Marvel: What's good RIGHT NOW?

New Avengers was rubbish last month but has otherwise been great fun.

Astonishing X-Men is flogging a plot into the ground at the moment and not concentrating on the 'core brand values' that Whedon did so well in 1-7. But it's good too. Pete Milligan's adjectiveless X-Men started dreadfully but the latest issue was a massive jump up in quality - it felt authentically 'X' and authentically Milligan.

The Dan Slott stuff is fun superhero marginalia and I'm glad it exists but don't adore it (actually SM/HT is pretty adorable).

Ed Brubaker's Captain America looks and reads very well.

If you are really keen to see a gritty and realistic take on superheroes then Supreme Power is getting a good run out of the old nag. Lovely art too.

I'm enjoying it though, as well as Milligan X-Men (what Tom said, basically) and Ultimates 2. I bought that one issue of Ultimate X-Men that Steve Dillon drew, so I might get back on with that title again since I do like Stuart Immonen a lot.

I enjoy Daredevil, but the current storyline is just okay. I think Bendis has killed a lot of momentum that the series had by focusing so much on this long arcs that take place out of sequence.

I'm probably going to buy Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man when it comes out cos I love Mark Weiringo so much and don't hate Peter David as much as I usually think that I do.

OK, I'll add one - the Ellis / Granov Iron Man revamp. It started the same month as the Brubaker Captain America revamp, but has been a bit slow in coming out - only 3 issues so far. But, if you're in the mood for theoretical discussions re: research & development in the field of SCIENCE! and the responsibility of the scientist to the world at large and themselves, then you'll like the first two issues, and if you want to see Iron Man get his tin cup handed to him by a human weapon of mass destruction (SCIENCE!), then you'll like the 3rd issue.

Also, Ultimate Spider-Man, tho (as I think Douglas has said many times) go w/ the trades.

(except it's in between 'seasons' RIGHT NOW)

But, yeah, SHE-HULK! I'd love to know what folks that don't have a vast knowledge of Marvel ephemera think of the series (tho I know Mr. Huk, a DC fan thru & thru, likes it).

Wolverine has been fun lately, if that's your bag. Ultimates 2, to my slight guilt, has been fantastic, possibly the best thing since good-era JLA.

I'm really enjoying Black Panther right now, and I'm on the verge of reading Ed Brubaker's Captain America.

To answer David's question, I don't feel like I have a vast knowledge of Marvel ephemera (I mostly know the larger Marvel universe through what has seeped into the X-Men) and I had no problems whatsoever getting She-Hulk. All the Avengers/Watchers/weird villains/Secret Wars stuff was either explained very well or not necessary for enjoyment of the story.

Wait, I take it back -- near the end, it did reference some (I presume) Avengers Disassembled stuff that I didn't really get. Or rather, it was explained (Shulkie killed the Vision? Who is, uh, what now?) but I still felt like I missed something.

Yeah, the last issue of She-Hulk referenced a lot of things that I had no understanding of--I don't even know what the deal is Doc Sampson, I'm not sure I care to know anyway. But what I loved about the last issue of She-Hulk is that it sort of brought everything full circle.
I'll be glad to see it on the stands again, but there was closure (and promise) within its own confines.

As far as the thread question, I'd recommend the She-Hulk trade paperbacks highly. I don't think anyone on ILC has disliked She-Hulk, have they? Reactions seem to vary mostly in intensity, but they're all on the same side of the line. And if Ian's asking about Marvel, I figure he knows enough of the basics -- you benefit some from knowing who the Awesome Android was, and about Titania, but the much bigger benefits come from knowing things like "Jameson writes anti-Spider-Man editorials in the Daily Bugle."

I think I liked Phoenix Endsong about as much as I'm liking the second leg of Astonishing, but you wouldn't want to read it without having read Morrison's X-Men run.

GLA has been even better than I expected, and I say that as one of ILC's biggest Slott-boosters. I suspect She-Hulk is a more accessible read, but maybe not knowing who the GLA are would actually make the comic better.

Dan Slott and Frank Tieri have an uncanny knack for coming out with series that I would pitch to Marvel myself if I were in a position to; Slott consistently does a better job than I would, Tieri doesn't, so I hate them differently.

Speaking of Wolverine, am I crazy or didn't Alan Moore say something about a Wolverine idea he had once? Or am I thinking of someone other than Alan Moore (and maybe someone other than Wolverine, in which case "didn't someone have an idea about something?")

