Is it time for Marvel NOW?

- by ReuBen DeBord, 21 August 2012

Sometime ago we had an article about how to deal with the realisation that Marvel kinda sucks now. One of the reasons behind it was the whole "Marvel NOW!", the next big thing in the Marvel Universe. But what exactly is Marvel NOW!? What will change? What will it brings us? Well, we contacted our friend, ReuBen DeBord, who will be our special guest writer today and tell us all about Marvel NOW! and what he thinks about it, in this highly detailed and in-depth article!

Hi, there! You may have never heard of me before, but I’ve been here in spirit for a long time. I am here today to talk a little bit about comic books. To narrow things down, Marvel Comics has recently announced that they are trying something called Marvel NOW! As opposed to DC Comics’ reboot at about this time last year, where every single title was canceled, and most of the titles basically started off from scratch, taking bits and pieces of the now-discarded continuity, this is not that at all. For one thing, we are not canceling every single title put out by Marvel Comics. And in fact, this event isn’t really a “reboot” like the New 52 was. This is more of a convenient time for anyone who isn’t reading any of these characters to jump on, all at once. I can point at any time in history where X-Men might have a brand new creator on the title, and the beginning of his run might be a great place for old and new fans to jump on if they haven’t been reading. But this really does feel like they’re trying to capture that and put it down on multiple titles across the board.

New creators who, as far as I know, haven’t worked on these titles before, and new numberings, so that it’s not AS confusing for new readers (long time fans may hate the renumberings, and I won’t lie, there are some things to hate about it, but at the same time, evidence does seem to show that the sales spike when a renumbering happens. And I can only assume that Marvel hopes to capture those people who like buying number ones, and then entice them to keep coming back with number 2s, 3s, and 4s).

So that’s Marvel NOW! in a nutshell. I have seen just a couple of reactions to this kind of thing from people on the internet who I follow, but I thought I’d throw out my own response to this thing as well. I like to think that I’m pretty good at being objective about this, to the point where, when I say that I might not be excited for a specific title that is part of this thing, I will at least say why, and hopefully my reasons are valid and cogent ones. Having said that, let’s jump right in and talk about each of the books that are part of this upcoming renumbering.

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First off, there’s UNCANNY AVENGERS. Written by Rick Remender with art by John Cassaday. Interestingly enough, I’ve never read any of the mainstream stuff by Remender. In fact, the only thing I did read by him was a creator owned title from a couple of years ago that I was wildly unimpressed with. But despite my first impression of the man’s work, I have heard nothing but positive squeals of joy about this guy’s work. People I listen to have constantly been talking up his Venom solo series, his Uncanny X-Force series, and, in a lesser manner, his Secret Avengers work. So at the very least, this title should see an influx of people who liked those books, in theory. Me? I’ve never been an Avengers fan. I have a limited amount of knowledge about the team or its history, and the longer I read comics,  the less interested I find myself being in the team.

But this is a brand new jumping on point. In theory, this should be the perfect time for me to get into the Avengers. So what’s the deal? Well, it’s not that I hate the Avengers or anything. I have a couple of books from here and there. I mainly like the low-key teams. When you have not so much the Thors, Iron Men and Captains, but the Tigras, Scarlet Witches, Quicksilvers, etc. In other words, I like the Avengers team to consist of characters who are not also in at least one solo title. This title, upon looking at some previews for the cover, has Captain America and Thor in it. And then the Scarlet Witch and 3 X-Men characters.

I hope to talk about why I am not a fan of the X-Men any more here in a little bit when I get to those announcements. But this basically looks like it’s going to be tackling the relationship between the Avengers and the X-Men after this AVX thing (it’s probably not a happy one). And that will include what the X-Men think of the Scarlet Witch, which is also probably not very nice. I didn’t like House of M, and an ongoing series that, from my own perspective, looks like it will tackle the ramifications of House of M, that doesn’t look like a book I would want to read. I feel like that’s a few reasons why I will not be picking it up (heck, it IS a few reasons). But maybe you’ll be picking it up if you felt less strongly about House of M, or if you really enjoy Remender’s work, or if you like the Avengers even a little bit.

