Panel detail from Contest of Champions #1. Art by John Romita Jr. Marvel Comics.

Podcasts: The Birth of Marvel Crossovers Explored in 'Heroes Punching Each Other'

Panel detail from Contest of Champions #1. Art by John Romita Jr. Marvel Comics.

Aw, chin up, Falcon! It's time for the latest episode of Giant Size! On this show we start with the original Marvel crossover - the Avengers/Defenders War - and boogie on down into the 1980s. This is the first of a multi-part series where we discuss some Marvel history as well as which crossovers are still worth reading and which ones changed the Marvel Universe forever!

Listen along here or subscribe to Giant Size via iTunes (or your favorite Podcast aggregator).

Podcasts: Marvel Slate Explored in "Permission to Kill Thanos"

Marvel finally formally announced all of those long-rumored new films they've been circling - The Inhumans, Black Panther, Captain Marvel (not in that order) - and gave us a timeline for stuff like Doctor Strange, Captain America: Civil War, and Avengers: Infinity War. In this episode of Giant Size, host Moises Chiullan and myself go after the starting points for people interested in these characters and storylines. We also dust off an interview with Captain Marvel writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, who discusses the importance of heroes like Carol Danvers.

Listen along here or subscribe to Giant Size via iTunes.

The conversation continues directly into Infinity Gauntlet spoiler territory in an episode of Test Pattern. Moises and I talk about where the line might be drawn between Avengers 3 and 4 and why the Marvel announcements draw more optimism than the Warners/DC announcements.

Listen along here or subscribe to Test Pattern via iTunes.

I Want My Marvel NOW: Uncanny X-Men #1, Secret Avengers #1, and Fearless Defenders #1

Uncanny! Secret! Fearless! That's a lot of leading adjectives; some carry more weight than others. Uncanny is, of course, the X-Men legacy title (not to be confused with the title X-Men Legacy). Secret Avengers is a book that's been riding the brakes since its inception, switching writers several times and suffering the burden of being a "sidebar" for multiple cross-overs. Fearless Defenders is yet another revival of the Defenders team, hot on the heels of Matt Fraction's version (which was a sales non-starter - but this brand is pretty much always a sales non-starter).

Cover to Uncanny X-Men #1, art by Chris Bachalo. Marvel Comics.

Uncanny X-Men #1 is more or less a spin-off from All-New X-Men, the other X-book by writer Brian Michael Bendis, and the more satisfying one, to be honest. We're still dealing with the aftermath of AVX, which saw Cyclops committing an act so heinous, he's been ostracized by (most) of his fellow X-Men. Bendis is casting him as a reckless mutant revolutionary leader, snapping up mutants as quick as they appear for the greater good of...something.

Scott's vision of what it means to be an X-Men isn't exactly clear to me. He seems defined by not wanting to be either Professor X nor Magneto, but what does that mean? What's the middle ground? Bendis lets us know (in All-New, not here) that Scott's building of a small army is an attempt to redeem himself, and the first issue reveals a major stumbling block in that plan.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? Too many X-Men books! Right now, this is my third favorite after Wolverine and the X-Men and All-New, so I can't guarantee that I'll stay with this one. To be honest, though not a bad book, I'm not terribly interested in Cyclops or the band of angry mutants he's surrounded by (Emma Frost, Magneto, Magik).

Cover to Secret Avengers #1, art by Tom Coker. Marvel Comics.

I think writer Nick Spencer may be on the cusp of being a Next Big Thing, but Secret Avengers #1 shares some of the problems I have with his creator-owned book Bedlam, and it's clarity of storytelling. Reading Bedlam, I thought it was just my comprehension skills being called into question. Now I suspect that Spencer isn't always a crystal-clear communicator. He's good with characters and his books feel dense, but the finer points of the plot get muddled in my head. If you caught me right after a Spencer book and quizzed me on what I just read, I would probably fail.

Secret Avengers #1 returns the title to being a full-on espionage book, in which various Avengers are recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. to handle missions so precarious that they have to have their memories wiped upon successful completion. The first issue throws Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Nick Fury Jr. (as I'll be referring to the Samuel Jacksonized Fury from here on out) into a case involving a mystic cult.

