Face Front, True Believers! A Marvel Comics Thread

[Octopus Prime]

We *certainly* can't let this important subject sit by the wayside.

Anyway, as I was chronicling on the OLD BUSTED forum, I've been reading, and evaluating every single tie-in to the 2015 Secret Wars arc; which is a lot of comics. Here's what I said so far:

Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows Was a lot of fun, and I kind of feel like it was a story Dan Slott wanted to write anyway, and Secret Wars gave him an excuse to do it without fussing about. It barely even acknowledges Secret Wars itself (it’s briefly mentioned that New York is a barony under GodDoom, but Spidey doesn’t understand any of it), and it’s got a lot of Mary Jane alternating between taking down some heavy weight villains via cleverness and being a Good Mom. Spidey winds up saving the day via Dad Jokes. Highly recommended.

Old Man Logan However, was a load of nothing. Best point of comparison I guess would be The Dark Tower, if Roland was Wolverine. Wolverine is propelled from one Battleworld Barony to another by explosions, and nobody quite explains to him what’s going on, and then he eventually lands in a world with the X-Men in it and decides to join a resistance in order to bring down GodDoom. Logan spends most of the story wondering if he’s just badly concussed or going senile in his old age. Not my cup of tea.

Civil War Was... not the most chill and fun thing to read right at this moment in history, but I read it anyway. It’s less of an alternate take on CW, and more of showing what would have happened if A bunch of firefighters didn’t tackle Captain America and convince him he was wrong (also, New York was blown up when Cloak exploded). Turns out It Was Skrulls. I didn’t like Civil War to begin with, and I didn’t like Civil War if Everyone Was a Bigger, More Violent Jerk. No connection to Secret Wars at all, either.


Infinity Gauntlet, on the other hand, was *excellent* and quite possibly the best thing to come out of the whole event. And possibly Gerry Duggan/Dustin Weavers entire careers. It has perhaps the least possible connection to Secret Wars (to the extent that the main book outright contradicts a lot of what happens in this) one. A family is left scavenging out in the ruins of a post Annihilation Wave world, constantly on the run from the remaining bug army... and then their Nova Corps mom comes back and turns everyone into a Power Ranger. Including the Dog. Also, they turn into a Mega Zord to fight Thanos.

And Dustin just arts the HELL out of every friggin' page;

I thought Renew Your Vows was going to be the high point of Secret Wars, but NOPE!

X-Men ‘92 is a comic I have to give props to for having some genuinely neat layout tricks based on its origins as a digital, rather than physical, comic, which tied in nicely to the main conceit of Cassandra Nova being reinterpreted as the living embodiment of the Fox Kids BS&P censors. For all that, though, it did come across as being a bit long winded, clocking in at nearly double the length of nearly every other book in Secret Wars.

Nice to see that Chris Sims got over his irrational hatred of Cyclops, at least.

Still only midway through the spinoffs, but I’m feeling like Planet Hulk May be the most high concept and weird of them all. Its a Conan style Sword and Sorcery story starring Gladiator Captain America and his mighty steed, Devil Dinosaur, going through the Hulk territory of Greenland in order to rescue Bucky and kill the upstart Red Hulk at Dooms request. Which mainly involves him chopping up monsters with an axe and tyrannosaur

Spider Verse Is kind of a weird choice of something to cram into Secret Wars, given the nature of both story arcs, and the kind of loose rules of how Battleworld is supposed to work, but it’s a fun story so I can forgive it. Not my favourite incarnation of Spiderverse, but not the worst one either.

Inferno was the other one I read before, so I wasn’t shocked to learn I really liked it. Felt like if Escape from New York crosses over with The Real Ghostbusters, with Colossus, Domino and Madelyn Pryor trying to free a corrupted New York from Illyana. Works like a Bad Ending Sequel to the original Inferno. Really fast paced and fun, and chock-a-block with Javier Garron drawing weird monsters.

Deadpools Secret Secret Wars is definitely a tie-in to Secret Wars, just not the one where the Multiverse was destroyed, and all that remains is Battleworld; a patchwork planet made of pieces, held together by the will of its lord and master, Victor Von Doom. It's the other one; the one written to help Kenner sell action figures because focus-testing proved that "Secret" and "Wars" were popular terms for toy sales. It's just that Deadpool was there all along and nobody noticed it. It's not a bad hook for a story, and the mini was fun, but it's not the best story about Deadpool being shoehorned into an older Marvel story. More enjoyable than Cosmic Ghost Rider Destroys History, which was basically exactly this in every way, however.

