Marvel!NOW and Jason Aaron's Great God Thor

I'm in the middle of the second part of my big move, this time going from Chicago to Austin, TX, my final destination and my home for the foreseeable future. Tonight, I'm in Joplin, Missouri, and I didn't fall asleep right away after an almost ten hour drive, leaving me some time to catch up on my books. Among the lot of good stuff that came out on Wednesday was the last issue of the first arc of Jason Aaron's Thor: God of Thunder; although I was suspicious about this title's potential when it was announced, my fears were quickly assuaged. Aaron is a very talented storyteller, and one with many hats, and Esad Ribic shook off some trouble with facial expressions at the starting line, becoming one of the better Frank Frazetta-influenced comics illustrators I've ever seen.

As the books that were relaunched as part of Marvel!NOW begin to reach their first birthdays, its been interesting to me thinking about their relative success or failure, in light of the creative failure of DC's New 52 initiative, which is now almost two. Whereas DC reinvented their characters and their universe, they didn't really do anything interesting or exciting with their talent pool. Mostly they just shuffled around some creators to see what stuck. To a certain extent, Marvel did the same thing with Marvel!NOW-- they just did a better job of it. Putting Jason Aaron on Thor was an inspired move; he was willing to separate the character from the very good, although somewhat onerous, past few years of story, which freed him to write a very, very good book. Aaron's Thor is dark fairytale about what it means to be a god and whether or not gods are good. What he ends up suggesting, at least in passing, is that people need things to believe in and that gods, good or bad, are as good a thing as any. In other words, its just the sort of pop-philosophy that makes Marvel so great, done in the high adventure/sci-fi combo that Thor is just right for.

This is exactly why Marvel!NOW worked where the New 52 seems to have failed; Marvel gave me a reason to give their new stuff a try, reinventing old ideas rather than recycling them, while DC seemed to be trying to make me take a pass. This isn't to say that the books are uniformly better at Marvel right now than they are at DC, just that, a year on from the relaunch, the House of Ideas is at the high point of a recent creative resurgence. Aaron and Ribic seem like a good bet to keep it going; let's hope the rest of the publisher's good books can, too. 

Thor: The Mighty Avenger and The Aesthetics of Scale

Over at his newly reinvigorated blog, Chris Samnee has posted a sketch of Thor and the Warriors Three.

Samnee hardly needs a good reason to sketch, although I imagine that he might be a little bummed out these days. It turns out, though, that he picked these particular characters in honor of Marvel's upcoming reissue of Thor: The Mighty Avenger. TTMA is one of the great unsung comics of this century, an all ages, absolutely free from the shackles of continuity Thor story, the real main character of which is Jane Foster, here an academic working at a museum. Roger Langridge wrote with a nice combination of for-the-neophyte and for-the-obsessive, totally reworking the character's history, but also nodding along to the tune of its contemporaries by setting it in Oklahoma, although in Bergen rather than Broxton. Rereading the first issue now, it seems pretty clear to me that whoever wrote the script for the Thor movie used this comic for part of the inspiration and they couldn't have made a better choice. 

The book was also the first extended encounter I had with Samnee's work, which I've since come to adore. Although the look is very typical for the artist, simple and bold, I think it might be his best work: the line is thinner than the one I usually associate with him and the compositions are less crowded, giving the book a gorgeous, spacious quality. Matt Wilson's not-quite-flat colors also need their due, as they detail the compositions while complicating them only slightly, joining Samnee's art with a consistent visual tone. 

For whatever reason, TTMA didn't sell well, and it only lasted eight issues. I suspect its unfortunate demise had to do with a misunderstanding about what could be expected, sales-wise, out of an all-ages title; as the mainstream newsmedia never fails to remind us, comics aren't just aren't really for kids anymore. A few neat looking all-ages comics boutiques not withstanding, the children's market is probably not as robust as any of the big companies would like. So when Marvel eventually collected TTMA, they doubled down, publishing it in a scaled-down digest format, presumably because little books fit better in little hands. Insofar as this cramped the book's style, turning the spacious into the claustrophobic, it was a small tragedy. 

Last weekend, I wrote about comics' unique ability to suggest through variation of panel size, and now I can't help but wonder if there's a minimum threshold for that. On the other hand, Archie and other books are published in small magazines all the time, but those stories are designed for that size. So it seems more likely that the nature of TTMA changed, that it got less good despite no actual change in content, not because of the size of the book itself but instead because it wasn't designed to be so small. I also wonder if the same thing is true about the scale up--  I've never read one of those neat IDW artists editions or any of those massive Marvel omnibuses, so I don't know for sure. But I get the feeling that they might be weird, or certainly awkward, reading experiences; nobody is big enough to read a thousand page collection the same way they read a single issue. 

The nice thing about this particular reissue of TTMA is that they've scaled it back up to original size, so that you can, in reading it, get a much better idea of why the book is so great. Surely, for Chris Samnee, the Warriors Four, and the rest of us, that's a good reason to celebrate. 

Everyone is in a Media Tizzy Over This?

I worry about the mental state of a world that puts at such importance the decisions of fictional characters in regards to their legal citizenship.

Yahoo.com's main page 'trending' searches as of two weeks ago, just after the release of "Action Comics" #900 on April 27th.
Maybe I'm just being cantankerous. I can see how, to the general public, the idea that Superman is now fighting for 'Truth, Justice, but NOT the American way' is shocking. But Superman's writers had long ago deduced that if Superman, as a character, was purely an American man the balance of power would be tipped unfairly and DC universe's American politicians would attempt to use him as a weapon, either literal or propagandistic. That was one of the many lessons of Alan Moore's and Frank Miller's respective late-Cold War epics of 1986: "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight". "God exists, and he's American." ("Watchmen" #4) Nobody would take this naively anymore. The solution was to stress him as a world-wide protector of all human life. Renouncing his American citizenship was implied as a done deal a long time ago. That makes this recent move not tremendously newsworthy from an insider's perspective.

