Marvel has released a new one-word Marvel Now teaser… kinda. And, well, so much for that Miracleman theory.
There’s still no specific word as to what Marvel’s “Superior” tease from a couple weeks back means, but thanks to Marvel releasing a new version of the image to USA Today, we at least have a creative team attached… which you can see after the jump.
Before you get too excited by the title, no; Steve Ditko has not suddenly pried open the door to his New York studio, gone to embrace Stan Lee in his hospital bed, started using Atlas Shrugged as a cutting board and taking commissions from all comers.
No, instead Marvel has found and restored an unused version of the original cover from Amazing Fantasy #15 *, produced by Ditko presumably before that issue was released in 1962, and announced that they will be using it as a variant cover for Amazing Spider-Man #700.
We’ve known for a while that there was gonna be a Ditko variant cover to the book, but a full-sized image hasn’t been available until now, when Newsarama got a hold of it. So feast your eyes…
Goddammit Marvel, now you’re just fucking with me.
Last week, Marvel released a series of one-word teaser posters hyping the winter round of Marvel Now relaunches (but not reboots! Marvel doesn’t reboot! And Mile Morales has always been Spider-Man in the Ultimate Universe! And Cyclops has always dressed like Nightwing on his way to an evening at The Ramrod’s Tower of Power night!). And while the first round of pre-San Diego Comic-Con teases were pretty transparent – “Mighty,” Marvel? Really? – the last few have been downright inscrutable. “Killers” could mean anything from a team led by The Punisher to some anonymous soul in Marvel editorial subtly bragging about blowing Brandon Flowers.
But yesterday, Marvel outdid themselves… and not necessarily in a good way, depending on how you interpret it.
We’ve known for quite some time that Brian Michael Bendis’s run on the various Avengers titles was coming to an end, and it was recently announced that current Fantastic Four writer Jonathan Hickman was going to be taking over the two main titles, Avengers and The New Avengers. But one of the burning questions leading into the transfer of power has been: after the Avengers Vs. X-Men event shakes out and Hickman takes over, who’s gonna be on which team?
Well, some of those questions have been answered, as Marvel has released the first three covers to Avengers, written by Hickman with art by Jerome Opena, picturing a pretty big gathering of superheroes (and, as did Pinocchio, I question the correct term for a gathering of multiple superheroes. For today, I will eschew “gaggle” and “pride,” and will go with “wad.”):
Editor’s Note: Seeing double? I got two spoilers, one for each of you.
You ever run into an old high school or college girlfriend that you broke up with? I have, and man, it sucks. There’s that whole moment of cognitive dissonance where your brain tries to match the person you knew years before with the older face and new haircut you’re seeing right now, and then you plaster on the fake smile and exchange overly loud and jocular greetings and exclamations of surprise at how long it’s been, and then you exchange stories of who you are now and the things you’re doing, and you promise to keep in touch while maybe exchanging email addresses that you know full well will never be typed into any browser, all the while dealing with the guilty knowledge that the reason it’s been so long is because you told her that you needed space… space to try to chuck the meat to that skank from UMass with the big knockers and the full liquor cabinet in her dorm room. And then you wander away feeling like you’ve had low-voltage elecro-convulsive therapy, and you spend the next day or so kinda moody and fucked-up, trying to get yourself back to normal equilibrium where you don’t feel like a long-term asshole. It’s a terrible experience; it’s one of the primary reasons you will catch me dead before you catch me on Facebook.
I know what you’re thinking: “Rob,” you’re thinking, “What in the ripe fuck does any of this have to do with comic books?” Well, all this emotion I’m describing comes from seeing someone you merely hurt by breaking up with them. Peter Parker, however, in The Amazing Spider-Man # 121, at best failed to rescue Gwen Stacy, if he didn’t accidentally kill her himself in a botched rescue attempt. So when Peter meets and interacts with the still-living Ultimate Universe version of Gwen in Spider-Men #4? I simply didn’t buy it. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
Editor’s Note: Does he spoil? Listen bub: he’s got Jack Daniels infected blood!
