Avengers Arena #2
In this sister panel to the rest of the Marvel NOW! panels, various creators handling a few of the Avengers titles stepped up to the plate to talk about what’s new, what’s the same and what could potentially be in-store. As always there is the chance for spoilers, so be careful when you click!
Marvel NOW: the Avengers
Not rebooting the Avengers (nothing is broken).
Panelists:
- Tom Brevoort
- Rick Remender
- Jonathan Hickman
- Kieron Gillen
- Dennis Hopeless
Uncanny Avengers
- A need for this team
- Covers by John Cassady for issue 002 through 004
Avengers
- Covers by Austin Weaver
- Jonathan Hickman
- Jerome Opeña
- Biggest Avengers books that has been done
- To follow movie with book, they had to make it so big Hollywood couldn’t pay for it.
- Opeña’s art: amazing
- Long-term storytelling gets set up from the very start.
- There WILL be a pay off
- Like F4 but bigger and better
New Avengers
- Jonathan Hickman
- Steve Epting
- Starts January 2013
- Most excited about this. The sister book to the Avengers.
- Focuses on superheroes who rule the world in secret
- Similar to the Illuminati
- Both stories will happen separately, but then they collide in a big way.
- Plotted to like 3-4 years out worth of stuff.
- 2 Avengers per month; 1 New Avengers per month
Avengers Arena
- Dennis Hopeless
- Kev Walker
- December 2012
- 16 characters wake up on an island & told only one come out alive.
- Teen supes fight it out.
- Arcade shoes she means it in a hurry.
(New) Secret Avengers
- Nick Spencer
- Luke Ross
- February 2013
- More S.H.I.E.L.D. focus in this book
- Coulson, Fury, Hill
- Recruiting a team
- Winter Soldier, Hulk, Mockingbird, Black Widow, Hawkeye and others will appear
- Very espionage heavy & super covert
- Features a lot of missions that are so secret not even the members of the team can know about each other
Young Avengers #1 variant
- Time gap allows Kieron to write YA his way.Very exciting, kind of like a long action sequence
- First run was about them being 16, this is about them being 18
- Kid Loki, Wiccan, Hulking, Hawkeye, Miss America and Marvel Boy
- Bryan Lee O’Malley doing the variant cover for issue one
- Jaime McElvy (frequent collaborator with Gillen) is doing art.
- There will be cameos from previous Young Avengers. Originally had a list of 13, but keeps it small to keep it character-driven.
Talk of Uncanny Avengers again when Rick Remender showed up. (Rick Remender thanks people for not hating it)
Avengers Assemble
- Kelly Sue DeConnick
- Steafano Ciselli
- Nov 2012
- “Shot Glass Avengers”
- Shorter, sharper stories. Very character heavy
- Stories about:
- Iron-Man & Hulk’s relationship
- Black Widow’s ledger is the second arc
MISC
- More Deadpool Variant Covers on the way?
- Remender: Keeps trying to sell himself as Jarvis. Handing everyone Mint Juleps and pretending htat is normal.
- X-Gene reactivated , but there are no plans to restart the 50 state initiative. It’s done for the moment.
- New creative teams starting, so starting on one makes accessibility subjective
- A lot of it reads like a brand new group, but some don’t. It really depends on the story.
- All strong books
- Modern sensibility is that it is easier to sell something on what is Episode 1, Season 1.
- Beginning of a new story, new volumes without being exposition heavy.
Red Skull
- Has a lot of new powers.
- He’s focusing his nazi agenda on mutants
- Apocalypse stuff coming of out of X-Force.
- Will kill a human to save a mutant which adds something else
New female Captain Universe
Old!Nick Fury will be in something big.
- Plans for Old Avengers villains
- Jokes that they will be killing Kang the Conqueror off-panel
- But rather will implement him in big ways
- Remender has blocked out 22 issues so he knows how Kang factors in.
- Hickman agrees and comments that there is synergy between them
- Explanation why half of the inlerg
- Avengers Assemble 8 gives the beginning as to why cosmic characters are alive
Dark Hulk is a oldest guy in Avengers Arena
- Brings that up right away because…dude.
Cannonball & Sunspot are now Avengers!
- First arc about making the team bigger.
- Also about hero-worship and dealing with that.
- Inevitable writing gorgon
SHIELD 5 & 6 are done.
- Plan is to keep creating characters and building teams of characters from all over the world.
