Marvel Now! was always going to claim some victims before relaunching, and now it’s made revealed (through that most sneaky of revealers, the solicitations listing) that nine of their current books will die in order for Marvel Now! to live.

Those nine titles are: Captain AmericaFantastic FourFFIncredible HulkInvincible Iron ManNew MutantsThe Mighty ThorUncanny X-Men and X-Men Legacy.

This isn’t completely surprising in every case, because Brian Michael Bendis already said that Uncanny would end and several of the other books were winding up long-standing runs with big name creators. Matt Fraction was already set to leave Invincible Iron Man, while Jonathan Hickman and Ed Brubaker were both already known to be leaving the Fantastic Four titles and Captain America, respectively.

What does this mean for the characters? Well, Captain America, Thor and X-Men Legacy’s Rogue are all in a team together anyway, while Iron Man will surely find a place in one of the Avengers titles. But what of the Fantastic Four? They’ve completely dropped off the map, apparently, and the World’s Greatest Superhero Family look set to pack up their bags for a one-way trip to the one place they’ve never been before: comic-book limbo.

It’s interesting to note that most of these books were handled by the ‘Architects’ of Marvel, and that some low-selling titles like the beloved Journey Into Mystery have survived this new purge. Dan Slott’s Amazing Spider-Man also escapes the destruction, so that much-teased ‘big change’ in issue #700 isn’t going to see the book cancelled, thankfully.

Three X-Men books are chopped, including flagship Uncanny X-Men. Which is a massive surprise, because most were predicting that the pointless titles – adjectiveless X-Men and Astonishing X-Men – would be the two to go. New Mutants was expected to go, and does. But it’s still surprising to see just how big a change Marvel seem to be making. What new books are going to replace these ones, which surely were the backbone of the Marvel Universe?

53 COMMENTS

  1. Kieron Gillen is leaving Journey Into Mystery, but there’s no concrete indication in these solicits that the series is actually over. Good eye, spotting the missing Punisher solicit. That’s interesting.

  2. “But what of the Fantastic Four? They’ve completely dropped off the map, apparently, and the World’s Greatest Superhero Family look set to pack up their bags for a one-way trip to the one place they’ve never been before: comic-book limbo.”

    Or, they’re going to get a new creative team and #1 on-going next month.

  3. Oh, wait, it looks like Wolverine is in the 310s now, while Hellblazer is only in the 290s. Grumph.

    Yes, it certainly looks from the solitications like Journey into Mystery has been axed (or is that “AvXed”? Haw!) as well, even though it doesn’t have a “Final Issue” variant.

  4. “But it’s still surprising to see just how big a change Marvel seem to be making. What new books are going to replace these ones, which surely were the backbone of the Marvel Universe?”

    Uhhhh….. what new books are going to replace these ones? Why, the same old books with new number ones.

    Sheesh.

  5. Haven’t Marvel said they’re going to re-launch most of their line between October and February.

    None of this is surprising as most of the cancelled books are going to be re-launched.

  6. Will they start cancelling other titles in exchange for ‘now’ titles? I don’t want them to cancel Daredevil :(

  7. So far, this isn’t affecting any of the Marvel titles I’m currently reading (mostly Steve Wacker’s titles). I hope they’ll leave Slott and Waid alone.

    That said, if they give Waid his own Avengers title with some good artists, I’d be all over that.

  8. Er, haven’t pretty much all of these been relaunched with new #1’s within the past 5 years anyway?

    How the hell is it that people are still surprised every single time this happens?

  9. Yeah, these most of these cancelled titles will be brought back later on in Marvel NOW!’s “a new number one a month” program. That was pretty much a given.

    What is news is that a number of the cancelled series were just recently rebot with a new number one, namely Captain America. Pretty soon Captain America is going to have more volumes than the Encyclopedia Britanica.

  10. Marvel has already announced new #1’s for almost all the main cancelled titles (Fantastic Four, Captain America, etc.) Punisher will probably become Punisher War Zone, and Jeff Parker has already announced we’ll find out what happened to his Hulk title at SDCC.

