Marvel Comics blabbery

The newest iteration (I think! it keeps iterating) of Secret Avengers has a Modok that is in love with Maria Hill

You just made me wonder how a physical relationship with a Modok would work so "thanks" for that.

I assume there's a lot of head

that's the DJP I know and love

lol, a+

Two things I'd like to see in the wake of Secret Wars: 1) fewer title reboots (preferably zero of them, but this is the new world we live in) and 2) fewer mind-bendingly colossal threats to the earth/universe/multiverse. I'm digging Infinity thus far but, between the Builders and Thanos and the alternate earth incursions, the MU threat level has risen to the point where I don't know how anyone could top it.

fewer mind-bendingly colossal threats to the earth/universe/multiverse.

feel like this is just the status quo for superhero comics from the 00s onwards. nobody just robs banks or fights crime or whatever anymore

Hawkeyes does, to critical plaudits.

fwiw the above is what I liked so much about Ms Marvel; the threats were definitely rooted in neighborhood sensibility, routed through Inhuman concerns

One of the downsides of the publishing side at Marvel is that they can go bigger and bigger and bigger with no increase in costs; they kind of forget to tell the human story. The MCU is kind of doing that neighborhood sensibility thing better, via the Netflix show(s), by virtue of sfx budget constraints.

Aaron's Thor is pretty good at doing both.

Warren Ellis's take on Karnak is a hoot. Well, maybe not a hoot, but very appealing.

Soule's Inhumans is less hooty, but there's an interesting thing about it: Steve McNiven, the inker, is billed ahead of Jay Leisten, penciler. Don't think I've ever seen that before. I know McNiven has the bigger name, but still odd and noteworthy.

It kinda drives me nuts that Marvel has stopped indicating in their solicitations whether something is an actual series or just a miniseries. I don't think a single one of their post-Secret Wars books were listed as miniseries but I can't imagine, say, Karnak continuing beyond the six issues Ellis writes before he moves on to something else.

I can sort of see the side of wanting to leave that status ambiguous in case it's a surprise hit. Has Ellis said specifically that he's only writing 6 issues?

Isn't that Ellis's thing now? Limited runs, self-contained story arc, on to the next thing?

Yeah, I just assumed. What's his longest run on a recent-ish Marvel title? Like 12 issues or so on Astonishing X-Men and Thunderbolts?

I definitely get Marvel's decision to be cryptic about series length from a business perspective and I assumed that was the main reason behind it. It's still annoying. Unless it really is their intention to make everything theoretically ongoing until and unless it becomes clear that a given series doesn't have legs.

McNiven, the inker, is billed ahead of Jay Leisten, penciler. Don't think I've ever seen that before.

When Alan Moore's Top Ten was running, you'd see reviews referring to "Zander Cannon's gritty inks" just because he was listed after Gene Ha.

Some of Alex Ross' books are like that where he is painting on top of someone else's pencils and quite a few times where he is top billed with doing just the cover and co-plotting the comic.

Holy shit, guys. Master of Kung Fu omnibus in this month's comics solicitations. With mentions of Fu Manchu in the blurb. So I guess those rights issues are no longer an issue.

I wonder if he finally hit public domain.

Isn't the standard copyright term in the US 95 years? So if the first Fu Manchu story was serialized from 1912 to 1913, it would've gone to public domain in 2007 or 2008, unless they managed to extend the copyright in some way.

It's usually X years from the author's DEATH. It's complicated by the way that in the US anything published pre-1923 is also public domain, so the early Fu Manchu is PD, but not all of it, and so the Rohmer estate uses the later stories to try to leverage the earlier stuff back into copyright.

I think they came up with a license. They are going to reprint the whole series in three omnibuses.

Wonder how many kids became Fleetwood Mac fans thanks to MoKF? Biggest regret of selling collection pre-college is no longer having the complete MoKF run. These omnibuses sound great, and realistically, the $112 price tag is much less than rebuying the individual issues, but still, ouch. $450 or so to rebuy what I sold for pennies on the dollar makes me sad.

$450 or so = Ran across one site yesterday that said four omnibuses.

Wait for it to pop up on Amazon and you should be able to get them all for a pretty steep discount. Just don't wait so long that Marvel's infamous single, limited print run completely sells out.

Thanks, will do. And yeah, stalled on the complete hardcover Calvin & Hobbes and watched it go from mid-$60s to $125. Fool me twice...

Yeah, the Marvel printing policy is ridiculous. I'm thankful I managed to get the Simonson Thor and Annihilation omnibuses in time, because now they're both going for 250 bucks at Amazon. The Annihilation omnibus only came out last year!

