Episode 1344 Talkback: Marvel Now Round Ten
Pants
Posts: 567
In this round of our Marvel Now coverage we discuss Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1, Uncanny X-Men #1, Nova #1, Secret Avengers #1 and Fearless Defenders #1. (1:35:27)
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Comments
Despite being a Marvel Guy at my core, I'd dropped a HUGE part of my Marvel books back during the beginning of Avengers vs X-Men. The $3.99 price tag on most of their series, combined with the ever-growing number of ancillary Avengers-related books became far too unwieldy for my wallet to contain. Granted, I didn't have any DC books cutting into that budget any longer, but still, it just became too much.
So, I dropped everything except Thor and Journey Into Mystery. And I've always felt like part of me was missing ever since.
I tried new series (and loved them) such as Hypernaturals, New Crusaders, and several others, but for as good as they were, the Marvel Universe just feels like home.
I've recently had a friend loan me a large portion of multiple issues of the Marvel NOW! series, and had an opportunity to begin reading them. I'm far too far behind at this stage of the game to try to catch up on the floppies, so I've resigned myself to trying to jump back onto books I missed like GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, and NOVA. Hickman's Avengers, I've been buying digitally, so I'm up-to-speed there.
Everything else, I'm hopelessly far behind. Too far, given the cost of trying to catch back up.
FEARLESS DEFENDERS was a series I wanted to buy because of my love of all things Asgardian, but didn't do so. But your discussion and reviews, coupled with the opportunity to read the first issue myself today, has brought me onto this with a vengeance.
I'm debating whether or not I should just jump onto the other series I want to collect again with the newest solicited issues and work my way back, or just wait for trades at this stage. Either isn't especially appealing.
Regardless, great episode guys.
I think it was in Comic Shop News, may have been elsewhere, I read something that said Misty, Valkyrie, Annabelle and Moonstar will be the core group and the remainder of the team will be rotated but will continue to be female characters and I thought that Bunn teased that we might see some of the former female Defenders make appearnces but may not be on the team, which would be cool to see Hellcat, Moondragon and I would love to see Tania Belinsky (the female Red Guardian) make her way back into the Marvel U.
Fearless Defenders #1, though, was one of my very favorites of the whole Marvel Now launch. I love it when characters as disparate as Misty and Valkyrie are thrown together, and this was done especially well by way of Bunn giving them such clearly defined voices and personalities (above and beyond the whole "this one talks fancy, this one talks street" thing that a lot of other writers may have just left it at). Really looking forward to seeing how Bunn brings the rest of the "band" into the book, and the role this archaeologist character is going to be playing. Added this to my pull list pretty much immediately after reading it.
I'm so eager to read Wolverine #1 (NOW!) as my first Marvel book in months.
Matthew
I like the idea that there was/is this black ops splinter Nova group. It not only offers up the possibility that Garthan Saal was a member, but maybe Rhomann Dey was actually on his way to Earth to get Jesse to help him with battling Zorr, but his injuries necessitated a change in his plans.
Just a random thought.
Still, as of yet I don't get the impression that the writers and editors really thought about this beforehand. So far it seems much more likely that Gillen used Magneto to break Cyke out in AvX Consequences simply because that was a cool thing to have happen in those issues. And now Bendis is having Magneto become a traitor because that on its own terms is a cool thing to have happen. I have been really, really liking what Bendis has done with the X-franchise so far, but these sorts of blatant inconsistencies were what turned me off of his Avengers stuff and I hope they don't become frequent in his X-Men work. As readers, we can always come up with our own explanations for these things, but it really gets disappointing when you begin to suspect that the writers and editors don't even notice or care about these contradictions.
Great episode, guys.
Also, I wonder if Pants is liking these Marvel books so much now simply as a direct reaction to being turned off by the changes in the New 52. I know the geeks say they aren't reading a ton of DC anymore but my LCS said that he is already in single digits on some of these Marvel Now books (X Men Legacy comes to mind) and he isn't in single digits on any DC book. He didn't know if it was a commentary on the quality of the books or the fact that Marvel puts out too much, too quickly, too expensive, with no clear schedule and DC books come out with a monthly schedule so its very consistent and the price point is better.
I suspect they are being too kind, given Bendis' history for ignoring events in other recent comics.
I have always been a big fan of the Marvel cosmic and I remember reading Nova, GotG and Star-Lord when they first were on the spinner racks. I still have my compete runs of all those titles.
The idea of a Black Helmet members of the Nova corp is not to much of a stretch because in the original run, one of Nova's villans Powerhouse turned out to be a member of the Syfon division of the Nova corps that had been brainwashed by another of Nova's villans. So it has been established that the Xandarian used had more that just the Nova corps so why not have a separate division of The Novas.
In GotG I loved how they stuck mostly to the origin of Star-Lord. Bendis seems to be using more of the recon version of his origin then the original from the 70's. Which makes more sense because things like being a member of NASA on a space station and the earth never getting beyond are solar system would not fit with the current Marvel Universe.
M
Magneto's powers didn't start acting up until afterwards when they tried to break Emma out. There has been a lot of debate as to whether or not Magneto would betray Cyke just because of him having broken powers. At the time I called double agent I just don't see Magneto siding with S.H.I.E.L.D. but recently we got our answer.