Marvel Previews Picks: August 2019
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Menace Revealed vol. 2
It’s not that there isn’t anything uninteresting in these solicitations. It’s just that I don’t feel like giving this spot to the latest round of events, stunts, and next-volumes-of-series-I’m-reading that I’m expecting to be “good” rather than “great.” Which is why I’m giving it to Marvel’s reprint of the Dark Horse “Star Wars” comics that introduced the best new character to come from the publisher’s time with the license, Quinlan Vos. He’s an amnesiac Jedi Knight and a wanted man by many people for reasons he can’t begin to fathom. Oh, and while he’s lost his memories Vos still has his connection to the Force. So he’s got this great power at his control but no instructions or discipline on how to use it. Writer John Ostrander used Vos’ situation to tell stories with a more ambiguous morality than you’d expect to see in a “Star Wars” story and you get to see the start of that here. Admittedly, I haven’t read all of the stories in this collection, but when the other writers include “Conan” and “Jonah Hex” veteran and the Pillar of British Comics that is Pat Mills I’m pretty sure they’ll be solid reads themselves.
Absolute Carnage #’s 1&2 (of 4): While I like what Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman have been doing on “Venom” (even with the VERY dark vol. 2) it still feels a bit early for them to bust the series out into a big event like this. Granted, Carnage’s return was foreshadowed in vol. 2 of “Venom” and pitting the two symbiotes and their hosts against each other is something that we haven’t seen in a while. I also appreciate the fact that while the first issue of this event is an $8 book it appears to be 60 pages of story from Cates and Stegman with no backups. I’m sure this will wind up being a good read based on what the creators have done with “Venom” so far, it’s just that this is coming too early in their run for me to get properly excited about.
Oh, and there are going to be plenty of tie-ins for this event as well. The most notable for me being Absolute Carnage vs. Deadpool #1 (of 3) which doesn’t appear to be a proper follow-up to the “Deadpool vs. Carnage” miniseries from several years back. In that one, Cullen Bunn and Salva Espin had the Merc With a Mouth out-crazy-ing Carnage to satisfying effect. There’s no indication if Frank Tieri and Marcelo Ferreira will be following up on that as Deadpool checks into Ravencroft for this mini. Then you’ve got Absolute Carnage: Miles Morales #1 (of 3) where Miles mixes it up with former Venom host Mac “Scorpion” Gargan and runs afoul of the Cult of Carnage along the way. What’s notable about this tie-in is that it’s coming from the regular writer of Miles’ solo adventures, Saladin Ahmed, with artist Federico Vincentini along for the ride. So it’s possible that this may have some relevance to that title.
Marvel Comics #1000: Even with their numerous renumbering stunts over the years, it was still going to be quite a while before Marvel got to their first #1000 issue. Unless they pretended that the “Marvel Comics” series from the 30’s had been published monthly ever since then! That’s some dubious logic right there, yet it’s the only kind that will get the company a #1000 issue after DC published two of theirs with “Action Comics” last year and “Detective Comics” earlier this year. Determined not to be left out, Marvel is putting together theirs and… it’s kind of weird. While the $10/96p format isn’t surprising these 96 pages are being filled by one-page stories from the likes of Al Ewing, Jason Aaron, Neil Gaiman, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chris Claremont, Christopher Priest, Phil Lord, Greg Pak, and I haven’t even mentioned any artists yet. It’s an impressive assemblage of talent that’s going to add up to… something? The one-page-story format appears on the surface to be a stunt to allow for as many big-name creators as possible to contribute to the issue. What gives me hope that it’ll turn out to be more than that is that this whole project is being masterminded by Al Ewing, who’s writing multiple pages here. If there’s one person who can turn this stunt into a worthwhile story, then it’s the man who gave us “You Are Deadpool.” No, really. Go read it and then get back to me on whether or not you think he can make this gimmick work.
Major X #0: Reprinting “Wolverine” #’s 154-155 which featured some of the characters from Rob Liefeld’s latest Marvel miniseries. I’m only mentioning it here because these issues were co-written by Eric Stephenson. Which means that in August Marvel will be able to say that they’re publishing comics from the publisher of Image Comics. I can only hope that Stephenson will be able to take such an announcement in stride.
