The Marvel 52, Part Five: Marvel Heroes

Sorry for the silence the last couple of days. Busy busy. I'll have to do a project update sooner or later. Kill All Monsters is coming along nicely and I've been working on a short, prose story about an old, pulp character named The Purple Scar, but I could give you some more details about both of those.

Anyway, the last twelve titles in my Marvel 52 are the big guns.

12. The Liberators by Gail Simone and Colleen Coover



The Lady Liberators were introduced way back in Avengers #83 as a team of villains (of course) to fight those poor boys of the Avengers. They made sort of a comeback in recent years though as a heroic group when She-Hulk formed an informal team of superwomen to fight the chauvinistic Red Hulk in Jeph Loeb's Hulk. Then they got together a couple of other times after that in She-Hulk and The Mighty Avengers.

I'm all about the female superheroes, so it would be awesome to have a book where they could team up regularly. Maybe have a core team of She-Hulk, Valkyrie, Black Widow, and Hellcat with other women coming on for particular missions. Since that's sort of Marvel's version of Birds of Prey, it's unoriginal, but entirely appropriate to have Gail Simone writing it. And Colleen Coover draws Marvel women (and men, for that matter) like nobody else.

11. Valkyrie by Paul Cornell and Jill Thompson

I know there's a bona fide female version of Thor, but Valkyrie's been around a lot longer and has the benefit of not being exactly a female version of Thor. She has the whole, cool Viking thing going on without just copying him. I know Paul Cornell could do awesome things with that and Jill Thompson's got a great, fantasy style that would suit very well.

10. Runaways by Brian K Vaughan and Ben Caldwell

Vaughan has said that he always wanted Runaways to be a series that other creative teams could pick up and run with; that he wanted it to be sort of his legacy at Marvel. But though other creators have done pretty well with the concept, unfortunately no one's doing anything with it now. I'd correct that and bring back the writer who started it all. Ben Caldwell has a great, manga-esque style that's perfect for books about (and targeted to) younger kids.

9. Agents of Atlas by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk



Quite simply the most definitively awesome team book anyone's ever made in the history of comics. It was Jeff Parker's baby, so no one else can touch the writing, and though there have been a few excellent artists working with Parker on it over the years, Leonard Kirk was the first. I'd want that dream team back on it again.

8. Spider-Man by Phil Hester and Pia Guerra

Spidey is a character that I haven't been excited about since the '70s. Phil Hester could change that by bringing the same mix of high adventure and everyman troubles that he put into Firebreather. As for Pia Guerra (Y: The Last Man)... Why, oh, why isn't she drawing a monthly comic book right now?

7. The Fantastic Four by Brian Clevinger and Darwyn Cooke



Brian Clevinger's proven that he's not about to run out of wacky science stories for Atomic Robo anytime soon, so why not share some of that with everyone's favorite family of super scientists? And you know you want to see Darwyn Cooke cut loose on a series like that.

6. Pet Avengers by Evan Dorkin and Katie Cook

Evan Dorkin can write a damn good animal story. Not just a cute, funny animal story (though they are that, too), but a real story about animals you care about. I sort of want his Beasts of Burden partner Jill Thompson on this one, but I'm trying not to be completely unoriginal and Katie Cook's not only awesome, she also has a thing for Marvel and pets.

5. Young Avengers by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung



Okay, maybe I am totally unoriginal. But in my dreamworld, Heinberg would have time to write a monthly series about these characters he and Cheung made up. I loved it when they were on the book, but in other hands the characters haven't been as exciting.

4. Iron Man by James Turner and Nicola Scott

If I can't have Robert Downey Jr play Tony Stark right there in my comic, something else that could get me to buy it would be to have James Turner (Rex Libris, Warlord of Io) write it. Like all my favorite writers, Turner has an insane imagination and unrestrained abandon about letting it spill out of his head and onto the page. And he's hilarious. I'm not saying that it hasn't been this way lately, because I haven't read Iron Man in years, but in general the character needs some craziness. It should be a scifi/superspy comic and I'd love to see Nicola Scott ground something like that in reality.

3. Thor by Neil Gaiman and George O'Connor



I went back and forth about whether I'd prefer to have George O'Connor (Olympians) write and draw this one by himself. He's certainly got the ability to tell fun stories about mythological characters.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how amazing it would be to see Gaiman make Asgard as huge and epic as the Dreaming.

