Marvel Now! Becky Cloonan's Thing! Monkeybrain! More

Marvel have announced that they will be revamping (don’t call it a reboot, or Dan Slott will scold you) their entire line after AvX, with most of their books getting cancelled and replaced with new ones. Brian Bendis will write All-New X-Men, with the original 5 X-Men returning to the present. Which is, he tells us, important or something. Can’t really tell why, because it’s not like this hasn’t been done several times before. It seems like a quirk title, which isn’t the case for the other three books. So far we have Uncanny Avengers, with X-Men and Avengers mixing together so the popular X-Men can carry rubbish Avengers like (and I am assuming wildly here) Hawkeye and Vision.

The other two books are by Jonathan Hickman, and are Avengers/New Avengers. Characters have been redesigned! Jerome Opena, Dustin Weaver and the Kubert brother who works for Marvel are involved somewhere! This does seem exciting, and a case of a good writer being put on a book which needs a revamp. Although giving both titles to one writer still seems ridiculous, when a range of different voices would surely make the books more exciting for fans (which is how the X-Men/Spider-Man books have operated recently). Random characters are involved at random points for all four titles, and the main draws at the moment seem to be regular monthly appearances for character-turned-plot-device Scarlet Witch, John Cassaday returning to draw for Marvel, and Jean Grey showing up via time travel. But when are they announcing a return for my beloved Winter Guard?!

Becky Cloonan and Sholly Fisch have been wandering in and out of the DC Universe for a while now, but Fisch gives the first indication he’ll be taking over as main writer for Action Comics in October, as he writes an annual for Superman. This will fill in some of the five years between the start of Morrison’s run and the start of George Perez’s run in the main Superman series. This is part of a series of annual releases, including Becky Cloonan drawing a Swamp Thing annual (perfect casting for her: her short stories The Mire and Wolves show she can draw trees like no other) and Frankenstein showing up for a Justice League Dark annual.

Gail Simone will write a Batgirl annual, as she continues to try and get this ship moving.

Chris Roberson and Allison Baker have launched a new comic imprint, called Monkeybrain Comics. This will see a range of different creators put comics up on Comixology, which will range in size and price. Bandette, which I reviewed for Comics Bulletin, is the pick of the five titles released so far, but the books are fascinating all-round. Some are better than others, but the model is intriguing. Will fans go for short, cheap comics? Once the various stories, which will be released on varying schedules, have enough pages to fit a lovely trade, they’ll be sent to print and put in your local stores. Roberson and Baker have put something amazing together here, and it’d be thrilling to see it succeed. With many writers moving mainstream comics (Ed Brubaker being one of the latest, as he announced he will be stepping away from Captain America later this year), it looks like comics are starting to really expand as a medium for fans. But will fans follow them!?

Read how people don’t like it when I like things! Black Lightning is returning to DC! http://www.comicsbeat.com/2012/07/04/dc-finally-remember-that-black-lightning-is-amazing/

Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey’s ‘Comic Book History of Comics’, published by IDW, has sold out, and is going to a second printing! Here’s how they chose to break the news:

Amethyst’s creator Dan Mishkin is unhappy – as are we all – with the idea that the character is going to be revived WITHOUT THE FLYING PONIES.

He’s done an interview with CBR about it, and you can go over there to read it I’m not going to bother cut-pasting it yo. It’s also a reminder that many creators are still unhappy with their treatment over the years. Tony Isabella, you may have noticed in that article about Black Lightning, isn’t happy about that character getting brought out again. Yikes!