Quick thoughts on SECRET WARS

Hey pals, been a while, I know. Just some quick thoughts to get them off my chest on the details we've heard so far on SECRET WARS.

Axel Alonso and Tom Brevoort held a press conference this past week to clear the air a little and take a few questions about SECRET WARS, the Jonathan Hickman-helmed book that promises to break down the Marvel Universe (with an assist, it seems, by a couple of fateful incursions and the development of a patchwork planet called Battleworld). Alonso and Brevoort were a little dodgy on the details, of course, and refused to give an answer about whether or not this would constitute as a "reboot," as many fans are fearing. Of course, reboot is a pretty broad category to apply to something that could be very specific, so I doubt that's what Marvel is doing, particularly given how successful the line is and how successful the company as a whole is right now. Doesn't mean I don't think they're aiming to significantly change things. I don't think this is going to be a Stan Lee-style mandate of "appearance of change leading to no change." I think there will be a serious reshuffling but the cards will all remain in the deck.

That said, of course I'm nervous about it. As readers, we all feel a certain (misguided) ownership over these characters and these histories. Events in total scare me and oftentimes disappoint me. Big broad changes are worrying, certainly, but I think we all have to trust in the system that's given us such great comics through the years (and, particularly to this situation, through the most recent years). If the creators are all still there and the talent, especially the talent in finding such talent, remains, the product should remain good.

The other less-worrying part, at least in the immediate, is Jonathan Hickman. Jonathan Hickman has been writing absolutely excellent comics for years now and I don't think he's ever been stronger than he is right now, in this moment in time. After completing a very interesting FANTASTIC FOUR run with Marvel, he's done excellent work with both AVENGERS and NEW AVENGERS (not to mention INFINITY, easily the best event of the event-strewn last few years) and unbelievable work on other, non-Marvel creations like THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS and EAST OF WEST. Speaking of EAST OF WEST (I usually am), I looked at the interactive Battleworld map Marvel has put on their SECRET WARS site and immediately began to think about EAST OF WEST, a comic set in a world with a very different timeline and, as such, a very different map. For my money (and I've spent enough of it, thanks), EAST OF WEST is the best book to come out these last few years and one of my favorite ever. Hickman certainly won't be porting his creator-owned book over to the Marvel continuity, but it's reassuring to know he's definitely up to the task of running a full-fledged new world. The tie-ins, sure, they worry me, and the release schedule as a whole is sure to flummox all of us (though, going back to INFINITY, Marvel has obviously gotten better at explaining which books tie to what), but there is reason for hope.

So final thoughts? Yes, I'm very nervous. I adore these characters. That's why I ran this blog into the dang ol' ground for two years (and haven't given up on any of this, obviously). That's what brought me to Marvel and to comics in the first place. But change and evolution is necessary, and Hickman is more than capable of using a steady hand to guide that change. We'll see how much this actually brings.

Geez, as much as I've enjoyed a bit of time off, it seems like Marvel is saying "don't worry about it, take some time for yourself" because BOY plenty of the comics they've released since I've stopped have ranged from bad to mediocre. Higher expectations for this week (also haven't yet read last week's X-FORCE and ROCKET RACCOON because I haven't had time to get the physical copies yet). Also, I can't help but enjoy SPIDER-VERSE. That's an update!

Blog News

Hello my friends,

Eagle-eyed readers will no doubt recognize that I have all but stopped posting entirely over the last couple weeks, save for one post about cancelled books (still a pity). Here's the thing: working a full-time job and living a full-time life makes reviewing every major Marvel release every week somewhat untenable. It's a wall I've been up against for six or so months now but one I stubbornly refused to acknowledge for much of that time, leading to many late and hurried posts as the year has gone on. As such, despite my desire to make it two years straight reviewing every issue (WHY would anyone want to do that?? Even as I type that, it sounds more insane and OCD than just about anything else I've ever done), I'm cutting myself off.

