Prejudging Marvel NOW!

After spending time last week to weigh in (and mostly tear down) DC Comics’ New 52 relaunch, it’s now time for me to turn my attention to the other massive, line-wide comics overhaul coming down the pipeline in a matter of weeks: Marvel NOW!, the publisher’s campaign to slap a shiny new #1 on many of its series while cancelling some titles, launching many others and in general shifting its top writers and artists onto franchises they’ve never before touched.



If you listen to Marvel’s editorial brass and publicity department in their promotional pieces regarding Marvel NOW!, the initiative is in absolutely NO way just another gimmick to boost sales with new #1’s OR any sort of response to the sales success of DC’s line-wide reboot, but anyone with either half a brain or the slightest familiarity with Marvel’s publicity tactics should know that’s a crock of bullshit. Like DC, Marvel is perpetually guilty of telling fans their latest publishing move has nothing to do with the competition when in reality the exact opposite is most likely true. Regardless of the possible reactionary nature of Marvel NOW!, however, I figure now’s the perfect time to take a look at how Marvel is approaching their latest overhaul and what that approach says about the publisher’s strengths and weaknesses over the past few years compared to DC’s.


What follows is a series of snap judgments on Marvel NOW! based on their publicity campaign and how they’ve approached their publishing line in recent years.

Once you recognize that Marvel is the guiltiest of all the major publishers when it comes to renumbering their series as a way to boost sales (and I’ve seriously lost count of how many times they reverted to this trick in recent years only to turn around and renumber the same series after only a dozen or so issues), it becomes easy to dismiss the renumbering aspect of Marvel NOW! as more of the same and focus instead on the campaign’s other two defining characteristics: 1) the reassignment and reshuffling of creative teams onto new books and 2) the start of accessible new creative directions for the vast majority of Marvel titles. Because the organic nature of the Marvel Universe’s continuity has allowed them to avoid the massive reboots that have plagued DC over the years and most recently led them to hit the “New 52” reset button, those two defining aspects of Marvel NOW! make up the most dramatic shake-up to hit the Marvel publishing line since the ill-fated Heroes Reborn stunt of the 1990s, and thus warrant close inspection.


Let’s start with the campaign’s reassignment of big name writer and artist teams onto new properties, which says as much about Marvel NOW! as it does what has been Marvel’s greatest strength over the past decade, which is the publisher’s willingness to let a single writer stick with a title for an extended run (I talked at length about this in a previous post about following creator’s instead of characters.) Whether you’re talking about Ed Brubaker’s Captain America, Matt Fraction’s Iron Man, Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four, Greg Pak’s Hulk or even Brian Bendis’ Avengers, it’s impossible to deny that Marvel’s greatest successes over the past decade have come from handing the reins of one of their flagship titles over to a talented writer and then allowing said writer the time and freedom to tell an epic story. Sure, a line-wide crossover almost always came along every two years to temporarily derail the momentum of those individual series, but in general Marvel has been exceptional at fostering the sort of memorable, visionary runs that last the test of time.

The very fact that, in their promotion of Marvel NOW!, Marvel’s editorial brass has promised to grant each series’ new writer the time, creative control and individuality to put his stamp on a given franchise is by far the most promising aspect of the entire campaign. Whether you’re intrigued by the writer/series combinations or excited by the little bit of information given to readers about the respective creative directions is almost besides the point as far as I’m concerned; what’s most important and promising to me is that there’s no reason to believe Marvel will suddenly abandon their willingness to allow writers to go nuts with each flagship character/franchise. Considering Grant Morrison’s Batman and Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern have been the only consistent flagship runs over at DC for years, and that the New 52 is showing a disturbing tendency to prematurely change writers mid-story, I think it’s safe to assume Marvel will continue to outshine the competition when it comes to consistent, writer-driven storytelling. Of course, on the flipside of that coin, Marvel has been just as guilty as DC of changing artists midstream in an effort to keep titles on an acceptable publishing schedule, so there’s no reason to believe that will change anytime soon, either. As sad as it is to say, it looks like the horribly frustration visual and artistic inconsistency currently plaguing superhero comics is here to stay.

In general, though, when you consider Marvel’s track-record of long, memorable, writer-driven story arcs and then look at the sort of writers they are allowing to jumpstart new creative runs, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about Marvel NOW! Rick Remender, fresh off a groundbreaking Uncanny X-Force run, getting free-reign to tackle an Avengers/X-Men mash-up on an Uncanny Avengers title alongside artist extraordinaire John Cassaday? Sign me up. Ditto for Jonathan Hickman on New Avengers, Jason Aaron on Thor, Kieron Gillen on Iron Man (even if he is saddled with the insufferable Greg Land on art), Remender on Captain America and Matt Fraction on Fantastic Four. The most promising of all these might just be Mark Waid and Leinil Yu on The Incredible Hulk, as anyone who’s read Waid’s Daredevil knows he’s currently at the top of his already masterful form. All of these writers have proven themselves capable of incredible long form storytelling, and the prospect of them unleashing that talent on a franchise they’ve never before handled is an exciting one.


But what about the other major aspect of the Marvel NOW! relaunch – the actual nature of all these accessible new creative directions, and how they’ll interact as a whole? It’s here that I start to curb my enthusiasm for the entire Marvel NOW! endeavor. For far too long now, the Marvel Universe has been stuck in a perpetual cycle of crossovers driven more by the whims of editorial mandates and plot contrivances than any sort of organic storytelling. If you look at the specific plot machinations behind the individual events that have all led one into the next – from Civil War to Secret Invasion to Seige to Fear Itself right up until this latest Avengers vs. X-Men nonsense – far too often internal story logic has been all but absent from Marvel’s line-wide storytelling.

When talking about the modern Marvel Universe, plot developments seem to derive first and foremost from Marvel’s many creative summits rather than occurring naturally and logically from within a given crossover story. As a result, Marvel’s events have felt more like glorified wrestling matches than stories intended to make any meaningful statements on the overall universe or the individual characters. This aspect of Marvel’s line-wide storytelling in recent years is the reason I’ve mostly avoided their crossovers like the plague, encountering them only when I had to in order to enjoy a particular series.


All of this is a long way of saying that I’m cautiously optimistic about Marvel NOW!, which is far more than I could say about the New 52 when it was first announced. Many of the creative teams seem genuinely awesome and I’m confident most of these writers will be given a fair shake at telling a long, memorable epic with each title, even if I’m almost certain they’ll all get together periodically for one of Marvel’s trademark, totally contrived superhero clusterfucks. And at the very least, any publishing decision that gets Brian Bendis off the Avengers title and onto the X-Men, a franchise that has long been in its own right a convoluted clusterfuck worth avoiding when possible, is one I can get behind in some small part.

That's it for the time being. As always, thanks for reading and please spread word about the blog to friends and likeminded fans.