2. Captain America by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener

If there's something else Clevinger appears to like as much as superscience, it's WWII history. Not only could he tell some fantastic flashback stories to Cap's adventures in those days, he's also a guy who - like Brubaker - can let that time period continue informing the personality and choices of the modern Captain America. And why not let Clevinger's Atomic Robo cohort, Scott Wegener be in charge of bringing it to life?

1. The Avengers by Paul Tobin and Cliff Chiang



Paul Tobin's already been writing the best Avengers comic around for the Marvel Adventures line, so he should get his shot at the main book with one of the best superhero artists working today.

Art Show: Cleo and the Agent of Atlas

Cleopatra in Space



By Josh Alves. [Cleopatra in Spaaaace!]

Bob the Uranian



By George O'Connor.

Art Show: A City of Web-Foot People Built in a Watery World

Squid Attack!



By Lawrence Sterne Stevens. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Up in the Sky!



By Al Feldstein. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

After the break: Wonder Woman, apes, lots of robots, and space girls on Venus.

Elsewhere... Space Ninjas and Uranians

What Are You Reading?



In last week's What Are You Reading, I briefly reviewed Captain Long Ears and The Aviary.

Marvel Boy and Retcons



This week's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs is about retroactive continuity, "that controversial thing that happens when a character’s adventures have gone on long enough that they include embarrassing things that need fixing." As seen through the filter of Marvel Boy from Agents of Atlas.

Elsewhere...

Here's what else I've been up to online lately:

What Are You Reading?



Mini-reviews of Mystery Society, Perhapanauts Special: Molly's Story, and Agents of Atlas, Volume 3.

Prince of Persia
 


This week's Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs was about the Prince of Persia graphic novel. I was initially disappointed that it lacks the swashbuckling quality of the movie, but I learned to like it anyway.

Old Sinner



Scrooge's nephew comes for a visit in the 1971 animated special.

Welcome to Atlas

I couldn't be prouder. Thanks, Jeff!

Comics News: Infamous Fiends and Timeless Terrors

Polly and the Pirates, Volume 2



I was disappointed when I first learned that Ted Naifeh wouldn't be illustrating the second volume of Polly and the Pirates (due early next year) himself, but I can't stay that way when Robbi Rodriguez' stuff looks so nice. Comic Book Resources has the preview.

Aqua Angst



The Aquaman Shrine has a helpful, aqua-centric review of Brightest Day #0 and... well, it's not so bright.

...this is the perfect moment to scrape off all the sturm und drang that's been dogging Aquaman like so many barnacles over the decades(!), and return the character to the courageous, confident, and almost happy-go-lucky adventurer and protector of the seas that he used to be. I'd hate to see Aquaman be put through all this, brought back to life, only to go right back to being Mr. Mopey again.

Like the Shrine, I understand the need to deal with the Darkness That's Come Before. There are people who've been following the story for a while and want to witness the barnacle-scraping for themselves. Me, I'll be looking forward to when it's all cleaned off.

Colonials, spies (one of them a gorilla), Alpha Flight in Hell, a skull-faced dude, Mulder and Scully go to Barrow, and a man punching skeletons after the break.

Comics and Book News: Atlas, Avatar prequel, and Space Dock 7

Atlas



Marvel's rebooting Agents of Atlas again, calling it just Atlas now. I'm not so excited about the inclusion of 3D Man, but as long as it still has a talking gorilla, a mermaid, a spaceman, a super spy, a killer robot, and Jeff Parker's writing it, they can call it whatever they want. CBR's got an interview with Parker about the whole deal.

Avatar prequel



James Cameron's writing a prequel novel to Avatar to tide us over until the next movie. I suppose that's pretty cool, except that the plot sounds a bit over-ambitious to me. Avatar-producer Jon Landau described it as going "into much more depth about all the stories that we didn’t have time to deal with — like the schoolhouse and Sigourney [Weaver's character] teaching at the schoolhouse; Jake on Earth and his backstory and how he came here; [the death of] Tommy, Jake’s brother; and Colonel Quaritch, how he ended up there and all that."

Now, James Cameron isn't Matthew Costello, but this reminds me a lot of Costello's King Kong: Island of the Skull prequel novel to Peter Jackson's King Kong. That novel also tried to follow several different plotlines leading up to the movie (Carl Denham's, Ann Darrow's, and the guy who discovered Skull Island) and never did figure out how to merge them all together to tell a cohesive story. Which, of course, is because that was the movie's job. I'm not sure how Cameron is going to do that with Avatar either though and I'm skeptical.

