Comics: The Weekly Rundown (was Heroes Con 2006) - Page 20

Yeah, the EIC of Marvel casually said on Friday that 2012 is Peter Parker's last year. Nobody has picked up on it, and I don't know what it means, but I've said if they kill him off in the 616, I'm done buying Marvel comics. But, I don't know if I can make good on that threat.

I would like to reiterate how awesome Uncanny X-Force is right now (Travis, I somehow overlooked your response to me from a couple of weeks ago). The latest arc has the team in Captain Britain's Otherworld realm, and I wasn't looking forward to it too much. Cracking open my old Captain Britain trade helped, but it's turned out to be a good tale in any case. The latest one had some amusing stuff as well as one absolute laugh out loud moment (rare in comics):
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
The recently concluded Dark Angel Saga in this book was so good, followup is taking up the second arc of Uncanny X-Men and was a major part of the latest issue of Wolverine & the X-Men.

When I read this post, I passed out due to extreme nerd rage . What kind of topsy turvy do I live where companies are using characters that shouldn't ever be used again (Watchmen) and dropping characters that should basically go on forever (Peter Parker)?

Here's the wording: "2012 is looking to be a big one for Spider-Man with a lot of big things happening -- the 50th Anniversary as you, mention, a big movie in July, and issue #700 on Broadway. Seems like a pretty good final year for ol' Pete, doesn't it?" Either he just dropped a bombshell (and, though death in comics is meaningless, if they are planning on replacing Peter with Miles in the 616, he won't be coming back any time soon out of sheer stubbornness if nothing else) or he's making a Mayan end of the world joke.

The worst case scenario is that they're replacing him because he'll be gone a shorter amount of time if he's dead rather than if he's replaced. Ah, comic books.

I don't really know what I'm crying about because I stopped reading the regular Spidey when JMS left Amazing Spider-Man which was like 4 or 5 (?) years ago and have been reading Ultimate Spider-Man ever since. Oddly enough, I'm more bothered by them dropping Peter Parker from the regular Marvel U eventhough I'm not reading it than I am when they killed him (presumably on a permanent basis) in the Ultimate Universe.

As an aside, Miles Morales is doing his thing surprisingly well in Ultimate Spider-Man too.

There is a thing going round that there will be a meeting of the Ultimate Spide-man and the regular Spider-man.

I haven't bought a comic in five years or just after the brand new day stuff started and I don't miss it.

Anyone want to buy about 50 long boxes of comics?

That was the early idea, but an analysis of the logo showed a blending of Ultimate Peter Parker's emblem and Miles Morales's. I don't think even jaded fans think Ultimate PP is coming back this soon, so the thinking is time-travel or something along the lines of Peter Parker finding out he's dead and replaced in his future. Who knows.

It makes sense to me to be upset that the "real" Peter Parker would be killed and replaced. Miles is alright and all, but the regular Spider-Man should not be treated as a legacy character. In another part of that quote, Axel calls Peter the center of the Marvel Universe--the everyman, our "in" to the universe. You can't just throw that away. Has Peter ever been seriously considered dead to the readers? I don't remember that ever happening. There was a "missing month," where Spidey wasn't in any of his own books. There was the time he was named the clone and retired to the suburbs with MJ. But, I don't think he's ever been killed and brought back. Well, The Other, but he was brought back inside that story.

It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, when I hear people say, "You need to kill characters so it is known that nobody is safe." Besides having the opposite effect when it's done over and over--nobody believes death is permanent--who says "nobody is safe" should be the goal? There were a lot of decades where almost nobody was in danger of being killed off. The thrill of reading was finding out how the characters were able to work themselves out of the villains' traps, how they were able to avert disaster. It didn't matter if we knew they would prevail. And, it made it actually shocking when they didn't.

I when it's looking more and more like Marvel is going to replace 616 Nick Fury with the Sam Jackson Nick Fury. When people complain about that or about Miles, the charge of racism is bandied about. How about coming up with good, new minority characters? Is that too much to ask? I am reading Ultimate Spidey, and I don't mind the new kid (though, no offense, but I think people are singing his praises a little early, considering he hasn't even really gotten out of his origin story yet), but I would think on some level it's a little insulting to say, "Okay, we need minority characters. Black Spidey! Black Wolverine! Hispanic Hulk!" New characters.

