Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Marvel says “NO” to reboot, launches new Marvel NOW! titles this fall – UPDATED

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News of Marvel’s post-Avengers vs. X-Men plans has leaked, and it’s everything a fan could hope for – major creator changes, new titles, and an intact sense of Marvel’s over seven decades of superhero continuity!

A sneak peak at the future of Marvel from the pen of Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada.

How are they doing it? With Marvel NOW! – a relaunch of one new title a week for five months – 22 new books to stand along some long-running favorites. The official news breaks later today on EW.com, but it hit the web last night.

  • Avengers, written twice monthly by Jonathan Hickman
  • Uncanny Avengers, written by by Rick Remender with art by John Cassady!
  • X-Men, written by Brian M. Bendis

There are other rumored changeovers not covered by EW – namely, Bendis on Guardians of the Galaxy, Frank Cho on Wolverine, Ed McGuinness on Nova, Matt Fraction on Fantastic Four, plus Uncanny X-Men writer Kieron Gillen talking the helm of Iron Man. Plus, already-announced changes like James Asmus on Gambit, and Kelly Sue DeConnick on Captain Marvel starring Carol Danvers.

That’s just 10 of a rumored 22 titles!

What does that mean for readers? Let’s take a look.

Avengers by Jonathan Hickman

Marvel currently runs five Avengers titles separated by blurry lines, and it sounds like some of them will end this fall to make way for this twice-monthly monster.

Hickman is the Marvel architect that reinvented Fantastic Four as a smash hit with a story that spanned 50+ issues and more than quintupled the core cast, but still resolved into several brief, funny arcs. He’s also the author and designer of some mind-bending creator-owned work like Nightly News and Pax Romana. 

Now he’s unleashed on one of Marvel’s two big teams, with reportedly 18 characters in a mix of standalone adventures and cosmic smashes. Plus, his one potential weakness – a slowly unfolding meta-story – will be aided by an accelerated ship schedule – already a success on The Amazing Spider-Man.

This is the Avengers everybody wants to be reading after the movie, and it marks an even bigger cast and more prominent role for Hickman, who has yet to misfire. It’s going to be awesome.

Uncanny Avengers by Rick Remender

Remender’s Uncanny X-Force has been a hit since day one, especially because it focuses equally on its cast instead of only featuring Wolverine.

Holy total status quo change, Batman! While The Avengers have had their share of mutant members, Wolverine is the only full-time X-Man to stay with the team for any length.

Now Remender is getting all sorts of X into the Avengers, bringing them X-Men’s traditional adjective along with a team that reportedly boasts Wolverine, fan-favorite Rogue, and First Class star Havok alongside Captain America and Thor.

No one is better for this job than Remender. After bubbling under on a solid run on Punisher he exploded on Uncanny X-Force, a stunningly grim and hilarious take on Wolverine’s secret execution squad. It sent readers into endless fangasms when its first year concluded with the epic Dark Angel Saga. Now Remender in the saddle of what will unarguably be Marvel’s flagship title, with all of the star power of the Marvel Universe at its disposal.

In late-breaking news, art star John Cassaday of Planetary and Astonishing X-Men will be joining Remender, at least for the first arc.

Says Remender:  “In 1943, Arnim Zola, who was this bio-fanatic engineer, recorded the Red Skull’s consciousness, and set it to wake up 70 years later. So the Red Skull [in Uncanny] is right out of 1943-44. Prime Nazi scumbag. In his mind, he’s taking that vitriol and hate and Nazi horror and methodology, and pointing it at the mutant species.”

For everyone who argued if the Avengers or the X-Men was Marvel’s Justice League, here’s the answer: it’s both. This is about as huge as a single Marvel comic can be, both in characters and creators.

All New X-Men by Brian Bendis

Fans both love and loathe Avengers impresario Bendis, who has steered the line for nearly a decade. He’s introduced a consistency and gravitas to the once meandering Avengers, bringing them to prominence and expanding a single book to a line of five. He also has steered Marvel’s snappy Ultimate Spider-Man title since day one. But he’s a slow, decompressed storyteller who relies on a lot of talking heads and domestic scenes, and he uproots long-running plot threads for his own plans.

