We’ve all been hearing about Marvel NOW so I made sure to attend the Marvel NOW panel at Baltimore Comic-Con to bring back the details for Player Affinity. I’ve included images of the covers of all the new titles, comments that were made by the panelists, and questions asked by the audience and the answers the panelists gave. Enjoy the great, new info!
Marvel NOW starts with Uncanny Avengers. New status quos and new creative teams.
As of 7 Sept final Avengers vs X-Men issue is off to print
Audience Question: With current Punisher series wrapping up - what’s next for Punisher.
Answer: Punisher: Warzone. After that news about his future within the next 2 weeks.
Audience Question: Plan to revive Bullseye?
Answer: Yes/No/Or Maybe - one of those is correct
Audience Question: Will The Wasp come back?
Answer: Likely she’ll be seen shortly
Audience Question: New editors on books?
Answer: More or less same editors as before. Only creative teams changing up.
Marvel Point One gives a good idea of what’s coming up
Uncanny Avengers comes out 1 week after AvX #12
A+X - an extension of the versus book during AvX. Pairs up an X-Men and an Avenger - two stories per issue.
Waid on Hulk: “When they called me to do it I said I don’t really have an affinity for Hulk. I like the character as a reader, but I’ve never thought about doing it as a writer. And they said ‘go think about it for a day or two’. And I went to think about it for a day or two and I came up with some good questions of the Hulk for which they’d never thought of an answer before. And thought ‘yeah, I can do this’. As luck would have it - hand to God this is the truth - having not seen Avengers the movie, the take that I had on his mission, personality, and status quo turned out to be in step with Mark Ruffalo’s take in the movie. So that made it an easy sell to Marvel management”
All New X-Men - will have not only the old, time travel X-Men as well as the current ones
Thor #1-3 covers will make one image together
X-Men Legacy will focus on Legion - Xavier’s son
Fantastic Four - the team goes off on a journey
FF - a replacement team that serves while F4 team is gone in the other book
Deadpool - all the past presidents of America have been resurrected as zombies and Deadpool has to deal with them Avengers - will ship twice a month
Audience Question: Are the two X-Men titles shown the only two surviving? Does Uncanny X-Force survive Rick Remender leaving?
Answer: No - Wolverine and the X-Men continues. There will be new X-Force things - maybe more than one X-Force title.
Audience Question: With New Mutants ending where do those teams go?
Answer: New stuff coming up - but not ready to announce.
Audience Question: How do you decide which books start again at #1?
Answer: (Acknowledges that they do renumber their titles a lot) It made sense for them to renumber because it’s a new team and a new run.
Audience Question: Will there now be 52 comics?
Answer: We already do. (laughs) Actually, we’re mostly not changing the number of books
Audience Question: Does Marvel have an in-house name for Colossus/Juggernaut?
Answer: No, we just refer to him as Colossus. Hints that Colossus might die during AvX Audience Question: Is Hickman just biding time because of Marvel NOW? Seems to be lingering past his epic story.
Answer: The real answer is: Not Quite. Hickman had originally plotted the story out to Fantastic Four #604. And when the story was wrapping up he asked to do some more because he loved the characters. Then when Marvel NOW was announced - he volunteered to allow Fraction to take his characters.
Audience Question: Is X-23 going to be in new Marvel books.
Answer: YES SHE WILL. You’ll hear about it in the next couple weeks.
Audience Question: Does Marvel studios have Daredevil franchise?
Answer: We don’t know - that’s another part of the company
Audience Question: Will Mad Thinker be in Hulk?
Answer: Wants to explore new villains for first few months
The panelists had preview copies of a few of the books that will be part of Marvel NOW. They were pencils and dialogue (no inks or colours yet). They allowed the winners of trivia questions to read it and then asked them what they thought.
Iron Man #1 - “A+. Solid Story. Beautiful artwork. Did it have to be renumbered AGAIN?” Mentions that readers aren’t thrown off by large numbers.
Answer from Marvel Panelists: Books with larger numbers don’t sell well. And new readers feel confused about where to start.
Thor #1 - Great book. Not a huge Marvel fanboy, but really, really enjoyed reading it. Got him excited for Marvel NOW.
