A mere 32 year after their last foray into the series....

[icon_uk]

Marvel have announced they are doing a "new" Wild Cards series!



Click to embiggen the lovely cover for #1 by Steve Morris. (That is one SERIOUSLY pretty Jetboy!)

For the first time in comic book form, witness the very beginning of the Wild Cards mythos with an adaptation of the very first stories in the original Wild Cards novel. Based on stories by Harold Waldrop, Roger Zelazny and series master-mind and editor, George R.R. Martin, Wild Cards is a fascinating saga set in a whole new world reshaped by the emergence of superpowers. The limited series, titled THE DRAWING OF CARDS, will be written by a team of comic superstars, writer Paul Cornell and artist Mike Hawthorne, and serve as a perfect entry point for Wild Cards newcomers and a must-have new reimagining for Wild Cards aficionados!

Comments

[tripodeca113]

I have been thinking about starting to read this series.

[beyondthefringe]

If you really want to get into Wild Cards, there's two good ways to go about it:
Start with the original volume, which does a great job of setting up the concept and introducing the first batch of characters. It's more of a time-skip book, with stories set everywhere from 1946 to the '80s (what was then present-day.) From there, you can keep reading in order, as there's a pretty coherent overarching set of storylines running through the original batch of books, all the way up through book 12 (aka the end of the Bantam Books run.)

From there, it gets harder because they jumped around publishers and some of the books are hard to find, though Tor has been reprinting them sporadically.
(NOTE: Tor has also reprinted the first few of the Bantam run with additional stories that weren't in the original books.)

You can also pick up with Inside Straight, the first of the Tor run, as that brings us into the then-modern era and introduces a whole new generation of characters, many of which play big roles in the books to follow.

Either way, it's a fun series, but immensely brutal and gory at times--don't expect happy endings for many characters--and the way they handle sexuality in the books has been... weird, especially early on. (Introducing FORTUNATO, THE SUPER-PIMP WITH HIS HAREM OF GEISHAS!) I think it's been much better in recent years though, with the newer crop of writers.

[gnarll]

My favorite series, although its been going downhill from the well-researched alternate history it started out as. And the last book was incredibly poor, almost turned me off the whole series.

Still, this is the good stories:)

[beyondthefringe]

Which one was that? Joker Moon? I thought it was a really interesting "between the lines" take on the entire Wild Cards history from 1946 on, and the culmination of a bunch of interrelated themes we'd seen in various books (Joker homelands, space exploration...)

Though I do sometimes miss the original generation of characters, like Turtle.

[gnarll]

There really seems to be two parallel book series at the moment. One is well-written, well researched and well edited. The problem here is that it shines through that the authors really, really don't want to write about superpowers or super humans. It feels like that embarrasses them.

They want to write social realism and about the persecution of their fictional minority. So the powers get smaller and smaller. This was what got us the Jokertown cop trilogy focusing almost entirely on nats. I think they got poor feedback on that, so now they do include powers. The last book there, Texas Hold'em, introduced a number of new characters, with powers such as control of household dust, the ability to make people fart, control over mosquitos, not having to breathe and vomiting up a brief cloud of darkness (to be fair, the last one was referred to as "totally overpowered"). Two astral projections, one of them uncontrolled, kind of keeps it from being a total parody of itself. Its not exactly Golden Boy throwing tanks of mountainsides.

I must admit I am interested in where it can go from here, it is kind of a trainwreck I can't look away from. How can they possibly make the powers smaller and less relevant from here?

The second series does not seem to be well-written, nor even researched or edited at all. It does, however, have notable superhumans and fights. The Kazakhstan trillogy was just poorly done, with characters being in two places at once, and people loosing an eyeball up to three times on the same page.

The last book I read there, Three Kings, was trying to do a political thriller from the UK, and was... unbelievably poorly researched. It was based on some kind of fairly-tale idea about how much power royalty and royal families have, with absolutely no idea of how the political structure of the country they set the book in works. And they didn't even get the name of the country right, they consistently called the United Kingdom "England" which is sort of like the President and Congress consistently referring to the US as "Texas".