Space Dock 7



I don't know anything about this except that it's coming in April and some of my favorite cartoonists are doing it (Grant Gould, Katie Cook, Otis Frampton, and Mike Maihack to be exact). I'm guessing it's a webcomic and with a name like Space Dock 7, it sounds pretty cool. The teaser page is here.

New Graphic Novel Day

I'm usually not very good with any kind of feature that has to be out on a regular schedule, but I've been wanting to try posting the promising new graphic novels that are coming out each week. This is based on Diamond Distribution's weekly list, so the caveat will be that these are books going into comics specialty shops on Wednesday. I'm not sure what kind of schedule mainstream bookstore distributors follow.

This week there are six that caught my attention:

Criminal Macabre: Cell Block 666 - The further adventures of Cal McDonald, one of my favorite paranormal investigators.

Dark Reign: Young Avengers - I like the teenage-girl version of Hawkeye. Not sure if she figures heavily into this or not, so I'll need to flip through it before I buy.

Incredible Hercules: Dark Reign - I've dearly missed Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente's awesomeness on this series since I stopped buying single issues.

Marvel Masterworks: Uncanny X-Men, Volume 3 - A great way to move one of the greatest runs of any comic ever from my storage boxes to my bookshelf.

PICKS OF THE WEEK

Usually I try to limit myself to one new book a week (with the rest going on my Wish List that I'm steadily working through), but I can't make a decision this week. Gonna have to get two:

Agenst of Atlas: Dark Reign



There are only two comics series that I still buy in single-issue form. I don't read them, but I buy them to show my support because they epitomize everything that's awesome about comics and I want more like them. Agents of Atlas is one of those (not that it did any good since Marvel cancelled it anyway), so it'll be nice to finally read the stories.

Atomic Robo, Volume 3: Atomic Robo and the Shadow from Beyond Time



This, coincidentally, is the other one.

Art Show: Fluffy, Surly, No Tail

I've gotten way behind on sharing cool art, so this week I'm catching up some with a series of smaller Art Shows.

Shark!



Don't worry, Diver-Man! That shark's just coming to help you with the octopus. Heh heh heh.

Artist unknown. [Admiral Calvin]

Mermaid



Artist unknown. [Never Sea Land]

Black Canary and Wonder Woman



By my pal Steve Bryant.

Los Agentes de Atlas lucha contra los Vengadores



By Humberto Ramos.

Space Quint



By Jessica Hickman.

Quote of the Week: The Worst Person That Has Ever Been Born

October took it's toll worse than I thought. I have a folder FULL of old quotes I never posted. Let's clear that right out...

As you all know, it takes me weeks, MONTHS , even years to get to commissions over email, and that makes me the worst person that has ever been born.... BUT!... If you catch me at a convention-Presto!-the commission appears right before your eyes! Just like David Copperfield, I reach behind your ear and say, "oh what's this behind your ear? Ah, it's a full color sketch of Death!". And then you cry.
--Ryan Kelly, on why conventions are the best time to ask for commissions.

George Lucas, Wes Anderson, Roman Polanski, Steven Spielberg, Pope Benedict, Miley Cyrus, me, Hitler, Dracula, Spongebob Squarepants, King Henry VII and Mr. Peanut will also not -- I REPEAT, [NOT] -- be directing the Avengers movie. All media outlets, please make sure to credit Topless Robot appropriately when you report on this amazing news.
--Topless Robot, on the "news" that Jon Favreau will not be directing The Avengers.

He’s just strutting down the street, singing his private themesong in his head ("Hawkman is swinging, Hawkman is swinging, Hawkmaaaaaan… Hawkman swinging") wondering if he should maybe undo another button.
--Rachelle from Living Between Wednesdays, on why Hawkman looks so distracted in this picture:



Margaret Wise Brown’s approach to the apocalypse is a minimalist one. Leaving only vague hints about the world in the wake of DR. MOREAU-style takeover by anthropomorphic animals, the slowly expiring narrator describes his deathbed — a seemingly normal bedroom and its mundane, but symbolically sinister furnishings.
--Ryun Patterson, making Goodnight Moon eighty times more awesome than it already was.

