A legend takes on an icon.
What is the threat so massive it will take more than one Man of Steel to defeat it?
Darkseid is ready to claim victory until Superman gets unexpected “Super” backup.
One of the big highlights of DC Comics February 2016 titles is SUPERMAN: THE COMING OF THE SUPERMEN by writer/artist Neal Adams.
This new 6-issue miniseries by the living legend (Batman, X-Men) takes flight in February. Continue reading THE COMING OF THE SUPERMEN in 2016
Wizard World Portland Comic Con is less than two weeks away.
Q & A sessions with legends like Stan Lee, William Shatner, Bruce Campbell, celebrity Meet-And-Greets and Costume Contests are just part of 3 days of programming at the Oregon Convention Center.
Here’s an update on the star packed schedule to help your navigate your fan experience: Continue reading Wizard World Portland Event Preview
Like Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk, Emerald City Comicon is getting bigger! The Seattle celebration of comic books, science fiction and gaming takes over the entire Washington State Convention Center this year giving eager fans more celebrities, more panels and more everything!
Sci-Fi legends Sir Patrick Stewart (Star Trek: The Next Generation, X-Men) Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) Walter Koeing (Star Trek) Billy Dee Williams (Star Wars) and Christopher LLoyd (Back to the Future, Star Trek: The Search for Spock) will shine for adoring fans in panels, photograph and autograph sessions where they could how about a real life space traveler? Astronaut Clayton “Clay” Anderson will be appearing in the ECCC Kids! area.
Pop Culture Icons Adam West and Burt Ward (Television’s Batman and Robin) are sure to inspire huge lines. Television’s Dynamic Duo will appear at a screening of the Batman film at Seattle’s Cinerama on Thursday night before the con begins and the Mayor will declare Mayor Adam West Day in Seattle in honor of the Walla Walla, Washington native.
The Walking Dead is killing it on television! Stars of the zombie comic book turned smash series Danai Gurira (Michonne) and Michael Rooker (Merle Dixon) will face the hordes of fanatic fans. The Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard will be appearing too. True Blood star Kristin Bauer, Dirk Benedict of Battlestar Galactica, Michael Shanks of Stargate and Misha Collins of Supernatural are among many other television actors shining for the fans.
Along with the stellar roster of celebrities folks can meet comic book legends who have made uncanny impacts on the heroes we see on the big screen. I’m most excited to meet Chris Claremont, writer of the X-Men series and creator of characters like Gambit, Emma Frost, Rogue, Sabretooth and Kitty Pryde. Claremont wrote my first comic book, Uncanny X-Men #116, and his work on the mutants is the comic book equivalent to the soundtrack of my life! The man gave us The Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past, inspiration for the upcoming X-Men sequel!
Denny O’Neil is another living legend famous for his runs on the Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Batman series with fellow guest Neal Adams. O’Neil was the Marvel editor of Frank Miller’s classic Daredevil run and returned to DC as editor of the Batman family of books to oversee modern classics Continue reading Emerald City Comicon 2013 Preview
Legendary Neal Adams and Christos Gage are telling a tale of The First X-Men. Logan and his ally (yes, ally!) Victor Creed are hunting for fellow mutants thinking there is strength in numbers. Logan and Creed attempted to recruit Charles Xavier in the premiere issue.
In this week’s The First X-Men #2 Logan, Creed and their new recruits track down a Master of Magnetism. The older mutant is on his own mission of vengeance in Argentina hunting Nazi war criminals. This Magneto is not exactly Michael Fassbender but he will remind you of how the character was portrayed in X-Men: First Class. Logan’s invitation does not go as planned.
Adams was an artist in the early days of X-Men. He dives into the conspiracies and key government figures of that era to shape the big threat of this mini-series and is still affecting mutantkind today.
In this lost X-Men tale Adams and Gage have introduces us to new/old mutants Holly Bright aka Holo, Bombast Aghast and a Yeti. The team shows early on how Logan can be a tough drill instructor and encouraging teacher.
This tale of lost mutants reminded me of some other great stories of “new” mutants created in stories of the X-Men’s past. There have been some great characters created for these stories…but they’re doomed.
X-Men: Deadly Genesis Ed Brubaker created four fascinating lost mutants in this tale of Professor Xavier’s darkest secret. The Professor sent his All-New, All-Different X-Men (Storm, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird, Wolverine, Banshee, Colossus) to save his original students from the living island Krakoa. But there was another team. The Professor’s biggest secret comes back to haunt him, leaves an X-Man dead and severs the teacher’s relationship with Cyclops. Kid Vulcan, Sway, Petra and Darwin were four fascinating mutants with great backstories and cool powers. Xavier sent these young kids into action unprepared and they paid the ultimate price. Vulcan and Darwin were revived and all hell broke loose.
X-Men: The Hidden Years The Children of the Atom almost vanished from comic book history! In the 1970’s the series went into reprints only. John Byrne created some amazing new tales set in those lost years. The original X-Men even encountered Storm when she was just Ororo.
