The other day, it was revealed in Entertainment Weekly that Marvel would be relaunching a number of their titles with new number ones and shaking up the creative teams of some of their biggest books with a new initiative called ‘Marvel NOW!’. Today, an official press release went out with basically the same information as the EW article from earlier in the week, except there’s a new little tidbit hidden in there about the new team behind ‘New Avengers’!
According to Newsarama, the companywide event will include ‘New Avengers’ #1 featuring the team of Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting. It seems like Marvel is making Hickman the new Avengers guy, just as Brian Michael Bendis, who will now be working on ‘All New X-Men’, was THE Avengers guy for almost a decade. In addition to writing the huge bi-monthly ‘Avengers’ title with Jerome Opena illustrating, Hickman will also be behind this new team of New Avengers, giving us three monthly doses of the writer. Unlike the other titles mentioned in the press release like ‘Uncanny Avengers’, we received no information about what the book will be about or who will fill the roster of the team. With the main Avengers team being comprised of about 18 members, what heavy hitters will be left to join the ranks of the new New Avengers? Maybe we’ll see Epting, who’s known for his work on ‘Captain America’, ‘FF’, and ‘Avengers’, bring back his team of the Black Knight, Sersi, Crystal, Quicksilver, Hercules and the Vision from the 90s. We’ll find out in January 2013.
Additionally, in an inter view with Marvel’s Editor in Chief Axel Alonso and Senior Vice President of Publishing and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort about the Marvel NOW! initiative, Comic Book Resources revealed that first string players Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America would be getting new #1 issues as a part of the upcoming event, however, not every title would be. For instance, Alonso explains why ‘Daredevil’ will stay the same:
“There might be some other titles, like ‘Daredevil’ for instance, which won’t go through a creative change or have a new #1. Mark Waid is doing a fantastic job on that book and his run is still very new. So we have no interest in interrupting that book. Of course, if Mark and Steve Wacker come up with a great hook that legitimizes things the book would become part of the Marvel NOW! line up.”
So while not every title will be involved in Marvel NOW! initially, every hero will feel the repercussions of this new status quo that will be set up once ‘Uncanny Avengers’ drops on October 10, 2012.
Who are some heroes that you’d like to see on Hickman and Epting’s New Avengers team? Leave your suggestions in the comments below!
