It's a Con-A-Rama Weekend Newsfeed! - Part One

[crimsonquill]

I'm not sure how many folks here are getting news blurbs from the two conventions going on this weekend (Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC and Wizard World Philly). So I'm taking a brief time out from my voice pack stuff and cleaning out my garage (AGAIN!  :wacko:) to update the folks here who care about this kinda stuff. Most of this is snipped from Newsarama, okay?

MARVEL NEWS - (6/16 thru 6-17)

A. The return of Marvel Comics Presents. The monthly series will debut in September, and feature 32 pages of story each issue, for a cover price of $3.99. Each issue will have 4 eight pages stories, including two serial stories that will run for 12 issues a piece, along with two 8-pagers – mostly stand-alone, but some will also continue in shorter serial arcs. "Some of these stories are by creators you know - Stuart Immonen, Chris Gage, McGuinness - and some are by rising stars. Plus there are two 12-part stories running through every issue. The first one’s by Marc Guggenheim and Dave Wilkins and tells the story of a secret that runs deep in the Marvel Universe. It’s about a covert group of superhumans that have been…let’s say, ‘carrying on the traditions of Captain America’. In a manner of speaking. In addition to the two big story arcs I mentioned, we’re opening up with a really cool Hellcat story by Stuart Immonen, co-written by his extremely talented wife, Kathryn. This is a story that Stuart’s wanted to tell for a long time, and people are going to be blown away by this. Stuart Moore and Clayton Henry round out the first issue with a really unusual Spider-Man story (accompanied by a page that shows dozens of spider-men from various alternate universes). After that, we’ve got a cool Taskmaster story - see what I mean about seeing characters you don’t usually get to see in their own stories - as he goes head-to-head with a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier. It’s a great story by M. Zachary Sherman with amazing art by Khoi Pham, from X-Factor. There’s a Namor story by Amanda McMurray and Roy Allan Martinez, a Stingray story by B. Clay Moore and Lee Weeks, Tom Cohen and Mark Parsons writing and Ed McGuinness drawing something I can’t talk about yet, Barry Kitson will be here, Man-Thing by Jai Nitz and Ben Stenbeck, Deadpool by Jesse Snider and Marco Chechetto, the Thing by Nelson - ’m excited to see Nelson writing and penciling a story again, he’s “just” been one of the best inkers in the business for too long…Outlaw Kid by Josh Fialkov, who wrote Elk’s Run and is one of the best up-and-coming writers in comics, with art by Chris Moeller who’s just incredible and I’ve been a fan of for years…there’s more stories than I can mention here. Plus MCP is firmly set in the Marvel Universe. You want to see what Stingray is up to? MCP. What Civil War meant to Man-Thing? MCP. There are some new faces in the crowd at MCP, but it’s all operating in the Marvel Universe we know and love.”

B. Annihilation: Conquest was up for discussion, with Rosemann asking the audience who read the original crossover. He talked about the challenges of equaling the first event, and plugged the sequel's prologue, out next week. Rosemann detailed the previously-announced creative teams on the Wraith, Star-Lord and Quasar mini-series, and the ongoing Nova title, which is also part of Annihilation: Conquest.

C. The Ultimate Universe was discussed next, with slides of Ultimate Silver Surfer in Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate Power and the upcoming "Death of a Goblin" story in Ultimate Spider-Man and "Sentinels" in Ultimate X-Men. Also announced was Ultimate Origin which is a payoff that’s been about six years in the making. Way back in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up #3, Peter Parker was warned by a de-Hulked Bruce Banner that there were layers upon layers in the world, and that he had no clue as to how everything - everything was connected. When asked about Banner’s comments in later years, Bendis, as well as Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada hinted and teased that the “origin” of the Ultimate Marvel Universe was rather different than that of the regular Marvel Universe, and that there were, as Banner had hinted, connections dating back years, decades, and more, and sometime, that story would be told. “Sometime” is now later this year as Brian Bendis will write the Ultimate Origin miniseries, with art by Jackson Guice. But it will definitely show how Nick Fury got to his place in the Ultimate Universe, which has not been revealed. It’s been hinted and tickled at through little vignettes here and there, but he’s got quite a whopper of a story. Wolverine will be the one that will have the most posts of “All right mister, let’s see what you do next issue, because that’s going to be my last issue unless you clear this up…” Yeah, it’s going to raise some eyebrows. Brian Bendis: "Jeph Loeb has a story coming up that is very reliant on this information being unveiled, publicly, so we came up with a plan where I would unveil the origin of the Ultimate Universe, which includes information you’ve never seen about nick Fury, Captain America, the mutant population, Wolverine, Charles Xavier, Magneto – every major player – the connections between Reed Richards and Peter Parker’s parents, connections between Captain America’s origin, and the other origins that involved the Super Soldier Serum, not to mention where the Super Soldier Serum came from…all of these things will be revealed in this miniseries. Not hinted at, not in that X-Files way where they promise that things will be revealed when they never have any intent to reveal anything – they’re really being revealed here."

D. Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin by Joe Casey and Eric Canete, coming in September. Brevoort: "In the vein of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, it's about Iron Man's first battle with arch-enemy the Mandarin."

E. The recently announced X-Men: Emperor Vulcan #1, of course spinning off of Brubaker's recent Uncanny work, was briefly discussed. Quesada then made the long-awaited announcement of what the big X-Men "event" will be - it's called X-Men: Messiah Complex, and will start with a one-shot by Ed Brubaker and Marc Silvestri. Newsarama has a talk with Nick Lowe up on the subject, and they showed interior art from the project by Billy Tan. "Wanda’s 'No More Mutants' spell made homo superior an endangered species and set a lot in motion. The Endangered Species one shot and back-ups crystallize what this has done to mutants. Messiah Complex, however, is the climax we’ve been building to since those dreadful three words were uttered. It’s huge. It’s dark. It’s intense. It will put the cap on the last two years of stories and set the stage for the next several years. Think of it as an “old school” crossover - no overarching miniseries, no external specials, aside from the launch, and all the action moves back and forth between the four core X-titles."

F. New Avengers #34 showed Captain America and Daredevil on the cover, as well as Luke Cage in the old silk shirt and tiara outfit and other oddties, touching upon the "Who Can You Trust?" storyline.

G. During the “Marvel Roundtable” panel at Heroes Con in Charlotte, writer Christos Gage revealed that, along with Mike Perkins, he’s taking a trip back to the world of House of M with the House of M: Avengers miniseries. Christos Gage was quoted saying "Bill Rosemann called me up and said Marvel had asked him to edit a new House of M miniseries, and he was interested in doing one called House of M: Avengers that focused on Luke Cage and his band of resistance fighters. The characters -- Cage, Iron Fist, Hawkeye, Misty Knight, the Sons of the Tiger, etc. -- were all ones I really liked, so I jumped at the chance...even more so when he said he had my old Union Jack partner, Mike Perkins, in mind to do the art!"

H. They announced that writer Peter David would be leaving the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man - and that the series itself will be ending as Amazing Spider-Man expands to thrice-monthly shipping. They also announced that writer Dan Slott would be leaving She-Hulk, but that series would be continuing back under the pen of... you guessed it...PETER DAVID!

I. When Sean McKeever announced earlier this year that he'd signed a DC exclusive, fans of the Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane series he has written for Marvel since its beginnings were distressed to think of the title in another writer's hands -- or, perhaps worse, ending altogether. Yes, It is getting a new writer, and it's Terry Moore.

[GhostMachine]

Interesting. But no word on the creative team for the new Captain Marvel series, or even a hint of when it will actually be out? Its about the only thing I'm looking forward to from them at the moment....unless they have a big event where its revealed Cap isn't really dead and Tony Stark gets a bullet in the head.

[detourne_me]

really excited about all the x-men news here!!

im also really excited to start reading Mark Waid on Flash again, and i'm hoping Eric Powell's art in action comics i think, will get me interested in Superman again.  besides,  its a bizarro world story, and no one can draw better 'goons' than powell.