“You make me feel like I’m living in a Star Trek dream!” This week’s offerings from IDW Publishing are sure to engage Trek fans. Everyone knows the joke about the wearing red means you’ll soon be dead. Mike Johnson, Stephen Molnar and Tim Bradstreet create a special tale just for the Redshirts…and those who love them. Star Trek #13 is a new stand-alone story of life on the Enterprise told through the eyes of a redshirt.
This Redshirt’s Tale joins the previously announced Star Trek: The Next Generation: Hive limited series by veteran Trek writer/producer Brannon Braga. A future where the Borg control the galaxy the only hope is Captain Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. But how can Picard save the day when Locutus rules this dark future.
The Man of Steel, Clone of Krypton and Girl of Steel feel the heat of He’l on Earth this December! DC’s The Source shared the Superman #15 and teased how this alien enemy will threaten the planet and cross into Supergirl #15 and Superboy #15.
The threat of He’l is so big Kal-El will turn to Lex Luthor!
The coming years are BIG for a little guy! Ant-Man will get the big screen treatment in a film by Edgar Wright. Erik O’Grady has gone from shady to dark in Rick Remender’s Secret Avengers. Scott Lang is joining FF by Matt Fraction and Mike Allred. Let’s give a big hand for the little guy!
This Ant-Man (Scott Lang) is featured in a new tease for Marvel Now! Point One courtesy Marvel.com. This book will be a primer for the Marvel Now 2013 relaunch. Fraction has said Lang will take a pro-active role against Fantastic Four nemesis Doctor Doom as retribution for the death of Stature aka Cassie Lang.
Earlier Sam Humphries revealed he and Ron Garney will launch a brand new Uncanny X-Force this January. The new book with a new team picks up 6 months after the climax of Rick Remender’s run. The new roster starts with Storm, Psylocke, Spiral and Puck of Alpha Flight. The writer says the action begins when a student is kicked out of the Jean Grey School. Humphries tells Marvel.com why Elizabeth is taking charge as team leader and acts the center of the book.
Uncanny X-Force 17 from Marvel.com. Cover Art by Esad Ribic
“She’s a great character with deep contradictions. Her history is a mess. She’s a survivor who doesn’t fear the darkness. She’s one of my favorite X-Men. And it’s her time. Watch the throne.”
I’ve said before that Psylocke is the new Wolverine. She’s everywhere. Betsy was in the previous Uncanny X-Force and in Brian Wood’s X-Men where she followed Storm’s commands. Humphries points out a moment of Storm’s history to explain her position on his new team.
“Don’t forget Storm is still the same person who ran off into the Tokyo night and reappeared sporting leather street wear and a mohawk! I see everyone in this book as a wild card, especially Storm. Without saying too much, the events of AvX creates a bond between her and Betsy that will take them into the events of the book together.
Characters in Uncanny X-Force aren’t always going to be on the same page when it comes to killing. Same goes for some of the other bizarre surprises we have in store. We’ve got a wide spectrum of strong personalities and it’s been fun to decide where they stand on some core values—and how their positions could change over time.”
Alpha Flight #1 courtesy Marvel
I think the biggest surprise about the roster is a short, hairy Canadian adventurer. Not that one with the claws. Puck.
“I see him as a Canadian Indiana Jones. He’s gone some dark places in his past, and he’s a dwarf, which can present challenges most of us never have to deal with. But he’s also a bad ass who has confronted the darkness with a wry sense of humor, and he has yet to find a situation where being small of stature has stopped him from kicking some butt,” Humphries explains.
The first villain this new team will face is Lucas Bishop. Storm has a history with this X-Man gone rogue.
“Bishop is the man she remembers, but not the man she remembers. He was abandoned in the year 6300 AD. The dude has been alone, thousands of years in the future. A man goes through a lot of changes trying to get from 6300 AD to the present day. It is going to be an ugly reunion all around,” explains Humphries.
Humphries explains how his new Uncanny X-Force will differ from Cable and X-Force by Dennis Hopeless.
But we’ve also got two books with two very different focuses. To put it simply, UNCANNY X-FORCE are the hunters, and CABLE AND THE X-FORCE are the hunted. Will the two books intersect? Well, one book has Cable as a leader, and one has Bishop has a bad guy. There’s a volatile history there that could be powerful enough to draw in both teams.”
Humphries ends with explaining how he will deliver on the Uncanny.
“How can I say this without spoilers? I take the title of “uncanny” very seriously, just like I do the mandate of “ultimate” over on ULTIMATES. My job is to tell a story about mutants that you can’t find in any other X-book—and that’s what you’re going to get. After the first arc, even the so-called “Uncanny” X-Men are going to find these mutants very, very uncanny. And [editor] Nick Lowe might start dodging my calls.”