Was Priest's Deadpool run cut short? That'd be one I'd like to see more of.

Thread merge: Priest's run on just about ANYTHING was cut short - even his Black Panther run! (RIP The Crew) Sweet shit STOP PAIRING HIM W/ SUBSTANDARD ARTISTS (and stop w/ the lack of love from the PR dept., too).

I just wanted to post NIGHTWANG. Don't mind me.

ihttp://www.idea-inc.com/~bill/lj/doomaid.jpg

(This has NOTHING to do with what's good at Marvel right now, sorry Ian.)

(n'wango)

(set up knock down etc.)

(wang of night)

I like how Robin's superjock shows off the tendons in his thighs while protecting his package.

Welcome to the X-Men, Kitty Pryde! Hope you like TEETH!

So what would be some good Marvel stuff from, say, the last five years that is awesome and available in trade paperbacks and which I should read?? I've been out of the loop since like 1995 but am, for some reason, wanting to read some recent stuff.

I'm a Bendis stan to an unseemly degree, so I'd say all of his Avengers work. But also --

Bendis/Maleev Daredevil, followed by Brubaker/Lark Daredevil
Fraction/Larocca Iron Man (the current series, now at #13)
Lethem/Dalrymple's Omega the Unknown
Garth Ennis' Punisher -- I never thought I'd like anything like that, but it's very cathartic.
Straczynski/Coipel's Thor
Hudlin's Black Panther

Yeah, I know the essentials about Marvel's cosmic stuff, and the cosmic stories are often the ones I like the most, so I guess I'll try Annihilation first.

Invincible Iron Man and Incredible Hercules are the only two ongoings worth reading

I'd probably add Fantastic Four to that, and the latest Punisher plot is WHOA FUCK.

The thing about Bendis is a lot of the mentioned stuff does feel hollow and EVENT BOOK! But he has used his power to write shared universe fun books with high production quality art attached, especially with everything relating to New Avengers. House of M and Secret Invasion (as well as Civil War) do feel like they have these interesting premises that end with changing the state of the Marvel Universe - which is probably more than you can say about most major crossover events of the last 20 years - as individual stories they feel unsatisfying, since the MU can never really resolve or slow down. (At least the way they've handled it - I guess Siege is it for a while?) Unfortunately, despite this, none of those stories ended in a way I was happy with, or lived up to their premises, though I haven't read Dark Reign yet.

But even with SI, reading the stories in New and Mighty Avengers and the went they took into account all the continuity from the last six years, they were great. On a pure entertainment level - as long as you don't expect the long stories to have satisfying endings, since everything is just an endless action soap opera - it's been fun. In short - even if you want to avoid the big stories I'd still recommend New Avengers.

Tied altogether this decade probably is one of the better mainstream MU runs in ages, with fun, usually competently drawn stories and decent editorial control, though I'm probably not defending it as well as others could. Though yeah there are some messes like too much X-Men spillover and Spider-Man selling his soul, but what can you do.

(Oh yeah, I dug JMS' first few years of Amazing. If you liked Runaways you should also give Young Avengers a shot. And nobody mentioned it but I'll say it - Secret War was pretty bad too, an even weaker version of the big stuff Bendis would try to pull later. Still rec his Daredevil if you can somehow get a hold of it. And I definitely have been a fan of the Greg Pak Planet Hulk/WWH/Herc run.)

I'll rep for the first couple years of the Bendis Avengers stuff, along with his concurrent Daredevil and Alias runs. I wasn't a fan of his before then, and I've kinda lapsed into not being a fan of his again now, but he did some decent work during those few years. Just make sure you jump ship before the execrable Secret Invasion.

Since getting burned by the aforementioned SI, I've dropped pretty much every Marvel title I was reading, save the X-books. But that's more because I've been reading the X-books for a couple of decades now than because they're, like, the best things on the shelves.

PUNISHERMAX is alright - I would never vouch for that "ain't I edgy?" title, but it acquits itself well as a direct follow-up to Ennis' run (as will be attested to by Ennis, though I suspect a required blurb on every "mature" PUNISHER trade for the next three years is a contractual obligation on his part). Aaron's dialogue isn't Ennis-crisp but it's good, and his take on Kingpin is quite clever.

