Aldo reads Marvel NOW! (even though you are, and he clearly hasn't learned his lesson)

Okay can I just say I am very very VERY happy I decided to pick up The Avengers

Of all the directions they were going to go "finish Warren Ellis's New Universe reboot" was nowhere near my radar and I am fucking PSYCHED

downloading the app now. Excited.

and yes, you can swipe pages forward and back
don't know how bad the drain will be.
you can download up to six comics to read offline which is kinda dumb but it's a start.

ooookay, already some issues.
poor curation is evident immediately. there are four different series of "the twelve" and you have to flip around to find all the issues. you can't just add a whole series or character to your library as far as i can see, it's hunt and peck.

creator credits and book information at the front end is astonishingly sparse; many books only list a penciller making it impossible to browse definitively by author

all this stuff was there on the web too, looks like they got the interface right and still haven't stepped up curation and maintenance
it's the worst and best elements of spotify. i hope they will put some focus on this; it could really change the industry

aaaaand it crashed twice already.
okay, i was too excited. still.

it could really change the industry

paying royalties could really change the industry

Of all the directions they were going to go "finish Warren Ellis's New Universe reboot" was nowhere near my radar and I am fucking PSYCHED

Hickman's grasp of the Cosmic Marvel U and its storytelling potential beyond Earth and a bunch of fit guys n' gals in tights is really awe inspiring.

forks, Todd Allen at The Beat has a gripe --
http://comicsbeat.com/calling-bs-on-marvel-unlimited/

oh yeah, this shit is hella old no doubt

and sic, no boubt

er doubt

The bendis avengers is really good!

no biggity, no boudt

I'm fine with the spotty curation and crashing -- I have an ipad 1, it crashes every five minutes -- but it's annoying you can't see the comics full screen. Unless I'm missing something?

you can see the comics full screen. there's an expand button in the lower right.

Ah, very good. Thanks! Thought that was a bit odd. Right, purchase time when I get home then.

Still can't find it -- is there not a way of getting rid of the name of the comic in the top bar?

Top bar never goes away

hey guys, you know the blatant Battle Royale/Hunger Games ripoff Avengers Arena?

it is shockingly good, like not in a "oh shit everyone must buy this" way but more in a "how the hell does this manage to be coherent and entertaining" way

I recommend taking a look, esp if you have passing familiarity with Avengers Academy, Runaways, and random New Warriors rejects

also I am semi annoyed that Cannonball and Sunspot aren't getting more chances to shine but Avengers is fucking incredible in the "oh shit everyone must buy this" way

have recently read an Avengers graphic novel collection by bendis, jrjr and b. hitch, mainly feat. a big dust-up w/ the red hulk, and two collections of recentish slott-written spider-mans - and they were all great! MAKE MINE MARVEL

(strangely, since reading Sean Howe's superb MARVEL COMICS THE UNTOLD STORY i've been on a real Marvel kick/high - i say strangely, because the book makes for depressing reading for anyone who has ever cared abt the company, the characters, its creators)

Yeah, the Avengers Now stuff is great. I've been rereading Hickmans Fantastic Four, and it's just amazingly well-plotted. It's also really fun how he just has these weird kicks, such as people always mentioning 'wheels whithin wheels' and such. The story of the Manifolds, which is just alluded to in the beginning of New Avengers, as perhaps being a big deal... Also, in FF they build 'sols anvil' and now in New Avengers they've build 'sols hammer'. I have no idea what the point is, and I don't think it matters, but it is really fun to think about.

Age of Ultron seems to be completely pointless but I've been enjoying it anyway

wow, so many issues with this app
it freezes up a lot but the big problem is that on A LOT of comix it doesn't import the dialogue.

weird. I haven't seen that happen. But I have had stuff start on the last page, and have search tags not work. What bugs me most is series showing up on the web but not in the app, or not appearing there until you restart it, or do a search, and then VOILA! They appear.

all the avengers stuff has that word bubble issue
and yeah, i have the same problems.... 24 ISSUES OF XXX and only three show up
it's basically buggy as hell and the more you use it the buggier it gets
even so, i've probably read like 300 marvel issues in the past month. it's a lil' addictive.

The more you use it the more it freaks. You have to shut it down and restart it pretty often.

Which Avengers issues? I'll test it on my end and see if I get the same thing.

I should go back and get all of the current New Avengers run, right

there is no "current" run on the ipad app, they're at least two years behind.
most of the dark avengers have that glitch

I am not using the iPad app

I was trying to ask a question about the current comics rather than talk about buggy software

I would say yes -- both Hickman Avengers books are great.

dig, i forget what thread we're on. may be time to have a marvel unlimited app thread.