IRON MAN. Written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Greg Land. I haven’t read much from Gillen. I think I read an arc or two of Thor after J Michael Straczynski left, but I just remember thinking it was decent. I don’t remember being blown away, or wanting to punch the wall. Add that to my less than enthusiastic response to Iron Man period (I don’t hate him, but I definitely do not get all the fan frothing over him. I guess I think he’s over rated, especially since the movie came out). So far, 2 neutrals. But Greg Land. I won’t go into a full on rage here, but Land has no business working in comics. I won’t lie to you and say that there was a possibility of me reading this book if a different artist had been on it. But let me make it clear that Land’s presence on this book certainly isn’t helping matters. This title is a skip for me, and sadly it looks like it was a skip from square one.

CAPTAIN AMERICA. Written by Rick Remender and drawn by John Romita, Jr. I am pretty wishy washy on Romita Jr, (didn’t like his work on, say, Spider-Man with JMS, but I loved loved loved his work on Hulk with Bruce Jones) but color me excited for him doing art on this book. I’ve already covered my experiences with Rick Remender. As for Cap himself. I never really had the desire to get into Captain America. And then Ed Brubaker came on the book…wow, back in 2004? Pretty much as soon as he got on the book, I began hearing so much praise for the title. And I wanted to get the trades. But I’m weird, because I like to wait until the entire “story” is finished before I jump in a book. And for some reason, I was under the impression that Brubaker’s whole run was one giant story, as many creators tend to do when they have a lengthy run on a book.

So I kept waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And finally, he’s coming off Captain America…except that, 8 years later, I am kinda overwhelmed with how much Captain America I’d be getting if I actually did get his whole run, as I once thought I’d be doing. So anyway, now that we have another All Star writer coming on a character who is actually cool for one of the first times in his existence, thanks to Brubaker (ok, that’s a little unfair of me. I’ve heard some great things about Captain America from the 1960s and 1970s, but I’ve just never read it, yet), you better believe I’m gonna be picking this up.

Several months ago, I was talking with my guy at the Local Comic Shop. We were talking about Captain America. I said that, after Brubaker had been on the title for so long, whoever was going to follow him up was almost certainly going to go in a completely different direction than what Brubaker has been doing. I even talked about how Steve Englehart did a political story rooted in real world events on Captain America back in the 1970s, and then Jack Kirby followed him up with his typical Kirbyian crazieness, almost a complete 180 from what Englehart had done. And now it seems we’re getting something similar. Brubaker’s thing was the espionage stuff that would feel right at home in a James Bond movie. Remender looks like he’ll be tackling the biggest crazy ideas you could think of. And I don’t want to miss a minute of it. This is easily the title I’m looking forward to the most, out of this whole bunch.

Moving on, we have THOR: GOD OF THUNDER. Written by Jason Aaron, with art by Esad Ribic. I am not overly familiar with Aaron’s work. He’s about like Remender, for me, except that he’s been active longer. I’ve heard lots of good things about some of the stuff he’s done, and I liked at least one thing he wrote. But I’m not a follower, and I am not in the practice of following him onto titles that I otherwise wouldn’t read. I’m afraid that’s where we are with Thor: God of Thunder. I’m not a Thor fan, the movie didn’t do anything to persuade me to change my ways, and since I’m basically neutral on this creative team (Ribic has some cool art, but like Aaron, he won’t bring me on to a title if I am not planning on reading it anyway), this one is a skip for me. Unlike some of the other items on this list, I’m not exactly sure what the premise of this book is going to be.

If you’re more open minded than I am, then you might want to check this book out because, if you’re lucky, you’re in for a very solid enjoyable Thor title each month. It’ll also probably help that you’re a fan of Thor, if you are planning on reading this book.

INDESTRUCTIBLE HULK. Written by Mark Waid, and drawn by Leinil Francis Yu. Kinda like Captain America, I’ve been wanting to get on Hulk for a long time. Ever since I read Planet Hulk, actually. But then we got a big companywide crossover, and since I am not a fan of those, and I was really just wanting something self contained like Planet Hulk, I didn’t bother with that. And then we had Rulk, which I read an issue of, and from everything I ever saw, it looked absurd. And then we got multiple titles, featuring sons, red she hulks, red savage she hulks, red he hulks, normal hulks, etc. And it all just looked too much, for me. Then I heard that Jason Aaron was doing some really great stuff on Hulk, and I wanted to get on that, because it seemed to me that he was taking away all the bells and whistles that had accumulated over the last few years, and was sorta taking things back to basics, while still simplifying things.

But I guess I heard about it too late, because I still haven’t read any of his run, and now they’re replacing him, just over a year later. But I like Mark Waid. A lot. And even though I do not like Yu’s art (I’ve never liked it, sorry fans), I can stomach his art if I’m getting a good not-confusing idiotic Hulk title from Mark Waid. The idea of Hulk wearing armor or something like that, it is a little weird to me, but sign me up. This would be the other book I’m really excited for, out of all of this batch.

