Marvel Comics blabbery

yeah it’s early but the Hick-Men books seem promising

They’re not bad.

I have a few theories about what's actually going on in the Hickman X-books but I'd be outing my knowledge of too-many-X-things from the last decade of relatively mediocre books

They really have been mediocre. Both X-Men and their putative replacements the Inhumans have suffered from Perlmutter's infantile edicts over the past several years. Here's hoping Hickman and co. can right the ship.

the multiple simultaneous timeline's is a neat trick but i could see it wearing thin quickly.

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/marvel-ike-perlmutter/

I'd love to hear theories! I like it so far, but every second page I go 'huh, weren't they dead?'

I've read some of the Uncanny X-Men '19 reboot and skipped the big Age of X-Man event entirely (again, god, so many books to follow just for that. skipped War of the Realms for the same reason. Marvel's out of control) so can someone who has been following them explain to me how Hickman is able to do essentially a hard reboot of the entire X-Men timeline? Did Nate Grey blow shit up a second time? Or is that deliberately obscure at the moment for the story?

I mean I even read this and was still left scratching my head on a lot of things (especially at the reveal that Chuck was resurrected in.. Astonishing X-Men? at some point?) but I'm still amazed that Marvel grim-rebooted X-Men in December '18 (X-Termination/new Uncanny #1) only to re-reboot it in 7 months. I hope there's a good explanation for Pirate X-men and two edgelord kill-team books.

I'm not up to date but apparently they had Hickman lined up for a while and were secretly laying the groundwork for his run at least as early as the most recent Uncanny reboot.

Also from what I understand the Age of X crossover, despite being yet another alternate universe narrative, apparently does figure in to Hickman's plans.

Sorry so vague and possibly wrong. I've been trying to glean news without encountering spoilers.

I think Xavier's in The World (the one Fantomex is from) pulling recreations of his original X-Men from pods, calling his mutant homeland "Krakoa" as some sort of veiled reference, and doing accelerated time experiments at the same time we're being show glimpses of a far-flung future and humanity's being offered medical solutions that seem ahead of their time

“All this structured chaos reeks of machination” -- line Hickman's already used in Secret Wars but will probably paraphrase in six months

The fact that 'Powers of X', the book that takes place in years 1, 10, 100 and 1000 of X-men history, is pronounced 'Powers of Ten' is so stupid that I absolutely love it.

Hey guys I read a recent Marvel comic! It was Tom King's Vision. Pretty good, not as good as Miracle Man, which both had better art and a layer of narrative ambiguity that I liked.

Also made me kinda bummed out that superhero comics are so murder-y now. Which is weird given that no one stays dead. Like, narratively we are still supposed to register murder as extreme, transgressive, dramatic, etc. even though its impact has been undermined by both overuse and its lack of lasting consequences.

art imitating life there

was unaware of people constantly rising from the dead irl but maybe I'm missing something

"narratively we are still supposed to register murder as extreme, transgressive, dramatic, etc. even though its impact has been undermined by both overuse and its lack of lasting consequences" = the past four days of news

oh I got the reference I just don't agree that that's analogous

death in the real world always has consequences

murder has been very common throughout human history (comics, not so much) and not really convinced this era is any more murderous than previous eras tbh

dunno if comparing modern age to bronze age either irl or in marvel eras is ever going to be partic fruitful.

why not? it seems to me like the levels of murder in mainstream superhero comics is fairly easy to track and it's gone from non-existent to super-rare to fairly common to omnipresent

rip comics code

Spoiler: mainstream (read: Marvel, those being the ones I read and am most familiar with) comics aren't actually all that murdery, at least inasmuch as murder is by no means omnipresent. The books with a high body count are enough of an outlier that they're fairly noteworthy.

So five (I think?) people getting murdered in this Vision book was an outlier?

my opinion is that everyone who wants to read marvel comics should be buying more issues of unbeatable squirrel girl

xxp well i wasn't looking to have a serious conversation about this, but i would suggest that graphic murder in mainstream comics was an every issue thing in the thirties and forties, waned considerably through the fifties, mostly disappeared in the era of the comics code and then came roaring back as a grim and gritty thing throughout the 90's and 00's. homicide as character development is currently undeniaby lodged in the goiterous throats of marvel and dcs glut of more mediocre titles; i think you could argue that's a side effect of the mid-90's death of superman/breaking of batman? anyway, i blame geoff johns.

And I can't recall a time when there were as many non-specialty titles (i.e. stuff that isn't based on a licensed property or released under a YA sub-imprint) specifically geared toward younger audiences.