MODOK Assassin was... pretty much the platonic ideal of an out of continuity story focused entirely on MODOK; he's the primary defender of KILLVILLE, a region ruled entirely by supervillains, wedged between the Days of Future Past and House of M regions, where he spends his days gleefully executing everybody who looks at him funny, and winds up meeting and falling in love with Angela, who just happened to show up and shares his zest for violence. She's completely unaware that he's big-head-over-tiny-heels in love with her. Things escalate pretty quickly, with MODOK and Angela being true to what they were designed for.

Series has a bright cartoony art style that works well with the... otherwise horrific levels of violence. I also read all of MODOKs dialogue in his EMH voice; which is honestly about the ideal sound for the guy.

2099 is, for one thing, kind of confusing as a SW inclusion; patchwork planet made of alternate realities, sure, that I can accept, but this one chunk is also 80 years in the future? It's arbitrary things that can cause the cables that suspend my disbelief to snap. As a means to bring back the 2099 continuity, it's not bad, and I did like this reinterpretation of Captain America, but at the same time, almost every single character was completely unlikeable (did some course-correcting on Herc, but he still spent half the mini being a drunken lout with some pretty bad views on women). I'd say skip it, unless you just can't get enough of the Dweller in the Darkness.

And if I had a hard time enjoying the last one because of one of the leads' were a total hole, then, hoo-boy, Where Monsters Roam was not going to do great by me. In fairness, the book never stops pointing out, time and again, that the main character suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks for that, and a great many other reasons, but it's still a solid five issues of the main character being just the absolute worst. It's the 1920s, and a retired air force pilot/jackass, and his comely air-fare find themsevles stranded on a dinosaur infested amazon-island somewhere on Battleworld. And he fortunately has a really bad time there as he is a complete waste of a person and I really don't feel bad for him at any point. Then the book ends with him washing up on a literal island of shit with the woman he abandoned earlier. Book wears its "Not FOr General Audiences" disclaimer proudly, and I really wanted to get back to fun superhero stories long before it was over.


Well, Armor Wars wasn't quite the fun superhero adventure that... every other story called Armor Wars was (the Marvel Adventures one is hard to top), but it WAS a fun cyberpunk detective story; it's about James Rhodes trying to uncover the murder of this domains version of Spider-Man, and finding out how it's connected to the mysterious plague that forces everyone to wear Iron Man suits.

It concludes with Tony Stark fighting a couple of Megazords, which is kind of weird in terms of tone, and one of the rare times when the fact that people talk so much in a superhero fight struck me as being weird.

Future Imperfect really shifts gears a lot for a five issue mini. It mainly follows a resistance group trying to overthrow Maestro (arguably the least of the Big Hulk villains), and then, instead everyone decides to go look for the Destroyer instead. Even if his name wasn’t on the cover, you could tell Greg Land handles the art.

Avengers vs. X-Men has little connection to the story it’s named after and, furthermore, it’s also an extended Little Marvels story. Whole thing had the same kind of vibe as one of the goofier Calvin & Hobbes story arcs

And also X-Tinction Agenda, based on an X-Men story I know nothing about, starring the Least Interesting member of Cyclops’ family and Wolfsbane, a character about whom I know little, all in service of Super Heroes Fighting Superheroes

So, with all that against it, I... kinda liked it?

It doesn’t take long to set aside “Heroes Fighting their Friends” in favour of “Everyone Fighting One Bad Robot”, and the villain is Cameron Hodge in full Phalanx regalia, so it’s a visual treat all the way through. Plus Wolfsbane got a redesign so that instead of looking like a Teenwolf (objectively the worst kind of whillwerf), she’s all gangly and monstrous, which looks rad.

There’s also a b-plot about Hank bringing dead X-Men back to life via time travel that... doesn’t seem to go anywhere, save that that’s what he was doing in the main X-Men comics too

Years of Future Past takes what is arguably the darkest timeline in Marvel (and that is a competitive field) and makes it just a smidge lighter... up until the actual ending where everything winds up in an even worse place than DoFP. Most of the story had a YA Dystopia vibe, like if Hunger Games had mutants instead of teenage death sports.

Plus side, packs of wild tigers prowl the ruins of New York, so... that’s not something you usually see in stories like this.

