So, even though it’s the end of April and I still have to finish working on DC NEW 52 Month 29, I need to make a side-step for a quick moment or ten. Bear with me.
See, I decided that I would sample some of the ALL NEW MARVEL NOW titles and actually attempt to give them an honest and fair review. Heck, maybe I would even like them. However, before I can do that, I need to give a bit of back-story; especially since I have spent the last two and a half years weaning off most Marvel Comics. And there is a story to that too.
I have been collecting comics since I was about five years old. The first comic I can truly remember reading, or having read to me, was X-MEN #17(back BEFORE it was called UNCANNY X-MEN). Classic Lee and Kirby with a killer closing full page shot of Magneto that was seared into my head. My collection was scattered between DC and Marvel, with a heavy concentration on Marvels. I remember having some SUPERMAN titles and some BATMAN books and the occasional WONDER WOMAN. Most of the DC’s I owned were the oddball non-superhero titles like their war books, SEA DEVILS and RIP HUNTER TIME MASTER and CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN. Two of my favorites were short lived: SECRET SIX and THE INFERIOR FIVE. And I had a large collection and interest in CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED.
But I have to admit: I was a Marvel Zombie. And my collection was a wonderful place, filled with many key books of the Silver Age. Want a list? Well, here’s a partial list of the MINT CONDITION BOOKS(many back issues, some cover-less, were bought at a little hole in the wall used book store in Warren, Rhode Island): AMAZING SPIDER MAN from issue #55 to #110; FANTASTIC FOUR from issue #48 through #105; X-MEN from issue #35 until #67; CONAN THE BARBARIAN from issue #1 through #24; numerous copies of IRON MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, SUB MARINER, DAREDEVIL, and a host too numerous to list here.
Unfortunately, peer pressure came knocking at my door, both from my friends and my family, and I found myself trading in my love of comics for the allure of Warren Publications. FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, CREEPY, EERIE, and VAMPIRELLA took their places and became my monthly fix and numerous back issues were acquired(after all: the shop didn’t give me CASH for my comics-I got some $150.00 in store credit. Think about that: all those comics for $150.00 in STORE CREDIT…in 1973 dollars!).
But I couldn’t stay away from my Four Color friends for long. By 1975, I was back in the game and went back to the title Marvel title I loved the best. My first buy back into the game was GIANT SIZE X-MEN #1. Not long after, I found myself going back to the same place I had sold my comics and buying them back, along with filling in spots with recently released comics. My first five grabs were INCREDIBLE HULK #180 and #181 and AMAZING SPIDER MAN #121, 122 and 129(two copies actually, as I had forgotten I had previously bought one). At least once a week, my dad would drive me to the same place I had sold my books two years before, now under a new owner, and I would spend my credit and eventually my money, rebuilidng my collection. I soon discovered that this was a near impossibility as some of those books I had parted with for mere pennies only two years before were now hanging on the wall at prices I could never afford (I believe the CONAN #1 was priced at $65 dollars-in 1975 dollars!)
Soon I was back buying comics the way it should be: on a weekly basis. But the days of haunting the spinner racks of the local variety store, Lussier’s Variety in Fall River, Mass., were gone and so was Lussier’s. And the Adam’s Drugs in downtown Fall River, always a last chance stop to find missing books, especially CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED’s, had shrunk it’s comics section to that of a postage stamp with about 25 titles on the shelf at a given time. In their places, a veritable magazine “superstore”, Dwyer’s News Service, popped up in a strip mall in North Dartmouth, Mass. And it was there, every Thursday night, that my dad and I would travel, pick up the current issue of BILLBOARD MAGAZINE, the current issue of CIRCUS MAGAZINE (yes, the teenage had finally discovered rock and roll) and whatever new titles were on the shelf. This was in the beginning days of what became known as the Direct Market and also represented a time where the Overstreet Price Guide was becoming the industry Bible for collecting comics.
Anyway, I digress way off topic.
