Smith. Doug Smith, from novaprimepage.net, which I just looked at and is definitely worth your time, provided you like Nova.
You can go there to see the same preview pages I'm showing here...but I'm ALSO showing this brand new MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES #20 cover by Chris Samnee and Veronica Gandini, featuring The Vision displaying three different powers. Why don't I remember any good The Vision stories? Do they exist? Maybe I'll get Jordan to explain The Vision to me.
I finished reading Paul Tobin's plots for his BRAND NEW BOOK yesterday, and sent him seven notes (I think it was seven). It's gonna be REALLY good. I'm talking Giffen-JM-first-Justice-League arc/Grant-Morrison-first-JLA-arc good.
I'm gonna go look at Ig Guara's PET AVENGERS #1 cover again...(maybe I'll show you tomorrow)
I’ve tooooooooooooooooooootally forgotten to update this blog thing. But there’s so much stuff on the internet, I’m sure you seven guys have found other stuff to do in the meantime.
Update on me:
--I’m 4th out of 6 in my Fantasy Football League. Team name: Behold Super Grover. I’m 3-3. Matt Forte is killing me and I want to do mean things to Terrell Owens. Terrible, horrible mean things.
--Finally gotten over my knee injury. Still hurts, but I’ve gotten over it. I kinda equate it to those African tribal people that add rings to their necks, to the point where their heads are a good twelve to fourteen inches away from their clavicles. Doesn’t feel good, but you get over it after a while.
--Don’t have a bulldog. My apartment’s too small for a beast, but that hasn’t stopped me from complaining about it. I’d be perfectly willing to move to a bigger place that could contain a dog, but then I wouldn’t have a ten minute commute to work, so the bulldog has to wait.
--Mississippi State beat Middle Tennessee State. Whoopee.
So that’s pretty much everything that’s going on with me. Here's 6 pages from the sorta "relaunch" of MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES, by Paul Tobin, Ig Guara, Chris Sotomayor's Sotocolor, and Dave Sharpe, with a cover by Nico Henrichon. We just put the finishing touches on this issue. It's very good.
My assistant Mike is gonna try and make me write on this thing more, so maybe stay tuned...
So Paul Tobin and I had a very healthy 2-hour phone call, figuring out who our new team of Avengers would be in MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES, starting over with Issue 17 in November. We were exhausted by the end, but finally got a REALLY cool team together. My favorite part of the conversation was when I tried to talk him into have Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, AND Marvel Boy on the team. I was kind of fooling around. Kind of.
I also told him that I’d asked about two dozen people who their super-seven A-Team would be comprised of, and several of the teams (like Jordan’s) were nigh-ridiculous.
I’m not going to reveal the entire team to you (Cap’s on it. That’s all I’ll say. I’ve said too much), but I will reveal that I got kinda obsessed with asking people about their perfect Avengers team. So much so that I started cold-calling creators and forced them to give me their teams with little-to-no preparation or time to think.
So this is the All-Star Avengers Selection List, I guess. Again, these are their real lists, I didn’t make them up…
CHRIS ELIOPOULOS (writer of Lockjaw & the Pet Avengers, writer/artist of Franklin Richards)
CAPTAIN AMERICA
IRON MAN
THOR
WASP
GIANT-MAN
HAWKEYE
HULK (it should be noted that Chris is like me, in that he has not really read Marvel Comics in the past 5 or 6 years)
COLLEEN COOVER (artist for TONS of stuff, including Spider-Man Family, X-Men First Class, Power Pack, Lockjaw)
CAPTAIN AMERICA
IRON MAN
THOR
WASP
GIANT-MAN
SCARLET WITCH
QUICKSILVER
(Colleen and I are very similar, in the sense that we are both married to Paul Tobin. She in the literal sense, I in SO many different ways)
RALPH MACCHIO (the legendary editor of many definitive Avengers runs)
CAPTAIN AMERICA
SCARLET WITCH
HAWKEYE
THE VISION
QUICKSILVER
GIANT-MAN
BLACK PANTHER
FRED VAN LENTE (writer of Marvel Zombies, Amazing Spider-Man, X Men Noir, Eminem/Punisher, co-writer of Incredible Hercules)
CAPTAIN AMERICA
IRON MAN
THOR
DOCTOR STRANGE
SUE STORM
SPIDER-MAN
HULK
JEFF PARKER (writer of Agents of Atlas, X-Men First Class, The Hood, formerly Marvel Adventures the Avengers)
IRON MAN
HULK
SUB-MARINER
QUICKSILVER
MEDUSA
MS. MARVEL
GIANT-GIRL/WASP
GREG PAK (writer of World War Hulk, Incredible Hulk, War Machine, co-writer of Incredible Hercules)
HULK
REED RICHARDS
WAR MACHINE
THOR
NIGHTCRAWLER
ARMOR
MS. MARVEL (PHOTON)
SCOTT GRAY (writer of Uncanny X-Men First Class, co-writer of Fin Fang Four)
CAPTAIN AMERICA
HAWKEYE
MACHINE MAN
BETA RAY BILL
THUNDRA
MOONDRAGON
HELLCAT
CHRIS CLAREMONT (Seriously? You don’t know what he’s written? The man’s a legend.)
