MARVEL SOLICITATIONS FOR APRIL 2008
February 5th 2008 13:09
So, I'm back to this already - previewing Marvel's upcoming releases for April. I don't feel so bad this time, though, because I've made a whole five posts between this one and the last. It's probably a new record for me, and hopefully things like tomorrow night's Iron Maiden concert won't distract me from posting in the future. Alright then, let's see what Marvel are giving us this time.
ULTIMATE X-MEN #93
Written by ROBERT KIRKMAN
Pencils & Cover by SALVADOR LARROCA
It's Robert Kirkman's final issue of Ultimate X-Men, and possibly the final issue of the title as a whole. The Ultimate line is undergoing a major shakeup, with Jeph Loeb as the mastermind (and I use that term in the most inaccurate sense) behind the whole thing. I've only followed Kirkman's run sporadically, and for the most part it's seemed okay. I love Kirkman on Walking Dead and Invincible, but he has yet to bring that magic to his Marvel work. It's all been competent, but his creator-owned work has a spark that he seems unable to reproduce when working with corporate-owned characters. It doesn't help that he's mainly been rehashing plot elements from the 90s that were poorly conceived the first time around. Ultimate X-Men hasn't been attracting much attention for a while, and a change is due. I'm dubious that Jeph Loeb is the right man for the job.
SPIDER-MAN (IRON MAN/HULK) MAGAZINE
Written by JEFF PARKER, FRED VAN LENTE & PAUL BENJAMIN
Pencils by MANUEL GARCIA, JAMES CORDEIRO & DAVID NAKAYAMA
Cover by CLAYTON HENRY
This is Marvel's latest attempt to break out of the comic shop ghetto. Again they're trying it with a magazine full of reprints of their kid-friendly Marvel Adventures line, as well as extras like puzzles and articles and such. It didn't seem to work the last few times, and I can't see it working this time either.
DAREDEVIL: BLOOD OF THE TARANTULA
Written by ED BRUBAKER & ANDE PARKS
Penciled by CHRIS SAMNEE
There's nothing particularly special about this one-shot (apart from it being written by Ed Brubaker, which means BUY IT IT'S GOOD!), but I just wanted to flag up what Marvel is doing now with its fill-in issues. They've had a few techniques over the decades. In the 70s if a book was running late they would either run a reprint or an inventory story that was completed ahead of time. This mostly served to distract from ongoing plots and, if it was a reprint, really annoy people who bought the story the first time it came out. In the 80s and 90s it was extremely common to see an inferior artist brought in to make the deadline. This was sometime sdisappointing, but I was always happy to see a new issue. It's not such a viable plan nowadays, because it really messes with the tone of the trade paperback collections. Recently the trend has been just to delay the comic for months on end, which was brought to a ridiculous head last year when Civil War got delayed, thus putting about five other Marvel titles on hiatus so they didn't ruin the ending.
None of the above tactics are really satisfying, but Marvel have hit upon a good compromise - if a title is going to be delayed a month, they issue a one-shot that's tangentially connected to the main title's story, written by the same author but drawn by a different artist. I like it. The trade paperbacks get to look better, the titles aren't derailed with inventory stories, and we don't have to wait months on end for the next installment. I hope Marvel keeps this up.
IRON MAN: LEGACY OF DOOM #1 (of 4)
Written by DAVID MICHELINIE
Art & Cover by RON LIM & bob layton
Once upon a time in the 1970s, there was an awesome story where Iron Man and Dr. Doom fought each other in Camelot. Then in the 1980s, there was a suitably awesome sequel. Now we have the finale of this trilogy, which sees Iron Man and Doom square off against Mephisto, and most probably each other. This looks like good old-school fun, and I'm looking forward to it.
SECRET INVASION #1 (of 8)
Written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS
Penciled by LEINIL FRANCIS YU
Ah, just when you start thinking that this is a quiet month for Marvel... Secret Invasion is this year's megacrossover, and it's been building for a long time. Skrulls are invading Marvel Earth, and apparently have a replaced a whole lot of people, superheroes included. Who do you trust?
