The Vision is back for a three issue mini-series coming out later this year.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=27841

I'm torn between my love of the Vision and my hate for Dr. Druid, so I really don't know if I'll pick this up. Leaning towards no unless Vision has a really prominent role.

~Hat~

Wow, is that a random team. Well, I suppose them all being dead helps, but still. Who else did they have to choose from? Isn't Wasp dead? Ant-man? (Although he answers that one in the interview). Thank god Sentry was left in the ground, or wherever they put him...




Well, I would think the Vision would be a central player on that team, considering he's pretty much the only link to all eras of the Avengers, not to mention that his personal adversarial relationship with the big bad, the Grim Reaper.

Edit: Not to mention, this thing is called "The Chaos War". I'd be kind of shocked if The Scarlet Witch isn't involved at all... Of course, I wouldn't have thought they could make "Avengers Disassembled" about Wanda going crazy and barely feature either Vizh or Pietro, so common sense connections seem to hold little sway with what appears in a Marvel book.

I might get around to reading this one eventually if I hear good things about it, but I really don't pay much attention to Marvel's actual comic output any longer. Thanks for letting me know about it though!

The Vision is by far the most "Avengery" character on the line-up. Wasp did cross my mind, and they did explain why Ant-Man wasn't on the team. Leaving Sentry out was a good idea, he hasn't been dead long enough. I would actually have thought about trying to work Hawkeye onto the team; yeah, he's alive right now, but he's been dead a lot lately. Could be some good story potential there.

I just hope all these characters aren't being resurrected permanently (other than Vision, he can stick around!). I admit I have to wonder if the line-up is partially being picked due to copyright renewal reasons...







Hopefully, but I've bought title before that were solicited one way and didn't work out that way in execution. For example, I thought Siege was going to be about the reunion of Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor. Turns out that Avengers Prime is the series that happens in, and we're 2 issues in and the characters have shared about 3 pages together so far (they've been scattered across the nine realms of Asgard).




Don't expect the Scarlet Witch to be a part of the series. While it's called Chaos War, there is a mini-series being published right now called "Avengers: Children's Crusade", which is about the Young Avengers trying to find Wanda. I would expect Wanda is off-limits elsewhere for the most part until this mini is resolved (which being bi-monthly will be awhile, it's a 12-parter).

Chaos War is about a "God Squad" of Hercules, Thor, Silver Surfer, Sersi, and one or two more characters I think, and Galactus is apparently a member too. They team together to prevent the Chaos King (the god Mikaboshi from Japanese legend) from destroying reality. It feels rather fanboyish to me, honestly (let's put Thor and Silver Surfer on a team with Galactus!). Apparently the new Hulk Family will also be a part of the story (because the Hulk and crew get involved in cosmic stories so often...).

I think Pak and Van Lente were going for a wow factor with their God Squad, but it feels lame to me. DnA's cosmic team-up that's been teased for Thanos Initiative actually captured the feel the God Squad was going for, which was a "holy crap that's awesome" reaction. Nova, Silver Surfer, Beta Ray Bill, Quasar, Ronan the Accuser, and I think I'm forgetting one other character. With all the work that's been done on these characters by DnA (and the addition of Bill) it really is an exciting team-up.




I will probably give it a flip at the store and make it a game-time decision on whether I pick it up or not.

~Hat~

...not sure where... Newsarama, maybe? Whatever came up when I Googled the title. Anyway, the writer says that each issue will feature a little "Lost" like vignette introducing what the characters were like before they died, and that their relationships to the living was the major thrust of the series. The Vision and the Swordsman apparently get this treatment in the first issue. The interviewer asked whether the classic Vision would be face to face with the new Vision, since the living Avengers would be playing a role somehow, and the writer responded the better question was whether he would come face-to-face with "the love of his life" who murdered him. (I did note, however, that phrasing it as a question allows him to say "Well, no... no he won't" later.)

Honestly, if the guy is telling the truth about being a fan of the character and "Avengers" being his book when he was young, then I don't think they can avoid having Vizh dealing with Wanda, whether she's "real" or not. While new fans are content to just ignore that the Vision ever existed or had a relationship with the Scarlet Witch, I think old-school fans and writers would be hard pressed to do a story like this "Dead Avengers" concept and not try to resolve how Wanda callously killed Vizh... it being the worst possible ending to their love story imaginable.

Ultimately, I doubt they'll be using this series to bring any of these characters back to the land of the living. Mar-Vell is definitely going to stay dead, and nobody aside from the Vision is really worth bringing back without specific plans. As for Vizh, they've replaced him and I think they're content with that. I could maybe see them doing more specials or a continuing spin off about dead characters operating in the afterlife, but I'm not sure they'd want to as it would give death less of an impact than it already has in the Marvel Universe. Dying would just mean being transferred to the "Dead" book.

(Now that I think of it, didn't they recently do a limited series like this with Dead Girl and Mockingbird and some others?)

I do appreciate that this seems to help draw a distinction that the current Vision is *not* a continuation of the previous one though. I'd rather he be dead and mourned (by a handful of fans if nobody on panel in the Marvel Universe itself) then just have it taken for granted that as long as there's someone called the Vision active, it's close enough to count as the same character.

