, but we can’t adjourn without some words about day-and-date digital comics. Everybody’s getting tablets these days — my mom got a Kindle Fire to go along with her plain-old Kindle, for goshsakes — so I’m hoping it opens up some new ways to explore comics. Not just the monthly books, either: maybe this’ll create new opportunities for those obscure characters and experimental stories I’m always yakking about. What effects do you see coming from digital? Anyone new at Metro who got turned on via their iPad and now wants to feel some slick paper every Wednesday?

Carla: True story: one of our regular customers comes into the store and notes Avenging Spider-Man #1 in its clear plastic baggie. We discuss polybags and their usefulness, and the code within the pages, and he asks me if I know anything about how this works. Does it download? Read from an online resource? What kind of reader does it use and is it Mac and PC compatible? How much trouble would it be to get this comic in digital form versus how much trouble it would be to come down to our store and take it in hand.

I didn’t have an answer. I mean, I know iPads are easy and handhold you all the way through the process with their super-slick technology, but if I was looking to make the transition on anything else, I was clueless. My brain is hardwired to follow ye olde fashioned logic of buying a newspaper when I want the news, buying a magazine off the rack at the grocery store and picking up comics in person from the friendly sales clerks at Metro Entertainment (cheap plug!). Did you know that if I go grab a cup o’ joe from Starbucks, I can read Marvel digital comics for free? And yet, here I was, dumbstruck when a customer knew if I could use the advanced option to a product in my own store.

I don’t understand the appeal of digital comics, but then again, I don’t understand the appeal of Twilight. Or wearing those big spacers in your ears. Times change and, no matter how much I would love a digital type to enter my store and ask for something fresh off the stands, it goes forward. I agree that that this brave new frontier is a great place to try out some of the fringey ideas, make shorts, “webisodes,” webcomics (oh dear Lord, if you have it in your heart, please give me a one page comic from Colleen Coover about the adventures of Marvel Girl and the Scarlet Witch in 2012!), maybe even a better stab at the motion comic that Heidenberg’d out on us, but day and date digital is only helping us in the paperback business as firming up some release dates. If people move on, they’ll move on.

And if that’s the way they go, we should be ready for it. No matter how nostalgia takes us, we can’t just pine for yesteryear like some Grumpy Old Fa-…. sorry.

Tom: Well, on that note, we’ll put 2011 to rest. Here’s hoping 2012 is good to us, and to all of you too!

Batman & Spider-Man

[Continuing their yearly tradition, Tom Bondurant and Carla Hoffman have joined forces to compare notes on the the relative fortunes of DC Comics and Marvel Comics.  Here is Part 1 of 2.]

Tom: Okay, old chum, if it’s late December it must be time to wrap up 2011 and usher in 2012. It’s the New 52 versus dozens of Avengers and Spider-Man titles! Christopher Nolan, David Goyer, and Christian Bale versus Joss Whedon, Andrew Garfield, and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes! High collars versus Point Ones! Judd Winick and Guillem March’s Catwoman versus … who, exactly?

Carla: I read Catwoman #1 and stopped there so this analogy is lost on me. Don’t go where I can’t follow, Frodo.

Tom: That was a dig at Marvel’s lack of female-lead titles….

Carla: Oh! I thought it was about our underwear-clad heroines. She-Hulk and Emma Frost have been flashing their bras at people since the 80′s! And don’t get me started on the Black Cat, how many female creative people we have, etc. etc. =D

Tom: Anyway, until September the Big Two were pretty much same-old, same-old. I suspect we’ll remember DC’s 2011 only for its 4th quarter, but in fairness we shouldn’t gloss over what led up to it. Therefore, I have to ask — from your retail perspective, how was DC doing in the before-time? Has the new stuff really made that much of a difference? And how do you, as a merry Marvelite, see the House of Ideas responding?

Carla: Say a couple gals go out for a night on the town and one of them dresses for attention. Hair done up, make up on a little thicker than normally, high heels, short skirt, the works. She’s out to catch herself a man and the other friend sort of looks her over in that “wow, laying it on a little thick there, eh?” way while wondering how she herself got so frumpy all of a sudden.

It’s a little like that.

As for the before-time, I gotta tell you: Green Lantern was selling WAY better. Blackest Night was a huge hit and that mythology was really pushing local reading buttons, so we sold it well. Off the top of my head, we also sold more Wonder Woman and Flash (when we got an issue), but less Justice League… it was kind of all over the place. No. 1s and the idea that one could be there at the very-first-something-or-other has pulled attention to the right books for market capitalization. But now that people have figured out our game of having to buy a comic once every month, the idea of following a title is starting to lose its luster for the novice collector. Now pulls are lowering, lists are sorting themselves out and aside from the tried and true Batman and Action Comics, numbers are receding like the tide. Are people buying more Action Comics at my store? Yes. Are they buying more of everything? Not really. So it’s great for the long term marketability, probably needs more time for other characters to get in on all the fame and fortune.

On a fun personal note, all the titles that I’m totally into are books I would have read pre-52 if they’d just released them: Batwing, Batwoman, Animal Man and The Shade could easily have been around without the big tarty reboot, so seriously, DC! Put on a sweater! You’re making Marvel look sensible.

As for how Marvel’s going to respond to the Big Reboot and freshening up on DC’s characters that got them major media coverage, a renewed interest in their franchise and a boost in sales unseen since Blackest Night? Oh, don’t worry: we’re going Hollywood. Marvel put out THREE MOVIES this year, all of which got an amazing 75% or above approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

So … Green Lantern. Yeah. How’s that working out for ya?

Tom: In fact, I have yet to watch Green Lantern on Blu-Ray, but I hear it’s much better with some made-for-home-video editing. Still, that’s the same kind of thing which got me more interested in Zack Snyder’s four-hour version of Watchmen. Now Warners have entrusted the Superman movies to Mr. Snyder, and even with Christopher Nolan looking over his shoulder, I have to say I’m a little concerned. That’s for 2013, though — next year I suppose Warners will have to settle for another billion-dollar Batman flick. Maybe they can put that money in a nice savings account and live off the interest while they look for the next ideal pairing of filmmaker and superhero.

I am seriously conflicted about Avengers’ prospects. Doesn’t it need to be hugely successful — like, three-movies-in-one successful — to justify itself? I am not seeing much middle ground in terms of quality, either. If it’s not tremendously entertaining, something in me keeps saying it’ll be a colossal 3-D trainwreck. These are purely irrational thoughts, but I simply cannot shake them.

Carla: Or could The Avengers be, at this point, too big to fail? Remember, Hollywood has been very very good to Marvel and even if Avengers turns out to be a Daredevil, there is so much involved in the production (big name actors, fan favorite director, a history of awesome movies catching the viewers up to the storyline) that it’s going to put butts in seats. It’s going to make people remember the names of the characters and if they want more, well, let me show you to the shelves! Here’s hoping.

Tom: Since we are talking nominally about comics, in what condition will I find the Avengers line come May? The last time I read an Avengers title regularly, Kurt Busiek and George Pérez were putting out the only one. If the Council of Cross-Time Toms plucked me from 1998 and dropped me into next summer, would I recognize any of the Avengers books?

Carla: Busiek and Pérez. Hee hee, you’re old. =)

No, sir, I can’t say you would recognize the Avengers anymore from the hey-days of yesteryear. Since Bendis disassembled the crew, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are missing an intangible something from the era of the grand super-opera. The team has remained inert, a lot of their peril is personal rather than the saving-the-Earth variety and often times, there’s a lot of sitting around and talking. A lot. Then again, the new Bendis Avengers are popular. The snarky tone used for everything goes over well with chart topping sales and a steady following. When the Avengers movie hits, people won’t look back to the older eras of Avengers, they’ll look for Bendis’ work because Dear Lord he’s been on the book since 2006! That’s like… forever! It may not be my favorite stuff, but I will tip my hat to the man who really worked hard to put his own personal style into the public eye on the now highest profile book Marvel’s got.

And that’s the thing: sure we all love the printed page, but I am totally ready to cop to the fact that comics have to reach other media outlets in order to remain current. There is no way that I’d dump all my eggs in a Marvel Studios basket and leave my monthlies high and dry (I’d be out of a job!) but it does help keep Thor and Iron Man and Captain America and the Hulk and Ghost Rider in the public eye with big budget blockbusters.

If anything, DC should be thankful that Batman: Arkham City keeps us all well aware of Batman’s … Batmanitude. Credit where credit is due: those video games are HUGE. Not to mention the great work done in animation, with Young Justice and Batman: Brave and the Bold being fan potlucks of fun, and the upcoming DC Nation. Man, I wish we had thought of it first!

Tom: I wonder if post-Harry Potter, post-Nolan Batman, Warners considers either the GL movie or the upcoming Man of Steel to be too big to fail.

Carla: Probably. Superman is Superman is Superman and Returns wasn’t so much a mistake that people won’t turn up just to see what happens next (but that’s probably why we haven’t had a Daredevil movie). Superman is a wonderfully safe property to launch a film series with, but Hal Jordan? Well, he’s kind of the least interesting thing about the Green Lanterns. Maybe they thought the genre as a whole could invest into guys they’d never heard of automatically? Maybe they forgot that what made Blackest Night so popular and the Green Lantern books so huge was the vast operatic tale of planets and emotions and everyone united under their own beacons so that no evil would escape their sight … not Van Wilder in a Mo-Cap suit.

P.S.: he should have been Deadpool.

Ooh, here’s something I can ask: with The Dark Knight Rises officially billed as the Final Chapter of the saga that Mr. Nolan laid out for us, do you think a World’s Finest motion picture might be up next? Depending on how the combiner-mecha gestalt of Avengers does as far as big movies leading up to an even bigger movie, will we see the Justice League in our lifetime? And will Wonder Woman wear pants??!?!

Tom: It seems pretty definite that Christian Bale isn’t suiting up again, whether it’s for World’s Finest or JLA. Regardless, though, I don’t see either of those movies getting made. Remember, Warners tried ‘em both a few years back. Superman Vs. Batman got as far as a script (which is kind of dire and fanfic-y — Bruce gets married, but Superman ruins it somehow), and Justice League’s cast was full of young whippersnappers. Avengers would have to make the kind of money Scrooge McDuck swims in, and Man of Steel would have to be at least okay, in order for Justice League to even have a chance.

Carla: Ah, but that was then; this is now! Sure, Warner Brothers is going to have to find the happy median between dire and dark philosophical dramas and silly goofy guys in tights, but they could do it. Avengers could really make the McDuck cash that might force one of the largest motion picture making studios in Hollywood, an institution of classic films, to compete with … well, you know who.

Tom: And as you say, DC may have to be content with its regular Cartoon Network exposure.

Carla: Can I just take a minute and say how exciting that is? Sure, Marvel may have set their sights on Hollywood, but DC is kicking out the jams as far as the small screen animation. They’re unique, fun, surely everyone in production seems to love the characters and the history they came from. When I finally sat down to watch Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Young Justice, I found myself compelled to love them despite preconceived notions. I mean, if there’s not going to be a Justice League movie, we will still have the finest show of all time representing DC’s best and brightest in animated form.

Honesty time: was the majority of 2011 just a waste for DC? Did Brightest Day really matter? Why was Flashpoint? Like, at all? I want to ask about how Geoff Johns’ great space opera that started in Green Lantern: Rebirth and continued all the way through the Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night and this year’s Brightest Day might have continuing momentum through the DC universe; or how seeing a different side to Aquaman and Wonder Woman in Flashpoint might affect their characters in the regular Earth-Whatever and play into future stories — but man. Brightest Day feels like it happened in another time, another place. An Age of Geoff-ocalypse, if you will.

Tom: Phrases like “Age of Geoff-ocalypse” are exactly the reason I look forward to our team-ups. Who says this isn’t the Marvel Age of clever inter-company wordplay?

