Marvel's September previews reviewed

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1
SALADIN AHMED (W) • GARRY BROWN (A)
Cover by ACO
VARIANT Cover by Gabriele Dell’Otto
Marvel’s Spider-Man Video Game Variant Cover BY DENNIS CHAN
TIES THAT BIND! Years ago, Spider-Man came back from an alien world with a fantastic new costume — one he eventually learned was a living alien symbiote looking to bond with him permanently! But before he rejected the costume that went on to become VENOM, many a night the symbiote would creep onto Peter, and unbeknownst to its host, take them out into the night!
Now, for the first time, see just what the symbiote steered Peter into during these mysterious nighttime excursions! Saladin Ahmed (BLACK BOLT) weaves an ALL-NEW nightmare fairy tale, illustrated by the incomparable Garry Brown, in what is sure to be a dream book for any Spider-Man fan!
40 PGS./Rated T …$4.99

That...is actually a pretty good idea for a Spider-Man comic. The superhero equivalent of sleepwalking, I guess...?

Seems a shame to put an ACO cover--well, an ACO cover or a Gabriele Dell'Otto cover, depending on which version you get--on the book though when Garry Brown is drawing the interiors. Especially if you're going to go ahead and hype Brown as "the incomparable Garry Brown." That really makes me want to see a picture of Garry Brown's Spider-Man fighting his own costume, not a picture of Gabriele Dell'Otto's Spider-Man fighting his own costume. Dell'Otto is easily comparable! I've seen his work loads of times!

Anyway, here's a place where one can go to look at Garry Brown art.

ASGARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #1
CULLEN BUNN (W) • MATTEO LOLLI (A)
Cover by DALE KEOWN
...
Spinning out of the events of INFINITY WARS comes an epic space opera from DEADPOOL veterans Cullen Bunn and Matteo Lolli!
Angela, the not-so-beloved half-sister of Thor. The hotheaded Valkyrie – and the human who shares her form, Annabelle Riggs. Skurge the Executioner, freshly returned from Hel. Throg, the mightiest frog of thunder. Kevin Masterson, the boy who took his father’s mace to become the hero Thunderstrike. And the Destroyer, the Asgardian armor built to take down Celestials – its wielder unknown. The events of INFINITY WARS set NEBULA off on a quest to rule the galaxy – wielding an Asgardian weapon even Thor would fear – and it’s up to this team of gods, assassins, frogs and heroes to stop her.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Bravo, Marvel. I kind of love the fact that this series obviously just started as a joke title that someone figured out how to build a comic book series around. Having not been following Thor comics since I got lost a few reboots ago--did they ever reveal what was whispered to Thor to make him unworthy?--or Guardians of The Galaxy or the latest Infinity stuff, I'm not sure I'll be able to read this and make any sense out of it, but I'm certainly impressed that it exists.


EXILES VOL. 1 TPB
Written by SALADIN AHMED
Penciled by JAVIER RODRIGUEZ
Cover by DAVID MARQUEZ
Don’t Blink — the Exiles are back! The fan-favorite teleporter from the Age of Apocalypse was once the lynchpin of an interdimensional team determined to save not just the world, but also the entire Multiverse. And now Blink’s talents are needed once again! When a mysterious threat begins devouring the very fabric of reality, the Unseen — the man once known as Nick Fury, who can now only watch Earth from a lofty post on the Moon — recruits her as his champion to save all that is. But Blink can’t do it alone. She’ll need a team drawn from across the Marvel Multiverse to face the Time-Eater! Which surprising heroes will join the newest squad of Exiles — and can they ever go home again? Collecting EXILES (2018) #1-6.
136 PGS./Rated T+ …$17.99
ISBN: 978-1-302-91165-2

I don't have a joke for this, or any sort of observation, just a question for any of you who might be reading it. Is it any good? Like, I-should-buy-it good, or just I-should-borrow-the-trade-from-the-library good...? I'm not really a fan of Blink or the X-people in general, but I like Tess Thompson's movie Valkyrie and the idea of Hayley Atwell as Captain America (Please tell me James D'Arcy's Jarvis wears a Bucky costume to adventure with her!).

