Marvel Comics blabbery

But, also, a lot of the comics they're putting out now don't resemble the stuff they were doing even 5-10 years ago. They're clearly trying to evolve.

If Morrisonesque superhero comics appeal to you, you could do a lot worse than Hickman's Marvel work.

Al Ewing's Mighty Avengers run has turned into the new The Ultimates, which seems pretty good so far. The core of the team includes the Blue Marvel, which had a kind of so-so "let's retcon a black superhero into the Marvel universe" origin but has really come into his own.

I think Marvel has mostly moved past the phase of comics where underserved characters are written with that as their main characteristic, which has been a problem.

I'm not enjoying The Ultimates as much as I enjoyed Mighty Avengers but I think that's partially because the team synergy with Hulkling, Wiccan and Squirrel Girl in the mix feels off

it's leaving plenty of room to grow, imo

I forgot to mention Al's New Avengers, it's excellent. The Ultimates, I haven't gotten into yet. On the whole I wish they'd kept Mighty Avengers happening. That was a great book.

MH, can you do one of your awesome summaries and explain me what happened in the last half of Secret Wars 9?

Sure!

Doom thinks he's smart enough to spot a distraction, but apparently not, as Reed and the Maker aka Ultimate Reed make their way to Molecule Man's White Room (not to be confused with the set of THX-1138, the phoenix entity's white room, or a room with black curtains). Owen's still hungry, as no one remembers to feed the poor bastard. Doom realizes he's being played, and fights both Reeds until he makes the crucial mistake of being badgered into admitting that Richards would have been able to imagine a better world. MM snaps to attention and hands the reins to his power over, which obliterates Battleworld, to be remade in Richards' image. There's a neat splash page with Reed/Victor talking, which goes back to all their past interactions. Reed is a nurturer, Victor's a protector.

Outside the room, as the world ends, Black Panther sees the light in his non-gauntlet-clad hand light up, indicating a world-destroying event is imminent. He seems to embrace it. After the flash of light, he finds himself in Wakanda, which apparently has a space program. He calls to the students studying nearby, calling them Makers, which is apparently the buzzword of the day.

Flash forward to eight months later (jeez these people love time lapses and countdowns) to Peter Parker and Miles Morales swinging around town. Miles's dead mom is back due to the universe smashing, possibly just a wink to him being the only one who packs a lunch.

The main aftereffect of the whole shebang is back on the moon, where Franklin is using his powers of imagination to dream up whole universes. There was a neat bit in the Hickman FF issues where the future Franklin coached his younger self into adventures every night where he'd explore worlds he'd conjure up, so he's in practice. Hopefully he's better at imagining Marvel universes than that time he created that Heroes Reborn clusterfuck, but who knows, Liefeld-verse might be out there. Reed still has the power Molecule Man has given him, and he's launching these fully formed universes into the void between multiverses and embedding a MM in each, who hopefully aren't bombs anymore. His power should diminish with each launch since he's giving up MM copies?

Sue is not the copy from Battleworld, but the original 616 version recreated so she assumes Reed saved her when the raft broke up. It's up in the air how many people remember Battleworld, but it's probably just those who were on the life rafts that didn't die. Reed's more optimistic than he's been in a long time, and likens his outlook to a belief in life and expansion instead of death and entropy, summing up the diseased universe breaking and collapsing and only being held together by Victor as opposed to his new role as cosmic creator.

Dr. Doom gazes across his balcony in Latveria, pulls off his mask to reveal an unscarred face (he was still hideously disfigured in Battleworld, unable to imagine a world where life and creation could blossom) and laughs.

At first I thought the gem that the Black Panther used as everything was winking out was yellow, the Time Gem, and he used it to go back to pre-Battleworld existence. But maybe it was orange, the Reality Gem, and he used it to reconstitute 616. From the coloring it's not entirely clear which gem it was.

It's possible that the Doom piece of Battleworld is the center of the new 616 (or whatever) but as noted earlier in the series, the infinity gems only work in the universe of their origin, to the extent that Strange made sure Doom's castle was constructed on a world fragment where the gauntlet existed. So its power was limited in the scope of fixing things.

something poetic about a white-hooded man being confronted by a black panther with his fist in the air

Thanks MH!

It is depressing/existentially weird to think that almost everyone did, in fact, die, and that from now on all the versions of your Marvel favourites are just Reed and Franklin's recreations.

I've been haunted since I was a child by the idea that you "die" every night when you got to sleep - or, at least, that day's version of you dies, because you think and feel differently in the morning.

So - creepy. But I guess more satisfying/interesting than Superboy punching everyone different.

Spider-Woman is the funnest thing going on currently.

Funnier than Squirrel Girl?

Haven't read SG. I'll give it a shot. Also, funnest not funniest.

Oh sorry, I misread that.

enh 'fun' applies to squirrel girl too. that galactus issue! so enjoyable.