CAPTAIN AMERICA
IRON MAN
HAWKEYE
WASP
ELEKTRA (“just to be a scary person”)
MS. MARVEL
“UNKNOWN 3RD WORLD MYTHOLOGICAL PERSON” (because he doesn’t like Thor)
Last time I really kept up with the Avengers, Black Knight wore a jacket and had a light saber, and there was a foil cover that had an embossed picture of Vision on it. I have absolutely no recollection of who they were fighting, or what was happening. I also have no recollection of the issues being particularly bad, so I have no ill will towards the Avengers. I just can’t really remember anything about them.
What I’m sayin’ is I have no Avengers anchor, no personal connection to who the Avengers “should” be. So when I hear people (JORDAN D. WHITE and other people not named JORDAN D. WHITE) complain that some Avengers teams aren’t the “real” Avengers, it doesn’t mean anything to me. I figure if you've got a group, and you've got something that needs avenging, let 'em avenge that, and we can call them the Avengers.
So now that MARVEL ADVENTURES THE AVENGERS (a team that was initially built for the purposes of marketing our more popular characters, with the noticeable exception of the awesome Jeff Parker creation, Giant-Girl) and MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR are going away, I’m funneling a lot more energy in the remaining MA titles, Spidey and Super Heroes. And I’ve decided to make Paul Tobin the regular writer of both, because we seem to get each other and he’s bald.
And we figure it’s a good idea to make MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES a book about the BEST hero team we can think of. We’re not necessarily calling them The Avengers at the beginning, but for the purposes of creating a super-team, we may as well call them that.
With all of this in mind, I’ve been going around the office this week, asking people to give their ideal 7-person roster of Avengers. “Seven” is the only restriction; any Marvel character is invited. I wanted to get a sense of who people really wanted to see on the team.
So before I bring Paul onto the blog to discuss how we ultimately chose our magnificent seven, here are a few of the options I was given. Some are pretty good, and some are really really really really really really really really really really bad (especially Jordan’s, which may need a blog post of its own):
1. Got in a 20-minute conversation with Jordan about the plusses and minuses of a PUNISHER FIRST CLASS series. We may have to turn it into a blog entry. After the three-minute mark, I stopped caring about the book itself and just wanted to see if Jordan would go to 11 on the Fluster Scale. (he did)
2. Got new Marvel Adventures Spidey sketches from Skottie Young. They're pretty.
3. Got in another conversation with a beleagured Jordan about the differences between The Force from Star Wars and The Oldpower from INCREDIBLE HULK/SKAAR: SON OF HULK. Again, three minutes in, all I care about is Jordan going into pseudo-conniptions. His moustache begins vibrating.
4. Met Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy, at the Tribeca Film Festival (he's a writer for ESPN). Felt embarrassed introducing myself. (realized "Huh. So THIS is what a fanboy feels like.") He was taller than I expected. Asked him to recommend writers for a SuperPro series (I kid you not).
5. Finished LOCKJAW AND THE PET AVENGERS #1 last week. Here's the first six pages.
Going back to work on Chapter Two of the Eminem/Punisher book...
Jordan told me about this thing on Comic Book Resources (which is a comic book website), where they do this top 10 list of the best Marvel covers.
Hey Jordan?
JORDAN: Hey, Nate. It’s on “Comics Should Be Good,” one of their blogs over there.
NATE: Yeah, there. So you went there, and it had the Top 10 for July. Just want to double-check my math here…how many of the covers that I commissioned for July are on the Top 10 list?
JORDAN: Well, it would appear to have six covers that you commissioned.
NATE: hang on hang on hang on…I’ve got something in my eye, having trouble reading the screen…how many out of 10?
JORDAN: Six, also known as 6. Though I am not sure why me typing it again would make you see it clearer.
NATE: It helps. So they do this list every month?
JORDAN: Pretty much, in one form or another. Sometimes it runs a bit late. I think they did 3 months worth in the last week.
NATE: I scrolled down to see previous entries, and I’ve got FIVE out of 10 for June and FOUR out of 10 for May. This means in the last 3 months, according to this list, I've commissioned 15 of the 30 best covers for Marvel.
Whitey, you go to this site ALL the time. How have you not mentioned my dominance of this list before now!?