Captain Marvel and the Carol Corps is, for one thing, a delightfully silly title, and second, really good. I’d put it up there with Infinity Gauntlet and Inferno. It’s also one of the few Secret Wars tie-ins that points out of the main plot points of the main story; that Doom is really bad at being a God; when the high flying aces of the Banshee Squadron (the titular Carol Corps) realize that an awful lot of Doom Scripture about the arrangement of the universe doesn’t make a lick of sense They all go AWOL in order to disprove the non-existence of outer space.

It’s really fast paced and well written and I really wanted it to keep going, it’s one of the few SW tie-ins that didn’t make it to a full five issues.

I didn’t know what to expect with Mrs. Deadpool and the Howling Commandos, but what it wound up being was another one of the high points of the Secret Wars tie ins; starring a character I only very recently became aware of existing at all; the titular Mrs Deadpool, Shiklah (a succubus Hell Queen). Except in this continuity, she never married him and was instead forced to marry Count Dracula, but instead leads a treasure hunt with the Howling Commandos (Werewolf By Night, Frankenstein, The Living Mummy, Man Thing and a centaur Symbiote named Marcus) with the goal of finding a magical weapon that can successfully kill Dracula.

Books really fast paced, has great art, plenty of well executed gags and it’s a story where a bunch of monsters gang up on a Dracula. Even manages to make Deadpools whole *thing* not overstay it’s welcome and even work in the framework of the story. Really kind of wish Gerry Duggan was able to bring this level of energy to his run on Guardians.

Weirdworld was another really good one. Which was especially surprising because it’s a five issue mini about Arkon. A character who you might remember as...

Oh who am I kidding, nobody remembers Arkon.

Anyway, the whole thing feels like a cross between Samurai Jack and Conan the Barbarian, as Arkon travels the well named Weirdworld trying to find his passage home, while the regions baroness, Morgan Le Fay repeatedly tries to have him killed with lava men, orcs, and the undersea apes of Apelantis, to name the more conventional problems.

It’s another one of the high points of the Battlezone books, and when I learned there was a second mini series that acts as a sequel, I immediately added it to my queue.

And we can ADD to that;

Witchunter Angela 1602 is... a lot of concepts to be throwing at the wall; starring everyones favorite Lesbian Murder-Angel, Angela into the 1602 continuity, where she works along with her Gal-Pal to hunt down and kill William Shakespeare! And also The Enchantress. It's also an excuse to try to cram variants on a bunch of characters that'd be really hard to shoe-horn into Medieval England like Venom and the Guardians of the Galaxy, so I admire the moxie, even if I didn't really wind up enjoying the book as much as I wanted to. Highlight was the short vignette in the middle written by Noelle Stevenson that looked and read like it could have been slotted directly into She-Ra with no adjustments.

And speaking of Fairly Gay OoC Marvel stories written by Noelle Stevenson, Runaways was another clear highlight of this experience. It also has nothing to do with the actual Runaways comic, outside of the presense of Molly; bunch of kids attending the Dr. Doom School for Gifted Youngsters are displeased to learn how the schools headmistress; Valerie Doom (ne Richards) makes sure that the school only produces the Very Best and Most Loyal subjects for Dooms inner circle; Institutional Child Death Sports. Sanforde Greens Art pops off every page (if there was no drawings except for peoples expressions, it'd be worth reading), story and characters are a lot of fun, and, again, it really feels like a template for She-Ra; even a bunch of character designs overlap. Also, Jubilee neither confirms nor denies she's a vampire.

 

[Adrenaline]

Immortal Hulk has gotten me more interested in Hulk generally. Right now I'm in the middle of the Fall of the Hulks storyline. It's funny to me how often they will keep a character's identity secret and stretch out the reveal for a year or more but then it just becomes common knowledge in every other book after it's over and you wonder why it was such a big deal.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Have you read Planet Hulk and World War Hulk? I love those arcs.

 

[Adrenaline]

Yeah, WWH leads to the existence of Red Hulk and Fall of the Hulks is about him and Bruce teaming up to fight the Intelligencia.

 

[Falselogic]

I started reading the Marvel Transformers Comics. I just started the 2nd omnibus.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Started reading the Ghost Rider relaunch from last year (or so) and it’s got a nice hook early on (it’s Rider v. Rider as either Johnny is being deceived into thinking innocent people are demon fugitives OR ELSE Danny is being tricked and demons have figured out how to hide from the Spirit of Vengeance, and also someone new is vying for Hell’s Throne). It’s got nice, Frank Quietly-ish art,too (Human!Johnny kind of looks like an Evil John Lennon) Problem is that Marvels had a whole bunch of GRs, and not only does the book focus on the least interesting ones, they’re also the Riders who are hardest to differentiate.

