This panel at NYCC was Friday October 12, 2012 at 1:30pm and the description was, “Want the scoop on the major players involved in Marvel NOW!? Axel Alonso (Editor in Chief), Tom Brevoort (SVP Executive Editor), Senior Editor Nick Lowe (Uncanny X-Men), Senior Editor Mark Paniccia, Mark Waid (Indestructible Hulk), Rick Remender (Uncanny Avengers), Kieron Gillen (Iron Man) and Arune Singh (Director of Communications) are on hand to give the 411on the Fantastic Four, FF, Hulk and much more!” And I am here to tell you that they lived up to the hype. It sounds to this reporter as if Marvel is a fantastic place to be writing and creating and working right now. The panel was in agreement that “every book looks and feels different now.” How does Marvel operate when they bring a new writer onto a book? They encourage every writer coming in to do a “hostile takeover” of that book and what came before. THIS is what we call a fertile ground for working and writing and GREAT for the fans! Mark Waid told us quite a bit about The Hulk and where he is taking the big, green guy. Waid is a big fan of Mark Ruffalo’s portrayal of Dr. Bruce Banner in “The Avengers” and feels that somehow he and Ruffalo are fully on board with where Banner and the Hulk are going. Waid’s Hulk is going to more like Ruffalo’s than before. The Hulk will speak more than he’s ever done, although there will be “fine shadings” and the quality of his speech will dependent on the circumstances of each transformation. On the Captain America front, Cap is going to explore his childhoold on the Lower East Side this year and where he got the will and the strength to fight. How the skinny little weakling developed the nerve and the heart to transform into Captain America and to fight the Nazis. The Fantastic Four’s focus this year is going to shift back to the core of family. Something that happens in the first book gets Reed’s attention and makes him think he needs to focus more on his family. So what he decides to do is spend a year with the family, traveling the universe and seeing things that no one has seen before in a BIG, FANTASTIC RV (YEAH, WE KNOW – AWESOME!). The hook here is that the one year of travel will only be 4 minutes of time in the Mavel universe – “but that doesn’t work out too well.” But Reed, thinking ahead recruits 4 Fantastic Four stand-ins just in case the 4 minute thing doesn’t come thru and, in effect, leaves the universe in the hand of a team of misfits who find themselves not only trying to keep the universe running smoothly, but also fighting off all the enemies of the FF who take this opportunity to attack. Best description of this panel goes to the Thunderbolts: “They will kill you dead if you deserve it.” They will not leave you for the Police to take in and book. They will not beat you down. They will KILL YOU. Tricky part about the Thunderbolts is that they’re mainly a bunch of loners who don’t work well with others. But that is going to be “dealt with” in Book #1. Should be fun! At the end of the panel “talk” they opened up the floor to questions and the fun just dialed up another notch. The fans were loving it, the panel was loving it maybe even more. Fan after fan was invited up onto the stage to read as-yet-unpublished editions of their favorite books. Best takeway info from the question and anwer period: Marvel has two books/series coming up that will focus on females. (There apparently is a third book that is “probably coming” but is a bit more risky to predict.) The “Young Avengers” will become a “book about being eighteen” – that stage in your life when you are entering the world “on your own terms” and being an adult. AWESOME FUN SPOILER THAT IS NOT REALLY A SPOILER – but apparently Marvel didn’t intend to broadcast: They are going to publish a “kick ass” girl team book that will probably be in the Marvel Top 10.
