MARVEL's 2018 Event Begins With INFINITY COUNTDOWN PRIME

>The march to Marvel Comics' big event series for 2018 begins February 21 with Infinity Countdown Prime, and Newsarama has the details on the story and creators involved.

>Originally solicited without creators or a synopsis, Infinity Countdown Prime will be written by Guardians of the Galaxy's Gerry Duggan and drawn by Original Sin's Mike Deodato Jr. Included here are three pages from the issue.

>"The Infinity Stones. Individually, they grant their wielder great power. Together, they grant the power of a god. Newly reformed and scattered throughout the universe, these artifacts allow the ones who claim them their heart’s desire. Now, as their locations are discovered, forces converge for a battle that will begin the universe down a dark path to the end," descibes the new Marvel solicitation. "Jump onto this exciting ride that will lead to the biggest Infinity yet! Plus: The saga of the Infinity Stones - what they are and how they came to be! From creation to destruction to re-creation, this prose primer will tell you everything you need to know about the legendary cosmic gems!"

you ready for SYNERGY

>The Infinity Stones were destroyed in the build-up to 2015's Secret Wars event, but four of them have turned up (in one form or another) in recent "Legacy" titles.

>The returning Logan has the Space Stone (as seen in Marvel Legacy #1), Star-Lord has discovered an extra-large Power Stone being protected by the Nova Corp (as seeen in Guardians of the Galaxy #147), and an alternate universe Peter Quill named Starkill has the Reality Stone (as seen in Captain Marvel #126) but in promo art released later, the Power Stone is shown being held by Captain Marvel. A future version of Ghost Rider has a shard of the Time Stone (Thanos #13).

>Neither the Mind Stone or the Soul Stone have yet appeared.

>INFINITY COUNTDOWN
House of "Ideas"

>In this Infinity Countdown Prime art by Mike Deodato Jr., a presumed fifth Infinity Stone is on top of a cane held by an unidentified individual.

>Marvel is branding Infinity Countdown Prime (and the event it's leading into) as a part of its long-running "Infinity" events/miniseries which kicked off with 1991's The Infinity Gauntlet and also included the 2013 Marvel event Infinity.

>This all, of course, coincides with Marvel Studios' Avengers: Infinity War movie hitting theaters May 4.

Lots of Infinity/Thanos stuff when you count this and the new Thanos trilogy coming out and all it's bound to be shit, wow

>Deodato

Not even with a rented dick

>have one of my favourite book's temporarily cancelled for Marvel forcing an event
>have to put up with Dedato till it restarts
God fucking damn it

Is that Phyla in the middle?

NO FUCK OFF ALREADY

Which book?

...

>Deodato jr.
>"drawn"

>NO EVENTS FOR 18 MONTHS!!1!1

Couldn't even make through 2018 baka

Different user, but it's obviously GotG. It was great book as long as you don't have a chronic case of DnAfaggotry.

oh ok, Infinity Quest was sounding much more interesting anyways.

Looks like Spectrum without the coat and with her Land hairstyle. Unsurprisingly, Deodatto is shit.

>Deodatto
FUCKING. WHY.

>Super-Skrull
WOAH, WOAH, back the fuck up! Why did no one tell me to get hype?

Hearts even more, considering great artist we had on GOTG.

all that shitty poser artwork, at least land... nah land is just as bad, youll find better art on the booru than in this

So, unsurprisingly, Adam has the Soul Stone, because of course he does. Kl'rt having the mind stone is a weird fit though. Glad it's not yet another stone stuck on Earth though.

Oh, wait, green is "time" using the Stone's colors. Looks like Loki is coming out of the Mind Stone, which makes more sense.

So:
>Gamora/Nova Corps/the Guardians have Power
>Wolverine has Space
>Adam has Soul
>Loki has Mind
>Carol has Reality
>Thanos has half of Time
>Kl'Rt has the other half of Time

It was no "planned" events for 18 months. This was originally just an arc of Duggan's GotG which Marvel decided to hastily force into an event instead. Duggan said as much on twitter, that this was just going to be an arc of GotG until Marvel decided to "make it bigger."

Which is a perfect way to take a great arc and fucking ruin it. Everytime they pull this shit on a localized story arc, it comes at the expense of quality.

Shit I didn’t even know it was going on hiatus

I thought they weren't doing events for some time.
Are they really that weak

Doesn't that happen with pretty much every event?

Fear Itself was originally a Cap/Thor crossover
Infinity was originally just an Avengers/New Avengers story
Secret Wars was pretty much the same

Speaking of Deodato, what the fuck even was Original Sin?

>Duggan said as much on twitter, that this was just going to be an arc of GotG until Marvel decided to "make it bigger."


Whoever calls the shots at Marvel should be shot.

Flashpoint is probably the biggest and best example

*dull farting*

Again?
I feel like Marvel writers can't create coherent story arcs nowadays not because of laziness or lack of talent but because of need to stop the story and relate to another event every now and then.

