When Marvel takes news to big outlets like The Wall Street Journal, they usually have something sizable to announce, a new artist for the main Avengers title after Secret Wars, shipping schedule, an Alex Ross cover debut, and roster confirmation are little details that add up to news.
The Free Comic Book Day Avengers issue already revealed the roster of the team after the Secret Wars eight months later event. Marvel even gave us what looks like a (fairly) stable creative team in Mark Waid and Mahmud Asrar. But today, they revealed that artist Adam Kubert will be switching storylines with Asrar. Also, they shared this Alex Ross cover: which is kind of insane. In addition, this comic book will be shipping more than an issue every month. The Avengers will first come together to fight someone that Marvel Studios film watchers and Nova fans will be familiar with: Warbringer, a Chitauri alien warlord. This new set of Avengers will be low on money, (I guess the whole Superior Iron Man thing burned some bridges?)
“They’re poor, and they have to manage their assets,” said Marvel Executive Editor and SVP of Publishing Tom Brevoort. “Another new wrinkle: Half the team goes to school. They’ve got hours of operation, and if they get stuck in Zimbabwe, somebody’s going to have to write the absentee slips.”
Marvel isn’t looking that bad when comparing their Avengers to DC’s Justice League strictly in terms of diversity. The Vision is a robot. The team has not one, but two women. It’s great to see three younger kids joining the Avengers ranks as well — all three are powerful and with the support of Vision and Tony Stark as Iron Man, they have nothing to worry about. How long with the new Thor be around? Her character is very ill and may have precious little time left to serve as an Avenger. Hopefully Waid will naturally integrate Sam Wilson into the Captain America mantle in a way that doesn’t seem forced, AXIS did some damage to his new role in the Marvel Universe. As ComicsAlliance pointed out as well, this roster is slim, a far cry to the massive Jonathan Hickman-penned multi-character Avengers world concept. As interesting as that story was, it’s time to take the franchise in a new direction, and Marvel seems to be doing just that with the new effort.
take the franchise in a new direction? maybe with just this book. considering all the rookie characters on the team, this looks more like an “avengers in training” book. do you really think this will be the only avengers book marvel will be producing during this “all-new, all-different” phase. before secret wars there were six avengers books floating around, you gotta figure there will be again at least that many upcoming avengers books (heard a-force is gonna stick around after secret wars) when all is said and done out of the fifty to sixty (or more) books debuting between October and December. the avengers are too hot a property with too many popular characters to just have one avengers book on the shelves. my guess would be that the other upcoming avengers books will have some characters join as new avengers, but also with the tried and true classic avengers spread out among them, so that if the “avengers in training” book is not your cup of tea, there will be other avengers books to choose from.
Hopefully with the non-reboot reboot we will get Rich Rider back as Nova and the can rebuild the Nova Corps with Sam, Rob Rider, Rich Rider since I think that would be an interesting book to build out the Marvel Cosmic scene after SW.
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