It is ONLY interesting as a nudge-in-the-ribs version of 'Hey look! These aren't your Papa's comic-books!' Something more dramatic is needed. We need to put interesting comics in front of people, not just tell them about one single incident of a single comic with some mild ramifications related to the public's retro-active understanding of certain mainstream characters. Last night after seeing the "Thor" movie adaptation in Times Square I stood on the street and watched the jumbotrons play the movie's trailer as well as the trailer for "X-Men: First Class" and lots and LOTS of other things: Martha Stewart. Good Morning America. Lady Gaga. Coca Cola. The Simpsons. Sit-com television.

The comics industry needs to concentrate less on 'stunts' and more on making comics themselves as visible as the things I saw on those huge screens.

And, well, if we're going to get technical? Clark Kent has a social security number. Superman doesn't. Superman is not a legal US citizen and therefore can't renounce his citizenship. Does that really need to be pointed out?

~ @JonGorga

THIS Is Why I Do This.

The Society of Illustrators held an evening panel entitled "Drawing the Line: An Evening with Comic Luminaries" three nights ago on Wednesday the 11th of May. The Society brought together mainstream American industry legends Jim Steranko, former Marvel Comics E-i-C Joe Quesada, and Walter Simonson to be questioned by Dennis Calero, a man with a young but varied career in comics himself, to speak about the craft of making sequential art.

Here's my Twitter blast from the evening with some new, fuller commentary from me:

@LongandShortbox
Listening to Jim Steranko, Joe Quesada, & Walt Simonson at the Society of Illustrators in NYC moderated by Dennis Calero! Amazing.~@JonGorga
11 May

Jim Steranko: "You want to be in comics? Four words: Draw. Like. John. Buscema. Draw every day until you have maximum facility."

The statement sounds like he's saying 'Just get good enough so you can coast' but the three artists were talking about 'good-art' days and 'bad-art' days. Times when the pencil just doesn't flow over the page like it should. The goal, as a professional, is to be able, even on those really bad days, to produce work that is still competent.

Jim Steranko: "I can't recognize my own work as apart from other artists. I'm in the middle of the forest, I am the forest."

As an over-active creative myself, I am far too familiar with being unable to see the forest for the trees, but what Steranko is referring to here is seeing instead of his own style or his own hand, only his mistakes. More on this concept to follow.

Walt Simonson: "I had to quarry it from the blank page. I know two people who seemed to just trace it out: Jack Kirby & Bernie Wrightson."

Simonson revealed at several points over the evening genuine frustration at making the lines on the page do what they needed to do. And the subsequent unique solutions and creative diversions that resulted from that frustration.

"Your style is defined by the things you can't draw well because you have to make it work in your own way." ~ @JoeQuesada

Quesada followed this by saying: 'You'll always hear people say "Oh, I love how you draw feet" and you smile and thank them while you think to yourself: "I can't draw feet to save my life" because you came up with a creative solution to a personal stumbling block.' (This writer thinks it's entirely possible that the specific mention of feet was a side-jab at a certain well-known artistic punching bag in the American comics industry whose ability to draw basic things such as feet has often been called into question.)

"Great advice I received: You won't be good until you have complete disregard for your own work. You have to forgive yourself." ~@JoeQuesada

This was really good for me and I suspect any and every young artist to hear. He also said 'Somedays it's all coming out of the pencil just the way you want, and somedays it just doesn't flow. On those days you have to forgive yourself for sucking, take a breath, and go write or go walk in the park. Just take the time to be away from the drawing-board and when you come back tomorrow you'll be refreshed instead of losing multiple days to the frustration and anguish of being angry at yourself for sucking.'

Walt Simonson: "I came in the 70s. I thought I'd be in comics 5 years and get a real job. I never got a real job and I'm happy to be here!"

Simonson was asked about how it felt to see some of the things he'd created for the world of Marvel's Thor become three-dimensionally realized for film and he proceeded to share some delightful stories from his three days on the set of "Thor" a year ago.

Q&A time. I REALLY don't want this evening to end.

I really didn't.

Walt Simonson: "I took mythology classes in college, I was fascinated by the stuff as a kid and it had a huge influence on my work on Thor."

This was, I'm sure, especially interesting to hear for long-time Thor fans. The statement was part of Simonson's answer to an audience question for all three panelists: 'Do you find your work draws on mythology?'

Jim Steranko: "I think many comics creators are children of urban mythology."

This was part of Steranko's answer to the question about mythology. He went on to say: 'Comic-book artists often grow up in cities and draw cities. Into these urban settings they place gunshots and brawls and crime, but these guys have never been in a fight in their lives!'

Jim Steranko: "Don't try to beat us at our game. Find what's unique about you and you'll make a name for yourself." #makingcomics #advice

This is where things went from educational to inspirational.

"Pacing is important. Find the crescendo. There might be smaller ones, but find the largest. The explosion could be a kiss." ~ @JoeQuesada

Quesada illustrated this by telling a story. A younger and more popular artist in the mid-Ninties saw him at a convention and asked: 'How do you get that awesome pacing down, Joe?' And Joe asked the intense prototypical 90s artist back: 'How would you open a story with all the major Batman villains sitting in a hideout drinking tea?' And this young gun answered: 'I'd draw them really angry and excited with The Joker screaming so there was spittle flying out of his mouth and the tea splashing everywhere!' Joe then said: Okay, then on page two Batman crashes the party.'' This got the guy even more excited according to Joe: 'I'd have him crash through the skylight with glass everywhere and his boot coming right at the reader's face!' Then Joe said: 'Okay. Page three. An atomic bomb goes off. How do you sell it?' And the guy had nothing to say. Hopefully he learned something.

