Our Favorite Marvel Comics Teasers, Revisited
This week, Marvel Comics have teased and revealed their upcoming all-new, all-different take on Heroes Reborn. In the new event spinning off from the pages of Avengers, the Marvel Universe has gone through a radical reinvention, with fan-favorite heroes finding their world turned upside-down, and having to deal with strange new threats in the process. All over the internet, people are buzzing with questions like “Huh?”, “Sure, okay”, and “So, we aren’t done with Jason Aaron, huh? We’re really gonna go ahead with more of his shitty attempt at re-creating Grant Morrison’s JLA, we’re fine with this, this is acceptable comics, to us.”
As always with these things, the whole event has been an occasion for Marvel to titillate the comics world with their always innovative, always informative, and always fun and exciting teasers, context-free snippets of information that are sure to get people excited, and not at all confused or baffled. Nothing gets people going like pictures of some randos in situations that don’t mean anything to anyone, and on that front Marvel have once again delivered. Only thing that was missing is cover art hiding key characters behind silhouettes, which are the best thing, because I hate being informed.
So, for today’s HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS, let’s revisit some of our favorite Marvel teasers, and celebrate a way of communicating with your audience that makes complete sense in the context of a business model that asks you to make blind purchases based on vague promises months in advance.
THE ASS SAGA (2012)
In this already cult series of teasers, various characters around the ol’ 616 reminisced about an unknown person named Ass Wilson. The cryptic sentence fragments, when put together, hinted at a dark secret that would threaten to pull the Avengers apart again again. We were all really excited about the mysterious Ass Wilson, with some even speculating that he might have something to do with the then-recent purchase of Miracleman’s rights. This led to a now-infamous NYCC panel, where Dan Slott said of the whole thing: “Actually, Ass Wilson was me the entire time”.
BEHOLD THE EGG FUCK (2013)
The series of in-house ads, published across several months of Marvel books, asked the world to imagine a character named “The Egg Fuck”, through questions like “HAVE YOU SEEN THE EGG FUCK???”, “WHO IS THE EGG FUCK???”, “IF YOU MET THE EGG FUCK FACE-TO-FACE, WOULD YOU KNOW THAT YOU’RE FACE-TO-FACE WITH THE EGG FUCK?” and, of course, the iconic question “WHAT IF YOU’VE ALREADY SEEN THE EGG FUCK???”. Rumors about the Egg Fuck project were aplenty, with big industry names like Dan Slott even rumored to write the ongoing series.
HULK’S DICK (2015)
This strange BANNER (haha, get it?) was on display over Dan Slott’s twitter profile for a couple of hours on October 18th, 2015, and now one is quite sure how or why. Did he want to write a story about Hulk’s dick? Were there plans for a story about Hulk’s dick? Was he even involved? Who could have seen the Hulk’s dick and lived? While the idea for a storyline centered around the mysteries of the Hulk’s dick were apparently scrapped, the inspiration for the horror-themed The Immortal Hulk might have been found in this classic Marvel teaser.
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: YES, CUSSES ARE FUNNY
I’d like to present a formal apology to Martin Simmonds, James Tynion IV, and to you, dearest readers. For I have shown great cowardice, last year, when I did not call The Department of Truth the best new series of 2020. I was hedging my bets, despite the excellence on display, and that stands against everything I believe in. I could claim that I was only doing due diligence, waiting to see how the story resolved before recommending a work that goes this uncomfortably hard on a unified history of modern American conspiracy theories. I could say that issue #4 weaving together Epstein, the Clintons, 9/11, Barack Obama, Pizzagate and QAnon was walking a fine line, below which was the shock-jock irony poison that even a one-time TrueAnon listener would be all too familiar with. But really I was being a coward.
To my great relief, especially in times as fucked-up as these, The Department Of Truth #5 closes out the series’ first arc by bringing the action back to the whimsy of pulp thrillers and pop conspiracies. Because looking at the violence that absolute fuckers like Alex Jones incite on a daily basis is well and good and necessary, but being on the trail of reptilians under Denver International Airport? That’s the kind of wacky bullshit escapism that is going to keep me coming back for more. Plus, it allows Martin Simmonds to stretch his considerable talent, not just in the styles and media he mixes, but in the form the storytelling takes. It recalls Dave McKean, if Dave McKean dropped a 9-panel grid once in a while to keep the traditional flow of a comic going. It’s clever as hell, I love it, and, yes, finally, I don’t care who knows.
