Face Front, True Believers! A Marvel Comics Thread

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

She always felt like the balance in his life to me. No matter what happened, how bad things got, at least he had her.

Without... kinda makes things feel kind of depressing. I'm glad that they're at least together (I think?) now, even if not married.

Still, their reasoning was more than a bit insulting, among other things.

 

[Adrenaline]

They are together right now, but Peter's recently been in a coma.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

What about before the coma?

 

[Octopus Prime]

As far as I’ve read in the Nick Spencer run, theyre A couple again, but keep getting interrupted from proposing because of supervillain mischief

 

[Olli]

Ah, the classic struggles of star-crossed lovers

 

[Octopus Prime]

The tale of Juliet
And her little Rome-y
Always kept apart
By a Bug-Mummy

 

[Octopus Prime]

The last issue of Way of X (which does not include "The Way of X" anywhere in its title, it's called The Onslaught Revelation, because Comic Publishing says that #1s are more important than cohesion) dropped on Marvel Unlimited.

While it's not my favorite X-Men story to come out of the Krakoa era (that's easily Hellions), I would say it's the best one. And while I'm kind of disappointed that the finale wasn't a big fight against a big spooky knight made of Angry, that would have been completely at odds with the kind of story Way of X was telling, and honestly, this whole thing was a WAY better adaptation of the Onslaught story than Scotty Lobs ever managed.

He also got yet another True Form and he looks like an evil BIC logo;

Lookit this goober.

 

[Adrenaline]

Finally read X of Swords. Fun build-up but I wasn't expecting the tournament itself to be so... silly? Still, the final issue is Hickman at his best. Magik opening a portal to let the SWORD station through and an army of X-Men joining the battle? That's comics.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

X of Swords was kind of a weird mood whiplash.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I haven’t commented on how much I love Al Ewing enough this year

 

[Adrenaline]

Continuing my catch up on X-Men stuff, I read the first volume of SWORD. I... don't think I can overstate how much I love Al Ewing. He's so great at writing event tie-ins that still serve the purposes of the existing story.

 

[estragon]

Al Ewing's first ever book for Marvel was a one-off event tie-in issue to an event I had never read, and one day I gave it a shot anyway because it was Al Ewing. I read it out of curiosity just to see how his first Marvel work went, expecting to be confused and underwhelmed. It turned out to basically be a perfect comic. He got an ongoing (Mighty Avengers, also fantastic, also tied up in an event I've never read from its very first issue) later that year, and I don't know if this tie-in was something like an audition or if the ongoing was already a done deal. But, if it was an audition, he did a perfect job of condensing all of his skills as a writer into one standalone issue. For better or for worse, writing for contemporary Marvel is all about writing around events of extremely inconsistent quality, and I don't think anyone does it better than him.

Al Ewing getting a book that with an (advertised) cast of Storm, Magneto, Sunspot, and Abigail Brand is the biggest thing keeping my interest in the X-line post-Hickman. Extremely disappointed with how Covid and Marvel's desire to milk the success of House of X/Powers of X kept him from finishing the story he wanted to tell, but at least Al Ewing still has an X-book.

 

[Adrenaline]

I'm looking forward to Gillen's book as well

 

[Octopus Prime]

Started reading the new Defenders book, by Al Ewing and Javier Rodriguez.

For one thing, I fell in love with it even before seeing Als name on it, for another;

The book is god damned gorgeous.

It also introduces Galactus' mom as one of the main characters, and she talks like a parody of a Jack Kirby character and I love her.

 

[Positronic Brain]

It also introduces Galactus' mom as one of the main characters

Sold.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Al Ewing sat down, and said "I want Galactus' Mom to be everyones favorite character"

 

[Octopus Prime]

It’s apparently Body Horror week on Marvel Unlimited as we got the final issue of Immortal Hulk, Gamma Flight and another issue of the Darkhold mini.

That last one began as a bunch of Non Magic heroes having to come together to deal with Wizard Shenanigans. Despite the name, pretty fun story.

And the tie-ins make it clear that this is Marvels version of Dark Knights: Metal, as there’s Bad Avengers from Bad Realities who show up.

And so we’ve got Ryan North channeling Cronenberg for a story about Iron Man’s new self-healing armor.

Its… really not the sort of thing you’d expect from the guy who wrote Squirrel Girl

 

[Adrenaline]

I read the main story of Heroes Reborn, which is a fun tribute to DC comics, mashing it up with Marvel stuff in interesting ways. I am overall still enjoying Aaron's Avengers, although I think he uses in medias res to skip setting up his stories a little too often. It works in HR but not all the time.

 

[Positronic Brain]

My only gripe with HR is that it feels too mean, and not in a good-faith critique way.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Given that the Squadron Supreme are bad guys, it not feeling mean, would be kind of weird, but I get your meaning.

Also started reading Marvels (the new one, not the Alex Ross one), and this? This is good stuff. It feels like it’s channeling a lot of Astro City, except built on an existing comic book universe, instead of one made out of homages.

 

[Positronic Brain]

Given that the Squadron Supreme are bad guys

That's the thing, they are not supposed to be, just misguided heroes. Dan Jurgens got it in the Death of Falcon comic, but some of these writers (including Aaron) don't bother selling us the bridge to cross the gap into outright cruelty.

It also annoys me that the DC pastiche keeps being used as an easy source for villains - feels cynical, somehow. Hickman got that, which is why having Hyperion in the Avengers was so good, but everybody else uses the Squadron to fulfill their personal, tired Superman-but-evil fanfic without having to pitch it to DC. I find it as tiresome as the writers using Hank Pym to slap the Wasp and then using him as a villain for a while before killing him, resurrecting him and restarting the cycle.

 

[Adrenaline]

The fact that this Squadron is created by Mephisto I think justifies the dark side of it. I didn't read it as critical of DC's characters.

 

[Positronic Brain]

The fact that this Squadron is created by Mephisto I think justifies the dark side of it. I didn't read it as critical of DC's characters.

That's the thing, is not critical. It's mean for the sake of beig mean. Which would be fine it they also didn't make such a thorough job of mapping many arcs from DC continuity (like the Legion) into the story. So it's not the DC Heroes, we swear, but here, have somebody with all of Superman's Bronze Age background killing a thousand bystanders.

It feels as if Snyder wrote this comic.

I'll grant it that it is a thousand times better than that awful Squadron mini from Secret Wars.

 

[Positronic Brain]

I really hope this was a one time thing - Marvel Unlimited showed me an unskippable pop-up asking me to follow Thor; it wouldn't close unless I pressed the "Follow" button that took me away from the home screen of the app and to the newest issue of Thor,

I don't need ads about your comics, Marvel, particularly non-closeable ones, when *I'm already paying you*.

 

[Octopus Prime]

To be fair;

They’re right to say it

 

[Octopus Prime]

I've said before that I'm pretty lukewarm on Hickmans runs on various series, even ones I'm normally a big fan of, and as much as I like the Krakoa era of X-Men in general, the parts he's been responsible for is just a showcase of why I'm so ambivalent.

But I just elected to skip the rest of Hickmans work on it and jump directly into Gerry Duggan taking the reins.

And this? This is Comic Books, y'all.

You give me the choice between a bunch of unconnected vignettes that feel like they're somewhere between ominous portents and like I missed a couple of issues (plus an infographic or two) and a story about a space-mushroom-man who is trying to coerce high-stakes gamblers to destroy the Earth from his Outer Space Casino-Fortress and... wellsir... I'm Octo, and only one of those choices has a guy named Cordyceps Jones

 

[Positronic Brain]

For the record, I really like Hickman's approach - makes the universe feel bigger, with stories having more weight. It feels as if the characters have a life outside the latest platenary crisis if we don't follow their every move.

But there's nothing wrong with a living fungus hosting a contest to cause the extinction of human life on earth, no.

My only small, little complain is that there's nothing to this history that makes it feel like an X-Men crisis instead of an Avengers one. The problem of taking Hickman's Krakoan teams out to super hero stuff is that it dilutes a bit the distinction between teams, particularly now that every team (Gamma Flight, Avengers, FF) is out doing cosmic, big concept stuff. Granted, I'm only in X-Men #3 so Duggan still is setting stuff up, and it looks like he wants to tackle this with setting the team as being welcomed instead of feared. And I love what he's doing with Synch.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Yea

For the record, I really like Hickman's approach - makes the universe feel bigger, with stories having more weight. It feels as if the characters have a life outside the latest platenary crisis if we don't follow their every move.

Yeah that part he does well, and he’s really good at coming up with huge concepts and making them work in universe. He has a wonderful toy box and everyone else gets to have fun playing with it.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Comics are fun!

 

[Octopus Prime]

I’ve often said that Dan Slott is one of my favorite comic writers in general, and of his current FF run in particular;

And everything in this image justifies why I think that way