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Author Topic: Marvel NOW!  (Read 72015 times)
Khaldun
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on: December 05, 2012, 04:51:06 AM

So Marvel redid all their books, but not so much a giant continuity reboot, just a lot of 'fresh takes' on characters where the creators are authorized to not pay so much attention to continuity. There are, as you might expect, some real turkeys in the bunch, but also some pretty interesting and enjoyable stuff.

My favorite so far is Jason Aaron's Thor, which is pretty fucking awesome. The initial arc tells a split story of Thor in three eras--as a god of the Vikings, joining in their plunder and raiding (and hoping that some gods of their victims will come down and brawl with him); Thor in the Marvel 'present', on an alien planet where they don't believe in their own gods; Thor in the Marvel future, the last of the Asgardian gods. In all three eras, he is stalked by a mysterious enemy called the God Butcher who does pretty much what his name suggests. Really recommend it.

The new Deadpool book is hilarious--the character is enlisted by SHIELD to fight an army of Undead American Presidents who were raised up by a sort of Tea Party sorcerer who immediately regretted doing it.

Captain America is a bit weird but I'll stick with it for a while--going for a sort of 1950s era "sci fi adventure" feeling to it. (Cap is thrust into a strange dimension.)

New Hulk book is good--very strongly derives from the Avengers movie in its feeling.

The rest is either eh or actively bad (the new X-Men book is terrible).
CmdrSlack
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Reply #1 on: December 05, 2012, 06:27:11 AM

The new Deadpool is great, but I think Deadpool is probably the most fun of the Marvel IPs to write. Even during that terribad Fear Itself event, the Deadpool arc was the best thing about it.

The new Iron Man isn't bad, but not super-great yet either. We'll see where it goes.

ETA -- Ok, this new Avengers book could have legs.
« Last Edit: December 05, 2012, 11:20:08 PM by CmdrSlack »

I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
Mattemeo
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Reply #2 on: December 08, 2012, 07:17:55 PM

The rest is either eh or actively bad (the new X-Men book is terrible).

Which X-Men book? From what I've read of Bendis' All New X-Men so far it's looking fantastic; the premise is so high concept I can't wait to see where Bendis is going with it. Immonen's art is also gorgeous, his take on Beast is one of the best yet.

If you party with the Party Prince you get two complimentary after-dinner mints
Margalis
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Reply #3 on: December 09, 2012, 05:42:22 AM

What's the deal with buying these digitally? Is it all one-offs or can you sub? I know there is some sort of Marvel digital sub thing but it appears to be only for back issues?

I used to collect comics as a kid, the idea of collecting boxes of comics is really not appealing these days. The space to content ratio is just not there.

vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
CmdrSlack
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Reply #4 on: December 09, 2012, 07:50:03 AM

You can get them the day they come out via Marvel's app. The iPad app works quite well, you can do panel by panel reading, or the entire page, etc.

The cost for new comics seems to be full price, which is a bit lame. The real value seems to be access to old runs, etc. You can also buy trades, which seem to be a bit cheaper than purchasing them at a shop.

The digital sub is something totally different, I have no experience with it at all.

I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
Khaldun
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Reply #5 on: December 09, 2012, 08:10:33 PM

The "original X-Men come back to the present" book. Hated it.

Hickman's big-screen Avengers is more or less a continuation of his big-screen Fantastic Four.

(Really hate Fraction's new Fantastic Four books--I love Fraction's independent books but his Marvel work has been almost uniformly terrible.)
Mattemeo
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Reply #6 on: December 12, 2012, 07:25:51 AM

I'm surprised we'd have such opposite reactions to it; both my flatmate and I have really enjoyed the first 2 issues. In fact I don't want to read any more singles so I can pick up the TPB and enjoy it as a whole. That said, we live in the UK and I don't know how much further into the story you might be if you're in the US so perhaps it either jumps the shark or you're just not a fan of the entire idea. Or possibly not a fan of Bendis?

If you party with the Party Prince you get two complimentary after-dinner mints
CmdrSlack
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Reply #7 on: December 12, 2012, 07:30:36 AM

We are only up to issue #3 here in the states. Today might change that. Or not. Looks like a slow week for Marvel and DC, but with a load of indies of various worth.