The old adage goes that every comic should be someone’s first, right? Well, if X-Men #17 was my first comic, I’d feel pretty shitty about it. Jonathan Hickman’s tenure on the main book of the line has been criticized before for missing a certain sense of momentum, choosing to do easily-digestible one-shots instead of a more traditional soap-opera structure. But usually, those one-shots would be filled to the brim with worldbuilding, introducing fascinating ideas and dropping hints for the future while doing the dazzling superhero action. There’s none of that in today’s outing to Chandilar, a far too neat story of intrigue in the Shi’ar empire. The backdrop is better explored in Al Ewing’s cosmic books, the factions in play are swiftly and completely dealt with, which leaves only one small line to be paid off in the future.
But what of the dazzling superhero action then? Well, it’s left in the hands of Brett Booth. This is a problem for multiple reasons. First, there’s a documented history of bad behavior that has contributed to making this industry a toxic hell swamp, which I am linking to here because I want for that history to become inescapable, to the point where it ruins any occasion you have of seeing his name somewhere. Second, he is an extremely mediocre artist. I’ve seen many people online compare him to the 1990s greats, your Jim Lees, Whilce Portacios, sometimes even Rob Liefeld (at his most pleasingly kinetic, obviously). And there is room in comics for that kind of throwback (I’ve praised Gleb Melnikov not one week ago for doing that very thing in Midnighter!). But here’s the thing: Brett Booth is not a throwback to Marvel’s golden era. If he’s anything, he’s the self-satisfied over-designed bloated mess of 2020 John Byrne. And at most, that’s a throwback to last week’s newsletter. Can’t fool me.
And hey, look, I don’t mean to be negative all the time, but please, could we not have your fucking goo alien bullshit in what should have been a landmark first issue after the gamechanger from Marco Checcheto, Mike Hawthorne and Chip Zdarsky? Daredevil #26 is just a total bummer, is what I’m trying to say. Sure, it continues the series’ excellent work studying what Daredevil even is through the contrasting perspectives of Matt, who’s trying very hard to not be Daredevil, and Elektra, who finds herself having to try and be Daredevil. But then the fucking goo aliens show up, and it’s like the book gives up on being interesting. It’s like “Yup, sorry, Knull came all over New York”, and it doesn’t work, because the symbiote god is entirely too dumb an idea to fit into this. How else can it end but in a big dumb stunt that will be seen as embarrassing when we look back at the run in retrospect? Well there’s always the possibility of a bigger, dumber stunt. But god do I resent Donny Cates for that one ESPECIALLY.
Anyways no time to speculate because it’s time for oh you know what it’s time for
You join us today on a very special episode of the Future State Roundup, as we’re almost but not exactly halfway through this strange event exploring the strange possibilities in the future of the DC Universe as it stands. And with all but one #1s dropped, I thought it appropriate to pay tribute to those series that WILL NOT re-appear in this column because, well, they weren’t really worth it. Please hold your applause, as we remember the fallen.
The New Batman
Superman of Metropolis
Dark Detective
Green Lantern
Robin Eternal
Nightwing
You were too boring, or just plain too bad, to continue reading, and one of you was written by a guy with an absolutely psychotic take on the X-Men. You will not be missed. Now, eagle-eyed readers might have realized that none of the books I mentioned in this came out this week. You know why? Because this week was ACE. Top stuff.
For instance: did you know that there’s one DC book that’s done everything about big two corporate shared universe comics right? And that, of all things, its name is Aquaman? Read on its own, this week’s Future State issue is a very cool, very stylish blockbuster Aquaman Of The Future And His Sidekick story, the kind you ought to expect from any comic asking you for your hard earned four bucks. But if you’ve read the previous 65 issues of the main book, going back to 2016? It feels of a piece with that. It builds on ideas, themes, and characters from Kelly Sue DeConnick’s run, itself built on Dan Abnett’s run. It delivers a consistently top-class action serial in a way that all books should aspire to, despite having gone through multiple writers and even more superstar artists. We ever so rarely give props to editors for keeping the ship steady, so, you know what? Alex Antone, Andrea Shea, come and get yours, you’ve EARNED IT.
