The once touted ‘House of Ideas’, Marvel Comics, is rolling out another incestuous crossover. Alien vs. Avengers is the miniseries event some dreadfully predicted would happen since the purchase of 20th Century Fox Studios by Disney on March 29th, 2019. The 4-issue mini-series is set for a July 24th release date.
Will it be good? Writer Jonathan Hickman has incredible writing chops; even garnering praise from Marvel detractors for being a true talent in the company. Esad Ribić, cover, and interior artist, is a heavyweight at Marvel as well. Jonathan and Esad have collaborated at Marvel with volumes of Ultimates and Avengers. Fans can certainly breathe a bit easier with that fact.
The mini-series was summarized as an alternate timeline of the 616 universe, where the Avengers are much older and grittier. There will be some Alien lore spliced into the history before the Xenomorphs arrive on Earth. As some fans have noted on social media, ‘ It’s basically a Brood story set in the future.’. The Brood, an alien race introduced in the X-Men, was inspired by Alien in the film. With Predator vs. Wolverine being their first crossover between 20th-century properties, this new series has deep footsteps to follow. The greater task is digging Marvel out of a hole among comic book fans. Sales of comics have been slumping recently, hurting the entire comic industry.
Fandom Pulse reached out to fan experts on the Alien franchise. Co-host of Crew Expendable: A Xenomorph Podcast, Ken Rohrbacher, told Fandom Pulse, “ I admit I’m not super excited by the idea of Aliens vs. Avengers, but I’m willing to reserve judgment until the comic actually releases. I will be looking forward to seeing how it turns out and hoping there’s lots of bone-crunching xeno action!”. Crew Expendable is a podcast with almost 2 years running and over 30 episodes covering all things Alien, from comics to movies.
While discussing the nature of Marvel with Ken, he mentioned his favorite character The Punisher. He has been a fan of Frank Castle for years but cited his least favorite event being Nick Spencer’s Secret Empire. Ken identifies as ‘left of center’ on most political topics but he maintains a vehement disdain for all things politics, no matter the side of the aisle. Mr. Rohrbacher, “Frank keeps getting books, only for Marvel to cancel them within a year. He joins multiple teams. Then the whole thing with his skull symbol getting co-opted” (referring to the Marvel debacle over police wearing the logo and the terrible redesign that followed).
He continues, “They clearly had no idea what to do with him, and haven’t for years. Eventually, they cut their losses. Start fresh. Write him, replace him with a new guy. Clean slate. Then that dude turns out to be pretty much the same as Frank. And then they immediately cancel HIS book too, proving they learned no lesson from the situation. Why bother then? From my perspective, it looks like they’ll keep making the same mistakes they already have been.”
Furthermore, he expressed his exhaustion for superhero comics as a whole: “There are books that I want to read. They publish comics I have an interest in. But the constant crossovers, and the constant reshuffling of creative teams, and every book getting a new #1 every eight months, and every major character having like four spinoff books that I also have to keep up with… I don’t have the time for this kind of thing, or frankly the desire to support this kind of business model. Let me just READ THE BOOK, please.”
These complaints line up with what many fans have cited as the reason they have divorced themselves from Marvel or the mainstream comic industry as a whole. Marvel has made a great effort to ditch their old audience to appeal to a different fanbase that does not seem to exist given the sales numbers over the last several years. Can Marvel win back audiences at this point? Will you be buying Alien vs. Avengers? Please follow The Fandom Pulse on X and Facebook and let us know your thoughts.
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Wildstorm did it first
Wildstorm will probably have done it better as well