#marte garcia

Throg and Thrr in Thors #2 (2016)

X of Swords: Tarot Cards

This week brings the big finale of Marvel’s Empyre by Dan Slott, Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti and Marte Gracia.

I am here. I have always been here.

Via Marvel’s Facebook Page:

BREAKING NEWS FROM #C2E2! The next chapter for the X-Men arrives in "HOUSE OF X" and "POWERS OF X," two new series from writer Jonathan Hickman coming in July: http://bit.ly/2Wiy3F6

Extremely cool that this totally coincidentally materialized in the immediate wake of the movie rights being sorted out once and for all (and started development by my understanding right as the ball started rolling on that).

Long and short of it is that Hickman back on superheroes is as big a win as it gets, even if this is probably the literal last major franchise he hasn’t touched I would have picked for him. Still, whatever your take on the X-Men or what they should be, I think it’s pretty much indisputable that something like this was necessary for them; even if you despise this particular turn of events, this is the kick in the pants needed so that when whatever you’d prefer hopefully rolls around, there’ll be enough eyes on it that it won’t be automatically consigned to the current conceptual dumpster bin of “post-Aaron X-books that aren’t All-New Wolverine”.

I’m not a dude with much abstract love for this particular group, but the times I have enjoyed it have been rooted in treating it as a book about tomorrow, and that’s definitely where I foresee Hickman taking it. Interesting that this’ll apparently be a passion project though, as opposed to how Avengers was very clearly and very much him plugging an Any Available Superteam Mega-arc Premise onto the given characters he had to work with; I have to wonder how that’ll shape it. Also wondering what it’ll be like for the bulk of the obscure continuity trappings he’ll be addressing to be in large part foreign to me, instead of part of the background radiation of the corners of Marvel I’m already familiar with.