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Marvel and GW


 Knockagh

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Announced over on community today a tie up between GW and Marvel.

It’s fiction and it’s Warhammer so this might (or might not) be the place to post about this. But this has me super excited. 40k comics to date have been a pretty poor offering but I have really high hopes for this. Star Wars has transfered onto the comic book format brilliantly under Marvel. The last few years of the Darth Vader runs have been beautiful and utterly chilling. Dr Aphra and the recent galaxies edge run have shown what they can do with a massive and diverse galaxy setting.

Marvels handling of the Conan the Barbarian franchise when it returned to them this year has been jaw dropping. Aside from the terrible idea to insert him into the Marvel Universe which I doubt GW would ever let Marvel do....

They have shown not only respect for existing IPs but an ability to build on those IPs brilliantly.

This could be fantastic, I can’t flipping wait.

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I've enjoyed the Darth Vader runs Marvel has done, so fingers crossed this will be of similar quality. Considering past (still current?) connections I wonder if Abnett will be heading the first couple issues. :biggrin.:

Honestly I kind of hope not. I love Dans BL as much as most but I’m not a huge fan of his Dredd comics.

 

My writer wishlist would be

Jason Aaron

Charles Soule

Donny Cates

Jeff Lemire

Margaret Stohl

 

Any of the above would deliver nicely!

Edited by Knockagh
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One fascinating thing marvel have been doing in throughout the most recent Conan runs, has been the inclusion of a serialised novella at the back of each issue. The novella format suits Conan’s publishing history and has massive appeal to his historic fan base. Obviously this would work really well in a 40k comic and could be a fantastic way to introduce comic book fans to BL fiction as well. They used the brilliantl John C Hockings to write the main comic books novella, he has no history with Marvel and is far from a comic book writer. So no reason we couldn’t see some of our authors serialising alongside some of marvels best in a similar collaboration.
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I've enjoyed the Darth Vader runs Marvel has done, so fingers crossed this will be of similar quality. Considering past (still current?) connections I wonder if Abnett will be heading the first couple issues. :biggrin.:

Honestly I kind of hope not. I love Dans BL as much as most but I’m not a huge fan of his Dredd comics.

 

My writer wishlist would be

Jason Aaron

Charles Soule

Donny Cates

Jeff Lemire

Margaret Stohl

 

Any of the above would deliver nicely!

 

Never read any of his Dredd stuff, how bad is it? Would you say Dans brand of 'Bolter Porn' would work well in a comic??

 

 

 

 

 

As for the comics themselves, I'd like to see something showing the whole human > marine thing, introducing the wider imperium to someone who is clueless about the wider galaxy in general. Like how the Ragnar books introduced a 'backwards' primitive to technology and other planets and space etc. Or how Ian Watsons 'Space Marine' book did a simmilar thing for three Juves on necromunda from different backgrounds joining the Imperial Fists. 

 

Then it could also be a gateway to the 40k lore to general public who have no idea about what 40k is. 

 

Or something from a Guardsmans POV, Whiteshield seeing his first Ork, Nid, Daemon  or whatever. 

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Scary though could these comics be rather...PC friendly? Like not Grimdark more unicorns and lollipops type of 40k? I'm sort of nervous with this announcement. If it was Dark Horse comics I'd be wicked happy, but with marvel...idk I mean Disney does own them....

 

Krash

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I'm worried, to say the least. Marvel managed to drive Star Wars against a wall, then proceeded through the next 4 as well. I haven't enjoyed their comics in years, and whenever I figure I should see how things have progressed, I get confirmation that yup, I really dislike the way they handle things nowadays. Writers tend to be poor choices, plotlines flat and art? Well, they stuck with Larocca for most of the Star Wars series, when it was just really awfully bad.

 

If they can get Dan or other traditional BL authors on board for some gigs, great, I'd love that. I'd be pretty confident in saying that Josh Reynolds would probably be an awesome fit, for example, but if Marvel pick their usual lot? It has the potential to be worse than the Will of Iron series that put miss Inquisitor into a full-blown Terminator suit, anatomy be damned.

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Considering the quality of comics we've gotten for 40k so far, even from the top tier writers, I don't know if we can really go anywhere but up. I've also enjoyed Marvel's Star Wars comics more than any from Legends/Dark Horse; I'll risk the possibility of a bit of toning down (though considering the cape comics industry being weirdly targeted at middle aged men, really not by much) for some actually decent series.

Edited by Roomsky
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I would rather see more elite Imperial Guardsman formations/ squads in comic book form than space marines. My mind is running away with itself with Sly Marbo, Straken and Catachan based comic book series. SM and CSM in my mind need proper books or animation to come alive IMO, IG fit a comic much better for the Imperium. Inquisition, IG and SoB would make great comic book arcs for the Imperials and 40k. Even something incredibly niche like an Imperial fighter ace + air wing would be better than a SM/ CSM comic. Astartes based comics for 40k would not hold my interest honestly- probably. 

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It's funny, when I saw this in my inbox the first thing I thought of was GW making Miniatures for the movie a la LOTR. It never even occurred to me that Marvel is a comic-book company.

 

I don't think this is unreasonable really, comics are a vanishingly small part of Marvel nowadays. That's both in terms of revenue - I've seen figures which say that the gross of all their comics is less than half that of your average Marvel film and less than a third of merchandise - and distribution/promotion, where they have a truly astounding ability to shoot themselves in the foot with summer events and resets of series to #1 and barely advertising. It's the kind of thing that would make 2000s era GW blush.