I think that killing characters permanently is a fine idea in a book where it's only going to run for X years and that will be all for the story. However when it comes to the characters that have been around for decades, I agree with you. The big characters should always be safe because that's part of the fun of reading their tales and like you said, no one believes that a long running character is actually dead so his death doesn't have as much impact as it should which makes killing them off somewhat pointless.

I read tons of Star Wars stuff and my biggest complaint about it is that it's so serious and they go for gritty tales, big events and big character deaths (and in their defense when a guy is dead in Star Wars, he's dead so at least it means something) but the Star Wars movies are primarily fun adventure movies where the good guys will eventually win. That's not say that Star Wars or Marvel should be making their stuff for 10 year olds but I think lightening up with their characters would be more in tune with the original incarnations of the characters.

When I saw they were doing the Death Of Spider-Man story in Ultimate Spider-Man, I laughed because I assumed that his death would be for a few months at most and then Peter would be back. However, by the time the last issue came out, I bought that they were killing him off permanently and found the issue to be great and a fitting end for the character. I think Bendis has said that he has no plans of bringing him back and it should stay that way so that the character's death will always mean something rather than a bump in the road of an endless story. However in the case of the Marvel U Spidey, I know that they won't be able to let him be dead forever so I hope they don't do that.



When I heard that Peter Parker's replacement was half black and half-Hispanic, I wasn't mad but it felt like Marvel was just trying way too hard to be diverse. I intended to give it a shot and I'm glad I did because I think the character is going to be really good and he's a kid that you can root for him. The book is fun because you're seeing Miles have fun with his new powers while also seeing him deal with his real life problems which is what Stan Lee did when he was writing The Amazing Spider-Man. And in terms of race, the best thing that can be said is that the kid could be white and the stories would be nearly identical so it's not like Ultimate Spider-Man has become a soap box.

Replacing Nick Fury with Sam Jackson Nick Fury seems like they're letting the movies lead them rather trying to give some diversity to their cast. That being said, I think having Sam Jackson's face makes Ultimate Nick Fury even more of a badass so I'm not that bothered by him replacing the Marvel U Fury but it's lame that the movies can dictate the direction when it should be the comics that are telling the movies what to do.

And I'd read Hispanic Hulk if he always wore a mariachi hat.

Yeah, just let me be extra clear that I don't care what race Miles is. To Bendis' credit, he's writing him to where he is what he is and it isn't "oh look, I'm the minority Spider-Man. I'm just saying its in everybody's best interest for diversity to come from new characters rather than just changing an existing character. And, of course, I love Ultimate Nick Fury, but I love the 616 version and it seemed like everyone won with both around (and, if they don't kill Nick off, I guess he can just be in the background for now). They are being led by the movies (thank God they aren't bringing Gwen back--a character I love, but a death that is too important to undo), which is silly, because the movies have not to date brought a new influx of readers into the shops.

A few days ago, John Severin died at the age of 90. The guy leaves behind a massive body of wonderful work but I was a fan from his stuff for EC Comics (Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat and Mad when it was still a comic book) but he also had a decades long run on Cracked and a boatload of other work.

For those reading Ultimate Spider-Man, has anyone seen Bendis, etc. say the correct pronunciation of the name of Miles' buddy Ganke? Does it rhyme with Spanky or does it rhyme with Tank? I haven't been this tortured since The Walking Dead's Michonne.

In other meaningless comics thoughts, it looks like a character that I've suspected for years would play a bigger part in The Boys might actually soon prove true. Nice to see Garth Ennis playing the long game and planting seeds about 3 or 4 years before they bear fruit.

Kick-Ass 2 ended today. I think this volume will go down as the Empire Strikes Back volume. AFAIK, Kick-Ass 3 hasn't been announced, so it should be a while until we see what happens next. Hit Girl is a prequel.

I think, in some ways, I actually prefer the movie continuity--namely, Dave and Katie. I don't know if they can get away with brutalizing movie Katie. I'd really rather they dropped that.

The Secret Service promo was good. It was entertaining seeing Mark Hamill defending the prequels. I wonder if Millar talked to him to get his side of the debate. The bit with the blinking light made me literally laugh out loud. Gibbons still has it, and his work looks particularly nice on glossy paper with modern coloring. I'm down.

I also bought Supercrooks, but I haven't read it. I like Yu's art. In fact, I like the entire stable of artists currently working on Millarworld projects: Gibbons, Yu, Romita Jr., Quitely, McNiven. Yow, that's some insane talent. I wonder if Jupiter's Children will be able to go toe-to-toe with Saga, which everyone (but me) is loving.