The community buzzed with heartbreaking rumors that he would be wresting control of the entire X-line from beloved authors like Remender, Gillen, and Aaron, but this move is a total left-turn from there! Bendis gets a single X-book, with a time-displaced team of the original five X-Men made popular in every form of media – Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Angel, and Jean Grey!

This is the best possible weapon for Bendis – fan favorite characters in a new context that’s not a side-universe. It lets him tell stories fans love without the interference they loathe.

Marvel is shaking up its existing architects, with four of them shuffling titles and Rick Remender seemingly replacing Ed Brubaker.

With Avengers vs. X-Men involving the reality-bending Phoenix Force fans have feared the worst for the post-event landscape; fans would riot if Marvel conducted a DC New 52 style full-line reboot. However, if this is the tone the soft relaunch of Marvel will be taking, it looks like readers will have plenty to celebrate.

Marvel’s development over the past few years has been steered by five major authors – Marvel Architects. Brian Michael Bendis on the entire Avengers line; Matt Fraction on Iron Man, Uncanny X-Men, Thor, and The Defenders; Jonathan Hickman’s ground-breaking run on Fantastic Four and cult Secret Warriors; Jason Aaron on Wolverine and his integration into X-Men, and Ed Brubaker on all things Captain America.

It looks like Brubaker is stepping down from his Architecture role, and Remender is stepping up! Meanwhile, a new class of fan favorites like Kieron Gillen, Ed McGuinness, Christoph Gage, and James Asmus has been racking up excellent runs and major sales. If Remender’s move to Uncanny Avengers is any indication it looks like this under-bill of writers is about to step into the spotlight.

Photo Shoot with Filmstar

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Editor’s Note: This post was drafted on this date but not finished or published. I believe that at the time I was waiting for one of the photos from the shoot to add to it. I’ve retroactively published it as one of my last written accounts of Filmstar prior to the band dissolving in September of the same year.

Being in a band involves a lot of activities other than playing music – organizing cables, sending emails, promoting shows, and posing for photos, among many other administrative and hard labor tasks.

You might assume photo shoots are the most fun of all the non-music-playing options. I mean, who can argue with being glamorous and having a photographer follow you around for a day?

I’ll admit, that part is pretty fun. But as someone who occasionally manages photo shoots for a living, I know it’s not all lipgloss and striking a pose. There is a lot of organization that goes into a good photo shoot, and when it is lacking it the quality of your photos can become a matter of chance.

That whole diatribe is for another time.

On Saturday all of Filmstar convened at new drummer Brad’s house in Northern Liberties, along with longtime fan Jake (not Arcati Crisis Jake), who was our photographer for the day. I’ve resisted in appearing in band photos since I joined, as I’m still technically a contracted player and not a band member, but with half of the band from the prior photos gone I had to submit to finally stepping in front of the camera.

We started out in an underpass. I know – bands and their brick walls, fences, and urban decay. So tiresome. Except, this particular underpass was rife with colorful, artful graffiti – some of which was dedicated to the recently deceased artist Moebius. So, not your typical graffiti. We also lugged a massive old monitor cabinet with us from Brad’s house to sit on and pose around. A great shot can be just a single prop away.

After the underpass we were intent on finding some other picturesque NoLibs locations to shoot. We had a few favorite bars in mind, but hadn’t had a chance to call ahead and ask for permission.

We walked towards Girard Avenue, debating the best approaches to springing a photo shoot on an unexpecting bartender, when we passed a fantastical wonderland of vintage lighting. It was a lighting fixture warehouse, whose massive load-in ramp was marked with a felled art deco lighting fixture that was flanked with high-backed chairs bearing decommissioned chandeliers.

Glam Decay. The perfect playground for Filmstar.