Brightest Day seems to be the latest example that DC’s high sheriffs really don’t have much in the way of long-term plans for the superhero line. It’s like you’re driving southbound I-75 on the way to Disneyworld — you’ve been there a dozen times before and it’s always fun, but maybe it’s still getting a little old — and just after you get through Atlanta you decide to chuck the whole thing and go bar-crawling in New Orleans. If Blackest Night capped off a lot of big-event subplots (mostly involving untimely deaths), Brightest Day was a decent transitional series, helping fine-tune the status quo. Along with the JMS-driven Superman and Wonder Woman storylines, the Batman Incorporated makeover, the James Robinson JLA, Justice League: Generation Lost, and whatever Geoff Johns had planned for the Flash, it looked like DC was settling into a comfortable (if not entirely innovative) post-event atmosphere. I mean, when Flashpoint came along my whole take on it was “great, an event which can stand on its own and not have to worry about long-term continuity effects.” And sure, that makes me look like a chump — but really, I think I can be forgiven for supposing that, having spent at least the past year on the aforementioned tweaks and relaunches, DC wouldn’t want to restart its superhero books with a completely different basis.

Carla: It’s okay. Sometimes love makes us look like chumps. That’s why Peter Parker is single. Wait– what?

Tom: And yeah, Flashpoint itself now looks pretty irrelevant to the New-52 — except for the hooded woman from all the #1 issues who is probably the harbinger of next summer’s Big Event. I may be deep in denial over the loss of my precious pre-September continuity, but I still don’t think DC has let go of it either. Since you brought up “too big to fail,” that sure seems to apply to the New-52, especially since it has made such an initial splash.

Carla: Ehnnnnnnnn, maybe. All I can say is that from my side of the counter, there are books being put back. Customers are looking for a payoff and some of the issues drag on just a little too long and have sparse content from a world essentially having to detach itself from the years of foundation it had before. Four issues in and it seems like some books are concentrating far too hard to flesh out what should be a simple yellow text box at the start of every issue. The new 52 could fail, life happens, peoples’ tastes change, what is super-popular right now could be next week’s quarter bin. Remember the ‘90s and beware.

Tom: Duly noted, but I do think DC will try to leverage its current success into a new focus on the pre-September stuff. Make no mistake — while that might not be the smartest thing to do, I can totally see DC trying it, in part because they did pour so much into 2011′s pre-relaunch books.

Now, in light of the New 52, do I think the bulk of 2011 was a waste for DC? No, because it still yielded some fine comics, including the still-relevant GL and Batman books. Even Superman and Wonder Woman perked up once JMS left. (Just sayin’.) I like continuity and the joys of a coherent shared universe, but I can’t unread those pre-September stories, you know?

And speaking of line-wide relaunches, I’m skeptical that Marvel will pull a New-52 of its own, but I was spectacularly wrong about DC. Are these “Season One” and Point-One projects (along with the movies) enough to simplify things for new readers, or could Marvel actually feel the need to do something big and drastic?

[The answer -- tomorrow!]

See? Even they're confused...

You’d be surprised by how many people don’t know how comics “work.” Really. Moms and aunts mostly, but a few granddads slide in or brothers or other assorted family simply don’t know or choose not to know. Mind you, it’s a little tragic to say that how comics work is unfathomable to anyone who, I don’ know, has functioning sight and understands how to read. You would think that the average Christmas shopper would be able to figure this out, but I stand before you as a retail clerk from a local comic shop and can announce with some shame that “how comics work” is apparently one of the mysteries of the universe.

With this in mind, it’s a little easier to understand how pop culture has accepted our sequential art and storytelling style. Comic book movies and TV shows (as we’ve gotten them in the new millennium) traditionally start at the beginning. People want to be there as our hero dons a mask for the first time or witness the tragedy of Uncle Ben’s death with them, any moment in which mortal man becomes …well, super. The idea that the new Amazing Spider-Man movie could bear the words “The Untold Origin” seems ludicrous since I’m pretty sure this is an origin well explored. But here we are anticipating a new story that’s the same story promising new information on what we already know.

Why? Because comic books are an impenetrable wall that no mere mortal can scale. Despite the fact that the tools are simple, despite the fact that basic characters and story concepts are now known around the world by the mass market, comics remain confusing. To the general public, the common knowledge may be there, but understanding lives underground with the Morlocks and Mole Men.

Recently in a Commentary Track for Uncanny X-Force #18 over at CBR, Rick Remender talks about fans trying to pick up his creator-owned book, Fear Agent:

“They’re like, ‘I bought issue #28 and I didn’t know what was going on.’ I reply, ‘That’s like watching ‘The Wire:’ season four, episode 2.’ I think you need to start at the first issue and move forward, because I don’t always write in a way where you can cleanly hop in later. I know no editor wants to hear me say that! [Laughs] Just go back to the first issue and move forward.”

“Go to the first issue and move forward” is about as simple as it gets, but it’s a daunting prospect to the non-comic fan. The first-time buyer is more likely to have a casual interest, pick up a couple issues and go, rather than something more studious in reading chronologically. Some casual readers developed that interest in the first place from movies, TV or a small news blurb on a hyped media event. It’s kind of weird how our never-ending serial fiction is notable to the public when it stops (The death of X!) and starts (X’s all-new #1 issue!). The #1 brightly emblazoned on a cover is a beacon for new readers, while I still get question about Captain America and how he’s supposed to be dead because they heard it on the news.

If Iceman should fail!

Comics from the Silver Age sold you quickly; availability was easy for kids, as comics were generally sold at a variety of local newsstands or convenience stores or what have you. Covers practically shouted story ideas to you from the racks, like a challenge to read it and find out what happens next. Normally, what was on the cover was also the story inside. You’d get a comic that asks you “If Iceman Should Fail!” You’d pick up the issue, learn that Iceman did not, in fact, fail (SPOILER!) and the story would be over. If the issue was cool, you’d pick up next month’s issue and be asked “Is the Mimic another mutant? — Or something far worse??”

Later, as comic shops became a viable form of business and back issues became a commodity, one could handle a longer-form story. After all, if Atlantis Attacks the X-Men in Annual #13, I now have an easier chance of finding the other annuals in the series to get the full story of how our heroes stopped Set from returning to Earth. Man, can you even imagine a day without trades and collected editions? Decompressed storytelling could not live without this new, thicker form of comic, sometimes taking the numeric order completely out of the equation to list story arcs and chapters on its spine.

In fact, decompressed storytelling is the leisure of the information age. Since information about comics and their creators is more available than ever, we learn not just about the longer form story, but the writers’ and artists’ intention behind it all as well. People can judge the work of Alan Moore or Mark Millar because these books and issues have been grouped together, whether in the comic shop or online, and the way a story is told becomes just as important as the characters themselves.

writers who have their own logo art

The good news is that comic readers gain a deeper connection to the books. They become Bendis’ Avengers or Claremont’s X-Men. We can follow that writer as he bounces through a few titles, or choose only the artwork we like and drop a book when it doesn’t live up to our aesthetics. Jim Lee art is a bankable idea that the Distinguished Competition is using to promote their characters. Books can become tailor made and rarefied through more and more specifics and details so that we, the audience, can make the most out of our experience.

So the bad news turns out to be that anyone coming into this vast resource of information and style can be completely bowled over by all of this. This? This is the impenetrable wall, folks. Rick Remender is right: it’s hard to come in to the middle of a series and know much. You might not know who these characters are, you might only have a small piece to a larger puzzle as far as story goes, you might not even know the people who made the book and won’t understand their particular voice or style. Lauded as he is, you either like Warren Ellis’ work or you don’,t and if you happen to pick up an issue of Astonishing X-Men thinking you’d get something like the movies, it’s just not going to happen. It’s like we comic readers have this very long conversation going with the House of Ideas about common topics. We agree with some of them and disagree with others, but we’ve talked and talked and talked about these themes or characters for ages. There is no easy way to jump into that conversation.

In a perfect world, not everyone would be in on that conversation. We can’t all think the same or stop a train of thought to let on new passengers every time someone wants to try it out and keep the medium how it is today. However, in a perfect world everyone would at least understand and use the method of conversation for any topic that came to them. A city girl like me knows nothing about fishing and would be completely lost in a bait and tackle store. The manager of said store could roll their eyes at my Spider-Man shirt and funny dyed hair and tell me to come back when I’m serious, seeing that I am clearly not in on the conversation of fishing. He could also, on the other hand, explain to me the basics and find me a starter kit. I could then go out with my kit and learn more about how to bait a hook or cast a line. My first fish would be all the more sweet from having learned how it all works.

I don’t know if there’s an easy way to teach a man to fish, but I’ve been learning how to teach a Mom to comic for over 10 years at Metro. It’s not easy and I can’t say it always works, but the rewards are spectacular.

The Shade invites you to Starman #6 (April 1995)

Writer James Robinson tweets that low sales might cut short his twelve-issue Shade miniseries. That would be a shame, because the first two issues of The Shade are tremendously entertaining, great-looking superhero comics. Robinson has returned to the character he revitalized, bringing with him the artistic talents of Cully Hamner and a bevy of high-profile guests like Darwyn Cooke, Frazer Irving, Javier Pulido, and Jill Thompson. The Beat’s Todd Allen has written a supportive post, noting along the way that certain New-52 titles which are selling below The Shade #1′s level (30,648 issues estimated sold to retailers) might also face the axe.

I’m somewhat skeptical of this rumor, despite Robinson’s insider knowledge, for reasons having to do with the 2009-10 miniseries The Great Ten.

Created by Grant Morrison and introduced in 2006 as part of the weekly 52 miniseries, The Great Ten is the official superhero team of the Chinese government. The Great Ten miniseries, from writer Tony Bedard and artist Scott McDaniel, ran for nine issues (cover dates December 2009-July 2010), with a planned tenth issue cancelled due to low sales. Specifically (per ICV2.com and Marc-Olivier Frisch), The Great Ten #1 sold 13,159 copies to retailers, issue #2 sold 8,760, and by the time issue #9 came out sales were down to 5,782. Since each issue included a vignette about a particular member of the ten-person team, the cancellation also screwed up the series’ format, adding a bit of insult to injury. To be sure, low sales might have been expected, inasmuch as the Ten weren’t especially critical to 52’s plot, Morrison wasn’t involved in the miniseries, and it came out over two years after 52 ended. (In the meantime, the Ten had appeared in a few issues of Checkmate.)

Thus, while DC did pare an issue off The Great Ten, that miniseries started off with considerably fewer sales, suffered a 33% drop between issues #1 and #2, and still only lost the one issue. In fact, for whatever it’s worth, the Ten’s August General In Iron is now part of the New-52′s Justice League International.

By contrast, The Shade follows one of the more popular characters from Robinson’s fondly-remembered Starman series. For those who came in late, Starman was one of DC’s 1990s successes, thanks both to the hero Robinson and artist Tony Harris introduced (along with a city full of other new characters) and for the ways in which it examined characters and legacies from all of DC’s superhero eras. It’s been collected in a 6-volume hardcover series, so clearly DC thought there was still an audience for those stories. In that context, a seventh volume with twelve issues’ worth of The Shade isn’t hard to imagine. (Admittedly, perhaps it is a little easier to imagine a slimmer hardcover; but again, I don’t think it will come to that.)

* * *

Naturally, this Shade rumor carries with it a couple of startling implications about DC’s cancellation policies. Put simply, DC may now believe that, after two months of chart-busting New 52 titles, it can afford to hold its superhero line to higher standards. Regardless, just as the Shade rumor is hard for me to believe, so is this notion that DC has suddenly become more draconian.

In April — the last full month of comics sales before DC announced the New 52, and therefore the last full month before the entire line got Senioritis — the charts looked a bit different. As it happens, the superhero line published 52 issues’ worth of ongoing series, miniseries, and specials, led by the 75,780 copies retailers bought of Green Lantern #65. However, most of the rest of those issues sold fewer than 31,000 copies each, including the following ongoing series:

Superboy #6 (30,490)
Birds of Prey #11 (30,270)
Superman/Batman #83 (28,403)
Batman Beyond #4 (26,722)
Teen Titans #94 (25,187)
Gotham City Sirens #22 (24,438)
Batgirl #20 (24,310)
Legion of Super-Heroes #12 (23,419)
Adventure Comics #525 (22,946)
Supergirl #63 (21,598)
Titans #34 (20,590)
Secret Six #32 (19,714)
Zatanna #12 (18,432)
Power Girl #23 (17,071)
JSA All-Stars #17 (16,706)
Booster Gold #43 (16,018)
Outsiders #38 (13,092)
Jonah Hex #66 (10,335)
REBELS #27 (10,014)
THUNDER Agents #6 (9,680)
Doom Patrol #21 (9,435)
Freedom Fighters #8 (8,601)
Xombi #2 (8,345)
Doc Savage #13 (7,426)
Spirit #13 (7,041)

Even then, a number of those were dead books walking. JSA All-Stars, Outsiders, REBELS, Doom Patrol, and Freedom Fighters had already been cancelled, with their final issues coming out in May. In fact, in light of the relaunch, we can lop off just about everything from Titans on down; because except for Jonah Hex and THUNDER Agents, none of it has survived recognizably to the New 52.