    I’m kinda disappointed we’re only seeing one #1 relaunch in October. These solicits were eh. (I realize it’s only one new #1 a week, though.)

  11. I’m sorry, but you seem to actually believe that these titles are being cancelled, instead of renumbered yet again. What are you, a Marvel press release?

  12. I’m sorry..this article is on a professional comic news website?

    Sure Legacy, FF, and New Mutants may be gone…but what kind of feltching idiot thinks that Marvel has truly canceled the Avengers Solo titles or Fantastic Four.

  13. i know marvel doesn’t care much about my personal collecting proclivities, but i just want to buy sequentially numbered continuously published stapled floppy paper issues of Wolverine and Uncanny X-Men, and i wish they’d stop making that increasingly difficult to do.

    the rest of their titles they can do whatever they want with, enumeratively and regards to publishing schedules. i’ll buy them in collected trades depending based on quality and whim. also, speaking for from an objective aesthetic/OCD point of view, it’d be nice if they just left Fantastic Four alone. as the start of the “Marvel Era” it makes for a nice benchmarker. but i guess that was also scraped a while ago during Heroes Reborn so whatever.

  14. I’m surprised that so many people are posting about being surprised that someone is surprised by this.

  15. It’s strange, if not surprising, that Marvel is, essentially, trying to push subscriptions, but never uses the marketing techniques that regular magazine publishers do for selling subscriptions. The company is just too dependent on sales of single copies through stores.

    SRS

  16. As song lyrics go, it’s more a case of “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

  17. This is a good time to start reading some creator-owned books.

    If the indies were smart they would start new arcs at the same time the big two decide to pull a reboot. Maybe even publish some point one issues.

  18. I am so sick and tired of Marvel restarting their titles. They just started many of these a little over a year ago and already they’re going back to #1’s. $#@!

  19. This post was intentionally and ironically incredulous, right? Please?

    No one believes these books are being purged. None of this is surprising. It’s a creative reshuffle/renumbering of their main titles. Nothing is being “purged”. No one “escaped destruction”. It is not a surprise that top titles are affected. No one was predicting nor did they expect that ancillary titles would be affected. The books that will “replace this backbone” are exactly the same books with different creators.

    This article was shockingly bad.

  20. Granted the number on a comic never held much weight for me but I understand long time readers being a bit erked by the frequent relaunches/ reboots.

    Since I’ve been a weekly/ monthly reader ( only a couple of years) I tend to pick out books based on premise and creative teams.

    I understand Marvel simply playing creative musical chairs with their reboot as a opposed to DC, who made a bit of a misstep with their relaunch by not getting new talent on their books.

    Fear not true believer, Cap, Stark, Thor, Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and the various mutants will be front and center in a new book by next March.

    This info now confirms what more than half of the Marvel Now books will be.

    Make of that what you will.

  21. Buy what titles you like, regardless of the number on the cover.

    Marvel should’ve done what DC has and started their universe from scratch again. Give people a new/fresh jumping on point, w/new creative teams. Just renumbering the same old garbage only works so long these days…

    Cancel the Ultimate line, its time has long since passed. This goes for Bendis too!

  22. I’ve got a great idea. All issues of all comics should be #1’s, just with a new volume number!

    So Fantastic Four, for example, could start with Volume #612, Issue #1, then go to Volume #613, issue #1, etc!

  23. Dave, I have a better idea; make EVERY month EVERY comic’s #1 issue!!!

    If this won’t bring in sales, nothing will…

  24. No big surprise that New Mutants is gone.

    I don’t see any form of New Mutants ever coming back, after NM Forever and this series. Both were nostalgia trips, trying to cash in on middle-aged people who remembered the original. Claremont’s NMF was awful, just a pale shadow of what he once was, and the new title just never did anything. It was involved in so many crossovers there wasn’t anything to it. DnA violated every cardinal rule of nostalgia, by bringing in Age of Apocalypse characters and the comic book industry nadir Simonson/Blevins era (note I said comics as an industry, not just the NM – these are the worst comics ever published!). If you want to make money off of nostalgia, you have to crank up the warm fuzzy memories, which this series did not do. Marvel never seemed to know who the reader was going to be.