"I always do my main layout at print-size, otherwise you'll have to walk ten feet away to see your work as the reader does!" ~ @JoeQuesada

This is really interesting because it is industry standard to my understanding to work at roughly 1.5 times print-size. Marvel and DC's pencilers and inkers produce their artwork on huge pieces of bristol board that look almost like the boards we all used to buy to display our science projects with in elementary school.

"I took two #comics classes at #SVA. One with Will Eisner. One with Harvey Kurtzman. I failed both of them." ~ @JoeQuesada

Quesada didn't intend to enter the comics industry when he was a student. He took the classes for the fun of it and when push came to shove between doing those classes' finals or his non-sequential illustration classes? He just didn't pass anything in. He learned his sequential storytelling from a storyboard class he took at SVA. (I stand outside SVA's main building as I write these words.) He went on to say he saw Eisner years later at a convention and thought they could have a laugh about it now as two adults in the industry, but Eisner wouldn't have it. He was still mad.

Jim #Steranko: "Start with the story. The story will tell you what to draw, what to do."

I can think of fewer words that make for better advice for comics artists and/or comicsmiths. Find a good story, then find what that story needs on the page to be most effective.

That was one of the best #comics events of the season. #Makingcomics #advice & #comicshistory, all #wonderful! ~ @JonGorga

That it was.

~@JonGorga

Impressively Sized Billboards, Budgets, and Bludgeons

Last year, at around this same time, I wrote a somewhat harsh editorial about the comics industry and advertising after seeing a different ad for a fairly different Marvel comics-adaptation movie on this same Times Square billboard:

[If nothing else, it's pretty interesting to see how that specific corner of Times Square has changed in the year since, if you go back and look at my photograph from a year ago.]

Now, unlike "Kick-Ass", I am so freaking excited for this film. Not just because it's a superhero comic-book adaptation spear-headed by a man better known for his Shakespearean adaptations (Kenneth Branagh), and not just because the production seems to have picked up on the crazy design-style Jack Kirby originally brought to Stan Lee's interpretation of the god of Asgard, but because this film is the first to come out of Marvel Studios with Disney (@Disney) money behind it. Thus promising something even more spectacular than "Iron Man" in production, and hopefully, success. (According to rumors...) the production had run entirely out of money and would never have been made if not for Disney's purchase of Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel). The movie is scheduled to arrive in theaters May 6th.

Look at all the awesome on display here as well:

Classy! Let's hope the rest of the ad campaign follows suit...

Oh not so much, huh?

Not exactly classy. But still in the open, where the common man will see it, and that's good.

The film reportedly cost $150 million [via IMDb.com & Wikipedia.org] so I would assume no expense has been spared on advertising. And the billboards and posters seem to be in a wide range of locations here in New York City. The one I photographed is east of Times Square but there's another one just a block away from the 7-11 where I took the other photo in Queens.

I'm currently working at another comic-book shop in Manhattan and several shelves and long-boxes are organized into sections devoted to comics with upcoming film and television adaptations: Green Lantern, X-Men, Avengers, Captain America, and of course, Thor...

People who are going to say: Huh, this idea of the Norse gods like Thor being from a world where science and magic are the same thing is fascinating OR The idea of Thor being an agent of protection for human beings because he is forced out of Asgard for his arrogance is cool OR The sight of a huge dude with a hammer smashing frost giants is super fucking cool AND then deducing that just as a series of novels are more complex, fleshed-out, and original than a film adapted from them, all of these things are available in more complexity, more frequency, and more originality in the Thor comics that have been coming out since the Sixties... will then travel to a store like the one I'm working in to find a few of them.

Well, these are my hopes. It happened on some level with "Watchmen" and "Scott Pilgrim". Let's see if "Thor" brings another piece of the puzzle into place.

~ @JonGorga

UPDATE 7/8/11:

Just discovered this site that makes a much fuller analysis than mine of the marketing campaign(s) for "Thor".

The King Is Dead, Long Live The King!

Seven months ago, Matt Fraction and Pascal Ferry began their long-awaited run on Thor.

Seven months ago, I told you that Thor may be the best straight up superhero work that Fraction has ever done and, seven months and seven issues later, I believe that more strongly than ever. If this isn't the best story arc from the last year, I don't know what the hell would be; if Thor isn't the best superhero comic published in the year, I have no clue what else it would be.

Mostly, this is because of Pascal Ferry. Ferry, a name we don't see nearly enough as far as I'm concerned, was almost certainly the best choice for a mythic title like this. He clearly has a very big imagination and, even better, he has the chops to make what he imagines real. Ferry's artwork is the exact opposite of everything that I usually hate about guys like Mike Deodato: his work has a certain softness and his characters jump off the page. His backgrounds are huge, almost all encompassing in scope and, yet, he handles the little moments (Thor's introspection on the death of Balder a couple of issues ago, Loki's sense of wonder at the forces of Asgard, assembled and victorious) with just as much skill.

Ferry's art, though, is all the more for the work of colorist Matt Hollingsworth; if Ferry makes the myth, Hollingsworth makes Thor pop (and I mean that in both senses of the word). This is perfect comics, in terms of art work. This is art for mass consumption that takes full advantage of the complications and benefits of shared universe, of modern gods and monsters. This is how comic books should look. This is how Thor should look, big and powerful and consumable.

And then there's Matt: Thor #621 is the promise of #615 (hell, the promise of JMS's Thor #1) delivered. If it wasn't clear yet that Fraction knew exactly the power of the character he was writing, Thor #621 should clarify. Fraction, here, eschews the idea that he is merely writing comics. Fraction, here, is instead a mythographer, in the Lee or Kirby or Simonson sense of the word. If Matt Fraction isn't the next great American comics guy, I don't know who would be. What better title than Thor (well, Mighty Thor as of this month) for a guy like that?