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Velocity #1 (of 5): The adaptation of last year’s great videogame, “City at War,” concludes this month and Marvel is wasting no time with a follow-up. Writer Dennis Hallum returns with new artist Emilio Laiso to tell the story behind the Velocity suit from the game while Mary Jane gets involved in one of Ben Urich’s investigations. It’s nice to see that this videogame spin-off title is working well enough to warrant a follow-up. Less nice is the sense of desperation that accompanies the new miniseries being started in the same month that the previous one ended. You can almost hear Marvel going, “THIS WAS A MODERATELY SUCCESSFUL ENDEAVOR! WE NEED TO FOLLOW UP ON IT RIGHT AWAY!”
Conan the Barbarian: Exodus: Marvel’s exploitation of the “Conan” licence continues apace, with a new miniseries starting this month, but this one-shot sounds promising. Not only is it a story of a young Conan trying to survive a particularly harsh winter, but it’s written and illustrated by Esad Ribic. While I can’t vouch for his writing chops, Ribic has a sense of scale and detail that will likely make this story worth reading for the art alone. There’s no indication where or when this one-shot will be collected at the moment. So let’s hope that Ribic comes back to do more so we can get a full volume of “Conan” stories from him.
Fantastic Four vol. 3: The Herald of Doom: The Fantastic Four have faced off against Galactus and Doctor Doom multiple times in the past. But have they ever tackled both threats at the same time? That’s the case here as Galactus is threatening the Earth once again, but Marvel’s First Family are having to deal with Doom’s new persona, Victorious, the heroic leader of Latveria who plans to lead his country and its people to a glorious new era on the world stage. I’m curious to see where writer Dan Slott is going to go with all this. I can’t say exactly how excited I am for it because the first two volumes are still in my “to read” pile as I write this. Still, it’s nice to see that this volume of “Fantastic Four” actually collects a decent number of issues (eight) in comparison to the first two (which only collected the first five and a wedding special between them).
Doctor Strange by Mark Waid vol. 3: Herald: The title is kind of a misnomer since this volume credits artist Barry Kitson as a co-writer on them. That said, Galactus pops up in this volume only to be banished to the far off mystic realms. While that might seem like a good thing since he won’t be consuming any more planets in the Marvel Universe, letting Galactus go unchecked is going to have some serious ramifications for the multiverse. What’s the answer to this? “Stephen Strange: Herald of Galactus” is my guess and I’m sure everything will work out fine with no complications whatsoever.
Immortal Hulk vol. 4: Abomination: No points for guessing which one of the Hulk’s rogues gallery is going to show up in this volume. The real question here is going to be “What happened to Rick Jones’ body?” The Hulk’s one-time sidekick has been dead for a while, but his remains have suddenly disappeared. Who did it and why? That’s what Al Ewing and Joe Bennett are going to try and answer here in this latest collection of issues. Fun Fact: The first issue in this collection outsold the most recent issues of “Batman,” which may have contributed to getting writer Tom King kicked off that title!
Domino: Hotshots: I don’t know how Gail Simone and David Baldeon’s “Domino” series got a miniseries reprieve, but I’m glad it did. “Hotshots” has Domino, along with her friends Diamondback and Outlaw, getting involved in an international conflict that has also drawn Black Widow and Deadpool into the fray as well. That’s just the tip of the iceberg as the thing the nations are fighting over might cause things to go a little cosmic in the end.
Uncanny X-Men: Wolverine & Cyclops vol. 2: And with this, the Matthew Rosenberg era comes to an end. Is this a good thing? We’ll find out along with whether or not his story winds up being a proper one or just an extended exercise in deck-clearing ahead of Jonathan Hickman’s relaunch. Which I’ve got some good news to report: It looks like Hickman will be writing “Uncanny” or whatever the flagship “X-Men” title winds up being after his two miniseries are done. So now I’m more optimistic about his new direction for the franchise since he’ll be sticking around to demonstrate how the ideas from “House of X” and “Powers of X” are supposed to work in an ongoing “X-Men” title.