JORDAN: Well, like I said, they are a little behind on them. A couple of months. Three months ago you were miles away in a different office from me.
NATE: Just hurts, Jordan. Hurts. Well, seeing this list, it makes me think I’m getting too high-profile. I think I should consciously try to make really bad covers.
JORDAN: I can draw them for you. What comic do you need a cover for?
NATE: That reminds me. As a hobby, I like to put Jordan in my comics and let him find out later. Below is a page from the upcoming Marvel Adventures the Avengers 36.
Weird thing happened last weekend. My girlfriend’s brother and I got out of shopping on Saturday. Y’know what we did instead? We watched "Speed."
When was the last time you watched "Speed"? Are you like me, did you forget how AMAZING it is? Keanu has never been more Keanuy…Dennis Hopper is sufficiently nutso and fragile but still kinda able to handle himself physically…both Cameron from Ferris Bueller and the southern lady that plays the southern lady in every movie that needs a southern lady play type in fantastic fashion…there’s that floppy-haired guy on the bus that was on a few episodes of "Beverly Hills 90210," who, along with Ethan Hawke, will forever be enshrined in my head as the quintessential Man of the '90s…Sandra Bullock looks reasonably attractive (when’s the last time you could say that?)…and stuff blows up SO GOOD. Barely a whiff of CGI!!!!!!! Sigh, I miss no CGI.
So I’m sitting there, inhaling the beautiful bouquet of '90s jargon (“This is unreal!”) and hilarious Keanuy Keanu line readings (“I don’t KNOW you MAHN!”) and great almost-"Die Hard"-level joke set-ups (“How do you feel?” “Like I been shot”) and watching a bus ram into all sorts of stuff…
…and I can’t stop thinking of Spider-Man.
Why? "Speed" has nothing to do with Spider-Man. Wrong city, wrong movie genre, wrong everything. Figured it was my mind not allowing me to enjoy one thing at a time. So I blocked Spidey out and kept listening to Dennis Hopper (“Three-point-seven million! It’s my nest egg, Jack! At my age y’gotta think about the future!”) and watched a bus travel 50 feet in the air without the benefit of an incline…and then Spidey popped in again.
Grrrrrr…the "Speed" action scenes were nothing like the Spider-Man movie action scenes (NO CGI!!!!!!). No one in "Speed" reminded me of any character in Spidey lore (but I DID notice that the guy in the beginning, where they get into the elevator before Hopper sets off the first bomb? The guy that presses the button is the comedian from the second season of "Mad Men"! Wonder what he did between these gigs). WHY is Peter Parker sticking in my craw?
And then it hit me: I didn’t see "Speed" until it came out on video in 1995. That was when my favorite Spider-Man book came out.
I was flashing back to when me and Spidey were on the same page, when the greatest Spider-Man comic, UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN, was released. At 99 CENTS!!!!! Perfect Busiek writing (he provided flashbacks so I didn't need to read the old issues) and perfect Olliffe art (Spidey should always look small and weird). That book was perfect.
This has been a really long-winded way of saying that we're kinda starting over MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN with issue #53, and I'm trying to look at it through the fresh eyes I had back when I was a fan of Spidey. And I have Jan de Bont to thank for it.
I’ve never seen "Speed 2."
More info on the new direction for MA Spidey tomorrow.
Was exercising this morning, listening to a B.S. Report from last week.
(God bless you, Bill Simmons, for being late on turning in your NBA book and being forced to do tons of podcasts instead of turning in columns. The writing’s great, but I can’t read while running.)
He was talking to Chris Connolly about the Oscars, and the merits/drawbacks of the nominees, and an interesting point was brought up about The Visitor (a really decent flick): Instead of Richard Jenkins, you couldn’t really put Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro in that movie, because Pacino would just do a variation of his Scent of a Woman performance, and (this is me) DeNiro would presumably do some variation of the same sleepwalking act he’s been doing for a while (the apex being, of course, his role in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle).
That’s a really good point. Jenkins worked great in that role because he fit the mold of someone that had not experienced enough joy/life/whatever. Pacino and DeNiro have spent decades in roles where they get everything (then they get shot or something, but still).
And then it hit me: That’s how I feel about comics now! That’s why I don’t really read that many anymore!!! Because of the casting! (and the fact that I spend most of my day working on comics, so why would I wanna go home and read them? Why would a guy that works a double shift at Krispy Kreme come home and eat nothing but crullers?)
So in an effort to make myself seem interested in comics (and to pass the time while Marvel’s archaic computer programs load data), I’m gonna create DREAM TEAMS (reserve the right to come up with a wittier title).