Haven't kept up with PUNISHERPROPER'N'WITHTIGHTS in a while. Those first few issues struck me as dullish and blah, but taking a look at new piecemeal Frank is tempting.

think i've said this before on ilc, but as an old school avengers fan - always my favourite marvel title - i'd rate the bendis years just behind the roy thomas-john buscema issues and pretty much on a par w/ the best englehart, stern and shooter stories - ie i like em just fine, a pretty gd superhero marvel team bk w/ some good ideas (i love the illuminati stuff and the dark avengers inversions) some not so good ones (most of secret invasion), some nice art (finch), some horrible art (bagley), etc - and i do find it pleasing that the for the first time in like 30 years, its the avengers titles that seem to be the 'hot' and central marvel bks, rather than the fuckin x-titles

good good good

I'm a hopeless Bendis stan, so I'd rank his Avengers run even higher. Bendis > Englehart >>>>>>> Stern > Thomas. (Shooter = rat poison imho.) The crossover Big Events are really to be avoided, except maybe for the Dark Reign stuff throughout 2009 because it seemed a bit less centralized and the individual titles were less bound to any specific action going on month to month.

For old-school superheroics, I think Tuomas might like Black Panther. V4 from 2005-2008, and v.5, starting last year and ongoing.

I haven't read too many of Bendis's Avengers comics, but the superhero comics by him that I have read, I haven't liked that much. He seems to treat the whole superhero genre like it was a police series or something, all the characters talk like they're tough guys in an action movie, basically they're just super-powered soldiers who fight against super terrorists or whatever. And I like the old-school superhero stuff with high adventure and high ideals, where superheroes never killed anyone, or if they did, it was big issue. I guess that's why I mostly read DC stuff these days, even though I used to be a huge Marvel fan as a kid; it seems DC still does the sort of superhero comics I dig. I'm not saying this is all Bendis's fault though... After I finished reading Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, I tried to read Warren Ellis's current run on the title, but I was disgusted to find out that all of a sudden these characters I liked as kid, who previously had a strong moral code not to kill anyone, had no problem killing not only as self-defense, but also executing a villain they'd already subdued. Seems the only one who had a problem with this was Storm! Maybe I sound old-fashioned here, but I've always liked the idea of superheroes having high morals and dealing with moral dilemmas like is it ever okay to kill; if Marvel wants to make it's superhero line into yet another form of cynical realpolitik action entertainment (which seems to be trendy in the post-war on terror entertainment world), then it's not for me.

Bendis (with Quesada's blessing) has been the main architect of Marvel's non-cosmic continuity the last ten years, so the whole thing may be an exercise in frustration for you, beyond Annihilation/Nova/Guardians.

I haven't been reading Ellis' Astonishing X-Men, but Bendis' superheroes are not casual killers. One of the stronger elements in his books has been the willingness of Osborn and his group of fake Avengers to kill innocents, and it's produced real tension leading up to the coming showdown, with ultra-moral Cap back from the dead, and Iron Man broken and reborn as a less morally compromised character.

As for Bendis' dialogue, it's one of the reasons he's my favorite comics writer. I can't read Marvels from the 60s to the 90s anymore -- all I can do is look at them and appreciate the art and general plotting elements. The dialogue is howlingly bad.

Let's be fair: Bendis's dialogue has, at times, been pretty howlingly bad itself.

"Did you see that?"
"What?"
"That!"
"That?"
"Yeah, that."
"Yeah, I saw that."
"You saw that?"
"I did."
"You did."
"Yeah."
"Huh."
"Yeah."

Invincible Iron Man is mighty good right now, in general, esp. that yearlong "World's Most Wanted" arc I've mentioned elsewhere.

Those who want Bendis's strengths combined with When Heroes Were Real Heroes Dadburn It Innocence are directed to his Ultimate Spider-Man, which is still remarkably consistent.

I've been keeping up with Amazing Spider-Man, which is consistently decent, and rarely much better or worse. I particularly like the romance subplots, actually.

And I just read the mean but intermittently thrilling Warren Ellis run on Thunderbolts--the second half ("Caged Angels"), in particular, has some terrific moments, although the resolution kind of comes out of nowhere.

xp I generally like Bendis' dialogue too, but to the thing that annoys me the most (besides his tendency to write badly readable double page multi-panel spreads - I know it's him because different artists do it on different titles he writes!) is when he sets a page up as two people talking, 2 or 3 panels at most - 2 heads, with literally 60-75% of the page consisting of dozens of word balloons intersecting with each other. Sometimes, the artist realizes this and doesn't even bother to draw any background - even good ones like Alex Maleev or Leinil Yu! And on top of that, when there's THAT much dialogue on one page it goes exactly like you said. "Huh." "You?" "Yeah, me." x100. (Layout - really not Bendis' strong suit.)