Captain America #1 - Great Tease in the end. One panel really blew him away.
FF - 8 page Ant Man story section of first issue - Old school story. Scott Lang, not Eric Grady.
Audience Question: How much bad blood between Avengers and X-Men in Marvel NOW?
Answer: Some characters will have some, but not that much because they’re together in a book. Cannonball and Sun Spot will be in an Avengers book.
Audience Question: Because of Time Travel - can the All New X-Men have a big story? And will we still see old Nick Fury?
Answer: There will be big stories and perhaps part of the tension in All New X-Men is the consequences of what they do in the present. Nick Fury will still be around. We have three Ant Men and you can love one and hate one. We can have two Nick Furys.
Audience Question: In FF why are you getting rid of the kids? Why is there a woman in a Thing costume?
Answer: Can’t say why there’s a girl in a Thing costume, but it’s awesome. And they aren’t getting rid of the kids. They’re all still there.
Audience Question: Will there be more Infinite Comics? Maybe a whole series?
Answer: Yes. Experimenting with new ideas. Maybe a regular series in that format.
Audience Question: Now that Avengers Academy is done, where’s Quicksilver going?
Answer: Not the end of the characters in that series. Within the next two weeks - some of those characters will be announced in a new series
Audience Question: Rumor of Cable, Punisher, and Deadpool in an X-Force
Answer: Nope
Audience Question: Will Hulk be written like the current writer
Answer: Audience poll: Who likes Erudite Hulk? Who likes Cookie Monster Hulk? (DNC ⅔ Majority joke) Mark Waid is still not sure exactly how his Hulk will be. Many of his books have empty panels with “dialog to come”
Audience Question: What’s up with Hulk armor?
Answer: It’s Bruce Banner’s armor. Bruce is going on missions and needs armor that doesn’t leave him butt naked when he transforms into Hulk. First issue has reference to purple pants. “but we run out of purple pants in the Marvel Universe. I’ve never seen purple pants in my life. I’ve never gone to Target and looked through the racks ‘blue, blue, blue...oh purple!’ “
Audience Question: New Young Avengers title or New Warriors title?
Answer: If you look closely - the point one book has images of Wiccan and Young Loki and Miss America. There’ll be a story in there that tees up something you’ll hear about soon.
Audience Question: Will Amazing Spider-Man be relaunched?
Answer: Doesn’t want to say too much about ASM. But look for issue #700 it changes everything about world of Spider-Man in a big, big way
Audience Question: Will newest books like Gambit and Hawkeye tie into Marvel NOW?
Answer: The covers will eventually match as will all Marvel books. No new #1 or creative team - they JUST launched.
Audience Question: Dr Strange being sued for malpractice...throwaway joke?
Answer: Originally was, but then Waid had an idea.
Audience Question: When is Age of Ultron coming?
Answer: 2013 for sure. Early 2013.
Audience Question: Anything planned for cable?
Answer: “No he’s going to be in a coma forever. They’re using him as a bookshelf....stuff stack on top of him. You will see him again - just not hanging out with Punisher and Deadpool”
Audience Question: More Clan Destine?
Answer: Depends on Alan Davis - those are his characters
Waid on Hulk: “When they called me to do it I said I don’t really have an affinity for Hulk. I like the character as a reader, but I’ve never thought about doing it as a writer. And they said ‘go think about it for a day or two’. And I went to think about it for a day or two and I came up with some good questions of the Hulk for which they’d never thought of an answer before. And thought ‘yeah, I can do this’. As luck would have it - hand to God this is the truth - having not seen Avengers the movie, the take that I had on his mission, personality, and status quo turned out to be in step with Mark Ruffalo’s take in the movie. So that made it an easy sell to Marvel management” 
All New X-Men - will have not only the old, time travel X-Men as well as the current ones
Thor #1-3 covers will make one image together
Fantastic Four - the team goes off on a journey
FF - a replacement team that serves while F4 team is gone in the other book
Deadpool - all the past presidents of America have been resurrected as zombies and Deadpool has to deal with them
Audience Question: Now that Avengers Academy is done, where’s Quicksilver going?