This is the correct way to use the Skrulls, as a way to generate paranoia, and it's actually refreshing for the Marvel heroes to have a genuine villain to fight rather than each other. Bendis is promising that this one has been planned out far in advance, and the Skrull reveals will all make sense. This is where he gets his chance to prove the naysayers wrong. If this supposed conclusion to many of his plot threads is satisfying, I'll shut up about his writing deficiencies. I'm not confident that it's going to fit together all that well, but it's going to be unmissable for anyone interested in the current goings-on of the Marvel Universe.
THE ORDER #10
Written by MATT FRACTION
Pencils & Cover by BARRY KITSON
This is the final issue of The Order. I never got into it, which is strange because usually enjoy Matt Fraction's writing a lot, and Barry Kitson is a gawd. It was plagued from the start, really, originally being dubbed The Champions before Marvel found out that another company already owned the trademark. It never found a large audience, and I never got around to checking it out. It has garnered good reviews, though, so I might read it some day.
X-MEN DIVIDED WE STAND BOOK 1 (of 2)
Written by MIKE CAREY, MATT FRACTION, CRAIG KYLE, CHRISTOPHER YOST and SKOTTIE YOUNG
Pencils by BRANDON PETERSON, JAMIE MCKELVIE, SANA TAKEDA and SKOTTIE YOUNG
In the wake of Messiah Complex, there are no X-Men. Of course Marvel can make an event out of that, and what we're getting is a bunch of short stories about what the X-Men are doing while there's no team. It could be pointless, but I don't think so. The X-Men titles have a definite direction, it's just hard to figure out what it is at the moment. It's been a long time since anything significantly shifted the status quo of the X-Men - even the aftermath to House of M was quietly ignored despite it radically obliterating the foundation of the series. I'm looking forward to this - I loved it when Claremont disbanded the team, and this should be good as well.
YOUNG X-MEN #1
Written by MARC GUGGENHEIM
Pencils by YANICK PAQUETTE
Bleargh.
Just when I thought I'd seen the last of these kids, we get another title starring the New X-Men. It's been about 60 issues that these kids have starred in, and I've read about a third of those. And honestly, I still can't tell 'em apart in a line-up. Real names? I have no idea. Powers I could take a stab at. Hobbies? You have got to be kidding. Contrast that to the original New Mutants, or even Generation X. Those kids had character, a life beyond the X-Men and their powers. The current New X-Men are a collection of costumes, powers, and very thin personality traits. As yet, they are lifeless. Hopefully a new writer can fix this, and Guggenheim is pretty good, but I have my doubts.
ULTIMATE X-MEN #93
Written by ROBERT KIRKMAN
Pencils & Cover by SALVADOR LARROCA
It's Robert Kirkman's final issue of Ultimate X-Men, and possibly the final issue of the title as a whole. The Ultimate line is undergoing a major shakeup, with Jeph Loeb as the mastermind (and I use that term in the most inaccurate sense) behind the whole thing. I've only followed Kirkman's run sporadically, and for the most part it's seemed okay. I love Kirkman on Walking Dead and Invincible, but he has yet to bring that magic to his Marvel work. It's all been competent, but his creator-owned work has a spark that he seems unable to reproduce when working with corporate-owned characters. It doesn't help that he's mainly been rehashing plot elements from the 90s that were poorly conceived the first time around. Ultimate X-Men hasn't been attracting much attention for a while, and a change is due. I'm dubious that Jeph Loeb is the right man for the job.
SPIDER-MAN (IRON MAN/HULK) MAGAZINE
Written by JEFF PARKER, FRED VAN LENTE & PAUL BENJAMIN
Cover by CLAYTON HENRY
This is Marvel's latest attempt to break out of the comic shop ghetto. Again they're trying it with a magazine full of reprints of their kid-friendly Marvel Adventures line, as well as extras like puzzles and articles and such. It didn't seem to work the last few times, and I can't see it working this time either.
DAREDEVIL: BLOOD OF THE TARANTULA
Written by ED BRUBAKER & ANDE PARKS
Penciled by CHRIS SAMNEE
There's nothing particularly special about this one-shot (apart from it being written by Ed Brubaker, which means BUY IT IT'S GOOD!), but I just wanted to flag up what Marvel is doing now with its fill-in issues. They've had a few techniques over the decades. In the 70s if a book was running late they would either run a reprint or an inventory story that was completed ahead of time. This mostly served to distract from ongoing plots and, if it was a reprint, really annoy people who bought the story the first time it came out. In the 80s and 90s it was extremely common to see an inferior artist brought in to make the deadline. This was sometime sdisappointing, but I was always happy to see a new issue. It's not such a viable plan nowadays, because it really messes with the tone of the trade paperback collections. Recently the trend has been just to delay the comic for months on end, which was brought to a ridiculous head last year when Civil War got delayed, thus putting about five other Marvel titles on hiatus so they didn't ruin the ending.
