marvel then

2012 heralded an irrevocable change in comics and superhero fandom. The Avengers had just become the biggest movie of the year and one of the most spectacular movie successes of all time. To tie in and capitalize on this major movie, Marvel decided to make an end-all, be-all blockbuster comic event that could entice movie fans to check out the comics, as well as tie a bow on all the major plot threads going on in the comics at the time. The solution was Avengers vs X-Men: a climax to the era that had begun with the twin releases of Astonishing X-Men and New Avengers.

In AvX, the two biggest franchises owned by Marvel, The X-Men and The Avengers, went to war over the return of the Phoenix Force, with the fate of the world in the balance. In this conflict, one of the major tensions is the perceived lack of political action by other superheroes on behalf of mutantkind. After a series of major conflicts, Avengers vs X-Men climaxed with the murder of Professor X by a Dark-Phoenix possessed Cyclops and the restoration of the mutant gene by Hope Summers, the Scarlet Witch, and The Phoenix Force.

Out of the chaos of Avengers vs X-Men came Marvel Now!, an initiative that shuffled the creative teams of all the Marvel books in order to get fresh takes. As promoted by Marvel in the leading months, the flagship title of this initiative was Uncanny Avengers which featured a new team of the biggest names from both the X-Men and the Avengers primed to face the biggest threats concerning both teams. In universe, they were called the Avengers Unity Squad. [Read more…] about Marvel Then! Uncanny Avengers by Rick Remender

The Morbius (2013) series seems to come a bit out of left field, considering that the last time we’d consistently seen Michael M. had been back in the early 1990s with Rise of the Midnight Sons. Receiving a hard push into his own series roughly two decades later with a new costume and a full superhero makeover may have seemed like an odd move because… it was!

Morbius isn’t a character who works particularly well as a superhero—he’s much better-suited for horror-adjacent solo series or guest spots in the books of more traditional heroes like Spider-Man. Yet Marvel NOW! was all about bringing old concepts into the modern age whether they liked it or not, so we ended up with a fairly unusual short-lived Morbius solo that sometimes works, though it often does not.

Covering Morbius (2013) #1-9 [Read more…] about Marvel Then: Morbius Moves Forward in Marvel NOW!

On May 6, 2015, the Marvel Universe came to an abrupt and dissatisfying end. There were a number of reasons for its ending (some of which require understanding the mystical implications of Donald Trump deciding to run for President of the United States), but one of them must be understood through the context of a work which concluded exactly one week prior. A book about destroying the universe and replacing it with a better one. I am, of course, talking about Aleš Kot and Michael Walsh’s Secret Avengers.

Ed Brubaker and Mike Deodata created The Secret Avengers as a black ops team of superheroes who would take on missions that the world must never know happened. Described as more of an action based book rather than a character one, inspiration for this book is often cited as Jim Sterenko’s SHIELD work. Other runs include work by Nick Spencer, Warren Ellis, and Rick Remender, who took the spy craft nature of the concept in different directions. Kot, meanwhile, had their own ideas. [Read more…] about Marvel Then! Secret Avengers – The Symbolic Value of Superhero Iconography in Relation to the World