Here’s a rundown of the information announced this morning during the Marvel press conference that announced the Fear Itself mega company summer event.
Joe Quesada started the conference by asking what do people fear? The world is smaller, and things are changing to make people nervous about what to expect. This kicked off the Fear Itself trailer, featuring images from the teaser images that were released over the last week.
- The creative team consists of Matt Fraction, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger, and Laura Martin.
- The event kicks off in April 2011.
- Who will be the eight most worthy Marvel Heroes to take on the God of Fear?
- Marvel then featured a video from Matt Fraction talking about the summer event.
- The story should be relatable to the world we live in.
- It’s the characters we love taking on an “Extinction Level Event”.
Who are the worthy? According to Matt Fraction, we’ll have to keep watching to see who they are, and more importantly why they were chosen.
Tom Brevoort spoke briefly about the Fear Itself, saying they took last year off from big events so they could work on this year’s big crossover event. According to Brevoort, Fear Itself will be analogous to the Secret Invasion event and as big as the Civil War event.
- Fear Itself is seven issues and arrives in April 2011.
- Fear Itself prologue (one-shot) arrives in March 2011 from Ed Brubaker.
- A guestimate of tie-in titles should be at the same level as Civil War.
- The God of Fear is a new character that will change everything in the way characters look at themselves, and how readers look at the Marvel Universe.
It will function like many of the other major event stories from Marvel – it will be self contained in the seven issue series, but will also spill out into (nearly) all of the rest of Marvel’s titles. Brevoort did say they built the experience so that no matter what level of commitment you want to dive into, you should have a good experience.
- There are some storylines that have already hinted at the Fear Itself storyline in some of the Marvel titles.
- Brevoort said he believes the series will be $3.99, with the first issue running 45 pages, and the price may even go higher.
- Quesada believes this event will bring out the best in all their writers.
- Civil War was about heroes beating the crap out of one another, Fear Itself brings in real world events seen through the eyes of super powered people.
- Brevoort said it was too early to name all the characters, though Wednesday’s Marvel Solicitations release should reveal much more. We’ll have those solicitations right here, on Major Spoilers.
- Go back to the map shown in the recent Secret Avengers arc and you’ll see bits and pieces there.
When asked about going back into the dark with its heroes, Brevoort said characters have always battled dark heroes, so while there have been attempts to bring back the light (Age of Heroes), the heroes always need a crucible to see what they are made of, and how much they can handle.
- The stakes need to be high in order for the heroes to triumph.
Quesada essentially said the big events are a series of set-ups, releases, and then periods of quiet, which could be interpreted to mean the big company wide, title spanning events are not going away anytime soon.
- Whatever is left of the Fantastic Four will be involved in the event, as will Deadpool.
- Don’t discount Steve Rogers returning to the Captain America costume and title.
As always with any comic publisher press conference, questions are answered with lots of vague maybes and perhapses.
Now it’s time for you to use the space provided to voice your thoughts, concerns, and/or vitriol.
20 Comments
Well count me out, I am sticking by my “No Event Comics” status.
I know there are a lot fans complaining about too many events, but this will probably sucessful because some of those fans but it because they will make up excuses to buy it (“It’s XXX writer/artist! I must have it!” or “It features XXX character”)
Fine. I’ll be the first to say it, let’s wait it out and see how it looks. The idea seems like a good one and could be a good psychological story as it deals with how people respond to the underlying doubt that they might have. Plus, some of the pics have been cool. It all depends on how its handled.
The idea of crapping on something is easier now since we have the internet and anyone can say “meh” to everything (tying in from the podcast), but that just leads to less good stuff since people are afraid of taking a risk (like punting on 4th and inches).
I was tired of events the moment they revealed Spiderman as Parker and then a few months later retconned the whole thing. Every event since then has been for the love of money and its caused more damage to comics than anything else as they tell thier creative writing teams that they -have- to ditch thier own stories and make thier comics take part in the mega event.
Unrelated to the major comment section here, but would the Parker/Spider-man thing actually be considered a retcon? The explanation for why he was wearing a Spider-man suit came forward in continuity and they didn’t go back and undo what had happened, they just came up with an explanation of why he had been wearing a Spidey suit. I think I hear “retconned” quite more often than is always warranted. Am I right, or was that actually a retcon.
Is that Cyclops-neto? Magne-clops?
Cykeneto.
Bleh. And will Marvel please either put Steve Rogers back as Captain America or leave him as Commander Rogers? Unless they’re planning on starting up “Captain America, Inc.”, which wouldn’t surprise me.
That whole press conference was one big “THIS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING! SOMEONE WILL DIE! BUY OUR COMICS!!”.
Marvel’s greatest fear? NOOOOOOOO SSSSSALLLLLLESSSSSS!!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Glad I dont follow Marvel.
ENTER SINESTRO AND PARRALLAX!!!
This will be about the son of Ares? Nightmare recently took over the World in the pages of Dr.Voodoo Sorcerer Supreme and nearly no one noticed.
it’s gotta be nightmare;
he’s been pulling strings behind the scenes in Hercules, Avengers, Thor and Dr. Voodoo. He’s also pretty Gaiman-esque and that’s back in for the moment.
I thought Nightmare got killed by the Chaos King?
I’m actually going to go against the flow this time. It seems like many people are opposed to this event, and events in general. But personally I feel that this last year was pretty good with events. Shadowland was decent, Blackest Night was a pretty epic tale, it had faults but was solid. So I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and pick up the core series, if I really get into it I’ll pick up the tie-ins.
I’ll be reserving judgement based on how it’s handled. If it’s more Sinestro Corps War and less House of M, we might be on to something. At least the creative team isn’t Bendis and flavor-of-the-month-hot-artist again…
I’m hoping that this is tied to Phobos and his death in Secret Warriors.
I’m glad they’re giving Bendis a rest considering how much of the current marvel titles he’s writing. Predictions are that Bucky dies again (or at the very least becomes incapable of being Captain America), Hulk will go on a rampage, and someone will get ahold of Stark technology. I am curious who the other two lead characters in this event are, but chances are it won’t be one that makes me buy this event. Only one has that power, and even though she would fit perfectly in the event their describing I don’t think she’ll be one of the final two.
I’m slightly on the fence about this, mainly because of the $4 price. However, I don’t think it will necessarily be bad or am totally anti-event. The idea is somewhat interesting and Fraction and Immonen is a pretty good creative team. The hype is over the top but Marvel hype is always over the top. Once it’s gets closer, I might decide to back out but I’m at least curious to see where this is going.
“It’s the characters we love taking on an “Extinction Level Event”.
The first thing that comes to mind is that this will be an illusion of change.
“Illusion of Change” … like the “Heroic Age” era once this event kicks in?