None of the above tactics are really satisfying, but Marvel have hit upon a good compromise - if a title is going to be delayed a month, they issue a one-shot that's tangentially connected to the main title's story, written by the same author but drawn by a different artist. I like it. The trade paperbacks get to look better, the titles aren't derailed with inventory stories, and we don't have to wait months on end for the next installment. I hope Marvel keeps this up.
IRON MAN: LEGACY OF DOOM #1 (of 4)
Written by DAVID MICHELINIE
Art & Cover by RON LIM & bob layton
Once upon a time in the 1970s, there was an awesome story where Iron Man and Dr. Doom fought each other in Camelot. Then in the 1980s, there was a suitably awesome sequel. Now we have the finale of this trilogy, which sees Iron Man and Doom square off against Mephisto, and most probably each other. This looks like good old-school fun, and I'm looking forward to it.
SECRET INVASION #1 (of 8)
Written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS
Penciled by LEINIL FRANCIS YU
Ah, just when you start thinking that this is a quiet month for Marvel... Secret Invasion is this year's megacrossover, and it's been building for a long time. Skrulls are invading Marvel Earth, and apparently have a replaced a whole lot of people, superheroes included. Who do you trust?
This is the correct way to use the Skrulls, as a way to generate paranoia, and it's actually refreshing for the Marvel heroes to have a genuine villain to fight rather than each other. Bendis is promising that this one has been planned out far in advance, and the Skrull reveals will all make sense. This is where he gets his chance to prove the naysayers wrong. If this supposed conclusion to many of his plot threads is satisfying, I'll shut up about his writing deficiencies. I'm not confident that it's going to fit together all that well, but it's going to be unmissable for anyone interested in the current goings-on of the Marvel Universe.
THE ORDER #10
Written by MATT FRACTION
Pencils & Cover by BARRY KITSON
This is the final issue of The Order. I never got into it, which is strange because usually enjoy Matt Fraction's writing a lot, and Barry Kitson is a gawd. It was plagued from the start, really, originally being dubbed The Champions before Marvel found out that another company already owned the trademark. It never found a large audience, and I never got around to checking it out. It has garnered good reviews, though, so I might read it some day.
X-MEN DIVIDED WE STAND BOOK 1 (of 2)
Written by MIKE CAREY, MATT FRACTION, CRAIG KYLE, CHRISTOPHER YOST and SKOTTIE YOUNG
Pencils by BRANDON PETERSON, JAMIE MCKELVIE, SANA TAKEDA and SKOTTIE YOUNG
In the wake of Messiah Complex, there are no X-Men. Of course Marvel can make an event out of that, and what we're getting is a bunch of short stories about what the X-Men are doing while there's no team. It could be pointless, but I don't think so. The X-Men titles have a definite direction, it's just hard to figure out what it is at the moment. It's been a long time since anything significantly shifted the status quo of the X-Men - even the aftermath to House of M was quietly ignored despite it radically obliterating the foundation of the series. I'm looking forward to this - I loved it when Claremont disbanded the team, and this should be good as well.
YOUNG X-MEN #1
Written by MARC GUGGENHEIM
Pencils by YANICK PAQUETTE
Bleargh.
Just when I thought I'd seen the last of these kids, we get another title starring the New X-Men. It's been about 60 issues that these kids have starred in, and I've read about a third of those. And honestly, I still can't tell 'em apart in a line-up. Real names? I have no idea. Powers I could take a stab at. Hobbies? You have got to be kidding. Contrast that to the original New Mutants, or even Generation X. Those kids had character, a life beyond the X-Men and their powers. The current New X-Men are a collection of costumes, powers, and very thin personality traits. As yet, they are lifeless. Hopefully a new writer can fix this, and Guggenheim is pretty good, but I have my doubts.
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