If what Axel Alonso is saying here is true, then that is really cool:

Yes. We want things to be organic. It’s the writer and editor huddling and deciding to pitch a tie-in; not me saying, "Yo, Jordan (White)! Get me a “Deadpool” tie-in!" We don’t lean on any of our writers to tie in. Although, a Deadpool tie-in might be kinda cool…

Look, Marvel NOW! did what we wanted it to do. It revitalized the monthlies and reenergized the talent pool. Events add a dimension to the Marvel Universe that should compliment the monthly publishing plan, not uproot it. If a writer and artist think there's an opportunity to tell a good tie-in story to an event, I won’t discourage that, but I won’t demand it, either. It’s better for a writer to come up with the best story within the universe of that character than search for connective tissue that doesn't exist.

The first line of defense for this is Tom [Brevoort], who always stands at the epicenter of our big events. If he’s not convinced it’s a legitimate tie-in story, I probably won’t be. And we both agree that oversaturating the market with tie-ins that aren't really relevant is a bad long-term strategy that erodes fan and retailer confidence.

Also, while events are crap, I'm curious to see if Hickman can pull it off.

It's from this interview: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=44894 Also, check out his thoughts on the meanings and metaphors of the Inhumans. Those are some clever thoughts for a Editor in Chief. Or perhaps it's just that the people at DC has really lowered the bar...

Alonso was a good and smart editor at DC.

I didn't even know that Quesada had stepped down, nice interview, kind of, at least for describing how some of these ideas kind of get hashed out

Quesada was promoted years ago iirc, not stepped down

Promising!

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/marvel-epic-collections.html

Nice!

Mr A. Ewing's issue of Avengers Assemble is VERY GOOD

I kind of think that Marvel is a lot happier with not giving a fuck about continuity than DC? Apart from the obvious Wolverine being on a billion teams, they've seemed happy just mostly freeze things in amber on a lot of titles - Franklin aging 7 years over the last 40, to pick the popular example - apart from the ones where there is so much going on all the time (Daredevil is a great example) that it settles into a hum of action, with no sense that there's a real permanent character history being written.

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― Andrew Farrell, Monday, November 19, 2012 12:47 AM (5 months ago)

I read 'Marvel Comics: The Untold Story' on holiday and actually Andrew's assertion here about Marvel and continuity is completely off the mark. Marvel used to use their slavish devotion to continuity as a badge of honour and a reason why you should pick them over DC, who didn't care about it. Lots of stories in there about plots being completely rewritten because the Marvel continuity police (and at one point they had an entire editorial team to uphold it) saw a problem.

The first crack appeared with McFarlane Spider-man, since he was so inept at writing they couldn't possibly expect him to keep continuity straight but was so integral to Marvel's business plan that they had to throw a new book and shitloads of money at him just to keep him. (As a sidebar, that's the funniest part of the whole book, where Todd describes how he just did a couple of splash pages and none of it made any sense but he doesn't really give a shit because he was being paid millions of dollars.) The whole point of the Ultimate line was to let Bendis tell a Spider-man story without any continuity baggage.

I'm guessing DC changed sides over continuity after Crisis, and codifying it in History of the DCU.

I'm happy to switch 'continuity' to 'history' there, and to point out that it's a view on their current output rather than what they might have been like 20 years ago.

I am a little surprised that damage to continuity was much of a concern in 2000, 6 years after the Clone Saga.

Yeah, I can see that and agree with you - but it came out of me saying that I couldn't parse the continuity of the different titles, who was in them and how they happened relative to each other.

Interestingly there's a story in the book about GMoz and the Planet X storyline, how it is just a parody by him of how crass and slavish the Marvel obsession with continuity is and that Magneto tries to reinvent himself and break out of the cycle but just ends up back where he began, fighting the same trivial battles with the same people.

think the marvel obsession w/ continuity start to fade away w/ the death of mark gruenwald, who once edited the 'seminal' marvel history fanzine Omniverse.

the death of continuity is of course also an effect of different corporate owners with different priorities (ie never let continuity stand in the way of a money-making title/'concept'), and of the sheer VOLUME of comics that marvel has published in the last twenty years, making totalising coherence an impossibility.

i might guess that all of the major comic publishers have also taken note of Paramount's decision to jettison imprisoning Star Trek continuity in favour of a re-boot

but the comics companies have been doing reboots for decades before Star Trek copied it off them

uh wait A. Ewing wrote an issue of Avengers Assemble?

Of "Ultimate Future Shock" / "Rogue Trooper at the Disco" 'fame', yes.

Or rather - The Ultimate Future Shock