Known Unknown Knowns: Marvel, Dan Slott Announce Changes To Spider-Man

Editor’s Note: Look, this entire article is loaded with spoilers about upcoming events related to Spider-Man and Marvel’s and Dan Slott’s plans for the character in the coming months. And while none of those events are particularly hard to guess, if you want to remain pure and unspoiled about things, you should probably move along. And try not to think about the most likely actions a corporation might take to maximize profit via cross-platform synergy. And if you don’t have to think about what “cross-platform synergy” means because it is a part of your job, you should move along before I call you something I can’t take back. 

I wrote not too long ago that, despite generally enjoying Dan Slott’s The Superior Spider-Man, that I was ready for the whole Doc Ock as Spider-Man storyline to start coming in for a landing. While it’s been an interesting storytelling experiment, in the sense that it explores a different and darker angle on the concept of “with great power comes great responsibility” that’s at the core of Spider-Man’s character, it’s grown a little long in the tooth for me, since I knew full Goddamned well that eventually, Peter Parker was gonna come back. When? Well, sometime before The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens in theaters in May, at the very least… no matter what Dan Slott said about Peter Parker staying dead.

Well, Slott and Marvel have finally gone on record about their long-term plans for Peter Parker. And while the broad strokes might be pretty much what one would expect, they amount to pretty big spoilers, so if you want to know what’s up, you can find out after the jump.

I Will Show You Fear In A Handful Of Boogers: All-New Doop Coming In April

There are two constant givens that I can tell you about Marvel Comics at this particular moment in time: Peter Parker will somehow return as Spider-Man before The Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes out in theaters in May (yes, I’ve been saying that since Doc Ock took over, but clearly I’m not the only one thinking that), and that Doop is awesome.

Yes, Doop. That floating green spud that acted as camera man for X-Force and X-Statix during Peter Milligan’s and Mike Allred’s run on those books in the early 00s, and who has been a stalwart faculty member of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning in Jason Aaron’s Wolverine And The X-Men. In fact, the Doop-centric 17th issue of that series was one of my favorite single issues of 2012. The little (literal) booger is just cool; an enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mucous. It’s just an interesting character that can move from fringe comic relief to an international snot of mystery. While remaining funny as hell.

And for anyone who feels like me, there’s good news: Marvel has announced that Doop will be getting a star turn in All-New Doop, a miniseries by Milligan with art by David Lafuente with covers by Doop co-creator Mike Allred.

Who Watches The Watcher? Anyone, Because He Is Dead: Marvel Announces Original Sin by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato, Jr.

We are well and truly into a new year, which is a downer on a few fronts. All the holiday vacation time is burned away, which means we will be forced to go to work in this shitty weather (it is currently eight balmy degrees outside the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, and that’s degrees Fahrenheit, not those wussy degrees Centigrade that you whimpering pleaders overseas use to try to convince people you’re not wandering blithely through simple sweater weather). And further, it means that the Big Two are gonna start announcing their big summer crossover events.

And, since we have been publishing over the last two and a half years or so, this has not necessarily been great news. Just in the last year, we have been hyped for, and then had to all but suffer through, Age of Ultron and Infinity from Marvel and The Trinity War and Forever Evil from DC, and they have not particularly grabbed us when they weren’t busy actively irritating us with arbitrary epic plots that often seemed more interested in involving everyone in the universe than making it clear why we should give a fuck about anyone involved (With God as my witness, I began pulling for Thanos about 2/3rds of the way through Infinity because at least I knew what he was trying to accomplish and why).

So I have been waiting without any particular enthusiasm to start hearing announcements about the upcoming big events that will change everything… so imagine my surprise when I heard about Marvel’s first big plans for 2014, and actually got a little excited, in spite of myself. Because while yes, the upcoming Original Sin four-month event involves a huge cast and some cosmic elements, at its heart, it’s a simple murder mystery.

A simple murder mystery written by Jason Aaron, who has been writing some of the most fun and character-driven books at Marvel over the last couple of years, and drawn by Mike Deodato, Jr., who is one of my favorite artists working for Marvel today.

