Sonny Corinthos

New series, new creative teams, new directions and new beginnings, promises a short announcement video on Marvel Entertainment’s YouTube account today.

Featuring Marvel Comics editor in chief C.B. Cebulski and chief creative officer Joe Quesada, the video is short on concrete information — though Marvel tells Polygon that more will be revealed later today and in the coming weeks.

“I’ve never seen more enthusiasm and more excitement for where Marvel is going this year,” Cebulski said of the feeling within Marvel offices, just before the images of Captain America, Iron Man and Thor sweep across the screen — each character once again in their classic incarnation.

The editor in chief also says the relaunch will feature the biggest line-wide change in artistic talent since 2012’s Marvel Now! relaunch.

Cebulski himself is new to his role, having replaced Axel Alonso in fall of 2017. And there are other sweeping changes afoot at Marvel regardless of relaunches: Long-time Marvel writer Brian Michael Bendis left the company for an exclusive contract with DC Comics, where he’ll be taking over two central Superman titles.

And, in January, Dan Slott announced that he would be leaving The Amazing Spider-Man after ten years with the character, to move to writing an unannounced Iron Man title.

Over its course, the video reveals a piece of Jim Cheung art featuring a few dozen of the company’s characters, big and small, but with Spider-Man most prominent.

The video promises “A Fresh Start” in May of 2018, making it Marvel’s second relaunch in eight months, following September’s Marvel Legacy. Fan and retailer frustration with Marvel Comics became something of its own story in 2017.

https://www.polygon.com/comics/2018/...h-announcement

Timber

They have to be kidding right? We're seeing about 2 of these line wide reboots a year. If I still collected...hell there is no way I'd be able to collect with things the way they are now.

fujishig

I like that new EiC Akira Yoshida even references that this is the first since Marvel Now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_NOW!

Just cut and paste Akira's name over Axel.

stingermck

Legacy just started in September! Fastest reboot ever.

And the legacy numbering is out too. Again.

How is reverting back again after a few months less confusing? Damn.

rocket1312

I don't really keep up with current Marvel, but holy crap what a dumpster fire. How anyone is supposed to keep track of any of this, I have no idea. The crazy thing is I feel like Marvel was firing on all cylinders 10-15 years ago and yet the minute the movies started coming out and Marvel became one of the 3 or 4 top entertainment brands in the world, it all went to hell. Legacy numbers, new #1's, whatever. Just pick a direction and stick with it.

rocket1312

An update was added to the original article:

I will say that this is at least a step in the right direction. Do the same thing for Spider-Man, X-Men, etc. The worst part about all of this has been just how impossible it's been to follow your favorite title over the course of any number of years. Every time a new writer comes on board or the status quo for a book is changed, it means not just a new volume and a new #1, but often a new series altogether with a new title or a new adjective in front of the title. Add in the fact that they refuse to do editorial notations referencing older issues (I know those have been gone for a long time, but it's still frustrating) and I don't know how you're supposed to track any of this stuff without people way more invested than me cataloging it all online.

Red Hood

Am I the only one who extremely dislikes Ed McGuiness art? I find it extremely cartoony, especially when drawing big, muscular characters like Hulk.

Marvel needs to clean house in the management department. I like Brevoort and Quesada, but their time is up with the company as the have run out of ideas. The reaction online to today's announcement is 99% negative. People were digging the Legacy story and things were actually moving up for Marvel. They have fucked it up by announcing this today. Also, Cebulski/Yoshida should have been fired months ago for catfishing Marvel.

DVD Josh

I can't afford to collect comics anymore with their cover prices what they are.

big e

Jesus Christ Marvel, stop with the f%@*ing reboots, re-numbering, re-whatever the hell it is you're doing. This isn't making it "simple" for anyone; it's becoming annoying and confusing. And they aren't even actual reboots; all that's happening is the creative team changes.

Is this Disney's meddling? Marvel has made some dumb decisions in the past, but ever since they were bought by Disney, their comics division has become a complete mess.

Undeadcow

If Marvel needs to reboot every time a flagship movie comes out, and by now hints are the comics are secondary to the movies, there might be a smarter way to do it than the constant numbering and re-numbering. When Marvel shifted all their X-men titles to new series and 'rebranded' temporarily for Age of Apocalypse it was a lot of fun with an epic story; maybe they could dive into the 'multiverse' and visit 'Marvel Contunity XYZ' when they need to dust off 'start here.' The Ultimate Universe originally annoyed me because it seemed to monkey a lot with the classic characters but I'd recently started getting into it and it's kind of fun to see some of the variants and simplified retelling of legacy stories, there's definitely room for that as a separate line like with Ultimate. It might even be kind of cool to have Marvel Cinematic Universe continuity in a few ongoing titles.

