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

I think Wolverine and the X-Men is ending soon, too?

I know that this is probably inevitable given the new character landscape and the fact they're doing this temporary series to get Nightcrawler back, but bleeeeh.

is Amazing temporary? I thought it was actually replacing WatX

Ah, that'd make more sense.

Watxm is relaunching with a new creative team. I'm looking forward to Avengers Undercover, cos Arena was the best Marvel book I've read in a while.

YA's having a two-issue afterparty/jam issues, ends at 15 I think.

btw can I just say YA was super charming and 90% of that is because of Jamie McKelvie's art

I preferred watching it to reading it - some of that is just literally Jamie McKelvie's lovely lines on a page, but a lot of it is what the page looks like, which I gather is more of a collaboration - there's a great post from Gillen about how and whether to disentangle that stuff.

I thought Cyclops killed Charles Xavier, but here he is in New Avengers #13. I totally don't know what the hell is going on in the M.U. anymore.

alt universe Xavier. They're watching that world through the bridge.

Ah, ok. That's what I get for quick skimming.

yeah, that is why mags is wearing his classic costume, too. that's the alt-world version of the illuminati or whatevs

I have read now Hickman's New Avengers up to #8 and Avengers to #13. Personally, I like the epic nature of the whole scope, even if some of the dialog is perhaps a bit stiff. I'm working on the last prelude to Infinity issues in Avengers and will start the main story next. I like it in that it feels big in the way some of Jim Starlin and Grant Morrison's cosmic comics seem. I like that Aim and the High Evolutionary showed up. It would seem that Eternity or the Celestials should show up at some point, if nothing else to see how they tie back into the Builders etc.

Funny thing is that the whole multi-verse in Marvel looks a heck of alot like the Bleed and the Monitors shown in Final Crisis. Perhaps it is all one and the same really...

I'm not sure if the Celestials are locked into Uncanny Avengers right now and they're unavailable or what

Infinity and Hickman's run on Avengers is pretty good. It's probably the best big Marvel story since the Annhilation.

"I wonder why he bothered making Cannonball and Sunspot Avengers if he was hardly ever going to do anything with them."

I don't know, considering that neither character is really a key part of the big plot (at yet), I think he has incorporated both quite a bit, usually for levity. Maybe it is because I have been reading that era of Avengers in Essentials, but the scenes they do popup in remind me a bit of the old Beast/Wonderman friendship.

I also got caught up and read Mark Waid's Indestructible Hulk 1-16 and the Jeff Parker written Annual. That also was a pretty fun read. Walt Simonson's artwork on the 3 parter with Hulk and Thor versus Ice Giants was fantastic. It looked really good, much better than the few issues of Avengers Simonson did a while back.

star wars NOW
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/how-star-wars-marvel-move-668465

that's gotta be a bummer for that fanbase, niche as it is

not that it's a thing for me, but it's gotta demolish a lot of hard built canon; wonder if marvel will even pretend to honor that

Can't wait for some heroes to time travel too many times, crack open the universe, and have some jedi pop through into good ol' 616

Han Solo/Bishop limited series teamup

Darth Doom

Darth Doom the Annihiliating Conquerer of Coruscant

Emperor Thanos.

Avengers World really reminded me why I like Hickman. Just so many bat-shit ideas thrown into twenty pages.

Anything else worthwhile from ALL NEW NOW!!!

Superior Foes of Spider-Man has been fun. Bendis is doing his best work in a decade with the out of time X-Men. Al Ewing's Mighty Avengers is charming me despite Land's art, which is a mighty feat indeed. Others are loving Hawkeye and Young Avengers, though I'm ambivalent toward them at best.

But I'm a few months behind. Is that the newest Hickvengers?

Okay, I just read about NOW2. Most of those look and sound dreadful. Phil Noto's Black Widow at least looks good.

Young Avengers just ended. Hawkeye rules. You have to get Mighty Avengers because of we support our own and it also happens to be great (plus it has Monica Rambeau in it). The X-Factor reboot was suprisingly fun but I like PAD on autopilot, so

I wondered what happened to her after Nextwave

But I'm a few months behind. Is that the newest Hickvengers?

― EZ Snappin, 9. januar 2014 03:17 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup, with help from Nick Spencer (Superior Foes of Spider-Man). Hickman really makes people like Johns and Bendis look myopic with all their heroes-fighting-heroes stuff.

Last issue of Young Avengers was awesome.

Yeah, new x-factor was non-earth-shaking fun.

I really enjoyed the original Madrox detective show setup of X-Factor and lost interest when it drifted from that -- then read the last issue before the relaunch out of loyalty and was glad I skipped it. BUT what's the new one like?