You’re Far Too Trusting: Marvel Reclaiming Star Wars Comics License From Dark Horse In 2015

Remember a little more than a year ago, when The Walt Disney Company bought the license to Star Wars from George Lucas? Who had owned the rights since its creation as a concept in 1974 through 2012, and had spent years made sure that the people creating stories in that universe were of the finest possible calibre? You know, except when he forgot to vet that rotten hack who wrote and directed Episodes 1 through 3, which nearly steered the entire franchise into a ditch? Yeah, Lucas should’ve eviscerated that rotten bastard… but I digress.

Anyway. At the time, there was a lot of speculation that Disney would take the Star Wars comic book publishing license away from Dark Horse Comics (who has held the license since the very early 1990s, when they published Dark Empire and when the only people who gave a shit about Star Wars were unfuckable members of Generation X – Hi, Kevin Smith and me in college!) and return it to Marvel Comics, who had the original license back in 1977 and held it until the late 1980s, when it was no longer cool or needed to save the company when it was in danger of going down the shitter in 1976.

However, that was all speculation, and year-old speculation at that. And it would be laughable to revisit that speculation if it hadn’t turned out to be completely and utterly true: Marvel will be the sole comic book publisher of Star Wars as of 2015.

And Another One Down, And Another One Down: Animal Man, Batman: The Dark Knight Coming To A Close

It’s been a little more than two years since DC launched their New 52 reboot, and while DC still puts a big, “The New 52!” bullet on almost every cover of every book each month, there sure as hell aren’t 52 of those original release titles from September, 2011 still kicking around.

And now there will be two fewer. DC and book creators Jeff Lemire and Gregg Hurwitz have announced the cancellation of two original New 52 books, one surprising, one not (and yet still disappointing).

To wit: Animal Man and Batman: The Dark Knight will be concluding their runs in a few months, each with issue #29.

Behold The Superman: Remastered Miracleman #1 Art Released

The first issue of Marvel’s reprint of Miracleman, drawn by Garry Leach and written by someone Marvel is referring to as “The Original Writer” in order to avoid litigation, but who we will refer to as “The Cranky Old Bastard,” will be released on January 15th, 2014, which, purely by coincidence, will be the same day that my original Eclipse Comics copy of Miracleman #1 plummets to a value where it will be less expensive to use as attic insulation than fiberglass.

While I have been excited for these reprints, it has only been in that they are precursors for Neil Gaiman’s and Mark Buckingham’s completion of their The Silver Age and The Dark Age stories that were scuttled in the 1990s when Eclipse went under. After all, I do own the complete original Eclipse run (including Miracleman: Apocrypha, Miracleman 3D and one or two of the trade paperback reprints of the original issues), so it’s not like I need the reprints for the story. And sure, Marvel has announced that they’re completely digitally remastering the artwork, but really: how much of a difference could that make?

A reasonable amount, it turns out. Marvel has released a few pages from that first issue to show off some of that remastered original Leach art… and it’s looking pretty good. And you can check them out after the jump.

Cranky Old Man Who Made Superhero Comics For Adults Hates Superhero Comics For Adults

They say that you should never meet your heroes, and I am okay with that proposition. Because they also say that you must separate the artist from the art, and I have been forced to do that for my entire adult life. Not only ephemerally – I could read Hunter Thompson all day long, but there is no doubt he was a violent, drugsucking monstrosity, and I could enjoy reading Harlan Ellison stories for a thousand years without having to hear the man calling me a dullard – but professionally. I have worked with comedians – comedians you have heard of – who were the worst kind of arrogant and selfish scumbags, and people in the music industry who would pretend you never even existed if it meant another case of comp’ed CDs to sell to local record stores at a discount, like a common mafioso.

