Marvel Now! was always going to claim some victims before relaunching, and now it’s made revealed (through that most sneaky of revealers, the solicitations listing) that nine of their current books will die in order for Marvel Now! to live.
Those nine titles are: Captain America, Fantastic Four, FF, Incredible Hulk, Invincible Iron Man, New Mutants, The Mighty Thor, Uncanny X-Men and X-Men Legacy.
This isn’t completely surprising in every case, because Brian Michael Bendis already said that Uncanny would end and several of the other books were winding up long-standing runs with big name creators. Matt Fraction was already set to leave Invincible Iron Man, while Jonathan Hickman and Ed Brubaker were both already known to be leaving the Fantastic Four titles and Captain America, respectively.
What does this mean for the characters? Well, Captain America, Thor and X-Men Legacy’s Rogue are all in a team together anyway, while Iron Man will surely find a place in one of the Avengers titles. But what of the Fantastic Four? They’ve completely dropped off the map, apparently, and the World’s Greatest Superhero Family look set to pack up their bags for a one-way trip to the one place they’ve never been before: comic-book limbo.
It’s interesting to note that most of these books were handled by the ‘Architects’ of Marvel, and that some low-selling titles like the beloved Journey Into Mystery have survived this new purge. Dan Slott’s Amazing Spider-Man also escapes the destruction, so that much-teased ‘big change’ in issue #700 isn’t going to see the book cancelled, thankfully.
Three X-Men books are chopped, including flagship Uncanny X-Men. Which is a massive surprise, because most were predicting that the pointless titles – adjectiveless X-Men and Astonishing X-Men – would be the two to go. New Mutants was expected to go, and does. But it’s still surprising to see just how big a change Marvel seem to be making. What new books are going to replace these ones, which surely were the backbone of the Marvel Universe?
i know marvel doesn’t care much about my personal collecting proclivities, but i just want to buy sequentially numbered continuously published stapled floppy paper issues of Wolverine and Uncanny X-Men, and i wish they’d stop making that increasingly difficult to do.
the rest of their titles they can do whatever they want with, enumeratively and regards to publishing schedules. i’ll buy them in collected trades depending based on quality and whim. also, speaking for from an objective aesthetic/OCD point of view, it’d be nice if they just left Fantastic Four alone. as the start of the “Marvel Era” it makes for a nice benchmarker. but i guess that was also scraped a while ago during Heroes Reborn so whatever.
It blows my mind that any of this would blow anyone’s mind.
I’m surprised that so many people are posting about being surprised that someone is surprised by this.
It’s new! Buy it! Buy it! Buy it! Please?
If JiM survives Gillen’s departure by more than a month or two, I’ll be surprised.
It’s strange, if not surprising, that Marvel is, essentially, trying to push subscriptions, but never uses the marketing techniques that regular magazine publishers do for selling subscriptions. The company is just too dependent on sales of single copies through stores.
SRS
As song lyrics go, it’s more a case of “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
And this is why I lost interested in a lot of Marvel and DC books. I use to read Fantastic Four pretty much fucked that up many of times with ending the series then starting it over again.
Piss on Marvel and DC for the lack of ideas and for having a bunch on cunts running the companies.
Creator-own comics books have been a life savers.
This is a good time to start reading some creator-owned books.
If the indies were smart they would start new arcs at the same time the big two decide to pull a reboot. Maybe even publish some point one issues.
I am so sick and tired of Marvel restarting their titles. They just started many of these a little over a year ago and already they’re going back to #1’s. $#@!
This post was intentionally and ironically incredulous, right? Please?
No one believes these books are being purged. None of this is surprising. It’s a creative reshuffle/renumbering of their main titles. Nothing is being “purged”. No one “escaped destruction”. It is not a surprise that top titles are affected. No one was predicting nor did they expect that ancillary titles would be affected. The books that will “replace this backbone” are exactly the same books with different creators.
This article was shockingly bad.
Sometimes you want to go….. Where everybody knows your name….
Granted the number on a comic never held much weight for me but I understand long time readers being a bit erked by the frequent relaunches/ reboots.
Since I’ve been a weekly/ monthly reader ( only a couple of years) I tend to pick out books based on premise and creative teams.
I understand Marvel simply playing creative musical chairs with their reboot as a opposed to DC, who made a bit of a misstep with their relaunch by not getting new talent on their books.
Fear not true believer, Cap, Stark, Thor, Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and the various mutants will be front and center in a new book by next March.
This info now confirms what more than half of the Marvel Now books will be.
Make of that what you will.
Buy what titles you like, regardless of the number on the cover.
Marvel should’ve done what DC has and started their universe from scratch again. Give people a new/fresh jumping on point, w/new creative teams. Just renumbering the same old garbage only works so long these days…
Cancel the Ultimate line, its time has long since passed. This goes for Bendis too!
I’ve got a great idea. All issues of all comics should be #1’s, just with a new volume number!
So Fantastic Four, for example, could start with Volume #612, Issue #1, then go to Volume #613, issue #1, etc!