My purchase list for the week looks like: Massive, Walking Dead, Supurbia (issue 2, we'll see how long it lasts for me), Batman, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, and ASM. I have two back issues of Stumpville to track down and perhaps one of The Secret Service. I'm most excited about the Secret (Strange?) Talent of Luther Strode TPB that they got in for me.

I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
Khaldun
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Reply #8 on: December 12, 2012, 10:47:09 AM

I used to love Bendis, but yeah, I'm off him now. I just found that the X-Men book more than any other was bent by having to carry water for AvX, particularly its conclusion.
CmdrSlack
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Reply #9 on: December 12, 2012, 11:25:56 AM

I used to love Bendis, but yeah, I'm off him now. I just found that the X-Men book more than any other was bent by having to carry water for AvX, particularly its conclusion.


AvX was by far the worst event Marvel has done in a while. The stupid Divided We Fall thing in the Ultimate universe is better, and it is pretty awful on the whole.

I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
HaemishM
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Reply #10 on: December 12, 2012, 11:44:58 AM

Can you give me a spoilered rundown of AVX that made it so stupid? Not doubting it's stupidity. Bendis seems to revel in really stupid ideas that ignore everything a character has ever done in the past to make it fit his idea of a story.

Khaldun
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Reply #11 on: December 12, 2012, 11:59:15 AM

Ok.

So, the Phoenix Force is spotted heading for Earth. It stops to fry some planets and shit along the way, but it's basically coming.

Cyclops, having recently gone more to the Magneto side of things (heading up a splinter faction of X-Men who were more and more unsubtly willing to hint that if humanity fucked with what was left of the mutants, the mutants would punch back), is convinced that the reason the Phoenix keeps coming back to Earth looking for powerful red-headed women mutants to possess is that it wants to help mutants out. He particularly thinks it is coming to work through Hope, who is yet another child of Jean Grey from some future or something like that. Captain America and the Avengers don't think so and want to take Hope off-planet until they can figure out how to beat or kill the Phoenix.

The X-Men and the Avengers fight (Wolverine siding with the Avengers). Then they fight some more and play "hide-and-seek Hope Summers" in between rounds. Then the Phoenix Force arrives and Iron Man does some supersciency thing and accidentally splits the Phoenix Force and it ends up divided between Cyclops, Colossus, Magik, Emma Frost and Namor.

The Phoenix Five make new costumes for themselves and proceed to make Earth a utopia. (Stop me if you've heard this one before.) Captain America thinks it's all a cheat and the Avengers and the X-Men fight some more. The Avengers kidnap Hope who is now on their side and it turns out that the Phoenix used to go to K'un L'un so Iron Fist has some magic anti-Phoenix techniques he can teach her or some bullshit like that.

The Phoenix Five turn on each other and become nastier. Cyclops absorbs all their powers and gets ready to destroy Earth. He kills Professor X out of irritation (stop me if you've heard this one before) and there's lots of Avengers and Phoenix Force fighting inbetween. Then Hope steps in and she and the Scarlet Witch work together and then fight and at the end the Scarlet Witch (formerly dead) reverses her House of M No More Mutants curse and there are lots of mutants again. Cyclops ends up in jail, having been proven kind of right actually that it would be good for mutants to have Phoenix back, and Captain America acts like a clueless dick towards the one superhero who actually is getting punished for being possessed by an evil superbeing ever in the history of comics.

The End.
HaemishM
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Reply #12 on: December 12, 2012, 12:19:51 PM

Fuck me. I'm sorry I asked.  swamp poop

Mattemeo
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Reply #13 on: December 12, 2012, 01:01:49 PM

It was basically Marvel does Dragon Ball Z, and no less stupid or enjoyable. I think Bendis just has fun with the event stuff, and it neatly bookmarks the period between AvX and House of M. Beyond that, one half of the event was essentially 'Who would win if X and X got in a fight' issues, which is as dumb as it sounds. I've had my expectations considerably lowered since Millar put the whole show on cruise control into the sun with Civil War so I just roll my eyes at the stupider stuff and wait to see where the event takes the rest of the universe afterwards. That said, I love Bendis' writing, especially his dialogue (no one else is in the same league) so I am willing to admit I let him off for some things I might not a writer I have less love for. Kirkman and K. Vaughan get a similar reprieve.

