A little over a year ago
Marvel launched their massive publishing event Marvel NOW! and it was heralded as one of Marvel’s best
ideas since Civil War. Essentially, it was just a shuffle of their
creative deck. They had some creators on long-standing runs, such as
Bendis’s 200+ issue Avengers run and Brubaker’s 7 or so year
Captain America run, who were ready to move on and let other people
take over these characters. This sparked controversy because, to do
this, Marvel was going to “cancel” over half of their titles and
relaunch them just like another superhero comic company who shall not
be named (but may have characters whose names rhyme with Cooperman and Fratman). Marvel,
prepared for this comparison, stated that Marvel NOW! was
merely putting fresh new creators on their beloved titles with complete and
utter respect for the continuity that came before. As luck would have it, Marvel
has a cornucopia of fantastic talent and ever since Marvel NOW!
launched, books like Hickman’s Avengers, Bendis’s All-New X-Men,
and Slott’s Superior Spider-Man have stood strong on the top 20 in comics sales.
So what’s All-NEW Marvel
NOW!? Since their first relaunch event was so successful, Marvel is
attempting to see if they can catch lightning in a bottle again. This
time around, they’re taking more risks by focusing on elevating
their B-list characters with inspired creative teams. This movement
also focuses on the "Marvel Knights" with Daredevil, Moon Knight, Ghost
Rider, Iron Fist and The Punisher getting relaunches. They’re also
focusing on a stronger solo female force with Black Widow, She-Hulk,
Captain Marvel, Elektra, and Ms. Marvel getting new #1’s as well.
The number 1 seems to be the primary focus of All-New Marvel NOW!
although with three types of #1 books put out throughout the four or
so months of this push it can get confusing. Three types? Yes,
faithful reader, there are three types of #1’s in All-New Marvel
NOW!.
(Note: The type of #1 does
not correlate with the quality of the book)
1. True #1- These are
titles with completely new creative teams with an overall different
take on the characters in their book. For example Nathan Edmondson
and Mitch Gerads’s "The Punisher" is a true #1 because it is
radically different from Rucka’s acclaimed Punisher run from a year
or so back in that Frank has moved out to L.A. and is entrenched in a
twisty-turny drug war and he’s also hunted by a mysterious group
who I won’t reveal here. Other True #1s include "Moon Knight",
"Fantastic Four", "New Warrior"s and most of the titles I mentioned
before when I spoke about the "Marvel Knights" and female focus, but
not all…
2. False #1s- These are
titles they relaunched that could’ve easily just been the next
issue of the series, but since the comics industry is #1 crazy, they
decided to make this new story arc a completely new volume of the
series. For example, "Daredevil" #1 is the exact same (all be it great)
creative team as Daredevil #36. All that changed is Matt Murdock has
moved to San Francisco for reasons explained in #36. Other examples
of this blatant disregard for numbers are "Captain Marvel" #1 (changed
the artist), "Wolverine" #1 (changed the artist), and "Hulk" #1 (changed
the artist). I’m not a huge fan of this trend where Marvel seem
to be committing to the Mignola style of comics which is “new story
arc, new book”. Mignola famously does this with Hellboy, and it works for that series, but I think a character like Spider-Man can sustain sales
numbers whether he’s on issue 1 or 732. But at the same time they
aren’t following the Hellboy paradigm. What do I mean? Well…
3. Bulls@$t #1s- There are
several books from Marvel NOW! that Marvel doesn’t want to restart
for some reason, yet they still want them to ride the All-New Marvel
NOW! wave, so they plaster a big #1 on the cover, with the ACTUAL number in the bottom right hand corner. A prime example;
"Uncanny Avengers" #18 is labeled "Uncanny Avengers" #18.NOW/#1 or some
silliness like that because Marvel doesn’t want to restart the
title, but they still want people to think that it’s a #1. I don’t
like this trick. Marvel, if you’re going to commit to “new story
arc, new book”, then commit. It’s even less consistent than I’m
making it out to be. Like I said with the False #1s, most of them
were restarted seemingly because of an artist change. Well "New
Avengers" #16.NOW (/THEN hey lookatusbeatDCsomemore.1) has Rags
Morales on art which is a brand new artist, but Marvel keeps the
numbers going. I don’t know why, but my guess is that with
Brand-New All-New Marvel NOW! 2.0 (or whatever it’ll be called)
they’ll probably just relaunch the book with Hickman and
fill-in-the blank artist.
And
that’s All-New Marvel NOW!. In this writer’s humble opinion, I
think the whole #1 craze is kind of silly and you shouldn’t really
worry about numbers. You can pretty much pick up any issue of a comic
and understand what’s going on fairly quickly, and if you can’t,
Marvel is nice enough to have a “Previously in” page in the
beginning of their books. So go out to your local comic shop and
pay no attention to numbers. If you’re sitting there
looking for recommendations, I personally like "The Punisher", "Moon
Knight", "Inhuman", and "All-New X-Factor" (on the True #1 list), but
you also can’t go wrong with "Daredevil", "Uncanny Avengers", "New
Warriors", "She-Hulk" or "Silver Surfer". Actually ...screw it. So far,
All-New Marvel NOW! has been pretty damn good. Using the #1 bait is completely unnecessary. Marvel has shown that B-list and C-list characters can shine under new light and emerge as the great characters. Sorry to all you cynics, but I just couldn’t end negatively. The endless #1 parade is annoying, but quality wins out over cheap gimmicks in the end.
No comments :
Post a Comment