And that’s another point in The Shade’s favor: the THUNDER Agents ongoing series was selling fewer than 10,000 copies per issue six months ago, and it’s about to be relaunched as a six-issue miniseries. Perhaps THUNDER Agents is a special case for which the math works out pretty well, albeit in some arcane fashion: in addition to the 10-issue ongoing and the 6-issue miniseries, DC has reprinted all of the back issues in hardcover Archives and is about to start paperback Chronicles reprints. However, it could mean simply that the feature has staying power, and it’s reasonable to contend that Starman and its spinoffs are similar. By the same token, I suppose that if the new THUNDER Agents miniseries tanks, it doesn’t look good for The Shade.

Anyway, at the very least it looked like DC in April had accepted a good bit of its line selling at or below the 30,000 mark. However, in October DC had jumped to an average issue selling (by my calculations) 56,851 copies, up almost 89% from April’s 30,148. As Todd noted, if The Shade’s 30K puts it in danger, then October’s bottom four New-52 ongoings (OMAC at 29,434; Static Shock at 29,124; Blackhawks at 28,534; and Men Of War at 28,301) should be a little nervous too.

For now, though, I’m more concerned with October’s other new miniseries. Legion: Secret Origin and Huntress debuted with sales of 38,248 and 36,099 respectively; and Penguin and My Greatest Adventure charted below Shade with numbers of 26,380 and 17,222 respectively. I note that while neither of the latter is a 12-issue miniseries, no one is talking about them ending early.

There’s also Neal Adams’ Batman: Odyssey vol. 2 #1, which charted just below The Shade #1 with 30,410 copies. No one seems especially worried about its future either, but it picks up about where Volume 1 left off in terms of sales. Plus, you know, Adams is apparently indulging every gonzo impulse he’s ever had. Again, though, the fact that Odyssey seems safe, selling about what Shade #1 did, argues against a stricter sales standard.

Somewhat counterintuitively, so does the news of Marvel’s recent cancellations. CBR’s Kiel Phegley summarized the grim details:

[R]egular series Daken: Dark Wolverine, Ghost Rider, X-23 and Iron Man 2.0 have all been cancelled. Miniseries Destroyers and Victor Von Doom were scuttled before their first issues even saw print, while All-Winners Squad was cancelled before the completion of its life as a limited series. Alpha Flight was downgraded from an ongoing to a miniseries after being upgraded from mini to ongoing earlier in the summer. And monthly series PunisherMAX and Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive will cease publication once their current, long-gestating storylines wrap in February.

[* * *]

For the most part, titles that remain untouched are those built off of properties and franchises that have proven to have long runs in the market, be they spin-offs of popular titles or series that have lasted for hundreds of issues, even through market fluctuations and creative changes. Even the lowest selling comics that remain, such as X-Factor, have shown a level of sales consistency from month-to-month, pointing toward a dependable place in the market. It is logical to assume Marvel is relying on steady, stable performers first and foremost rather than banking on newer, unproven titles bucking their downwards sales trends and building an audience over the long run.

Among the titles listed above, X-23 sold the most copies of its October issue (24,043). With that number as a guide, it’s not surprising that these books were cancelled; but at the same time, it’s hard not to think that if The Shade were a Marvel book, it’d be pretty safe. For the past several years, Marvel has dominated the sales charts both through popular titles and sheer volume, so its standards are going to be a little different from DC’s. Still, if DC aspires to those kinds of numbers, Marvel has just established its own cancellation threshold, which the vast majority of DC’s October superhero titles would be well above. Moreover, thanks to its Starman pedigree, The Shade arguably has that “dependable place in the market” Kiel mentioned. While DC may want better monthly numbers, it would probably be just as happy with consistent sales on the inevitable collection.

* * *

Naturally, for this kind of title, trying to arrive at an appropriate sales “sweet spot” is tough. Starman was a great series, but it’s been over for ten years. Not all of its collections are in print, and as nice as the Omnibus hardcovers are, they’re pricey too. Besides Starman’s eighty-plus issues, The Shade picks up a little from Robinson’s run writing Justice League of America, so depending on the amount of minutiae involved, it may not be too new-reader-friendly. In short, it can be a hard sell — and yet, DC solicited twelve issues of the stuff, of which two elegantly-written, exquisitely-drawn installments have been published so far. Additionally, DC ordered those twelve issues knowing they would run alongside the New-52′s almost-completely-different continuity. DC may be expecting more from its New 52 titles, but I’m not sure it’s fair to measure The Shade’s success the same way.

Having said all of that, certainly The Shade could use more readers. It’s a nimble, great-looking spotlight on a character who started out a Golden Age villain and ended up a peculiar sort of antihero, and it offers another glimpse into the unique world of Robinson’s Starman. If you haven’t read issues #1 or #2, they have my official endorsement (as does Starman, but that pretty much goes without saying). Heck, Gene Ha is the guest artist for issue #12, and he’s stoked about drawing it, so the book needs to be supported for that reason alone.

On one level I’m not overly worried about The Shade making its full allotment of issues. DC is still a fairly conservative company and I have to think it went into The Shade knowing the New 52 books would make market factors behave a little differently. However, the fact that a book’s writer is concerned about its fate this early is unusual enough to warrant some attention. Save The Shade, I say; and enjoy some great comics while you’re at it.

In the future, all comics will look like this!

Holy hand grenade, it’s been a week of nasty cancellations over at the House of Ideas! Yesterday it seemed like it wouldn’t stop as smaller titles were stripped away seemingly far too soon. Ghost Rider feels like it only just got here, but that’s now ending with issue #8. X-23, a successful breakout character in her own right (and currently on my TV screen in Ultimate X-Men vs. Capcom 3) is gone with Kssue 20. We’ll also be saying goodbye to a personal favorite: Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive is ending as of #529. 2012 does not seem to be a good year for new ideas as, while I can’t say that a Kirby-created character and two male-derivative heroines are all that new, we’re losing some of the more fringe books while our core titles seem to be bringing up old fan favorites.

Then, while PunisherMAX is coming to a conclusion rather than a short and final stop, there’s a quote from a Marvel representative saying that “A big change is coming to the MAX universe and nobody can miss what we’ve got coming.” Couldn’t tell you why, perhaps it’s the littered canceled titles scattered before them, maybe it’s the fact that the MAX titles are a struggle to publish and promote, but this statement doesn’t rest any fears.

The marketplace is vast; I mean, have you seen a Diamond catalog? While I think it’s a little thinner that usual these days, that doesn’t mean it’s not a PHONE BOOK OF COMICS AND COMICS ACCESSORIES produced monthly. Sure, maybe a little more white pages than yellow, but that’s still a lot of published titles you may honestly never see. Or perhaps want to see, as the range and scope of subject matter extends far beyond super-heroes. Marvel itself publishes Halo and Sense and Sensibility comics, and then everything in between. And while I might think Jane Austen is a bore, someone reading right now might be willing to club me with a shoe for maligning the great Jane’s name (please don’t hit me with a shoe). One reader’s Gravity is another reader’s Sammi the Fish Boy. While every comic may have a fan, they might not always have an audience.

Marvel has canceled books before they hit the shelves, before retailers have had a change to order them, and I’m sure there’s even books pitched right now that might never see the light of day. What do we do? What can we do as readers to change such a system, and how do we keep the hope alive? Here are a few thoughts.

It's like she never left!

First, find out where that character is going. That’s why we’re in this, right? Ghost Rider is cool, and so we want more issues with Ghost Rider in them. X-23 fans are in luck because she’s going to be in one of the best Avengers titles around, Avengers Academy. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see her pop up in Wolverine and the X-Men for a guest spot or two. We know that the last two Ghost Riders will return for Ghost Rider: Cycle of Vengeance #1 in January, plus Matt Fraction’s got the Defenders in their own book now, so certainly there’s a potential to find the Spirit of Vengeance over in that book. Black Panther recently turned down the opportunity to be an Avenger again, but you know his wife’s going to sign up by Avengers #21. The man can change his mind. I know these shots aren’t the same as having your own starring title and in Alejandra’s case, it feels like this is all just a footnote to the Marvel Handbook. Still, it’s worth a try to go pick up a couple issues of the book your cancelled characters will be appearing in.

What if the change was too great? What if the characters weren’t the draw for you and kept you reading month after month? Then find the creators. Scour your comics for the title pages and take those names to Google. More often than not, your favorite writers and artists and inkers and colorists will have a website, if not a Wikipedia page where you can discover what they’re doing next. Maybe even what they’ve done before; did you know Marjorie Liu has a hit series of paranormal romantic thrillers? How about that Francesco Francavilla has done a lauded run of issues on Detective Comics? Did you know there are about a billion Rob Williams between the U.K. and the U.S.? Good news, the one who wrote Ghost Rider is also writing RoboCop for Dynamite Entertainment. Robocop! Make sure these great creators who you enjoyed don’t fall by the wayside without their canceled title. Sometimes following a favorite writer takes you into new and interesting places, places you’ll come to love just as much as where you found them. I used to read a lot of Star Trek novels as a kid and when I learned that Peter David did comics, I checked them out and picked up a couple despite my previous lack of interest in Spider-Man. The rest, as they say, is history.

Okay, so you’ve scoured for artist’s names and websites, you’ve flipped through pages to find out where Black Panther may be next, what else? This one requires the help of your local comic shop or, if not available, a friendly and helpful message board. If your favorite title is being canceled, try and dissect why it was your favorite title. Was it the artwork? What were qualities of that artwork that really drew you in? I mean, just get in there and find every adjective you can and be as objective as possible. Was the idea of a female Spirit of Vengeance something new and exciting? Was a young woman’s loss of humanity and the desire to gain it back touching? Was the use of shadow and light engaging to the eye as you read Black Panther? What was it about any title you’ve had canceled out from under you that really made you miss its absence?

the forums are kind of like this and sometimes, just as dangerous

Great, now take these adjectives over to your friendly neighborhood comic shop and tell them what you need. Any store worth their salt should be able to have recommendations ready and some selection to choose from, but the more adjectives and ideas that you have will help them form the best retail search engine and get you want you need. No local comic shop or worse, no good local comic shop? Welcome to the internet! Our own CBR message boards are full of people who create this vast Supreme Intelligence who may know a little something about what you’re looking for. Head over and find the right place to pose a polite inquiry; you might be surprised at what you find.

Lastly, write a letter. I’m not talking about petitions, I’m saying a simple heart-felt letter. Send it to the creative team, send it to the editors, send it to the internet. If any canceled book meant a lot to you, it’s worth it to let people know. Trust me, the writers and artists appreciate it and your support can mean a lot. Writing to editors is probably the closest the fan on the street is going to get to telling the top brass what distinguishes cult hit and cash-dollar success. And while some fan letter campaigns never work, but honestly, some times they do.

Check your favorite titles, my friends. Do they have Wolverine or Spider-Man on the cover? How about on the inside? Anybody soon to be in a movie in there? As, like, a guy? If no on all counts, please treasure them. As Comics Alliance put it, these are fan-oriented books, rather than market-oriented; in fact, fans are what makes them marketable in the first place. Marvel has to have the faith and trust in we the people to see a title like X-Factor through, with or without a guest spot with Wolverine.

But fighting the system only takes you so far. Swearing you’re never going to read Marvel comics again on a message board or a comment page doesn’t bring these titles back. The system is flawed, but it’s workable: just look at Deadpool. Obscure X-Force villain to multimedia oversaturated hit! It took awhile for sure, but with a little faith in the title from the company and a mighty fanbase working side-by-side, we can keep the more fan-oriented books alive.