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HaemishM
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Reply #14 on: December 12, 2012, 01:23:50 PM

I like Bendis' dialogue when he's doing crime fiction/Daredevil street level heroes. His Avengers stuff? Absolutely and utterly wrong for that book. It was such a weird, ill-fitting tone and yet now it's stamped on just about everything Marvel does.

CmdrSlack
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Reply #15 on: December 12, 2012, 06:21:04 PM

It's nice that Marvel is doing this reboot right now, because I just discovered how TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME the Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics from 1970-71 were. I plan to nerd out on Oliver Queen (while avoiding the Kevin Smith bits -- I fucking hated his Daredevil run) trades to placate my rage regarding a new Spider-Man book called Superior Spider-Man, which I cannot stop myself from buying.

Yes, that just conflated DC and Marvel comics, but dammit, I am just now discovering that DC doesn't suck. After digesting all of the classic Batman stuff (and even that DC reboot of Batman was cool -- the Court of Owls stuff was neat), I'm learning that DC has other worthwhile stuff.


I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
Mattemeo
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Reply #16 on: December 12, 2012, 06:27:34 PM

Smith's run on Green Arrow is pretty decent, from what I remember. It gets overshadowed by the hate his writing got for more ...popular characters.

If you party with the Party Prince you get two complimentary after-dinner mints
CmdrSlack
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Reply #17 on: December 12, 2012, 06:44:58 PM

His Daredevil run was just so terribad.

Bendis, on the other hand, is awesome when he writes Daredevil. The End of Days limited run that's going on right now is kickass.

I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
Khaldun
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Reply #18 on: December 12, 2012, 08:03:43 PM

Smith's run on Green Arrow is pretty decent, from what I remember. It gets overshadowed by the hate his writing got for more ...popular characters.

It's ok I think up until he does something really dark and nasty with Stanley and His Monster.

But it's coherent at least and has a fun nostalgic vibe. His later comics writing is basically a stoner giggling at himself in the corner, which is all Smith is good for these days. I don't use drugs but I don't have any particular beef about pot or other softer stuff--however, you could pretty much just show kids Smith from the beginning of his career to now and have that be 'don't be a pothead, QED'.

Denny O'Neill GA/GL was insanely important to the history of comics but I don't know that it's aged very well.
Lantyssa
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Reply #19 on: December 13, 2012, 06:23:15 AM

Can you give me a spoilered rundown of AVX that made it so stupid? Not doubting it's stupidity. Bendis seems to revel in really stupid ideas that ignore everything a character has ever done in the past to make it fit his idea of a story.
I'll just leave this here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmB_N3J-0Vk

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
CmdrSlack
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Reply #20 on: December 13, 2012, 07:55:35 AM


Denny O'Neill GA/GL was insanely important to the history of comics but I don't know that it's aged very well.

The dated language is what makes it so awesome.

I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
HaemishM
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Reply #21 on: December 13, 2012, 08:16:40 AM

Can you give me a spoilered rundown of AVX that made it so stupid? Not doubting it's stupidity. Bendis seems to revel in really stupid ideas that ignore everything a character has ever done in the past to make it fit his idea of a story.
I'll just leave this here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmB_N3J-0Vk

2 Things.

She's so goddamn hot.

And fuck me, Bendis is a retard.

Lantyssa
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Reply #22 on: December 13, 2012, 09:02:56 AM

Gotta do my bit to up her potential stalker quotient.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
Nevermore
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Reply #23 on: December 13, 2012, 10:17:32 AM

Ha, you've really got a crush on her now, don't you?  DRILLING AND WOMANLINESS

Over and out.
palmer_eldritch
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Reply #24 on: December 13, 2012, 11:13:42 AM

Ok.

So, the Phoenix Force is spotted heading for Earth. It stops to fry some planets and shit along the way, but it's basically coming.