...remember when maybe you didn't get into that one college? Did they send you a personalized four-page essay on how you were super great, but they just didn't have room for you? Or did they send you a one-page "thanks, but no thanks, better luck elsewhere"?

Aha.
--Pimp My Novel, on why writers shouldn't be so offended by form rejection letters.

I’ve kept it rather quiet over the years, but I’m actually something of a big fan of Batman. I’d even go so far as to say he’s probably my favorite character not just in comics, but in anything, but even I have to admit that the fact that he is not a foxy lady luchador with an equally foxy sidekick named Esmerelda who fights crime in an outfit consisting of cape, cowl and bikini is proof that we are not living in the best of all possible worlds.
--Chris Sims, concerning La Mujer Murcielago.

Namora looks bored while fighting the X-Men, and if actually fighting the X-Men is so goddam boring, what’s reading about fighting the X-Men going to be like? Will you actually fall asleep, as Colossus has here?
--Caleb Mozzocco, on the weakness of the cover to X-Men Vs. Agents of Atlas #2.

This is not a moral dilemma. Kill someone for pay. They die, you get money. You are a hit man/woman. This is not a complicated story. This is not a nuanced question. What would you do? Well, I would not kill the person for money, for the same reason that if you offered me a million dollars today to go run over someone with my car, I would not do it, because I do not work as a contract killer.

(Also because I don't have a car.)

"But it's someone you don't know!"

You know what? Even if I don't know you, I would still not kill you for money. I know -- I am very generous that way.
--Linda Holmes, explaining why The Box may not be nearly as complex as it would like you to believe.

Elsewhere on the Internets...

Here's what else I've been up to online lately.

Five for Friday



Last Friday's assignment was to Name Five Of Your Favorite Hats Or Other Pieces Of Headgear Worn By a Comic Character. My answers were:

1. Bill the Cat's Billy and the Boinger's wig
2. Dr. Midnight's mask
3. Kroenen's mask (Hellboy)
4. Dr. Doom's mask
5. The Baroness' glasses (GI Joe)

What Are You Reading?

In Robot 6's weekly feature, I talked about first impressions of Al Williamson's Flash Gordan and Agents of Atlas.

Amazon Princess



I don't typically link to my posts on the Wonder Woman blog, but I can't tell you why that is. Recently it's been about Wonder Woman Reeboks, Wonder Woman Shelf Porn, and Katie Cook.

Horror Is...

Over at Alex Ness' poplitiko blog, I joined Alex, Mike Carey, Joe Monks, and Anne Freakin' Rice in trying to define what horror is.

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs



This week's column covers three convention comics: The Cowl, Super Maxi-Pad Girl, and The Visible Rooster Jack.

Jann of the Jungle turns down the Agents of Atlas

As if it wasn't enough to simply tell me that Jann of the Jungle (my new favorite jungle girl) was almost a member of Agents of Atlas (my favorite super-team), Siskoid's so awesome that he actually sent me the entire Jann sequence from What If...? #9. Which of course means that you get to see it too.





Thanks again, Siskoid!

Jungle Week: The Return of Jann

Temper Temple



By the Etherington Bros from their highly anticipated (especially by me) Monkey Nuts comic. I think my very favorite thing about jungles is all the hidden temples and ruined cities in them.

Jann: Agent of Atlas?



When I linked to those Jann of the Jungle stories the other day, I didn't realize that they were published by Atlas (which eventually became Marvel). And I certainly didn't know that Jann was this close to becoming a member of my favorite super-team, the Agents of Atlas. Siskoid did though, and he's got the story here.

Yet another reason for me to get the Agents of Atlas collection with that What If...? story in it.

And that's it for Jungle Week. Next week, I'll continue catching up from the Computerless Times by spending... A Week at Sea! Garrrr!

There is a (Seaweed) Monster at the gates!

"Still, they're better than GAARD..."

Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep! takes a look at some of Aquaman's classic villains and decides to stop making fun of Superman's rogues gallery.

I don't know though. I'd love to see someone take these guys and do something with them like Gail Simone did for Catman. I see about 50x the potential in Fisherman that I do in Toyman.

Why sword-and-sorcery Aquaman didn't work

My working theory that Aquaman is a better undersea fantasy character than superhero has at least one major hole in it: Kurt Busiek's Sword of Atlantis re-launch tried to do just that and failed to attract an audience. (Heck, I got tired of it myself after a while and quit reading.)

