LavaLampBamboo said:
They're also doing a Planet Hulk storyline again! And Years of Future Past! It's a classic Marvel reactivation!
Right, now I'm going deep into speculation territory here. I have no proof other than what has been announced, but this is my theory on what the House of Ideas is up to:
Currently, some of the Avengers comics have jumped forwards eight months, as part of the build up to Time Runs Out, which I believe is taking place next April/May. According to Marvel themselves, this Time Runs Out event will involve them doing "something they've never done before in their 75 year history". This is then going to be directly tied into the new Secret Wars event, which has that art where all the heroes from multiple universes and time periods are fighting.
I reckon that Secret Wars will essentially be a reset button for the Marvel Universe. In a similar way to the New 52, I think Marvel will essentially "destroy" the universe, then spend Secret Wars having them hash it out amongst themselves. At the end, the remaining heroes get "rebirthed" into a brand new universe, which is similar to the classic 616 universe, but with changes in history (probably because they want to bring in a bunch of characters from other universes, like Miles Morales). Then, once we hit Summer 2015, all these "old-but-new" limited series run, explaining HOW the history of Marvel has changed, and how these newly introduced characters will have affected events.
Essentially, these series are stories we have seen before, but, for want of a better word, rebooted. Makes it easier for new fans, possibly directed in by the success of the MCU, plus allows Marvel to consolidate their admittedly messy multiverse.
Either that, or they really HAVE just run out of ideas.
(Mild Potential Spoilers Below, albeit most of the stuff mentioned is hardly brand new)
Well, I have a feeling they are angling to get into a "universe reboot" cycle where they can do it every few years like DC seems to in order to get sales with a new big event whenever it suits them. They mess around with classic characters, and then wait for people to demand the status quo return, then they do another shake up, and then mess things up with yet another shake up, etc... it's an old trick. Marvel has a big enough stable to potentially make it work.
I'd imagine they will want to do things like try to modify characters so they better represent their screen counterparts since that is the version of Marvel a lot of people know. Of course this will cause problems and ultimately irritate a lot of long term comics fans who will Jihad, which is ultimately more attention for them which is the point. The big question in something like this tends to come down to characters like say Nick Fury who people associate with Samuel L. Jackson now, all due to guys doing "The Ultimate Universe" making Nick Fury look like him as a joke, and then promising Sam the rights to a live action version if they ever tried again if he didn't sue (or so I've heard). They do this and they might as well cut Mr. Jackson's estate a portion of the profits from Marvel for life and give him an unprecedented amount of control in an offhanded way, aside from the whoile issue of pissing off "Howling Commandoes" fans (like my dad). Ditto for changing various comic characters to look more like the actors associated with them in the movies (which was fairly close to begin with). The movie versions also tend to be a lot cleaner as well which means that they miss a lot of depth, meaning that an Iron Man reboot for example could get around his very serious problem as an alcoholic. He gets sloshed once in the movies, but it's never been the kind of problem it has been for him in the comics. Likewise I'd imagine they would want to get Pepper and Tony together like in the movies, as opposed to having Pepper remain his "girl Friday" and romantically linked to Happy Hogan (who isn't used much in the movies), which of course also they will be playing down his lecherous antics that also acted as a foil for the character allowing groups like the Hellfire club to get their hooks into him in the past and so on.
As far as Milo Morales goes, I wouldn't put it past Marvel to keep him and Sam Alexander around just to spite people and generate rage for people to bring back the originals (Spider Man and Nova). Really, the funny thing about "Ultimate Spider Man" nowadays is that Milo has the best selling comic book that nobody actually reads, it keeps selling because so many collectors and speculators want the run because of how bold it was. There is a reason why the idea of a Milo Morales(Enhanced) costume is a recurring joke request in say Marvel Heroes: 2015 and why they wouldn't release Nova without having a Richard Rider enhanced costume ready pretty much from day #1. That said such an event would be a perfect opportunity to put bullets in the heads of both Sam and Milo, let the collectors finally relax and seal up their box for "maybe someday it will be worth something" and get back on track.
At any rate I could be wrong but I imagine for a while at least they will create a much shallower, less interesting, Marvel Universe. To use Iron Man as an example, one point about the character is that as "Invincible" as he is, he has crazy numbers of flaws. After saving the world following "Fear Itself" he fell back to drinking (the guy is a problem alcoholic) leading the the government coming after him (since he's public) to ground him/limit his use of the armor as a threat. A spat between Pepper and his head of security leads to footage of Pepper breaking up as "Rescue" being distributed which pretty much wrecks her as well. This kind of stuff just doesn't apply to the movie versions because you can't work in this kind of characterization in 2 hour films.
That and while dated Tony trying to counsel Ms. Marvel when she was becoming a problem drinker (for a lot of reasons, she was in her Warbird identity at the time I believe) given that he had been (successfully at the time) grappling with that problem was one of the more interesting character interplays I had seen.
The problem with continuity reboots is that they usually take a lot of good characterization with them, which is why I think Marvel has stayed away from them, unlike DC, which always struck me as being comparatively shallow and thus it could do this kind of thing more easily.