FANTASTIC FOUR. Written by Matt Fraction, and drawn by Mark Bagley. Ok, I’ve only recently become a Fervent Fantastic Four Fan (not gonna lie, it probably has something to do with me no longer having X-Men to sleep with at night, so I’m looking for a replacement lover). And I am absolutely in love with the fact that this series, for a good 40 years, you didn’t need a brain implant to understand the order of events or which book takes place where, like seems to be the case with X-Men and my other great love (rhymes with Shmatman). It was only within the last few years that Jonathan Hickman added a second FF title to happen concurrently with the old one (Ok, nobody remembers Fantastic Force, or cares about it for the month and a half it lasted). But anyway, I’ve been loving all of the old Fantastic Four stuff that I’ve been catching up on, to the point where, so far, I haven’t even found a bad story. So there’s no way I’m letting this title escape me.

As for the creative team, Bagley is ok. I liked his work on Ultimate Spider-Man, but in other places I’ve been less impressed. And Fraction, he’s another of these creators who I have heard loads of praise for, but everything I’ve read so far from him was pretty terrible, I thought. So we’ll see. He might make me not want to read Fantastic Four. Which would be terrible.

FF, also by Fraction, and this time drawn by Michael Allred, is, I guess, the companion title, since they're both written by Fraction. If I had to pick between these two titles, I’d probably go for the one with the traditional team lineup. The weird She-Hulk, Ant-Man, whoever else is on this team thing is almost too bizarre for me. I’ve never really had a problem with replacing one or even two members of the team for a brief period of time (like adding She-Hulk to the team back in the 1980s, or replacing Sue and Reed with Black Panther and Storm after Civil War), but to just create an entirely different team seems weird to me. Like, why even call it the FF? Individually, I don’t hate purple-haired Thing, or Medusa or whatever, but this just doesn’t really have much to make me want to read it. I’ll already be getting my dose of Fantastic Four from the real Fantastic Four.

And even though I want to make babies with Allred’s art, that won’t keep me reading if this book is bad, or even underwhelming. But unlike some of the others I’ve talked about so far, I will at least give this one a shot. But it’s the one that I think I will drop first, just based on what I’m seeing so far. But you never know. It could kick lots of butt.

Moving on, we have ALL-NEW X-MEN. Written by Brian Michael Bendis, art & cover by Stuart Immomen. Now I guess is as good a time as any to talk about my ambivalence on the X-titles. Long story short (it is a long story), I haven’t been enthused for any of the X-books since around the time House of M happened, even though I lasted for a couple more years after that. And I’m sorry to say that most of the X-stuff that’s coming out of this renumbering (ok, two of the three X-books) don’t look like they are going to impress me. For one, I’m not a fan of Brian Michael Bendis. I don’t much care for the way he takes  6 issues to tell a story  that could  have been told in 3, without all the fluff. I haven’t read much from him beyond the big events that he’s helmed, like Siege and House of M, but needless to say, I wasn’t a fan of either of those. And now he’s got his own X-Men book.

I wasn’t very happy to hear that he’d be taking over an X-book several months ago, when this was announced, and now that we have the premise, I’m still not sold. From what everyone can tell, it looks like at least a couple of the original X-Men are coming forward into the future (our present) to join a team of X-Men now. I’ve heard some reports say that the entire original team is coming from the past to our present, and I’ve seen confirmation of at least 3. So…I don’t really hate nor like this premise. Usually, I like time travel. I like it when it’s a character from the present coming to the future, or if it’s a character from the future going to the present. But we never see a whole lot of coming from the past to the present, at least if it involves characters who we know. I guess the whole reason we don’t see this is that, as far as I can tell, it logistically makes no sense. It seems to me that, as soon as the original X-Men return to the 1960s, where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were creating their adventures, the present day would immediately be altered. It seems like that’s how time travel has always worked, in the Marvel Universe.

So unless the Men in Black will be stopping by to erase their memories (and if they do, then what’s the point of even using them?), then I can’t see any way that this will work. If I wanted to be cynical about it, I could say that Bendis just needs some characters with blank slates so that he doesn’t have to slavishly adhere to 50 years of stories. But…no. This title looks entirely skipable to me. Immomen is a guy who I like on almost everything I read, but even he can’t persuade me to read this. And on top of all that…why does Marvel seem to think that the X-Men and the Avengers need to be merged into one big huge franchise? The X-Men franchise was already huge and sprawling enough…did we really need to add the Avengers to the mix? A franchise which, I might add, has only gotten to be so big and huge in the last 8 years or so, when Bendis was writing them.

