Marvel has released a brand new teaser for their All-New, All-Different line of characters. While yesterday’s image featured mostly Avengers heroes, this image contains a select few from the X-Men and Fantastic Four properties! From right-to-left the characters include a new Dr. Strange (or an old Dr. Strange with an axe,) Old Man Logan, Star-Lord, X-23 as Wolverine (we think,) a new Daredevil, Medusa, the all-new Iron Man, Hyperion, Inferno, a new Dr. Doom, Rocket Raccoon, The Thing, Doctor Spectrum, and finally…Citizen V?
IGN shared this brand new image which is attached to Marvel’s publishing line starting in the Fall. The All-New, All-Different publishing strategy begins 8 months after the events of Secret Wars. Marvel seems to be stretching deep into their vault with some of these characters including Doctor Spectrum, who was re-introduced in Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers titles. Citizen V however, is an oddity originally hailing from the Thunderbolts.
Some heroes have smaller additions to their costumes. For instance, Daredevil has a new logo, The Thing is wearing a Guardians of the Galaxy uniform, and IGN noted that Star-Lord doesn’t have a Guardians logo on his own costume. The additions of The Thing and Wolverine characters also lovingly dispel some of the damage caused by Marvel refusing to acknowledge those set of heroes over the last few months.
Nothing’s been dispelled by Marvel until they actually admit they’re purposely ignoring the words Fantastic Four, Human Torch, The Thing, Reed Richards, and Invisible Girl (and maybe X-Men, we don’t know that one yet honestly) by edict of Perleman.
Ignoring the actual characters? That was never going to happen. We were told from the beginning when the press release for FF being cancelled was put out was they’d still be around in the Marvel Universe like they always have been. And they’ll always be referred to as Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben. I doubt we’ll ever hear their code names again for as long as this cold war exists.
But Marvel keeps acting as if the people who ask the questions are utterly stupid and answers to the lowest common denominator with just “Of course the characters aren’t going anywhere, why would we do that?” instead of acknowledging that the fans actually know how they’re doing this and the why, they just need to put on their big boy pants and admit they’re doing it.
Oh and the usual “We don’t want journalism in the comic book industry, we just want you to kiss our ass because we’re Marvel and if you make us go away, we’ll take all of you down with us.”
I agree with Evan. All this Marvel butt-kissing and yet, when DC were relaunching their line in 2011, all they got from the comics “journalists” was scrutiny and negativity. Marvel can do no wrong, right?
Marvel have continually led the reader on with all this, by claiming it’s “not a reboot”, “not the end of the Marvel universe” (even though Secret Wars is being promoted as such). Why isn’t Marvel being scrutinised for that? Ah, but that’d require you comics “journalists” to do some real work.
I don’t think it’s “butt-kissing” as much as it’s preference. I believe it’s cooler for people to like Marvel. I also believe that many perceive fans of DC comics (outside of Batman) to be the “40 year olds living in their mom’s basement who get mad that Wonder Woman has pants”. On the other hand, DC was rebooting their characters while not really changing them. Morrison tried to make Superman less George Reeves and more a Socialist crusader and there were some changes here and there with other characters but they were basically just younger with more body armor. Marvel is more celebrated for bringing diversity with their not-a-reboot. It’s harder to criticize them because you’re now criticizing a company who has a black Captain America, a Muslim Ms. Marvel, female led titles, and so on.
Axel Alonso may try to spin that this is new stuff from Marvel (because alot of diversity did indeed disappear in the 90’s) but as a kid, I read Marvel comics with female leads (Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman, Dazzler, She-Hulk, Cloak and Dagger) books with minority leads (Black Panther, Power Man and Iron Fist, Falcon), and books written by someone other than white men (Ann Nocenti, Louise Simonson, Jo Duffy, James Owsley). Your mileage may vary on the quality of much of what I listed but the same can be said for Marvel’s output today. For example, I love Carol Danvers but I’m not a big fan of the Captain Marvel book (I’ve bought both series because I do enjoy the character but Kelly Sue DeConnick’s writing just doesn’t appeal to me so I’ve dropped the book as of the most recent issue). Marvel gets less criticism because their movies are more successful (though with Avengers: Age of Ultron we’ve seen a little more criticism, mainly because of how Black Widow has been misused/slighted what have you..) and they tout their diversity more. Plus under Axel Alonso, there is ALOT less adherence to the continuity started by Stan, Jack, Steve etc. and carried on by Thomas, Claremont, Byrne, Simonson, Miller, etc. whereas DC keeps saying “In spite of the reboot, all these events still happened”.
I can’t shake the feeling that this is all to change the Marvel Universe enough to stop paying the Kirby’s.
Jonathan, you’ll be pleased to know Bleeding Cool has been covering this for a year now. X-23 as Wolverine was from September, and Old Man Logan and Thing in the Guardians was from last month. And it’s all consistent with our original coverage of the FF cancellation over a year ago…
Jacob, the Kirby estate settled with Marvel for a mid eight figure sum.
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