Face front, True Believers! Marvel is making its big Legacy announcement and its a series of covers that homage great Marvel covers of the past, from the Silver Age to the brief Auteur Era. The Legacy relaunch will follow a 50 page one shot. The revamped Marvel line-up will include reverting to old numbers on books and the return of traditional characters in their traditional roles.
The covers have thus far been revealed at ComicBook.com, SyFy and ComicVine. We’ll update as more are revealed. Ah and Diamond Previews and Nerdist have joined the party!
A cynical observer who just wrote a big think piece dissing Bronze Age nostalgia might see this as more of the same…or a reassuring pat to Marvel readers of many ages that Marvel still has what made it great. Or as Axel Alonso put it:
“A new initiative that will take things back to our iconic history, with a firm eye on the future, MARVEL LEGACY will present stories that remind everyone — newcomers and longtime fans alike — why Marvel stands as the premier name in fiction,” said Editor in Chief Axel Alonso. “Our titles will unearth gems from Marvel’s rich history, remind readers of connections between characters, and usher in the return of some major characters who’ve been missed. Above all else, we want to inject our comics with a massive dose of fun!”
The covers have been posted in gif format that helps you see just how close these homages are. Also, cover artists are clearly credited, which is nice!
- Incredible Hulk – Mike Deodato (gorgeous)
- America – Benjamin Caldwell
- X-Men: Blue – David Lopez
- Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur – Felipe Smith
- Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows – Khary Randolph
- Astonishing X-Men: John Cassaday
US Avengers (cover artist: Christian Ward)
Hawkeye (cover artist: Greg Smallwood)
Jessica Jones (cover artist: Daniel Mora)
Champions (cover artist: Daniel Mora)
Spider-Man vs. Deadpool (cover artist: Giuseppe Camuncoli)
Guardians (cover artist: Ron Lim)
Iceman by Michael Ryan
Alan Davis pays homage to Invincible Iron Man #150.
Dave Johnson give an update to Luke Cage: Hero for Hire #1.
Old Man Logan by Cameron Stewart.
Secret Warriors Dave Johnson
Avengers vs Champions by Mike Allred
Cable by Robert Liefeld
Despicable Deadpool by Salvador Espin
Moon Knight by Bill Sienkiewicz
The Punisher by Tim Bradstreet
Royals by Juan Doe “This Issue Everybody Lives” – haw.
Black Panther (artist not given – shame on you Nerdist!)
Captain Marvel (artist not given)
Daredevil (artist not given)
Doctor Strange (artist not given)
Genx (artist not given)
Squirrel-Girl (artist not given)
So whadday think? Are you all excited for Legacy?
No I am really not, Marvel lied to us. quite frankly though i am far from surprised.
I love how Marvel is going all in on chasing old people. I wonder if they’ll ever stop marketing to Baby Boomers and Gen Xers?
Look, homage covers do nothing but appeal to the audience that is already buying your books. A tiny audience that is shrinking and dying. “Oh, but these are 1:10, 1:25, 1:100 variants, retailers will increase orders!”. That’s nothing but artificially inflating numbers on books people don’t buy so some old white dude can get a cover that looks like an X-Men cover the he saw the last time he had an erection.
It’s garbage. And to say this will “Change the industry!” Is a fucking sham.
Yeah, it’ll change the industry. It’ll kill Marvel comics.
Good going there, guys.
Why is it that whenever Marvel does anything, there’s some dumbass commenter who acts like it’s meant to the one final push to save Marvel comics from destruction but it will actually shut down all comic shops forever? Like, calm down.
Because I’m bored at work.
Wait, seriously? I fully expected to be underwhelmed by whatever announcement Marvel was going to make that promised to “change the comic industry forever” but seriously? Variant covers? WTF?
Ignoring the hyperbolic PR surrounding this “historic” Legacy rebranding, it looks as though Marvel will continue to publish mostly the same comics, and probably by mostly the same creators. They may trim the line a bit, and there will be some oddness with the numbering. In essence, this is just like every other linewide rebranding/relaunch going back at least to Marvel NOW!
This is good news if you’re a fan of any current Marvel comics. It looks as though North/Henderson Squirrel Girl, Thompson/Romero Hawkeye, Aaron/Dauterman Thor and many other current runs will continue largely unaffected by the PR BS swirling around them. Marvel execs seem to have faith in their editors, and those editors have faith in their preferred creators. If, say, team books written by Al Ewing (clearly a skilled writer) keep tanking in sales, they’ll just keep pairing him with different sets of characters under different titles with the hope that something catches on. To a large extent, I think this is positive; Marvel is publishing comics it believes in.