  25. Interesting Joe McCulloch review of an old Alan Moore comic at TCJ today :

    “Moore’s true target comes into view: the purposeless banality of modern society and its pop culture, a full 15 years before the similarly-situated The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, except with an American focus, and the tv sensation Friends standing in for Harry Potter as avatar of all that’s hopelessly shit.”

    http://tinyurl.com/75kfrbc

  26. All comicbooks should be a number one`s each and every month that come with multiple variant covers.
    What`s the point now?
    read digital comics or trades. Monthly floppies are about dead at $3.99 per month.
    respectfully “stam”
    who tells it like it is.

  27. The intricacies are astounding here, both in regard to what is perhaps incidental as well as what maybe going on behind the scenes as the whole situation plays out, both in the short term and long, numerically and alphabetically, as we can clearly see what appears to be an important pattern emerging which holds serious ramification for both present and past.

  28. All that fuss that made about Fantastic Four coming back after it was FF for a while, with Johnny’s “death”, and now the book’s gone again. How did it become that the actual books themselves became publicity stunts? It used to be that the very comics were there, to tell stories and entertain. Marvel must not have any faith in what they publish anymore.

    @ Apollo9000 – what makes you think Marvel have bought new talent to these relaunched books? It’s still the same old creators, just shuffled about. It’s still the same old lazy editors and idea-less publisher.

    At least DC relaunched as an actual relaunch (like Barbara Gordon as the only Batgirl; tinkering with Superman) and restarted their whole line from scratch.

  29. @ SomeGuy. Agreed. I started buying New Mutants when DnA were calling it “the continuity police” book. I thought that sounded cool. But nothing happened in the book. No character confict, story drama. So bland.

  30. Well this is good, I can drop all the Marvel titles I am buying now as most will be cancelled anyways (FF, all Avengers, Red Hulk, Green Hulk)….will be left with DD and Amazing Spider-Man! I can use those extra dollars to buy more DC and Indie! Nice!

    I agree with some of the folks above, I would have been more interested to a full reboot like DC (not perfect but not bad either) than this crap. How many times will Marvel relaunch their titles…Hulk was #1 I think 3 times in 10 years (Cap America even more) and always revert to their old numbers. I fully agree with jaroslav hasek….keep your book in order and let fans be able to collect them without getting lost. I mean DC has not done this before, except maybe 2-3 titles (Flash was a disaster) that is it. I have runs on some titles that stretch 250+ issues in a row and I like that I owe them all. Anyhow, its just the opinion of 1 little fan from Canada, does it even count?

  31. i’m glad marvel didn’t go the full reboot route, ’cause i for one would have dropped marvel like a bad habit, just like i dropped dc when they rebooted (dc has rebooted in the past and i did keep collecting their books, sad to say, but this was just one reboot too many). just an opinion but i feel that rebooting is a slap in the face of any and all long time fans (anywhere between five , ten , or longer years) that have put in the time, effort , and money to read, enjoy , and collect these books. and while a relaunch is not exactly a reboot, the increased frequency of canceling and restarting all these books (with only short term and no real long term gain in readership) has become a real pain in the ass. don’t get me wrong, i have no problem with new directions for characters, or new creative teams doing their thing, but the idea of wholesale elimination of storylines and continuity that fans have been following for years for short term gain of new readers that eventually drop off just shows a lack of respect for the established readership these companies already have. they should nuture the readership that they already have by respecting and working with the continuity they already have, bring in new creative teams and new ideas and focus the hype on them instead of all this relaunch nonsense and slowly but surely start to build and expand the audience. this “wham, bam , thank you ma’am” approach is not working, but i guess in today’s corporate climate if a company doesn’t gain higher and higher profits each and every quarter, heads will roll, so the hell with the fanbase.

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