How Ultimate is Ultimate!?

Have you ever seen a word so often that it starts to lose its meaning? Louis CK has a great bit on the word ‘hilarious’, go check the link (right about the 1:38 mark, NSFW language) and you’ll see what I mean. Because it feels like the word “Ultimate” means nothing to me anymore. I don’t know what Marvel means by it, I don’t know why it’s there now instead of a new label, but it’s been on a lot of comics. Just as a word, the adjective has five definitions, all of them relating to a finite point. They’re all various shades of getting to an endpoint.

So what shade do we call this particular line of comics? At NYCC editor Sana Amanat said that it wouldn’t be right to put one label on them all, but one general theme of the Ultimate comics was of identity exploration, with characters like Miles Morales and Nick Fury coming into their own. I don’t think that’s enough. Identity exploration happens in all comics, and labels help you sell those comics. The word “Ultimate” needs to have meaning. Seeing that name should let the reader know what they’re getting, after all, Diet Coke, Cherry Coke and Coke Classic are all different types of soda, but looking at the label, I know exactly what I’m going to enjoy (heaven forbid it say Pepsi!). I believe the Ultimate line started out with such a label, that they were a way to market a particular type of story to a particular type of reader at their inception, but just through time and ever-changing story, the Ultimate name has lost its luster and clarity. As an adjective it can mean five different things, and I’m not even talking about nouns (grammar humor!).

Right now, we have four titles united by one word, all different facets of their totality. Sit down and take note–I’m looking at you, Marvel Marketing–because I’m going to explain this and tie it all together.

We start with Ultimate Spider-Man, because that’s where we always start. No offense to Mark Millar, Andy Kubert, and the rest of the hard-working artists and writers who have worked on the Ultimate titles, but Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley are truly the founding fathers of the Ultimate line. Also, maybe someone in editorial (I kid!). The premise was easy: a modern re-telling of Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man, and there was a market for it. Kids wanted to read about Spider-Man, but not 600 issues and some questionable and confusing story content (coughCLONE-SAGAcough). A back-to-basics approach not only lured new readers to the stands, but longtime fans as well, who yearned for a more streamlined web-slinger. The writing was fresh, the art was classic, and this is the one of the few times I can say that decompression storytelling was used for Good. The term “Ultimate” was probably more of a marketing decision (Do the Dew!) but it helped guide readers to the right books. Soon, there were modern re-tellings for everyone, from the X-Men to the Fantastic Four to the inspiration for the Avengers movie we’ll be seeing in 2012. One can say that down the line the Ultimate titles jumped the shark; the clash between revamping classic ideas and genuinely new ideas ended in a turf war we call Ultimatum. There were casualties, and some of them were readers; no one is proud.

A fresh start was necessary, and so the Ultimate Comics era (Ultimate Comics: Spider-man, Ultimate Comics: X, Ultimate Comics: New Ultimates, etc.) started with all new #1′s and a different premise. If anything, these comics tried to shuck off their former revamped shell and work within their own creation. A lot of new ideas had come out of the original Ultimate line, and it was time to start exploring them in earnest and using the continuity that had been established for even newer continuity. Love it or hate it, it was hard to confirm exactly why we bought this line, instead of the normal 616 universe. This was no longer the modern retelling of Peter Parker, and more a story that required knowledge of past events to enjoy, even if it wasn’t a full 600 issues worth of prior history. In the end, we had this different, new universe from your standard Marvel set, but it was just as disconnected and complicated as anything you could read in Amazing Spider-Man.

So here we are again, currently at four titles (Ultimate Comics: All-New Spider-Man, Ultimate Comics: the Ultimates, Ultimate Comics: X-Men, Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye). Man, these titles are getting long. Anyhow, face value would say that these are all popular on the silver screen and in cross-market promotion, thus their own little boutique comic line. Everybody knows who the X-Men are, we all saw Hawkeye’s cameo in Thor (GO SEE THOR), the average movie-goer will recognize all of these titles and should be drawn to them.

But can we pull something deeper from the label, and find ourselves in a gooey caramel center of understanding? That’s my plan.

There are five definitions for the word Ultimate as an adjective, and right out of the gate, Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye easily fits the definition of “Maximum, decisive.” This book is extreme tactical action, with all the explosions and pull-down shades of any summer blockbuster. He will certainly cut a striking figure in the Avengers movie as an action hero, and Jonathan Hickman and Rafa Sandoval are bringing that character to you in these solo adventures.

Ultimate Comics: the Ultimates would be the “highest, not subsidiary” in the definition line-up. In other words, the Ultimates are EARTH’S MIGHTIEST HEROES. That’s literally what that means. Out of the entire planet, these people are the mightiest and are not beholden to anyone above themselves. There is nothing these guys could not/should not be able to handle. Trouble stops here. I totally trust Hickman will be awesome in this book as well, for different reasons. His ability to think up fourth-dimensional problems for incredible third-dimensional superheroes will test these characters in a way that will not diminish their mightiness, and will provide some damned good stories.

Ultimate Comics: X-Men‘s story is the “last; furthest or farthest, ending a process or series”. After everything that has happened before, there is a true sense of finality to the battle between humans and mutants. In this book, you will see the last of the X-Men, they’ve skipped the lead-up to Days of Future Past, and brought mutant internment camps and Sentinels to our doorstep. This kind of story will make the characters desperate, so that decisions made now will not have a do-over. These are the last, furthest, and farthest acts of the end of a species.

And at last we come to the heart and soul of the Ultimate Comics universe: Ultimate Comics: All-New Spider-Man. This will be the book that returns us to our “basic, fundamental” roots. Peter Parker represents something in all of us, so shouldn’t the reverse be the same? Shouldn’t a little of the diversity of mankind be represented in Spider-Man? Even from the first few issues, you can grasp something of what made you identify and empathize with a smart young man from humble beginnings, gaining extraordinary abilities, and learning to use them responsibly and honestly.

These are our heroes, in concentrated form, and the Ultimate line should be the final word on who they are.

See, now you just know I’m going to talk about the X-Men!

How can you not, when they are the go-to comic book metaphor to play and experiment with all sorts of social issues. Fear of the future, minority oppression, youth activism, why there’s even this MAJOR SCHISM that divides their public on how to achieve their goals. In the blue states- I mean, Wolverine’s camp, we have a return to the foundation of education and the protection of the next generation. In the red visor camp, we have a more aggressive approach, the idea that war is inevitable and the way to meet a world that hates and fears you is with heavy hitters, young and old. They even have a handy chart to know whose side you’re on (ooh, deja vu).

If you take a look at Cyclops and his Extinction Team (Really? What a terrible name), Dani Moonstar and her friends are listed as “Clean-up,” which one would think means some kind of X-Force-like hit squad (X-Force being mysteriously absent from these breakdowns). It’s a strange sort of listing, and once you read New Mutants #33 and understand what exactly these characters want to do, you’ll see how this might just be the answer for an entire out-of-place generation.

WARNING: We’ll be talking about New Mutants #33, so spoilers and nostalgia to follow. Grab a copy and read along!

to be so young...

It’s weird how a very generic term has, in my mind at least, come to represent a very specific era in time: the original New Mutants were the first all-youth team that followed the older X-Men. The X-Men weren’t always the Fab Five, but they didn’t really set about creating that same sort of team again until Sam, Dani, Rahne, Xi’an and Roberto. While possibly not the most exciting bunch of teens ever to hit the four-color page, they were thrown into adventures and teenage angst that could easily become a cipher for ’80s teens as the generation grew older and bolder. Heck, they even got a character named Cypher. While Kitty Pryde called them X-Babies and they feuded with a rival school, got new members, lost their faith in the school & mentors and tried to force a new look and an extreme point of view, the characters from that first second class changed with the times and always rolled with the punches. They split off and took a new direction plenty of times, returning to the school, moving out west, going on road trips, all in search of that elusive answer to what they want out of life. Dani Moonstar alone has been a student, a Valkyrie, a SHIELD agent, a member of the Mutant Liberation Front and not just on a whim. These characters have been allowed to adapt and grow through the ’80s and ’90s and they really do feel like different people. Like all these characters are friends and have an amount of experience equal to their back issues. I’m not saying all of it was great, but it certainly feels like a lifetime.

All that experience allowed into continuity makes for some fine adults who can now come to these big Schism-y decisions with more than a personality trait and a list drawn up in editorial. New Mutants #33 sees some some people leave (Sam & Xi’an want to head back to the school for personal rather than ideological reasons) and some have nowhere to go, but all of them seem to have that alienated feeling. Heck, one of them is an alien.

Which brings us to now and New Mutants #33. In one issue, they move forward into a new direction, avoid the military feel of the powers-that-be, let some friends go, understand who they are and take up residence in what looks like the old Real World house in San Francisco proper. They have moved out into their community to make a stand and a difference in a way that understands that past attempts have not worked.

Dani Moonstar brings it all home by not just having a belief in the powers that be, but an understanding that the old guard isn’t working. That you can’t promote mutant equality by falling back to old tactics. “I believe in the struggle for mutant rights,” she says, “but I also believe that part of that fight is interacting with that world so you can change it.”

Heaven forbid I compare X-Men Schism to the political divide or class warfare or anything of the sort; however steeped in metaphor, it’s also entertainment. However, this idea that one could agree with a point of view and not live in that encampment, that the New Mutants-era guys continue to grow and have their own unique perspective because of how they grew up, that a diverse group of characters who could never be considered the poster children of the mutant cause are taking to the streets to make a difference on behalf of tolerance, well… it makes for good storytelling.

Oh Phoenix Force, we know you...

As most of you CBRians know, Marvel’s solicitations for January 2012 came out last Friday, so our look forward into the past is a little delayed. On the bright side, the first of 2012′s books seem like something that deserve a few more days reflection. After all, 2012 is the year it all comes together! You guys, there’s going to be an Avengers movie. A real, live action, big budget, A-list star Avengers movie! All Marvel’s rather crazy Hollywood ideas are paying off next summer and, with a little hard work, the House of Ideas could come to a beautiful fruition.

So while our celebratory May month is still off in the distance, the recently hung Chrismas decorations let me know that January is just around the corner. Can we get an idea of what next year will look like, through the first books to roll out at the start of the year? Let’s just read along and find out, shall we?

Alright, I’ve got some good news and bad news, and I’ll be honest: “brave” and “bold” are not words I’d use to describe January’s line-up. The Avengers, while obviously the focus of mainstream media in this blockbuster year, should be giving us something different. They should be at least “Road-to-Wrestlemania”-ing their way to the big movie.   By reading books now, we should get a sense of build-up to what May will be like. We had a bajillion Thor comics last year as we got close to the Thor film, showing different aspects of the God of Thunder; Captain America spread his patriotic heroism throughout several one-shots, miniseries and collections well before July, so that by the movie’s debut, there would be a plethora of material for movie-goers to feast upon. So far, January is starting out pretty slow. Yeah, you’ve got your Secrets, your Academies, your New, and Adjectiveless … there are plenty of types of Avengers out there, but what are they all doing?

For example, Avengers Annual #1 brings back the Revengers, returning to let the reader debate whether or not being a strong force in the world makes you a target.  The same idea seems to apply to X-Sanction, albeit with a different creative team and Cable. In Avengers #21, the team battles “the combined forces of Hydra, AIM, the Hand and H.A.M.M.E.R. under the leadership of Norman Osborne.”

Since Disassembled, the message is clear: DO NOT BE AN AVENGER. It’s all conjecture at this point, but January starts with the target squarely on the Avenger’s head rather than leading to a major threat or event (we’ll get to the Phoenix in a moment). They seem to be less “Avenging” and more “Defending,” but that’s a whole different book. If anything, it looks like the same holding pattern we’ve seen before, through seasonal restarts.

More of the X-Men will be inching their way toward box office gold as Cable will return from the grave to annihilate Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and Wakandan queen Storm will be joining the Avengers and our pal, the Scarlet Witch, will finally be returning to mainstream continuity with an official game change across both teams. You know, you got your people will live, people will die, nothing will ever be the blah blah blah. Considering the big IT’S COMING teaser shot shown at recent conventions, let’s figure that if the Avengers or X-Men are going to fight something huge in that yearly big event kind of way, it’s coming from the cosmic entity known as the Pheonix Force, and Hope and Wanda are probably involved.

