Big Question Help

[Flightpath07]

Hey All,

This may need a wordy answer, and I apologize if it does, but i am out of the loop currently when it comes to Marvel comics (I buy none of them right now).

With some of the changes that have gone on with the end of Siege and this whole New Age starting, seems like a lot of books have ended and others have started or re-started.

Can somebody fill me in on who is who?
What team books are out there now, and who is on the teams? X-books, Avengers titles, etc.
And what happened to all the superhero training that went on in The Initiative, and all the 50-some teams that were started out of that? Did they all disband?

Thanx, 'preciate it,

Flightpath07

(Wow, 800 posts! Geez, I gotta get a life...)

[Le Messor]

No.

Nobody can fill you in because it's now unpossible to keep track.
Somebody who keeps better track than me might be able to fill you in though.

Initiative is now being 'Avengers Academy', so the training is going on. A lot of those teams disbanded, but not all; I think the Marvel characters want to keep up the idea of the 50-state initiative, without the whole oppressive regime of the first one.

Wolverine, or a version of him, or aversion to him, is now on every single team in 616.

That's my jumbled recollect at the moment.

- Le Messor
"He who hesitates is last."

[Flightpath07]

Maybe we could start a new universe, call it 919, and have everybody be the exact opposite personality that they are now. Wolverine would be a boy-scout troop leader...come to think of it, he`d be a lot like MML II ! lol.

[Le Messor]

And the X-Men right now would be...

Wait, the opposite of zero is still zero.

- Le Messor
"He who hoots with owls by night cannot soar with eagles by day."

[mos_def]

Flightpath,

I like it. 616 upside down is 919. Everything opposite. Though wouldnt that make the AVengers the Masters of Evil and the Thunderbolts the Avengers....I might regret that. Sort of Crime Syndicate type stuff. Koodos for the thought though

[Flightpath07]

Flightpath,

I like it. 616 upside down is 919. Everything opposite. Though wouldnt that make the AVengers the Masters of Evil and the Thunderbolts the Avengers....I might regret that. Sort of Crime Syndicate type stuff. Koodos for the thought though

Thanx. Somebody find me an artist, I'm on a roll! (not)

[kozzi24]

Hey ‘Path
Don’t be disdained by the sarcastic answers...it’s all true.
I became disable and only recently gained enough back to be able to read comics. I kept having them held for a time, but have since cut back. Gone is my collector’s mentality attitude. I read the Siege era and reformation in bulk, so I have the basics down.
Keep in mind I have an old school reader mentality. Also that any reference to latest issues could be one issue out of date as I pick up only once a month these days.
AVENGERS:
I’m not sure what became of the actual Initiative and the teams. Some training is going on in Avengers Academy, and I have found that to be a great character oriented book that made my new reduced pull list. In my opinion it has some of the most interesting Avengers in Pym, Tigra and Quicksilver, and further interest in having both Speedball and Justice as regulars.
The core Avengers titles are unadjective and New. Spider-Man, Wolverine and Hawkeye overlap on both teams. New did not make my cut with Iron Fist, Mockingbird, Ms. Marvel and the Thing. Hawkeye hangs around, so is also in both titles. The "main" title is faux-Cap (Bucky), Iron Man, Thor, Spider-Woman.
I loved the Avengers/WCA era. There was reason for the two teams back then, and they both used characters generally recognized as Avengers. That’s not the case anymore. BM Bendis writes both of these titles, and his success in overexposing Wolverine and Spider-Man has lost me. Add to that his "pet choices" and character overlap, and you see why New got dropped. Bendis also did not follow his own story set-up. For Heroic Age, the main title should have been the grand heroes people look at and say "Avenger." Ms. Marvel should have been on the main team and Spider-Woman should not have been. Why include the Thing when he’s not in a rift with the FF? Why include "publicly-known menaces" Wolverine and S-M on the main team (other than sales.)? I would be all for a common man’s Avengers team, and it could have been worked as "transparency," but Bendis just failed. I am not sure I will be keeping with the main team either.
Secret Avengers has some characters I like, but it didn’t work for me. Valkyrie’s now an Avenger...with no set-up whatsoever. Moon Knight’s "disassembling" has been ignored. Beast quit the X-Men is opposition to the covert X-Force stuff, so he joins a secret team...huh? He also should have been in the main public team, IMHO. It just seems that every writer was allowed to use who he wanted with no reason. Here, on this team, Wolverine would have actually been appropriate.
Cage also is in Thunderbolts. That has returned to its reformation roots, but failed to hold my interest in some character choices and some characterization. USAgent is there, now a maimed cripple who is so brave as to not want any type of treatment that would improve his function or appearance. As someone who was suddenly gimped last year, I found the attitude so unrealistic and un-empathetic to be offensive.
Another Young Avengers is out. I passed. It’s 9 issues. It’s bi-monthly. It’s by Heinberg, who has a track record of deadline problems and abandoning projects. I have loved the Young Avengers stuff, but those three factors enticed me to wait for trade on this one.
X-MEN
The problem here is that the X-titles seem to all be Cyclops and Emma. And Wolverine Legacy maintains a focus on Rogue and Magneto, but otherwise it’s the same characters, with a lot of emphasis on newer and younger characters I don’t know, don’t relate to, just don’t like, or any combination of the above. Character interaction is minimal. Cyke and Logan are now best friends, and other interaction and character nuances are sorely lacking. Northstar was CLEARLY brought in as a token. Unless I missed something, Northstar and Madison Jeffries have NOT interacted on page AT ALL, for good or bad. (They never did like each other much.) Aurora has to be the ONLY mutant who was not an outright enemy of the X-Men who is NOT on Utopia.
Matt Fracton on Uncanny is very good at identifying characters, but I think he gets too cute with his tags.
New Mutants has been a great title, and I say that with a strong opinion that most dead characters should stay dead. I also think the success of this "nostalgic team" has influenced Marvel editorial towards the legacy team McCann will be using in the Alpha one-shot.
I don’t follow X-Force (ANOTHER Wolverine team), and am not sure if the team has reformed or the title is being cancelled.
The problem I see with the X-titles is the same as Avengers. A lack of focus, too much character repetition. But worse, all mutants are now X-Men, and save for a handful, live happily on Utopia. This has left the X-Men without adversaries. The science thinktank gets boring fast with deux-machina use and are as underfoot as Emma, Cyke and Logan, unrealistically so. The books are too crowded and character nuances are also missing. I passed on the new title as more of the same, I like Legacy but not most of the characters in it (this has been true for me since Carey took it on.) Astonishing has been dropped. Uncanny is on the verge of being dropped. I refuse to see "having all these back issues" as reason to get more.
Agents of Atlas has been really good stuff.
The latest issue left me cold, but FF has also been some great character stuff since the new writer took over, even if over the long term of bulk reading there’s been too much emphasis on Reed to the sacrifice of the others. My understanding is that the Thing is leaving the team, and that may be because the current writer doesn’t want to be dragged into every bad Bendis event.
My top three picks for enjoyable comics are FF, Agents of Atlas and Avengers Academy.

