OH HELL YEAH (marvel oct 2007)

HOLY YES THANK YOU!!!!!!

OHY PART DEUX:

MARVEL ZOMBIES 2 #1 (of 5)
Written by ROBERT KIRKMAN
Penciled by SEAN PHILLIPS
Cover by ARTHUR SUYDAM

Are you ready for Marvel Zombies Civil War? Forty years have passed and the zombies have come back home after eating just about everything else in the universe. Yum yum! What awaits them back on Earth, though, is beyond anything even these shambling monstrosities could have conceived! This is a new series featuring the amazing, irreverent take on the Marvel characters that became last year’s unexpected smash hit. They’re back and more stomach-churning than ever! The smash hit series is back, daring to ask: "Whose stomach are you in?"

According to that super-obnoxious rumor column featuring the shameless self-promoting asshat that Googles himself even more than I Google myself (and I'm a chronic self-Googler), Paul Cornell (a writer on the new Doctor Who TV series, and the writer of the grossly neglected & totally great Marvel MAX Wisdom series - CHECK IT OUT YO) will be taking over writerly duties on New Excalibur in the near future. Here is hoping!

Punisher World War Hulk Journal looks pretty rad too.

Thankfully, Marvel keeps us on our toes by releasing heinous shit like MYTHOS: PAUL JENKINS' FANTASTIC FOUR #1.

An actual link for the lazy (meaning me).

OMEGA: THE UNKNOWN #1 (of 10)
Written by JONATHAN LETHEM with KARL RUSNAK
Art by FAREL DALRYMPLE & PAUL HORNSCHEMEIER
The story of a mute, reluctant superhero from another planet, and the earthly teenager with whom he shares a strange destiny -- and the legion of robots and nanoviruses that have been sent from afar to hunt the two of them down. Created in 1975 by Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes, the original Omega The Unknown lasted only ten issues but was a legend to those who recall it -- an ahead-of-its-time tale of an anti-hero, inflected with brilliant ambiguity. One of Omega's teenage fans was award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem, who has used the original as a springboard for a superbly strange, funny, and moving graphic novel in ten chapters.
32 PGS./Rated T+…$2.99

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IMMORTAL IRON FIST #10
Written by MATT FRACTION & ED BRUBAKER
Pencils by DAVID AJA
Cover by JELENA KEVIC-DJURDJEVIC
The kung fu tournament to end all tournaments continues in this, the third part of THE SEVEN CAPITAL CITIES OF HEAVEN. Davos and Crane Mother’s conspiracy to crush K'un-Lun and the Iron Fist legacy once and for all springs to life. The Heroes for Hire continue tracking the rogue Hydra cell across the snow-swept Himalayas. The wicked Bride of Nine Spiders spins her terrible web. America continues to fall in love with Fat Cobra. And Danny Rand returns to the fight, armed now with the long-lost life story of Orson Randall, the Last Iron Fist. Will he be too late?

I'm already crushing on Fat Cobra.

Very odd that the WWHulk epilogue is being cowritten by Fred Van Lente... but Pak is doing all of the "What If?" spinoff himself.

Marvel Zombies = Sean Phillips not drawing Criminal for a bit, I bet. Sadface.

Also odd to see that J. Lethem is actually cowriting his Omega the Unknown with someone that a quick Google reveals to be an old friend of his (with no other real Google refs).

Also odd to see that J. Lethem is actually cowriting his Omega the Unknown with someone that a quick Google reveals to be an old friend of his (with no other real Google refs).

FIRST APPEARANCE: That Kirby essay published in the London Review Of Books about five years back!

OMEGA: THE UNKNOWN #1 (of 10)
Written by JONATHAN LETHEM with KARL RUSNAK

finally

You mean <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n08/leth01_.html";>this essay</a>?

That is kind of awesome that he got his childhood comics buddy to draw it!

whoops

I mean help write it.

It's interesting (to me, anyway) that Marvel's able to offer in-continuity stories / books that are both intertwined w/ everything & still nicely compartmentalized & easy to enjoy separate from their events (Captain America probably being the best example). Meanwhile, DC's trying to make everything tie into everything else, and the end result are all these different monthly series & minis & one-shots that are dependent on each other in order for the story (which seems to be serving a Greater Purpose) to make a lick of sense. It might just be a matter of perception, tho - Marvel's made it a point to have their big stories / events stand out as independent entities, while DC has to a fault driven home the oh-so-important shared-universe conceit.

Which is to say that I am in love with the Howard the Duck cover.

FFS, tho, what is gonna take to get some Ty Templeton ART???

Tacos. For me. Lots of tacos. For me.

(NB: that might be a Pissed Jeans lyric.)

ha, wait - is that the childhood comics buddy lethem writes about in the jack kirby / stan lee piece in <i>the disappointment artist</i>?

> DC has to a fault driven home the oh-so-important shared-universe conceit.

Well, there is the whole All Star and Confidential thing, too. Not to mention Vertigo and such.

Yeah, but those things aren't getting much press or push from DC (from what I can see) - the Confidential titles (despite of the high-profile teams they got for their first arcs, and there's a case to be made along the lines of "Whilce Portacio ain't high-profile") seem to be nothing more than Legends Of... books w/ different title graphics, and the chronic lateness of the All-Star books (never mind the widely accepted crapitude of ASSBATS) undercut any momentum those books once had.

&, yeah, I conveniently forgot about Vertigo - I always consider it totally separate from DC, and has a decidedly lower profile, no doubt because it's treated as such by the higher-ups. Not that I'd want a Didionic spooge job to accompany the "press push" for The Unmen or that upcoming Brian Wood Viking thing. If Didio (the most public face for DC) is opening his yap, there's a good chance he's flogging COUNTDOWN and related spinoffs at the expense of the company's diversity. & even if Didio's only concern is the spandex stuff, would it kill him to point out the other stuff out there that's not involved in this clusterfuck?

Poke away!

Granted, it would help if COUNTDOWN wasn't a YEAR-LONG WEEKLY SPECTACULAR. If it was just a 7-issue monthly that came out over the course of 9-10 months (to name a random example), the overkill I'm seeing probably wouldn't be there.

I don't disagree with anything in David's last two posts. I guess you guys have seen the eye-rollery that is the "Final Crisis" ad on Gnusarama?

http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/FinalCrisis/FinalCrisis.html

Yeah, Tom, I believe it's the same essay.