There was a lot of stuff that just felt like a parody of Americans writing about other nations. I found it hard to believe that a British person had been involved. It also involved a sharp departure from the series previous practice of research and keeping the personality of a real historical person into the alternate history.

Edit: In general, I've also started to feel that the extreme gender imbalance in who has the big powers is bothersome, and if I, as a middle aged white male feel its weird...

[beyondthefringe]

Okay, yeah. I agree that Three Kings was weaker than the usual lot. I'd forgotten it came out last year in the UK, as I was still thinking of it as an upcoming release in the US. I really don't know WTF happened for them to deliver such a lackluster, off-tone installment. Especially since the previous one, Knaves Over Queens, felt stronger. (Though I personally couldn't stand the character of Babh. Talk about one of those overpowered types...)

Texas Hold' Em was fun, though it felt like an atteempt to suss out the viability of Wild Cards as a Young Adult property, with the focus on teens and teen hijinks. Not that I'd mind a Wild Cards YA with the right authors...

If you don't like when the powers are small, you must have disliked Deuces Down, where they actually -did- focus on the Aces with insignificant or overlooked powers. :)

[gnarll]

I don't mind a book or trilogy that is up front about exploring the lives of deuces in the Wild Cards world, or creative uses of minor powers. But many of the latter books have felt like they are downright trying to stealth phase out the "powers" concept from the series.

And the powers is, after all, why I buy the books. (It is the only series I still order physically from abroad) And at this point the powers of most new aces are so minute they read as parody.

[laughing_tree]

Oh, wow, I couldn't agree less. There are a million comics I can read if I want stories about loud, explosive powers. I like the exploration of regular folks and how their minor powers affect their lives in stuff like Texas Hold 'Em.

[icon_uk]

Yeah, I have nothing against the Superman's or the Storms of the superhero worlds, but I do tend to gravitate towards the low key abilities (You couldn't be a Cypher fan in the pre-www 1980's without that outlook, for instance :) )

[gnarll]

Cypher is kind of a heavy hitter though, compared to Fart Lad, Can-Emit-a-Pleasant-Smelling-Fizz Boy, Household Dust Man, and Plays The Flute For A Long Time Girl.

Although the vast majority of Wild Cards characters are minor powers compared to Marvel or DC, so I suppose you could say there people are in a similar position vs. the major Aces as Cypher is vs. the more powerful mutants.

[icon_uk]

"Cypher is kind of a heavy hitter though"

A sentence I never thought I'd read in 1986, but am delighted to see being said by someone other than me, even now. :D (Dabs a happy tear away)

And in the mid 80's it was defintiely not a heavy hitter power. A useful one in the real world though, so yes, maybe not THAT minor

The one's you list remind me more of the Legion of Substitute Heroes candidates!

[gnarll]

Well, you are entitled to opinion of course. Mine is pretty diametrically opposite. Except the bit about liking the exploration of regular folks and how their minor powers affect their lives. I wish we'd gotten some of that. "Deuces Down" was a good example of how that could have been done well. But the average power levels of "Deuces Down" were in a totally different weight class from the new powers of Texas Hold'em.

I mean...did you really find the powers of compulsive farting, dust bunny control, playing a flute for a really long time etc interesting? Personally I felt we have left the term "power" behind a loong time ago by then. Felt more like the much less serious products of the process that produced the Holy Roller and Grow-Grip Man. And a little bit like the authors are laughing at the readers.

Theres millions of books without superpowers. If i wanted that, I am not short of choices. But I bought one that was supposed to have them.

[laughing_tree]

I think that’s an unfair comparison. Other than the dust guy, those were minor background characters. But if you look at the main characters in Texas Hold ‘Em, you get shapeshifting/size-changing, giant explosive bubbles, winged flight, Mr. Fantastic-type stretchiness, electricity blasts, density-shifting like the Vision, darkness generation, and a ginormous psychic werewolf.

There’s no dearth of fiction with powerful superpowers OR fiction without superpowers whatsoever. But stories of regular joes with small, offbeat powers? That’s much less common, and I’m glad there’s a series that can scratch that itch.