 

[estragon]

I'm continuing my way too thorough chronological readthrough of X-titles. I've now reached the era when I read scattered issues as a kid, which is the immediate post-Claremont era. My main discovery about this period has been almost everything that I assumed as a child would have made sense if only I could have read more back issues was actually either (1) total nonsense that makes even less sense with full context or (2) literally the first appearance of a character so no amount of prior issues would have helped. The time when I started reading these comics books (and when a lot of other people did too, because of the cartoon) was also probably the worst the X-Men has ever been since the 1960s.

The exception to this is Larry Hama's run on Wolverine. Despite Larry Hama's reputation as an author who infamously plotted ahead "two or three pages at most," he is a master of serial storytelling, always planting new seeds for future stories and deftly drawing on Claremont-era continuity. Also, after a nonstop glut of white-savior orientalist storytelling by previous writers aping the Claremont/Miller solo mini-series, Hama instead introduces fun nonsense like going back in time to fight fascists alongside Hemmingway and George Orwell in the Spanish Civil war. (The white savior stories don't stop entirely. They're kind of baked into the character by previous Wolverine solo stories. But they're much less central.) So maybe Hama was always making it up on the fly, but during a time when the vast majority of the X-line was in shambles, only Hama seemed to still be serving up what made the X-titles sell in the first place.

As a kid Hama's Wolverine was the book I begged my parents to buy for me monthly (starting with #75, the first bone claws issue) instead of getting a scattered issue as an occasional treat when we passed by the comic book store in the mall, and for a long time I thought that was weird in retrospect. He was never my favorite member of the team or anything. I expected to come back to this and just see what a strange thing it was that I wanted this solo book about I character I was never really into. But honestly now I see that it was just the most solid title of the immediate post-Claremont era. Through Fatal Attractions, every other book was at best finally righting the ship after the soon-to-be-Image-founding artists wrecked their titles before running off and leaving a mess in their wake, or were still totally at sea with no clear direction. Hama's Wolverine was the book from this era that was consistent on an issue-to-issue basis and presented deep dive continuity in a new reader friendly way. It's the one book that is now better in retrospect, while the others books mostly were better when I was a child who assumed the issues I wasn't able to read would have made it better.

(Alan Davis' Excalibur is also an exception and extremely good, but in my periodization I'm including it in the Claremont era since his run is relatively short and mostly just finishing all the dangling plot points left over from when Davis and Claremont started the book together, and in some cases even finishing up dangling plot points from Alan Davis' Marvel UK Captain Britain solo stuff.)

 

[Peklo]

It's a very fun run and shockingly long-lasting as a tenure on a single book, and balances self-contained nonsense with satisfying ties to the surrounding big picture narrative with seeming ease, in contrast to other writers like Peter David in that era who had to essentially be forced to play along and acted out the resulting resentment on the page as they did. It's probably the most invested I've ever been in Logan as a solo act, because Hama's treatment of him as a ridiculous one-liner dispenser transforms a character who's often framed too self-seriously into a genuinely entertaining and humorous figure in juxtaposing that ostensibly inherent seriousness with Hama's absurdities in turns of phrase and over-the-top scenarios, for an overall net benefit to his characterization.

 

[estragon]

My view of Peter David's X-Factor was definitely the biggest revision downward. It was so bad that it has even preemptively made my evaluation of his second run on X-Factor worse. The gap between my memories of the book from scattered issues as a child and reading it now in full context was huge. I can't hold too much against him for the humor not holding up for me. If his jokes were funny to me when I was a child, well they were hitting with their target audience even if now I don't think they work.

But its treatment of the characters is not interesting enough for his big revisions to them. I'm not a stickler for continuity. I'll forgive even obvious retcons if it's in the service of a good story. But in this case it's really not. Havok and Rahne especially are really a mess, in my opinion.

Pre-David, Havok's whole thing was basically that he was too powerful, creating a situation where he essentially could not use his powers against a living being without doing murder. It created a lot of good action scenarios, unique stories, and played into his characterization as being not entirely comfortable with being a superhero, which fit in well thematically with Claremont's X-Men during the period he was on the team. Character growth is of course good and gaining control is a common narrative in superhero stories, but in David's X-Factor all of a sudden he's just another generic energy beams guy with a generic superhero personality who is the generic team leader for some reason.

