"Epic" is one way to describe it. -Andrenn Update-

Whoa, what an EPIC day of EPIC announcements that, in turn, are EPIC for being announced on such an EPIC occasion.

As a matter of fact, today is so EPIC that I’m crossing off this week’s cover Talk in favor of talking about some of the big announcements made by Marvel. It will show up next week though, and I’m still planning on it being WWH and Skaar related. But for now, lets go over some huge announcements.

I guess the biggest one was Marvel FINALLY releasing info on the 2009 “event.” As it turns out, its not an event at all, it’s something much bigger. Marvel Noir, a new line similar to the Ultimate line in that it reinvents the Marvel characters. But more similar to 1602, they do this in a darker and easier light. Seeing as this is set smack dab in the 1930’s, a time that most Noir films are placed in and resemble in setting, that should make for an interesting outcome.

David Hine is one of the brains behind it, though it was brought to him by another, he seemed to really build on it and was the main writer behind the concepts made up for Spider-man Noir, which, as I’m sure you know by now, is what yesterday’s teaser was of. Not Lobster Johnston after all, but hey, right time frame mentality.

David Hine…is writing Spider-man…Noir…Black and White….*Warning, Andrenn is about to Fanboy out. If you don’t want to hear something major fanboy, skip this next paragraph*

YEEEEEEEEEESSSSS! HA! First off, I ****ing love Noir, comics and Noir go together great, just ask Frank Miller. I love…repeat that. LOVE Black and White art, it rocks, thank you! And whats that, David Hine and Spider-man? Can I get “Hell Yeah!”?

All right, now that I got that out of my system…I’m seriously excited for this. It sounds great, and David Hine has obviously poured all his creative genius into this, at least from the sound of it, he’s created a hard dark noir tale that just happens to involve everyone’s favorite Wall-crawler.

It all sounds great, and has me very excited. That plus the artist is the guy from Battlin’ Jack Murdock, a Marvel Knights series that flew fairly far under the radar last year. But I’d seen the previews, the art looked amazing, I greatly look forward to seeing what the artist brings to Spider-man Noir.

Then we Have….X-men Noir…what do I think of it? Well, I look at the interviews and press release…then I sit back and give a heavy “Meh” to it. It looks fine, don’t get me wrong, and I’ll probably check it out. I like how the artist doing the teasers is indeed doing the art, that was nice, but everything else…I’m still not sure.

Also Fred Van Lente is the writer…as psyched and excited as I am for Marvel Zombies 3 (in a local interview he really sold me on it, can’t wait for this) I am a little confused as to why they chose him for a Noir project. I know it’s not fair to say he can’t do Noir since he’s mainly done simple Super Stuff and the more comedic side to things, but I’m just a tad skeptical here.

In the end, if the previews look good and Van Lente is good at selling X-men Noir as he is at Marvel Zombies 3, I’ll check it out.

Now probably the most EPIC of the all the EPIC news, was Dark Reign from Marvel. The “event” that deals with the fallout of Secret Invasion. I love the title, very ominous…as if something is still going to happen, as if the battle may be won, but the war is yet to be over. While I’m sure that the fallout is just like the Initiative, not dealing directly with the end of SI, it’s still something very interesting.

Among the announcements of Dark Reign, the thing that caught my eye the most was Bendis announcing that with #20 of Mighty Avengers he would be leaving the title he helped start, and would be starting a 4^th (good god, a 4tth) Avengers title, Dark Avengers, with Mike Deodato on art.

One of the big speculations is that maybe the Skrulls win? While not on a wide scale, maybe they conquer small parts of the MU and take them as property of the empire, and the rest of the world is forced to live with it. While that sounds a little harder to believe, it could very well happen.

I’m glad to hear Bendis is of Mighty Avengers, no offense to him, he’s done a fairly good job with the title recently since his arc with Mark Bagley, but I don’t think it was fair to give him the 2 most prominent post-Civil War books.

Dark Avengers…sounds fairly stupid, I’ll be honest, I have no idea what to think of this. This sounds cliché as far as titles are concerned, but it’s Mike Deodato on art and I love his work so I wouldn’t miss this for the world. If it ties into the Evil Illuminati like I think it will, this could be great.

Then there was the brief teaser to Amazing Spider-man #600 to say what “really” happened the day of Spider-man’s wedding…*sigh*…I wish they’d get the couple back together, but sadly, that’s still a dream that ends up far away. This will no doubt simply stomp more and more on our hopes of reconciliation. Making Mary Jane a cheating whore or Peter a sleazebag who is caught in bed with Liz Allen.

Maybe I’m just seeing it in a negative light though, maybe it will ACTUALLY justify their splitting up. But really, I can’t see it doing anything beyond demonizing their love and making me more frustrated. Then again…maybe…some how…they will get together and Joey Q will give us all a break. While it’s a long shot, there’s nothing wrong with hoping.

There was also Ultimate Avengers announcement with Mark Millar making a big return to the Ultimate Universe. First off, I’d like to say that I’m glad to hear Brian Hitch won’t be on this book. With any luck, Joe Mad will return to the Ultimate U one day! But until that happens, I’m just glad to see Hitch has moved on.

Ultimate Avengers will be spear-heading the Ultimate U come end of Ultimatum. How ironic, the book I’ll be reading! Basically, the main idea is to bring the Ultimate U back to what it was intended to be, 5 years ahead of the Marvel Universe and pushing the envelope of what we’ve come to recognize as comics.

While I’m not sure if I’ll ever read Ultimate Avengers, I am interested in what the other 3 books, aside from Ultimate Spider-man, will compose of these big 5 books. Gone is all the mini’s every few months, the Ultimate U will be a solid being again.

I can guess Ultimate X-men and Ultimate Fantastic Four are still around, but what other comic would be out by then? Maybe someone like Iron Man will finally get an Ultimate Ongoing? Or someone else? I’m not sure what to expect, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not excited.

Finally, we have the announcement from McFarlane toys…and probably my favorite announcement, Halo Wars figs. When I brought this up to a friend today, he commented on how Halo Wars is going to suck, when I said that McFarlane is making figures off of them, he quickly said “Oh, well those will rock.”

And rock they will. The prototype sculpts already have me excited as it looks like McFarlane Toys continues to soar with the Halo franchise. I absolutely Looooove collecting these bastard Spartans, its so much fun, takes me back to being a kid when I collected Spider-man toys.

While I won’t be getting Halo Wars, I will definitely be getting the McFarlane Toys figures, you can count on that.

All right, now that’s about it. If I find something else to talk about, or later announcements, I’ll just edit this one and add more to it. So you may want to check in on it if I do. See you tomorrow with my weekly reviews.