The rest of the X-Men have forgone ramping up for a big change and are instead hauling out the past to settle the Regenesis in a little bit. Remember, just in the month of January, the Phalanx return in an Uncanny X-Men one-shot, the Jean Grey School of Empty Graves will be in full swing in Wolverine & the X-Men, there will be a preview of the new Age of Apocalypse book in Uncanny X-Force, goddammit the Magneto clone Joseph is returning in the Magneto: Not a Hero mini-series, Exodus (really?) will show up in X-Men: Legacy, Havok and Polaris come back to X-Factor and oh yeah, the big looming threat is the Phoenix force.

It’s a lot of old ideas. Again, three months from now, maybe we’ll be hankering for a little slice of the ’90s (Joseph? Really??) but looking forward, I can’t say I can see a brave or bold future on the horizon. In fact, right now my big horizon line is May, not January, so maybe my eyesight’s gone a little funny.

With all the recent changes of the current year and the fallout still left to come, perhaps it’s better that we linger with the toys we have rather than throw them out in anticipation of what’s to come. I know that the Fearless and Battle Scars books will be handling their fair share of Fear Itself fallout and maybe, as much as the X-Men have restructured themselves again, we might want to go back to our roots and see how they fit in with our swanky new teams.

It can’t always be all new and all different. Sometimes, we still have pieces to pick up, ideas to finish, characters to haul out of storage and dust off a little and see if they still work. January seems entrenched in our past as a foundation for all that’s to come in the year and, while certainly not glitzy or glamorous, might be what we need.

Take a look through the solicitations (again) and share your thoughts. Excelsior!

“Fear, that’s terrible for kids to see, and all the violence, it’s just too negative for them,” she explained. I looked at the poster, wondering if there actually was something terrible on it but no, no gore, sexual situations or excessive violence. She actually had a problem with the title. I told her the title came from the quote that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, an appeal for strength. How every kid faces a fear at one time or another and why not show them how super-heroes handle theirs? “After all,” I told her, “… you know the good guys win.”

She thought about it and we talked about fear and being strong. In the end, I hadn’t changed her mind entirely but she did admit that saying the whole store was negative was probably a bit rude. The young customer bought something he liked and everyone went home happy. If a robot had carried in a cupcake for me, it would have been the perfect day.

But then again, nothing in this world is perfect, not even my unflinching adoration for one of Marvel’s finest architects (FRACTION 3:16!). But if you boil Fear Itself down to its base elements, you will find jewels of the human spirit expressed in the Mighty Marvel Manner. It may not be the best event book, but I’m starting to think that the core of Fear Itself is one of the most important stories you can read for inspiration.

(WARNING: We will be talking about Fear Itself, including this week’s cataclysmic issue #7, grab your copies and read along)

In an article talking about Doomwar, I said that event book essentials included: 1) a major villain, 2) a global threat, 3) assorted heroes unified to fight numbers 1 and 2, and the most important 4) the human element. When galactic threats bear down on the planet Earth, someone has to stand, look at the sky and shout ‘Holy cats, that’s a Terrible Thing!’ Heroes don’t often get this chance, as they are too busy being heroic and fighting the good fight to get in a word of astonishment at their own activities. Fear Itself is unique in that not only does the common man express his hopes and fears at what is quite possibly the end of the world, but the heroes express the weight of their down fears as they take on impossible odds. From gods to men, they all stare own adversity, face their own fears and dig deep to find the strength to keep going.

a dark father's love

Even when they’re not human. Odin tells Thor over and over that he doesn’t have to fight this mortal battle, and that he would see Midgard razed to ashes because, “A world is nothing for your son.” In a similar fatherly gesture, when Skaldi laments that their victory will cause the Serpent’s death, he tells her that when he falls, she will carry on in his name. “This is all for you, darling. This was always just for you.” Even our villain does not fear death and his own defeat, because he is giving his daughter the world in his absence. One man would see it burn, the other would serve it up on a silver platter, both for their children. Come on, that’s kinda cool.

Two human men demand not miracles, but tools and some level of accountability, from Odin himself. Tony gives up something of his own dignity by drinking at the doorstep of the All-father so that he could get the God’s attention, to arm his friends so that they may fight their own battle. When Captain America brings back the battered body of Thor before the final fight, he demands that Odin do his own duty. As much as Odin may want to burn the world to save his son, destiny demands otherwise. All of his efforts and machinations to escape his (and his son’s) fate come to nothing. By the end of the final story, Odin has not only lost Thor, but Asgard has become his tomb as he stands guard over the broken body of the Serpent until the end of time, his brother’s keeper at last.

There is a moment after all they’ve seen, and the oppressive weight of inevitable defeat is on their shoulders that Spider-Man bends to his own fears and leaves the front line. He is worried for his family, for his friends, and as terrifying as the end of everything is, one wants to be with the ones they love. I can’t fault the man, these are some impossible odds! He eventually finds Aunt May and she asks about her nephew Peter. There is some sideways dialogue possibly alluding to the idea that Aunt May knows exactly who Spider-Man is, but once she is assured that her nephew is fine, she tells Spider-Man to keep protecting him and others. “You have a great responsibility, you know, and it wouldn’t be right, me keeping you here away from it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he tells her, and swings back out to continue the good fight.

Parallel to this, there is an everyman threaded through Fear Itself, a homeowner in Broxton who also runs back to his family to check on his wife and child. As they huddle together, this everyman makes his choice and heads back out to do what he can. “If this… if this is the end…? I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”

Later, Captain America has fallen in the midst of battle, and it’s this guy who helps him to his feet. And thus for the bravery of a balding middle aged man in the midst of costumed adventurers, do we understand the point of this seven issue series.

Fear can be many things. You can be afraid of spiders, afraid of heights, afraid of flying Nazis in powered armor. You can be afraid of losing your son, of losing your job, afraid of the end of the world, but those fears are incremental in comparison to what you do about them. Fears say less about a man than his strengths of character, and if there is anything I think kids should be learning about today, it’s that.

That's a strange amount of whimsy from Matt Murdock...

Now, I will admit that the Distinguished Competition has given this month an air of finality.  So many No. 1 issues, what could possibly come next? Tonight there will be drinks raised high and hands shaken to a job well done as their Wrap Party ends this publishing month at Golden Apple Comics.  And it does seem a little final, doesn’t it?

It’s the perfect mood for looking ahead to December, where the last of the Marvel books published this year will leave 2011 not with a bang or a whimper, but with a dawn of things to come.  I’m not saying it’s a very big dawn or a brilliant one either; right now, I will full admit things look kind of so-so for December at Marvel …

… then again, I have been wrong before, so let’s take a look at December’s books, shall we?

The twice-a-month rally continues as December will see 11 comics give us two issues in 31 days; they’re mostly X-Men titles (Uncanny X-Force, X-Factor, X-23 and technically Deadpool) with a few Spider-Man books (The Amazing Spider-Man, Venom, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man) and random guys (Hulk, Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive, Kick-Ass 2) in the mix for good measure. I’m still not sure how I feel about this because The Amazing Spider-Man has been twice (even three times!) a month before now and it really hasn’t slowed the momentum or been complained about where I work (Metro Entertainment, Santa Barbara’s best in comics, toys, games and more! /end cheap plug).  If anything it’s welcome as the “Spider-Island” story is moving briskly enough to start a few readers thinking about a pull list or special orders of the entire storyline. But that might just be the quality of the work rather than the gratification of having two issues a month, so the debate continues.  If you have a preference, go ahead and leave it in the comments below, but I am thrilled to get two issues of Uncanny X-Force a month.

The other twice-a-month book I didn’t mention was Fear Itself: The Fearless, which will be just shy of the middle of its miniseries, cleaning up the long-term weaponry hauled out in Fear Itself.  This and Battle Scars are specifically set in a post-Fear Itself universe, and handling the fallout of the big event. So, instead of throwing a banner on some books and anchoring the writers and artists into a “Heroic Age” or “Aftersmash,” Marvel has continued the party over in the next room and left the rest of the hotel of comics to sleep peacefully into the night.  Not a bad idea, but I can’t trust on them selling well, especially not twice-a-month for The Fearless. Hrm.

Your Defending May Vary.

Speaking of extra titles I’m not sure will sell well, we have two oversized issues coming out to tell young and old alike all about the Defenders, from a rockin’ recollection of their first adventures to a rollicking roll call of past members and enemies. Oh, and then there’s the new book Defenders #1, which will probably have very little to do with any of the above. I can see how publishing some history and cast lists might psych up a reader for, say, the Avengers, where their main motivation hasn’t changed much over the years, but the Defenders are crazy-unique in their place in the Marvel Universe. Funny, intellectual, a secret love letter to the Blue Oyster Cult, the Defenders are a pretty awesome book and have their highs and lows just like any well loved published entertainment.  I would think again — this is surely why I don’t work for Marvel — that one would want to let a new book stand alone and show off whatever new take Matt Fraction and friends are doing with it. Maybe the history and cast lists can come after it’s a hit as people start to look for more things that say “Defenders” on them.  Maybe it can all show up the month before, giving the curious and the well-read time to digest the fact that there’s a new team due to debut.  It just seems like a foot bullet to have two oversized books at $5.99 and $4.99 show up in the same month as your big debut. Then again, that’s why they publish the books and I just sell ‘em.

This, of course, would not be the end of Marvel’s 2011 if we didn’t get to see just a taste of the exciting new future that is The Avengers: X-Sanction #1 (of 4)! Cable is back, guns are huge, and apparently he has to “wipe the Avengers from the pages of history!” And we quote: “How has Cable been reborn? Where has he been since Second Coming? And what dark event has driven him to destroy the Avengers? The answers are just the tip of an iceberg that threatens to smash the Marvel Universe to smithereens!” Man, some guys really bring their A-game to these solicitations, don’t they? I’ve read that like five times and I’m still super-excited when I get to “smithereens”! Those aforementioned smithereens are the start of the next big change in the Marvel Universe, plus Joe Quesada will be whipping up some variant covers to the book, ensuring it as a must-read this December. It does make me wonder, though:  Norman Osborn seems to have a new team of “Avengers,” Wonder Man’s “Revengers” wanted to disband everyone and now Cable is back to wipe the Avengers from history itself? This is not a good time to be an Avenger.

Marvel Holiday Special 2011

The holiday season rolls along with Deadpool MAX X-Mas Special #1 takes over the Punisher niche of highly violent yuletide stories that are deliciously offensive.  The Marvel Holiday Special 2011 will collect a variety of digital stories that debuted this year just in time for a stocking stuffer, and the Art of Marvel Studios hardcover slipcase is the big ticket item that you can delight True Believers and Movie Fans with at the same time.  Well, maybe not all of them, as the $150 price tag is crazy steep for the younger set. So what do you get the kids this Christmas?  Why, The Muppets Presents: The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson, the previously-at-BOOM!-now-at-Marvel reprint! Yay!

Me? Why, I’ll just be settling for a new X-Club series with Simon Spurrier and the Avengers: West Coast Avengers — Lost in Space-Time premiere hardcover. One has done nothing but delight me at every one-shot and limited series during major events and Mr. Spurrier does a great job at making science adventurous and funny in the midst of a lot of mutant angst and greater drama.  The other is a book where Hank Pym attempts suicide and is stopped by a Catholic superheroine, and where Mockingbird threatens her marriage by letting a man fall to his death when … oh, just read it.

And read the rest of the December solicitations here and let us all know what you’re looking forward to.  Merry future Christmas to all!

Well lucky for you, I know what he’s talking about.

A Man-Thing graphic novel by writer Steve Gerber and artist Kevin Nowlan. Initially started and announced in the 80s, it reportedly fell by the wayside while sitting on Nowlan’s drawing board. The original title was “Screenplay of the Living Dead Man”, intended to be a follow-up from the story “Song-Cry of the Living Dead Man” published in Man-Thing #12 way back when. It wasn’t until Gerber’s passing in 2008 that Nowlan refocused his energies and began working on the project again in his spare time. Back in March, Nowlan told me that it’ll end up being a 62-page painted story, and I even confirmed with Marvel that they’re going to publish it once Nowlan completes it.