Cyclops, having recently gone more to the Magneto side of things (heading up a splinter faction of X-Men who were more and more unsubtly willing to hint that if humanity fucked with what was left of the mutants, the mutants would punch back), is convinced that the reason the Phoenix keeps coming back to Earth looking for powerful red-headed women mutants to possess is that it wants to help mutants out. He particularly thinks it is coming to work through Hope, who is yet another child of Jean Grey from some future or something like that. Captain America and the Avengers don't think so and want to take Hope off-planet until they can figure out how to beat or kill the Phoenix.

The X-Men and the Avengers fight (Wolverine siding with the Avengers). Then they fight some more and play "hide-and-seek Hope Summers" in between rounds. Then the Phoenix Force arrives and Iron Man does some supersciency thing and accidentally splits the Phoenix Force and it ends up divided between Cyclops, Colossus, Magik, Emma Frost and Namor.

The Phoenix Five make new costumes for themselves and proceed to make Earth a utopia. (Stop me if you've heard this one before.) Captain America thinks it's all a cheat and the Avengers and the X-Men fight some more. The Avengers kidnap Hope who is now on their side and it turns out that the Phoenix used to go to K'un L'un so Iron Fist has some magic anti-Phoenix techniques he can teach her or some bullshit like that.

The Phoenix Five turn on each other and become nastier. Cyclops absorbs all their powers and gets ready to destroy Earth. He kills Professor X out of irritation (stop me if you've heard this one before) and there's lots of Avengers and Phoenix Force fighting inbetween. Then Hope steps in and she and the Scarlet Witch work together and then fight and at the end the Scarlet Witch (formerly dead) reverses her House of M No More Mutants curse and there are lots of mutants again. Cyclops ends up in jail, having been proven kind of right actually that it would be good for mutants to have Phoenix back, and Captain America acts like a clueless dick towards the one superhero who actually is getting punished for being possessed by an evil superbeing ever in the history of comics.

The End.

I actually read AvsX but I think I've blanked some of it out. Did we ever learn what Hope actually is? Clone of Jean Grey, daughter of Jean Grey, Jean Grey, creation of the Phoenix, creation of Scarlet Witch? Is it still a mystery?
Khaldun
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Reply #25 on: December 13, 2012, 08:10:06 PM

Hope featured in a bunch of dumb X-Men crossover stuff before AvX. She started as a continuity mess and got even messier. Basically she's the first mutant born after the Scarlet Witch magicked mutants out of existence except for all the popular ones. Cable took her into the future and gave her the surname Summers, just so he'd have someone as stupidly complicated in backstory as he is. Then she came back to her time, the "present" of the Marvel Universe, and mutants started to be born again slowly and there was a bunch of stuff about the new characters she finds. And then AvX, more or less. The whole X-Men continuity is hopelessly borked in any event and she's a symptom of that.
Lantyssa
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Reply #26 on: December 14, 2012, 08:57:38 AM

Ha, you've really got a crush on her now, don't you?  DRILLING AND WOMANLINESS
Guilty.  I've actually refrained from watching all of her shows to keep it from getting worse.  embarassed

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
Furiously
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Reply #27 on: December 14, 2012, 02:00:47 PM

She looks like she could ba a little bi-curious to me....

Merusk
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Reply #28 on: December 14, 2012, 03:07:30 PM

She looks like she could ba a little bi-curious to me....

Curious? Hell, she looks like she could teach Lant a thing or two to me.

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
CmdrSlack
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Reply #29 on: December 14, 2012, 06:00:16 PM

Hope featured in a bunch of dumb X-Men crossover stuff before AvX. She started as a continuity mess and got even messier. Basically she's the first mutant born after the Scarlet Witch magicked mutants out of existence except for all the popular ones. Cable took her into the future and gave her the surname Summers, just so he'd have someone as stupidly complicated in backstory as he is. Then she came back to her time, the "present" of the Marvel Universe, and mutants started to be born again slowly and there was a bunch of stuff about the new characters she finds. And then AvX, more or less. The whole X-Men continuity is hopelessly borked in any event and she's a symptom of that.