For all his prowess, though, Fraction is something of a sloppy genius; once the battle between the Asgardians and the World Eaters ends (Thor has to slice the World Tree in half!), a battle going on now for a good three issues after a hell of a lot of buildup, we get a series of vignettes, abstract events rather than a true plot. Half of this issue is resolution, the other half is suggestion for what comes next, threads of what we'll see in Mighty Thor and Journey Into Mystery. These vignettes could be a great mess; instead, they are intriguing clues with enough momentum of their own to carry the story forward.

This week is a week for whats to come, and, just a few years since being allowed to lie fallow for a while, Thor may be the most fertile ground that Marvel has to work with right now. The King is Dead (although rumors of his death may in fact be greatly exaggerated). Long Live The King!

Quote For The Week 1/17/11

The one-line to take away from this interview: If MIGHTY THOR is AVENGERS then JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY is SECRET AVENGERS. MIGHTY THOR storms the gates of Hell. JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY sneaks in the back door and ends the threat with a single strike. MIGHTY THOR doesn't know that JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY exists, despite Thor being in it. It's a mythological black-ops comic, with a rotating team organized by the most Machiavellian figure in the whole Norse pantheon.

-Kieron Gillen, in this interview with Marvel.com on the newly announced Journey Into Mystery, which he'll be writing with Doug Braithwaite on art. The new title (well, actually the old title- Thor reverts to its old title with #622) will coincide with Matt Fraction's new book The Mighty Thor, which will have Olivier Coipel on art duties. I'll be sorry to see Pasqual Ferry go- his work with Fraction may have been the best comic of 2010- but, given that I get three of my favorite creators in return, I'll take the trade.

Update: It looks like we're not going to lose Ferry after all- Rich Johnston says that he'll be doing the art for the Fear Itself crossover, and then returning to The Mighty Thor when the crossover is finished. Sweet.

A Long Awaited Return...

Thor has, since its JMS driven relaunch a couple of years ago, consistently been one of Marvel's best books. Handled, as it should be, by premier talents like JMS, Olivier Copiel and now Matt Fraction and Pasqual Ferry (with fantastic up and comer Kieron Gillen acting as a bridge between the two), there hasn't been a bad issue of the book in a long, long time.

And Thor #615 may very well be the best of them.

Months and months ago, with the announcement of the creative team of Fraction and Ferry, Thor fans rejoiced- maybe the book will finally ship on time, we said. And ship on time it did, but with a pretty decent six month run written by Gillen that tied into the larger Siege storyline and acted as both prologue and epilogue to the larger shared universe story while tying up JMS's last loose threads. Now that Fraction and Ferry are here, though, aided by John Hollingsworth and John Workman doing colors and letters respectively, Thor fans should again rejoice, and doubly so: this is great comics, some of the best straight up superhero work Fraction has ever done.

Although we've seen great Thor writing from him in the past, this blows all of that other stuff straight off the world tree. The scope here is huge, epic and cosmic and takes its influences from the Thor greats of years past, greats like Kirby and Simonson (and if you don't believe that that's what Fraction and Marvel have in mind, then why do you think they brought Workman, who lettered on Thor for Simonson, back on board?). Fraction not only has a handle on all of these characters and their relationships- this is clear from the Thor/Donald Blake dialogue (which is a home run) and the way in which the titular character mourns for his half brother- but also the way a book like this should feel. The sense of impending doom, expressed explicitly near the end, that lurks underneath the whole story, that imbues it with a sense of urgency is an indication of just how brilliant, in both subtle and straight up ways, the writer can be.

Pasqual Ferry's art is soft in all the right ways, and his slight redesigns of the Asgardian garb to give it a more sci-fi feel and help signal the shift away from a fantasy based book. His art, although stiffer than I like generally, has a certain diffuse energy to it and his line, thin and soft, moves the comic away from Copiel's hyperrealism into a more mythic territory- this is not something you could walk out of your house and see going on down the street, and Ferry does a great job expressing it. Hollingsworth's soft colors and, in particular, Workman's fluid lettering help this impression as well.

If the next issues of Thor can be as good as this one- or, imagine, if they could be better- we have a new classic on our hands. Fraction and Ferry were a long time coming, but now that we have them we should feast and rejoice- they just don't make comics like this anymore, even if sometimes they try.

A Mightily Lost Avenger

Someone at Marvel had a crazy idea: take Thor, distill him down to his essentials, strip away his continuity, hire a killer creative team, and see what comes.

The result is Thor: The Mighty Avenger by Roger Landridge, Chris Samnee and Matt Wilson and their book (which has shipped both #1 and #2) is an example of through and through good comics. What they give us is Thor at his most basic, with Jane Foster, Mjolnir, and an Asgard that looms in the background. In this way, they can explore Thor and his mythos without the awful shackles of continuity, and they're explicitly clear about what they're doing: the titular character is something of an amnesiac. At the same time, though, there are some clever references to the Thor that we know and love that make it clear that this is a different aspect of the same character or, perhaps, the origin of the character if things had happened slightly differently, if Thor had started his adventures in Midgard in Broxton, Oklahoma rather than in a cave. What we've got here, then, is a retelling but not a retcon, a reinvention but without the specter of a bold new direction. What we've got here is an opportunity for some fun superhero stories, one that Landridge, Samnee and Wilson take full advantage of.