With New Teen Titans: Games coming out this week and this other long-awaited release finally coming out, what other great stories might be lurking out there waiting to be finished?

George R.R. Martin

Talk about your harmonic nerd convergences: John Hodgman spoke with George R.R. Martin about Marvel Comics in yesterday’s episode of public radio’s The Sound of Young America. In one corner: George R.R. Martin, author of the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire and its #1 New York Times–bestselling latest installment A Dance with Dragons, executive producer of the HBO television adaptation Game of Thrones, and inspiration for Dynamite Entertainment’s own comics adaptation A Game of Thrones, whose first issue debuts tomorrow. In the other corner: John Hodgman, nerd-friendly writer, comedic cultural commentator for The Daily Show, and “I’m a PC” guy, filling in as the radio program’s guest host. The topic: One of Martin’s first pieces of published writing, a piece of fanmail published in Avengers #12 in 1964 when Martin was 16 years old.

Hodgman used the letter, which entered wide Internet circulation a few weeks back, to kick off the interview. And he was probably kidding around when he asked Martin to explain why his 16-year-old self believed Avengers #9 to be superior to Fantastic Four #32, as his letter had argued. But once Hodgman jogged Martin’s memory by reminding him that Avengers #9 marked the debut of Wonder Man, Martin knew exactly why he liked the issue so much. His explanation to Hodgman is a solid exploration of why the early Marvel superhero comics were so groundbreaking for the genre — and in offering it, Martin seems to come to the realization that that issue had an impact on his own writing that resonates with him to this day. (For readers of the book or viewers of the show, the influence will be obvious.)

Read a transcript of the relevant section below, then listen to the entire interview.

[George R.R. Martin:] I liked Wonder Man. And you know why? [Laughs] Now it’s coming back to me vividly! Wonder Man dies in that story. He’s a brand new character, he’s introduced, and he dies. It was very heartwrenching. I liked the character — it was a tragic, doomed character. I guess I’ve responded to tragic, doomed characters ever since I was a high-school kid.

[John Hodgman:] Especially those who might die at any minute.

That’s right. Of course, being comic books, Wonder Man didn’t stay dead for long. He came back a year or two later and had a long run for many, many decades. But the fact that he was introduced and joined the Avengers and died all in that one issue had a great impact on me when I was a high-school kid.

I imagine it was pretty surprising, in a comic book at that time, to see a whole story arc resolve tragically in that way in one issue.

Yes. It’s hard to understand, I think, from the vantage point of 2011 exactly what was going on in comics back in the early ’60s. The Marvel comics that I was writing letters to were really revolutionary for the time. Stan Lee was doing some amazing work. Up until then, the dominant comic book had been the DC comics, which at that time were always very circular: Superman or Batman would have an adventure, and at the end of the adventure they would wind up exactly where they were, and then the next issue would follow the same pattern. Nothing ever changed for the DC characters.

The Marvel characters were constantly changing. Important things were happening. The lineup of the Avengers was constantly changing. People would quit and they would have fights and all of that, as opposed to DC, where everybody got along and it was all very nice, and of course all the heroes liked each other. None of this was happening. So really, Stan Lee introduced the whole concept of characterization [chuckles] to comic books, and conflict, and maybe even a touch of gray in some of the characters. And boy, looking back at it now, I can see that it probably was a bigger influence on my own work than I would have dreamed.

(via Westeros)

Fantastic Four #51 is titled “This Man… This Monster.”  It’s one of those inspiring cover blurbs like “Spider-Man No More!” and “This Issue: Everybody Dies!”  Phrases which catch the eye and demand you read the book.  “This Man…This Monster!” is about the struggle of man… versus also man; our darker parts or outer appearance versus who we really are, inside.  You’ll notice there is nothing between the man and the monster, just an ellipsis.  It’s not “This Man AND This Monster,” which would suggest two different people, nor is it “This Man, This Monster” suggesting they are one and the same.  Three little dots almost let the reader decide as to what exactly the inner struggle is.  And that’s kinda what I’ve been doing with the Incredible Hulk throughout my adoration of the book.

No matter who he fought, the internal battle is key.  It’s tortured scientist Bruce Banner versus his raging alter-ego in a never-ending stalemate over who gets to be human.  I can’t say this is always the thrust of an issue or storyline, but it IS the thrust of the really good ones. The ones that make you think, and linger with you long after you’ve put the book away.  We come for the “Hulk smash,” but stay for the “Hulk think.”  And then Incredible Hulks #635 came along and blew my freakin’ mind.

Because after six years, the struggle is over. (A few SPOILERS after the jump!)

*****

Greg Pak’s six-part story “Heart of the Monster” gets absolutely outrageous at times.  When you watch Fin Fang Foom cram gamma bombs into his mouth and threaten to take out… well, I don’t even know how much that would take out, but it would be a lot. When everyone is gamma-enhanced and explodes off the page with bulging muscles and radiating green power, when there’s magic and science and everyone and possibly their mother shows up, things get a little messy.  The whole crux of the story is based on a mystical wishing well.  Get to it, wish for something, and it will appear.  As always, there is a catch: the wishing well doesn’t exactly give you what you want, just an idea of it that has been kinda soured.  Wish for an apple, get a rotten apple, etc.  It doesn’t solve your problems, but could possibly make them worse.  So there are monsters and villains and family and explosions.  Doctor Strange shows up, the aforementioned Mister Foom, it’s just madness and the story does not stop until the epilogue of the very last issue; it’s loud, it’s violent, it’s exciting, and it all hinges on a very simple answer to the wishing wackiness.

In the end, Bruce uses the wishing well to give everyone what they wanted: all the monsters are defeated, Rick, Jen, and Betty all have control over their alter egos, and can become A-Bomb, She-Hulk and Red She-Hulk at will.  So, in a way, he wished for control: for his family and his foes to have control of their situation.  Control, of course, not meaning that everyone wins, but everyone gets some sort of stability.  Even the outrageous peril they had gotten themselves into had vanished into dust because really, escalation of that type was going to destroy everything.  Tyrannus might have told everyone he could rule from the ashes, but hey.  Magical wishing well, pal and you don’t always get what you want.

But here was Bruce Banner, a man who for years and for one selfless act, has been saddled with this terrible, destructive, shoot-you-into-space-because-you’re-a-danger-to-yourself-and-others, mind fracturing, loved-one-distancing, uncontrollable monster that, you would think, if you could get one wish it’d be to be free of that.

Yeah, it’s an evil wishing well.  So your wish to be free of it might still have some dangerous effects.  But you think it would cross his mind when Red She-Hulk (side note: please change this name!  The Red She-Hulk is ridiculous to say, ridiculous to type, and so derivative it makes me cross-eyed.  If they are serious about keeping her a gamma-powered creature, then let’s get the woman a serious name.) uses the last of the wishing power because she “.. wanted Bruce to get what he wanted.  Not the Hulk.”  You would think this would mean some sort of peace, stability of his own, at least some ice cream?  Something positive to come from all of this madness, smashing, and tragedy.

But that’s not the case.  Bruce DID wish for what he wanted.  Another selfless act from a selfless man.  The Hulk had nothing to do with it because he and the Hulk, while fractured, while at odds, while locked in tragedy, are merely facets of the same person.  There is truly an ellipsis between Bruce Banner and the Hulk; sometimes they are separate, sometimes they are together, but in the end it is for the reader to decide.  Greg Pak has given us six incredible years of Hulk stories.  This is the final issue of his run, and this isn’t a revelation he has come to lightly: that Bruce and the Hulk are really interchangeable.  From “Planet Hulk,” the physical absence of Bruce Banner on Sakaar should have been our first warning.  In World War Hulk, when the Hulk tells Reed that “I will never forgive you and will hate you forever. Almost as much as I hate myself,” that should have been our second clue.  This whole time, during Greg Pak’s story, he has been easing us into the new epiphany that Bruce and the Hulk, while still at odds, are no more different than you and I in our own frustrations.

"But we all deal with it. Just like you."

Because that is the Marvel way.  Ordinary people with extraordinary problems.  And while you can’t always get what you want, when you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

Despite fan apathy, despite the louder bolder act from the Distinguished Competitor, Fear Itself is a mighty fine event book. It has a very easy premise that people unfamiliar with comics can get into (hey, you know Thor? It’s like all the bad guys are that strong now), it’s got that “Versus” style atmosphere where people can debate all day long on who should have really been the first down or defeated in the Worthy vs. Heroes, it’s got a super-powered upgrade coming up for us by Iron Man, there’s been some tragedy and some triumph, and coming up in October, we’ll have closure with an ending that multiple comics can build up or down from.

Fear Itself #7.1

Fear Itself #7.2

Fear Itself #7.3

Or maybe not.

Remember in the last Lord of the Rings movie when they just kept having to tie up so many loose ends or add so much finality to the main story that it just felt like the audience just didn’t know where to applaud in a well-made film? Or even worse, you drank a really big soda during a three-hour+ movie and really wanted it to have a firm sense of a finish so you could escape? Yeah.

So, thanks to some New Math numbering by Marvel, it looks like #7 of Fear Itself really doesn’t end so much for our heroes because come November, we’re getting a Captain America ending, an Iron Man ending and a Thor ending (Depending on how well you do playing through the game, does this unlock any achievements?) If your mini-series is seven issues long, you should be able to tell me a complete story between issues #1 and #7. Afterwards, if there is a banner theme running around the books as they’ve done historically since Avengers: Disassembled and even further with some of the old annual arcs, so be it. I think, as comic readers, we’re more familiar with picking up what looks good coming out of a major event and deciding for ourselves that hey, let’s see the prologue with a certain character after the book is finished. Even a Fear Itself: Thor #1 one-shot would be more preferable, because at least with some distance from the main series, it feels like we’re moving on and not buying a very sneaky issues #8, 9 and 10.

Yeah, it’s probably too much of a sour note to play against the backdrop of a very solid set of storytelling, but man. What a way to start November.

Let’s see what else is coming from the House of Ideas in November 2011, shall we?

pointedly Point One

Oh hey look, everybody! Another Point One book! Only it’s called POINT ONE point blankly and it seems to be an… anthology one-shot? From the solicitation: “Here are SEVEN all -new stories that set the stage for everything coming your way in 2012 from the biggest names in the comics industry. You CANNOT miss this. Catch a tease of the biggest change to the Marvel Universe in over 35 years!” Is this like a preview of upcoming books coming out next year, written by prospective creators and sold as a Whitman’s Sampler? Wow. Brevoort is even calling this “our Rosetta Stone to the future” for Marvel Comics at large. “It will harken back to what I think the Annuals used to be when everybody remembers them as being so great – the big special issue that would come out and blow your mind with all the craziness in it. That’s our goal with Point One. It is literally the first point in the next year or 18 months of Marvel publishing.”

All at 64 pages at $5.99. Oh. That’s… actually not a bad idea. Maybe the idea of an ongoing anthology series is not as sustainable as an annual look across the board at what everyone else is doing that will tell both old and new readers just what the heck is going on and maybe, just maybe, lure them into a book or an idea they might not have gone for when the Prelude to Such and Such starts. Huh. I am honestly pleased by this and am kind of excited to see how it goes. Sure, the price point is a little high, but considering the content, it’s (hopefully) going to be worth the money.

Can we just get rid of this “Point One” nonsense though? Decimals are not that much marketing gold, I’m just saying…

New Dark Avengers #18 (with more nougat)

Anyhoo, back to now … or maybe then. Either way, despite compartmentalized, “buzzword” numbering, there’s a whole big wide universe to talk about that’s still ever present and ever changing. Over in Avengers-ville, we have three all-new teams to sort out, with AVENGERS #19 debuting a roster of Captain America, Vision (I’m 98% sure he’s from the Young Avengers series), Spider-Man, the Protector, Black Panther, Spider-Woman, Wolverine, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel and Iron Man. A little of column A and B from both ‘Adjectiveless’ and ‘New’ books. Over in NEW AVENGERS #18, Norman Osborn is back and in charge with his new probably evil team, looking to include himself, Skaar, the Swordsman …. gosh, a woman with long hair? A guy in a half mask tied in the back, Iron Fist style? Is that Tarantula, maybe?

