The Marvel Retailer Panel kicked off at 11 AM on Thursday, directly after the Diamond Retailer Panel. Only retailers were allowed admittance. And me. In attendance from Marvel were editors Nick Lowe, Christina Harrington, Tom Brevoort and writer Charles Soule.
Marvel kicked things off right with a showing of the Black Panther trailer. Damn, this movie looks good.
The Marvel editors then went into a slideshow promoting a slew of upcoming Marvel titles and storylines.
Rise of the Black Panther by Evan Narcisse, Ta-Nehisi Coates & Paul Renaud, with painted covers by Stelfreeze. This is meant to be an evergreen, go-to origin story for Black Panther.
Avengers will ship weekly for four months beginning in January. Avengers No Surrenders runs from #675-#693. It’s going to be all the Avengers from all the Avengers titles in one book. It’s a 4 month, 16 week story. “Full cast of all the Avengers titles and more. It will be a capstone of the current era of Avengers. It is this era’s Avengers Disassembled. It’s the biggest, nuttiest, loudest and fastest story we could come up with.” – Tom Breevoort. He continued, “It’s a big, event-scale story week after week.” The first part is $4.99 with a lenticular, wraparound cover. The rest of the story will be $3.99.
All of the Legacy books that came out this Wednesday are sold out at Diamond. One retailer chimed, “I have some.” Another said, “I have a lot.” This was met with laughter and cheers from other retailers and silence by Marvel.
A line of Avengers variants start in January. Twenty covers from different artists, including covers by Todd Nauck, Alan Davis and Barry Kitson. Each cover will highlight a different era in Avengers history.
Captain America #695 starts the Waid/Samnee run. Interior pages were shown. No surprise, it looks gorgeous. Captain America #695 looks as energetic at Waid and Samnee’s Black Widow #1. “At the outset, this is about as straight up the middle Captain America book we can make. This IS your father’s Captain America.” – Tom Breevoort.
Marvel Super Hero Adventures is a new young readers series by Jim McCann and Dario Brizuela. It launches in April.
Amazing Spider-Man Annual #42, coming out in February, is set firmly in the Legacy era for Spider-Man. Peter Parker is back at the Daily Bugle. Mayor Fisk shows up in the issue. Mayor Fisk???
Venom Inc. Alpha #1 by Dan Slott, Mike Costa, Ryan Stegman, Brian Riber and Gerardo Sandoval. The story will be a crossover with Amazing Spider-Man and Venom. Ryan Stegman is doing the art for the Alpha, Omega and the Amazing Spider-Man issues. Fans will see a return of Flash Thompson, post-losing the Venom suit!
X-Men Blue Annual #1 starts Poison X. The X-Men: Blue team vs Venom. Cullen Bunn is writing, with Edgar Salazar on art. “The story that came out of this retreat is huge.” – Editor Christina Harrington. In part one, the X-Men kidnap Venom. “Why would the X-Men kidnap Venom? You have to read it to find out.” – Nick Lowe.
X-Men: Gold Annual #1 – This issue will be an original Excalibur team reunion, with a cover by Alan Davis harkening back to Excalibur #1.
Legion #1 – Written by Peter Milligan, art by Wilfredo Torres. “The insane, heady stuff Peter can do is perfect for this character.” – Nick Lowe
Rogue and Gambit are getting a 5-issue limited series by Kelly Thompson, Pere Perez and covers by Kris Anka.
Power Pack #63 – It’s a Legacy one-shot. Written by Devin Grayson, her first Marvel comic in years. “The story of the missing characters from Marvel Legacy #1 continues in this one-shot.” – Tom Breevoort. When asked by a retailer if these one-shots were try out issues, Tom said that “If people show up for Power Pack, we will do more Power Pack.” Nick Lowe added, “We didn’t plan for Spider-Gwen to get an ongoing, but that issue of Edge of Spiderverse blew up and we knew we had to.”
Charles Soule thanked the retailers in attendance for everything they do to support the stories they tell. Mayor Fisk kicks off in Daredevil #595 by Soule and Landini. On page one of this story, Fisk is Mayor. “When researching this story, I found out that the mayor of New York City is the second most powerful political figure in the country.” – Charles Soule. Ron Garney is back on art with issue #598! He’ll be drawing #598-#600. “The fact that Wilson Fisk is mayor of New York will be reflected out through the Marvel line. It will have an impact on the X-Men, on the Avengers.” – Tom Breevoort. Soule added that “it will be like a 1970s crime movie.” If it doesn’t do well, Soule joked he would have Daredevil fight Darth Vader in #601.
Phil Noto will be the artist on Astonishing X-Men starting with issue #7. Soule said the point of Astonishing X-Men is the resurrection of Charles Xavier. However, Soule said he wants to give the Marvel Universe a Charles Xavier different than the one we’ve seen before. What’s that all mean? You have to read Astonishing X-Men #6 and 7 to find out.
After this, the floor was opened up to Retailer Q&A, which quickly became a shit show, a shit show that you can read about right here.
$3.99 for a weekly Avengers book is asking a *lot*, Marvel!
Looking at Diamond’s site on 10/6 at 11:07 AM PST only two of the eight “first week” books have no stock at Diamond — SPIRITS OF VENGEANCE and IRON FIST. The rest are all available for reorder right now.
-B
“At the outset, this is about as straight up the middle Captain America book we can make. This IS your father’s Captain America.”
Honestly, it’s not. The pictures, while well-drawn (sure, pretty) are static in comparison to old-style comic books, i.e. it’s not drawn “the Marvel way.” It looks sober, not wide and enthusiastic like traditional four-color heroics. Which is weird. The broad, earnest Marvel Studios heroes are successful with a global, all-ages mass audience. Why not Marvel Comics?
Just going to put this comment here to claim sanity for this comment forum. No reason for heated comments here, please.
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