Landridge's writing in both issues is solid, solid enough that it's evident that plotting is his strength and that dialogue, while not exactly a weakness, isn't quite at the same level. This isn't really a very big deal, and he seems to have a pretty good grip on all of the characters' voices except for that of Thor. His characterizations elsewhere (particularly of Jane) are strong enough that they carry through some of the titular character's more awkward moments and this makes me wonder if Landridge was trying something funky with Thor's speech patterns, as a way to replicate the effect of the typical Olde English with something a little more modern but with similar effect. If that is what's going on, it doesn't quite work and Landridge needs to work on it a little bit.

Despite this, it's clear that he's very capable, firstly because his plot is very good but secondly, and more importantly, because he gives artist Chris Samnee and colorist Matt Wilson a lot of room in which to play. Whether it was intended as such or it just turned out this way Thor: The Mighty Avenger is, without a doubt, their book. Samnee's artwork, last seen in Siege: Embedded, is thick, bold, and stylized in a way that makes it feel like something Kirby would have drawn, that's just how dynamic it is. Samnee, though, often takes his art in a slightly more down-to-earth direction and his work lends itself to a kind of physical humor, almost slapstick, that makes the book an extra joy. His control of his character's expressions is priceless and this too helps Landridge's writing through some of its more awkward moments.

All these things together give the book something of a comic strip aesthetic, one that's made even more abundantly clear by Matt Wilson's colors, which are difficult to describe. Muted isn't right, and flat has too much of a negative connotation to be of any real help, so I'm going to settle for dynamic but textureless. Because they don't try to be overly realistic they emphasize the stylized and cartoony qualities of Samnee's work and they really make it shine. The coloring really could have destroyed this book if it was done wrong, but Wilson does a bang-up job, and the comic is all the better for it.

I really, really like The Mighty Avenger and I think it's going to go far as a series as long as it doesn't try to outdo itself. This book is great comics with a classic feel, but it's never going to break any new ground- not that I think it's trying to right now, but I think the creative team (and, more importantly, Marvel editorial) need to keep this in mind when planning for the future. Keep the stories simple, keep delivering great art, and this book is going to be a great success. I'm looking forward to it.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

The Heroic Age is here.

How do we know? Well, the first issue of The Avengers (that's right, without a modifier) is here and on the third page Steve Rogers (you know, the most heroic of them all) says that what the world needs is heroes.

But not just any heroes... the world needs the Avengers. This is a moment that I've been waiting for, a moment that I've been dying for, a moment where our heroes get to be heroes again. By no means do I intend to criticize superhero deconstruction; it has its place and for good reason. In many ways, it got people to start taking comics seriously, because it proved that comics, just like any other medium, could blur the lines and convince readers to cheer for flawed people, just like they cheered for perfect ones. This is all well and, as I said, extremely important to the history of comics, but it lost the track when it forgot that we like to pretend that we can be our heroes, because we aren't perfect and we aren't brave and we aren't strong. But we would like to be.

It feels damn good to remember that.

Brian Michael Bendis and John Romita Jr. hit every note here. I've ragged on Bendis in the past for being too wordy and at the same time saying too little. I've derided his comics as often actionless dialogue-fests where nothing happens and all the bright and colorful superheroes are, well, boring. It is important, therefore, for me to just come out and say that this comic is not those comics. Every word has its place, there are great character moments (like Wonderman's refusal to join the Avengers or Thor not knowing who Bucky Cap is), there's a ton of action and, unlike Siege, the book feels fulfilling- this is great comics writing. Not ground-breaking. Not necessarily literary. But damn good. Bendis' script only hits one sour note, and that's at the end- I won't spoil it for you, but I'll suffice it to say that if you read any of Mark Millar's Fantastic Four, you've seen this reveal before. It feels so tired that it must have been used before, too.

Despite that, Bendis spins a great story and JRJR is nothing but a help. His panel design is brilliant and easy to understand, he fluctuates between drawing action and static scenes with incredible ease and damn does this man draw the Avengers well. Not a single costumed character is off-model and my biggest complaint is that Steve's hair is probably too long.

If that's my only quibble, this man should win an Eisner.

If you were on the fence about this issue? Pick it up. Don't bother with the backmatter (prose really needs to stay out of comic books), but even without it it's worth the extra dollar. This is a damn good comic book and, hopefully, it'll remain this easy to remember why my heroes are my heroes.

Marvel Announces New $1 Reprint Throwback Line

In what is obviously meant to be a compliment/counter to DC's "After Watchmen" program of last year, Marvel announced their "World's Greatest Comics" line on their corporate site back in December here and have made a second recent small statement here.


DC's "After Watchmen... What's Next?" program can be read about at AfterWatchmen.com, a sub-site of DC's website [which appears to have been taken down - DEAD LINK - 9/15/2o12]. It was just narrowly an even better program than this new initiative from Marvel, because it also included a free catalog that explained why they felt X, Y, and Z project they did was similar to "Watchmen" and why you should go buy them all.

This seems like an excellent idea to me. Comics, as a medium, is great. Individual comic-books are great. Superheroes are great. Trade-paperbacks are great. Marvel is great. DC is great. These programs essentially promote all of these things at once.

Already out is "Invincible Iron Man" v3 #1 reprint for FREE no less!
"Captain America" v5 #1
"Thor" v3 #1
"The Wonderful Wizard of OZ" #1
and
"The Punisher MAX" #1
are to follow over the course of March for a mere $1 each.

Putting out the first issues of the modern interpretations of the BIG THREE (Thor, Captain America, Iron Man) just before they are presumably going to be re-united by the currently ongoing "Siege" crossover 'event' storyline in cheap, cheap reprints is a stroke of genius! No question about it.

"Marvel's Greatest Comics" was the title of a reprint anthology series Marvel produced from 1968 to 1981, which was a re-titling of "Marvel Collectors' Item Classics" started in 1965. The bombastically promotional nature of the title is Stan Lee all the way. So there's a throw-back element here as well: the idea of presenting old comics material again at a lower price has been around for a LONG time.

