All the buzz on MARVEL NOW! in one place!

As we move now well past the halfway mark of Avengers vs. X-Men (a.k.a AvX) and head into the final stretch of this marathon of mindless mauling, big news arrives!

The good folks over at Marvel Comics have announced a huge new “game-changing” move they are calling Marvel Now! that will start to build momentum towards what they are calling a “soft” reboot.

What exactly is the purpose and nature of this reboot? Especially now? Is this just a ploy to get back at their chief rival, DC Comics, who had a hard reboot of their whole line and for the first time in ages beat Marvel in the sales numbers? Is it a genuinely thought out, brave and innovative move? Or is it just a hurriedly put-together gimmick because they have nothing else to do?

We don't know all the answers, but we are committed to bringing you as much information as we can so keep going past the jump for everything on this event out in the news thus far – and remember to stick around in the coming weeks for more!

Marvel Now! Point One #1 by Adi Granov

[NOTE : All images can be clicked to enlarge!]

The kick-off to this big change-over will start with Marvel Now! Point One #1 which will be co-written by the stars of Marvel's talent: Brian Bendis, Matt Fraction, Nick Spencer, Kieron Gillen, Dennis Hopeless (what a strange name...) and Jeph Loeb (note: GOD-DAMMIT! WHY @*#&!@^@!#*#^%#$& LOEB!?).

These scripts will be brought to life for us by Michael Allred, fan-favourite Ed McGuiness, the amazing Steve McNiven, Jamie McKelvie, Salvador Larroca and Luke Ross. And of course all this will be covered by this pretty wicked image above of the Marcus, son of Nick Fury, by none other than Adi Granov – the man who's art and design shook up the Iron Man with his work on Extremis by Warren Ellis and influenced the armours look and feel in the mega-hit movies.

Starting from October 2012 till Feb 2013, we’ll be getting a whole slew of new #1 titles starting with

Yeah... this will go well!

Uncanny Avengers #1 (likely to release on the 3^rd of October), a strange medley that will merge certain elements of two teams. For now it seems the team will be Captain America, Wolverine, Thor, The Scarlet Witch, Rogue and Havok – so a pointless combination that makes no sense whatsoever. It's almost as if they created the most unlikely and mis-matched team they could find! That said however : the series is being written by Rick Remender who is one of the finest writers alive today and I love ALL his work, throw in Astonishing X-Men (with the Avengers movie-mastermind Joss Whedon) and Planetary (with Warren Ellis) artist and legend John Cassady on art duties... well I expect to love this book regardless of the rest of the Marvel Universe – in Rick I trust.

Oh and the teams purpose is to address threats to humans as well as mutants. From what I gather, it evolved out of an understanding reached by Cyclops and Captain America that there needs to be real and functioning alliance which involves both humans and mutants to solve the long-standing inter-species problems.

...and of course the obvious first villain here is the Red Skull (or so I've been given to understand) who is going to create an anti-mutant army. So suddenly mutants are Skull-faces' focus? Big change for sure! I hope you know what you're doing Rick...

According to Marvel Chief Creative Officer, Joe Quesada:

"Marvel NOW! is the next step in Marvel story evolution and character evolution. It’s not a reboot. It is a universe-shifting catch-all."

Editor-In-Chief Alex Alonso had this to say:

From October through February, we’ll provide at least one great reason for readers—old, lapsed or new—to go into a comic store each week: a new issue #1, featuring an exciting new creative team and driving concept, that’s an easy entry-point into the Marvel Universe.

Early promotional teaser

This all started after an official press release by Marvel in earlier this month and has been slowly building some hype ever since. Personally, to me this looks to be following the same style/format that Marvel has been using for a while now – i.e. after Civil War we had the non-event but all-encompassing The Initiative which had similar points to it, then after Secret Invasion we got Dark Reign, etc. and most recently after Fear Itself we got the line-wide banners for Shattered Heroes which was again a company wide aftermath kind of thing. To be honest? I think it was not always warranted and is a bit gimmicky to slap this onto every title – that said, Marvel Now! promises to be a far greater change in the status quo, so perhaps not as pointless as previous versions of event aftermaths. What do you think?

Earlier in this article you saw mention of this being a response to DC. That was because of last years Flashpoint event that rebooted the whole DC universe into the New 52 we have today. DC had a record number of sale with its #1 titles because of it's bold gamble in rebooting such a massive line of comics and trying to retain readers who would definitely be unhappy with the decision (and many still are!), but Marvel is doing what I firmly believe DC should have done as well – making changes and alterations but largely keeping the Marvel Universe’s history intact. (I say this because for anyone who's been following them, except for 2/3 titles, pretty much all of the New 52 could have existed as they are now just fine without being a “reboot” - but that is a grouch/rant for another post!)

This move by Marvel however, will give old readers something new to read while not restarting everything and also aim at getting some new fans.

Also in the news is that in all likelihood a character (possibly more) will die, there will be costume changes, many new alliances (clearly!) and Marvel released this artwork which gives a lot of hints and teasers about what the relaunch may bring us. Few things to notice in this image:

- Cable has an eye-patch.

- Hulk has some funky armor (why would he need armour!?)