Rahne is a minor who is suddenly violently horny for Havok. This is bad enough on its own, but my memory is that David comes back to this again X-Factor Investigations where she is instead violently horny for (violently jealous over?) that team's leader, Maddrox. I think Rahne's strictly religious upbringing and low self-esteem makes her suited to stories about complicated relationship feelings (and Claremont/Simonson did this well!). But I feel like David's approach to this subject matter reduces her to a kind of virgin/whore version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which I think is not doing justice to the character.

 

[Peklo]

Ethically fraught relationships involving Rahne are generally much better explored in the New Mutants Vol. 2/New X-Men: Academy X run by Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir from around 2003 and on, so something to look forward to. That's generally a bright spot in that era of X-books; equally as capable of telling new stories with long-missed, neglected characters while creating an entirely fresh, compelling central cast to complement the returning faces. Great while it lasts!

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

That was a great run and I was really confused and upset by how it continued after they left. Obviously the (annoying, no fun) Decimation plotline meant the end of mutant Hogwarts, but like why the relentless slaughter?

I do remember Rahne explicitly lost her strangely transcribed Scottish accent in that run and then Peter David intentionally brought it right back. Enjoyed both of his runs, but Rahne as he wrote her was never a favorite.

 

[Adrenaline]

Rahne is a minor who is suddenly violently horny for Havok. This is bad enough on its own, but my memory is that David comes back to this again X-Factor Investigations where she is instead violently horny for (violently jealous over?) that team's leader, Maddrox. I think Rahne's strictly religious upbringing and low self-esteem makes her suited to stories about complicated relationship feelings (and Claremont/Simonson did this well!). But I feel like David's approach to this subject matter reduces her to a kind of virgin/whore version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which I think is not doing justice to the character.

In his second run she is still attracted to Havok (and has sex with him before leaving and eventually coming back with a baby (fathered by a Norse wolf god)). Layla is the minor with a problematic relationship with Madrox.

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

I think she attacks Shatterstar and is a bit homophobic when his and Rictor's relationship comes to light, and lies about the baby being Rictor's. I don't remember her having romantic plotlines with Madrox or Havoc in that period but she could have... I dunno.

 

[estragon]

I'm thinking of the reoccurring dream about Rahne going feral and killing Madrox when he is in bed with Layla.

Maybe that's not written as motivated by misdirected attraction/jealousy based (don't totally remember except that I didn't like it), but even if not I didn't particularly care for it in X-Factor Investigations, and I didn't care for 90s X-Factor Rahne wanting to kill Alex every time he's being romantic with Lorna.

He seems to want to keep writing Rahne as worried about becoming an uncontrollable animal who kills men when they sleep with their romantic partners. I'm just not into this as a plot point for her.

 

[Adrenaline]

Oh yeah Havok is not Rictor I'm stupid

 

[Rascally Badger]

Didn't the Rahne/Havok stuff spin out of X-Tinction Agenda?

 

[estragon]

Didn't the Rahne/Havok stuff spin out of X-Tinction Agenda?

Rahne became a mutate in X-Tinction Agenda. The original effect of her becoming a mutate was being unable to become fully human again or she would become a kind of mindless thrall.

Becoming a mutate making her violently horny for Havok was all Peter David. It's presented as a shocking twist and not foreshadowed by anything from any other book or author.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Not a fan of the character in general, but I picked up Zeb Wells’ run on Ant-Man and I love it.

Scott’s got the kind of Hapless Loser Who Tries, Dammit energy that the movies were going for but couldn’t quite land; who moves to Florida in order to be a better dad, and gets precisely as much respect as Ant-Man warrants despite being Florida’s #1 Superhero.

Books got a great sense of humor that’s bolstered by Dylan Burnett’s art. Also, while it may be a coincidence, I think the big villain of the first arc is taken from the 60s Spider-Man cartoon (who was, IIRC, also taken from Rocket Robin Hood)

 

[Octopus Prime]

Also steadily making my way through Ewing’s USAvengers; which flagged a little bit for a tie-in arc for Secret Empire (to the books credit, it did more to make me want to read Secret Empire than anything else ever did. Sure as hell don’t want to, but seeing Squirrelgirl teaming up with the Champions of Europe to save France from HYDRA is... very enjoyable), and then it immediately jumped into a story where Cannonball is being held capture on planet Glenbrook; a world that based its entire culture on Archie.

