Marvel Penguin Picks: December 2024
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Ultimates by Deniz Camp vol. 1: Fix the World
They live in a world gone wrong. Where many of the superheroes that it was meant to have never came to be. They’re going to fix that and Tony Stark, Captain America, Doom, Thor, and Sif have been working to create a network of newly-empowered superheroes who are eager to undo what The Maker has done to this world. Except that there are plenty of powers – super, world, and otherwise – who don’t want that to happen and they’ll do anything to stop this new upstart band of Ultimates from achieving their goals.
The original “Ultimates” series from writer Mark Millar and artist Bryan Hitch was a hugely influential, and entertaining series that the Marvel Cinematic Universe drew upon at its inception. This new version of it doesn’t look to have garnered the same impact, but I’ll take the fact that the writer of “20th Century Men” hasn’t driven it off the rails yet as a win. Better still is that this volume also answers my question of “When and where the hell was the ‘Ultimate Universe’ one-shot from Hickman and Caselli going to be collected?” Putting it here actually makes a good amount of sense, so it’s genuine added value.
In the meantime, I’ll have to get around to looking at Camp’s “Children of the Vault” miniseries to see if he can tell a decent superhero story without overbearing long-winded pretentiousness. That one’s about Cable and Bishop dealing with the titular time-aged metahumans during the “Fall of X” and speaking of those fun-loving time travelers…
Timeslide #1: …this one-shot sees them teaming up to stop a time-traveling villain from ensuring that the X-gene never came to be at all. It comes to us from writer Steve Foxe and artist Ivan Fiorelli and isn’t just a random one-shot teaming up these characters for a story that will likely be forgotten soon afterwards. No, this is Marvel’s annual year-in-preview issue for 2025 that’s meant to highlight the stories we’ll be seeing next year. It’s basically a glorified preview reel with a story tying them all together that will set you back $7 for 56 pages. Nothing against Foxe or Fiorelli, but I haven’t heard of any of these one-shots being of much value beyond the hints they offer at stories to come.
All-New Venom #1: The “Venom War” is over and whether or not Eddie or Dylan won is still (thankfully) a mystery. Venom itself is still around, even though the identity of his host is a complete mystery. All the solicitation tells us is that it could be the journalist, the terrorist, the sidekick, or even… the mayor? Only writer Al Ewing and artist Carlos Gomez know for sure, and Ewing’s premise here implies that the time-travel story he’s been telling in “Venom” is going to be wrapped up there and this series is both “All-New” in story and title. The writer’s work on that series has consistently been the best part of it, so I’ve got no issue following him to this one to see what he’s got in store for everyone’s favorite symbiote.
TVA #1 (of 5): The tail wags the dog again as we get a new version of the Time Variance Authority that looks to have taken a lot of its cues from Marvel’s Cinematic (and Television) Universe. The TVA is starting to crack down on the proliferance of variants throughout the multiverse, and to do that they’ve gone and recruited other variants to do the dirty work: Super-Soldier Peggy Carter, Spider-Gwen, and Sad Gambit Who Has Lost Rogue (no, really). I kid, but this comes to us from one of the writers of “Loki: Season Two,” Katharyn Blair, along with artist Pere Perez. So if you like what was done there, and I genuinely did, then this may be worth a look. Sad Gambit and all.
Hellverine #1: Someone joked a while back that there are no new characters at Marvel, and if they are they’re just variants of Wolverine. Well, this new series from writer Benjamin Percy and artist Raffaele Ienco is here to prove them wrong: The “Wolverine” in this story is his son Daken, who has bonded with a demon his dad tussled with a while back. Now they’re trying to work together to fight evil, but they’re going to need some help first. Some “Strange” help *rimshot*. Anyhow, this follows the “Hellverine” miniseries which was apparently successful enough to greenlight this new ongoing series. Which is something that used to happen a lot back in the 90’s, but tends to not happen as much these days. It implies that Percy really did something right with that previous miniseries, so this could be worth checking out.
Sabretooth: The Dead Don’t Talk #1 (of 5): There’s a picture of an infamous crimelord from the 1900’s on the wall of a bar in New York, and the person in it is… Sabretooth? He’s been around as long as Wolverine, but just what was he doing at that time? Logan is determined to find out, just in case it may have some relevance to the present day. Marvel has been doing a lot of throwback miniseries from classic writers/creative teams to tap into the appeal they had back in the day. I don’t know if this actually qualifies, since it looks to have a split focus in the present day and the past, but if you liked what writer Frank Tieri was doing with Logan back in the early days of the new millennium, this may be worth a look. Michael St. Maria illustrates.
X-Men #’s 8-9, Uncanny X-Men #7: It’s been a while, which means it’s time for an inter-title “X-Men” crossover. Things are being kept to a minimum here as it appears that only “X-Men” and “Uncanny” will be participating in the “Raid on Graymalkin” as Rogue and Cyclops’ teams strike out to rescue a certain prisoner from what used to be the Xavier Institute, and is now a ultra-high-security prison. While this sounds like a difficult enough proposition, both teams have been at loggerheads recently, and they’re each mounting their own resume attempt. I’m sure that’s not going to end badly…
A couple months in and it doesn’t sound like anything from “From the Ashes” – the branding given to this new “X-Men” era – has done too badly for itself. We haven’t had a breakout title yet, but all of the individual ones sound like they’re doing all right for themselves. Will this take things to the next level? Probably not, given that two “X-Men” teams being at odds over a specific thing is something that has been done many times before. This still might be a good rendition of an old tune, however.
Alien: Paradiso #1 (of 5): The titular colony is the ideal vacation spot for intergalactic criminals with its temperature-controlled climate and white sand beaches. So when a couple of Colonial Marshals are sent here to bust a smuggling ring, they plan on taking their time. That changes when… well, this is an “Alien” comic, so you can probably guess what happens next. This is the first non-crossover “Alien” comic we’ve seen in a bit, coming to us from writer Steve Foxe and artists Edgar Salazar and Peter Nguyen. It all sounds remarkably straightforward and not unlike the kind of miniseries we’d see from the franchise at Dark Horse. The only difference is, and it’s not mentioned here (other sites have reported it), is that Nguyen is illustrating sections from the Xenomorph’s point-of-view. That’s unique, even if it does sound a bit gimmicky in the context of this mini.