Yes, Vision was an outlier with a darker tone than most (but certainly not all) of Marvel's other titles.

never forget, the second issue of action comics features superman straight up killing a guy but it's okay cause he deserved it
http://i.imgur.com/xVKJnZv.png

Blaming Geoff Johns is a good general policy in this and many other, wholly-unrelated instances.

also, here's batman shooting a "vampire"
https://i.imgur.com/TQkQjoW.png

maybe i should start a "when superheroes kill" thread

graphic murder in mainstream comics was an every issue thing in the thirties and forties, waned considerably through the fifties, mostly disappeared in the era of the comics code and then came roaring back as a grim and gritty thing throughout the 90's and 00's

yeah this sounds about right

that Superman page never fails to crack me up, Supes is so "now this is happening" about it

I can't recall a time when there were as many non-specialty titles (i.e. stuff that isn't based on a licensed property or released under a YA sub-imprint) specifically geared toward younger audiences.

totally agree with this, it's crazy the wealth of stuff that's available and perfectly suitable for my daughter that bears absolutely zero relation to the DC/Marvel/licensed characters axis

OL on the mark about the COMIX FOR KIDS onslaught, which is great! but there's still a fuckton of weirdly ultraviolent books out there where murder is the case that they give you. The Punisher's last four(?) or so volumes treat human life like kleenex.

batman versus dracula: a one panel thrill ride

http://i.imgur.com/PYQ3cgv.png

Batman Stops a Pogrom

on a slightly more modern marvel note
https://i.stack.imgur.com/ult59.jpg

bon voyage, baron blood!

Comic Panels of Superheroes Killing People

Yeah, scrolling through the books released in the year I'm just wrapping up (2017), the only stuff that stands out as particularly murdery are Punisher, the Bullseye mini (which was frankly fucking gruesome), and, well, anything with Rocket Raccoon (I neither understand nor care for this retcon of the character as utterly kill-crazy). Some Deadpool stuff, naturally, but during his time on the Avengers they tamped it down quite a bit.

allow me to introduce you to what DC did with "deathstroke"
http://i.imgur.com/9tZmy33.png

I'm trying not to.... oh hell

Remember when Jeph Loeb wrote a little story called Ultimatum and Marvel pretty much burned their Ultimate Comics line to the ground?

What else...Old Man Logan, Thanos, Carnage. I mean, you know what you're getting with most of these books that feature characters who've always been 'edgy'. You don't have to worry that you're gonna turn the page in most of the other other Marvel titles and suddenly find Marvin being graphically devoured by Wonder Dog (thanks again, Geoff).

you're right about Rocket, that's the movie to blame for that i think in that they needed a way for people to not read him as a cartoon. which i guess leads to his Bendis catchphrase:
http://i.imgur.com/M4lSKua.png

Deeply, deeply, deeply hate that catchphrase.

all the "old man" series are murderfests; here's a random panel i found in the first page of old man hawkeye i opened
http://i.imgur.com/HeG5k2L.png

The Nighthawk book was dark but kinda righteous, too (black vigilante unapologetically taking out racist white folks).

Important to recall that Millar kicked off that whole 'old man' future timeline.

yeah, he's responsible for a lot of this post-miller grim and gritty bullshit too. i'm not even gonna post the relevant JR JR Hit-Girl panels.

Marvel stuff coming out this week:

Probably some murders imo
ABSOLUTE CARNAGE #1
COSMIC GHOST RIDER DESTROYS MARVEL HISTORY #6
DEAD MAN LOGAN #10
IMMORTAL HULK #22 (in a horror comic style, though)
MAJOR X #0
OLD MAN QUILL #8
PUNISHER #14 (of course, I mean...)
STAR WARS #70 (someone's gonna get shot or lightsabered in a cantina)

probably not murdery?
AGENTS OF ATLAS #1
BLACK CAT #3
DAREDEVIL #9
HOUSE OF X #2
SAVAGE AVENGERS #4

no gratuitous deaths here, folks (hopefully, no guarantees)
CHAMPIONS #8
AERO #1
FUTURE FOUNDATION #1
INVISIBLE WOMAN #2

i will bet you a shiny nickel that house of x and savage avengers will have at least one murder

a random 2019 monthly body count of marvel vs dc vs usa would be an interesting if depressing project

I can't tell if you guys are arguing for or against my point anymore (ie whether or not Vision was an outlier - kinda doesn't look like it if there's a consensus that >50% of Marvel's monthly titles = murdery). But idk you guys read so much more of this crap than I do.