With HeroesCon now settling into the dusty annals of past history, the time has come for companies to start promoting what will happen at the almost-here-taste-it San Diego Comic-Con. For Marvel, that means some new teasers for whatever will follow their Avengers Vs X-Men event. Two have been released so far, promising lucky readers that the much-hated characters Thor and Wolverine will finally have their uppance come, during a story simply known as ‘War’.

This is likely to be a requiem-style miniseries following on from whatever the aftermath of AvX is, as you can see from the images of Thor’s broken hammer and Wolverine’s hand being…. well, who knows what’s happening in there. Expect a broken Captain America shield within a week, and probably some shredded Spider-Man clothes or something too.

Oh! Maybe this is something to do with that randomly-scheduled Brian Michael Bendis-written finale to the Avengers, Ultron War? That story has been slated to happen for over a year now, and there’s still no sign of it. In that case, expect a teaser image of Luke Cage’s beanie, which was accidentally put in the wash with some colours, and has now stained pink. What horrors. Marvel say that this story, whatever it is, will be announced at the Spider-Man panel during SDCC, on July 15th.

1 COMMENT

  1. Just shows how violent and right wing the comics industry is. Everything is about battle, nothing less, nothing more.

  2. Really? Another teaser for a Marvel “epic” showing Thor’s broken hammer? Where’s Cap’s cracked shield?

    They sure ran out of ideas for Thor fast over there at Marvel. Anyone else notice he’s on the same loop for EVERY big event he appears in?

  3. Also, I wanted to point out an extremely irritating grammatical error you are picking up from Bleeding Cool.

    “Marvel” is not a plural noun. It is a singular noun.

    It is incorrect to say “Marvel have.” It makes you sound like an English rumor-monger that doesn’t understand grammar or the use of a spell-check.

    The correct usage is “Marvel PROMISES War.”

  4. What will they be so angry about?

    The heroes could easily have been on opposite sides: the Avengers using a Cosmic Cube or another cosmic doohickey to bring about worldwide peace and rice in everyone’s pantry, and the mutants protesting, “No, you’re interfering with humanity’s evolution! You’re going to ruin everything!”, and using the Phoenix Force, or Wanda, to try to stop them. Opposite sides from AvX, but the same fighting, and the same results (including everyone forgetting about starving Africans again). At least AvX doesn’t have Dr. Doom trying to steal the Phoenix Force for himself. I don’t think it does.

    SRS

  5. It is incorrect to say “Marvel have.” It makes you sound like an English rumor-monger that doesn’t understand grammar or the use of a spell-check.

    That’s perfectly correct British English. What’s a group noun between cultures?

    SRS

  6. Probably the 73rd time Ultron takes on the Marvel Universe, not convinced on how this will be different from the other tries…..how about a break from these massive storylines? I mean Fear itself was soooo bad, it left a bad taste. And Avx vs Xmen is ok….nothing to rave about. Reading it, but wont be one of those stories remembered 5 years from now. (Civil war, that was cool!)

  7. Wow! This looks like something new and original from the House of Ideas!!! Fuckin’ Make Mine Marvel!

    (note the sarcasm)

    I’ll read “The Sixth Gun” or “Rachel Rising” instead. . .

  8. There was a discussion, along with some sales figures to back it up, it may have been here, that regular, monthly periodicals don’t sell well enough, and that the Big Two, especially, need these annual crossovers and big events to keep their sales up.

    Doesn’t it mean that they’re doing something wrong somewhere in the way they are producing, distributing and marketing the product? Or perhaps it’s the product itself?

  9. @naveed: funny, but i’m the exact opposite of the events you mentioned. i didn’t have a problem at all with fear itself (and quite liked the fearless sequel afterwards). i’ve been collecting the AVX series, but have yet to read any of them (i’ll probably start reading after the first six issues come out, which i think has already happened),we’ll see how much i dig or dislike that series. as for civil war, IMO it was absolute dreck. as for ultron, if it is indeed going to be an ultron war, hasn’t there been a few of these wars already, and i agree with your question as to how this time the story will stand out from the previous wars with ultron.

  10. Doesn’t it mean that they’re doing something wrong somewhere in the way they are producing, distributing and marketing the product? Or perhaps it’s the product itself?

    Well, people talk a lot about character-driven stories versus plot-driven stories, but I see much less talk about situation-based stories versus character-based stories, probably because most of the superhero comics are character-based stories. But starting to think about a story for a character is much more limiting than thinking about a situation, and creating the characters to fit it. If a lawyer decides he’d like to write about a messy divorce with a custody fight, an M.D. thinks about an intern tackling a medical mystery, or a physicist thinks about writing a story about discovering a new element, nothing would prevent the would-be author from making the characters as interesting as the situation. He’s only limited by his interest and skills.

    If his starting point is the character, that might be because he’s writing a series and writing about the character guarantees a market for the story. If the selling points for the story are the author, and how attractive the situation, etc., are, the publisher will have to work to market the story. A writer can vary the situations his star is in by bringing in other characters, but if his star ends up guest-starring in his own story, then readers are disappointed.

    Eventually a writer will run out of ideas for stories for his star and he’ll stop doing them. The advantage of doing a novel series is that if a writer does one novel a year or every other year, he’ll retire before his character does. Several years ago, Bill Pronzini almost stopped writing his “Nameless” private investigator series, but he decided to have Nameless start an agency; that brought another P.I. and a female investigator into the storylines. Nameless has less page space, but the series continues.

    SRS

  11. yeah it feels like everything I’ve read has shown that sales are up across the board at marvel and dc. Maybe the X-Men franchise isn’t what it once was but they had like 20 years on top and I don’t think Justice League is going to have that kind of a run.

    It was kinda funny how everyone was pointing the Aquaman outselling X-Men as a sign that marvel was on the downswing but if history has shown us anything it’s that Uncanny X-Men will see issue 100 and Aquaman won’t.

  12. My question:

    Why is an Avengers event being announced at the Spider-Man panel and not Cup of Joe or something more Marvel Universe centric?

  13. Actually, Bleeding Cool just possibly figured out why its being announced at the Spider-Man panel.

    This isn’t the Ultron War, it may be the Reckoning War that Slott’s been wanting to get done for years.

  14. >how about a break from these massive storylines?

    Marvel tried that but they need the juice. Personally, I’d prefer Marlve run their “epics” in the regular titles (without crossovers) rather than in separate mini-series. However, it’s hard to argue with (short term) success when the industry is struggling.

    LL

  15. The last crossover by Marvel that I liked was Secret Wars because I was 11 and thought it was cool. Since Secret Wars 2, I see them as nothing other than an attempt to make people buy comics that they don’t already buy. The collection after the series is over makes that move irrelevant. I know there tends to be a bump in sales for lower selling books that are involved in crossovers but not too many people are interested in buying an issue after the crossover is done.

    Even as a guy who dislikes crossovers, recent Marvel has been especially bad with their concepts in these IMO.

    House of M:
    Good guy with powers creates alternate reality that puts good guys on opposite sides.

    Civil War:
    Good guys make a reality show that recklessly kills hundreds and puts good guys on opposite sides.

    Secret Invasion:
    Skrulls infiltrate the super community and puts good guys on opposite sides.

    Fear Itself:
    Ancient evil possesses characters and puts the good guys on opposite sides.

    AvX:
    Cosmic force that nobody has been able to use properly in 30 years puts good guys on opposite sides.

    Luckily with Fear Itself, I was able to recognize that I didn’t like it after the second issue and quit buying the crossover which I realized too late with the previous ones.

  16. The funny thing is they’ve had a lot more success with the little events then with the big ones (at least creatively and in my opinion)The Omega Effect was one of the best marvel stories I’ve read in years and Schism and Spider-Island were both really good. I’d rather see a bunch more of those then another line wide Fear Itself thing.

    I’d love to see a Spiderman/Wolverine centered mini-event. The interaction between those two has been my favorite part of the Bendis Avengers so far.

  17. It sounds like they need some new villains, but in order to do so they would have to deal with reality as it is.

    1. Jihadi.
    2. Some sort of gov’t replication bueraucrat monster.
    3. PETA killing puppies.
    4. Demographic downward spiral
    5. Rogue states and nukes.
    6. the Molochians
    7. The coming Singularity

    All of these have at least one virtue: They’re more original than the list Mr. Kane made describing Marvel’s crossovers.

    And Walt Simonson’s Thor was about the only great Thor I’ve seen in the comic books. Bring back the Asgardian.

  18. How is Ultron randomly scheduled? Bendis has said multiple times that it would be his swansong. Since he’s not quite done yet, it obviously hasn’t shipped yet.

  19. If it’s coming from the next Spidey panel, yeah, could be the next Amazing Spidey story. They seem to do that now, promote each story arc. Weird.

    Still, at least we now know Spidey, Wolverine etc make it out of AvX okay. Phew. I was worried there for a second.*

    (*Yeah, I’m being sarcastic.)