Mighty Avengers has such a lovely tone of voice and hangout vibe, it's already a keeper - actually kind of reminds me of PAD's original X-Factor run from the 90s.

I still think Daredevil is terrific if also auto-piloty (but folks here are ambivalent)

Speaking of loyalty, I read Justice League 3000 and it made me :(

It looks like PAD is exploring the X-Statix/Youngblood idea of a corporate hero team, only with PAD-humor rather than overwhelming cynicism.

I'm just glad he's well enough to write anything at all.

i dig new direction iron man

Mighty Avengers has such a lovely tone of voice and hangout vibe, it's already a keeper - actually kind of reminds me of PAD's original X-Factor run from the 90s.

Oo, I think I'm sold. i loved that too-short run he did then.

New She-Hulk was awesome. All lawyering, all the time. Loke #1 was great as well. Also, did people see that Ms Marvel #1 apparantly topped Marvel's digital sales chart? 2-7 was issues of Hawkeye...

Really liked She-Hulk, and Ms Marvel was very promising--didn't get far into the plot, but was really well done.

Is anyone else a Jeff Parker fan? He's more good-times fun writing than the cerebral Hickman end of the Marvel universe but I think his stuff is pretty clever

Jeff Parker is way better than alot of people ahead of him on the food chain.

Quite a few of the good writers over the years in super hero comics seem to oddly never get the main titles. Maybe it is because they can sell comics that many other writers couldn't get done. I guess I would be referring to guys like Steve Gerber or John Ostrander, guys that were really good writers and created stuff that lasted but never really got any real run with the top characters for various reasons. I figure Parker might end up in that kind of company in the super hero comic world.

I can see Ostrander wanting to get a main DC title with his great Suicide Squad work - did Gerber want to pen X-Men/Spider-Man etc?

Any Jeff Parker recommendations that don't require knowing everything that's happened in the Marvel U for the last few years?

Reading forum posts talking about Ms Marvel #1 full of people complaining "why are all of the white people racists" is really the funniest fucking thing

Quite a few of the good writers over the years in super hero comics seem to oddly never get the main titles. Maybe it is because they can sell comics that many other writers couldn't get done. I guess I would be referring to guys like Steve Gerber or John Ostrander, guys that were really good writers and created stuff that lasted but never really got any real run with the top characters for various reasons. I figure Parker might end up in that kind of company in the super hero comic world.

I would assume that at least some of these writers preferred the more obscure titles because they were allowed more creative freedom there? Like, Ostrander could do things with Suicide Squad that he never could've done if he was writing the Justice League, and the same applies to Kieron Gillen with Young Avengers, Christos Cage with Avengers: The Initiative/Avengers Academy, etc.

Oy, I think Gage is pretty dreadful though.

Parker's Agents of Atlas stuff is mostly divorced from mainstream Marvel continuity. I've only read part of his X-Men: First Class runs but due to it being in that timeframe, it's also pretty divorced from current Marvel.

His Red She-Hulk run is a little more linked in, but he ended up doing something kind of neat with it (using some of the SHIELD-as-centuries-old stuff Hickman introduced) that gave it kind of the secret society feel that the Atlas series had.

Jeff Parker wrote a bunch of those alt-continuity, all-ages Marvel Adventures titles, where he basically got to do his own Ultimate Spider-Man under the radar.

<I>Like, Ostrander could do things with Suicide Squad that he never could've done if he was writing the Justice League, and the same applies to Kieron Gillen with Young Avengers, Christos Cage with Avengers: The Initiative/Avengers Academy, etc.</I>

Bearing in mind that at the same time he was writing Young Avengers, Gillen established that Tony Stark is adopted...

I have to say that the past few years have really made me into a big Remender/Hickman/Fraction fan. I really dig all of those dudes, ESPECIALLY Fraction.

Also in completely unsurprising news, Al Ewing has been killing every Marvel project he's touched. Kind of amazing/crazy/awesome that One Of Our Own is the hot new talent at one of the Big Two.

I think the Jeff Parker / Gabriel Hardman stuff was a few years ahead of it's time. Like, with the right kind of project they would fit right into All New Marvel Now along with Daredevil and Hawkeye and She-Hulk and Loki and Young Avengers and Ms Marvel. Agents of Atlas was really good, but at the time it was seen as too 'marginal'. Now She-Hulk spends an entire issue arguing about the inventions of Jonas Harrow...

Marvel really is on fire these days. Wonder how soon it will collapse.

What's interesting is that I don't think they've got anyone other than Bendis on an exclusive (okay, possibly a "Don't do DC", apart from She-hulk's writer) - all of them have some side gig or other going, many with Image.