Is that Rougue & Bullseye?

Probably Havok, not Bullseye.

Yeah, that's definitely Havok.

As long as he's wearing pink bunny slippers.

Uh oh, "realistic" movie-like costumes have invaded comics. Do comic book executives really think this is what is going to sell issues, when they have much more serious problems like distribution and a shrinking readership?

The Scarlet Witch is wearing too much clothing

I don't think comic book executives are equating these particular new costumes with selling more issues, let alone precluding them from worrying about shrinking readership.

Man, Quesada still has the chops. I wish he was drawing one of these new books.

He actually does the shorts during commercial breaks during the Marvel Cartoon hour (or whatever) on Disney XD, where he shows you his drawing process (pretty quick and they gloss over a bunch of stuff, but still pretty cool...)

Heh, funny you should mention that because that's on my TV right this second (I'm catching up on Avengers).

"Realistic" movie-like costumes invaded back when the X-men movies came out and they all started wearing leather. But Marvel never seems to be able to capitalize on the movies, probably because their stuff is so spread out.

For all the hate I give Marvel, a Remender/Cassaday Uncanny Avengers sounds great. It would be even better if it could be freed of continuity reigns and quick changes, somewhat like Whedon/Cassaday's Astonishing X-men, but somehow I doubt it, which means the creative team, lineup, and purpose of the book will change within a year.

This "relaunch" doesn't seem to be getting nearly the same amount of buzz as DC's New 52... just sayin.

Which makes complete sense, since the New 52 was the biggest thing DC has done you could argue since Crisis. That was literally a relaunch/reboot, on top of the added dimension of day and date digital, and all of DCs entire line launching in one month.

This Marvel Now initiative is more about creative team changes, and book "relaunches" in the classic since, not in the DC post crisis everything is new sense. It isn't even really fair to compare the two I don't think.

Yeah, rather than being a reboot/relaunch like DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths or Flashpoint, this Marvel Now relaunch is more like what Marvel did in the late 90s with the Heroes Reborn that relaunched the majority of the titles as a new #1.

Uh... this is nothing like Heroes Reborn. The DC relaunch was more like Heroes Reborn, turning over the properties to ex-Image creators (Jim Lee and Liefeld) to reimagine in a totally separate universe.

The fact is Marvel has "reinvented" the universe with major events time and time again, and relaunched books left and right, starting with new #1s, then returning to the old numbering before a milestone hits. I think that's why this isn't making major waves, it's basically a new status quo that will probably last for about a year until the next big event. The biggest impact of this (and maybe the impetus of this) is that several creators who have been working on series for a long time are for one reason or another leaving the property (Bru on Cap, Fraction on Iron Man, Bendis on Avengers) and so there are a bunch of fresher creative teams on these books.

Only the Fantastic Four and Avengers were outsourced to Liefeld and Lee. Other titles, like Daredevil and Amazing Spider-Man, also relaunched with new #1s but remained in-house.

Those titles weren't part of Heroes Reborn. If you're just talking about relaunching with a new number one, they do that every few years for seemingly no reason at all.

Yeah, this feels like Marvel's new status quo. It's very much like Dark Reign or The Heroic Age. Marvel Now is a bit more important than those, because of the long running creative teams that are leaving books. If anything, that's the truly "big" news from Marvel now.

Yeah, who cares about these new #1's, we all know within a year or so that they will just revert back to either an anniversary issue number or go back to another #1. And does anyone really expect Cassaday to be a monthly arist? I expect that more issues will be done ythe backup artist than Cassaday himself.

I used to be a huge Marvel fan, but nowadays I can't be bothered. It's sad because they have such an excellent roster of characters, but they seem to make all the wrong choices.

I think Marvel still maintains a lead over DC in terms of market share (though they lost it for a while when the new 52 first launched). So from a "reaching out to the current comic book fan" perspective they probably are doing alright. They've certainly had some great creative teams on a variety of books. I'd say the number of great creative runs on Marvel books in the past decade or so far outnumber the number of great creative runs on DC books (at least talking about purely in-continuity stuff... there's a reason the only creative teams and storylines kept intact in the new 52 were Morrison's Batman and Johns' GL, though I still mourn Lemire's Superboy and Bryan Q. Miller's Batgirl). I would say don't let the big crossovers and yearly changes ruin it for you, if you like the characters there is probably some good stuff out there.

But yeah, both of these guys are pandering to an ever shrinking market, and these event books and changes are like small booster shots that need to be administered time and time again, but with shrinking effectiveness. Of the bigger companies, Image is the one currently taking the bigger risks and seem to have a ton of creative talent doing series now.

Maybe I haven't paid close enough attention to DC, but it feels like they're less dependent on the giant crossover arcs. Granted, the New 52 is a bigger change than any of the Marvel ones, but at this point the Marvel continuity can only be explained as which giant crossover followed the last giant crossover.

No, DC was worse. Marvel just kinda pushes continuity errors under the rug. DC tried to fix everything, and thus they had stuff like the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, 52, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, etc, and that's before you get into the secondary crossovers like Amazons Attack or Our Worlds at War. Finally they just explained most retcons with "Superboy Prime punched reality." No, seriously.

They've been (wisely) avoiding the company-wide crossover since the reboot, but it's coming with the Trinity.

To be fair, I didn't read mainstream comics for years until the New 52, so I missed all of that.

A lot of new #1's here:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=40453

The head scratch for me is Cap #1. Could be great, or terrible