There was lots of news and accouncements coming out of NYCC this weekend. Here’s what I found to be the most exciting, interesting, or enraging:
First on the list is Marvel’s X-Men panel. Marvel announced two new that really aren’t: X-Men Forever and New Mutants. The former is Chris Claremont getting to fulfill his fantasy of being the only X-Men writer ever. The bi-weekly series will pick up after the end of Claremonts run in X-Men #3, because what the X-Men really need right now is a title so encumbered by continuity that you have to have read comics from 15 years ago to know what came before. Does this sound like a plot point from a bad soap opera to anyone else? New Mutants picks up the adventures of the teen mutants team left off at the end of their original series in 1991. Brilliant, a teen mutant book that should be aiming at a teenage audience following up a series that ended before most of today’s teenagers were born! They cancel New X-Men at its peak, then cancel Young X-Men as soon as it starts being decent, and then they give us this? Who (besides Blair Butler) asked for this? And why the hell are they trying to time warp the X-Men back to the 90’s like it was a great period for them anyway?
In much better news, I’m actually excited about Fantastic Four for the first time ever. Marvel announced that Jonathan Hickman, quite possibly the next big thing in comics, is taking over the book (along with artist Dale Eaglesham) once Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch Conclude their run. Hickman made a great Marvel debut with Secret Warriors #1 and has already made a name for himself with his creator owned works, so I will be totally on board for his Fantastic Four run and you should be too. For a prelude, you can pick up the Dark Reign: Fantastic Four mini-series starting next month, written by Hickman with art by Sean Chen.- Vertigo announced plans to price several debut issues at$1, as an incentive to get people to pick up their monthly books rather than wait for trade. I don’t know all the economics of it, but I know a while back there was a bit of hand-wringing at trade-waiters amongst frequenters of Brian Wood’s forum (including Brian Wood himself) so this is a move that will surely be applauded. I’ll almost surely support it myseslf, as I love a cheap way to try out a new book.
- Marvel announced new plans on the digital front. First, they will release a handful of War of Kings tie-ins
exclusively via their Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited program. This is surely Marvel testing the waters to do this kind of thing in the future with much bigger events, and its a smart – if sneaky – way to get fans to give the digital format a try. I’m cool with this, but they really need to do something about that reader they use. Its just awful. The other part of the announcement was that they would be selling digital “motion comics” comics via iTunes, starting with motion comic adaptations of Astonishing X-Men #1-6 and an original Spider-Woman motion comics series by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev. Hey Marvel, you know what I’d like to be able to download from iTunes even more that “motion comics?” COMICS! Quit wasting time putting out stiff flash cartoons (which is essentially what they are) with terrible voice acting and start pushing the digital comics front forward instead of running in place. Its not original and its not wanted. 
Marvel also announced the cancellation of its Ultimate line and subsequent rebranding of it as “Ultimate Comics.” Brian Michael Bendis will continue writing Ultimate Spider-Man under whatever the new official name is with new series artist David Lafuente. Ultimate Spider-Man was a great comic at its start and became a good one again after it got over a kind of bland, slow period, but I’ll definately be checking out the new #1 if for no other reason than Lafuente’s awesome, perfect-for-the-book artwork. I just hope this reboot really makes the universe more new-reader accesible again, because if it draws too heavily on past universe continuity then all it is is a “LOOK! IT’S ISSUE #1! BUY ME” trick done on a large scale.
And those are all the stories a cared enough about the mention! I’m going to go drool over that Lafuente Spider-Man art some more now…
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