It's funny - I read this month's Avengers Assemble the same night as Secret Avengers, and both books had Hawkeye and Black Widow going on secret missions away from the Avengers team. Assemble's story was quick and basic; Secret's felt edgier and more convoluted. Immediately after, I thought Secret was the superior of the two, but if you asked me right now, I could tell you exactly, beat-for-beat, what happens in Assemble. I can't do that from memory for Secret. Take that as you will.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? Ehh, no. It has its audience, though, and it's nice to see the book swing back into a distinct spy flavor of Avengers that's different from the flagship book.

Covert art for Fearless Defenders #1, art by Mark Brooks. Marvel Comics.

We love B-movies, but is there such a thing as a B-comic? One you feel a little guilty for enjoying? Fearless Defenders #1 is a an action ride that really exemplifies how comics aren't just the writing or just the art, but an overall package of all that plus storytelling plus concept that add up to one unique experience. Cullen Bunn and William Sliney have turned the deadest property of the Marvel NOW line into a scrappy underdog of a book.

I don't know much about Misty Knight, but she's appealingly tough and she has a golden cybernetic arm. Valkyrie is a Defenders mainstay from way, way back, and has had a little more exposure over the past few years during Fear Itself and its extended epilogue The Fearless. The two ladies team up here to fight re-animated Viking corpses brought back to life by the song from a mysterious artifact.

It ain't Maus, but it's thrilling in its own slam-bang way. Bunn's work feels refreshingly pressure-free, not trying to stand out as the Most Important Marvel U Must-Read, and Sliney's thick linework and mastery of action sequences display a foundation in simple cartooning that's a welcome change from Marvel's typical well-rendered talking heads.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? Lord help me, yes. This is my new guilty pleasure book - the one I will recommend while sheepishly dragging my toes on the ground. I hope it doesn't let me down.

I Want My Marvel NOW: Thunderbolts #1, Avengers #1, Cable & X-Force #1, and Avengers Arena #1

Well, it couldn't last forever. As much as I'd been enjoying the Marvel NOW debuts overall, there's been another dud dropped into the line, to join the ranks of A+X at the bottom of the heap. While I can't see A+X really getting any better, due to it not having a direction or monthly creative team, Thunderbolts, by writer Daniel Way and artist Steve Dillon, still has the potential to climb up from the bottom of the books.

The problem is in the first issue's execution, not in the concept. General "Thunderbolt" Ross aka Red Hulk recruits a team of Marvel's most notorious killers - The Punisher, Deadpool, Elektra, Venom, and a purple-haired mystery member. And that's it. That's the first issue. Basically, it's a weak extrapolation of the cover art.

Lack of conflict equals lack of drama, and Thunderbolts #1 is conflict-free. Ross shows up, usually calmly negotiating during the middle of a firefight featuring whoever he's trying to talk into joining him (a visual gag that never works here). They join him, and the issue ends. There's almost no world-building beyond perfunctory introductions of the characters on the cover, and certainly no clue at all as to what kind of book this is going to be in the future (a violent one - but then what?).

Hopefully, it's going to be a better book than its debut. While the first issue might stink, it stinks because it doesn't do anything. The good news there is that Thunderbolts could improve simply by doing something. I expect it to gear up over time now that the introduction is out of the way, but, really, I can't remember the last time I found the first issue of a team book so dissatisfying.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? Not unless I hear that Thunderbolts has really kicked it into overdrive. I need drama.

I've been an Avengers fan for a long time, and the Avengers comics I prefer are the ones that really allow for a lot of the team's personality to shine through. I like banter and interplay and inter-personal team soap opera stuff with these guys. One of my favorite Avengers writers of the past was Steve Englehart, who was good at finding a balance between the superhero fights and the smaller personal conflicts. I'm not as big on the book when it's threat-driven, where I feel like a lot of the team's interaction are defined by their abilities instead of their personalities, and this is where Avengers #1 lets me down.

New writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Jerome Opena are working in a "widescreen" cinematic style for the book, and tonally, it's pretty interesting. It really does feel big, in a way that most of the Marvel NOW books don't, and it sets up things that you can already tell are going to require a little patience to see through to the end. Hickman is known for his long-term planning on books, but, to me, it's also his downfall as a writer because individual issues always feel (and here comes the bad word) decompressed. I always feel like I can read them in a matter of minutes, and I rarely feel like I got any kind of a story with a beginning, middle, and an end - I just got a chunk of something.

With the promise of a massive 18-member roster of rotating sub-teams, I'm pretty much guaranteed to not see the kind of personal politics I enjoy in Avengers. There are going to be adventures, probably really good ones, on huge cosmic canvases, built around Hickman's big ideas, but little apparent room for soap opera. And that's fine, I guess; I can't ask everyone to write their books just for me.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? I will probably "trade wait" this one, and get the first arc when it's all collected. It'll probably be a more satisfying read in that form, and if I like it (and I sort of suspect I will), then I'll be back for more.

Are you a Cable fan? I'm not, though somehow I've collected a lot of stuff with Cable in it over the years. Sometimes X-Men books are like barnacles on the ship of our comic book fandom. We travel through the waters and we end up collecting this stuff, whether we really want to or not. Ah, analogies.

Anyway, Cable & X-Force #1 (Dennis Hopeless/Salvador Larocca) sees the militant mutant leading some kind of secret strike force that manages to piss off the Uncanny Avengers (does the team actually call themselves that, and, if not, how do they distinguish themselves from the "real" Avengers?) and Cable's daughter Hope (who is still dealing with the aftermath of AVX , fallout from a book I never read).

I found it completely serviceable, and your mileage may vary depending on your love of Cable. Oddly, it's another first issue in Marvel NOW (like Fantastic Four), where the lead finds out he's really, really sick and doesn't know how to deal with it. That fuels a lot of the story, along with Hope trying to figure out if there's a place for her on her father's side. I got the impression that a greater working knowledge of what's been going on with these characters would've helped a lot. In some ways, #1 felt like it could've been #19 or so of a book that wasn't bad, but was barreling along with its own story.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? This isn't a bad book, but no. If you have nostalgia for the original X-Force or a healthy love for Cable, then you'll probably like it just fine.

Also from writer Dennis Hopeless is Avengers Arena #1, an in-name-only Avengers book that sees a bunch of the more recent teen heroes of the Marvel U thrown onto an island and forced to kill each other by the mad gamer Arcade. Yes, it's a lot like The Hunger Games in concept, and if Hopeless thinks a quick verbal reference will let him off the hook for such a blatant swipe at a pop culture phenomenon, it doesn't.

Imagine for a second you're Christos Gage, and you've created a bunch of brand-new characters for Marvel. They get their own monthly, Avengers Academy, and build a small, but loyal, fanbase over time. Sales can't support the book, and the writing is on the wall, but even if the book has to be canceled, Marvel now has a half-dozen new interesting characters to play with. They thank you by handing those characters over to Dennis Hopeless to kill off one by one in Avengers Arena.

In that way, Avengers Arena is an almost brutally disrespectful book - a garbage bin for characters that Hopeless has no creative attachment to, in the service of a stab at a fraction of the Hunger Games audience. It's cynical and gleeful in its cynicism. In the press Hopeless has done for the book, he's laid out his long term plans for eventually killing all but one of the teenagers within its pages by the time he's through. I'm sure it will be a wild ride, but is this the best use for these new characters? Wouldn't it make more business sense for Marvel to cultivate them instead of cropping them?

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? Yes. Because even though I've spelled out my knee-jerk thoughts on the book, it's fascinating and too early to tell if its a fascinating trainwreck or fascinating experiment. I kind of need to find out, and, in that way, Avengers Arena #1 is a rousing success, albeit one with a repulsive core. I'm curious to know how I'll feel about this book three or four issues after this and there's only one way to find out. Gotta read it.

I Want My Marvel NOW: Fantastic Four #1, Avengers Assemble #9, Thor #1, and the X-Men!

