Making a note

[womzilla]

Marvel is about to quasi-reboot their line--the Marvel NOW project is a lot of cancellations and new #1s and a lot of shuffling of creative teams. (Matt Fraction writing Fantastic Four? Hells bells, of course I'll buy that.)

I just want to note that right now I am buying 14 Marvel ongoing monthly titles. One of them has already been announced as ending with no replacement, Kieron Gillen's brilliant Journey into Mystery; others have been restarted with creative teams I'm not interested in following (Brubaker's Captain America, Fraction's Mighty Thor). I'll check back in January to see how many I'm buying then.

I also note that right now I'm buying more DC main-imprint titles than I was before the "New 52" relaunch--18, up from 11 in August 2011--so it's quite possible I'll end up getting more Marvels after the relaunch; I just don't think it's likely. DC has actually shown some cleverness in recruiting new writers from the indies (Jeff Lemire, Josh Filakov), from outside comics (China Mieville), and getting good work out of writers who had been away (Paul Levitz, Marv Wolfman). I don't see Marvel doing that; almost all the writers who have been announced so far for Marvel NOW are already working for Marvel. (The one exception so far is screenwriter/comic actor Brian "Brian from The Sarah Silverman Program" Poesen for Deadpool, which is a great choice.)

Anyway, as I said, just leaving a record.

Comments

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Fraction's Casanova is extremely good, a complex psychedelia about multiple timelines and superspies and, well, just everything. And his run on X-men was first-rate; I've never read his Iron Man, and am mostly enjoying his Defenders, though it seems like it's moving more slowly than it needs to be. I agree that his Thor has not been of the first water, but I think FF will play to his strengths. I mostly liked Waid and Weringo's run on the series in the early part of this century, and I did like Mark Millar and Brian Hitch's short run, in part because I liked the way that Millar stitched together the narrative across three apparently unrelated titles (1985, Old Man Logan, and the "Masters of Doom" story). I have never warmed to Jonathan Hickman and skipped his tenure on the title.

Brubaker's Captain America is mostly interesting for Jack Barnes, but I've enjoyed it well enough overall. I seem to have a fondness for Cap and a wide range of tolerances for how he's presented. As to Criminal, I think that Last of the Innocents is probably the best work of Bru's career.