Over at THE INCREDIBLE HULK #2, it looks like Jason Aaron is taking the John Byrne approach and splitting Bruce and the Hulk for a time, only instead of Bruce Banner forming the Hulkbusters and setting out to contain/destroy his former alter ego, we’ll be doing the reverse this time and the Hulk will be trying to take down Banner. Hey, why not? Aaron’s been pretty genius in a wide variety of books about terrible people and maybe now, sans family and kingships, we’ll return to more books about the monster. Also, this makes the Defenders pretty useful as a way for Banner to ‘defend’ himself against old Jade Jaws so… yeah. Another pretty solid and intriguing little storyline to follow!  I am truly excited to a see a Hulk book for the first time in a while so hooray Team Marvel! As long is it’s not issue #2.1 next month, we are OK!

Anyone else notice a small proliferation of semimonthly titles this month? There’s 12 of them in November and I don’t seem to recall when it got to be so many. This wasn’t a sudden thing, Marvel has put out plenty of books like Amazing Spider-Man with a couple more issues a month, but 12 just seems like a new style that no one’s mentioned yet. Or I simply didn’t catch on to…

Avengers Academy, Fear Itself: the Fearless, Ghost Rider, the new Six Guns western book by Andy Diggle, not to mention the Thunderbolts and Amazing Spider-Man, are all two issues a month for your comic fan. This is a topic in and of itself, weighing the merits of extra books on the shelves and meeting a demand for a popular book with simply more like it than a piñata of mini-series and tie-in books, but here’s the real kicker: the other half of semi-monthly titles are just X-Books.

All these silhouettes are so slimming...

Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, New Mutants, Wolverine and X-23 are all serving up two issues a month realness in November and, unless Wolverine and the X-Men get top billing due to the fact that they have Wolverine right in the name, that means the Uncanny X-Men, traditional herald of the Mutant titles, is now twice a month with new numbering. Make of this what you will.

Of course, looking over the X-Books it’s kind of hard to see what exactly we should be considering the main story of Marvel’s merry mutants and what title simply gets Miss Congeniality. We have the Regenesis angle, where the X-Men have split into two camps with two respective guys in charge of said groups. Wolverine’s crew of ‘We hate Broccoli’ are heading back to Westchester to face off against more Hellfire Club guys and “the villain of the most important X-Story ever” going at them as well. Uncanny X-Men starts with XXXXX and Scott Summers (who may make it out of this intact) on the “We Think You Need More Vegetables in Your Diet” side figuring out what’s to becoming of them and oh yes, “the resurrected Mister Sinister” is also back as well. Either way, while nebulous as what this is all going to be about is, it make some sense that there will be a change of philosophies or betrayals, etc that will give you two camps of X-Men to follow each month.

And then there's these guys...

And oh yeah, X-MEN #20 & #21. The Adjectiveless book that will guest star Iron Man 2.0 to fight Sentinels with him. See, I just don’t get how this book fits into all that plot mentioned above. Is this an out of continuity book? Kind of Marvel Adventures style where you like the X-Men, you just don’t want to devote a collection to them? I’d buy that but then Iron Man 2.0 is there, telling me that now, this has to be all in continuity or that means everything else happening in the two main X-titles has nothing to do with the regular Marvel universe! Who are these X-Men anyway? What team is this? THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL HOUSE!

I suppose it doesn’t matter, or maybe it shouldn’t? Not to geek reference even harder than I have thus far, maybe I should think to myself it’s just a comic book, I should really just relax. At the end of the day, we’re all just reading stories and the amount of “importance” a book has or how much you should read in order to understand anything should really just come from the 28 pages of story contained behind the cover.

And on that philosophical note, I leave you to peruse for yourself the rest of Marvel’s Solicitations for November 2011. What are you looking forward to? What sort of numbering do you want to see?   Tell all below and hey, let’s give a hand to everyone who had a hand in the KAPOW! GUINNESS WORLD RECORD SPECIAL #1, a pretty special feat on its own.    ”In April 2011, Mark Millar, Frank Quitely, Dave Gibbons, John Romita Jr, Leinil Yu, Paul Cornell, Andy Diggle, Jock, Duncan Fegrado, Sean Phillips and over fifty other comic-book creators joined forces with Kapow to break not one but TWO Guinness World Records – the fastest comic-book ever produced and the biggest number of creators working on a single comic. The Kapow Special stars Superior and was written, penciled, inked and lettered in less than 12 hours.”  Hey, I may not dig Superior but I love Guinness World Records and the Yorkhill Sick Children’s Hospital, where all the proceeds for the book will be going to.  Great work, guys.

Excelsior!

Vengeance #2

The weird thing about the internet and having a strong fanbase is that comics can often disappoint without even trying. Here’s my story: Last month I fell in love with a weird little mini-series called Vengeance. Artist Nick Dragotta and writer Joe Casey made this unclassifiable story that had all these weird touches to it, moments and names and items that jumped immediately to that place in my brain where I store the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (Deluxe Edition, please). The story is set “nowish,” with characters seeing current Marvel events like Fear Itself played on bar TV screens and a few flashbacks setting the tone, like the Red Skull and Hitler chatting about the Red Army’s eugenics program. The appearance of Forge’s old gun that takes away a mutant’s powers being toted around by the new Ultimate Nullifier, the fact that the book opens up with the Red Ghost sitting alone at a bar somewhere, watching Captain America face down an angry mob, that anyone would remember Sugar Kane the pop star that dated Chamber in order to seem edgy to her public … I might have taken those for granted. But all these little morsels of info in a rather disjointed book left me enamored with it.

My esteemed, saintly and incredibly good-looking editor here at Robot 6 mentioned that an annotation of the Vengeance series might point out all these little things and bring them to the surface for more fans. So I spent a couple weeks going over the book, making notes, putting things in order and then… the worst part. I made conjectures. After all, you can’t put a bunch of puzzle pieces out in front of someone and not expect them to make a couple guesses, right? But then one guess turns into two and the more you dissect a frog to see how it works, well, you learn a lot in the process. But in the end the frog is dead.

So with Vengeance #2 on the stands this week, there’s all this new information to prove me wrong on everything I had assumed. Which was disappointing at first; after all, my ideas are pretty cool, why didn’t they go in that direction? If you bring out the Red Ghost in act one, he has to have monkeys by the end of the play, it’s integral! But then, is there a lot of disappointment running through comics sometimes? The flashed image of a character’s redesign can send fandom into fits. The lack of information on a missing character can start wars in convention halls. I can sit here, read Vengeance #2 and think, “This isn’t what I expected at all.”

First issues are like that, though. We don’t normally have all our ducks in a row for our introductions in modern comics storytelling. The boards have to be set up, players chosen, the rules in place and only then does the game begin. So how do Vengeance #2 and WWE tag team matches relate? Read on and find out, gentle viewer.

WARNING: Rampant discussion of the events from Vengeance #1, Vengeance #2 and 75% of WWE tag team matches follows. You have been warned.

Casey brings the bizarre and thoughtful to the page. Dragotta’s stylish graphics have a lot of freedom to how panels are placed, how sound effects come in, where the color is, that it makes me think I’m reading an independent comic. Throughout the first issue, there are some re-purposed characters like Miss America, who went from a pretty standard WWII adventure heroine to a pretty standard low-cut pants adventure heroine. The Teen Brigade went from the CB radio to the underground computer network, led by a cocky guy with a rather outrageous legacy, but certainly believable in a world where gods and monsters live in a downtown high rise. All of this seems like high science adventure thus far, looking down at the old guard like Magneto, who no longer have a villainous bone in their body, the appearance of the New Masters of Evil toward the end (last seen in the fantastic Dark Reign: Young Avengers mini-series). It gives you the idea that this is going to be a book about passing the torch, changing the idea of what you think is the standard line between hero and villain, and how they interact with one another.

And then there’s the weird things. Hey, was that Kristof Doom? What is up with the Nighthawk subplot? And that big stone face at the end there, declaring, “My idol screams across the extra dimensions… walking decay… and so I await my sacrifice.” Now we’re moving from high science to cosmic concepts, where re-purposing just doesn’t cut it. One of the many reasons I love the Annihilation comics from Abnett and Lanning is because these are not just characters with a new coat of paint. In fact, in some cases they could just be all-new characters to begin with. Cosmic stories are more conceptual than character-driven, and that fits this style, so bring on the cosmic adventure, guys!

Okay, issue 2 has none of that. It’s actually more of the first, reinvention, and less of the second, cosmic thematics. This book is all about the new Masters of Evil or as they are referred to here, the “New Generation of Evil Bastards.” It’s catchy.

While the Teen Brigade tries to make the In-Betweener at home, and Darkhawk and pals seem to hover just at the edge of the plot, the Young Masters buy a fairly high-tech base from a Devlin D’Angelo, who was last seen in an older Joe Casey book, trying to get Bruce Banner to fix the Super-Adaptoid (it didn’t work). From their new base, they break into a Extechop location, searching for their Fisher King: Bullseye. Now, I don’t know what Bullseye was supposed to be guarding or have that would relate him to the Fisher King story referenced by the Executioner earlier because they never had a chance: Lady Bullseye shows up, shares a tender moment with the corpse of her namesake and tells the kids the line on the cover of the issue, “Children at play… you have no right to claim here.” It doesn’t flow lyrically, but the Young Masters get the hint and book it.

Oddities still remain. Devlin D’Angelo, wasn’t he murdered by the Super-Adaptoid back in Hulk #469? Where’s the big giant head go? The big scary bats from last issue, those seemed ridiculously easy to fight off. The Red Skull shows up, I guess to show the reader how real evil works, and the Darkhawk gang pick at the edges of the plot. It seems to me that Casey and Dragotta are working incredibly hard at something I don’t quite understand.

And there’s some disappointment in that. After all, it’s hard sometimes to read comics without adding in your own two cents or trying to guess the next piece of the puzzle. Our expectations can disappoint us more than the work itself. There was a time when I could calculate the exact script of WWE tag team matches. With some adjustments, different characters and stakes, there is still an underlying core of how this dance is supposed to go: you can start at random but eventually, the weaker partner of the face tag team is going to get cornered. He’ll be drug through a long series of exhausting moves until after one last reversal, he’ll crawl his way to the corner and tag in the stronger face. The stronger face will clean house, taking on the heel opponents and getting revenge for beating up on his pal. Finishers everywhere, then the three count, normally in the face’s favor. Seen it once, seen it a million times, but the moment they go off-book or try something new to the formula, my regular routine of action is thrown off. Strangely, I would find myself more disappointed than challenged, and that is just a shame.

We love comics, no one disputes this. No matter how much they piss us off or change up our routine, we love them and keep coming back because the challenge is everything. The idea of “what comes next” is the cornerstone of serialized fiction. Each issue comes with the promise of something more than we had before. Even if we guess and make conjectures and research and put facts on the table, it’s not just the creator’s job to prove us wrong or right, but also to tell us a story so good that we can’t wait to do it all over again.

Fear Itself #7

You guys.

We did it.

This is, quite possibly, the best it’s ever going to get. Two opening weekends of more than $65 million from Marvel Studios movies this summer, Thor and Captain America, combined with the $55 million from X-Men: First Class … I feel like I want to go buy a jet ski! We really did own the box office this year, and I am so proud to see the House of Ideas forge their own path in Hollywood and come out on top for staying close to the stories we adore and yet still forging entirely new ones for a new generation.

Then there’s print media. I know, it’s a weird time to be looking ahead to October, because events tend to end around this time of year, if not simply reveal their catastrophically shocking twists. So the solicitations have shed a lot of words like trees shedding leaves, both leaving us with the bare branches of what will later flower in the spring with … well, whatever next big story will dazzle the public.

I will be honest with you, gentle reader; this one will be a little bare as a snapshot of Marvel’s titles in October. Add to this that I wasn’t at Comic-Con this year, so I can’t exactly report or add info I heard at the show. The good news is that CBR is the most dashing and handsome news site out there, so you can catch all the coverage here.