"Marvel Tales Annual" #1 was Marvel's first and was printed back in 1964! It reprinted the origin stories of each of Marvel's biggest hit characters from the previous three years. In a way, this is EXACTLY what the new "Marvel's Greatest Comics" line is doing. I have fond memories of some reprint titles, as they were the only way to cheaply catch-up on old Spider-Man stories in those days before the internet!

Reprints may not be worth as much as the original, they may entirely miss the cache of that 'THIS WAS THE OBJECT, THIS WAS THE TIME' feeling, but reprints are a good thing.

In fact, the first comic-books were reprints. "How the fuck is that possible?" you ask. "How could there be a reprint if there were no comics to reprint!" you think, smug in your excellently logical thought process.

Well Mr. Smug, the first comic-books and comics trade-paperbacks were reprints of comic-strips. "The Funnies" #1 from January 1929 was essentially a newspaper comic-strip section without the newspaper. "Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics", published in 1933, was the first comic-book one-shot. "Famous Funnies" #1 kicked-off the first ongoing comic-book series way back in 1934.

They are all firsts, but they are also made-up mostly or entirely of comic-strips reprinted one on-top of another page after page, reformatted to the new form of the comic-BOOK.

________________________________________
To learn yourself more about this stuff:

Arthur's Marvel Comics Reprints Website is a catalog of Marvel reprint titles.
Marvel Masterworks.com is a very detail-oriented examination of the Marvel Masterworks hardcover and trade-paperback reprint line.
The Collected Comics Library is a strange but thorough site which reports on collected reprint editions.
and
TheComicBooks.com has a detailed history of the invention of the comic-book format in the section titled "Newsstand Period 1922-1955".


UPDATE: 3/12/2oo9
Not only are these many first issues being made available in super-cheap reprints, but the second issues will be available for free as a part of Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited on their website.

Brilliant.

One More

Now we know that Spider-Woman (who I may have forgotten to handicap a couple of weeks ago. Woops.) is going to be on Brian Bendis and John Romita Jr.'s team too (and JRJR has really hit these two previews out of the park, hasn't he?), as well as Cap and probably Spidey. I also should have mentioned that yesterday that we also know Iron Man and Thor are going to be on this team too.

For more info, go here.

Avengers Endsemble?

Well, this news over at IGN is certainly interesting.

Certainly, this isn't the end of The Avengers- I suspect that what will happen is that they'll relaunch with one main title (presumably entitled The Avengers) and a couple of periphery ones (if I were to have my druthers, one of these series would be called Avengers Assemble! and a second one would be another try with the Young Avengers). Alternatively there could be two main titles (and I would still be pulling for the second one to be called Avengers Assemble!) with two main teams- one to handle street level threats, another for the more pressing and world altering kinds of things the Avengers used to be used for.

The big question, then, is who will be doing the Avenging? It isn't, of course, a question a lowly reader like me has any sort of real answer too- but I'm going to fulfill a time honored geek tradition and attempt to handicap it.

To start, here are the lineups from the Avengers teams from the last several years (I'm leaving out the Dark Avengers, for what I think are pretty obvious reasons)

New Avengers:
Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Iron Man, Captain America (Steve), Luke Cage, The Sentry, Wolverine.

After the events of Civil War and then again after Secret Invasion the following heroes also became members of the New Avengers:
Iron Fist, Dr. Strange, Ronin, Mockingbird, Ms. Marvel, Captain America (Bucky).

Mighty Avengers:
After Iron Man left the New Avengers because of the events of Civil War, he started his official, registered Avengers team, also including: Ms. Marvel, Wonder Man, Ares, The Sentry, The Wasp and Black Widow.

After the events of Secret Invasion, Henry Pym (as The Wasp), manipulated by Loki, starts up a new team of Avengers featuring: Hercules and Amadeus Cho, Quicksilver, Jocasta, Stature, Vision and US AGENT.

So, given all of that, who stays and who goes? I'm going to categorize my guesses in three ways- those who I know will be on the team, those who I guess will be on the team, and those who are longshots, but could stick around anyway:

Incidentally, there are some minor spoilers below- don't read if you aren't caught up.

Avengers Assembled:

Given the way that both Siege and the upcoming Heroic Age have been branded, I would put money on Captain America, Iron Man and Thor being on whatever team Marvel assembles. As the Big Three, this is basically a no-brainer. The only real question here is which Captain America will be throwing his shield into the melee and my guess is Bucky Barnes- I expect Steve will stick around in some capacity, but given what goes on in the Who Will Wield the Shield one-shot I think Buck is going to be the one wearing the Flag on a regular basis.

With that said, I'll hazard to say that Avengers mainstays Hank Pym (in who knows what costume) and Clint Barton (and, lets be honest, same deal costume wise) will also be on the team in one form or another. If, for whatever reason, Janet Van Dyne comes back to life, she's here too.

Ms. Marvel will be on the team too, if only because her solo book just ended and, given that Osborn saw fit to replace her on his team, she's clearly an important part of the Avengers mythos.

Finally, I think that Brian Michael Bendis likes Luke Cage (and, also, Jessica Jones) too much to let him fall by the wayside. I read somewhere (or maybe Jon and I talked about this, I can't really remember. Perhaps it's both.) that Bendis turned Cage into a top tier character by sheer force of will, and I think that's exactly right. The only scenarios in which I imagine Luke not staying on involve some sort of attempt at a solo book or, perhaps, some sort of Iron Fist/Power Man team-up series (if it were to be written by Brubaker or Fraction, well, I think I would die of happiness.) Even if one of those come to pass, though, I still have trouble imagining Bendis letting go of one of his favorite characters.