[Le Messor]

Kozzi, thank you for your detailed, non-sarcastic reply.
Sorry to hear about what happened. Um, what happened? (That's an answer that deserves its own thread.)

As for your comments on character, etc...
I like Fractions tags; they're about as much character development as we get in Uncanny X-Men these days.
I decided to write a 9-page essay on my problems with the way X-Men is run right now, including solutions, and send it to Marvel.
I'm not some comic-book supervillain here; I wouldn't be telling you if there was any way you could stop me.
I did it 3.5 days ago.
(Well, I mailed it last Saturday, it's now Tuesday morning, why let maths get in the way of a reference ?)

- Le Messor
"He who lives by the sword eats with bloody hands."

[Flightpath07]

Thanx, Kozzi. That was a way more detailed rundown than i expected to get from anyone!

Good to hear Tigra is still involved in something. She is my fave hero, after all (and I have a large back tatooo to prove it). Unfortunately, i dropped all comics earlier this year (or was it last year?), and so cannot follow her no more.

As for the X-mess and the Avengers messes...one of these days, Marvel is going to run into a brick wall for their stupidity in the way they do things.

Sorry to hear about your accident (if it was such). [It wasn't from a problem with your super-suit's battery pack, was it?] Glad to hear you are a little healthier now.

[kozzi24]

Kozzi, thank you for your detailed, non-sarcastic reply.
Sorry to hear about what happened. Um, what happened? (That's an answer that deserves its own thread.)

Whenever I get around to finishing the actual event, I will post a more detailed what happened on my site so I can just cirect people there and not have to be gracious to platitudes of "oh I'm so sorry." Public whining about my problems just isn't my style.

Long story short. That bit in my sig about waking with a blood hemmorhage is true.

[kozzi24]

Good to hear Tigra is still involved in something. She is my fave hero, after all (and I have a large back tatooo to prove it). Unfortunately, i dropped all comics earlier this year (or was it last year?), and so cannot follow her no more.

Tigra's kind of prominant in Avengers Academy and was a regular in Avengers Initiative before that.

[Flightpath07]

Yeah, i followed Initiative until just before it fell apart...

[Le Messor]

and not have to be gracious to platitudes of "oh I'm so sorry."

Yeah, I'm not fond of platitudes, either.

- Le Messor
He: Your husband is a brilliant man. I suppose he knows everything.
She: Don't be silly. He doesn't even suspect.

[Flightpath07]

Yeah, I'm not fond of platitudes, either.

- Le Messor
He: Your husband is a brilliant man. I suppose he knows everything.
She: Don't be silly. He doesn't even suspect.

I thought the plural of platitude was platipuses.

[Le Messor]

Platipi.