I don't like Squirrel Girl and I feel bad about it. (I think it just topped Tom's poll.) Sort of feels "amusing" but not actually "funny". Sorry, grouch.

I was blase on issue #1 (the first issue #1) of Squirrel Girl until I noticed the running captions at the bottom of every page; that really made the book for me.

Ok, I will try again, again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCivz_0fJNQ

why were MTV's microphones so gigantic

You know, I still think of the 90s if I type "Peter David's X-Factor issues" but the run in the 2000s when he returned, which ran quite a few issues, is pretty great.

I'm with you on that. His second run on X-Factor lasted way longer but that initial run is the one that's stuck with me.

So many mullets in that video! I don't know how I never saw those clips before. That would've aired at a time when I was both incessantly glued to MTV and in the initial throes of my Marvel obsession.

You should read some of that not so recent but 2000s run! I feel like he really did ponder what the characters are up to

I have read both runs (and like 95% of everything X-related, more generally). The second run started very strong but got more than a little aimless as it went on. I've also started but haven't finished All-New X-Factor which doesn't really resemble either earlier run in any meaningful sense and which hasn't exactly bowled me over thus far.

The 00s run is the one that starts with Jamie Madrox absorbing a dying clone and featured little notes on his family in the 'previously' page?

his = PADs

Yeah, that's the one.

I enjoyed the Secret War series he did where he mashed together his future X-Factor characters with his future Hulk characters

so they launched an 'all-new hawkeye' comic that actually ... had the exact setup of the preceding hawkeye comic, then after number five they launched another all-new hawkeye #1 which continues directly from #5

for something that I can get hundreds of thousands of issues to read without getting out of bed, marvel comics sure are inconvenient

Starting in June, every new issue of a Marvel comic will be branded as #1 in perpetuity.

The least they could do is some kinda '90s Superman numbering shit to keep things straight. I'm way on top of this stuff and it's confusing even for me. I cannot even imagine how casual fans make heads or tails of anything (like trying to keep track of the three volumes of Captain Marvel that have been released in the last couple of years, featuring Carol Danvers, who was previously named Ms. Marvel but who is not the Ms. Marvel who has had two separate volumes of her own comic within the same span of time).

the sad thing is that i could easily keep all this shit straight in my head when i was 15, when i'd have to travel for a couple of hours in each direction to buy my comics. now that i'm 35 and have access to 50 years of marvel to read anytime and anywhere, most of the time it's too much effort to work out which captain america or whatever i should be reading next and i just end up doing something else instead.

Well, twenty years ago, Marvel would actually continue issuing a single volume of a title for decades at a time rather than rebooting every six months. It was a much more streamlined thing. And they also put out about a third or a quarter of today's volume of titles.

does continually bringing out new #1s really have a positive effect on sales? i'd have guessed diminishing returns would have set in long ago but they keep doing it!

it doesn't help that marvel unlimited will frequently throw an additional spanner in the works by filing All-New Forbush Man as under 'A' rather than with all the other Forbush Man comics under 'F'. it took me like a year to realise that the new squirrel girl series was on there because it wasn't where i expected it to be under 'S'.

I honestly can't keep track of the verbiage for the line-wide rebranding. I don't know what's Marvel Now! and what's All-New Marvel Now! and what's Even Newer Marvel Tomorrow! and Super-Seriously Way-New Marvel Future!

also this hawkeye comic sucks

the thought of an all-new hawkguy without fraction/aja is deeply unappealing tbh

I wouldn't say the new Hawkeye sucks but it's definitely not as good as the Fraction/Aja/Wu iteration

in the first five the present day bits just felt like the same thing done less well (why are kate and clint being idiots?) and the kid stuff was just ...

We (me and my friends in middle school/high school times) used to think it was awesome that Thor was on issue 348 and capt America on issue 275 etc etc. it made us want to read those series more. I mean new titles were exciting too but those triple digit issue numbers were IMPOSING like the way hulk lifting 50 tons was imposing.

Yeah, that's pretty OTM. But everything is Tweets and Vines now, who has time for long shit, man.

The first issue of Uncanny X-Men I picked up was #273. This was immediately on the heels of a crossover (X-Tinction Agenda, I believe), and all of the X-teams were hanging out at Xavier's. I had no idea who 90% of these people were, and there was a ton of them. Totally baffling, but also totally intriguing because I'd jumped into the middle of this story that had clearly been going on for a looooong time, and the fascination with digging into that backstory has kept me going for a couple of decades since in a way that I don't know I would've been as inclined to do had I first picked up, say Uncanny X-Men v.3 #4.

One of my first X-Men issues was during the X-Cutioner's Song crossover. I still don't understand what happened in that crossover.

there's just too much now. I would be more inclined to dip my toe in if series naming/numbering wasn't so bafflingly complicated.

One hopes that shit will settle down in the wake of Secret Wars but we shall see.