So while I consider several comics writers from the 1980s to be heroes of mine, I am okay if I never meet them. The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One are a couple of the greatest comic stories I’ve ever read, I think I can go to my grave without having Frank Miller chase me around while shrieking, “hippie!” and trying to cut my ponytail off with a replica switchblade from the set of Sin City. Miller’s political beliefs or behavior doesn’t take away a word or line of Dark Knight, but I don’t think it’s something I want to witness firsthand.

And then there’s Alan Moore. My copies of Miracleman are amongst my most prized possessions, and I have both Watchmen and V For Vendetta as not only the original issues, but as the big ol’ Absolute hardcover editions. Those stories taught me, as a teenager, that the superhero stories I loved as a child didn’t need to be put aside, but could be enjoyed as I moved into adulthood. The man basically invented the idea of the superhero written maturely for adults.

And once again, Moore has gone on record saying that he hates the idea of the superhero written maturely for adults.

A Long Way From The Silver Age: New Miracleman Stories in 2016

One of the hard parts about getting older is that you start to understand that there’s a chance you won’t live long enough to see all the cool shit you assumed you would when you were a kid. When I was a kid in the 70s, I assumed that someday I would live on the moon, while now I understand that the best I will ever be able to do is a few minutes in low Earth orbit, strapped into a chair and watching only my vomit float in zero gravity, and even that assumes that I have six figures to give Richard Branson in exchange for a 45 minute “vacation” in space. Hell, when Warren Zevon was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he famously said that he hoped he hung on long enough to see the next James Bond flick, and the poor prick never knew that if he’d survived for two James Bond flicks, he might actually witness a good one.

Yes, this is a morbid and depressing way to start a post about comic books, but it feels appropriate, because I am a Miracleman fan. And as a Miracleman fan, I was thrilled by the recent news that, after 20-plus years of waiting, Marvel was not only gonna reprint the original series written by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, but that they intended to publish the as-yet-unseen conclusion of Gaiman’s and Mark Buckingham’s The Silver Age and The Dark Age stories that were aborted when Eclipse Comics went under and suddenly nobody – and everybody – owned the rights to the character.

However, in comics as in life, there is no good news without bad news. The good news is that Marvel will start reprinting the original out-of-print stories soon, but I don’t care about that since I already own the entire original Eclipse Comics run (including Miracleman 3D and Miracleman Apocrypha). But the bad news in this story is that Joe Quesada, Marvel’s Chief Creative Officer, thinks that we will see new Gaiman / Buckingham Miracleman stories, well, a little less soon.

Like, in two or three years soon. When I will be 45 years old, and actuarially closer to dead than alive even if I didn’t have 35 pack years of cigarettes and about 5,000,000 case years of whiskey under my belt. Or sometimes overflowing my belt.

Bad Apple: Apple Refuses To Sell Sex Criminals #2

There are times when I resign myself to the idea that digital comics are the future. Sure, I love my weekly visit to my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me if I’m interested in any IDW Artist’s Editions or DC Absolute hardcovers because the kids need braces and they can’t show up at the orthodontist’s office in an American car like a common wino, but only a fool would think that, on an infinite timeline, comics can resist digital delivery where music, movies and print books couldn’t.

But every time I think that relying on digital comic companies wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, something happens to remind me that a dude in an actual place who knows his customers is still the way to go for me in a way that some mindless Web server will never be.

Most recent case in point? Apple has just informed Image Comics and Matt Fraction that they’ve rejected the second issue of Sex Criminals from the Apple version of the Comixology app due to “content that many audiences would find objectionable.”

Which is in start contrast to the policies at my local comic store, where they would not only sell me tentacle hentai if I could give him a Diamond code for it, but would sell me an octopus if the money was right.

Happily Ever After: Bill Willingham Announces Fables To End With Issue 150

It’s a good thing that, for good or ill, Vertigo Comics has got some Sandman back in the fold for at least a little while, because their arguably final big series from their second wave of glory days is coming in for a landing.

That’s right: Bill Willingham has announced that Fables will be ending with issue 150 in about a year and a half, with its spinoff book Fairest closing out at about the same time.

This is… not particularly welcome news.

So what’s up, Bill?