Aldo reads Marvel NOW! (even though you are, and he clearly hasn't learned his lesson)

Ah, very good. Thanks! Thought that was a bit odd. Right, purchase time when I get home then.

Still can't find it -- is there not a way of getting rid of the name of the comic in the top bar?

Top bar never goes away

hey guys, you know the blatant Battle Royale/Hunger Games ripoff Avengers Arena?

it is shockingly good, like not in a "oh shit everyone must buy this" way but more in a "how the hell does this manage to be coherent and entertaining" way

I recommend taking a look, esp if you have passing familiarity with Avengers Academy, Runaways, and random New Warriors rejects

also I am semi annoyed that Cannonball and Sunspot aren't getting more chances to shine but Avengers is fucking incredible in the "oh shit everyone must buy this" way

have recently read an Avengers graphic novel collection by bendis, jrjr and b. hitch, mainly feat. a big dust-up w/ the red hulk, and two collections of recentish slott-written spider-mans - and they were all great! MAKE MINE MARVEL

(strangely, since reading Sean Howe's superb MARVEL COMICS THE UNTOLD STORY i've been on a real Marvel kick/high - i say strangely, because the book makes for depressing reading for anyone who has ever cared abt the company, the characters, its creators)

Yeah, the Avengers Now stuff is great. I've been rereading Hickmans Fantastic Four, and it's just amazingly well-plotted. It's also really fun how he just has these weird kicks, such as people always mentioning 'wheels whithin wheels' and such. The story of the Manifolds, which is just alluded to in the beginning of New Avengers, as perhaps being a big deal... Also, in FF they build 'sols anvil' and now in New Avengers they've build 'sols hammer'. I have no idea what the point is, and I don't think it matters, but it is really fun to think about.

Age of Ultron seems to be completely pointless but I've been enjoying it anyway

wow, so many issues with this app
it freezes up a lot but the big problem is that on A LOT of comix it doesn't import the dialogue.

weird. I haven't seen that happen. But I have had stuff start on the last page, and have search tags not work. What bugs me most is series showing up on the web but not in the app, or not appearing there until you restart it, or do a search, and then VOILA! They appear.

all the avengers stuff has that word bubble issue
and yeah, i have the same problems.... 24 ISSUES OF XXX and only three show up
it's basically buggy as hell and the more you use it the buggier it gets
even so, i've probably read like 300 marvel issues in the past month. it's a lil' addictive.

The more you use it the more it freaks. You have to shut it down and restart it pretty often.

Which Avengers issues? I'll test it on my end and see if I get the same thing.

I should go back and get all of the current New Avengers run, right

there is no "current" run on the ipad app, they're at least two years behind.
most of the dark avengers have that glitch

I am not using the iPad app

I was trying to ask a question about the current comics rather than talk about buggy software

I would say yes -- both Hickman Avengers books are great.

dig, i forget what thread we're on. may be time to have a marvel unlimited app thread.

If what Axel Alonso is saying here is true, then that is really cool:

Yes. We want things to be organic. It’s the writer and editor huddling and deciding to pitch a tie-in; not me saying, "Yo, Jordan (White)! Get me a “Deadpool” tie-in!" We don’t lean on any of our writers to tie in. Although, a Deadpool tie-in might be kinda cool…

Look, Marvel NOW! did what we wanted it to do. It revitalized the monthlies and reenergized the talent pool. Events add a dimension to the Marvel Universe that should compliment the monthly publishing plan, not uproot it. If a writer and artist think there's an opportunity to tell a good tie-in story to an event, I won’t discourage that, but I won’t demand it, either. It’s better for a writer to come up with the best story within the universe of that character than search for connective tissue that doesn't exist.

The first line of defense for this is Tom [Brevoort], who always stands at the epicenter of our big events. If he’s not convinced it’s a legitimate tie-in story, I probably won’t be. And we both agree that oversaturating the market with tie-ins that aren't really relevant is a bad long-term strategy that erodes fan and retailer confidence.

Also, while events are crap, I'm curious to see if Hickman can pull it off.

It's from this interview: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=44894 Also, check out his thoughts on the meanings and metaphors of the Inhumans. Those are some clever thoughts for a Editor in Chief. Or perhaps it's just that the people at DC has really lowered the bar...

Alonso was a good and smart editor at DC.

I didn't even know that Quesada had stepped down, nice interview, kind of, at least for describing how some of these ideas kind of get hashed out

Quesada was promoted years ago iirc, not stepped down

Promising!

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/marvel-epic-collections.html

Nice!

Mr A. Ewing's issue of Avengers Assemble is VERY GOOD

I kind of think that Marvel is a lot happier with not giving a fuck about continuity than DC? Apart from the obvious Wolverine being on a billion teams, they've seemed happy just mostly freeze things in amber on a lot of titles - Franklin aging 7 years over the last 40, to pick the popular example - apart from the ones where there is so much going on all the time (Daredevil is a great example) that it settles into a hum of action, with no sense that there's a real permanent character history being written.

