Broken Frontier

Hello! Welcome to Guiding Lines, the weekly column that shines a light on the comics of tomorrow, or at least the comics being released tomorrow. My name is William Gatevackes, and I’ll be your host as we look at the comics being released January 11, 2006.

Ultimate Extinction #1 hits the stands tomorrow. It is the first issue in the third series of the Ultimate Galactus storyline, following the Ultimate Nightmare and Ultimate Secret miniseries. This storyline, if you haven’t guessed, introduces Galactus to the Ultimate Universe.

Marvel began the Ultimate line of books in 2000 with Ultimate Spider-Man. The Ultimate line was started as a way to entice new readers to comics by providing them stories they could understand without needing to know 40 years of continuity first.

In the 5 years since its inception, the line has grown considerably. We have seen Ultimate versions of the X-Men, Avengers, and the Fantastic Four, just to name a few.  As the months go by, more and more Marvel characters are getting the Ultimate treatment.

The addition of characters, each introduced with somewhat different origins and back stories than their regular Marvel counterparts, creates the exact situation the Ultimate line was meant to avoid.  In other words, the Ultimate line is quickly becoming hampered by a growing and intensive continuity.

Don’t get me wrong, I am as interested as the next guy in seeing who will be next in line to get the Ultimate treatment. But with all the characters being introduced, the Ultimate universe is quickly becoming as unwieldy to follow as the mainstream Marvel line.

The Ultimate Galactus storyline is a prime example of that. Not only does the storyline introduce no less than four new characters into the Ultimate universe (the Ultimate Vision, the Ultimate Captain Marvel, the Ultimate Silver Surfer, and the Ultimate Galactus), but it also features the casts from the Ultimate X-Men, the Ultimates, and the Ultimate Fantastic Four.  That’s a lot of characters to follow and a lot of back stories to remember.

The fact that you have to read 3 miniseries over 14 issues just to get the whole story of the coming of the Ultimate Galactus goes to show how the Ultimate line has gotten away from the reason the line was created. How accessible is having to buy 14 issues to new readers?

And even though it has only been in existence for a little over 5 years, the Ultimate line has experienced conflicting continuity within its own universe. The versions of the Hulk and Fantastic Four that previously appeared in the Ultimate universe in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up have differed greatly from the versions introduced later in Ultimates and Ultimate Fantastic Four.

The idea that the Ultimate line would stay continuity free and accessible was flawed from the get go. Each issue published contains a new story. Each story adds to continuity. After a while, continuity builds whether you intend it or not. You can’t escape it.

Speaking of continuity, Hawkman #48 features the second part of a three-part storyline which ties into the Rann/Thanagar War miniseries, which ended 4 months ago.

The reason why this storyline was delayed was that Hawkman was embroiled in another long-running storyline at the time Rann/Thanagar was released. As a matter of fact, Hawkman was presumed dead in his own book at the time. So, Hawkman was dead in one book and alive in another that hit the shelves at the same time.

Crossovers have to be headaches for all involved. They require intricate planning amongst all the creative teams on all the books to coordinate the stories in each comic. It must be most annoying to creative teams who were building a major story arc and are forced to stop the development of the plot so the title can tie into an even larger event.

But annoying as that may be, it is preferable to what happened with the Hawkman book. Having Hawkman be alive in Rann/Thanagar undercut some of the dramatic tension in the plot of his own book. No one truly believed Hawkman was actually dead, but still we didn’t need to be reminded that he was going to make it out of the storyline alright. It dampened the desire to see how he made it through.

Marvel releases X-Men: The 198 tomorrow. The miniseries, which ties in with the Decimation arc running through most of the mutant books, would seem to focus on the lesser known mutants remaining after events at the end of the House of M miniseries.

For an event that was supposed to shake up the Marvel Universe to its core, the reduction in the number of mutants in the current storyline has raised mixed feelings in me. As it’s played, the reductions have brought more tension and drama to the mutant books. On the other hand, it’s hard to take the supposed magnitude of the reduction seriously when the characters that inhabit the three main X-Men books remained unscathed.

As a result of this “decimation”, the mutant population of the Marvel Universe has been reduced by 90% (not by 10%, which, as Peter David likes to point out over in X-Factor, is the meaning of the word “decimation”).  However, out of the 16 current members of all the X-Men teams, only Iceman and Polaris were shown as losing their powers. Of those two, Iceman already has his powers back.

If Marvel wanted to really drive home the severity of the “decimation”, more major characters should have been affected. Having mutants who haven’t been seen in years lose their powers is not as emotionally powerful as having mutants we follow every month lose theirs. Of course, the fact that the X-Men is a lucrative movie franchise might have had an effect on the way the members of the team were treated with kid gloves. But from a story perspective, not having more power loss on the team took something away.

Also from Marvel tomorrow are the second printing variant covers of Amazing Spider-Man #527, Marvel Knights Spider-Man #21, and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #3. One of the most detestable things that comic companies did back in the comic glut of the 90s was to increase sales on their books by using gimmicks. Most of these gimmicks revolved around the cover, either through enhancements such as holograms and metallic ink or the dreaded variant cover.

With variant covers, the companies used to slap a different piece of art work over the same story and sell the issue to collectors twice. Rabid collectors would buy both copies in case one became more valuable than the other.

Marvel’s policy about using variant covers has changed quite considerably from those days. Now, for the most part, they use variant covers on second printings of key issues so the public can differentiate it from the first printing. But Marvel still publishes variants for two first printings of the same issue sometimes. Usually, they do this so the issue will post better numbers.

When two variant copies of the same issue are released at the same time, the amount sold for both copies are added together and the combined amount counts towards the total number sold for the issue by Diamond Distributors. So if one cover sells 50,000 copies and another sells 20,000, the total amount sold in the eyes of Diamond would be 70,000. This makes a meager performer seem to sell much better, and might mean more orders for future issues. A few recent, non-second printing Marvel Comics which featured variant covers were New X-Men #20, New Avengers #9-10, and Spider-Woman Origin#1.

Is this cheating? Yes it is, a little bit. But as long as some readers equate a high seller with a quality book, and therefore would be more willing to pick up the issues that follow, Marvel will continue the practice in attempts of boosting sales on certain titles.

          

Getting back to the Spider-Man variants, each issue of “The Other” storyline has received a second printing. As a running theme through out all the second printing variants Marvel has done for these Spider-Man books, each book features art work portraying Spider-Man as he looked at various time in his history. These covers feature Spidey in costumes as common as the black-and-white one he got after Secret Wars to costumes as obscure as the old Fantastic Four uniform with a paper bag over his head that he wore only in Amazing Spider-Man #258. The covers also feature alternate Spider-Man concepts such as Spider-Ham and Spider-Man 2099. I think these are a nice touch and a humorous way of honoring Spider-Man’s long and varied history.

Of course, these are only my opinions. Every one has them, and yours may vary.

Well, that’s it for this week. Tune in next week as we talk about a whole new bunch of books you may or may not be interested in. Until then, this is William Gatevackes, signing off!