Marvel's getting its own Crisis on Infinite Earths

[cyberghostface]

Info here.

Comments

[dr_archeville]

So this Incursion thing — which has been running since January of 2013 — is leading up to a Crisis on Infinite Earths-style merging of the various Marvel Universes... except the end result won't be a (vaguely) unified universal continuity, it’ll be one hodgepodge'd world floating in a featureless void?

???

[zero_elec]

That's only for Secret Wars, in the end the pieces of the worlds will merge or something to only have one world... Or something.

[dustbunny105]

I don't have the vocabulary to express how much I don't want this to happen.

[philippos42]

It's gob-smackingly stupid, is what it is.

[zero_elec]

DO NOT WANT

[big_daddy_d]

I'd say it's more Marvel's Convergence personally.

[chrisdv]

Not really, Secret Wars was announced before Convergence.

The only new information we've got is the 616 & Ultimate universes are ending, with that being the incursion they fail to stop. Which was really freakin' obvious a year ago, btw.

[lizard_of_aus]

Really, Marvel? You're gonna break your streak now, when you've had decades of uninterrupted continuity? Is there any real need for a reboot, at this stage in the game?

(sighs) Well, if this really is going to be as earth-shattering (pun unintended) as everyone thinks it'll be, then I'm not sure how long the reset will last. Could end up being another Heroes Reborn or Spider-Man Chapter One.

[shingi70]

Marvel wants its comic universe to better parallel what we see in the MCU for reasons.

[dr_archeville]

Here's Stan Lee's reaction.

[lego_joker]

Just sayin': Stan Lee ALSO had nice words for "One More Day". The guy might not officially work at Marvel anymore, but he can't seem to bring himself to say one bad word about any of its projects.

[ablackraptor]

In fairness people, a reboot in itself isn't a bad thing; its really what and how much they change which is the problem. DC's New 52 wasn't a bad thing because they rebooted the line, but because they messed things up by making bizarre changes to characters backstories or removing characters and events that didn't need removing.
Given the 'Renew your Vows' thing now looks to be whatever's coming out after this, I'm not going to assume the worst.

Edit: I will note though that this does make me question why they didn't wait to launch their new Ant Man, Spider-Woman, and SHIELD books, as well as things like the Magneto/Maximoff retcon until after the new universe started. Could have saved them some hassle..

[philippos42]

No, I'm sorry, it is a bad thing. Especially if they're just doing COIE at Marvel. Post-COIE DC was sometimes good because they had new editorial blood and they were trying some new takes on things, not because of COIE.

Post-Flashpoint DC is a nightmare because they're trying to be who Marvel and Image were in the 1990's.

Now Marvel wants to do COIE and call it Secret Wars? That screams out, "We want no new ideas!"

I'll probably read my few Marvel titles until they're cancelled for this or get sucked into the crossover, then I'm likely gone. If this stops short of being an actual DC-style Crisis Crossover and reboot, I might stay. Otherwise, I can walk away from them as much as from DC.

Apparently Marvel & DC want to trade on continuity (in a corporate sense of the word, largely nostalgia in practice) while undercutting their own continuity of artistic presentation by reinventing their trademarks all the time.

[his_spiffynesss]

So, they really want Sam Jackson's Nick Fury to be canon huh?

[adam_sherman]

Fuck it.
From now on, Marvel and DC aren't getting a single penny from me.
I'm purchasing everything second-hand or pre-owned from now on.

Who wants to join me in bootlegging Age of Ultron and Ant Man?

[sagrada]

If a thing that's meant to be enjoyed is becoming more of a chore than a hobby maybe it's best to just set it aside. At least for a while.

[nyadnar17]

Has anyone actually confirmed this as a rebot? Because my initial guess is this is just Marvel's way to grab popular characters from its other universes and merge them into 616 proper.

[ablackraptor]

All that's said is that they're making a 'New' universe with old things from both present. Technically, it *is* a reboot, but not necessarily a *bad* reboot. Technically speaking, all this could mean is that we get a bunch of new books where certain controversial elements of the past are removed from history and Ultimate Universe originals that haven't made the jump to the old universe do so.