FANTASTIC FOUR #2
DAN SLOTT (W) • SARA PICHELLI (A)
Cover by ESAD RIBIC
VARIANT COVER BY SKOTTIE YOUNG
CONNECTING WRAPAROUND VARIANT COVER BY ARTHUR ADAMS (2 OF 2)
COSMIC GHOST RIDER VS VARIANT COVER BY TOM RANEY
WISH YOU WERE HERE!
What have Reed, Sue and the kids been up to all this time? What adventures have they been on? What strange new friends have they found along the way? What deadly new enemies have they made? And what are Franklin and Valeria’s new codenames? All these questions will be answered… just in time for ENTIRE UNIVERSES TO DIE!
The return of Marvel’s First Family keeps getting more and more intense! Don’t you dare miss a single moment of the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!
32 PGS./Rated T …$3.99

Huh. I've honestly never thought about the fact that it's kind of weird that Franklin and Valeria have never had codenames until I read the above copy, but yeah, that's kind of weird. I'm pretty curious what they might be. Hopefully something farm more inspired than, like, Kid Fantastic and The Brain...

ICEMAN #1
SINA GRACE (W) • NATHAN STOCKMAN (A)
Cover by W. Scott Forbes
VARIANT Cover by Nick Bradshaw
VARIANT Cover by Skottie Young
He’s back!
Iceman is back! Which is good, because someone is hunting the Morlocks for sport. Now it’s up to Bobby Drake to prevent another potential Mutant Massacre. But who’s behind this horrific hunt? You won’t believe it if we tell you! Guest-starring Bishop!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

Well this is certainly unexpected...way even more unexpected than the fact that Marvel announced an Iceman ongoing series the first time around. Marvel canceled that book remarkably quickly; as I recall, the first trade paperback collection was just released when the cancellation was announced, and the book limped along after its imminent demise was scheduled until it hit issue #11 or so.

I'm glad to see that the title and its writer, Sina Grace, is getting a second chance, and I hope Marvel learned its lessons from the first attempt. The lessons that needed learned, by the way, weren't simply that some books need a little more rope than a handful of issues and the immediate sales of the first trade paperback to find their footing in the market.

Iceman was, as I recall, quite well-written, but suffered from its unfortunately unavoidable connection to the X-Men line--basically, the premise of the book hinged on the fact of the time-lost original X-Men and their Bobby Drake, which meant Iceman was a book for extant X-Men fans, not new readers.

It suffered even more from the fact that there was no artist attached. The first collection, which I reviewed here, had five artists assigned to the first five issues. Some were okay, some handled the material quite poorly, but the book was a visual mess, and that's really no way to assemble a comic book. If they couldn't find an artist to attach to the book, Marvel might as well have assigned Grace a prose novel to tell his story in.

Anyway, here's hoping Marvel read my review and decided to address all those problems, and that new artist Nathan Stockman has been given plenty of lead time to start drawing the new volume of the series...!

MARVEL RISING: OMEGA #1
Devin Grayson (W) • MARCO FAILLA (A)
Cover by GURIHIRU
...
THE FINAL INSTALLMENT!
Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl and their friends are trapped in a world they did not create. And the one person who could free them…is trapped herself. Someone has been pulling Ember Quade’s strings, and even this burgeoning super villain knows when the game’s gone too far. But the last save point is long past — and there’s one final boss ahead. It’s now or never: The heroes must rise.
40 PGS./ONE-SHOT/Rated T+ …$4.99

Ha ha ha! The "Final Installment!" falls in a book with a #1 on the cover, the same number that...every issue of this series has had on it...? Except maybe that one, which had a zero on it. Also, note that this is a "one-shot," according to the above. What the fuck Marvel? That's not how numbers work.

This particular comic book is a pretty great argument for ignoring serially published comics and instead trade-waiting Marvel's wares. For example, why try to make sense of this weird-ass series, where each issue has a slightly different title, and either a #0 or a #1 on it, when you can just buy this, instead?


