Before I begin, some panels I sat in on and some I didnt. I forgot
my pen one day, so some things I am reporting by memory, but Im not
putting it here unless I am sure of it. Some news I am relying upon the
accuracy of friends for, and these folks I do trust.
I did attend the Marvel panel, with my trust pen and notebook. The
Marvel panel was comprised of Joe Harris, Ruben Diaz, Mark Waid, Joe Kelly,
Joe Casey, Kurt Busiek, Tom Brevoort, and Joe Quesada.
The new X-Men lineup was a group decision. The current line up is
going to be the team for awhile. The original X-Men are out doing "different
things" and should "appear from time to time." If you want a book featuring
the original X-Men, write Marvel and ask for it. John Byrne will be filling
in the gaps of what happened to the original X-Men. The X-Men movie is
serious..it is in development, but all the papers are not signed yet. In
December, there will be a Gambit series coming out, courtesy of Fabian Nicieza
and Steve Skroce. The creators on the panel want to do a series featuring
Rogue. Again, if you would like to see this, write Marvel and ask for it.
The regular X-men artist for a couple of issues will be Adam Kubert, and then
Alan Davis is slated to draw a 6 issue arc.
According to Mark Waid, the Captain America cartoon was *awful*, and we
all should be grateful that it never made it to the air. It was set in the
1940s and the cartoon villain was Hitler. It contained a lot of 1940s
references like USO shows that older folks like me would understand, but
would be totally lost on children.
Avengers Forever is slated to be released October 12th. Only one Avenger
book is planned at the moment. For it to go biweekly, the panel joked that
they would have to hook George Perez to a caffeine drip. Waid talked about
his take on Captain America. He said that Mark Gruenwald wrote Cap
"intellectually" while Waid saw Cap more as a John Wayne action-adventure
character. Mark Waid has decided to write Cap more from the heart and to
show more of Caps personal life from now on.
November is slated to be Thunderbolts month at Marvel. The T-Bolts should
be crossing over with the Avengers, Captain America, and Hercules. The
Thunderbolts are working to be accepted, but it isnt going to be easy, or
maybe even possible. Hawkeye, for one, is very suspicious of their motives.
There will be an Avengers-Thunderbolts prose novel coming out.
The Punisher has a new series coming out. In this series, he does remember
what he did in his last series. He will try to redeem himself for his past
actions in this new series, and his name will take on new meaning.
More Essential are in the works for next year as are more MC2. We should
see more versions of heroes to come. Marvel Knights is also going to continue.
Ash is coming out in December. A brand new version of the Black Widow is
coming soon. Doug Braithwaite is going to be doing Sentinel of Liberty.
According to the panelists, the merger with Toy Biz is still in the works,
and as soon as it is completed, Marvel will be coming out of bankruptcy.
I accidentally stumbled into the Chaos panel, so forgive me if I cant tell
you who was on the panel. Lady Death is going to make a return to the "mean
sadistic bitch we all know and love." A one shot featuring Little Evil Ernie
is in the works.
The Legion of Superhero news:
This I can tell you about, because not only was I there, I was interested.
The panel consisted of Mark Waid, Colleen Doran, Jeff Moy, Tom Galloway, and
the one and only Paul Levitz. Roger Stern and his wife Carmela were in the
audience. Paul revealed that he was inspired to enter the comics business when
he found out that Jim Shooter was writing Adventure Comics for DC when he was
13 years old. Paul figured that if Jim could write for DC at an early age,
maybe one day he could work for DC, too. There is a gay legionnaire. It will
be revealed slowly over time, in an subtle way, mainly because the writers are
dealing with teenagers. The creators also said that the "Hey look at me! Im out
of the closet and gay" mode was too much of a sledgehammer for them to use. Paul
said that there would be some sort of figurines of the Legion characters coming.
They are currently looking at the cost aspects. It may be statues like the Silver
Age Superboy Legion summoning device (although in less dorky poses), although
they are still looking at their options. They feel the market will not support
action figures, that this will have to be some sort of limited edition set, like
maybe set at a 5,000 run. They did say that the sales of the Legion flight rings
exceeded all of their expectations, though.
Aside from the Legion panel, I didnt attend any DC panels, so many thanks
to my friend Bala Menon for providing this information. This is some information
that was shared in the DC panels, whether it has to do with DC or not.
The structure of Alan Davis' JLA:
The Nail is based loosely on that of JLA #200. Everybody's back in #3 (which
should be out this week). Busiek has an exclusive writing contract with Marvel
(with specific leeway granted for his Astro City work). Busiek's coming out with
a 12-part limited series called Avengers Forever, which really looks good (I saw
some advance material). The Flash #134 has a senile Johnny Thunder give Jay Garrick
a pink pen. Unknown to anyone, that pen is actually the mystic thunderbolt (revealed
by Grant Morrison on stage at the JLA panel). The JLA foe Prometheus is based on
Grant. Grant will stay at least six more issues than his projected departure issue
of JLA #30. The Atom and Captain Marvel will be among those who will fill the JLA's
floating chair.
The Batman event, "No Man's Land", is better named "No Brains Land".
While they have good creative teams lined up, the whole thing is sparked
off by an extremely drugged-out editorial team. Denny O'Neil's getting
quite defensive about this decision, based on advance rac.* misgivings.
Seems to me that they were pretty valid misgivings, since the USA will
declare Gotham City to be no longer part of the USA (I have NO idea
where Denny,or his assistant Editor Gorfinkel, gets these brainwaves),
among a bunch of other lunacies.
Dan Raspler, JLA Editor, made an offer to John Broome (creator of Hal
Jordan) that he'd love to see anything written by Broome, if Broome
would be interested in doing something for DC again.And Broome's reaction
to "Emerald Toilet" (Hal's going insane) was marvellous :) When he was
informed of what had happened to his creation,he just looked dazed for a
second and quietly said "I would never have written that story.". To the
accompaniment of a huge round of applause from the audience :-)