----------

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, November 19, 2012 12:47 AM (5 months ago)

I read 'Marvel Comics: The Untold Story' on holiday and actually Andrew's assertion here about Marvel and continuity is completely off the mark. Marvel used to use their slavish devotion to continuity as a badge of honour and a reason why you should pick them over DC, who didn't care about it. Lots of stories in there about plots being completely rewritten because the Marvel continuity police (and at one point they had an entire editorial team to uphold it) saw a problem.

The first crack appeared with McFarlane Spider-man, since he was so inept at writing they couldn't possibly expect him to keep continuity straight but was so integral to Marvel's business plan that they had to throw a new book and shitloads of money at him just to keep him. (As a sidebar, that's the funniest part of the whole book, where Todd describes how he just did a couple of splash pages and none of it made any sense but he doesn't really give a shit because he was being paid millions of dollars.) The whole point of the Ultimate line was to let Bendis tell a Spider-man story without any continuity baggage.

I'm guessing DC changed sides over continuity after Crisis, and codifying it in History of the DCU.

I'm happy to switch 'continuity' to 'history' there, and to point out that it's a view on their current output rather than what they might have been like 20 years ago.

I am a little surprised that damage to continuity was much of a concern in 2000, 6 years after the Clone Saga.

Yeah, I can see that and agree with you - but it came out of me saying that I couldn't parse the continuity of the different titles, who was in them and how they happened relative to each other.

Interestingly there's a story in the book about GMoz and the Planet X storyline, how it is just a parody by him of how crass and slavish the Marvel obsession with continuity is and that Magneto tries to reinvent himself and break out of the cycle but just ends up back where he began, fighting the same trivial battles with the same people.

think the marvel obsession w/ continuity start to fade away w/ the death of mark gruenwald, who once edited the 'seminal' marvel history fanzine Omniverse.

the death of continuity is of course also an effect of different corporate owners with different priorities (ie never let continuity stand in the way of a money-making title/'concept'), and of the sheer VOLUME of comics that marvel has published in the last twenty years, making totalising coherence an impossibility.

i might guess that all of the major comic publishers have also taken note of Paramount's decision to jettison imprisoning Star Trek continuity in favour of a re-boot

but the comics companies have been doing reboots for decades before Star Trek copied it off them

uh wait A. Ewing wrote an issue of Avengers Assemble?

Of "Ultimate Future Shock" / "Rogue Trooper at the Disco" 'fame', yes.

Or rather - The Ultimate Future Shock

It's also not un-thrill-powered

there seem to be a lot of books with 'avengers' in the title atm

i'm also a little unclear as to whether the comic with wolverine leading a death squad is contemporaneous with the one where he's running a school

Such was, in fairness, ever the case other young Mr Howlett.

Wolverine contains multitudes.

Go Marvel!

In an attempt to make it seem like Dan DiDio isn't the biggest dick of a CEO at the big two, Marvel are about to announce that...

Age of Ultron #10 will actually be a 4 issue mini series called Hunger...

Starring Galactus...

From another dimension.

Jesus titty Christ.

waht

Also we shouldn't overlook Avengers Assemble being cancelled and them writing to subscribers telling them iy was and that their subscriptions were being transferred to another title. Then when said subscribers leaked the news using Marvel emails as evidence, Marvel taking the huff and denying it leaving them without a product to meet their new obligations.

what exactly is wrong w/ galactus from another dimension (i mean moreso than any other dopey different-dimensioned variant of character x)?

i recently glugged down a nice big british collection of the bendis avengers vs x-men series, which i thought was the best of his widescreen multi-crossover megaseries blahdiblah, although i was pained to see cyclops written as such a big prick (i don't think this is any new departure for marvel's treatment of the character over the last x number of years, but as an old school byrne-claremonter, i'm sorry to see the definitive leader of the x-men treated in such a way.) marvel cld quite easily write cyclops as a man literally deranged by grief and loss, and make him a tragic hero. some of the art was horrible - frank cho's bubblewrap cheesecake, ugh - but jrjr, even on autopilot, is still gd to look at

my "waht" is more about turning the last issue into a four issue miniseries

well also they just did "Galactus from another dimension" in the X-Termination crossover that ended X-Treme X-Men and Age of Apocalypse so I guess some of my "waht" is just at the stunning lack of creativity on display

My waht is that they've run a massive series that has huge, far reaching implications for the MU (see Bendis' leaked memo for the implications of what Wolverine and Sue Storm did) and the only way they can think of finishing it is with Galactus From Another Mother? anyone reading AoU should be wtfing themselves into a coma at this point.

This is all only so they can bring Angela into the MU apparently, now they own her.

AU started off promisingly, but #8 took it way off the rails imo.

yeah after that one I was basically thinking to myself "why am I reading this again"

AU is awesome and batshit crazy and I kind of think there is no good resolution

somehow over the course of less than ten issues it's already the tv show Lost

I feel that Hickman's two Avengers titles are doing pretty well. He seldom really does an outstanding issue, but a series of issues that make for a good long-term arc is kind of his thing. He's really starting to pick up steam.

Brian Wood's take on X-Men is coming out soon, which I'm also looking forward to.

two other titles that are really good right now are Fraction's FF and Hawkeye