It was a huge day for Marvel NOW today, as six titles came out under the "reboot that isn't a reboot" banner - four all-new books and two jump-on issues of existing titles. You can read about the previous Marvel NOW releases here. To recap, until today, I liked Deadpool the most, and even after today's haul, A+X remains the least satisfying of the bunch. Fantastic Four is near and dear to my heart. This is the comic series that first got me interested in comics. I watched the old cartoon with HERBIE - even watched the teen Ben Grimm TV show, the one with the "Thing Ring" - and because of Fantastic Four, the first comic book artist and writer I ever followed was John Byrne, whose landmark run in the 1980s is still looked up to as the second most definitive run on the book after Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I've checked in on the book now and again over the years, but the only time I've had it on my pull list recently was under the care of Mark Waid and Mike Weiringo.

The good news is that Matt Fraction and Mark Bagley's Fantastic Four feels more like the spiritual successor to Waid's run than anything I've read since. Fraction lays down a new direction - the team are going to slip out of time and space for a bit to teach their children practical lessons in inter-dimensional exploration (while Reed searches for a solution to a newly discovered physical problem he has; one that can't be solved on Earth), but the tone is highly reminiscent of Waid's. There's good-natured humor, comfortable characterization, and an air of anything-goes unpredictability that hints at future greatness.

Bagley seems to be trying something a little different with his art style. There are hints of Alan Davis (or Bryan Hitch by way of Alan Davis, who was obviously an influence on Hitch), but I'm not sure that those kind of larger open panels, with more detail, serve Bagley well. I'd almost rather see him swing the other direction - stripping away his linework to get down to efficient cartooning - but that's Monday morning quarterbacking on my part. Admittedly, I've never been a Bagley fan, though my opinion of his work has mellowed over the past twenty years (when he replaced Larsen on Amazing Spider-Man, I was one sad Spidey fan). He's a workhorse, and that's admirable.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? Yes. I'm in. It'll be nice to read this Fantastic Four every month.

Avengers Assemble is the Avengers book that's supposed to best match the Avengers movie. The thinking here is that someone interested in the team can buy this book and get the characters they expect, behaving pretty much the same way that Joss Whedon made them behave in the blockbuster. It's the movie tie-in that isn't a movie tie-in. Brian Michael Bendis, already stretched thin writing two Avengers titles, always seemed like an odd choice for this series, and I was curious how Kelly Sue DeConnick (currently the fastest rising star in comics) would approach the book, knowing that she'd be adding a couple of characters from outside the movie roster (Spider-Woman and Capt. Marvel).

Well, she approached it like DeMatteis/Giffen's Justice League, which I don't think I've ever seen applied to Avengers before. The book's number one goal seems to be amusement, with adventure bringing up the rear. It's a very playful take on the team. DeConnick writes Tony Stark as Robert Downey Jr. straight-up, not even pretending not to (Gillen walks a finer line in the Iron Man monthly, reviewed here). If you're an Iron Man purist, you might wrinkle your nose, but if you love the Iron Man films, this is the Stark you know.

Heck, if you loved the Avengers movie, this is the book for you. DeConnick seems to be capturing an overall spirit of what she enjoyed about the film (the chemistry between the crew), not tied to servicing specific movie nods like making sure Black Widow or Hawkeye show up (they don't). Stefano Castelli is called on to do a variety of facial expressions more than big action (just like Kevin Maguire did on Justice League), and he's a better match with DeConnick's sensibilities than Dexter Soy is with her on Captain Marvel.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? Yes, but not monthly. Not yet. It's so, so close though. I think I need some reassurance from Marvel that this is a book they actually care about, not just a (well-written and entertaining) movie supplement. I need to know that this book is going places.

Thor: God of Thunder sort of shocked me with how good it is. It has the same doomed campfire tale feel as Conan comics have, and the art is really phenomenal. I love Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men, and pretty much hated Aaron's Hulk, so I had no idea what to expect with this book. Aaron sets up the story of a mystery godkiller who has affected Thor's life across three different eras. The book eschews superheroics for hard fantasy, and benefits greatly because of it. Not all ice cream should be vanilla.

Dean White is giving Esad Ribic's art a beautiful painted feel, and the team is already indispensable to this title. Often, art this good can't be maintained on a month-to-month basis, and my one hope for the book is that it finds a way to always look this good as it continues. Aaron's writing is solid, but this is really a "perfect storm" book - where the art and the words work together to create an exemplary final package. One piece of it is not more important nor more impressive than the other.