- Marcus Fury is going to be more active – makes sense since he fits the look of the movie Nick - Fury and new readers will like that – still not happy about the way they did it though!

- New Uniform for Cyclops – possibly the biggest uniform change seen thus far.

- Iron Man has new armor – of course, when does he not... (but black is new, maybe it's Rhodey?)

- Thor has swords??

- Jean Grey is back – more on this a little further down

- Rocket Raccoon and Nova of the lamented Guardians of the Galaxy getting a lot of focus.

- Possible New Uniform for Captain America – again, seems to more closely resemble the movie outfit now.

We can make a lot inferences based on this and a lot of speculation, but we will try our best to refrain from that.

The stuff we DO know about is as follows:

1. Jean Grey will indeed be back – but before you celebrate or start swearing (whichever side of the argument you stand on) – it is not a “rebirth” or anything. It's actually something I'm wanting to see but not at the same time. You see Brian Michael Bendis is taking over some X-Men duties now having left his beloved Avengers, but he's also starting a book starring the original five X-Men who have apparently travelled through time to the present and that is the Jean we see here. Personally? I hate this! As a time travel story, sure, it always appeals to have a setup like that. However there is so much that has happened since those simple, happy days that unless they memory-wipe them before the return to their own time or they belong to an alternate time-line, this makes little to no sense that they would learn all about the years ahead and still do this stuff? Still let it happen or such? It's a poor choice of gimmicky story-telling that brings Bendis once again down in my opinion and I'm sorry for it because the man has skills!
2. Cap's uniform, the new Fury and the inclusion of Rocket and Nova is all clearly a HUGE push to make the comic universe more accessible to potential new readers who would have been enticed by the movies to maybe try out the comics – having these familiar touches put on all this and creating a huge set of #1's to create jumping on points and such, it's a good strategy.
3. The merging of teams and bringing into the front of characters like Nova and others is clearly a move to bring the more fringe/niche/outsider series like the X-books (which exist almost in a bubble all their own really) and the Cosmic Marvel books and characters into the more “mainstream” Marvel picture. It's a move I do applaud, but also one that makes me apprehensive because it's the lack of gimmicky and greedy headline grabbing presence that has actually made these families of titles as good as they have been, catering to the more serious readers, touching on more interesting stories and allowing fantastic writers to really push a few envelopes and elevate the books to a higher level.

In the end, it is still too early and too vague to guess where all this will go. Personal experience teaches that Marvel has a better handle even now on what the current fan-base wants and has done a great job of building up it's heroes and titles and of course their movies. DC on the other hand has been pandering to blatant gimmicks a lot as well as to the pretty poor 90's “over-the-top” action, suggestiveness (of nudity and sex and such) and cliché story-telling in several big titles and has lost a lot of dedicated readers as the price for gaining a bunch of new kids excited by all the gore and boobies and such.

Marvel meanwhile has as I said, been steadily building itself a constant path forward instead of jumping back repeatedly. In fact, except for the crap-fest that was Heroes Reborn back in the terrible 90's, Marvel has never really done reboots (must not of course forget the other nightmare reboot that made readers hate Marvels choice – Spiderman's One More Day reboot. The horror... it took years and Dan Slott to make me read Spidey again...), while DC seems to do them with some regularity.

Solicited cover for Cap #19

In addition, based on the October solicitations and already confirmed by Marvel, the following series' will be concluding: (in alphabetical order)

Captain America #19 – wonder what will happen to this one and Brubakers excellent work on it.

Fantastic Four #611 – Hickman made me love this title after YEARS, hope the new incarnation can come at least close.

FF #23 – There was already rumour that they would be canning the Future Foundation so not shocking, but I wish that they would let this continue because like the under-appreciated Avengers Academy, this is a great group/team book – and it's all genius kids!!

Incredible Hulk #15 – Aaron's take on ol' green genes has been polarising, now ends barely a year into its run.

Invincible Iron Man #527 – like Hickman, Fraction made me love this title after forever so will be sad to see it end, though curious to see what comes next.

New Mutants #50 – a cancellation I really don't understand! Love this book!

Mighty Thor #22 – Another good series, seems like Fraction is really cutting loose from his current obligations!

Uncanny X-Men #20 – The most surprising announcement because Marvel canned and restarted it so recently in 2011 after the end of X-Men: Schism.

X-Men Legacy #275 - It's expected that this title will be incorporated/merged into one of the new releases.

For now, there is much to be excited about with some fantastic talent writing for Marvel – Jonathan Hickman who has been decimating all with his brilliance on FF and Fantastic Four will be leaving those title and taking on the now vacant Avengers books (not sure if he will write them all yet), while Matt Fraction jumps into the drivers seat for the books he is vacating, the X-books have several new writers on board starting with Bendis and we get more Rocket Raccoon and Groot! I'm a happy man for the moment and I hope my expectations aren't crushed too much.

What do you think? Is this a good idea? Anything in particular you're looking forward to in all this? What do you hope for/wish against with all the changes happening?

We'd love to hear your thoughts so do let us know – and stick around and we'll bring you the latest news as soon as we get our greedy hands on it!

Till next time folks, cheers!