Reserves:

While the Iron Fist has said that he doesn't really fit it on the Avengers, it's hard to imagine a team that Luke Cage is on without Danny Rand far behind. This would be particularly true if Luke has some sort of leadership role/his own time.

I'm not sure what Mockingbird's story is- they seem to be teasing her death in some of the solicits, but they also just brought her back, so I imagine she'll stick around in some capacity, particularly if Clint is on the team too.

Stephen Strange is usually around too- although now that he isn't the Sorcerer Supreme, I don't really know what his deal is. Still, his presence on the team wouldn't be a surprise. At the same time, it is a distinct possibility that Jericho Drumm becomes an Avenger. I suspect it will be one or the other- there really isn't another good place for them.

Hercules and Amadeas Cho come as a package- either they're both on the team or neither of them are and it all sort of depends on the outcome of Assault on New Olympus and whatever the new status they're teasing for Herc is. If Dan Slott is writing it, the likeliness that these two are in goes up.

Who knows whats up with Wolverine? He's in the mix for no other reason than he's been around and also that he sells well.

Quicksilver, too, is sort of an unknown quantity. I'm going to hedge and put him in the middle.

Finally, what about Spider-Man? Does he stay on the Avengers? I think he might, but it's hard to know. I think it's more likely if there are two main teams, but he's been a consistent member since New Avengers started up six years ago. It's a bad idea to count him out, and I suspect it's worthwhile to count him in.

Some Dissassembly Required:

Conceivably, there are some characters who have served in the past, say Wonder Man or She-Hulk, who might be in the mix. Of the two, I imagine Simon is the more likely choice, if only because he repented for serving with the pro-registration heroes on Iron Man's team, and he still lingers in the Avenger's mythos.

Another such long shot is Beast, who has recently taken a leave of absence from the X-Men. He's taken on a starring role in SWORD, so I suspect that's where he'll stay for awhile. Still, I would welcome the big blue guy back to Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

I have no idea what the Sentry's deal is. Depends on what happens in Siege, but my guess is he goes away for awhile.

With two Caps, I think that US Agent is probably superfluous.

Finally, Stature and Vision are in this category only because I think they're going to move to a soon to be announced Young Avengers book. Remember that one of the Siege one-shots is going to be a Young Avengers one- I suspect that they're going to be part of the new status quo.

Well, that's what I've got. How about you, noble readers? Got any ideas of your own?

The Mighty Matt

Today it was announced that, after Kieron Gillen's six issue run on the title, Matt Fraction will take over the writing of Thor, and will be joined by John Romita Jr. on art.

This is great news.

Although I'm in a bad mood because I am in the midst of finals, reading this article totally made my day. If you're interested either in Fraction or the God of Thunder, take a peek.

For Asgard!

UPDATE: This Fraction interview over at CBR indicates that Romita may not be doing the Thor ongoing, just the Free Comic Book Day book. We'll just have to see about that, I guess.

When Writers Put Back Their Toys

Because I go to a shop that's sort of far away from the place where I live, and also because I was home last week due to Thanksgiving, I hadn't gotten to read the Giant Size Thor Finale until yesterday, when I went to Millbrook to pick it up from my shop.

As the title of the issue indicates, it is JMS's last issue on the book, which is both a good thing and a bad one. On the one hand, maybe now that Kieron Gillen is writing the title, it'll ship on time. On the other hand, JMS's run was unbelievably fantastic- each time I thought it couldn't get any better, it did. The Giant Size Finale isn't his best issue of the series, but it is still pretty good (the highlight, by the way, is Volstagg being badass, something which will never cease to delight me). Unfortunately, JMS saw fit to end his run in a way that always makes me cringe: he decided to put his toys away before he went home.

When I say that, what I mean is this- JMS decided that, in the last issue of his run, he was going to reintegrate certain parts of the status quo before he started writing the title a few years ago. Now, this is his right, but I don't understand why writers feel the need to do this. By killing one of the most interesting characters he introduced during the course of his run, he prevents us from seeing where another writer would have taken the concept (one that was, by all means, worth developing further). Additionally, I think I wouldn't be quite so pissed about the whole thing if Kieron Gillen hadn't sort of mishandled the fallout (which is in the preview for Thor#604 at the end of the issue)- although I suppose it could still have the dire consequences for the book's villians that I think it should have.

I understand that the above paragraph is nebelous, and it was the less egregious of the two examples anyway- what really makes me wonder why unwriting of this sort is necessary is that JMS gives Donald Blake his limp back.

I know, I know, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it is- he couldn't have just let Donald Blake keep walking normally? Why not? I mean, it's not like it's essential to the character, or anything- if it were, the run wouldn't have been nearly as successful. The whole half-cripped-guy-turns-out-to-have-superpowers thing is pretty played out at this point, so I'm not sure it's actually going to bring anything to the comic that wasn't already there.

The only concievable reason why any writer should unwrite him/herself like that is because they don't trust whoever is coming up next to play with the new status quo very well (or, at least the first writer thinks the second one won't). Quite honestly, it's kind of arrogant, and it brings a run of issues that should have ended with a bang (Volstagg being badass and associated dick joke notwithstanding) out with a little bit of whimper.

I understand that this is, in the end, a very small complaint. The book is a good book, and I certainly recommend reading it if you want to get into Thor, but this sort of writing frustrates me to no end because it nullifies ideas that make comics interesting- something that we're always a little short on.

Already Tired of Tuesday 11/24/09

AHA! Finally a big week of things for me to report on Already Tired of Tuesday!

First off we've got the final story in JMS's fantastic run on Thor- its sad to see the writer leave the God of Thunder as the stories he's told have been unbelievable. He's taken Thor and Asgard to entirely new places and while many of the comics that the Big Two produce seem to be recycling themselves Thor has been blazing its own trail for as long as JMS has been writing it. I did, however, really enjoy Kieron Gillen's first issue of SWORD, so I'm hopeful that the series will remain fantastic, although I'm certainly invested enough in it that I'll probably keep pulling it, even if it blows.