But seriously, folks, I liked Druid for the same reason I enjoy Moondragon, Quicksilver, and USAgent. They're jerks. Jerks who fought the good fight, but jerks none the less. Granted, some writers went too far in their portrayals of Druid as asshole (Walt Simonson in his crappy Avengers run) or just made him an out and villain (Warren Ellis), but before that he was a great character. One of my favorite TV characters was Charles Winchester from M*A*S*H and even beyond the obvious physical similarities they had a lot in common- erudite, competent, snobbish men who still ultimately did the right thing.

I'm almost tempted...

And doesn't deathcry sound almost un-lame in that write up!

Thor, the Surfer and Sersi?

Aww man.

...is tempted...

I didn't really care for the new imagining of Deathcry in Annihilation: Conquest. She was an irrational killer; Captain Universe saved her from an attacker, and she flipped out and tried to kill him for taking away her "honour killing". I don't have a problem with that concept, she just seemed pretty fanatical about it.

I'm not too attached to the character either way, but it seemed to be quite the departure from her previous appearances.

~Hat~

I am a USAgent fan (though he could sometimes get depicted as too much of a jerk sometimes), but Druid has never interested me. Perhaps a better costume would help, and if he was a little less creepy. Probably the fact he was screwing over Captain Monica, a character I'm very fond of, doesn't help my opinion of him.

As to the appeal of Alpha Flight, I do admit a part of it is that they are Canadian. When John Byrne wrote the title, it really did feel like the team was set in Canada. Most writers had no idea how to do that and it was plainly obvious (at least to this Canuck).

But beyond that, I love the personalities that make up Alpha Flight. They are a team of misfits (the original line-up includes a midget, an alien, a mythical beast, a schizophrenic, a goddess, an aboriginal mystic, and a very hostile gay man...none of which really fit in anywhere) that comes together and that clash of personalities makes for some great story-telling. Nobody really belongs, so everyone does!

Byrne really did his homework when he was working on Alpha Flight...I actually wrote a university paper on Shaman for my Introduction to World Religions course. Byrne really did research the Sarcee tribe and Shaman's powers were a natural extension of their beliefs and culture. That attention to detail is amazing.

The line-up of Alpha Flight really opens itself up to telling many types of stories. With Snowbird, Shaman, and Sasquatch you open up a lot of mystical/mythical stories. Box and (again) Sasquatch are the link to the technological. Aurora alone has tons of potential with her mental problems. Northstar, Talisman, and Shaman open up possibilities for racial/prejudice stories. Puck has links to the east (aka an excuse to bring in ninjas). Guardian has ties to the corporate world. You can tell a lot of stories with this group.

While I do have every issue of Alpha Flight volume 1-3 (plus mini's, one-shots, and Omega Flight), I will admit that nobody has held a candle to Byrne's original run.

~Hat~

I remember picking that issue up in the store specifically because of the inclusion of Mantis and Deathcry, and then putting it back after seeing that they just dug her up so they could make a joke out of killing her. It pretty much solidified that I was done with Marvel's continuity. (Which might have been a shame, since I've heard good things about those cosmic books otherwise.)




Well, a consistent portrayal was never the character's strong suit anyway. She showed up as a rather aggressive soldier type, then out of nowhere became a stereotypical teenage girl. I was more interested in her potential than her actual character... Sure, she was over-designed and very much a 90's character, but I saw potential in the Avengers having a Shi-ar member, especially post Galactic Storm. I thought it opened them up to some other storytelling opportunities, and I liked the hints at the larger Imperial story that were being laid with Deathcry (who I believe was going to be reveled to be half-Kree and likely in the royal family, which would be a dangerous combination following the unification of the Kree and Shi-ar empires.)

Blowing her up as a gag just seemed like such a waste, and fit the trend of Marvel killing characters left and right. Yes, they can always come back, but they waste such story potential every time they off someone callously.

I'll be honest, the Marvel cosmic books have been pretty out-of-the-park. I collect them all in hardcover form, since you can get them on Amazon for about $25. What I really liked about the hardcovers is they collect everything except Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy (those are collected separately), otherwise the whole story is there. Nova has been one of Marvel's best books since it started so I was already collecting that in tpb format anyway, and I'm just starting to pick up the Guardians collections here and there.

We'll see how good the Chaos War is though...it's a cosmic story but it's not being told by DnA, so I reserve judgement. Seems like every day a new tie-in is revealed...I just learned about a Thor tie-in, and Ares tie-in, and a rumour of a Silver Surfer tie-in.




Well, her death did have some meaning in that it really shell-shocked Captain Universe, who had to kill her to save himself. I guess they wanted to establish that people could and would die and Deathcry got the nod. While I didn't like her portrayal, I liked how they explored Gabe's guilt after he killed her.

~Hat~

Fair enough then, I didn't see that interview.




Which was already kind of done in Paradise X anyway.




Yeah, dead villains were resurrecting themselves and Dr. Strange needed Dead Girl's help to descend into death's realm to stop them. Mockingbird, Gwen Stacey, and a third female I forget where a part of Dead Girl's book club, and Ant-Man (Lang) spent his time combing carpet fibers for demons.




It is a shame the Vision has never been properly mourned on-panel. At least his death was on-panel, which is more than I can say about Alpha Flight's.

~Hat~