The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand
In today’s episode I finally open one of my all-time favorite modern X-Men runs – but, first, I talk about my intended musical experiment on my own offspring and how it was derailed by our mutual love of Michael Jackson.
Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.
Episode 78 features the Uncanny X-Force omnibus, covered in my Guide to X-Force.
I begin today by musing on the ephemeral nature of the vast amounts of information we publish daily in this digital age. How will the archeologists and historians access all of this data, and what will they think of it?
After those deep thoughts, I unwrap the pair of library editions of Rick Remender’s Fear Agent. My memory of the plot of this modern take on sci-fi pulp is a bit dim, but I share some of the history of the series as related in iFanBoy’s fantastic three-part oral history and attempt to explain why I don’t love this series.
Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.
Episode 68 features Fear Agent Library Edition Volume 1 and Volume 2 from Dark Horse Comics. These editions are about to get very scarce, as Rick Remender has moved the publishing rights for this series back to Image Comics!
Today I have my first update to a team guide, and it’s a team I have had a love/hate relationship with over the past decade – The Definitive Guide to the Uncanny Avengers!
Don’t need a full reading order right now, but want to know what the Avengers are doing with the X-Men’s “Uncanny” adjective? Keep reading for a brief history, where to start reading, what the team has been up to in 2017, and just how much of it you can own in oversize format.
[Read more…] about Updated: Uncanny Avengers Collecting Guide & Reading Order
Today in my best-of-Marvel retrospective, we’re looking at ten mega-sized runs from Secret Invasion in 2008 to Avengers vs. X-Men in 2012 that really ought to be omnibuses.
If you want to see any of them in that mega format, perhaps they ought to be your vote in the Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot – choices are due this Sunday!
However, even sans a mighty omnibus edition, all of Marvel’s modern runs are easily collected in hardcovers and trade paperbacks listed in Crushing Comics’s Guide to Collecting Marvel Comic Books, and 100% of the issues are available on Marvel Unlimited, a $10/month Netflix-for-Marvel-comics.
Whether you’re a new comics fan or a grizzled vet, read with this in mind: These potential mappings are just my own shot, and the may include errors, omissions, or choices that could be improved. That’s part of the fun, for me – it’s like playing “Fantasy Corrections Department”! If you see something fishy or have a vociferous disagreement, I’d love to know what that is via the comments, below.
Let’s begin! [Read more…] about 8 Must-Read Marvel Runs (that ought to be an omnibus) from 2008 to 2012
Each year, a mysterious and intrepid comic book fan known only as Tigereyes reaches out to some of the biggest collected editions communities on the web to ask them a single question: What are the top 10 Marvel Omnibuses you’d most like to buy?
Thus, the Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot was born.
While we only get to see the top 50 or so results of the survey each year, based on the number of voters it’s entirely possible that there are over ten times that many omnibuses nominated by voters. The long tail of the survey would make not only for interesting analysis, but terrific rainy-day reading.
To help inspire that long tail as well as your own rainy day reads, I’m covering dozens of Marvel runs that would make for terrific omnibuses. For the past four days I highlighted every potential missing X-Men omnibus from 1963 to 2015. Now, I’m going to stroll backwards through time to look at the rest of Marvel, starting with their newest comic runs released from 2012 to present.
The fact that these books aren’t currently omnibuses (and may never be) doesn’t have to stop you from sampling them – even if you’ve never read a comic before in your life! Each one is a terrific self-contained comic experience that can be enjoyed without any crossovers or companion series.
You can either pick up existing collections as outlined by Crushing Comics’s Guide to Collecting Marvel Comic Books, or just sign up for Marvel Unlimited, a Netflix-for-comics where 100% of the issues from today’s post are available to read on any device.
[Read more…] about 20 Must-Read Marvel runs (that ought to be an omnibus) from 2012 to 2015
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.
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.