My problem with the Marvel comics by Bendis/Millar/Ellis (at least the ones I've read) is not so much with the dialogue than with the way the characters are written... Pretty much everyone in them acts all cynical and weary, like they're veteran cops or soldiers in a superhero war, and all the superhero leaders have turned from inspirational moral mentors/leaders to cynical "generals", who only think about strategy and tactics in an ongoing super war. And I think that takes away from what makes superhero comics special, because then they're not so different from your basic war/cop series, except that the characters have superpowers instead of guns. Superheroes are by their very nature a ludicrous genre, and I think it's much better suited for high adventure and clear-cut moral fables than this sort of gritty cynicism. I know the dialogue in old superhero comics is often quite bombastic and corny, but I don't mind that because I think they work better when they're a bit corny and not saturated with the sort of quasi-realism Bendis & co seem to prefer.

PAD's X-Factor is currently the best Marvel book I read, with Thunderbolts and (lol wuht) New Mutants (ya rly) coming in close behind.

Oh yeah, forgot how much I love X-Factor.

X-Factor doesn't even seem to be in the same universe as the rest of the Marvel mainstream. Realized, rounded characters with individual motivations in interesting stories? Nowhere else. Best soap opera in comics.

Actually New Mutants is kind of hitting this same line of territory, only it's laboring under the problem that no one except hardcore old-skool New Mutant fanatics would give a shit about the stories.

Still, it's the best portrayal of the old New Mutants crew I've read in ages, particularly Sam, Bobby and Dani.

Also nu-Illyana is maybe the greatest character in the Marvel Universe at the moment (and I am just as surprised to be writing that as you are to read it).

I thought basically the entire House of M/Decimation/198 follow-up seemed to go completely to X-Factor? I wasn't able to get more books by that point though, so i don't know.

Tuomas, the point I was making was that I think you'd like Ultimate Spider-Man a bunch.

I gotta check out recent New Mutants and X-Factor. I am also a little bit curious about the Abnett/Lanning outer-space quasi-weekly serial, but the bits I've flipped through in the store haven't grabbed me.

My favorite Marvel Universe character at the moment is almost certainly Amadeus Cho from Incredible Herc--a really, really clever variation on the young-Peter-Parker archetype.

I thought first Anniliation series and the mini-series was really great and some of the stories on the more minor characters like Drax the Destroyer was some of the best parts. Keith Giffen did a good job of not getting bogged down in all that has gone down before and got straight into the action, but there are ties back to the older stories. I couldn't get into the sequel nearly as much and haven't read past the first trade.

"Bendis just wanted to shake the Avengers down to its foundation and ruin a perfectly good character (Scarlet Witch)"

I think the why on the Scarlet Witch is still to come. I think in the end there will be a big reveal that Loki was behind her going mad and he was just using her as a tool to destroy The Avengers, who he unwittingly caused to come into being.

The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver have been re-worked by pretty much most main writers on the Avengers. Englehart hooked her up with the Vision. A who's who worked on that story in the 80s that completely re-wrote their back story making them Magneto's children. Stern gave her and Vision "kids" and then Byrne took them away. I'm not sure she has been ruined, maybe used less, but Wanda is now got to be considered one of the more powerful characters in the Marvel U, so I would say it all depends on how the next big story using the character is done.

The Disassembled arc is pretty shocking breaking of the toys, but I think in the long run it worked out somewhat well. Bendis did use some newer characters and try to develop some other less used characters.

The actual Secret Invasion series was pretty rub, as it was pretty lame compared to the build up and the background stories, but I think the Dark Reign stories that came out especially the Dark Avengers (which is really the sequel to Ellis' run on Thunderbolts) have been pretty good.

When I started reading comics Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver being Mags kids was status quo, it wasn't until much later I realized that was a more recent retcon. I didn't realize her character got so messed up all this time - sounds kind of like what's happened to Power Girl or Wonder Woman at DC.

That reminds me though - the Son of M mini that followed House of M was weird and pretty damn cool. I wish I read X-Factor to find out what the heck happened afterwards...

earlnash otm re: scarlet witch

Really, I don't know that it is really messed up as much as filling out the back story and using that as way to plot out and tell stories. Some of those stories are pretty good and some are kind of rub, but that is kind of the nature of super hero comics.

One of the biggest things that changed with super hero comics in the fifteen years or so was this kind of stuff got a formal name "retcon" and instead of being a cool thing that happened every once in a while, it seems to become the status quo with stuff switching around more often than staying somewhat static.

Dropping Batmite & Zur En Arrh into modern Batman- very hip.
Turning Hal Jordan into a psychopathic killer who completely destroys the Green Lantern Corps- not a very good idea.

I'd say that making Wanda & Pietro into Magneto's kids was a pretty good retcon compared to most.

Oh yeah, definitely. And Morrison's execution was brilliant. I even kind of like Marvel's somewhat sneaky style of just pushing in a lot of these retcons without a ton of fanfare, like the constant timeline updates of Iron Man and Cap's origins (Stark's involvement in which war, when exactly Cap thawed out of the ice).

It was also an interesting and innovative post-Watchmen way to incorporate decades of other writers' retcon after retcon, and to shine a bright light on the genial huckster saying "face front, True Believer!!" and revealing a very scary clown.

Thing is that DC for better or worse seems to go the scarred earth route on many of these retcons, not only laying waste but salting the fields in the aftermath. Geoff Johns is pretty much has a cottage industry at DC going around fixing dumb recons one character at a time (with mixed results if you ask me).

It all depends on how it is done, but certain characters work quite a bit better for this kind of thing. With Jean Gray/The Phoenix or The Flash, I think you can do about anything, as there is time travel and/or huge power tied to their character. Heck Barry Allen traveled through time left and right, it figures that a story could be done where he would show up. (I thought it would be cool that the guy that showed up would be the actual Earth 1 Barry Allen, but I don't think the are going that way.)

One thing I kind of like on some of Ed Brubaker's Captain America and what he is doing in The Marvels Project is that it is kind of a modern take on a bunch of super hero stuff that Roy Thomas did both at Marvel and DC.

What is kind of interesting I think on the sliding time line is that they still have Frank Castle fighting in Vietnam and his war on crime starting in the 70s at least in the Max book, not sure if they have yet changed his back story in the actual Marvel Universe or not.

Yeah, that's a good question, I wondered about that too. The MAX book was totally separate from 616 - I think Punisher was basically MIA in the mainstream universe from between the first non-MAX Ennis series until Civil War. So far it seems like they're just ignoring it for now, since he'd have to be in his 50s like in MAX, when he clearly isn't in everything post-Civil War. Speaking of which, I hear he's undead now, which sounds hilarious and terrible. Didn't they learn anything from '90s Angel Punisher?

I'm kind of curious about that story line. On the one hand it is totally bonkers and ill-suited for the character, but on the other hand it is Rick Remender and Tony Moore and those guys are pretty good. Some of the pages on Tony Moore's site look pretty cool, once you can get over the idea 'hey man that's the punisher, he should be shooting dope dealers'.

To be honest, I have to say I liked some of Ennis' ha ha Punisher stuff just as much as the best of the Max series, so I do think the Punisher can work in other ways other than grim and gritty.

It all comes down is it a pretty good comic. You can do something totally off the wall if you pull it off and nail the landing.

I kind of want to read it just out of freak curiosity! Who knows - it could be amusing.

That's why I mentioned it up top, it's really pretty good.

The inhabitants of Monster Island, plus some other famous monster characters, are living in the disused Morlock tunnels because a Japanese monster execution squad are after them. Once Frank is blown up by Osborne in one of the Dark Reign books, then sliced up by Dark Wolverine to make sure in another Dark Reign book, they (the monsters) collect up the bits and sew him back together so he can save them. It's still early days, of sorts, but it's as good as anything anyone else has done with the post-Ennis character.

Punisher is such an 80s character, it'd be pretty hard to make people take him seriously these days. So this sounds like a good development for him.

Jesus fuck Tuomas I only remember you dropped it last time we had a big Punisher arg't so I don't recall, have you not read Ennis' MAX series at all?

Based on that argument, I read Ennis's "regular" Punisher series (with Dillon art), which was okay I guess. But I don't really like some of Ennis's writing quirks, such as his macho bullshit and his indulgent hyperviolence, and it seems like Punisher is a character that brings out the worst of Ennis in this regard. What made the series readable was the humour (which Ennis has always been good with), otherwise it might've been as intolerable as the late 80s/early 90s Punisher comics. Is the MAX series equally humourous?

Is the MAX series equally humourous?

NOT QUITE (very much an understatement; mind you, I've a thorough knowledge of the MAX stuff, but, aside from like two issues, none of Ennis' more mainstream take). What humor there is is ingrained and satirical (the ott BARRACUDA corporate shenanigans, w/ its "die yuppie scum" message is what I'm mainly thinking of). Mind you, Ennis' MAX Nick Fury is always a hoot-and-a-half.

I don't know, I think Ennis' macho bullshirt works pretty good some of the Punisher stuff, especially on a couple of the one-shots like The Tyger (with John Severin!) and The End (with Richard Corben!!!). If you want to check out two issues, go for those and you won't go wrong.

Garth Ennis did a complete circle on the Punisher Max title though, as he followed up on all of his story lines and the thing pulls together really well. The violence is really over the top, but most modern comics any more are (criminy did you see that scene when Black Hand offs himself a few months back jezus), but I thought how he tied the Vietnam stuff back into the title was really great.

The thing that I would love to see Jason Aaron do with his run on the title is do some story lines based back in the 70s and 80s. Ennis did a bit of that in his run, but I think that is a gold mine of stuff that could be done, as they play it that the Punisher has had this war on crime going now for 30 years in the Max book.

Yeah, P-Max is the one title where the macho bullshirts and hyperviolence actually make sense*; and they're played straight-but-tacitly-disapproving, rather than childishly gleeful. I'd recommend getting a few full storylines in paperback or hardcover from the library if possible, to get a better feel for the run than the semi-out-of-continuity one-shots.

(*oh, Hitman too, but that's a very different tone, and has SO MUCH good Ennis comedy to balance out every other aspect. P-Max is nowhere near as great as Hitman, but it's maybe Ennis' second-most-successful extended run**.)

(**I don't rate his Hellblazer cos I jumped off with the "Royal Family drink the blood of commoners DO YOU SEE?!??!" storyline, and I like Preacher, but it waffles and lets Ennis's romance for macho get the better of it***)

(***it has WAY more consistently good cartooning than Max Punisher though!)

But T-dogg definitely shouldn't be talking about the impossibility of making such an 80s character serious without at least LOOKING at some of the FIVE-YEAR-RUN of super-serious Punisher!

Hmmm.

Now all he needs is a scooter and a Kinks song playing on the soundtrack.

Har! Or "Song 2" and the ghost of Don LaFontaine.

It isn't from "now" but should have been in the scope of this thread. Where's Iron Fist?

Series ended at #27 with Misty Knight pregnant with Danny's child, followed by a 5-issue Immortal Weapons miniseries. I'm not sure if another IF series is on the schedule or not.

I kind of meant it just wasn't mentioned here. I don't think I read past the Brubaker/Fraction issues except for that Immortal Weapons mini.

So, I wouldn't say that Iron Man is the *best* that it has been, but with this recent arc, Matt Fraction is rolling the character back to about where he was when the Ellis/Granov issues were done. Which in my mind is good, because the Civil War/head of Shield days were kind of editorially-mandated crap. It's somewhat etched into the character, because..

*SPOILERS*

..the character of Tony Stark had his brain wiped and restored from a hard drive copy that predated all that crap.

Seriously? They're just going to pretend his actions didn't matter then?

Not that they don't matter, but that he doesn't remember them, which is even cooler. I like this twist. "I did WHAT? Oh shiiiiii --"

I assume Fraction is going to have him wrestle with the decisions he made but doesn't remember. Him convincing his former friends "he's not that guy," etc. It appears it isn't like amnesia, but he IS - even personality wise - the guy he was before he did all those things. Restored from a backup.

Now if they can only explain Reed Richards' actions...

Yeah, the new Thor-Iron Man dynamic will have potential. Thor laid a heavy beating on IM for the Thor-clone thing and probably won't be over it completely, though he did help with the physical reboot.

...SUCH a fanboy...

I should mention that after a couple of years of recommending stuff to her, I've finally got my daughter reading comics and she's gone off the deep end, total immersion, bless her heart.

You have to love Marvel for being so obvious about Captain America. He was dead and gone, and now he's hanging out in every comic, reminiscing about old times with all his buddies.