Since 1975, I have been an avid collector. I have lived through the collector’s boom where everything had a collectible gimmick, be it glow-in-the-dark, die-cut, or foil-stamped books with multiple covers that EVERYONE NEEDED TO OWN. It was a time when every person collecting saw their buying habits as future investments to guide them trough retirement, no matter WHAT the comic may have been. And I too jumped on that bandwagon, collecting old favorites like BATMAN and SUPERMAN but also titles like ROM THE SPACEKNIGHT and DAZZLER: the first book specifically GEARED at the Direct Market. We counted out pennies and waited to get rich. Companies came and went: Valiant, Eclipse, Malibu, Pacific, Americomics, Atlas, Blackthorne, Image. The rise of the Independent Comic, spearheaded, whether he liked to admit it or not, by Dave Sim’s CEREBUS, looked to give readers what they wanted with non-traditional superheroes and slice of life comics. By the early 1990’s, print runs of comics were in the hundreds of thousands. Life was good for comic dealers, comic publishers, and comic buyers.
But that all came to an end with the publication of SUPERMAN Vol. 2 #75. Published in late 1992, it presented the death of Superman: an event that rocked the industry and fans to the core. This was MAJOR NEWS, not just among comic fans but among the MEDIA in general. You could not turn on a new program and NOT hear about the impending death of the Man of Steel. And when it hit, that Wednesday of release, it was like a battleground with fans and speculators alike lining up to get their copies. How would you like that: newsstand edition, black bagged edition or the super rare PLATINUM EDITION? Fans wept, non fans opened their safety deposit boxes and retailers and rubbed their hands with glee as the cash cow had just rolled it and brought with it people who had never even SEEN the inside of a comic shop before. This meant revenue for the business and new collectors to feed their need for something new.
And then a villain by the name of Bane arrived and broke Batman’s back in a little epic called KNIGHTFALL. This meant a NEW BATMAN and, we were told, this was a PERMANENT CHANGE. Again, fans and non-fans flocked to stores to scoop up this rare commodity.
And when Bruce Wayne again donned the mantle of the Bat, and Superman came back to life, people realized that this is the world of the “Funny Book” and, unlike in real life, dead doesn’t always mean dead forever and change can always be reverse. And the boom became a bust. News fans turned their backs and tried to sell their new found collections, only to find they would be offered a fraction of what they paid or what they were worth (retailers DO need to make money. So it may say “X” in Overstreet or WIZARD but that usually meant 20% of “X”-AT BEST!). And longtime fans, the die-hards who had been here from the start of it all, found themselves feeling mighty jaded and many of them threw up their hands in disgust and walked away from the hobby.
To show how far things had fallen, at a CBLDF Auction I helped run in 1996, a PLATINUM SUPERMAN #75 went for $10.00(and I nearly got laughed off the podium when I presented it for auction!). Reports that nearly 66% of the comic shops in America went bankrupt during this time-period are reliable. Marvel filed for bankruptcy, their stock went down the drain, and rival Diamond Distribution and the single distributor days arrived by swallowing up Capital City, one of the Big Two comic distributors. Many of the remaining comic shops branched out, selling everything from MAGIC cards (tournaments became common in an effort to draw in business) to videotapes and games.
But those that survived did so because of a loyal fan base, a shrewd business model and the consumer’s need to be entertained. And having a slew of comic related movies like the SPIDER MAN, X-MEN and DARK KNIGHT series, and flat out blockbusters like THE AVENGERS, among others, certainly helped reel in business and maintain a core base.
Now where is all this leading to, you may ask? Well, in May of 2011, DC published FLASHPOINT: a five issue mini-series that promised to change everything in a flash. And it did. With a host of crossover titles and mini-series running around it, the conclusion resulted in a completely retooled DC Universe which jettisoned most existing continuity and christened itself as The New 52. Every DC Comic was cancelled and in their place, 52 BRAND NEW NUMBER ONES. DC’s longest running title, ACTION COMICS, ended with issue #904 and was replaced by a brand new ACTION COMICS #1 in September of 2011. Right behind it, DETECTIVE COMICS ended it’s run before it could reach issue #900.
As was expected, it became a jumping on point for some fans and a jumping off point for others. It became and still IS a topic of conversation, both pro and con. “How dare they throw away 75 years of continuity!” “But change is good and some of those characters needed to be spruced up!” And the debate rages on. I was one of those fans who sat on the fence and actually had considering completely cutting myself off from DC when the initial project was announced. I too found myself upset that the 75-year-old baby was going away with the bath water and had decided that I was done with the whole mess. But the more I thought about it, the more curiosity got to me and I dove in, to at least check out the first issues of all 52 titles and see what they were going to do. Some I liked, and some I could not stand.
And then, a little over a year after the first NEW 52 title dropped, just when it seemed that the world was going to be nice and normal, DC’s primary competition, Marvel Comics, decided that they were in need of a freshening up of their titles. And suddenly MARVEL NOW was born in October of 2012. In the process, nearly every Marvel Comic found itself renumbered from issue #1(except for some titles like DAREDEVIL, which had already reset it’s numbering when Volume 3 was introduced in 2011. Even long time titles like the FANTASTIC FOUR(611 issues) and AMAZING SPIDER MAN(700 issues) found themselves renumbered or changed(Spider Man became the SUPERIOR SPIDER MAN and Doctor Octopus became Peter Parker!). And this was the point that I said: “enough is enough!” and slashed my Marvel Comics purchases to the bone. To the bone meant less than ten titles per month.
While I didn’t completely agree with DC’s tactics of starting from the ground up and renumbering all their titles(and have major issues with a lot of their editorial decisions), I was MORE OFFENDED by Marvel doing the same thing. But, in most of the Marvel titles, a renumbering just meant a changing of a creative team, not a complete reboot. This was their way, in my opinion, of creating speculator interest by having a host of Number One issues on the stands. What I was doing was totally being done out of protest first and financial need second (not to mention the now almost 40 year old collection is getting hard to handle and store properly). So I have cruised along quite contentedly since then, reading a lot of DC’s (although Marvel still controls the market share of titles-something I am constantly reminded of with some notable glee by my shop owner) and enjoying myself. Heck-I’m enjoying myself enough to Blog about them monthly! And Marvel: well, they’re just there, with the few titles I buy being the bright spots in a cluttered landscape of far too many Mutant titles, Avengers titles and Ultimate books (how many folks feel cheated there? We’re destroying the Ultimate Universe…not really!).
And yes, I do read some of the “Indy” books out there, if you can consider Image (WALKING DEAD and STRAY BULLETS-is there anything else?) and Abstract Indys (well-I’ll give terry Moore his due and credit him for hanging in and creating great product!). So don’t get the idea that I have become the flag waving Poster Child for all things DC and no one else. I pick my battles and pick my favorites.
But with the All Singing, All Dancing, All New Marvel Now (hold up your hand if you are old enough to catch that reference) rearing it’s ugly head, I felt it was only fair to at least give them a shot: if only for one issue. And while I expect to like some, hate some and feel indifferent about some, I am again OFFENDED at the idea of RENUMBERING BOOKS YET AGAIN. While I will be reviewing many of these in the upcoming weeks and months, here is part of my gripe:
ALL NEW X-FACTOR: Did we NOT just END that book. Oh wait: new numbers, more value to the collector.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: Wait: we killed a title that was 700 issues old so we could make changes to the character and now that we have changed that character (SPOILERS!), we’re resurrecting the OLD TITLE!? Could we not have had SUPERIOR CONTINUE the numbering from AMAZING? It’s not like THUNDERBOLTS didn’t go from THUNDERBOLTS to DARK AVENGERS and back again without messing with the numbering. Oh…that’s right: THUNDERBOLTS DIDN’T have a MOVIE coming out!
CAPTAIN MARVEL: See my comments on X-FACTOR. Marvel just ended a series, also written by Kelly Sue DeConnick. I wasn’t impressed with it. We’ll see if that changes for me.
DAREDEVIL: This title just ended a tremendous run that solved many mysteries and left some others unanswered. What we DO KNOW(SPOILERS!) is that Matt Murdock has OUTED himself and moved to San Francisco(No...not that kind of outing!). So, this is a reason to renumber AGAIN(Volume 4?).
FANTASTIC FOUR: Wow! AGAIN-DID WE NOT JUST FINISH A RUN OF THIS BOOK? So, the cornerstone of the Marvel Universe now moves to Volume 3? That’s just plain ridiculous!
HULK: I can’t even count what volume THIS IS!
SECRET AVENGERS, WOLVERINE, WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN and X-FORCE: All titles which just finished runs. Just because there is a new creative team is NOT AN EXCUSE to do this!
So, as you can guess, I WILL have my pencil sharpened in the next few weeks as I dissect what’s ALL NEW with MARVEL NOW. Better wear a raincoat or an apron: it might get REAL MESSY!
Until then: keep watching for my NEW 52 reviews. They may not always be at scathing, but they will be pointed!
Thanks for listening!
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