For more on the perhaps lesser known members of this team:
What the Puck? I highly recommend John Byrne’s original Alpha Flightrun with Eugene Milton Judd as the small guy with a big tragic past.
Longshot #6 courtesy Marvel
Stuntwoman Ricochet Rita was transformed into Spiral by Mojo back in the original Longshot series. Spiral was last scene in Matt Fraction’s Sisterhood arc of Uncanny X-Men.
Bruce, Talia, Damian – is this the most dysfunctional and deadly family dynamic in history? The battle for Damian’s destiny and Gotham City heats up in Batman Incorporated #6. DC Comics The Source shared the cover and preview for the issue coming in December.
Bat-robots versus Man-bats! Leviathan seizes Gotham City. The Heretic returns. Grant Morrison dreams up the most fantastic and frightening scenarios and artist Chris Burnham delivers. There’s a twisted mind-meld that fills each issue. This may be one of the perfect combinations of writer, artist and characters.
The New Gods of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World are crashing into The New 52! Orion appeared at the end of Wonder Woman #12. DC Comics shared this amazing cover and announcement for Wonder Woman #15.
Wonder Woman versus Orion – Round One! Why is the New God fighting the Amazonian warrior? Find out this December in the latest chapter by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang.
Uncanny X-Force is heading to a finale with Rick Remender’s Final Execution arc. Sam Humphries (Ultimates, Higher Earth) and Ron Garney will relaunch Uncanny X-Force #1 this January according to Comics Alliance. The X-Force concept has always been a team operating outside the core X-books- outsiders among outsiders if you will.
Humphries told the site his take on the ‘outsider’ team.
“One of my favorite things about this book, not just working on it but reading it over the years, is that it delivers a story that you can’t find in any other X-Book. Theres’s a combination of characters and character dynamics, and they go out and find and deal with situations and beings and all sorts of dark secrets that you can’t find anywhere else. Through the different incarnations, we’ve seen that implemented in different ways. You have the Rob Liefeld paramilitary extreme version, you have the wacked-out, nearly psychedelic Milligan/Allred version, you’ve got Rick Remender doing his thing with questions of killing and murder and when it’s okay and when it isn’t.
Even though it’s a definition, it gives you a lot of room to move within that definition. There’s a lot of different things that you can pick apart in the Marvel Universe, and specifically the mutant universe, that aren’t ever really addressed in the main book. It’s a huge opportunity to do some cool things, new things, to get people excited and present the whole mutant world in a new light.”
courtesy Marvel
The biggest shocker from this interview is the initial roster including a short Canadian guy – without claws!
“This is not any cast that I think anyone can say they’ve ever seen before. This is not a classic Wolverine, Rogue, Colossus line-up. It’s definitely a new mix of characters thrown together in ways that they really have never encountered each other before.
The group that we start off with right off the bat is Psylocke, Storm, Puck and Spiral, and we have a few more characters joining the group in the first few issues. In my mind, all those characters are wild cards. They’re all strong personalities, they’re all strong in terms of their powers, they’ve all got dark secrets and they’ve all got a rebellious streak. That to me is a really attractive part of the book, being able to balance all those character dynamics at once.”
Puck…seriously?
“I think Puck is a character that deserves more love. He’s like a Canadian Indiana Jones, he’s an adventurer. He’s also gone out and faced a lot of dark stuff out in the world, but he does it with this wry sense of humor. He’s a guy that despite being short of stature, he always finds a way to kick somebody’s ass. That kind of character who has a wit and determination is fun to write, and I think he’s going to be a good mix with these other characters in the book who all tend to be super-serious all the time.”
For more of the Humphries interview here’s the Comics Alliance link.
Cable and X-Force and a brand new Uncanny X-Force in the Marvel Now? Do you think the publisher is “forcing” too many similar teams on us?
This is not the answer I was expecting after the Killers teaser. I love Storm, Spiral and Puck. I commend Humphries for going for an unexpected roster.
Move over Grinch! Green means the Hulk with the giant taking on Iron Man this December. Mark Waid and Leinil Yu are taking Bruce Banner and the Green Goliath in a new direction. December’s Indestructible Hulk #3 features a Marvel NOW meeting of Hulk and Iron Man. Will it be a friendly reunion or clash?
Red She-Hulk #60 courtesy Marvel
Red She-Hulk versus the Avengers? Captain Marvel, Iron Man and Thor tackle the red warrior woman on the cover of Red She-Hulk #60 by Carlo Pagulayan. Jeff Parker is making Red She-Hulk a national threat and Machine Man may be connected a bigger conspiracy that will come back to haunt and hurt her.
