Guardians of a rather smaller Galaxy

Marvel just released some art to promote an upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

Hmm, now what's missing?

Oh, right, all but one of the female members of the team.

One more yawn

Joey Q has been talking about doing it for at least a year.

The publicity was hinting at it for months.

Every fan has been assuming it for the last six months.

Every blogger has been complaining about what a bad idea it is.

And so the biggest twist in the Spider-Man story One More Day is... that it's exactly what everyone has been expecting all along.

After a year when the level of misdirection at the big two has reached the point where creators lie in interviews and publishers put out misleading solicitations for comics that will never be published, I am a little baffled to find the biggest Spider-Man story of the year to telegraph its big conclusion months before the first issue was even published.

So I'm now left wondering what they are going to do when the next movie rolls around and it features Spidey and Mary Jane as an item, given that last time Marvel bent over backwards so far to identify with it that they put him into his black costume for several issues for no good reason other than it was in the movie.

I'm less wondering how they are going to integrate the new status quo into the overall Marvel continuity that is so tightly clenched that if Thor sneezes in one comic, Daredevil hears it in another, because it's that obsessively tight continuity that puts me off reading any of the individual titles I might be interested in if they weren't going to be suborned into some huge uberstory every other issue.

I hope Joey Q is happy. Because I'm not sure anyone else is.

It really is First Class

There are some phrases that you don't naturally associate with certain people. One you'd probably not expect to hear from me is this: I enjoyed an X-Men comic.

It's not that I particularly have anything against the X-Men, but their backstory is so huge and complicated that I can't imagine picking one up and having any clue who anybody is or what they are doing, even if it's explained. I read a lot of them when I was a much younger, but I have an idea that I wouldn't even recognise the characters I recognised. There is such a huge weight of continuity and I don't want to have to read a zillion other comics to make sense of the one in my hands, and that's before you add in all the recent "event" comics.

But I picked up X-Men: First Class #1 on a whim, and partly because it was free of all that continuity baggage. It's great. Sue Richards mentors a teenage Jean Grey, who is feeling a bit left out among her all-male team. Hilarity ensues.

I loved the story, I loved the subtle nuanced characterisation of everyone except the Mad Thinker, and I loved his unsubtle characterisation. I loved the art, which supported the characterisation so well. I loved that I could read a satisfying story in a single comic.

Come to think of it, the last Marvel comic I enjoyed was also written by Jeff Parker.

He's okay.