If you are a Spider-Man fan, you will find Avengers Vs. X-Men #9 to be about the most satisfying issue of the crossover event so far. It hammers home his philosophy of “With great power comes great responsibility” without actually saying the words for a change, it plays to his strengths as a character, and it allows this street-level hero to have a distinct and concrete impact on a cosmic-level story in a way that is true to the character, and satisfying for people who love him.
It also has a marital collapse. And it sets up the savage beating of one of the biggest douchecanoes in modern superhero comics. So there’s not a lot of downside here.
When Brian Michael Bendis had Spider-Man join The New Avengers a few years ago, I remember hearing grumblings amongst the regulars at my local comic store, where the know me by name and ask to remember that “that’s not a web shooter, and please don’t wave it at the paying customers while shouting ‘thwip!'” that having Spider-Man join a team would take away the whole outcast loner vibe that was part of what made the character unique.
That was 2005. It is now 2012, and after having had Spider-Man join not only The New Avengers, but also the Avengers proper and The Fantastic Four, Marvel has made it clear that they haven’t forgotten Spidey’s long and storied history as a loner, and that they intend to celebrate that history by giving him a teenaged sidekick!
Wait, what?
Back in July 2005, at the San Diego Comic-Con, Joe Quesada said that, if the classic Marvel Universe ever crossed over with the Ultimate Marvel Universe, it would mean that Marvel was “officially out of ideas.” It is now June 2012, and by Joey Q’s own metrics, Marvel is officially out of ideas. Say hello to Spider-Men #1.
This is the first time that the 616 has mixed with the Ultimate Universe (Think a Resse’s, your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter deal except ram-fed full of anticipated marketing dollars), but it’s not the first time that the Ultimate Universe has crossed over, even at the hands of Spider-Men writer Brian Michael Bendis. Bendis was one of the writers of Ultimate Power, which crossed the Ultimate world with Marvel’s other alternate world of Squadron Supreme, back in late 2006, or about four months after Quesada announced that such a crossover would equal an utter dearth of ideas. That crossover event led to Nick Fury leading Squadron Supreme, that book eventually quietly disappearing, the Ultimate Universe being almost destroyed by Magneto, the reboot of the Ultimate Universe (But, but Marvel doesn’t reboot! And their crossovers are always well-conceived and executed!), and, ultimately (get it?), the death of the original Ultimate Spider-Man.
My point is, when it comes to Ultimate universe crossovers, Spider-Men is facing a bar that is comfortably low. So the big question is: does Spider-Men make it over that bar? Well, considering this is the first issue of a Bendis miniseries, the answer must be: how the fuck should I know? Almost nothing happens in this comic. This issue is all set-up.
In a spring season loaded with Batman battling to save Gotham from the Court of Owls, and The Avengers trading punches with the X-Men with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, sometimes Event Fatigue sets in. And sometimes you want a change of pace from the ongoing Superhero Apocalypse, and as you look at your normal alternatives – the Zombie Apocalypse in The Walking Dead or the Zombie Apocalypse in Crossed: Badlands are normally pretty much it – you maybe start wishing for a nice, fun, and maybe a little goofy one-and-done to cleanse the palate as a change of pace.
Or maybe you just have a thing for cats. Maybe your house smells like cat litter and ammoniac urine, the Internet doesn’t give you enough other cats to fill in the gap, and where the rubber hits the road, you’re despondent that you just can’t hug all the cats, despite oodles of free time with which you can pursue this goal thanks to the aforementioned ammoniac smell. Either way, Avenging Spider-Man #7 is the book you’ve been looking for, and between it and Versus, it is living proof that, from the standpoint of just plain fun comics, Kathryn and Stuart Immonen should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, ever.
Ok, I’m behind on my comic book reading for the week and in a fit of desperate jealousy right now because Rob is at a showing of The Avengers at the moment and I am not. Stupid “having to go to my day job” thing. Boo! However, here’s a little something to cheer us all up: a new trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man! It’s got a bit deeper insight into Dr. Curt Connors, aka The Lizard, in relation to the events of the film. We see more of him, both in pasty pale scientist and green scaly goon forms. Also, more shots of the new web shooters in action. Cool! I have to admit that I didn’t see the point of rebooting the franchise, particularly so soon. But, this trailer does get me more interested in seeing the new film. Good job, marketing department!
The Amazing Spider-Man opens in US theaters on July 3, 2012.
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