There are plenty of issues that come with reviewing so many comics so often. The first is, of course, the time dedicated to it. I love writing and I love comics so that was a sacrifice I was willing to make, particularly when I was job-hunting and otherwise unoccupied. As the obligations of my day-to-day life ramped up, my time for comic reviewing quickly nosedived (I could make a graph and it would be...well, it'd be what you'd expect). The second (and perhaps more important to me) issue is that reviewing every single comic makes you kind of hate comics. As I said above, and as the very existence of this blog for the last nearly two years should prove, I love comics. I've always been someone enamored with story and especially with characters. There's something absolutely magical about the entire comic conceit, particularly seen in superhero comics. Thanks to the serial nature of the product, we've gotten to see characters grow and change with the times. A character created 70 years ago but still going today will very clearly have some peaks and valleys, the way that any real human would. Sure, the stories are fantastical and plenty of the changes have been outlandish for certain characters, but there's no other medium that I know that has the ability to evolve like this. There's an argument to be made against stories lasting so long and I absolutely understand and often agree with that argument, but watching a character travel from writer to writer and from artist to artist over actual generations is something awe-inspiring to me. As the weeks went on, I found myself dreading books I'd have to read and regretting the time I was spending on comics (an argument could be made about the time I spend on fiction anyway, but at least I personally wasn't making it) and particularly on comics I don't like while comics I really wanted to read from other publishers sat there unread (yes, I see you BLACK SCIENCE and FATALE). It's a place I don't want to be.

So what does this all mean for the blog? That's a little harder to explain (and maybe why I should have waited on this very post, but I didn't want to let this poor blog just sit and stagnate longer without reason). The ultimate plan is to go bigger. I know. Stupidly, my response to "the work is piling up too quickly and I can't handle it" is "I should do more." But it won't really be "I should do more." It'll be "we should do much more." Whatever form the next step takes will come with added help and probably a shifted focus. I certainly won't review every book every week (another flaw with that method, while we're finding more and more, is that many books are being released more frequently, meaning I was reviewing the same series a couple times a month and things weren't changing enough to actually make for a meaningful review), rather probably focusing on a few books every week. There will be more to it but I can't really reveal details until we've made a few more decisions. As ever, I will keep you posted.

Finally, as this blog ends or morphs into the new project, I want to again deeply thank everyone who has ever come by here. Whether you were a regular reader, someone who somehow managed to find this blog despite poor SEO, a friend or a friend of a friend checking Twitter at the right time, someone with Google alerts for the phrase "Marvel cancels" (I've been redirected to my own site from that particular phrase), someone drawn here to snag a cover image from one of my reviews, it doesn't matter. Whatever brought you here, whether it encouraged you to stay or not, thank you. As much as I tell myself this blog is simply an exercise for writing more often or for letting people see my writing or just to say things I want to say, I'd be lying if the entertainer part of me didn't want constant attention. It's nice feeling like I'm not just shouting into a vacuum about how much I don't like ALL-NEW INVADERS (I'm not reviewing right now but guys, this last week's issue was really bad). So again, thank you.

I'll let you guys know more as things develop (or, hey, even as they don't) and please feel free to keep checking in over here for little updates I feel like giving about this or about the comics world (as I start to switch things over, I expect I'll still want some sort of a platform on which to talk about comics). As ever, thank you once again.

Tim Nicastro
Marvels: A Marvel Comic Blog That Often Fails To Review Movies In Any Meaningful Way

Disappointing news out of Marvel

Hey everyone. Some of the bits of news that have come out this week, on the heels of February solicits, include the ending of Waid and Samnee's run on DAREDEVIL, the cancellation of ELEKTRA (slated to end with issue 11 in February), and several more books that seem to be wrapping (though I don't have links for those), including X-FORCE (brutal) and STORM (though I'm not hearing that that one's actually being cancelled, just that the numbers are much lower than they'd like). DAREDEVIL, it sounds like, is ending based on Waid and Samnee wanting to move on, but the others all seem to be numbers-based. One of those sad days where really good books aren't getting enough eyes on them and are being dropped, undoubtedly, for more events.

Bit of internal news, I doubt there will be many more reviews this week. I've read just about every book this week and many are very good (DAREDEVIL, BLACK WIDOW, ELEKTRA, AVENGERS, NEW AVENGERS, MOON KNIGHT, SPIDER-WOMAN, and several more) but, as you all know, it's getting harder and harder to get these reviews out on time. We'll see what the start of this week brings.

Amazing Spider-Man 10

Amazing Spider-Man 10
Slott (w) and Coipel (p) and Von Grawbadger (i) and Ponsor (c) and Eliopoulos (l)

A team of Spiders led by the Superior Spider-Man enter the Ultimate Universe to rescue Miles Morales and that universe's Jessica Drew from Verna of the Inheritors. Superior Spider-Man leads them back to the 2099 Universe, where a number of Spiders including the newly onboard "true" Peter Parker, Miguel O'Hara, Spider-Woman, Kaine and some others go to bring them into the cosmically guarded alternate Earth. Unfortunately, the mass influx of Spiders in the 2099 Universe (and particularly the draw of Silk, who wasn't supposed to tag along with Peter but did) brings a handful of Inheritors to the 2099, only for Superior Spider-Man to kill what ends up being a clone of Daemos and managing to get away with the body. Teams of the various Spiders split off and begin setting out on different goals, meant to throw us into such tie-ins as SPIDER-WOMAN, SCARLET SPIDERS, and SPIDER-MAN 2099. As Peter leads Superior Spider-Man and a couple others back to the cosmically protected universe, Doc Ock decrees that he is in charge during this war.