I am kinda wondering if Bendis just didn’t want to lose his darlings after so long, and so he’s got an “X-MEN” title that is actually predominantly Avengers. This and Uncanny Avengers just makes me want to quit comics cold turkey. I was already iffy on the X-Men for reasons too numerous to get into here, but now it looks like if you actually like the X-Men, then you have 2 or 3 places to get your fix, (which, let’s be honest, that should be enough for anyone. 13 X-Men books is way too much, when you count solo titles and the 645 team books) since the other titles are actually Avengers titles that are erroneously titled as X-Men books.

X-MEN: LEGACY. Written by Si Spurrier and drawn by Tan Eng Huat. I have never heard of Spurrier before, and I don’t think anyone else has either. I like Huat’s art, but I don’t really “love” it, like other artists on this list (Mike Allred, the offer to make babies with your artwork still stands). Basically, out of the 3 X-Men related titles that this renumbering has brought us, this is the only one I’ll be checking out. Not for any particular love of the X-Men, or because of any experience or expectations with Spurrier. But because I miss actually loving the X-Men. I want this to be good, and since I have nothing but bile to spill over the other two on this list, let’s hope I don’t crawl away disappointed. I think this is also the title that nobody really has anything to say, since it looks like the only thing Marvel is willing to say, so far, is that Legion will be the focus of the title.

DEADPOOL will be written by Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan, with art provided by Tony Moore. This is probably the title that I’m the least interested in. Sure, there are titles in this renumbering that I won’t be picking up, and plenty of them have evoked negative feelings from me, but I just have nothing to say about Deadpool. I don’t like Deadpool, largely because, for almost as long as I’ve been reading, there has been an inordinate amount of fanage for this character, and like Iron Man, I cannot figure out why. He’s not funny, to me, nor have I ever found his sense of humor funny. I definitely don’t get why he needs his own title, but I guess it’d be foolish for him to NOT have his own title, since there are crowds and crowds of people willing to throw money at this character.

Basically, I imagine that putting a non-comic book writer on the book will be a good thing that will inject some sales into this title (think of the times this has been done in the past. Joss Whedon on Astonishing X-Men, Brad Meltzer on JLA, if you wanna take it really old school, or the upcoming Batman story by Damon Lindelof). Posehn and Duggan are comedians, from what I gather, so that’ll be a good thing on their resume to have when they are writing a character who SHOULD be funny. So yeah, from a technical point of view, I see no reason why this title should do bad. I just can’t think of a title that I have less interest in than this one.

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So that’s that. From these titles, I’ll be picking up 5, in trades, at least tentatively. From there, who knows what’ll happen. But I think that I will have more luck staying on these titles than I will be on the DC books that were relaunched a year ago.

One thing that made me very happy about this renumbering thing was that Marvel said that these creative teams will basically be on the books until they are done with the story they want to tell. That pleases me. So far, on the DC side of this same basic thing, they’ve been canceling titles 4 issues in, or replacing writers, or writers have been leaving in anger. It’s a very sloppy way to do business, just from what I’ve seen. I’m glad we’re not going to be seeing an announcement in 2 months that Nick Spenser will be replacing Mark Waid on Hulk or something like that. A creative team staying on a title for a kinda long time makes me more interested in getting invested in that character.

So what do you think? What titles are you most interested in reading from the Marvel NOW! announcements? What do you think of the fact that they are renumbering again? Do you think this’ll be more or less successful than DC’s New 52?

ReuBen DeBord has written a few things on the internet. On the wunderkind of a website, the Essential Webcomics Showcase, he has written a few pieces you may have heard of, such as "50 Reasons why I hate Smallville", and his ongoing series called “If It’s Broken, they won’t fix it.” If you don’t feel like waiting 5 months for him to put something on that website, then you can go to Mickey’s Tavern, where he does reviews twice a week. This is where you can see him review movies, comics and things that are just kinda related to this corner of pop culture.

Outside of his writing, there are rumors that ReuBen is a surviving clone of some kind. Either from the Clone Wars, or an unknown from Peter Parker’s past. Either way, he’s pretty crazy. It’s a good thing he focuses 95 percent of his energy in writing stuff for the internet.

Tagged: comics.

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