[bradygirl_12]

Oh, good, I loathed DC's COIE but that was a long time ago. Now I have a new COIE to loathe! :)

[jetpack_monkey]

Sigh. Marvel was doing so well.

I mean, I knew that Hickman's Avengers run was an extended riff on Crisis on Infinite Earths, but I kept shrugging off the speculation and hints that it would lead to a hard reboot event. That's a DC thing and every time DC does it, it creates more continuity snarls than it fixes. Marvel's sliding continuity has been a much more organic way to handle the march of time and conflicting creator viewpoints on characters and events.

I'm willing to give this a shot, simply because Marvel's earned a lot of goodwill from me and I trust the minds behind this reboot far far far more than I do the minds behind the New 52. However, this move is pretty disappointing.

[wtfomfg2]

I feel like the writing's been on the wall for this for a while now (I think I might have even commented a few times here within the past few months that I thought this was the path they were heading). It would be pretty difficult for them to come back from an even like the Incursions without some kind of reboot to redeem the heroes involved.

If this does turn out to be a hard reboot, then I'm not a fan of the idea. I get that they're probably trying to get something closer to the MCU, but these characters have existed before a decent amount of these creators. It feels disrespectful if they make such a huge change all to cash in on a popular trend, which could be overplayed within the next decade anyway.

[beyondthefringe]

I am of greatly mixed feelings about this.

1) After the incursion storyline and the Cabal and the Illuminati and all that other stuff, Marvel needs to do SOMETHING to fix some of their characters and get everyone back on a heroic path. Hopefully this will, for instance, see the return of a less douchetastic Iron Man.

2) On the other hand, Marvel has so many great, entertaining, good series going on elsewhere (Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, etc) that it wouldn't make sense to throw them all away for the sake of a reboot.

3) The Ultimate Universe really has virtually nothing worth keeping or incorporating beyond certain characters in the Spider-Man title like Miles and Jessica. I mean, do we need the evil genocidal Reed Richards or the A is Not For France Captain America or cannibalistic Blob or yet another set of X-Men? What exactly are they going to use from the Ultimate U that isn't already in Marvel continuity to a degree?

4) I feel like a full-scale reboot would devastate their fanbase, just when they have so much going for them.

5) I suspect we'll see cherry-picking as someone else said. Restore the spider-marriage. Maybe unkill a few characters. Bring some popular alt concepts into continuity, or maybe do more ongoing alt-continuity series like Spider-Gwen....

I just don't know what to expect. But if they handle this as poorly as DC did the ongoing state of the New 52, my comics pulllist may look radically different after it's all over... and by that I mean shorter. :(

[sagrada]

MUST things be put back where they were, though? I mean, I see Namor in that promotional page, but who knows if that's "our" Namor. Could be his twin from a world where he's actually an alien or something. They didn't put things back where they were after Civil War, not for years. It took several events just to be rid of the Super Registration Act, and to make their heroes kind of what they used to be. They haven't put Iron Man back where he was for close to a decade by now. Who's to say ANY of what's happened will actually be undone? Cyclops being a jackass scapegoat, Wolverine being dead, the original X-Men being in the present, Attilan being crashed, these will be tough to outright reverse or fix, things could stay more or less like that for a long time, with only incremental changes.

[informationgeek]

*Sigh*

It would be one thing if this event had a good writer, but no. We got Hickman on it, who after reading all of his Avengers work does not inspire confidence the least bit. This whole thing is going to be either extremely pretentious, dull and dry, contrived, lack any and all emotion and soul to it, or possibly a combination of any of those or all of them.

Even if we ignore the writer, we must ask ourselves, when was the last time Marvel had a good event? Looking at the past events, we've had Axis, Original Sin, Infinity, Age of Ultron, Avengers & X-Men, etc. Yeah... really not confident about this one folks.

[jeyl]

It can't be as bad as New 52... How can it?

[junipepper]

Oh, now it's jinxed! lol

[obsidianwolf]

I have to say I'm disappointed. I'm not opposed to reboots except in cases where the same folks who ran the previous universe into the ground are the ones doing the reboot. (See what happened with DC transitioning from the Old 52 to the New 52 with the same folks running the show) Which unfortunately this is looking to be.