However, it’s difficult to imagine that a PR campaign and new numbers slapped on to more or less the same content published in the same format will attract a substantially larger audience. To do that, they need to radically alter the content/creators (going after either lapsed or new readers–difficult to see how they can do both at once) or format (price, page length, “satisfying chunk” value).
In short, Marvel Legacy just looks like more of the same diminishing returns.
Also, the animated gifs, and the close alignment between old and new covers, lead me to suspect Marvel will publish these as lenticular covers. Knowing Marvel, I can’t imagine they will charge less than $4.99. Will this strategy pull in new readers? Again, I can’t imagine it will, but it might garner Marvel one more big haul from the existing collector/speculator market.
I get the feeling that the storylines have damaged marvel so much with old time fans that they are desperate to remind people that their characters used to be the good guys. For me though it reminds me just how bad it’s gotten and how rotten the heroes have become. Suddenly after years of grim and gritty they going to fun? I don’t think they have the talent or the will to make their comics fun again. Even if they do I don’t have the money to see one way or the other. Not at 4.99 a comic.
Excellent thoughts, Carl. Like you, I’m glad to see Marvel not wholly abandoning their off-center books (as the “legacy” hype seemed to indicate. But at the same time, I don’t see what’s been announced moving the needle much. Good luck to them. The comics they produce in this effort might be excellent, but as marketing goes, this feels like a fizzle.
Wow, that lineup of covers is about as tired and uninspired as you get. “retro” and “throwback” = lazy, desperate art direction. As in politics, you need to get back to thinking locally, not globally with the story lines. Not every book has to be geared toward an eventual gigantic crossover event. Get back to what you used to do 30 years ago, which is a series of finite yet character defining story arcs so we can have time to absorb and enjoy the heroes and the people in their lives.
If comments on comic book websites is some how an indicator, there seems to be a fan vs. fan mentality to this stuff. On one hand, you have “40 year-old white guys” who want the characters to be just as they were in 1983 and the other side is the “20-something Millenial” who wants to read Anyone But Steve Rogers as Captain America on their phone for $.99. Truthfully, I don’t feel this is the case but Marvel is kind of missing the point here. Homage covers are not the answer. Great comic stories with great art is the legacy. Marvel is a corporate comic book company and complaints about them go way back but they developed a fan base and a loyalty oftentimes because of a great mixture of characters and creators. For some reason, current Marvel thinks that the legacy revolves around stunts and character deaths.
The older comic book fan is important because they tend to have more disposable income to buy the product. The younger fan is important because you can’t have an aging fanbase forever and you need to hook them and keep them (plus someone tweeting about how great a new comic book is creates free publicity). I still think the group that Marvel the ignores more than anything is kids. I’m a “white 40-something male” who discovered my brother’s comics when I was 5 and started getting my own when I was 8 (with my parent’s money, of course) and I still love the characters but don’t feel that Marvel has creators that interest me. As a kid who read books that had art by Kirby, Ditko, Romita, Kane, Buscema, Starlin, Byrne, Perez, Simonson, and so many others, I dislike how Marvel has decided writers are more important. A cover by a “top name” artist is not the same if the interior art is done by some guy who is more affordable. I may prefer Steve Rogers as Captain America but if the writing and art is crap, I’m still not buying it. I think all fans, no matter their age, just want good comics and don’t need to be divided by demographics.
Some of these look quite nice, but I can’t really get hyped for most of the supposed plot teases. Covers lie. Variant covers more than most.
So, it appears that marvel will continue to publish the titles it’s already publishing, while adding a couple, so their monthly solicits will now be between 97-100 rather than 95-98 books PER MONTH. Plus, they do not appear to be shaking up their creative teams much at all. Unless some more “big announcements” are still forthcoming, this looks like a clever plan to exacerbate the problems Marvel already has, rather than attempt to solve any of them.
As it stands now, this whole Legacy thing is just… baffling.
No
Didn’t Marvel put out some press release saying would be ground breaking or something? Themed variants covers have been a thing for years. And its not like Homage covers have never been done before either. Sorry, but I can’t get excited for a cover. – its the inside that counts. And Marvel have some shockers right now.
Slapping a Dominatrix cover on America won’t make me buy that series when I have already seen how bad the current creative team is. Although, that IS a good cover :)
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