Rules:
-I will name the title of a book that I don’t read (FF, Avengers, Hulk, etc) and then figure out who would have to write and draw that book for me to be enticed to actually read it. This should in no way insult the current writers and artists. They might be doing amazing work; I’m just not reading them.
-There are two different things I’ll be doing: Casting current books, and casting books that I think should be current. So if I think Greg Rucka and John Romita Jr. would do a great Scarlet Spider comic, by God, they’re hired.
-Nobody dead. As much as I would love Kirby to draw FF again, that ain’t happenin’.
-Money’s no object. So I can hire Jim Lee if I want.
-Sanity’s no object. So I can hire Alan Moore if I want.
-Hm…that’s all I can think of. (reserve the right to think of other rules).
So I went to Jordan and told him to challenge me with a book that I would normally not read, and now I'll put my Dream Team in place to excite me enough to actually pick up. (not buy, of course)
He picked…(drumroll)………….
CAPTAIN BRITAIN
Captain Britain makes me think of Justice League Europe. The writers set Flash and Metamorpho and Wonder Woman and a bunch of other arbitrary characters in England, and just made fun of Europeans the whole time. Good stuff. Ah man…Giffen and DeMatteis doing that book AND Justice League America at the same time…those were the friggin’ salad days of fun comics. Sigh…but I digress.
My twelve seconds of online research tells me that CB is strong, can fly, is somehow tied to magic…aaaaaand with that, I’m bored and ready to cast:
WRITER:
Let’s see…British. Ok, I give writing to ROGER LANGRIDGE, who’s a Brit and gets doing wonky and delving into the serious when he needs to. He also has a sense of humor about the English, and would probably have the British Captain waging war against gingivitis and the lack of flavor in food.
ART:
It’s a tight one…I almost gave this one to the great Barry Kitson, but edging him out is the legendary (and refreshingly surly) ALAN DAVIS. Gorgeous artwork that man does, and he's already associated with the good Cap'n, so he's rehired. His usual inker MARK FARMER comes along too, and DAVE STEWART does color. Dave Stewart should do ALL colors for all things printed and/or on computers.
PLOT
The biggest rule I’d give Roger is that he’s not allowed to involve much magic. When the supernatural does come up, Captain Britain has to hate it (“Magic is rubbish!” he would say). The only magic I’d allow would be to grant a little kid with similar powers, put him in Captain Britain’s old costume, and name him Dodger. He’d be from Manchester, so he’d be kinda slow and funny, like Karl in Ricky Gervais’ podcasts.
Cap and Dodger would primarily defend England from non-super hero stuff, but when they were needed outside the country, they’d have a VERY specific amount of time they could be away before losing their powers.
FRIDAY
3:27 pm - finished DR. DOOM AND THE MASTERS OF EVIL #2, WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS #12, MARVEL ADVENTURES: FANTASTIC FOUR #45, and read over DARK TOWER #6. Left for the con.
3:43 pm – got to the con. Picked up an illegal badge from a friend so that I wouldn’t have a Marvel badge, therefore wouldn’t have to work at the Marvel booth. I think the badge said my name was “Peter.”
3:45 pm – went to Marvel booth, found Tim Dillon (who makes editors work at the booth) and showed him my badge. Laughed at him. Walked away.
3:50 pm – wanted to leave.
4:10 pm - found Dennis Calero's booth, saw him signing stuff. Signed his paintbrush (he's a fan of me), saw that he had on an ugly jacket. Told him to stop punching hobos in the stomach and stealing their jackets. Then told him his wife was a better colorist than him. (he's a fan of me)
5:00 pm – girlfriend arrived, wouldn’t let us leave.
6:00 pm – she let us leave.
SATURDAY/SUNDAY
Didn’t go.
Also...
"He’s Just Not That Into You" isn’t terrible. It proves again that British people tend to make better romantic comedies (is it because they keep their emotions in check better than we do?). See "Four Wedding & A Funeral," "Love Actually," "Notting Hill," "Pride & Prejudice," "Sense & Sensibility" for reference. Though if you’re reading this, you probably don’t watch romantic comedies. You likely know Klingon and carry longboxes around crowded convention centers.
About this blog: By day, he’s a mild-mannered comic book editor! By night, he’s an obsessive sports fan!
By early morning, he drinks coffee and then runs! He’s Nathan Cosby, and he has thoughts about things.
This is them.
About the author: When Associate Editor Nathan Cosby is not thinking about football, he edits Marvel’s All-Ages books, including the Marvel Adventures line (Spidey, FF, Avengers, Super Heroes), X-Men and Wolverine First Class, Franklin Richards, Mini Marvels, and Power Pack, works on the Marvel Illustrated and Stephen King books, does the Custom Comics, and runs Super Hero Squad. There’s like 20 other things he does, but he’s bored with typing this.
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