Marvel Universe

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Back with a Hat Trick of series with the word 'New' in them. All of them subpar. And a forgettable oneshot.

Namora. A 2010 oneshot. Part of the 'Women of Marvel' series they did that year. Namora helps some Atlanteans relocate. Absolutely nothing memorable here. But nice Sara Pichelli art.

New Exiles. Back in 2003, Judd Winick started a fantastic series about a dimension hopping super team. After awhile he handed the writing duties over to Tony Bedard, continued the series almost as excellently as Winick had. Then Claremont took over, and in about a year he managed to drive the book to cancellation. Claremont then duped Marvel(or blackmailed) by suggesting the book hadn't failed because he was an atrocious writer, but because the series had reached 100 issues. So they rebooted it for him. And this was the result. It lasted 18 issues and one annual. Some of the alternate worlds/heroes he came up with werent bad. But his damnable dialogue and his insistence on favoring his fave characters(Chris, NOBODY gives a shit about the Betsy Braddock/Slaymaster arch rivalry that you wrote back when you were twenty years old. Stop trying to make it a thing.) Ugh. At least I got through it. It wasn't as bad as his FF run anyway.

New Invaders. The two issues, 7 and 9, I was missing of the short lived 2005 ongoing. Tried to revive all the Golden Age Invaders in a modern setting, fighting modern day terrorists. Who ended up being pastiches of GA villains anyway. One of the worst series Marvel has ever done.

New Mutants: Truth or Death. A 3 issue mini from 1997 written by Ben Raab. Wretched boring writer. How the eff he got tapped to do so many Marvel books in the late 90s I will never understand. He must've fingered Harras' butthole jussssst right. Anyway, the original New Mutants travel forward thru time to meet their older (1997 era) counterparts. Illyana and Doug find out they're dead in the future. And then Mikhail Rasputin shows up to "save" his sister from the Legacy Virus before she gets it. It's just a really limp series from a limp decade. The only thing it made me think about is looking up Douglock on wiki to see what happened to him.

Anyway, that batch of books was pretty much suck. More 'N's on the way, New Teen Titans, New Warriors, and lots of stuff with 'Night' in the title somewhere.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

And onward. And yes, I know Teen Titans aren't Marvel, but I don't care. Clone Wars isn't a movie and y'all insist on jabbering about it in the movie section. Blow.

New Teen Titans. Technically, it's Tales of the Teen Titans. I finally after all these years read the end of 'The Judas Contract'. I reread the 2nd and 3rd parts before reading the final chapter in the Annual. I also read issue 50 which was Donna and Terry's wedding. I do believe it's the first super hero wedding that went off without any villains attacking. Imagine that. A full issue devoted to a normal wedding.
New Warriors. This is the 2005 mini series where the team became a Reality Show. I'll admit I at the premise back when it first came out. But this series by Zeb Wells and Skottie Young is quite hilarious. The Warriors do battle with Red Ghost's Super Apes(sans Red Ghost), a robot Terrax built by Albert Einstein and DaVinci robots, and other oddball D-list villains. Highly recommended.

Nextwave. Always hilarious. Always.

Nick Fury's Howling Commandos. The premise of this sounds dumb as shit. Marvel's 70s monster characters such as Frankenstein, Living Mummy, Werewolf by Night etc, get revamped and repurposed as an elite SHIELD unit. But it was written by Keith Giffen so I figured if anybody can make that work, Giffen could. As it turns out, he CAN'T make it work. The art was atrocious, the dialogue disjointed. It was an ongoing that only lasted 8 issues. I only have the first four. And I could only muscle through the first two before I gave up. Yuck.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

And more!

Nightcrawler. The 4 issue mini from 2002. It was during Kurt's Priest phase(and the ugly Austen uniform phase. Blleccch.) Kurt gets involved in takin down coyotes and slave traders in Brooklyn. Ultimately he realizes nothing he does matters. Kinda dreary.

Nightcrawler. The final three issues of the 2006 12 issue ongoing. I thought I had read the previous nine, but now I think I may have waited until I found these final issues and now they're buried in storage somewhere. Oof. Anyway, it's a pretty good series by Robert Aguirre-Sacasa and Darrick Robertson. It's too bad it didn't last longer than 12 issues.

Nighthawk 1. First of a 3 issue 1998 series. Kyle Richmond wakes up from a years long coma(I don't know what his previous appearance was, but he "died" in it.) Anyway, Kyle now has the power to "see" crimes before they happen, so he goes around beating up "innocent" people and gets into a fight with DD over it. And Mephisto is involved. Eh. I wouldn't mind finding the other two issues.