A lot of events, yeah, but not all of them. Civil War II, for example, was always envisioned as an event. Basically what ends up happening with events is one of two scenarios:
>Marvel needs an annual summer event comic, so they plan to do a summer event comic and hash out the plans for it during a Creative Summit wherein whoever the main writer for it is then decides to start building up to it in their own comics and other writers know that the event is coming so they can plan future tie-in arcs
>Marvel needs an annual summer event comic, but don't have one planned, so they just take whatever upcoming arc some writer was planning and blow it up into a line-wide event, thus forcing other writers to change their plans to accomodate this other writer's plans while forcing that writer to take their planned story arc and make it "bigger"

The former sucks because it comes about somewhat unnaturally, wherein they create an event for the express purpose of having an event and then work backwards from there. The benefit though is that knowing the event is coming allows different writes to plan ahead for how their event will tie-in and the bigger writers will get a chance to affect the event itself during the planning stage at the Creative Summit.

The latter sucks because it takes a planned contained story arc and forces it to be bigger than originally planned, potentially ruining what would have otherwise been a good arc, and forcing other writers to have to change their plans to tie into someone else's comic. The benefit though is that the event itself comes about more naturally since the writer was already planning and building to that arc anyways, so if you were reading Guardians of the Galaxy, you already saw this coming.

See:

...

>Another Marvel event
>Starring Thanos and the fucking Infinity Guantlet
Oh joy

See:
They weren't going to. Then someone in editorial saw that Duggan was going to do an arc about the Infinity Gemstones and went "wow, what a great idea for an event comic. Your comic is now cancelled so we can move you full-time on doing an event comic about it instead. All those plans you had? Fuck 'em and try to figure out how to make Wolverine and Captain Marvel the main characters."

Good to see the Super-Skrull finally getting a big role.
He became Emperor of the Skrull Empire back in 2013 and then did jack shit, even in stories with Skrulls where you think he should have shown up or at least been mentioned.

Sooo... The main selling point of the event is the macguffins nobody cares about from the movies above all else: characters, high concepts, revitalizing the line. It's Dragonball Z: starring the dragon balls.
Fuck, with the state of Marvel, Image, IDW, and the rest, it looks like DC stands alone in comics with decent taste. God help us, comics are doomed.

>you ready for SYNERGY
What happens when Disney buys Fox, and that leads to part of Infinity Wars being the merging of the Mutants in the new reality of the MCU, even including the X-Men of The Phoenix Saga having a cameo in Captain Marvel?

Didn't SE have a different dude running the Skrulls?

So they Flashpoint'd it

Happy for Duggan and all that he's become such a major writer since Deadpool Now, but events always seem to suck writers dry.

Running? No, that dude was just a Skrull Ambassador. Also, half of the people shown representing their respective races in that scene are supposed to be dead right now, so just chalk that up to Sorrentino being a hack.

This art is sooo fucking ugly! Why the FUCK do places like reddit worship this garbage?

>post yfw this event is shit, they reset the comics universe at the end of it and then they start taking all the characters from the movies/Fox deal and make new ongoings featuring semi-canon stories outside of the movies/tv shows

Since its Duggan they should've gotten Scott Koblish or Mike Hawthorne, his signature artists.

Does it have something to do with the current acquisition of Fox?

No. Why would it?

also see Ultimatum

>"No more events"
Thanks, Marvel.

>Duggan
Alright, I'm in.
>Deodato
I'm out.

>hastily thrown together event for 2018
>movie out in 2018
>both have Infinity, Thanos, and gems

No

>Starkill

Wasn't Ultimatum always planned as an event? Even if it wasn't, it would have been Ultimates 4 which isn't really comparable to what we're talking about since it'd be more a standalone limited series gaining tie-ins rather than an arc of an ongoing getting turned into an event.

There's a lot of talk about what Ultimatum was originally supposed to be. At one point it was an UFF/UXM crossover, for instance. But it ended up going line-wide for a major shakeup.

Also, I know it's an unpopular opinion around here, but the post-Ultimatum UU was great.

>Also, I know it's an unpopular opinion around here, but the post-Ultimatum UU was great.
I agree.

I agree also think Ultimatum was a good event
it was intense

OK, I agreed with you about the post-Ultimatum UU being better than people give it credit for, but Ultimatum remains horseshit.

mar-vell's alive again?

I'm not the guy you were replying to (I'm the original user who said post-Ultimatum was great), but I think Ultimatum has its merits.

The writing was absolutely shit in the main event, no two ways around it. However, I don't have all that much of an issue with the desire to kill off a bunch of characters; I think it was a bold move and somewhat interesting. The problem is that Loeb fucked the pacing HARD. There's no time for any emotional beat in any of the deaths, and things just move from one too-short scene to the next. The plot itself is just a ripoff of Millar's Return of the King UXM arc; it even has the same damn artist.