FictionMachine takes a look at the first collection of those issues and tries to figure out what went wrong. By the end of the essay, he decides that the whole fantasy angle was a bad idea to begin with, but I don't think that's it. I think he nails the problem right here:

In Sword of Atlantis the original Aquaman - Arthur Curry/Orin - has vanished, and the series is based instead around the coincidentally named Arthur Curry - who looks identical, wears the same costume as the classic Aquaman, but spends the entire book protesting that despite looking, sounding, acting, speaking as and having identical powers to Aquaman, he is in fact not Aquaman.

Busiek's story was essentially a quest story, with New Aquaman trying to figure out what happened to Old Aquaman. The problem is that we figure out where Old Aquaman is fairly quickly and the only remaining mystery is how he got there. Despite some very cool characters and beautiful art by Butch Guice, the direction of the plot wasn't strong enough to keep me reading during a time that I was actively trying to cut back on my comics spending.

Or maybe FictionMachine does have a point. He points out that Sword of Atlantis is specifically high fantasy. It's underwater swords-and-sorcery. And perhaps that approach is taking the fantasy angle too far. When I talk about Aquaman's being an "underwater fantasy" character, I just mean that his adventures should primarily be underwater and take full advantage of our lack of knoweldge about what the undersea world is like. Anything can happen down there and that's wonderful. It doesn't really need to be Conan underwater. I love Busiek for trying that out, but I'm considering it a lesson learned.

The future of Aquaman?

The Aquaman Shrine has scans of the Aquaman bits from Final Crisis: Secret Files. There's not much there except for a possible costume tweak and a desire to "make him look a little more badass," but it's all we've got for now.

Namor and ROM vs. the Seaweed Monster

Siskoid beautifully summarizes this glorious story (and also points out how dolphins are the SUVs of Atlantis).

So much fantastic art there. Atlanteans riding whale sharks and manta-drawn chariots. Wow.

Fish and ships

Though Namor's people prefer real animals in the ROM story, they've also driven fish-shaped ships from time to time. Comic Book Science notices that the US military may be taking a hint from Atlantean design.

Namora and the Agents of Atlas



By Rich Ellis.

Agents of Atlas and the New Nation

It's been too long since the Agents of Atlas mini-series. Their occasional appearances around the Marvel Universe have been awesome, but I'd completely forgotten about the idea that they're a bunch of good guys posing as a bunch of bad guys. They're the anti-Thunderbolts. Or the anti-Dark Avengers as it were. It makes more sense now that Marvel would launch their ongoing in the same, massive breath as Dark Avengers. (Not that I needed a logical reason for Agents of Atlas to be part of that launch; I'm just extra thrilled to be connecting the dots).

The Agents story in Dark Reign: New Nation is a beautiful piece of work. It's packed with stuff about the Agents' robbing Fort Knox and uncovering enough of Norman Osborne's plans that they want to know more. Ain't no doubt that an Agents of Atlas/Dark Avengers meeting is imminent, but even though the Dark Avengers sound lame (Iron Patriot?), I'd love to see Namora, Gorilla Man, and the rest of the guys be the ones to bring down Osborne. The story here does exactly what it's supposed to: gets me craving more.



Contrast that to the dreary, drowsy Secret Warriors story, which is nothing but Nick Fury reminiscing about Captain America for eight pages. No way I'm interested in an ongoing full of that kind of writing.



Or in New Avengers, if it's going to be more about the tragic love of Ronin and Mockingbird as shown here.



The Skull Kill Krew has a lot of life in it, but it's too '90s for my taste, what with its anti-hero whose arm turns into a giant gun and all.



I only bought New Nation for the Agents story, but if there's another one that gets my attention and makes me curious about the new series it's promoting, it's Greg Pak and Leonardo Manco's War Machine tale. I like both of these guys already and Pak has more than proven himself when it comes to bringing the awesome. Witness this short story in which War Machine has to fight remote-controlled polar bears.



If only I liked War Machine. But then, I wasn't any kind of Hercules fan before Pak got ahold of him either. My continued interest will be largely dependent on how much Marvel's charging per issue. I'll probably pick it up for $3, but I'm not going to four.

Edited to add: I meant to link to this interview with Jeff Parker about Agents of Atlas as long as I was talking about them, but I forgot. It's got preview pages from the new series, so you should go look.