Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Things I'm looking forward to from Marvel

I'm finding myself transitioning from "disappointed in Marvel" to "negative, cynical fanboy looking for something to criticize in everything Marvel does." I don't want to be that guy again, so I'm going to try to spotlight some of the few (there I go again) new things I'm looking forward to.

Dan Slott's not a perfect writer, but he's written lots of really good stuff, and Fantastic Four seems like a good fit to bring out his best work. I'm not familiar with Sara Pichelli, but what I looked at online seems to have potential. The FF is usually one of the more stand-alone titles, at least as much as a Marvel book can be in this day and age, so it shouldn't hit my event-phobia alarm. I'm actually looking forward to this.

Gail Simone and Domino. I'm just going to hope that Gail's superhero sabbatical lets her come back and do something strong.

Exiles (and Quicksilver). I loved Black Bolt, so I'm happy to follow Saladin Ahmed to his new projects. And I've always been a Valkyrie fan, so I'm looking forward to seeing her in Exiles, even if an alt-universe, movie like interpretation.

aaaaand... <grimace>

Jason Aaron on Avengers. This would be something I would love, but for more than a decade now Avengers has been the property driving Marvel's tentpole events, and thus is almost impossible to read in a vacuum. And the back-to-basics lineup doesn't exactly scream "we won't be deep in other books' messes." But I've never read anything bad from Jason Aaron (fortunately, Secret Wars altered real world history to erase the writing of Get Mystique), and in the name of positivity I will at least keep my hear to the ground and give the feedback I hear when it launches a fair hearing.

Mind you, I'm not going to stop complaining about the endless renumberings and events and Wolverines and Old Man Squirrel Girl and everything else, but I will at least acknowledge that there are new projects I'm actually looking forward to.

Slott on FF?

Iffy.

Pichelli on FF?

Love her! I am so there!

Some Sara samples:

www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=913579#Post913579

Some more Sara samples:

www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=913580#Post913580

Exiles I'm cautiously hopeful for since I wasn't a fan of the writer's "Generation X" book. Runaways is currently the one Marvel book I've consistently looked forward to.

Saladin Ahmed wrote a Generation X book? I had no idea. Despite the negative review, I've liked his work enough to want to track it down and give it a shot.

No my mistake, I didn't realize it was Ahmed writing Exiles. I thought the writer for the last Gen X book was writing Exiles.

Guys I apologize for having derailed the thread.

Pichelli on FF is going to be great! Slott won me back over big time these last few years with Spidey and Silver Surfer so he is a writer I trust, especially with a great artist.

Aaron's Thor is a top 5 series for me these last few years. I'm eager to see that continue.

I'm really nervous about Nick Spencer on ASM. I love his Morning Glories, but his Marvel stuff is atrocious and the way he defended himself so much online exposed him as sensitive and immature. (I'd rather have a mean jerk than a crybaby).

Has Samnee announced what's next? I can't even remember whose on Hulk, Daredevil, Dr. Strange, etc.

Enjoying Exiles. Domino was okay but nothing great. Reviews of avengers convinced me to pass, but I’ll keep my ear to the ground. Still looking forward to FF, and as always am enjoying Ms. Marvel and Thor.

Exiles is too fluffy for my taste (it's like I was telling a friend of mine last month -- Tony Bedard's Exiles run gave us both the big World Tour epic and the little done-in-one Cheese Danish story, whereas Saladin Ahmed's Exiles feels to me like one Cheese Danish story after another,) and I found the first issue of Quicksilver's solo series (also written by Ahmed) too arty-farty in both story and drawings.

I did not expect to, but found myself really enjoying Domino. (I'm generally not a fan of Liefield's characters, even the popular ones like Deadpool and Cable, although I'll admit to a fondness for lame and forgotten creations of his like Tempo and Dragoness.) But the writing here is really interesting, and a bit more mature than I expected. ('Mature' in that she's saying and thinking kind of shocking things, like 'I wish I'd lived my life differently' when falling to her death, as opposed to the marketing term 'mature audience' which generally means 'full of potty humor, titillation and / or gore that will only appeal to a twelve year old.')