Night Thrasher 19. An issue of his ongoing. 90s dreck. But nowhere near as awful as...

Nightwatch. Bwa hah hah! Oh, how awfulsome your writing is Terry Kavanagh!! When people ask why the 90s sucked, point them to this series. It's only issues 9 and 11 of the 12 that escaped, but they're enough. Woof!!

[RoIIo Tomassi]

After reading those excellent Northlanders books, I then return to this. Errrch.

Nova. A couple issues from his 18 issue series from 1994. And a couple from the mere 7 issue 1999 series. Did you know Rich tried to commit suicide in the final issue of the '94 series? True story. He had lost his Nova title/powers to some alien named Garthan Saan and missed being Nova. So he jumped off a building. I guess he was trying to kickstart his powers like Night Thrasher did in New Warriors 1, but still, he flung himself off a building.
The '99 series was by Erik Larsen and didn't get a chance to get going. But it's funny how Larsen "reset" Rich's status quo by breaking up the New Warriors and ending his romance with Namorita in the first issue, and by the sixth issue, the New New Warriors series had started up and he had to un-retcon a bunch of stuff. He also made fun of the fact, on a slightly meta level, Rich was wearing two different uniforms in the two series.

NYX: No Way Home 6. Finally found the last issue of the second NYX mini. Wow. What an anticlimactic letdown.

The No-Prize Book. A oneshot from 1982 that collected all of Marvel's major continuity gaffes in a humorous way. Stuff like Doc Ock calling Spidey Superman or Cap's shield getting vaporized and then him having it a few pages later. But that was back when there was only 20 years of continuity and the goofs were manageable.

Next, I'm skipping DC's 1,000,000 issues and jumping into a bunch of Outsiders series. I'm just not in the mood for any Grant Morrison shroom induced chicanery.

[Diabolical]

NYX: No Way Home 6. Finally found the last issue of the second NYX mini. Wow. What an anticlimactic letdown.

They really killed the possible franchise with that one.
I really liked the characters and story in the first NYX.

[anarky]

So, Age of Ultron starts with Ultron already having taken over the world and most heroes being dead, and the solicitations have already spoiled that time travel will be the way everything is corrected, but perhaps not quite right.

Jesus, didn't Marvel just more or less reboot last year? And what percentage of their big crossovers involve dystopian worlds that are fixed with time travel or something very similar to put everything almost exactly back to normal? (I added the "something very similar" bit because that's also essentially what Infinity Gauntlet did as well, though without time travel technically being involved, IIRC.)

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Infinity Gauntlet/War/Crusade/Abyss were fixed with magic beans.

Apart from AoA what other dystopian future Events have there been? I suppose you could finagle Inferno in there if you cast a wide net as to what constitutes "dystopian future".

[Diabolical]

Marvel Zombies and Marvel Universe Vs Punisher/Wolverine/Avengers could count...or they could also be considered alternate dystopian present(s).

X-Men also had Days of Future Past and Bishop's future.

[anarky]

X-Men also has Cable's future, which may or may not be Bishop's or Days of Future Fill-in-the-Blank.

House of M also comes immediately to mind. I didn't say "dystopian future." I said "dystopian worlds." Given the retcon, Onslaught could count, as well.

[anarky]

So, wow, this sure was underwhelming. "Now our digital comics have music!" Even worse is the announcement of free first issues... through Tuesday night. So, you apparently just have to luck into checking them out now? Shouldn't first issues always be free if that's a financial possibility--I'm talking only from a marketing standpoint here?

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I already have those First Issues (I have no idea what the 700 1st issues are, but I'm fairly certain the odds are in my favor regarding my original statement).

And I can make up my own playlist, thankyew. (Troofs be told, I prefer reading sans distraction. Including music.)

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Syndicated Opinion Columnist Leonard Pitts gives good Nerd by referencing a 1987 Marvel Graphic Novel, Emperor Doom in his latest Op-Ed piece.
Nay, more than references. He makes it the center point of his argument. More people should couch their arguments with Comic Book parables.

[anarky]

My copy of Hawkeye Vol. 1 should arrive by Tuesday.

I'm hearing insanely good reviews from very disparate quarters here. Looking forward to it; if it lives up to the hype, it could undo fifty years of shitty Hawkeye stories.

[anarky]

Only three words apply here.

WHAT. THE. FUCK?

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I was gonna post that in the "1990 Predictions Topic" or whatever it's called.

You honestly couldn't have made up a more bizarre "story" if you tried. And technically doesn't Todd still own 50% of Angela? Or has that been further rectified?