Staying in the realm of the divine, the second of part of Assault on New Olympus comes out tomorrow too- if you're interested, check out this interview over at CBR- and, seeing as I've been digging Incredible Herc so much recently I'm excited to see where Pak and Van Lente take this.

Matt Fraction is keeping the trouble coming for the X-Men in Uncanny #517, Tracy Lawless is sure to find some of his own in Criminal: The Sinners #2 and the JSA is going to tear itself to shreds in #33, the last issue before Matt Sturges takes his team and splits it off into JSA: All Stars.

Additionally, there are two more things I'm going to take a good look at: the new trade dress for The Invincible Iron Man is fantastic, and I've been waiting for a good point to jump on Fraction's Tony Stark story, so I'm going to try it out for a few issues and see what happens. Also, I've been hearing really good things about Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four, so I might be picking that up as well.

Anything else I should take a flip through?

I Have No Idea What This Means

Any guesses? (from Techland, via Robot 6)

Siege

I've kept my mouth shut about Siege for a little while and, while its been hard, I kind of wanted to see what the solicits looked like before I said anything and...

Well, I don't know.

I mean, it could be very good. It could be. It could be the culmination to the Bendis macro-story we've been dealing with since what feels like forever and it could end it and could be done and we could move on.

It could be all of those things. It probably won't be, but it could be. And for the moment, I'm going to continue to have hope.

I'm less interested in Siege, though, than I am in the repercussions Reborn is going to have for the event. I've made no secret of the fact that I think that Steve should have stayed dead. There was a lot to go on with Bucky, a lot of new territory to cover and a lot of new things to do- in many ways, Steve's death was the most authentic and original thing to happen in mainstream comics in a very long time. There was a lot of interesting things going on in the book and I'll be sad to see that period of experimentation end.

Still, it is Brubaker we're talking about here. Reborn (so far) might have been something of a misstep (the story isn't perfect, but it's really the art that makes it painful) but I still have faith; the man had to be due for an imperfect story at some point, right? I'm think he's too smart to undo everything that he's done, and it's unclear to me that Steve is going to be the same Steve- he'll be the same figure, sure, but will he be the same sort of hero? More interestingly, what's going to happen with Buck? The solicits make it clear that he isn't going away and, again, Brubaker is too smart to turn him into Steve's sidekick- will they both be "wielding the shield"? It's not as if he can put on the Nomad uniform, and making him the second "Captain" would be, well, dumb.

Furthermore, what role is he going to play in Siege? Where does Bucky fit in the downfall of Norman Osborn?

I'm going to buy Siege- I don't always dig Bendis, but I generally dig Copiel- mostly because I want to see how Marvel is going to put the band back together, so to speak. I've become interested in Thor as well as Cap, and I'm going to buy a couple of issues of Iron Man starting next month, just to see if my dislike for the character might be misguided (looking back on the way that Brubaker wrote him in Captain America, I think I've been a little mean-spirited in the past; I suspect he's just a tough character to write, so, unlike, say, the X-Men who are often compelling on their own merits, the writer needs to be top notch to make it work. I think Fraction just might be that guy), and this appears to be the culmination of the stories about all three- so I'm interested to see where this leads.

Say what you will about the editorial choices at Marvel in the last few years, but let's put it in perspective- last week, in my Planetary review, I talked about Warren Ellis warning against stale comics and Marvel has done everything they can to move themselves forward, really since Disassembled. It's made for some really good comics, and I'm curious to see what happens. I've got faith.

I guess thats what makes me keep coming back.

YOU THINK THIS A STANDS FOR AWFUL?

I want to love Captain America: Reborn #3.

I really do.

Most of you already know that I adore stories about Captain America, as I'm sure you also know that I adore Ed Brubaker, so, as I've said, I want to love Captain America Reborn #3. Except I can't.

Because the art is terrible.

Brubaker, as usual, is doing everything right- he has set up a good story, his characterization is excellent and, although his scope is abnormally large, it really does seem to work: with an event this big and this important, most of the Marvel Universe should be involved and, thankfully, Brubaker slims what could be a bloated monster down into a managable but approprately sprawling tale of being unstuck in time.

Bryan Hitch, however, seems to be mailing it in. I know he's capable of drawing Cap, because he's done it in the past, but here it just seems like nothing works. Everything, it just seems... wrong somehow. The Bucky in the panel above should look like a mess, because he's just been beaten up in the back of an airplane, but thats not why he looks like a mess up there- he looks like a mess because he was drawn t0o fast. This is a moment of victory and a moment of revenge, but Buck doesn't look victorious or vengeful- he looks like someone is about to hit him. And its just all wrong.

There are also too many horrifying images like this terrifying picture of Namor:

I don't know what it is about Hitch's figures here, but they're all terrible- there's an even worse one of Thor that I omitted because I love you.

Anyway. Reborn is good, but not great (but mostly because the art sucks) and it needs to get better, right quick, before what could have been a fantastic ending to a fantastic saga turns into a whole lot of nothing.

Already Tired of Tuesday 09/29/09

After a one week break filled with some pretty decent comics, I'm back in action this week for what looks to be the second pretty small week in a row; after two big weeks in a row, it is something of a relief.

In fact, there looks to be only one Marvel book I'll be picking up this week-

Thankfully, that book is the epic, the mighty, the finally assembled THOR #603. I'll be sad to see JMS' run end, but maybe it means that the book will ship on time one of these days. I certainly hope so, anyway.

Other than that, well, I'm getting JSA #31 and... that's pretty much it.

In other news, I already miss Wednesday Comics.