MARVEL RISING GN-TPB
Written by DEVIN GRAYSON, RYAN NORTH & G. WILLOW WILSON
Penciled by MARCO FAILLA, IRENE STRYCHALSKI & RAMON BACHS
Cover by GURIHIRU
Squirrel Girl meets Ms. Marvel — for the very first time! When Doreen Green volunteers as head counselor for an extracurricular computer-programming class, little does she know junior counselor Kamala Khan also moonlights as a crimefighting super hero! But this coding configuration is more than just ones and zeros when a mysterious new super villain shows her face! Ember Quade can bring video games to life — and that just raised the stakes to a whole new level! Can Doreen and Kamala save the day without blowing their secret identities? Join Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl — and a few special guests — as they learn what it truly takes to become the next generation of Marvel heroes! Collecting MARVEL RISING #0, MARVEL RISING: ALPHA, MARVEL RISING: SQUIRREL GIRL/MS. MARVEL, MARVEL RISING: MS. MARVEL/SQUIRREL GIRL and MARVEL RISING: OMEGA.
168 PGS./Rated T …$9.99
ISBN: 978-1-302-91261-1
Trim size: 6” x 9”

That's so much easier.


RETURN OF WOLVERINE #1 (of 5)
CHARLES SOULE (W) • STEVE MCNIVEN (A/C)
X-FORCE COSTUME VARIANT COVER BY STEVE MCNIVEN
FANG COSTUME VARIANT COVER BY STEVE MCNIVEN
AGE OF APOCALYPSE COSTUME VARIANT COVER BY STEVE MCNIVEN
PATCH COSTUME VARIANT COVER BY STEVE MCNIVEN
WEAPON X COSTUME VARIANT COVER BY STEVE MCNIVEN
BROWN & TAN COSTUME VARIANT COVER BY STEVE MCNIVEN
WHISKERS COSTUME VARIANT COVER BY STEVE MCNIVEN
REMASTERED VARIANT COVER BY TODD MCFARLANE
B&W REMASTERED VARIANT COVER BY TODD MCFARLANE
VARIANT COVER BY JOHN CASSADAY
VARIANT COVER BY LEINIL FRANCIS YU
VARIANT COVER BY SKOTTIE YOUNG
VARIANT COVER BY JOHN TYLER CHRISTOPHER
PARTY VARIANT COVER BY TBA
PREMIERER VARIANT COVER BY STEVE MCNIVEN
BLANK VARIANT COVER ALSO AVAILABLE
HE’S BACK, BUB.
40 PGS./Parental Advisory …$4.99

So, if you are a retailer and your considering if you should order a comic book entitled "The Return of Wolverine," and, if so, just how many copies of it you should order, the two things that Marvel thinks you need to know about it are that it is, in fact, about Wolverine returning and that it will have a lot of variant covers. And...that's it! Get to ordering, retailers!

Oh, and if you make it all the way down to the second-to-last cover mentioned there, you'll see that series artist Steve McNiven is responsible for the "PREMIERER" cover. That's probably a typo, but I kind of hope it's not, that Marvel is instead offering a cover that is even more premier than the PREMIER cover.


RUNAWAYS #13
RAINBOW ROWELL (W)
DAVID LAFUENTE (A)
Cover by KRIS ANKA
VARIANT COVER BY RYAN SANDS
THAT WAS YESTERDAY starts here!
After the world-shaking arc-end in #12, a lot has changed for your favorite super-teens.
And a major villain from Runaways past is back in a way you won’t be able to predict!
Plus! This issue has a variant cover by Ryan Sands, the actor who plays Geoffrey Wilder on the Marvel’s Runaways television series, now streaming on Hulu!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

So I guess this means that actor Ryan Sands is a semi-professional artist, right...? I'm totally okay with this. In fact, I would love nothing more than if the actors who play particular characters on Marvel TV shows contributed variant covers, regardless of artistic ability. I would love to see Krysten Ritter drawing stick figures of the Netflix heroes for a Defenders variant, Jon Bernthal finger-painting a skull for a Punisher variant, whatever....