Thanks to the seasonal shift that event books create, there’s a lot of stuff we just can’t say or know about until we hold those issues in our hot little hands. On the other hand, you can’t keep everything a mystery without the public going to town on speculation, so let’s delve int the unknown of October and see what Marvel has around this corner.

First up is the last issue of Fear Itself. Marvel tells us stuff that’s been established from ads and Comic-Con (I hear that was nice): that Iron Man’s made some cool new armor for his pals and that Thor’s Day is the day that everything ends, plus the hint that there will be a “a little something extra for the keen eye.” Speaking of keen eyes, can I ask a general question about the front cover layouts? I’m kind of digging this middle title placement, the color-coded release months and the covers that, for all intents and purposes, show you directly what’s going to happen in this book. Considering past reformatting of the comic book cover, I think Fear Itself is a very well-designed package that was easy to sell customers and organize in the back-issue bins. Good job, guys!

Fear Itself: The Home Front #7

In other Fear Itself news, we’ll be wrapping up all sorts of bits and ends, from major battles (New Mutants #32), to character pieces set with in the main storyline getting their time in the sun (Invincible Iron Man #509), to old history being put to rest within the new history being created (Fear Itself: The Home Front #7, The Mighty Thor #7) and then, of course, good old-fashioned team formation/destruction. To be destroyed are the guys from Youth in Revolt, the “New Initiative” characters as they’re called, and what exactly we’re going to do with all of these people we stood up and brushed off for Civil War, then sort of forgot about when the bigger shinier toys came along. Don’t get me wrong, I grew to really like Fear Itself: Youth In Revolt after the first issue or so, but I don’t see this continuing. On the other hand, Fear Itself: The Home Front #7 is hinting that ” X-23, Power Man, Amadeus Cho, Thunderstrike & Spider-Girl” might “form an all-new team of young heroes” which is totally a book I see making it out alive. That’s nearly a Junior New Avengers league right there, with a lot of faces who have been breakout stars of other books, so there might be something young and hip rising out of the ashes of Fear Itself.

Journey Into Mystery #629 & #630 give both an idea of conclusion to the adventures of Lil’ Loki in Fear Itself and the start of maybe a Voltagg-centric run on the title. Sure, a one-off story on Volstagg could also be the case, but it would be neat to not only get an anthology book started for the ancient adventure that the Warriors Three, Valkyrie and other Asgardian characters bring, but have a permanent place for story ideas to germinate outside of major books. Want to write a Volstagg story, but it would get in the way of major title story flow? Put it in Journey to Mystery and see how much interest you can get. If it’s super popular, give him a mini-series and see how that goes. Want to write a Doctor Strange story but don’t want to take up all of the New Avengers’ time? Put him in Journey into Mystery and then later take that story back with you to the title he’s hanging out in. Maybe put a little yellow box on the panel it’s mentioned with a note from, say, an editor about what issue that mentioned story came from- nah, they’d never do that! Madness!

The Fearless #1 is going to be twice a month (yikes!) and $2.99 (not so yikes) where Matt Fraction, Cullen Bunn and Chris Yost will be giving us our post-Fear Itself wrap up of the Marvel Universe, as “CLASSIFIED.” I told you it would be a short one this week.

Incredible Hulk #1 will have the absolutely bone-chilling Jason Aaron teamed with the incredible art of Marc Silvestri to “CLASSIFIED.” Might be time to break out the Mad Libs.

Amazing Spider-Man #671

Oh hey! Over in Ultimate town, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #3 might tell us who is behind the new Spider-Man mask? Taking a step away from “CLASSIFIED,” the Ultimate universe does look to be shaping up from what it once was and what it eventually became. Aside from ol’ Webhead’s identity, the concepts seem to be boiling back down to something movie-styled (Hawkeye’s new look, the X-Men thought terrorists, etc.) and will certainly return to being a great stop for film fans looking to read a comic fresh off the stands. I have hope, gentle reader.

Spider-Island will wrap up in Amazing Spider-Man #671 & #672 (with a little Mary Jane gets spider-powers thrown into the mix), leaving two orphaned books of its own: Spider-Island: Cloak & Dagger #3 and Spider-Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #3. These tie-ins are 50/50; on one hand, they could be ultimately superfluous and simple character pieces that will delight fans of these characters and/or might lure a few new ones in to the fold. On the other hand, they could be key issues later as to when these guys are showcased to their next book. Clock & Dagger always comes up as a title people want to see and Spider-Island could be the springboard they need to try out some solo stuff. Shang-Chi is even in the new Secret Avengers, so he might take some story with him out of his Spider-Island stuff. It’s tricky.

on the right, it's NIGHTCRAWLER!

Personally, I’m pretty sure the big news from Marvel in October is going to be the fallout and restructuring from X-Men: Schism. Most interestingly enough, X-Men: Regenesis has billed a choice I did not expect: “When the dust settles from the X-Men’s Schism, a line has been drawn, and every mutant must choose. Who will they follow — XXXXXX or Wolverine?” Bwaaaah? XXXXXX? Have we lulled ourselves into a false sense of security, thinking this fight was between Cyclops and Wolverine when really it was XXXXXX all along? If so, nice curve ball, guys, now my mind is a flutter for all the possibilities this new choice might bring! Magneto? Emma Frost? Xavier fits the amount of letters, but if he has to step in, what does Wolverine do to cause so deep a rift that the big guy has to get up and order him out? What about Utopia? See, this is a great solicitation because my mind is racing to keep up with what it’s delivering and I can generate interest in that back at the local comic shop.

Even better: Wolverine & The X-Men #1 as awesome silhouettes on its cover! OH HOLY CATS, NIGHTCRAWLER!? No one say a thing about ‘oh death is stupid didn’t he just die lol’ because this is exactly what death is for in comics. To change the game up, to give characters some recuperation time from their own continuity and for some fine dramatic revelation. Nice job, X-Guys.

What did you enjoy? Are you super-excited for the John Carter of Mars comics Marvel with publish along side Disney’s new film? Has the new Ghost Rider jazzed you enough that a confrontation between her and Johnny Blaze has you marking a date on your calender? Has the upcoming Avengers roster change started an office betting pool? Which reprint is more amazing, the Marvel Firsts: The 1960s trade paperback or the X-Men #1: 20th Anniversary Edition all the way from that ancient time they call 1991? Take a look at the solicitations for Marvel Comics in October and tell us what you think in the comments below. Excelsior!

I wonder what happens in this issue....

Sorry for the graphic title, Gentle Readers.  

I’m sure you get the idea: last week, Ultimate Spider-Man #160 gave us the final chapter in the long-awaited “Death of Spider-Man” storyline. That’s long awaited because the prelude kicked us off in February and we’ve been talking about the “Death of Spider-Man” as a future storyline since before that so no one really should take this as a shock that Peter Parker perishes. It wasn’t called the “Death of Captain America” until those Captain America issues were in trade and Fantastic Four’s “Three” is still just labeled “3″ on the cover so the mystery of who bites it there is still under wraps. There’s an air of ‘whodunnit’ with those issues, questions that I have personally seen lure the curious new reader to the stands. With the Ultimate “Death of Spider-Man” written on a bevy of covers for the past few months, sometimes even more prominently than the book’s actual title, I don’t see what the polybag was for.

Why note this book at all? Yeah, it’s the murder of the guy whose name’s on the cover, but a polybag? What secret within could be worth wrapping in plastic? The cover spoils the end results! There’s no secret to keep but how Spider-Man dies and, after cutting my way into another comic, that’s not even a secret worth keeping.

So why the hoopla? Why the trending and interviews and rather somber occasion for an event that everyone’s known about for months thanks to tireless campaigning and announcements? Perhaps why they’ve revealed their shocking ending now and not for so long was because the Ultimate Spider-Man title’s been dead for a lot longer than this final issue.

WARNING: Hey guys. Spider-Man dies in Ultimate Spider-Man #160. I know, I know, we’re all surprised but below I’m going to talk a little about how he died so I suppose a spoiler warning is the polite thing to do. Just in case.

Lois Lane mourns the loss of Superman

Right, so when I was young and naive, I bought into the “Death of Superman” hype despite not really knowing much about Superman or DC Comics, for that matter. This was in my carefree Trekkie comics phase so the Man of Steel was absolutely beyond me aside from what I had been told by the Donner films or an episode or two of Lois and Clark. I got the most collector-y issue I could find and debated with myself on whether or not I should ever know its contents. After a long, agonizing lunch break, I carefully cut it open and removed the collector’s black armband with an archeologist’s care. When I finally got to the comic, I promised myself one read and then it would go back into the polybag and, of course, someday pay for my college education.

Superman #75 is a mess. Just a big fight-y mess and in the end, I didn’t know why Superman had died at all. All the emotion and grief from Lois Lane in that infamous splash page felt empty, and I was left more disappointed than whatever I had imagined the story would be like. Now older and a little wiser, I know it’s important to get the issues before to understand a comic like this and that, at the time, the biggest, baddest fight could trump any artful assassination shot that we might catch today. Superman fought very hard until he couldn’t anymore, and that was that. Yeah, Hulk Hogan can trounce any man in the squared circle, but every now and then he takes a shocking bump for the heel that has the announcers demanding the match be stopped and swearing his demise.

Mary Jane mourns the loss of Spider-Man

Ultimate Spider-Man #163 reminds me a lot of Superman #75: a beat-up and desperate Spider-Man is fighting a souped-up Green Goblin, and wreckage is everywhere. People are being desperately saved left and right as the Goblin ruthlessly pursues a tattered and torn Peter Parker. It’s a fight, and you’ve seen these fights before. Mary Jane totally drives a moving truck into our villain, and still he relentlessly comes at Peter. Eventually, Peter picks up said moving truck and smashes it on top of the Green Goblin, the truck explodes and Peter seems to finally rest as he dies on the lawn outside his house with Aunt May, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy and Bobby Drake.

If I had just picked up this issue, I’d be a little disappointed. Yeah, Spider-Man had been shot in the issues leading up to that comic, but the man’s been moving with a gun shot in the side for quite some issues (yeah, he even took the bullet for Captain America; if he had gotten trapped in the Negative Zone to die fighting the Green Goblin, I think that’s a triple death score or something). Sure he had to fight all of his rogue’s gallery leading up to the final fight with the Green Goblin (Oh yeah, that is a little like Knightfall!), but to have him there, quietly on the lawn he probably mowed last week? It’s a nice, quiet end, but it doesn’t seem worth the hype.

To me the polybag isn’t about the shocking secrets inside, it’s about everything that came before this one pocket in Ultimte Spider-Man. Every single issue before, not just this storyline, has been heading toward this pristine moment, and it started about two years ago with the Clone Saga. Before then, the Ultimate Spider-Man title was the perfect place for new readers looking for easy, off-the-cuff adventures of their friendly neighborhood hero, and old readers looking to escape the convoluted history of Peter Parker and remember a simpler time, before the ’90s. It sold remarkably well at my shop, mostly from the diligence of the store manager at the time, but also through the need to have a fresh start for readers. The Clone Saga is when I remember the book starting to feel unfinished, like this might have been a storyline that we should have just left for the ages and not tried a revamp with. The book kept going, eventually becoming a Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends-style book with Kitty Pryde, Bobby Drake and Johnny Storm hanging out at his place after “Ultimatum.”

“Ultimatum” was good for the book in some ways, as Bendis did an award-winning job with an abysmal situation by filling out his cast of characters and making a more teen-styled book after the gruesome carnage in Loeb’s final chapter. It also never quite got to where it was before all of this, just our hero Spider-Man, being Spider-Man, doing Spider-Man things and rethinking through a lot of old stories that still resonated with us after all these years. The Ultimate Spider-Man book we started with has been gone for a long time.

It’s funny, when I set out to write this piece I thought it was going to be short. Just a few words about the obvious Death of Spider-Man and the odd fascination we have for the contents within a polybag, but now, there’s some sadness over the loss of a book that started out as a Gold Standard long before they added some foil to the covers. A runaway hit no one thought would be successful enough to see four issues, let alone 160, that I think started us thinking about comics in a new way. And as we look ahead to the all new, all different Ultimate Spider-Man ahead, I hope some of the magic returns for the readers and cretaors, too.

Good job, Ultimate Spider-Man. It’s time to rest.