The First X-Men will join the pantheon of “lost” tales of the past and leave us with “new” characters from the past that might survive and thrive in the here and now.
By Editor
A brand new, old school adventure with Marvel’s mutants drawn and co-written by a living legend. The First X-Men #1 is out this week kicking off a 5 part limited series written and drawn by Neal Adams with Christos Gage scripting.
“You guys probably know I was at one time associated with X-Men…then they canceled the book. I had great fondness for the original X-Men, had the time of my life, then they canceled it,” said Adams referring to this era (1969-70.)
“At the beginning, Stan and Jack were experimenting. You had Professor X, bald and in a wheelchair. These strange kids already in costume. It seems to me like this was not the beginning of the story, but the middle,” Adams tells Marvel.com.
“Of all the mutants on Earth, Professor X could easily pass as a human. Why would he want to get involved in this? Maybe all this was going on before Professor X was Professor X…when Professor X was a teenager. Maybe mutant kids were getting abused by the military, by the government. Somebody would have been looking out for them, but maybe that person came to Charles Xavier, realizing he couldn’t protect these kids. That was my pitch,” Adams revealed.
“Marvel was very generous to provide Christos Gage to me, who is an expert in all this stuff. He’s taking my pitch and turning it into scripts that are in my opinion groundbreaking. It’s the X-Men before there were X-Men,” Adams said about his partner.
From the preview it appears Logan is the leader of this team before the team.
“How deeply is Wolverine entrenched in the X-Men? Why was this first team…maybe a failure? Lots of questions to answer.
It takes place before the original X-Men and at a time when the government was snatching mutants up and doing scary things to them. Logan notices this and thinks somebody needs to look out for them. He recruits Sabretooth, who asks ‘Why?’ and so he pays him. Professor Xavier is a young man studying at Oxford, who’s engaged and wants nothing to do with this,” Adams reveals about the lineup.
“In those early X-Men stories, everybody hates and fears them, but we never really know why. It’s so core to the concept, but it was there before the series started. Here we found out why mutants are so hated and feared in a way that is different from any other super heroes,” adds X-Men Editor Nick Lowe.
Wolverine targets the future master of magnetism for his team. Gage says “They recruit this guy Erik Lensherr who is out there killing Nazis…”
“The natural instinct is that this is like the ‘X-Men: First Class’ movie, but it’s not,” Adams states but adds, “We didn’t mind stealing the Nazi Hunter version of Magneto though.”
Gage calls Wolverine a soldier putting together a unit not a school in this series and Adams reveals more of Logan’s team.
“There’s a character who calls himself Bombastic Aghast, but they call him Bomb. Wolverine saves him from a cave-in then gives him a leather jacket that fits like a tent. He looks ridiculous, but he thinks it’s his costume. Later, Wolverine buys him a jacket that fits, but he throws it back in his face. That jacket means so much to him and represents his relationship with Wolverine. That’s the origin of his costume,” Adams confirms.
Fans may assume this retro tale is from an alternate timeline but the X-Office says this is not
“This is firmly set in continuity. This is not a What If. This is canon. This is key to Wolverine’s history and his relationships with other characters. This will answer questions that have been out there for decades,” says Lowe
“They do encounter ‘hobo’ Sub-Mariner at one point.” Christos Gage reveals. “He throws a car at Wolverine!” adds Adams
“We wanted this to be something you could hand to somebody who just saw the X-Men movies and they’d enjoy it as a good X-Men story. At the same time, for giant nerds like me, FBI agent Fred Duncan from the early stories is in there, and when Professor X talks about his brother you know it’s Juggernaut,” says Gage.
“There will be early versions of the Sentinels. I did the giant ones, now I’m getting to do different one,” revealed Adams
“Wolverine was a mercenary, and mercenaries make a lot of money. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find that Wolverine’s mercenary work funded…” Adams teased.
“The concept that Charles Xavier could pass for a human I don’t think has ever really been explored. At some point in his life, he made the difficult decision to step forward as leader of the X-Men and as a mutant. He could have wiped all of this out of the world’s collective mind. Why didn’t he? Stuff to think about,” Adams says of the mutant leader.
The First X-Men arrives this Wednesday 8/1/12. For the entire transcript here’s the Marvel.com link.
By Editor
If you’re like me you’re still geeky giddy with the news that legendary Neal Adams will write and draw The First X-Men. This retro but in canon tale will feature Wolverine and Sabretooth.
In the latest Axel-In-Charge column on Comic Book Resources Marvel Editor-In-Chief Axel Alonso revealed interior pages of the series. I wanted to share this interpretation of Victor Creed by Adams. Alonso revealed the balance the retro story with modern readers.