Josh-da-man

On the bright side, they'll eventually run out of names to call these reboots, so maybe they'll stop doing them.

"Fresh Start" as a name is kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Trevor

Guess it’s too late to go ‘backwards’, but I’ve often thought that DC or Marvel should have kept their output a lot tighter. If they stuck to maybe 20 monthly books, perhaps making several of them anthology books to have more diversity and a range of genres, people would be more tempted to stay ‘all in’ on a company’s output. Once they got so large that they had like 5 monthly Avengers or Batman books, who can read let alone afford them all.

Red Hood

This is because they value market share more than profits. That's the reason their output is big. To them, the new release shelves are real state and the more they own, the better for them. It is like this with almost every Fortune 1000 company.

PhantomStranger

This is basically Marvel's Rebirth. They had to clean house of toxic names like Bendis and Slott's run on Spider-Man.

I also think implicit in this "fresh start" is a back-to-basics, straightforward superhero approach with Marvel's classic heroes back in the saddle.

Timber

So you mean like 6 months ago?

stingermck

Yeah I thought that was Legacy.

stingermck

Now 2 sets of numbers!

Timber

So, you mean like 6 months ago?


They continue to make this shit way too confusing. They want to restart but they don't have the guts to wipe out the numbering. They know this won't stick so they need to keeps those old numbers around for when things change again in a year...or less. Restart or don't, stop trying to cater to new readers, which there are none, and old timers, which you're pushing away more and more.

stingermck

Well at least Marvel writers are admitting its not for long time fans

10 years worth of Marvel movies. Where are these new customers?

Timber

https://www.newsarama.com/38724-marv...e-numbers.html

So it's really not a reboot, it's simply a "jumping on point" and marketing. So much for fresh new ideas.

Trevor

By summer we’re going to have new Marvel issue #1s inside of issue #1s.

Timber

Just condense the line and make sure you have a good writer and artist on each book. X-Men Red got good reviews yet I can't get through the first issue cause it looks like garbage. I'm not even sure how many "core" X-Men titles there are anymore? Blue, Gold, Red, Astonishing.

fujishig

Yeah, they basically throw crap on a wall and hope some of it sticks. I think we've had this discussion here before, but as much as people seem to hate having 5 spider-man and batman books or whatever, that's what sells, the niche books that are internet darlings usually do barely anything (unless digital sales are just huge, which they never disclose). I'm actually surprised they're going to condense the Avengers line, though it is so diverse that it probably lost a lot of readers anyway and having a core book of Avengers akin to Morrison refocusing Justice League way back when (or even Johns doing it in New 52) would probably help.

But yeah, they're catering to old readers because they have to. If they want to try to start catering to new readers, to the detriment of the old, they're going to be screwed, because who goes into a comic book store for the first time and picks up a five dollar single issue and thinks hey, I want to spend this every month, it's well worth it.

If this gets some solid creative teams on there that last more than a year, and we can get runs like Brubaker's Cap or Hickman's FF or Avengers, I'm all for it, though, I'll pick up the collections.

Also, I thought people liked Slott on Spidey?

Red Hood

Slott Spidey is a hit or miss. He's been there so long though. On the plus side, he took out Parker out of being a miserable poor person, but on the other hand, he kept constructing Peter's world on the One More Day storyline. It's pretty obvious that people, both old and new, want to see Peter with MJ and that's why the Renew Your Vows book is selling so well.

Besides Mark Waid, there are only 3 people working at Marvel as writers who are really good. That's Matthew Rosenberg, Charles Soule and Donny Cates. Everyone else is just so-so to mediocre. The art side has to improve too. Marvel's art has been mediocre at best (I'm looking at you Humberto Ramos). DC Comics have kept their art top notch for the most part.

fujishig

The One More Day thing seems more like editorial mandate than Slott's decision, but I don't know that much about it.

I don't collect much Marvel monthly (though I don't mind Ramos, he's actually gotten better from his Impulse days), but they seem to have decent artists like Samnee, Perez, Immonen, Sprouse, etc., but I'm sure they have so many books that they put out that there is a lot of crap out there as well.