I just don't get why Marvel is doing this since frankly it seems really short sighted. I mean even if they do make it match the MCU it most likelywon't bring in MCU viewers who don't read comics and within a story line or two they'll inevitibly end up writing somethign that doesn't fit the MCU so resetting things to match it just seems pointless in the long run.

[violetclm.livejournal.com]

Does this mean we can replace the 616 Punisher, a skull-chested guy who shoots people, with the Mangaverse Punisher, a skull-faced geisha who whips and spanks people? If so I may be interested.

Also, didn't Spider-Verse just establish that the Spider-Man newspaper strip is part of the Marvel multiverse? It'd be pretty weird if that got Battleworlded.

[kevinroc]

The Spidey newspaper strip was made into its own little pocket universe away from all the multiverse shenanigans.

Nobody wants to mess with Stan's stuff.

[chrys]

Hmm, lots of extreme reactions based on speculation.

We still have no idea what will happen to the Multiverse after this. We don't know if they'll just add AU characters and their histories to the new main reality. We don't know if they'll just merge some characters with some AU conterparts without erasing what happened to them in each universe.

[bruinsfan]

While I can't predict any specifics, the fact that Hickman is the "creative" force behind this reboot makes me certain that whatever the new status quo is, it's going to suck.

[flash_fan]

I wonder if fans recognize most of their beloved universes and characters are rebooted ones? I refuse to assume whether this'll be good or bad until I read a few issues. The writer has proven to be both good and bad at times the artist is amazing. Seems like the sane way to approach this sort of thing.

[mrstatham]

Eh. They aren't going to wipe out *everything* and go with a hard reboot. Marvel can easily tell from looking at DC's numbers that it just doesn't work in the long run and pretty blatantly causes a headache short-term in terms of figuring out 'new' backgrounds for characters and the like. Baiting fans with the idea of resurrecting Gwen Stacy and the like is just that - baiting. They know fans are going to froth at the mouth over this stuff and that the comics sites reporting it are going to overegg the omelette in an 'EVERYTHING YOU LOVE IS DEAD' way.

They've also got too many books successfully riffing on or using creative teams from the more 'Image'-style teams at the moment, and they're not going to throw out babies like Ms Marvel with the bathwater. They can say they're going to cancel 'Guardians of the Galaxy' and that they'll appear elsewhere all they like, there's no way they're offing critical and commercial successes like Hawkeye, Ms Marvel (again), and stuff like Squirrel Girl and so on which is proving popular at the moment.

They know what the reaction will be. Chances are they're basically cherrypicking what's best of the UU and a handful of other universes and merging them, but basically playing the Trollololololol Song as they watch us squirm.

[angelophile]

I'm not sure I can be bothered to learn a new continuity and, as had been said, this seems to be a way Marvel can bring the comicsverse more in line with the MCU by combining elements of Ultimate and 616 universe together.

Given how whitebread the MCU is, that may not be a good thing. However Marvel have been vocal about supporting Miles Morales, Kamala Khan and others, so I don't think we'll see a Nu-52 style reboot where everyone's a white guy from the 1950s.

Of course, if they are attempting to corporatize the Marvel universe into a more cohesive and marketable whole, things like making Miles the one and only Spider-man and writing out Peter Parker would be a ballsy move, but might also make -some- sense commercially because if they're not using Peter Parker and associated characters, Marvel might be able to make Spider-man movies again.

I doubt we'll see anything so radical, but it would be interesting if they wiped out both universes and rebuilt using the best elements of both, rather than the most familiar, like DC did.

[junipepper]

No, no -- that was the most iconic elements. You know, like how Damian Wayne is the most iconic Robin, and apparently Barbara Gordon is the most iconic Batgirl and Nightwing (Smallville). 😉

DC: Making dumb decisions, and compounding them with even dumber rationalizations.

[icon_uk]

I'm old... and cynical... and patient.... I survived the Crisis... in fact I survived ALL the Crises... I survived New Mutants #60 (though that was a tough one), and Armageddon 2001, and Eclipso: Darkness Within #2 and "One More Day" and "One Year Later" and... well, you get the idea.

I can wait...

[philippos42]

I'm not quite as old as you, but I don't care anymore.

Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths? In a single series? This is where I came in, I can leave now.

I have webcomics.