“It’s a challenge. Neal pitched us a really great concept for a Wolverine story that we realized, with a little bit of work, might actually fit as an official piece of X-Men history. A story that illuminated the connection between Wolverine’s, Professor X and Sabretooth and, indeed, the very concept of a mutant super-team. The few months Neal and [writer] Christos [Gage] and [editor] Nick [Lowe] work-shopped that story really paid off — it became so much richer and important and relevant, considering surprises that have yet to be revealed in “Avengers Vs. X-Men.” I commend Neal and [writer] Christos [Gage] and [editor] Nick [Lowe] for their ability to take this story and make it count.”
I’m definitely excited for this new series. If you want to experience Neal Adams first X-Men stories then check out Essential X-Men Volume 3. Writer Roy Thomas and Neal Adams energized the series especially with the introduction of Havok, the Living Monolith story and future X-Man from Japan, Sunfire.
By Editor
A brand new, old school adventure with Marvel’s mutants by a living legend. The First X-Men will be a new 5 part limited series written and drawn by Neal Adams with Christos Gage scripting. In today’s Next Big Thing event Marvel revealed the story behind last Friday’s The First X-Men teaser.
“You guys probably know I was at one time associated with X-Men…then they canceled the book. I had great fondness for the original X-Men, had the time of my life, then they canceled it,” said Adams referring to this era (1969-70.)
“At the beginning, Stan and Jack were experimenting. You had Professor X, bald and in a wheelchair. These strange kids already in costume. It seems to me like this was not the beginning of the story, but the middle.”
“Of all the mutants on Earth, Professor X could easily pass as a human. Why would he want to get involved in this? Maybe all this was going on before Professor X was Professor X…when Professor X was a teenager. Maybe mutant kids were getting abused by the military, by the government. Somebody would have been looking out for them, but maybe that person came to Charles Xavier, realizing he couldn’t protect these kids. That was my pitch,” Adams revealed.
“Marvel was very generous to provide Christos Gage to me, who is an expert in all this stuff. He’s taking my pitch and turning it into scripts that are in my opinion groundbreaking. It’s the X-Men before there were X-Men,” Adams said about his partner.
From the preview it appears Logan is the leader of this team before the team.
“How deeply is Wolverine entrenched in the X-Men? Why was this first team…maybe a failure? Lots of questions to answer.
It takes place before the original X-Men and at a time when the government was snatching mutants up and doing scary things to them. Logan notices this and thinks somebody needs to look out for them. He recruits Sabretooth, who asks ‘Why?’ and so he pays him. Professor Xavier is a young man studying at Oxford, who’s engaged and wants nothing to do with this,” Adams reveals about the lineup.
“In those early X-Men stories, everybody hates and fears them, but we never really know why. It’s so core to the concept, but it was there before the series started. Here we found out why mutants are so hated and feared in a way that is different from any other super heroes,” adds X-Men Editor Nick Lowe.
Wolverine targets the future master of magnetism for his team. Gage says “They recruit this guy Erik Lensherr who is out there killing Nazis…”
“The natural instinct is that this is like the ‘X-Men: First Class’ movie, but it’s not,” Adams states but adds, “We didn’t mind stealing the Nazi Hunter version of Magneto though.”
Gage calls Wolverine a soldier putting together a unit not a school in this series and Adams reveals more of Logan’s team.
“There’s a character who calls himself Bombastic Aghast, but they call him Bomb. Wolverine saves him from a cave-in then gives him a leather jacket that fits like a tent. He looks ridiculous, but he thinks it’s his costume. Later, Wolverine buys him a jacket that fits, but he throws it back in his face. That jacket means so much to him and represents his relationship with Wolverine. That’s the origin of his costume,” Adams confirms.
Fans may assume this retro tale is from an alternate timeline but the X-Office says this is not
“This is firmly set in continuity. This is not a What If. This is canon. This is key to Wolverine’s history and his relationships with other characters. This will answer questions that have been out there for decades,” says Lowe
“They do encounter ‘hobo’ Sub-Mariner at one point.” Christos Gage reveals. “He throws a car at Wolverine!” adds Adams
“We wanted this to be something you could hand to somebody who just saw the X-Men movies and they’d enjoy it as a good X-Men story. At the same time, for giant nerds like me, FBI agent Fred Duncan from the early stories is in there, and when Professor X talks about his brother you know it’s Juggernaut,” says Gage.
“There will be early versions of the Sentinels. I did the giant ones, now I’m getting to do different one,” revealed Adams
“Wolverine was a mercenary, and mercenaries make a lot of money. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find that Wolverine’s mercenary work funded…” Adams teased.
“The concept that Charles Xavier could pass for a human I don’t think has ever really been explored. At some point in his life, he made the difficult decision to step forward as leader of the X-Men and as a mutant. He could have wiped all of this out of the world’s collective mind. Why didn’t he? Stuff to think about,” Adams says of the mutant leader.
The First X-Men arrives this August. For the entire transcript here’s the Marvel.com link.
This is NOT what I expected. What do you think of the concept?
By Editor