The Generation Hope book was kinda decent. I'm a bit pissed that it abruptly ended when AvX began. CBG19 seems to love the Wolverine and the Xmen series, but I dumped it during AvX. My local shop has a "give us a pull list and get 10% off" deal. It has been like two years since I got back into comics and I'm still slacking on that.

I need to focus the list.

In other news, I scored Deadpool #3 and #4 today.

I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
Khaldun
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Reply #30 on: December 14, 2012, 06:04:55 PM

Deadpool is staying great. But of course he's already in another book where the take on him is completely different and mostly serious.
CmdrSlack
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Reply #31 on: December 14, 2012, 06:13:01 PM

These are early 90s issues of Deadpool. "In honor of Hillary, call me Dead Rodham Pool!"

I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
Khaldun
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Reply #32 on: February 12, 2013, 04:24:39 AM

A lot of the Marvel NOW! books are really quite good. The distinction between how Marvel's handling the ongoing publishing of comics and DC is really striking. The word coming out of DC is that there is massive editorial interference, some of it directly by Jim Lee and Geoff Johns, or by Didio. They've rehired virtually every 90s Marvel editor with a bad reputation and revived some of the worst storytelling emphases of the 90s. They're emphasizing plot over characterization and situation, and trying to make everything even MORE continuity-dependent. The requirement to have 52 titles is causing them to cycle through tons of low-selling, terrible books (I think maybe they're about to give up on the 52 concept though with the latest wave of cancellations).

Marvel is letting its writers do what they want, they're not terribly worried about continuity, they're emphasizing a big diversity of art styles and aesthetics. Fraction's Hawkeye couldn't more unlike Hickman's Avengers, but nobody cares. Lots of the NOW! books you could walk in and start fresh without having read a boatload of earlier things but they haven't formally 'restarted the continuity' or anything of that kind.
Velorath
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Reply #33 on: April 12, 2013, 03:23:53 PM

Marvel is letting its writers do what they want, they're not terribly worried about continuity, they're emphasizing a big diversity of art styles and aesthetics. Fraction's Hawkeye couldn't more unlike Hickman's Avengers, but nobody cares. Lots of the NOW! books you could walk in and start fresh without having read a boatload of earlier things but they haven't formally 'restarted the continuity' or anything of that kind.

Just read through the first 9 issues of Fraction's Hawkeye books the other day and they're really damn good. Has a very deliberate "indie book" sort of feel to the point where it barely feels like a superhero book (and really it's not) let alone a superhero book that's recognizably Marvel.
HaemishM
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Reply #34 on: April 12, 2013, 11:00:10 PM

Can you give me a spoilered rundown of AVX that made it so stupid? Not doubting it's stupidity. Bendis seems to revel in really stupid ideas that ignore everything a character has ever done in the past to make it fit his idea of a story.

Just wanted to quote that as thanks to the Marvel free #1 promotion, I got a chance to read some of the first issues of the AVX stuff for free.

Had I paid for this, I'd have wanted my money back as well as the opportunity to cockpunch Bendis. It is so UTTERLY IDIOTIC on its face. Cyclops starts the book as the biggest raging dickhead I've ever seen and if I've missed some continuity that explains why he has suddenly turned into Magneto's douchier son, it still could not explain why the fuck he would choose to protect the Phoenix Force against the Avengers. FFS, the goddamn Phoenix Force tricked him into thinking he was banging his girlfriend, then killed her in front of his fucking eyes. There's no goddamn way he'd think "Oh great, we can use this uncontrollable cosmic force to make more mutants that everyone hates because that won't start a war with humanity or nothing."

SO... MUCH... STUPID.

The vs. books which were essentially Marvel Team-Up/Two-in-One only devoid of any plot were even more fucking retarded. Magneto vs. Iron Man and Tony Stark suddenly channels the goddamn magnetic field of JUPITER from Earth via satellite. I'm sorry... LOLWUT? That's not even comic book LOLWUT that's just bad bad bad handwaving sciency-wiencey shit. I don't think I can blame Bendis for that, but I can blame an editorial staff who didn't dickstab the writer when that script was brought to them.

Look, comics have often been over the top and a lot ridiculous. But... just no. NO.

NO.

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