Sinister Monday #5

"Now with 100% more titular ramifications!"
(and by that I mean today I have something very Sinister indeed to talk about. But on to him, er I mean that later...)

Howling Fiends,
Welcome. On this pentacular edition of Sinister Monday I'd like to discuss the Marvel U as a whole and where it is heading. Having relatively recently returned to comic-dom, I have Civil War to thank for anchoring me firmly in the Marvel side of the comicbook Majors. Sure, I still read my JLA/JSA/Batman books, and i peruse an indie now and again (*cough* City of Others *cough cough*) but for the most part I'm a Marvel hellhound. Much of this has to do with my re-entrance into comics coming during a Marvel epic crossover. Maybe if I'd got my collective comic shit together a year earlier it would have been Infinite Crisis that would have captured my soul and instead I'd be living in the DC. Such as it is I'm just happy to be back at all. And the point is (and yes, I'm getting to one, dammit) that huge epic crossover events have a tremendous influence on comics these days. They are able to draw new readers in, expose readers of middling experience to titles they were ignorant of or were avoiding for the wrong reasons, and in most cases up the ante on 'stakes' and quality.

Now what I mean by 'stakes' is that crossovers live and die by the success (or failure) of a Big Change. Civil War readers were livid after the 7 part series ended with very little (immediately apparent) Big Change. Of course the people that thought very little had changed were idiots, and besides, the death they were looking to stamp the Big Change happened anyways, just a few months later in the pages of a different series. Point is, crossovers have tremendous power to change, Exhibit A: The House of M. If one was to chart the current line of Marvel stories (and I will shortly), House of M has to be one of the most important fathers (or mothers seeing as M-day is mostly Wanda's fault). BENDIS!' story radically changed Marvel's mutant population and its effects are still being played out (and will continue to be, etc). Thus the second most important factor of an epic crossover is the germination of new stories. House of M bore much fruit. mmmm... I could sure go for a nice depowered Magnetorange right about now.

Readers are just beginning to see the 'germination' ability of an epic crossover following Millar's opus. Marvel wasn't exactly coy when it said Civil War's main role would be a supporting one. The Superhuman Registration Act does change things significantly (any doubters just focus your eyes on Spidey) but it is the fall out of the war that has really begun to take the Marvel U in wonderfully interesting directions. And now for the first part of a (somewhat half-assed) chart.

Okay so I already know that for all intents and purposes this chart can be begun further back than where I am starting. After all this is comicbooks and everything's got continuity, right? But for our purposes House of M is the Grand Pere. HoM leads to Decimation. Now the mutants being all fucked over leaves them a non-factor when Civil War crops up. yet there non-participation makes HoM important to Civil War in a negative sense. How would that war have gone if (and thats a big if seeing as Xavier's students probably wouldn't have participated anyways, seeing as they were not exactly beloved by humanity before HoM) say Wolverine or perhaps a depowered but always wonderful field martial Cyclops played a part? At any rate these first few chart connections illustrate a third major component of a crossover. They are important merely for their own bigness of scope. There are few characters who remain uneffected (hell you'd need to be in deep space... I'm talking to you Banner/Rider). This may spell continuity hell for some writers, and others may just ignore what is going on (hello Brubaker's DD), but there is real power if numbers here.

'Bigness' also allows minor characters a chance to become something more. Thus the Avengers: Initiative series growing from the Civil War ashes. Yet what 'Bigness' does more than anything else is turn up the spotlight even higher on the big'uns. Want proof? Look no further than World War Hulk. Big Green is about to fuck shit up and by that I mean hulksmashhulksmash. Now HoM and Civil War are no true parents of WWH, but the devastated hero-scape they've left is one primed for hulkstruction. In other words no HoM no CW and as one prominent Marvel writer has already acknowledged, no dead Cap, and WWH would be shorter, less devastating or haulted altogether. This sets up my fourth point. Epic crossovers lend themselves to being followed by, you guessed it, epic crossovers. How does one re-capture reader attention after a civil war slap-fight? How about a world war? How does one up the ante on a mutant population suddenly reduced to 198 card carrying members? How about X-men: Endangered Species?

Thus it is that story-line which is the 'true' heir of HoM and Decimation. Ive recently read an excellent interview of one of the chief architects of this upcoming saga, Mike Carey. His words are much more thought provoking than any 'view-cap I might write here. And I've gleaned elsewhere that the future, i.e. beyond CW and WWH is a time for villains. Thus Endangered Species, the Initiative, and a major (if not THE major) nebulous, currently un-named epic corssover of 2008 will all feature big baddies. Sinister and the marauders return in Endangered, Eddie Brock's name is popping up everywhere, Red Skull is coming to the fore in Cap, and there is much Doom-mongering all over the place from F4 to the near future of the Mighty Avengers, a team already battling Frank Cho's Orgasmotron, I mean Ultron. And yet all this means is that Big heroes will return to fight the Big Baddies, bring on Thor, Namor and a ridiculously powerful Nova to name a few.

The future is going to get much clearer very soon. Next months' New Avengers #31 promises 'the single most important final page of any single issue Marvel publishes this year,' but will probably make things cloudier rather than clearer. June also marks the kick-off of Endangered in X-men #200 where (headline which has become obligatory to Epic Crossovers) "Somebody Dies!" And there is the goings-on in space (i.e. Annhiliation) which for the most part I remain entirely ignorant of (that might change soon). For my part I am going to avoid WWH (but will keep tabs on it somehow, RHD or wikipedia perhaps?) but I'm all in for Endangered. I already subscribe to X-men and New X-men. Grabbing a few copies of Uncanny and X-factor won't put my budget that far in the red. I still think BENDIS! and holds the reigns to the future Marvel U in his various Avengers lines, but Carey might be contributing more and more down the road. And Brubaker remains the true story-teller, somehow playing inside and outside the rules of epic crossovers at the same time. Now that's a real mark of greatness.

Here's to the future, Hellions.

Left D.