Rolling 2015 Reading Funnybooks Thread

There were hints that 616 & Ultimate were going to moosh together somehow and Miles Morales was going to wind up in the "reg" M.U. -- I can't cite a source though.

Marvel has been pretty good the past few years! I feel like it'll probably be okay, or at least not suck as bad as Flashpoint.

If Jeph Loeb is involved all bets change tho

wtf

they have been introducing little bits all over the place that merge different universes/timelines in an interesting way lately and I have no idea why merging all things down to one line would be a good idea

they also gave their new time-traveling mutant a bunch of extra experience in a couple of the recent annuals and then shot her backward to talk to Xavier at the end of something last month, I think, which I figured was their way of backing out the past-X-Men from the present day

Miles Morales has already made appearances with a number of 616 characters. That much has seemed inevitable for a while.

So basically they're cancelling the Ultimate line, and that's the only change that will probably still be true three-to-five years from now, when Wolverine is merrily romping through the universe once again.

Yeah, at the worst I hope it's Bendis

if it's Loeb then I'm going to stop reading Marvel

Crisis on Infinite Secret Wars III: The Nu-616

Yawn.

The one thing I'll give Loeb mad props for is being in charge of Marvel's television projects and, by all appearances, not contributing in any way to the writing/plotting of Marvel's television projects.

Ach, this is probably editorial's last chance to do an old-school comics-nerds-only clusterfuck before the movie and comics continuities align, and the X-Men are erased from existence forever. I'm sure it'll be a solid 5/10.

It's worth noting that, prior to the Bendisification of the Marvel U in the mid-2000s, the last big line-wide crossovers were Onslaught in '96 and then Maximum Security four years later. This exhausting three or four events per year thing really only kicked into high gear towards the end of the last decade.

I mean, event-wise what are they still tying up?

That goofy Axis junk
Spider-Verse, which I think ends by then, but is already a multi-universe spanning event
Hickman's multi-year Avengers epic, which is apparently the centerpiece with its world-smashing
X-Men crossover w/the young/past X-Men visiting the Ultimate universe
Time traveling new X-Men member Eva visiting Xavier in the past
The young X-Men being in the present
Whatever the hell the Fantastic Four have been up to since I stopped reading

Oh yeah, and Spider-Man 2099 and the X-Men 2099 being real and crossing over with the present, to some extent

I guess I was being awfully conservative with the 'three or four events per year thing' thing, huh?

These aren't events, per se, they're just the current storylines packaged. If anything, Marvel is realizing that the online collection/trade paperback route is where things are going and having discrete storylines or crossovers that resolve within a few months with a collection immediately dropping at the end fits the market. You can do a multi-chapter story with several chapters per month, end it more quickly, and then sell it as a package while there's still some buzz.

It kind of beats the old days where they'd have a giant crossover that took most of the year, had one story beat per month, and the individual monthlies were just "what is the Fantastic Four doing while this is going on"

I said this was happening in (I think) last year's thread, via a Bleeding Ccol link that had characters clearly from other Earths on 616.

I hope Spider-Ham stays in 616

I would be down with that, a la Morrison's efforts to legitimize Captain Carrot.

fwiw
http://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/rip-the-marvel-universe-1961-2015#.ho56yKXod

“When you see the scope of the event, [you will] see what we’re willing to do. This is a place where we’re going to be bringing new pieces onto the board and taking old pieces off. You guys will be yelling and screaming, loving and hating in equal measure.”

i guess the alignment with the movie universe was likely inevitable; hope they can get through this nonsense quickly and we can get to the inevitable jaden smith spiderman movie with as few tears shed as possible

Marvel is not in the business of publishing readable funnybooks, they are in the business of cross-purposing intellectual properties across multiple media streams also OMG NEW TOY LINE!!!!

seriously I dunno how anybody endures this shit with a straight face (says the guy who hasn't read a new Marvel comic since the 90s)

image + archie obv where the good comix are being made

Aren't Archie falling into the pit with DC and Marvel by doing all this ultra-serious stuff?

maybe but i greatly enjoy afterlife with archie

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/comic-riffs/StandingArt/afterlife_archie_NOVcover.jpg?uuid=NQsinngfEeOxxXOeY-nJpw

i mean if this doesn't thrill u then i understand but i am very sad for u

I've never read that, maybe it's good but I don't know why comics people still do retro pastiche and parody of 50s horror comics. That's been done since the early underground days and it still gets presented like it's a novelty.

Anyone remember Frankenstein Mobster? It wasn't amazing but it had its own feel and the presentation at the time was unique. The cover art by other artists really hurt that though.

to be fair, the actual comic has more of a 1980s horror movie vibe

Afterlife with Archie, that is. I'm enjoying it, but there are loooong between-issue gaps that aren't helping

The fifth volume of Ditko Archives is including some bits of his Stanton collaborations, I don't know how much (there's a couple of pages in the previews) but I hope it's a lot because that work is still really hard to find.