SPIDER-VERSE continues with another pretty strong outing (not least helped by the impressive Olivier Coipel on pencils). What's particularly weird about my reaction to this book (and you all should know by now I largely review these books just based on reaction) was that I found myself really intrigued and, dare I say, excited about the tie-ins they were promising. It's hard to ignore (and I'm sure this is what the Spider-Man team at Marvel formed this event around) the multitude of really great Spiders in these universes. It's a curious thing as this event seems every bit as manufactured as AXIS ("let's get all the Spiders together!" vs. "let's make all the heroes into villains and vice versa!") but I'm far more willing to suspend disbelief on this one. I think that comes from a number of factors, starting with the idea that this impacts Spiders alone and can certainly be tied up neatly after the fact. AXIS (geez, I really need to get over this) bold-facedly claims to be a major event and feels instead like something that will be washed away with little problem and a solid forty bucks+ out of a lot of people's pockets (calculating the cost of AXIS just made me really sad). So yes, I'm enjoying this manufactured series more than I'm enjoying AXIS and, in fact, possibly a good deal more than that.

Total Score: 4/5

Marvel announces new HOWARD THE DUCK ongoing

Following a fun little cameo at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, Howard the Duck is making his return to Marvel comics in the form of a new ongoing written by hilarious SEX CRIMINALS artist Chip Zdarsky and drawn by the very talented Joe Quinones (CAPTAIN MARVEL, FF, SAVAGE WOLVERINE, a bunch of other things, several prints on my wall, many thanks for that). Like with the announcement of the new Squirrel Girl series, Marvel makes another smooth move by taking a bit of a joke character and putting a very funny Canadian in charge of the book (Zdarsky for HOWARD, Ryan North for SQUIRREL GIRL). I'd throw Skottie Young for ROCKET RACCOON on that list but I'm pretty sure he's not Canadian, though I believe he lives in one of those states on the border that isn't in New England. Anyway, I'm stalling a bit because I'm on my phone so my abilities are a bit limited. Segue! Here's a link: http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/11/21/marvel-announces-howard-the-duck-by-chip-zdarsky-and-joe-quinones/

Not going to say I'm not excited.

Avengers and X-Men: Axis 6

Avengers and X-Men: Axis 6
Remender (w) and T. Dodson (p) and R. Dodson (i) and Delgado and Aburtov (c) and Eliopoulos (l)

The X-Men have taken over Manhattan and have started to expel humans from the city, promising that soon, attempts at taking back the city would be met with violence, all while secretly building a gene-bomb that will soon kill everyone without the X-gene. Sabretooth and Mystique have learned of the bomb's existence and have joined with other inverted villains like Loki, Enchantress, and Carnage in a group assembled by Steve Rogers to set things right. Also, Scarlet Witch attacks a repentant Doom in Latveria.

Let me make one thing clear: there are some interesting dynamics here. I've talked in the past (though probably not for a year and a half now, since DARK AVENGERS) about a soft spot I have in my heart for alternate dimension stories. Because I'm a nerd, like you, and we like these possibilities. I think we like them even more in long-running comics because we so intimately know these characters that twisting them allows us to wonder, if I may, "what if...?" That's 100% what this feels like. So, you say, perhaps I've come around on AXIS? Nope. It feels like that but I don't want my mainstream universe to feel, at any point, like an alternate universe. That's why it's my mainstream and that's the appeal of an alternate. However, it does leave me in a weird position with this event where I'm able to recognize that maybe occasionally we need a big shift like this, even if it's only going to be righted a couple months down the road. However, this continues to feel very much like a shoe-horned "let's write heroes as villains and villains as heroes!" sort of pitch. I cannot respect that. Even if this wasn't billed as a major event and was instead advertised and sold as a WHAT IF...? or a separate alt-universe story or something like that (which, I understand, wouldn't sell at a fraction of an event), I'd be rolling my eyes at it. The complications are that some sort of marginally interesting plot is developing amidst this terrible premise and the tie-ins (which we'll, I'm assured, get to at some point this week) are a little more compelling than the main series (which occasionally happens, at least in my view, because it gives us a sense of how things are affecting our characters at a more personal level). At the end of the day though, my rating has to be based on whether this is worth reading? And guys, obviously it's not.

Total Score: 2/5