I can't believe I'll be buying a Thor book on a monthly basis, but there you have it.

I'd mentioned Wolverine and the X-Men as a book I already enjoy, but issue #19 is the first to bear the Marvel NOW name. What does that mean for new readers? The same thing it means for old readers, turns out. There's big shake-ups going on at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, and #19, while not a new direction, introduces new dynamics and fresh storylines for the future of the book. The gimmick here, if you haven't read it, is that Wolverine has started a school in Jean Grey's name to educate young mutants and let the kids be kids instead of X-Men-in-training. Wolverine is a presence in the title, but the book is really an ensemble piece, with Kitty Pryde and Beast sharing the spotlight with the eclectic student body.

#19 is literally packed with cameos from all across the Marvel Universe, heavy on the humor, and if you try this issue and don't like it, you're probably not going to like the series. Kitty's looking for a new teacher, Wolverine and Beast are assisting a comatose alien student, and something is simmering between Husk (who may be crazy) and Toad (who may be bitter). If you like your books fun, this is a fun one. I'd also recommend it to old fans of Generation X. The spirit of that book lives on in this one.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? Yep! Month after month! Been reading since #1.

Probably the most hyped book in the Marvel NOW launch is All-New X-Men #1, and it's the most traditionally X-Men flavored of the three X-books this week (which makes sense, as this one and Uncanny X-Men are the flagships of the X-brand). Bendis's first issue feels dense, which is a welcome change for that particular writer, and he's assisted by career-best artwork from Stuart Immonen (with inks by Wade Von Grawbadger).

In the aftermath of Avengers Vs. X-Men (AVX), Cyclops has distanced himself from Xavier's dream of a peaceful mutant/human cohabitation. Instead, he's allied with former villains White Queen and Magneto, and he's scooping up as many mutants as he can as part of a militant mutant agenda. The X-Men are, of course, concerned about Cyclops basically becoming the next Magneto, so Beast concocts a kooky plan that involves going back in time and bringing the Cyclops from the past to the the present day to talk some sense into his future self.

It's all sort of ridiculous in a big comic book way, but, damned if it isn't entertaining. Bendis only seems to operate under the desire to create definitive runs of whatever book he's working on (the success of those attempts can be argued), and while it's way too early to start throwing words like "definitive" around, you at least know that this is a writer with plans.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? Yes, it's going on the pull list. I want to know what happens next.

X-Men Legacy #1 has an uphill battle ahead. I don't think anyone is a fan of Legion aka David Haller, the psycho son of Professor Charles Xavier, but if there is a fan out there, they're in luck. Legion has his own solo book now.

And it's not bad, but it's not an easy sell. In the first issue, Legion's multiple personalities are being extinguished under the training of someone called Guru Merzah, until Legion gets a psychic vision of what Cyclops did to his father at the end of AVX, and all of his training goes out the window. This is the oddest book yet in the Marvel NOW launch, feeling far removed from the Marvel U, with just a dash of psychotronic Vertigo flavor. I'm not even sure how it got past the pitch stage, but kudos to the X-editors for taking a chance.

WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? No, but this is a book that deserves a shot. Writer Simon Spurrier's doing weird stuff in here, and I'm not sure how this series will sustain past 4 or 5 issues. The only way it could sustain is to get even weirder, and if that's where it goes, I could see this becoming a cult favorite. This has an audience. It isn't me, but I hope it finds its people.

NEXT WEEK: Rick Remender and John Romita Jr. on Captain America #1 and Mark Waid and Francis Leinil Yu on The Indestructible Hulk #1.

Podcasts: The Birth of Marvel Crossovers Explored in 'Heroes Punching Each Other'

Podcasts: Marvel Slate Explored in "Permission to Kill Thanos"

I Want My Marvel NOW: Uncanny X-Men #1, Secret Avengers #1, and Fearless Defenders #1

I Want My Marvel NOW: Thunderbolts #1, Avengers #1, Cable & X-Force #1, and Avengers Arena #1

I Want My Marvel NOW: Fantastic Four #1, Avengers Assemble #9, Thor #1, and the X-Men!

Gutters and Panels