Edit: For some reason (I guess the title), I was thinking Jupiter's Children was a sprawling space opera. Nope, it sounds a little more traditional and earthbound. Guess it won't be competing with Saga at all.

Yes, it's definitely The Empire Strikes Back because things got dark. I'm assuming that most people (certainly myself) laughed at nearly all the crazy violence in the first mini-series so I like that Millar changed things up and made the violence have some terrible consequences with all the stuff that happens to Katie and Dave's dad. That being said, I still loved Hit Girl telling the Russian baddie that she "shouldn't have turned your back on me, bitch." and the ensuing bloodbath.

At the end, it says "End Of Book Three" and I thought it was a dopey error but maybe Hit Girl will retroactively become Book Two? Millar is claiming that the Hit Girl comic will be monthly but since it took 17 months for the 7 issues of Kick-Ass 2 to come out, I'll believe that when I see it.


Saga is off to a very interesting start. I read an interview with Brian K. Vaughan where he said that he wanted to maintain total ownership over the book so he can make sure that it's never sold and turned into a movie or a TV show. It's refreshing to see a guy who wants his comic book to only be a comic book. Also, his contract stipulates that the book will remain at $2.99 for the entirety of its run and be at least 22 pages (another refreshing change of pace that I'm happy to support).

Unless he said it recently, I think things have changed. I can't imagine there being enough material to carry an ongoing between the first and second KA volumes.

That stuff about Saga is cool, but I just didn't care for the book itself. It just didn't make a great impression with me when the first dialog is "Am I shitting myself?" and the same character later says, "Suck my hemorrhoids!" And then TV-headed robots having sex? Just really not my scene. Other than Jedi powers, I don't particularly like mixing magic with sci-fi, either.

I ended up with two copies, though, and that may end up being a score. I understand this thing is sold out at the retail level and people are looking all over for it. I would never part with my Chew 1, so maybe this'll be what puts my kids through college.

Sorry, I didn't mean that it was an ongoing title, I meant that the Hit Girl mini-series would come out on a monthly basis. I'm guessing Kick-Ass 3 is probably next year?


BKV does call it Star Wars for perverts. There's definitely some real weirdness in that book and those TV headed robots were crazy even before they started banging. I'm not an authority on Vaughan but I've read all his major works and this unlike any of those other books. One thing I like that Vaughan nabbed from Star Wars was dropping the audience into the middle of a crazy situation with almost no info. As a reader, I know I'll catch up but I like being a little behind compared to the characters.

Oh, yeah. I remember his blurb saying it would come out monthly. I thought when some of these books were announced, included Hit Girl, they were supposed to be ongoing. But, I don't think any of them turned out to be.

I'll probably give Saga a chance for a while, if only because I know if I skip issue 2 and decide I want it down the road, I won't be able to get it. Maybe it'll turn me around, but I don't know.

Having the first two or three issues could look more attractive to a potential eBay bidder than just having the first one.

Speaking of eBay, the other day I saw that the first issue of The Walking Dead Weekly going for about $25. It's amazing that that series is so popular that even reprints command a decent size price tag and even crazier when you consider how easy it is get that first issue online or in a trade. If only I had the foresight to buy up a bunch of copies and sell them but I would never have thought that a reprint would be worth anything.

I wonder if Image Firsts is worth anything. I might have one, can't remember. I know I bought the Chew issue.

Wow, people are dumb. They bidded an Image Firsts up to $52! Meanwhile, others bought it for $4 to $7. Some are asking in the $30 range, but it looks like there aren't too many biting at that price.

I doubt anyone reading this thread doesn't already know but Free Comic Book Day is on Saturday. I'll be picking up the Star Wars book and the Buffy The Vampire Slayer book and maybe one or two. I know the idea is to check out some new titles but I guess I'm happy in my rut.

I don't know if I'll bother going in, but I'd probably get the Avengers and the Image sampler. Maybe the DC book.

I'll be going in more for the massive sale my shop is having. I recommend getting the Fantagraphics Donald Dog freebie. The fist volume is out, and it's a real gem of a book. Put's every superhero book I've read since Sept to shame.

I was thinking about getting that one but I picked up the Mickey Mouse book last year and wasn't that into it.

My store is having a sale too so I'll pick up this week's books and get the feebies as well.