It turned out that the shop’s owner was a former owner of JC Dobbs from its 80s heyday. You find these sorts of connections all around Philly. He regaled us with stories of a young Kurt Cobain and renting light fixtures to Angelina Jolie movies while we scouted his shop for interesting photos. Well, I mean, the whole place was interesting photos, but we were trying to find one that we would look good standing in.

Feeling quite ingenious and victorious after our impromptu location, we headed into the bars and did what any intrepid band of beer-appreciators would do in that situation – we turned our photo shoot into a bar crawl. In an effort to not have to ask awkward questions about photography, we simply ordered a round of beers at each one.

This had the added bonus of loosening us up a bit. Not that we weren’t loose and gorgeous in our pictures already.

#MusicMonday: “Shores of California” – Dresden Dolls

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Three years ago, Amanda Palmer was one of the first people to engage with me on Twitter – and, I’m not just talking famous people. People in general.

I don’t always love Amanda’s solo ukele-based efforts as much as the songs from her revelatory punk-cabaret two-piece Dresden Dolls, but I continue to follow her becasue she is one of the most honest and open full-time rock stars on the internet. She contends 24/7 with the trials and concerns I encounter only in rehearsal (four days of our seven, last week).

On Friday, Amanda was tweeting about recording a new record with a new band, and in the stream of messages this one stuck out…

… and not just because it involved one of my top five tunes by Amanda…

It stuck out because, as with many things Amanda shares, it expressed something I have felt about music but haven’t ever really articulated.

Historically, Arcati Crisis learns songs at a rate of about four a year. Since Gina and I each write on our own, that means we’re learning just two of my tunes – yet, I write anywhere from six to twenty songs in a year.

As a result, my perspective on song-picking for AC is that every one of my choices must be lead-single quality. I don’t like subtle picks. Every new song of mine that we choose has to be awesome enough to obliterate the memory of all prior songs.

A few years ago, Gina picked “Unengaged” from my available songs. It’s a song I love. It’s complex, but catchy. It’s challenging to play and sing, but not impossible. It seemed like a good pick.

It lasted about two rehearsals. The problem wasn’t the complexity … it was the emotion. “Unengaged” is about the period where I had decided I was going to propose to E but hadn’t yet gone through with it. It’s a hard type of energy to connect with – happy, but uncertain if that’s the right thing to be – and because of the delicacy of the vocal, I need to nail the emotion behind it to get it right.

I realized quickly that it was destined to be a “live unfavorite.” I already loved what Gina was doing with it, but I knew it would fall to the bottom of my list as we chose setlists because I wouldn’t always want to summon the emotions to sing it. And, with only two songs to choose each year, what would be the point of picking something if I didn’t want to play it?

(I did the same thing a year later with “Tattooed,” at which point Gina and I agreed that songs specifically about E are generally not the best choice as Arcati Crisis songs, exactly for the reason that they can become live unfavorites for me as some new emotion between E and I supersedes the older one in the song.)

That’s not to say that I don’t sometimes select emotionally hard-to-deliver songs for AC. “Love Me Not,” “Dumbest Thing I Could Do,” and “End With Me” can all be hard to get emotionally right and incredibly draining when I do. I was ready to fall on the ground after delivering a searing “End With Me” at our holiday revue, and had to spend the next thirty minutes avoiding conversation with other guest. Yet, those songs simply aren’t personal the way songs about E are. I get to play a character.

When they were together, the Dresden Dolls learned songs at a much faster rate than 4 per year, so Amanda could afford to bring a song to the band that might not become a live staple. It was still worth hearing the band version, and worth recording. Fans still love it. It spawned a hilarious music video. It’s just hard for her to play.

This week Gina and I are picking our next pair of songs to learn, having already learned a pair in January. That means we’ll have hit our 4-song quota by April. Will this be the year we learn an entire album’s worth of new music in twelve months? If it is, I wonder if I will eventually tap a live unfavorite as one of my choices.

What Happens In Vegas…

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Scene: Yesterday at the Las Vegas airport, just after 9am PT.

I am scheduled to rehearse with Arcati Crisis in approximately six hours. E and I have just been deplaned. I texted Gina an update on my flight.

This is our actual text message conversation, unabridged.

Peter:  Our plane is delayed due to a bad smell. Will text you upon arrival. I still might be home in time.

Gina: Bad smell like a rotting carcass, or like an “OMG PLANE CRASH” kind of bad smell?

G: I don’t know what the latter would smell like. Fuel?

P: I suspect a dirty sock has been sucked into the air circulation system. We have been grounded due to a dirty sock.

G: Probably placed there by an angry flight attendant.

P: They keep beckoning the attendants back into the plane for a “sniff test.” I do not think “sniff” is a technical acronym. I believe they are actually testing our safety with their finely trained noses.

G: That’s amazing. “Flight attendants: it is time for you to sniff once again. This is what we’ve been training for all of our lives.”

G: If there was a chemist there, they’d make sure people were wafting.

P: Do you think I should go over and explain wafting to them? They seem very pleasant. Maybe they are lifelong learners who would appreciate the knowledge.

G: Well, I suppose wafting would only be useful if they are looking to stick their noses into bottles or cans of questionable materials. If there is an exhaust pipe somewhere with a dirty sock in it, I guess that counts.

G: It is my opinion that they should have hired people who walk around in lab coats with the airline emblem on them to do the sniffing … to add legitimacy to the whole thing. Nothing says “legitimate” like a lab coat.

P: Maybe they have the lab coats in the overhead bin with the sample oxygen mask. Maybe SNIF stands for “sensing nefarious intrusive fragrances.” They serve many roles, flight attendants.

G: It’s true. Perhaps they just ran out of miniature liquor bottles and they’re trying to come up with how to handle the passengers without them.

An hour passes.

P: Now we cannot reenter the plane to retrieve our luggage. I will be secretly thrilled if the bad smell is actually toxic.

G: Wow, you still haven’t taken off yet? Are they going to put you on another plane?

P: No. We are relocating Arcati Crisis to Las Vegas. We will be staying in the executive suit of The Flamingo. We will be alternates for Donnie & Marie.

G: This all sounds completely reasonable and appropriate.

G: Of course we would be staying at The Flamingo. This would only be more sensical if we were staying in a suite next to a penthouse filled with Elvises.

G: Elvi? I don’t know.

P: Oh, it gets better.

P: There are paramedics with a stretcher waiting in the jetway. Except, everyone from the flight is seated out here at the gate.

G: I am guessing they found an alien life form in there. You might actually be living out Terror at 30,000 Feet … but … at sea level and not trapped in a plane … and without William Shatner. So, not nearly as dynamic or exciting.

G: It occurs to me that the presence of William Shatner in any form at this point would improve your situation.

Several minutes later…

P: They just took a single large bag out of the plane on the stretcher.

G: Oh my god. There is a human head in it, isn’t there?!?

P: Or a small E.B.E.

[That’s Extraterrestrial Biological Entity, for those of you who did not watch The X-Files.]

G: I think this entire conversation will be making it’s way onto my blog.

P: Yes, mine too. Clearly.

G: So, rehearsal’s off, then?

Epilogue, three hours later … around when rehearsal was set to begin.

G: Have you made your way onto a plane yet.

P: No.

G: Oy. Did you find out any fabulous details about the Mysterious Odor?

P: No further information. I was told by an airline rep that I was “very nice,” so clearly they are trying to cover something up.

G: Intrigue!

P: This is an actual message I just heard on the overhead: “We want to let you know this flight does not have running water, which means you will not have coffee service, or be able to flush the toilets.”

P: Then, after a brief pause: “We jut want to clarify – you will be able to use the toilets, but will be unable to flush them or wash your hands.”

G: Wow… just wow. Purell for all!

E and I touched down in Philly just after 10pm. Our plane smelled lovely and did have running water.