[jgraygaming]

I'll be curious to see how well this adaption works with the misogyny and homophobia inherent in the original series.

The Sleeper was pretty awesome, though.

[beyondthefringe]

And if anyone says anything about GRRM doing this but not finishing Game of Thrones, I will slap them with a Joker fish. Because he's pretty hands off the Wild Cards except as executive editor... someone else edits the fiction, and there's a whole bunch of writers who well... write the books.

I'm looking forward to this. I've always liked the series.
There was also a limited series from Dabel Brothers in like... 2006, I believe.

[morallyambiguousscience]

The wide variety of authors who've worked on Wild Cards is to great benefit to the series, I don't think it would work nearly as well if it were entirely GRRM.

[beyondthefringe]

Yeah, but people see GRRM announce literally anything not GoT and immediately get bent out of shape, regardless of his level of participation in the project.

Admittedly there have been really strong writers on Wild Cards, and weak ones--Chris Claremont's contribution is forgettable IMHO.

[deh_tommy]

People seem pretty hyped for Elden Ring at least.

[laughing_tree]

I've wondered if there was some behind the scenes drama with Claremont. He did one story for them and then never another one. The characters he created don't get used by the other authors. And while other past authors pop up on the Wild Cards website to do articles and interviews, he never does.

[beyondthefringe]

"We don't talk about Chris Clare-mont, no no no no"

It looks as though he created the Jumpers.
So... a gang of bodyswapping villains whose power is passed on/generated by a lawyer who fucks them in the ass??? Yeah, the emphasis on bodyswapping really does feel like a Claremontian trope all right.
I wasn't sorry to see the Jumpers get... dealt with in the end.

[gnarll]

There was talk about a TV series for the longest time. Jumpers would have let them keep a character when an actor could no longer be there.

[icon_uk]

And easier solution would just be to... not use the Jumpers in the series.

[gnarll]

I'm ... not sure what that is a solution to? A main actor does a Mark Frankel and where are we?

[icon_uk]

Sorry, a poorly phrased reply on my part.

I meant that I don't consider the convenience of a way of replacing actors, to be worth the introduction of a group of characters whose power is entirely rape based.

I had to google who Mark Frankel was though, not a name I recognised.

[gnarll]

Er. I don't want to come across wrong here, I just about never get to talk about Wild Cards, so I got a lot of opinions I have been backed up on for a while. Since the 80s really.

But... how was the jumpers powers rape based?

I don't remember anyone going to Latham without full consent. (And they all knew they'd get a superpower from it) There was even hangarounds who would work for long periods for a shot at it. Tachyon got put in one of them as I remember it.

I do remember that the sex was not presented as pleasant. But I think the general levels of rape in the books at that point may have bled over to the point where everything looked non consensual.

[icon_uk]

Having now gone and checked the wiki I seem to be grossly misremembering it.

I thought that each instance of body jumping happened through sexual penetration, not that the actual ability to jump bodies being transferred through having sex with Prime.

I must really have lost interest in those books.

[icon_uk]

Oh lord, the Jumpers, an entire gang of villains with powers necessitating rape... I think the first or second book they were in was the last Wild Cards I read because it was just such a horrifyingly tasteless idea.

[llordllama]

Ah the early books were among my favourite reads when I was at university, the first time around. Even if nearly all my copies were charity shop finds so I ended up reading them in well-thumbed out-of-sequence order.

Sure I 'homaged' more than a few Wild Card characters in various DC-Heroes campaigns at the time too. Somewhere in my stash I've the four (?) issue Wild Card comic series that came out way back when too.

[tinygaylaura]

I've read the books on and off over the years and I'll be curious to see what this will be like

[thanekos]

Ten to fifteen years from now, someone's going to find a trade of this on the shelf of a dollar store.

They're going to flip through it, say " Huh. " and put it down.

When they leave the store later, they will have only purchased a pack of kitchen sponges.

[gnarll]

I wonder if I could put a general theory out here, because the book series has been a favorite of mine since the 80s or so and Ive never gotten to talk about it:

I believe President Barnett is a byblow of Dr. Tachyons.