If I don't preorder it before the December cut-off date (which the holidays make difficult, money-wise), I'm gonna have to snag this and the Nick Fury omnibus as early as possible in the new year. Because, yeah, Marvel's incredibly stupid about this stuff and they don't seem to make much of an adjustment based on potential demand. You generally just have to wait 5-10 years until they get around to reprinting the material in a different format. I had no idea about the Annihilation omnibus price hike, though! Thankfully preordered both of those omnibi (after stupidly selling the original trades and watching their second-hand prices skyrocket beyond anything affordable).

Thanks, will do. And yeah, stalled on the complete hardcover Calvin & Hobbes and watched it go from mid-$60s to $125. Fool me twice...

The binding on the hardcover was really bad FYI, and fell apart a lot.

new Nick Fury omnibus? Does it have the same shitty re-coloring as previous collections?

I don't know as I haven't seen it in person. But it collects all of the Lee & Kirby and Steranko stuff, so I'll be able to hold my nose if the reproduction is a little off.

tomorrow is the end of the new Secret War

I am the only one looking forward to this after the last couple issues have had little more than "let's round up the forces," right?

No, I'm looking forward to it as well; it's bound to be better than most of the post-Secret Wars books I've been reading

(btw in case you were wondering, almost every X-Men book I can think of is now irredeemably terrible)

Vision book has an interesting premise but I find that in practice, I don't give a single, solitary shit about a solo Vision story

I'm finding it kind of interesting but so far it's domestic drama... with robots
...and now, witchcraft?

X-Men titles seem equally split between "let's rally the troops" and "mysterious forces are making us inferior merchandising property to the Inhumans"

The Cullen Bunn one that seems like a rehashed X-Force (X-Men assault squad) seems like it could be interesting but again, it's all action to start things off

the best post-SW title I picked up was the Karnak title, but it sounds like the artist has had some family problems and it's delayed

I'm still working my way through the Secret Wars pre-preamble. Thoroughly expect to read the first issue sometime in the next year or two.

Fun fact (which I don't remember how I discovered): there were more Secret Wars crossover issues than the total issues put out under the New Universe banner. And I think more than 2099, as well, but I'd have to double check that. At any rate, the volume surpassed a couple of multi-year, multi-title lines.

The only thing about Uncanny X-Men that I find "interesting" is the inclusion of M on the murder squad. I'm kind of done with the Psylocke/Archangel treadmill, good Sabretooth is basically indistinguishable from Wolverine, and Magneto being Magneto only less logical isn't a draw.

On the plus side, there are some hilarious Greg Land splash pages in there.

Someone needs to leave an enticing trail of skin mags and lightboxes that lead into a deep hole where Greg Land can live out the rest of his days.

oh, so has marvel reality been reconstituted?

Yeah, as of a couple months ago.

anybody wanna give me a capsule explanation? I've been reading on marvel unlimited and it's hard to follow .... or more accurately, hard to care about.

titles in the reconstituted reality have been shipping for a while

how the reality got reconstituted, that's yet to be seen

yeah I assume we find that out tomorrow

here's the dumb spoilers version of Secret War
~do not read if you really care, but the Hickman unraveling of it has been somewhat interesting~

- Doom and the Molecule Man, accompanied by Dr. Strange, bombed the Beyonders with a box full of Molecule Men they saved. They'd been killing them across all the realities after MM revealed he was a singular being with one body in each reality, and was basically a reboot bomb that would destroy them all at once. Doom had created a cult that was doing his bidding over decades, as the Beyonders have a grasp on everything except for time, which Doom could manipulate. Some of Doom's cult became heretics like the Black Swan character that showed up a couple years (?) back. They ended up unwittingly helping the Beyonders in their new plot to smash universes together.

- Following the destruction of everything (survived by two life rafts: one containing 616 Reed Richards and friends, another containing Ultimate Reed Richards and the remains of the Cabal) Doom pulled together remaining pieces of everything into his own world. He's God, Strange is his right hand man, an army of Thors is his police force. Sue, Franklin, and Val from two (maybe three) realities are his family. Castle Doom sits on top of Yggdrasil, the world tree. There's a wall surrounding much of the world to keep out the annihilation horde and zombies. There are different Houses, led by assorted characters, governing the different states of Battleworld.

- The life rafts open, Doom's deception is starting to show, rally the troops, etc etc. Eight years passed in Battleworld while the people in the rafts only experienced a couple days. Strange confronts Doom, gets killed.

- Not so secret: a handful of characters find out about a room below Doomstadt and figure out the Molecule Man is still there.

~end spoilers

Favorite moment: Molecule Man keeps complaining about being hungry, eats a hamburger

i haven't read an issue in months and none of those were spoilers to me which means... nothing has happened since like august??