Comic Books Are Amazing

 

[estragon]

Squirrelgirl teaming up with the Champions of Europe to save France from HYDRA is... very enjoyable

I really wish Ewing would get to write a Champions of Europe mini or something because clearly he likes those characters a lot and makes them fun to read but also I understand it probably has no market appeal.

(Also I like the Tini Howard's Excalibur okay and I understand they needed a new direction for Betsy Braddock but I would have preferred someone picking up on Ewing's work building up Faiza Hussain as Excalibur instead and/or in addition to this... I guess she's a "mutate" rather than a mutant which is a weird fit for the current era of X-books but Excalibur has always been the team on the margins so I wish they could have fit her in somewhere. Or maybe this has happened already, I'm reading on Marvel Unlimited so I'm 6 months behind...)

 

[Adrenaline]

She popped up in Valkyrie recently.

 

[estragon]

Oh neat. Presumably while Ewing was still a co-writer? My Ewing Marvel readthrough is still on hold right before No Surrender. I should get back to it sometime.

 

[Adrenaline]

Yeah, they were his last two issues

 

[Octopus Prime]

Still slowly plinking away at Kurt Busieks Thunderbolts, which may well be the best Marvel book of the 90s. By default, really.

just read the special Wizard Magazine Contest Winner issue, which gives the distinct impression that Kurt wrote it under duress, and the T-Bolts are extremely reluctant to help at all

 

[Nich]

Not sure how much longer the deal goes on for, so jump on it while you can, but every single issue of Black Panther on Comixology is free right now. Just head on over there and add the whole megillah to your cart and hit "checkout" for $0.00. (This only applies to single issues, not trades, but whatever. It's the same thing delivered a different way.)

Mind that some issues won't show up in the search linked, so you might want to comb through the pages for the Priest (1998-2003) and Coates (2016-2018, 2018-present) runs to make sure you got all the issues.

 

[Positronic Brain]

Still slowly plinking away at Kurt Busieks Thunderbolts, which may well be the best Marvel book of the 90s. By default, really.

just read the special Wizard Magazine Contest Winner issue, which gives the distinct impression that Kurt wrote it under duress, and the T-Bolts are extremely reluctant to help at all

Ooof. I remembered something going around that, so I did a quick wikipedia check and turns out Charcoal was a bit of a legal mess

Charcoal was created to be a villain, by means of a Wizard magazine contest. However, Wizard Entertainment failed to establish certain legal specifics in the language of their contest rules, leaving the ownership of the character's copyright in question (normally in such a situation, steps would be taken to ensure that, unless otherwise stated, such a character's copyright would legally belong to the comic's publisher). Furthermore, Wizard Entertainment reportedly failed to provide the contest winner with other prizes promised along with the winning character's appearance in a Marvel comic. Feeling undercompensated, Charcoal's creator attempted to legally claim the copyright for the character from Marvel. Meanwhile, writer Fabian Nicieza had decided to kill off Charcoal and resurrect him later on. Because of the legal issues, Marvel told Nicieza it "wasn't worth" bringing the character back.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Strange Academy has shown up on MU; which takes the Super Hero School (one of the best settings for comic books) and makes it apply to Magical Teens instead of mutants or Super Scientists. Honestly pretty surprised it took Marvel until now to make that a thing, rather than back when Harry Potter was popular, and JK Rowling wasn’t known to be a big ol trashbag.

First issue was more of an intro to most of the characters (Dormammus Son, Doyle is an early favourite), and Crazy Ass Comic Magic fits Humberto Ramos’ art like a glove.

My only real concern is that J Scott Campbell is also listed as an artist, and between the two of them it leads me to be concerned about how sexy these magic teens are going to wind up being

 

[Adrenaline]

(This only applies to single issues, not trades, but whatever. It's the same thing delivered a different way.)

The exception is when the book crosses over and you'd have to pay for the non-Black Panther tie-ins.

My only real concern is that J Scott Campbell is also listed as an artist, and between the two of them it leads me to be concerned about how sexy these magic teens are going to wind up being

Doesn't he only do covers?

 

[Octopus Prime]

I think he does interiors as well; he’s got an art co-credit on this, but it doesn’t specify what. Ramos did the cover, though

 

[Positronic Brain]

A magical super-hero academy drawn by Ramos and Campbell? Is as if somebody had published the best-selling comic book from the early aughts two decades too late,

That said, I like the concept, but this issue also made really obvious that Marvel has an editorial mandate that each comic book issue must have at least one fight.