Speaking of delivering on a known quantity, yes, Legion of the Super-Heroes is either a coda, an interlude, or just a continuation of Brian Michael Bendis’ run on the Legion. So it’s more of that, but with more references to one unseen event taking place between last week’s #12 and now. That said, Bendis Legion is a fun as hell book with slightly too many characters doing slightly too many things in slightly too many places, which is always fun, and in Bendis tradition it’s paced with many incredible two-page spreads, which give Riley Rossmo another opportunity to flex and shine with excellent alien weirdness. The designs are way on point, the layouts are crazy and cool, the action rules; all of this was really to be expected, and I am really wishing for more of the stuff.
Meanwhile, in this week’s double feature, Javier Fernandez and Robbie Thompson deliver as by-the-book a Suicide Squad tale as you can deliver. This sounds like an insult but, as with pizza, traditional recipes are there for a reason: it’s because they work. So, let’s run down the list. Morally ambiguous anti-heroes? Check. Somewhat deep-cut continuity pulls? Check. Stylish and lethal action? Oh that’s a big ol’check. Amanda Waller coming up with a plan that’s completely fucking evil? Yeah that’s also a check. Tricks? Yeah, and it’s pretty good tricks, so I’m not giving it away, except to say that it does keep all of the above working, despite the big shift in context, which is the kind of daring storytelling acrobatics you should try more often. As for the Black Adam backup? It’s some DC One Million stuff, complete with the 90s style omnipotent narration, and near the end Black Adam shows up and he looks like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. So that’s nice.
Our last two books this week do the self-evident excellence thing by just replaying the hits. In Superman vs. Imperious Lex, Steve Pugh and Mark Russell take the wacky Silver Age story of Lex Luthor being the leader of a planet and building an army of killer robots, and they use it to deliver their patented brand of broadsides against greed, settler colonialism, authoritarians, and all that fucked-up shit we do to one another. It’s a fun time, these two know what they’re doing, it’s good. Meanwhile, Batman/Superman kinda does the same, except the premise is a prequel of sorts to the events in the Batman books, and it’s really about a fucked-up society in which you have to conceal your identity to escape constant surveillance and violent threats. If you liked these ideas in Gene Luen Yang’s excellent Superman Smashes the Klan, you’ll love them here too. Plus Ben Oliver does the art, so it’s drop-dead gorgeous. Hard to write about, but, just plain great to read.
Golly folks, what a week! Thank you ever so kindly for reading this particularly nonsensical edition of the newsletter and — wait hold on I’m being handed something; we go RIGHT NOW to the HYBC X-MEN ELECTION DESK:
LATE BREAKING: HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS OFFICIALLY ENDORSES MARROW IN X-MEN ELECTION
In a crowded ten-person field, which includes names like Armor, Polaris, and also Banshee, HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS, the world’s only actually good newsletter about current comics, chooses Sarah “Marrow” Knuckey, a life-long radical, as well as a survivor of the original Mutant Massacre, to represent the interests of the lowest stratas of mutant society in the X-Men squad. Marrow has been a dedicated servant of the mutant nation, joining the X-Men in the aftermath of the attacks carried out by the United States during Operation Zero Tolerance, and most recently serving with X-Force in the aftermath of the Alexandria Incident. She’s also experienced firsthand mankind’s cruelty, both as a brainwashed operative for S.H.I.E.L.D. and as a prisoner of the Weapon X program. She’s proven capable on multiple occasions, and she has shown considerable bravery after her depowering at the hands of the Pretender Wanda Maximoff. And while her time as part of Mikhail Rasputin’s Gene Nation experiment has made her a controversial figure, it has given her the resilience and leadership skills that are needed for the X-Men’s future mission. Most importantly, her past affiliations should not be seen as controversial when compared to the rest of the field, which includes Sunspot, a former Supreme Leader of A.I.M., Strong Guy, a former Supreme Lord of Hell, and Boom-Boom, whose record as a member of H.A.T.E. is still under heavy debate.
In endorsing Marrow, we choose to hold former Quiet Council member Marvel Girl and Great Captain Cyclops to the promise of Krakoa. If Krakoa is indeed for all mutants, as it must be, then its heroes must represent its least well-off. Putting Marrow on the X-Men is the only way to achieve this.
Okay now we’re done. See you next week! Keep reading! Keep telling your friends about this! Please like, comment, AND subscribe! And if you’re already done, well then, why not HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS?