Great Unified Comics Thread

[Darth Wagtaros]

Is DC literally pants on the head retarded? Releasing Wonder Woman two months after Justice League?
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/justice-league-movie-to-hit-may-2017-wonder-woman-green-lantern-flash-crossover-coming-same-year-20140612

May 2016 – Batman v Superman
July 2016 – Shazam
Xmas 2016 – Sandman
May 2017 – Justice League
July 2017 – Wonder Woman
Xmas 2017 – Flash and Green Lantern team-up
May 2018 – Man Of Steel 2

No Steel 2? Shaq ain't getting any younger.

[Syt]

Courtesy of Super Dictionary, entry "anything":

[The Brain]

Tell me more of this "Batman".

[Syt]

Tell me more of this "Batman".

You mean Läderlappen?

[jimmy olsen]

Tell me more of this "Batman".

What are you, dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think he is? He's the Goddamned Batman!

[Syt]

I've gone and subbed to Marvel Unlimited. Holy archive panic, Batman!

I've read through the Age of Ultron arc which I thought was ok, and have now started on the Civil War arc. Fortunately they include all the tie ins in those arcs' pages.

[Savonarola]

This will lead to some disturbing fan art:

Updated Images, Info: THOR Drops The Hammer, a New Female THOR Takes His Place



Update: In a follow-up press release, Jason Arron stressed that the new Thor is just that: Thor.

"This is not She-Thor. This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is THOR. This is the THOR of the Marvel Universe. But it's unlike any Thor we've ever seen before," Aaron said.

The new female Thor will launch in a new series with a new first issue, Thor #1, launching in the fall. Aaron will stay on as writer, joined by artist Russell Dauterman, coming off of Cyclops. The press release also says this is "a brand new female hero," seemingly putting to rest speculation that the newly-revealed sister of Thor, Angela, would take up the hammer.


Marvel Comics also confirmed to Newsarama that Thor will take the place of Thor: God of Thunder, which will ship its final issue in September 2014.

Original Story:

Earlier this month we learned that we'd be getting an all-new Captain America, but on ABC's The View earlier today news broke that Marvel is also replacing another core Avenger: Thor. As announced by Whoopi Goldberg, Marvel is introducing a new female Thor in comics later this year.

"It's a huge day in the Marvel Universe. Thor, the God of Thunder, he messed up, and he's no longer worthy to hold that damn hammer of his. For the first time in history, that hammer is being held by a woman. That's right. Thor is a woman!"

Details on the identity of this new Thor remain sparse. Goldberg jokingly said that the character works on the set of The View in comics when not being Thor. The comedienne did say more matter-of-factly that the new Thor modeled herself after the original after being saved by him. The View co-host goes on to say that she becomes the possessor of Mjolnir after the original Thor becomes no longer worthy according to the inscription.

The idea of the original male Thor losing Mjolnir might seem shocking, but something comics fans were hinted to in recently solicited Avengers covers showing Thor holding Jarnbjorn, a battle axe introduced in the first issue of Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic's run on Thor: God of Thunder, which also had a major role in the Uncanny Avengers storyline that has run since that series launched.

Newsarama expects more information on this all-new, all-female Thor leading up to Comic-Con International.

[Savonarola]

This will also lead to some disturbing fan art:

Archie's death latest comic book to inject reality

LOS ANGELES — For most of Archie Andrews' life, the red-headed comic book icon's biggest quandary was whether he liked Veronica or Betty.

The character's impending death comes in Wednesday's installment of "Life with Archie," a spin-off series that centers on grown-up renditions of Archie and his Riverdale pals. It brings a bold conclusion to Archie Comics' four-year-old modern makeover of the squeaky-clean, all-American character.


Freckle-faced Archie will meet his demise when he intervenes in an assassination attempt on senator Kevin Keller, Archie Comics' first openly gay character, who's pushing for more gun control in Riverdale. Archie's death, which was first announced in April, will mark the conclusion of the "Life with Archie" series.

"I think Archie Comics has taken a lot of risks in recent years, and this is the biggest risk they've taken yet," said Jonathan Merrifield, a longtime Archie fan who hosts the Riverdale Podcast about all things Archie. "If it shakes things up a little bit, and people end up checking it out and seeing what's going on in Archie Comics, it will be a risk that was smartly taken."

While casual fans likely still associate Archie with soda shops and sock hops — and that's still holds true for the very much alive teenage character in the original "Archie" series — Archie was thrust into adulthood with the launch of "Life with Archie" in 2010. The series kicked off after alternate futures were envisioned where the love-struck do-gooder married both Veronica and Betty.

Over the past four years, storylines in the more socially relevant series aimed at adult Archie fans have included Kevin's marriage to his husband, the death of longtime teacher Ms. Grundy, Archie love interest Cheryl Blossom tackling breast cancer and Jughead and friends dealing with financial struggles.

It's been a shift not unlike other changes in the modern comic book landscape, where Spider-Man's alter-ego is a multi-racial teenager and Wonder Woman wears pants.

"Every few years, we see a comic book tackling an issue that could be considered provocative," said Dave Luebke, owner of Dave's Comics in Richmond, Virginia. "It's interesting that the ending of 'Life with Archie' involves multiple social issues, but it's not surprising." (Luebke sold his rare 1942 "Archie" No. 1 comic book in 2009 for $38,837 at a Dallas auction.)

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and several Archie fans praised Archie Comics' decision to have the character sacrifice himself to save Kevin, who is depicted in "Life with Archie" as a married military veteran turned senator.

"In recent years, 'Life with Archie' has become one of the most unique books on the shelves by using its characters to address real world issues — from marriage equality to gun control — in a smart but accessible way," said Matt Kane, GLAAD's director of entertainment media. "Though the story is coming to a close, we look forward to seeing Kevin and Archie's stories continue in their remaining titles."

Others have voiced their concern on Archie Comics' Facebook page and other online forums that the character's death was unnecessary or too politicized.

Jon Goldwater, Archie Comics publisher and co-CEO, defended Archie's demise being a lesson about gun violence and diversity.

"Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don't agree," said Goldwater. "I think Riverdale is a place where everyone should feel welcome and safe. From my point of view, I'm proud of the stance we've taken here, and I don't think it's overtly political on any level."

Depending on the success of the final installments of "Life with Archie," Riverdale Podcast host Merrifield won't be surprised if Archie Comics takes on other topical issues in the near future.

"I'm sure there will be a tearful moment for me," he said of the character's death. "But this isn't goodbye. He'll be back in a couple of weeks in a book of reprints and the teenage 'Archie' will continue. Archie will still be around. He's always around."

But then four impostors will arise, each claiming in some way to be Archie; until the real Archie comes back from the dead.

[jimmy olsen]

[Syt]

 

[Darth Wagtaros]

Be better if Archie were killed defending a black friend against a posse of homosexual Klansmen.

[DontSayBanana]

[jimmy olsen]

Anyone read this?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2013/05/13/kieron-gillen-uber-comic-book-series/2149289/

Talking about his newest comic-book series Uber is both exciting and challenging for British writer Kieron Gillen.

But more than that, he's conflicted emotionally by the whole thing.

On the one hand, this enormous World War II horror story is one he's passionate enough about to write a 30,000-word bible about its characters, story beats and real-life historical situations.

However, it's also a bleak and often brutal "What happens if Nazi Germany got the bomb?" tale in some ways because it veers from reality by imagining Adolf Hitler and his SS developing superhumans in order to win the war and defeat the Allies.

"That is the horror of it — it's meant to be horrible. I entirely accept anyone's right to be offended by the story, but I'm very much not on Nazi Germany's side," Gillen says with a chuckle. "I feel completely redundant saying that but this is a critique of the problems of the psychology that leads to this and using the metaphor to explore those areas."

MORE: Check out an exclusive preview of "Uber" No. 2

The writer, who teams with artist Caanan White, worries about the ethical questions of Uber — of if it's even possible to do an ethical book about seemingly unstoppable Nazi supervillains — but readers are so far embracing the tough subject matter: Both last month's zero issue and Uber No. 1, released last week from Avatar Press along with an "enhanced" edition of the zero issue, sold out at the comic-shop retailer level.

The series is a brutal and intriguing epic set mere hours before the end of the war in 1945, with the Soviet army surrounding Berlin and a broken and defeated Germany quickly crumbling.

Everything changes, though, with the introduction of the Ubers, comprised of two genetically engineered groups of men and women: the rank and file of the "Panzermensch" and the really powerful elite group known as "Battleships" who are living weapons of mass destruction.

It pretty much takes a bazooka shot at point-blank range to down a Panzermensch. So you can only guess from there how near-invincible Battleships Siegmund, Siegfried and Sieglinde are and what kind of damage they can do — they rack up a serious body count in the zero issue.

"Probaby the hardest thing about designing the Ubers is making them powerful enough to make a difference and not make them so powerful immediately they take over the world," Gillen says.

Their appearance sets off an arms race where other countries scramble to build their own superheroes to deal this new threat. (And Freya, an undercover agent for the Brits working undercover in a Nazi lab, is trying to high-tail out of Germany with their secrets in hand.)

Avatar editor in chief William Christensen had originally reached out to Gillen about doing a comic about Germany inventing superhumans. Then the writer extrapolated hugely on it "because I realized it locked into things I was thinking about — humans and society and responsibility and fear and death," he says.

"The thing about Uber is it's not a book about superhumans in any way, specifically not about the genre, and for me that was part of the point, as well."

The novelistic structure of Uber — Gillen hopes to get 30 to 60 issues out of it — explores the darker side of humanity, what power does to men and what kind of monsters there are in the world.

"It's a book that does not shy away from the question of monstrosity — it's very much a theme," Gillen says. "At what point does it become divorced from the intrinsic humanity? 'Superhuman' is just another way of saying not 'human.'

"In a real sense, a crisis shows humanity at its best and its worst, and there are moments in Uber that show why humans are worth continuing to exist."

A serious take on World War II superheroes is not new in comics, according to Gillen — it has been done in books such as Zenith, Tom Strong and Garth Ennis' The Boys. And even the idea of Nazi supervillains is a common trope now, though they're usually rendered as zombies and the like for "safe" fiction.

Gillen, however, really wanted to use the metaphor of enhanced humans to expand upon World War II themes in a respectful way.

"As a writer, I might tend to be more interested in why people do bad things than why people do good things. It's why people are led down horrific moral paths and all the different reasons for that," Gillen says.

Uber also wildly differs from the main superhero books he does, including Iron Man and Young Avengers for Marvel Comics.

In fact, one of the core ideas of the book was to stray from the traditional idea of heroic action fiction that the hero will always rise to overcome an objective.

"It doesn't matter if Spider-Man's fighting Galactus — Spider-Man will find a way to beat Galactus. Uber isn't that story. Uber is the story that every single time, Galactus will kill Spider-Man," Gillen explains. "In the same way that a tank is an incredible piece of hardware, a modern attack helicopter will always take out a tank just because they are different tools for different purposes.

"It's not a story about heroism and overcoming. This is the story about just being [screwed]. Occasionally, the economics and the military situation will lead to people being crushed in the wheels of history, and that's true whether you are the most powerful person on Earth or if you're just a random orphan living in the streets of Okinawa. These are enormous forces that can crush anybody."

Even though it's called Uber, the book focuses on more than the Nazi war machine. The series will span the globe in terms of different theaters of war and in types of characters — however, there are no leads since Gillen wants readers to worry that people could die at any time, sometimes rather nastily.

"Caanan and I are not just interested in doing the brutality thing. When we show brutality, it's horrible," the writer says. "It's not just someone unleashing a bomb — this is knowing who is in the building when the bomb is unleashed."

There will be point-of-view characters and supporting players like Freya and the lethal Soviet sniper Maria, and a whole history book of real-life figures like Hitler, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and, from the research-and-development side of things, Alan Turing and others at England's Bletchley Park code-breaking center.

While some are harder than others — Churchill is "brilliant to write," Gillen admits, but "any day where you write Hitler isn't a fun day. That's not something I like doing" — Gillen feels a sense of responsibility to be fair with all his interpretations, just like with any historical fiction.

"I'm writing Hitler literally at the end of the war," he says. "Anyone who's seen for example Downfall knows Hitler isn't exactly in the rightest of minds at this point. That's the kind of Hitler I'm writing — he is a man who is physically broken.

"There are moments when I'm writing something and I realize it's not fair to do that to that character — rarely with the Nazis. I was writing Georgy Zhukov the Soviet general and I realized, 'No, I think that's unfair to Zhukov,' so I had to completely reapproach the scene."

Gillen spent a lot of time doing research over the past five years, poring over history books to reach an acceptable amount of authenticity and mapping out Uber's battle plan. He sees the series going from Germany to Britain to Okinawa to the Eastern front and the Soviet superhuman program to the Atlantic Ocean.

He stayed home for the first five-issue arc and focused on primarily the Western theater and aspects such as Churchill's politics and Bletchley Park. It all builds to the first big battle between Allies and Ubers.

"There is very much a Battle of Britain-ness to it, the refusal to give up and fighting uphill," Gillen says. "Having Nazi Germany have the lead in this field creates an enormous challenge for the Allies to try to match. That's the thing with the first arc: Can we get superhumans together in time for this thing that is happening?

"World War II in Britain is a strange thing and it hangs over us, and this is very much me processing a lot of that," adds the writer, who is also delving into history with Three. His Image Comics series with artist Ryan Kelly debuts in October inverts the Thermopylae myth with a trio of Helot slaves on the run from the Spartan army of 300.

Uber is unlike most everything he's written and it's the anti-superhero comic in many ways, but the series is "not solely a grim-fest," Gillen promises.

"I find these people incredibly heroic, especially the people who are completely innocent. The question of innocence is interesting in Uber (with) people being crushed by something much larger than them and the horror people face with real dignity. There's heroism in that as much as in anything."

[Syt]

Still reading Marvel's Civil War arc. That's what - over a hundred comics? Still, liking it quite a bit, and I may look a bit closer at the noirish X-Factor run 2005-2013, and some of the other series tied into it.

[Syt]

Preview for Avengers NOW!: