Thursday, December 23, 2021

Marvel's March previews reviewed

Well this seems like a good (if obvious) ideas for a comic book. Jamie McKelvie and Marika Cresta's Captain Carter #1 picks up the idea of the What If...Peggy Carter Became the World's First Super-Soldier Instead of Captain America?, and then puts her in the same position Captain America once found himself in, being unfrozen after decades in a block of ice in the modern world. 


World-renowned fan of Frank Miller's Dardevil run, Keven Eastman, has a story in Elektra: Black, White and Blood #4 (as does Peach Momoko, who provides one of the issues covers, the one above).

I wonder if this is as close as we'll ever get to Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman reuniting for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Daredevil crossover that I hope to see sometime in my lifetime...?


Well, it's not Street Angel Vs. The Marvel Universe, but I guess it's the next best thing. 

Jim Rugg follows pals Ed Piskor and Tom Scioli with a Marvel "Grand Design" book, The Hulk Grand Design: Monster #1, which, if I'm reading this right, condenses the whole history of the Jade Giant into just 48 pages...? Is that right, or is this just the first issue of a miniseries? Someone let me know soon so I know if I should pre-order this, or wait for the trade.

I'm all in favor of Grand Design books in general. I hope they do the whole dang Marvel Universe at some point. There are characters, series and franchises that I have a general interest in, but don't really want to wade through a dozen or so Epic Collections just to read about them. I would love, for example, a Defenders Grand Design book, but I imagine we'll have to get through way more popular ones, like Spider-Man and The Avengers before we get down to B-teams...

March will see the release of a brand-new X-Men title by writer Keiron Gillen and artist Lucas Werneck entitled Immortal X-Men #1. I guess Immortal Hulk did well enough that Marvel is going to attempt to make "Immortal" their new buzzword for new titles. 

The thing is, in Immortal Hulk it was a fairly literal title, as Al Ewing's then new take on the Banner/Hulk relationship was that if Banner was killed, he would come back to life as the Hulk the next night. Here I am assuming that "Immortal" is meant to be more figurative, but I don't know, I haven't been reading X-Men in a while...I guess there's some new weird technology on Krakoa that allows them to resurrect dead X-Men easily, right? (Well, more easily, I guess I should stay, as X-Men don't exactly have a tendency to stay dead for very long at all.) 

Anyway, I won't be too terribly surprised if we see an Immortal Spider-Man, Immortal Guardians of the Galaxy or Immortal Ghost Rider in the near-ish future...


Is the new Iron Fist, seen here on Jim Cheung's variant cover for Iron Fist #2, wearing his mask upside down...?


Word on the street is that The Punisher is getting a new logo/sigil in his new book, Punisher by Jason Aaron, Jesus Saiz and Paul Azaceta, but it wasn't on any of the three covers released with this solicitation, so I guess I'll hold off on making fun of it and/or pointing out better, more obvious alternatives...including, of course, no logo at all.

But, can I just say here for the record how insane it is that fucking Disney of all corporations gave up on control of a logo?  I mean, I'm sure cops, racists and militia types aren't any fun to fight in court, and certainly less fun than others who might abuse intellectual property rules, but it's still discouraging to see an entity as powerful as Disney say, "You know what? You guys keep the logo."


Wait, is that really what Jack of Hearts' hair looks like under his hood...? Why does he ever wear his hood? That's the cover of She-Hulk #3 by Jen Bartel, incidentally.


Jed Mackay and Marcelo Ferreira's Strange #1 kicks off a new series about Clea becoming the new Sorceress Supreme...and, apparently, a Super Saiyan.


It feels like forever since I've seen any new John Romita Jr art, let alone read any of it. Here's his variant cover for Wolverine: Patch #1, a five-issue miniseries by Larry Hama and Andrea Di Vito set before Hama's run on Wolverine


The two types of comic book-comics I am still buying and reading seem to be DC holiday anthology specials and Marvel "Voices" anthology specials. This one is Women of Marvel #1, and is presumably all female creators doing stories featuring female heroes. 


I'm sort of surprised that X-Men Unlimited: Latitude #1 is entitled "X-Men Unlimited: Latitude" instead of having the name "Wolverine" in the title, as Jonathan Hickman and Declan Shalvey's digital-first comic sounds like it's a Wolverine solo, or at least Wolverine-centric, title, and I would assume "Wolverine" had more market value than "X-Men" at this point...

1 comment:

J. Bencomo said...

"I mean, I'm sure cops, racists and militia types aren't any fun to fight in court"

Please let's not say "cops" in general, right next to "racists", as if all of those in that field of public service would be in that same wavelenght, that might be seen as a discriminative generalization on its own. Especially when one writes in a venue that can be read internationally, effectively addressing the planet as a whole.