Looks like Fantagraphics is doing a Wolverton chronological series now too.

i dig the obvious publishers: first second, drawn and quarterly, IDW, top shelf, oni, fanta, nbm, boom, viz, picturebox, uncivilized

Hi all, so I'm just getting back into comics (first time as an adult) and I'm doing my best but this I just don't

"The new Marvel will instead be a conglomerate of familiar history, elements imported from alternate versions of the Marvel Universe, and entirely new things."

So does spider man get a new origin story? Is it the same spiderman, or a new spiderman with the same origin story, but now he'll do different things? Or new spiderman with new origin story?

When they say a new universe will emerge, but "our history is not broken", are we supposed to know what that means? battleworld's the name of the timeline/universe, like Earth 606 (can't remember the correct number), or are people actually going to only be hanging on a place called Battleworld?

In all seriousness is there a simple way to understand this (a link with plain-speak reading will do!). I probably won't go near anything released in the past five years for a while anyway, just gonna read older stuff, but I'm kind of curious.

Anyway I'm actually really stoked to read a bunch of this stuff. Picked up the 75th anniversary omnibus and might check out Unlimited in a month or two. Must say though they do a good job of overwhelming you with the continually splintering series/timelines etc.

I keep trying to fave all yr posts.

great way to alienate all the new fans who've come into the fold in the last few years with the relatively crossover free and great Ms Marvel, Hawkeye, Iron Fist etc titles.
ugh.

Hi all, so I'm just getting back into comics (first time as an adult)

just read some adult comics tbrr

tbh I think Ms Marvel, Hawkeye, and Iron Fist will remain relatively unchanged. I think the idea is that they're going to have certain story elements be true for characters going forward, but with the acknowledgment that contradictory story elements and origins are all available for writers, because the continuity has been repeatedly busted. All the main franchises have had elements of time travel and interdimensional travel for years, and stuff has been popping through between dimensions more and more in the last decade.

The characters as featured in Marvel Studios film or television projects will replace the current 616 versions of the characters, while Spider Ham and the X-Babies will be replacing their 616 counterparts. The FF will be rebooted as the Fantastic Farts, an incontinent group of septuagenarians having flatulent misadventures in a retirement home for dumb losers.

jesus it all just sounds so awful
these poor writers

This has apparently been in the works for over three years and all of the writers knew it was happening, so they're presumably cool with it. I mean, whatever the end result, I appreciate that Marvel is super intentional about these things and values forethought and planning.

What does it say about me that I'm actually a little excited and seriously thinking about jumping back on the Marvel bandwagon in time for this?

knowing about it well ahead of time is definitely great but /= being cool with it, obv, i mean they all have to go along with it and say how exciting it is in website interviews but i'm willing to bet the only writers who enjoy these events are the ones who are the main drivers of em.

I think they're at least giving the writers the freedom to have their own run-up? Spider-Verse and the X-Men junk going on right now really seem like they gave the writers the keys to do their weirdest dream crossovers

I read a big piece a while ago about DC always trying to be more like Marvel (probably starting in the 60s) but it looks like Marvel are trying to be more like DC this time.

I try to bite my tongue when it comes to a lot of these comics because maybe they're better than most of the ones I had read. But seriously guys, if you're having doubts if this stuff is worthwhile, please read something else, there are so many good creators who need and deserve your time and money more. I don't think the industry is ever going to benefit from Marvel and DC staying on top, people keep waiting for them to change but they should be gradually replaced.

tbh i think most of the ppl posting about this event are also reading a pretty substantial amount of indie stuff

I think in the end I feel the same way about Marvel/DC as I do about the tendency for Young Adult/Teen fiction to sell more heavily and get adapted into popular films. There will always be better/more interesting art, but the drive toward the middle is going to exist and is a consensus zeitgeist. They are blunt media, not going to speak directly to small audiences in the way deeper, more personal works are.

imo they're constantly being replaced and refreshed with the voices from the edges and the ideas new creators bring in, even if they're watered down to fit a framework.

So yeah, buy and seek out the works that speak to you personally but there's nothing inherently with the mainstream.

Yeah, I read plenty of other stuff, but there would have to be a serious degradation of quality and goodwill for me to ever lose interest in Marvel. DC pretty much lost me with Flashpoint so I'm clearly not as invested in their thing.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/07/02/brian-bendis-teases-the-convergence-of-the-ultimate-and-616-universes-in-todays-ultimate-spider-man/

Found the link I posted here 6mo ago.

Spider-verse is kind of superbad fanwank, there's an Aunt May as Spider-Ma'am and Uncle Ben turned out to be still alive a couple of weeks ago. Plus one of the Spider-Mans is still REALLY OBVIOUSLY wearing a wedding ring.

I think you mean Spider-Uncle Ben

there's also Spider-Gwen Stacy!

No, he's just Uncle Ben Uncle Ben I think, he went into an underground bunker at some point before Doom blew something up.

I must have missed that, they found an Uncle Ben in a vault recently and uh any more would be spoilers for today's issue I guess

I might be projecting Doom, from overuse of the word doom.

It's that universe's Uncle Ben, in one of those Morlun-proof vaults

thing is that since getting a marvel unlimited subscription about two years ago, I've really re-engaged with all of the MU titles and this feels like it's gonna demolish my interest. maybe i'm wrong.