 

Overall I don't have a huge amount of hope for this. The fact that it's GW working with a new partner combined with Marvel's shortsightedness is enough to make me expect a standard spread of well-worn 40k stories retreading the main beats for a new audience, at least for the forseeable future. Here's your big angry space marine battle story with an emphasis on brotherhood, wrapped up in 80 pages. Here's the same but about a Blood Angel/Space Wolf wrestling with the beast inside. Here's one about a guardsman in a brutal warzone who is then impressed by the sudden appearance of a space marine.

 

I would agree that GW's previous comics output has been pretty lacklustre but at least it did put out some gems like Deff Skwadron or Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat, which did more than tell the same old action stories and felt like they were pulling more on the 2000AD legacy. If this does get folks like Simon Spurrier or Kieron Gillen back doing GW stuff, great, but I'm not holding my breath.

Edited by Sandlemad
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From a comics point of view Marvel (& DC) have been on a downward trend for over a decade. Having said that, they will garner GW the widest audience/promotion within that market.

 

How successful these books are, and it's a guarantee there will be a W40K and AoS book as a mimimum, will depend on who gets the writer and artist gigs.

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Cause Marvel writes rather..."hopeful"  stories and comics. Not very mature (Yes there are some but it is unusual for them to release "adult" oriented comics) So the fear is it will be a 40k "lite" version of itself. Or not follow established source material faithfully nor with respect. I mean are they are pushing these to kids? Maybe? Are they are pushed to adults? Doubt it.

 

Krash 

Edited by Captain_Krash
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Cause Marvel writes rather..."hopeful" stories and comics. Not very mature (Yes there are some but it is unusual for them to release "adult" oriented comics) So the fear is it will be a 40k "lite" version of itself. Or not follow established source material faithfully nor with respect. I mean are they are pushing these to kids? Maybe? Are they are pushed to adults? Doubt it.

 

Krash

Marvel has undergone considerable change in how it approaches many of its comic titles. Under the old Comics Code Approved titles they were rather limited in how they could develop and present their stories. But they abandoned that quite a few years ago.

If you take the time to read any of the recent titles I’ve mentioned. Conan, Thanos, Savage Sword of Conan, Vader, Dr Aphra and Vader Dark Visions all carry much much darker overtones.

If all you have read of recent is Captain America or the Avengers or you haven’t read anything in the last few years I could forgive you for thinking Marvel couldn’t fit with 40k but any objective reading of the titles I’ve mentioned should excite any BL fan at the mention of the two parties working together.

I’m not a fan of 90% of the marvel universe titles and am bouncing mad at their current attempts to insert Conan into it. But when they don’t do stupid stuff like this and they leave IPs in their own universe it can be done brilliantly.

At the end of the day though they will still be a comic book something I’ve been into for 30 odd years. But if comics aren’t your bag this probably won’t rock your boat. Maybe you’ll get some decent visuals from them.

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marvel have put out some very dark stuff over the past decade. whether that equals “adult” is another thing...

What’s adult then? I’m not sure what you mean or want. I’ve two kids and if it’s too dark it’s nots not for their eyes, ears or whatever. Kids often struggle work between fiction and reality. So dark content isn’t usually suitable for kids.

When Conan moved back from Dark Horse to Marvel everyone had the same concerns and I haven’t heard anyone make any noises to say those fears were justified. If anything the marvel run has been even more brutal than DH. Most fans have been blown away by what Marvel have done.

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If you take the time to read any of the recent titles I’ve mentioned. Conan, Thanos, Savage Sword of Conan, Vader, Dr Aphra and Vader Dark Visions all carry much much darker overtones.

 

The problem is that the first post-Disney Vader run had a lot of stupid stuff in it, and then spun off the comic relief evil dudes into their own series with Aphra - which I enjoyed at first, but my god did they beat that dead horse. In Vader & Aphra, we had basically Bad Chewie, Creepio & MurdeR2D2, pseudo-Grievous and what not. It was full of recycled ideas and silly levels of comic relief that took away from precisely those darker undertones the stories should have had....

...and then you got the Screaming Citadel arc, which was split between Aphra and the main SW series, where gothic horror was just terrible past the first (only self-titled) issue.

 

Frankly, I was baffled seeing what incredibly grim subject matter the stories could take and turn it into a poor attempt at comedy or undersell it in general.

 

As for Conan, it definitely helps that they've got a host of stories to base the comics off of, at least. I hope they'll straight up adapt some big novels, like Eisenhorn, with Abnett adapting them, rather than tell more annoying Will of Irons or such.

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I've enjoyed the Darth Vader runs Marvel has done, so fingers crossed this will be of similar quality. Considering past (still current?) connections I wonder if Abnett will be heading the first couple issues. :biggrin.:

Honestly I kind of hope not. I love Dans BL as much as most but I’m not a huge fan of his Dredd comics.

 

My writer wishlist would be

Jason Aaron

Charles Soule

Donny Cates

Jeff Lemire

Margaret Stohl

 

Any of the above would deliver nicely!

 

Have not read his Dredd comics, didn't know he actually did some of those. I was more thinking about Dan's time writing for Guardians of the Galaxy. 

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Personally, I'm not overly excited about this announcement, same as I wasn't when they announced Eisenhorn TV series. Mainly because I'm not a big fan of comics in general and from the little I've read by Marvel I wasn't impressed.

 

If Todd McFarlane was on board, then I would be more into it. At least I can be only surprised at this point.

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