Other than that, I'm reading various X-books, mostly out of inertia, not because any of them are particularly awesome, and enjoyed the Ant-Man and the Wasp book starring Scott and Janet that came out this week (not to be confused with the *other* Ant-Man and the Wasp book that came out this week, starring Scott and Nadia, which was less good, IMO).

About the most consistently enjoyable comic I'm reading at the moment is Runaways, which is just fun. I missed those gals (and token guy). The new artist has a running gag of giving Old Lace facial expressions, and it never fails to put a smile on my face. (There's one scene where the group goes to visit someone in a college dormitory, and are in the hallway *with their pet velociraptor*, when someone walks out of the next room over, sees the dinosaur, who turns to look at her, mutters 'Nope' and goes back into her room and closes the door. The dinosaur smiles. I die laughing.)

I wish DC would get their crap together. I'd kill for a good Teen Titans, Young Justice, Legion of Super-Heroes or Justice Society / All-Star Squadron / Infinity, Inc. sort of book right about now.

Marvel's kind of 'eh.' The Avengers I *want* read about (Monica Rambeau, Living Lightning, etc.) are sidelined for the 'big names', and it feels like the Justice League all over again, where I *want* to read about Vixen and Ice and Black Canary and Hawkwoman and, uh, Booster Gold? (Had to think of a guy real quick!) and its all 'Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Hal, Fast Barry!' Yawn. Iron Man, Thor and Captain America have become the Avengers Trinity, which means, as is my wont, I'm done with them. Bored now. Rip their kneecaps off!

I really, truly, genuinely wanted to like the first issue of Sara Pichelli & Dan Slott's Fantastic Four relaunch. Slott's recent work on Amazing Spider-Man #800-801 made a convert of me, and I just felt that if there was any still-active writer other than Peter Allen David who could produce a version of F4 that I can abide -- even after Hickman's puke-fest of a run which, by turning Reed and Susan and their two loathsome kids into gods, betrayed the very principle of the F4, that they're regular folk with powers -- it would be Slott.

First, the good news -- Sara's art did not let me down. She seems particularly enamored of Johnny Storm. The sequences with him in full flamed-on flight are simply glorious! She also manages the difficult trick of making Ben's face and body expressive. And Alicia has never looked this lovely.

As for Slott, my gut reaction is to give him the benefit of the doubt that there's a lot of pressure on him from editors and execs, and an equal amount of meddling and second-guessing going on. The backup story which brings back a certain A-List F4 antagonist is, in my opinion, decently written, but Simone Bianchi's art is even more sloppy-looking, obnoxious, and lacking in subtlety than usual. And that "humorous" 1-pager at the end seems to me like a last-minute, overly defensive patch anticipating fan displeasure with the fact that, even by modern standards, this is a deeply unsatisfying issue in the way that it doesn't stand on its own. It feels like a fraction of a fraction of a larger story, which is exactly what I feel has been driving away readers in droves from comic books.

I'm only going to buy the next few issues because of Sara. But if Slott and the people he answers to don't pull their stuff together, I may very well end up giving up altogether on the Marvel Universe, after nearly 30 years of fan loyalty.

I will hopefully be reading it tonight, and can take more part in the various discussions that I have seen. I will say that in principle, it doesn’t bother me that the cast won’t be united until the second issue. Of course, I will have to see how it is executed

I'm enjoying Jean Grey's X-Men Red (actually).

Cassandra Nova is spreading a hate virus that seems very referential to the real world. Usually I don't like stuff that refers to current events but I am liking this.

Jean Grey's trying to get the mutant homeland back together. Art is pretty good though not rockstar in my opinion. It's a little slow and there is a lack of super heroics aplenty so far.

... but I like the contrast of the main protagonist (Jean) and her antagonist Nova. I also like that its about something, something optimistic in fact, and not just about the X-characters personal drama/demons.

I look forward to catching it each month and am bummed I missed the first couple of issues.

It stands alone well? Not part of some bigger X storyline?

I enjoyed FF #1 but didn't love it. The art was great, the writing was... perfectly good FF. I don't think it's anything that's going to put them back into superstar status, at least so far. I'm not quite sure the source of the criticisms of it not being standalone. I mean, I've seen it in many more places than just here, so I concede there is clearly something about it that is bothering a large number of readers that I just can't seem to see. But I'm used to multipart stories enough that a "stage setting" first issue doesn't bother me. The only thing that did was it's potential to be a Jemas-era deconstructed story, with a 6-issue reunion arc. So that final page successfully dispelled that worry for me, although I agree it would have been better if the story itself had managed to assuage my fears, instead of essentially an editorial note. If I drop it, it will probably be because it failed to excite me more than anything actively making me dislike it. I'll give it a few issues to see how it goes.

Given the recent bait-and-switch stories in X-Men Gold and Batman, there is one particular plot development that falls in the "I'll believe it when I see it" category.

I think it does, I'm not getting any other X-books. I haven't felt like I'm missing anything. It seems different than what I know about the other books.

I'm not loving Honey Badger or Wolverine II in the cast, predominantly as zingy comic relief, but Trinary and Gentle have been the more meaty portions of the character story lines. (besides Jean herself).

I read a couple reviews and they noted that it was back to the crux of what the X-books are about, the mutant-human relations metaphor and they liked that Jean was a leader, rather than a plot device or love interest.


I liked how it includes Namor but he is not pursuing Jean romantically. So far his a supporting character.

I got the first issue of the new Astonishing X-Mne line up and didn't like it at all, I even found them paraphrasing Joss Whedon's run.

That's basically the same way I feel. I guess I just feel it more intensely, and with greater wariness. The comparison to the decompressed nature of the Jemas Era is very apt, in my opinion. But so, I believe, is the decompressed nature of the Hickman Era, and I notice you didn't comment on my negative opinion of the Hickman Era. If you do like Hickman's writing, I have no problem with that. My friend Matt, one of my oldest and closest friends within the fan community, is a guy who lives and breathes Hickman's work. And, yes, we've had a few animated yet civil discussions about that. But if you'd rather not have one here, I won't push for one any further.

I’m really enjoying east of west, but I was pretty meh on Hickman’s marvel work. I THOUGHT I liked his fantastic four, but then I got bored and wondered off halfway through, so I guess I didn’t like it as much as I thought I did. And I never read his avengers at all, although I have a friend who really liked it. I guess I feel like his intensive world building habits work better on a creator owned property then in a shared world work for hire. Every time I think about trying his avengers run, I realize just how many books I’m signing on for and put it off.

BFOB, I think you make a very good point about how writers like Hickman, who specialize in world-building, do it better with universes they create and own themselves (I feel that way about Kurt Busiek as well -- I don't think his work for either of the Big Two even compares to Astro City at its best.)

And consider yourself fortunate that you jumped off Hickman's FF partway through, and avoided his Avengers altogether (I assume you haven't read Secret Wars 2015, either, since it spun out of the loose ends of both his FF and Avengers runs...and, IMO, had the most incomprehensible ending I've ever seen in a Big Two event storyline. I'm talking worse than Final Crisis level incomprehensible.)

I tried reading whatever the all female Avengers SW tie-in, and had so much trouble figuring out what was going on it scarred me from trying anything else but Thors, which had such a simple high concept it worked in isolation.

Fantastic Four #2 by "Pichellot" seems, at first, a big step in the right direction -- Sara's art is even better (she and color-artist Marte Gracia are quickly becoming a team to be reckoned with,) while Dan does a good job of addressing both sides of the fandom reaction to Hickman's work on F4 and Secret Wars (and with me being a Hickman Hater, it pleases me that the nay-sayers' meta-spokesperson is a new female villainess, the Griever.) But the issue #2 cliffhanger...it wasn't a deal-breaker, but it came close -- too close. Time, and the next issue, will tell whether or not I stick around.