Omnipush Continues - late March 2022
Not having posted about this (or anything else here) since mid-February (and I've just updated that post with some notes in dark blue), and having done some overnight ordering, it seemed like time.
Early this morning - so still late Friday night as far as the West Coast seller's system is concerned - I ordered four more, then stepped away rather than immediately moving ahead with a few more I was considering.
Incredible Hulk by Peter David Omnibus vol. 4. I'd previously passed on it because I know that this will include the tragic descent of the title, as the manic bean-counters at Marvel back in the '90s, panicked over the collapse of sales once the "hot artist"/investment pyramid scheme collapsed, greenlit the Heroes Reborn deal with the Image folks, and so viciously rolled through with Onslaught, then the cancellation and horrific relaunches/reimaginings for Avengers, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Captain America, and Thor. Horrible, horrible moves that finally saw me dropping everything from Marvel for a bit.
Anyway, I decided there'd still be enough material of interest in there, and I liked the idea of having the end of that long run under Peter David in this format, too, however tampered with and mutilated the end-stages may have become. I went with the Kubert cover... I suppose for general variety's sake. It unfortunately channels some of the graphic ugliness of so many '90s comics, but it also taps into the chaos and transformations appropriate to the character.
Collecting INCREDIBLE HULK (1968)
#436-467, #-1 and ANNUAL '97; SAVAGE HULK (1996) #1; CUTTING EDGE #1;
CABLE (1993) #34; ONSLAUGHT: MARVEL UNIVERSE; INCREDIBLE HULK: HERCULES
UNLEASHED and HEROES REBORN: THE RETURN #1-4.
That's currently set to be released April 19th, so not far off if they stick to the schedule.
One of the newly-solicited items is a reissue of the Avengers by Kurt Busiek and George Perez Omnibus vol 1.
On the one hand, I have most to all of this material collected elsewhere, but the blend and concentration appealed to me. This was all part of the attempt to get Marvel's old guard back on track, restored and overseen (ideally) by people who had both deep knowledge of and affection for who the characters were established to be -- you know, back when Marvel was attentive to such things.
An odd aspect of it is that it includes the 12-issue Avengers Forever, which was written by Kurt Busiek (and Roger Stern), but didn't involve George Perez. Both by authorship and overall intent - to mend damage, celebrate their history, and restore the characters - it absolutely belongs in this package. It's just that it's not part of the Perez catalog.
Collecting AVENGERS (1998) #0-23, #1 ROUGH
CUT and ANNUAL '98-99; IRON MAN (1998) #7; CAPTAIN AMERICA (1998) #8;
QUICKSILVER #10 and AVENGERS FOREVER (1998) #1-12.
That one's set to ship well off on October 18, when surely we'll all be dead.
The Spectacular Spider-man Omnibus vol 1.
I well remember when this series launched in 1976, including being a little dubious about its loose mission statement of providing more of chance for general character development for the endlessly fraught Mr. Parker. Instead, fairly quickly, it became what we pretty much expected: A third Spider-man title to hopelessly overload his calendar and squeeze as much each month as they could from his fans. We didn't really mind, to be honest, but at the time I don't recall really connecting with this series, so the nostalgia factor here is a little odd. Who knows, though - maybe it'll click with me here as I roll toward that second childhood? With a 42-issue block of the title, along with its first Annual, it should be interesting to get lost in again. There'll be frequent references to then-recent matters going on in Amazing and Marvel Team-up, which will involve interwoven subplots, but at this stage they weren't directly weaving the stories through two or more of the monthly titles. That was soon to come, though.
Collecting SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN (1976) #1-42 and ANNUAL #1, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL (1964) #13 and FANTASTIC FOUR (1961) #218.
That's scheduled to ship around September 27, 2022.
This is a chunk of time where Roger Stern was the primary writer, and generally directing the plot, even if some others got involved along the way. This was also when they began to weave a single story between two of the titles, so there wasn't a full month's wait for the next chapter. I don't have the page count for this one handy, but it has to be one of the mightier volumes as it includes 58 standard issues of the two main titles, along with several Annuals and some odds and ends.
Collecting THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN (1976) 43-61, 85, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (1963) 203, 224-252 & ANNUAL (1964) 16-17 and material from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #15, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #3, WEB OF SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #3 and WHAT IF...? #34
This was the only one of the four that wasn't a pre-order, so I'm watching for signs of it shipping any time now. Cool. As of Tuesday evening this was marked as beginning to ship, so that's on track. A bit later that night there was also a shipping notice for volume 2 of the original X-Men run, so that was right on schedule as Tuesday was the official release date.
Follow-up note: Both of those arrived on or before their target dates.
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