But the tie-ins are actually really good. It does better than any other event I've read of weaving the tie-ins into the event, so it actually gets better by reading the whole thing properly. The instant death of Dazzler, Nightcrawler, and Beast suddenly has an emotional moment due to the UXM tie-in. There's some good moments with the Storm family in UFF. USM was great as always. And the Requiem issues were pretty solid too.

But Jesus that main mini sucked. I can defend a good bit of Loeb's Ultimate work more than I probably should, but fuck.

>Infinity Countdown
Y'know, I seem to recall another event called 'Countdown'... It was fuckin shit.

Now, obviously I'm not suggesting that this event will be shit solely because it has the word 'countdown' in the title, I'm just saying it's hilariously bad marketing. Seriously, Marvel? Really banking on that seven year rule, huh?

blue skin, white hair... that's not Warlock.

That's MAGUS!

I don't get the hate Deodato's art is receiving.

Not this shit again jesus christ.
Glad I dropped marvel.

Have you read a Deodato book before? If it's your first one, you might not notice. Like Greg Land.

But after you've seen it a few times, it's fucking shit.

It's poser. Deodato doesn't even try to hide it or make it look good like Janin used to with Grayson.

I remember some page in Bendis' Iron Man where you can literally see some of the polygon shapes because he didn't give a shit to trace it better. It looked like he just added a filter and shadows.
Does anybody know what I'm talking about? The page had Riri and her friend on it.

>DC blantly copies Marvel in the movies
>Marvel blantly copies DC in the comics
Poetry

Not the page you're looking for, but this is a personal favorite.

Chitauri again?

>a presumed fifth Infinity Stone is on top of a cane held by an unidentified individual

Or you can just already spoil that it is Adam Warlock

>drawn by Original Sin's Mike Deodato Jr.

goddammit. they wanna get that shit out on time huh.

I'm actually really loving Duggan's Guardians so I'm a little excited for this

it's that black guy in first page.

Flashpoint was just adding an extra page and then changing the costumes at the end. Most of the tie-ins were already done, the only thing they added was rebooting the DCU.

>The march to Marvel Comics' big event series for 2018

>n-no events planned for at least 18 months you guys

I knew Marvel was full of shit

Not to mention forcing shit like Captain Dyke, Thanos, Sniktbub, and other overrated characters that weren't in Duggan's GotG.

I honestly wish they skip this event and go and deal with the Raptors or just deal with the other subplots.

>Magus
>Super Skrull
I might check it out

This whole thing (Marvel in 2018) is starting to look like the lead-in the infinite crisis with all of the little miniseries. At Marvel we have:
>Avengers No Surrender, a weekly that used to be three books
>Doctor Strange: Damnation, a miniseries with at least one tie-in
>Phoenix Ressurection: The return of Jean Grey, a five part weekly miniseries
>Poison X, a Xmen/Venom crossover
>Infinity Countdown Prime
There might be a few more that I can't remember right now. I guess Marvel can technically say "we don't have a line wide event," but they sure have a heck of a lot of mini-events

I sleep.

U fuckers were right again about the next event being synergized with the films

>This all, of course, coincides with Marvel Studios' Avengers: Infinity War movie hitting theaters May 4.
They’re not even being subtle

Here are Jimmy Palmiotti's comments on these pages from Bleeding Cool comment section.
I guess Jimmy truly is a shit connoisseur.

>Marvel is calling them STONES now

Inconsequential, but REEE

christ another?

>MARVEL's 2018 Event

That art is so ugly.

they've been calling them stones since post-SW

Looks like tra-

>wolverine
>super skrull

....god danmit

>they wanna get that shit out on time huh.
It will probably still be delayed. Like Secret Empire.

Marvel is at this point the epitome of everything Alan Moore has called DC.

It’s just an event to capitalize on the movie. All of which will lead to a semi-relaunch of some books with new creative teams (Slott will still be on ASM. Forever) and a new banner. It will have a more “back-to-basics” approach with more classic character and stories. You can already see the groundwork as Waid works to fix Steve Rogers, Slott puts Peter back at the Bugle, the original Jean Grey and Wolverine coming back. I predict similar stuff will happen (Thor’s death will inspire Odinson to pick up the hammer, Vision/Wanda will happen, and Bruce will probably come back).

what issue is this from? the art looks so good.

Literally this.

Member when Deodato hired a bunch of literally who Brazilian artists to draw like him?

Jesus christ.

It's called being nice, user.
In this industry you survive by being two of the following: nice, on time, and good.

Spiderman/Deadpool #7

So which two are Palmiotti?

>DClass

He used to be all 3 but he stopped being good when Gray stopped writing with him

Marvel Legacy sales are terrible, so I don't blame them for walking it back. They need these tentpole books.

And best girl. Hopefully she and Logan get to hang out a lot again.