A veritable smorgasbord of Marvel writers and artists bring us a murder mystery, as well as tantalize with lead-ins and hooks for the stories of 2020 in this follow-up to the story spine of Marvel Comics #1000 and 1001.
Ari Bard: Incoming was… not what I thought it was going to be and pretty fun? I think there was way too much emphasis on the murder mystery and not enough on the structure when the book was being advertised, and it was the structure that really drew me in.
Nola Pfau: I didn’t like it at all! Even a little bit!
Vishal Gullapalli: I’ve been looking forward to this issue for a good while now, expecting it to be something along the lines of 2017’s Marvel Legacy #1. I was incredibly pleasantly surprised by the structure of this comic, and honestly I really enjoyed the vast majority of the content and teasers for each book, alongside the overarching mystery.
Zack Jenkins: As someone who has been drug kicking and screaming into the larger Marvel Universe, this buffet of pitches seemed like a great way to do it.
The Mystery
NP: Look, I’m something of a fan of locked room mysteries, and I also have a pretty significant tech background, so maybe I’m just not the audience for this? Everything here felt like stuff I’ve seen before, and the one clue that everything hinged on I guessed literally the moment I saw it. So anyway, our mystery opens with The Questio–no wait, The Answ–no, that’s not it either…hm, could it be Rorsca–no, still the wrong universe. Well, I dunno who this guy is, but his magical mask and guns and noir vibe is…well, it has a legacy.
AB: It’s called the Eternity Mask because that’s how long the list of characters defined by their ability to wear a faceless mask and be mysterious goes on for. I definitely understand where you are coming from though. The only compelling part of the mystery component was how many people they had to consult with to solve it. I’m also not sure how difficult it was supposed to be, but since there are letters… and numbers… there aren’t too many possibilities. Also is the Venn diagram of tech stuff and spy stuff really just Tony?
NP: I guess? I did a count and it takes twenty-five pages and NINE characters—two of whom are legitimate geniuses and tech experts in their own right—to figure out that the clue is in fact a hexadecimal number. The two geniuses, by the way, are Adam Brashear, also known as the Blue Marvel, and T’Challa, also known as the Black Panther. Maddeningly, Blue Marvel is specifically introduced via a blurb that touts how he was rejected because the world was scared of a Black genius super-scientist hero in the 1960s before he and T’Challa, thus far the only two people of color in the story, prove unable to solve the mystery. That sure is…a choice.
AB: Agreed. The way he sheepishly approaches Mr. Fantastic for help really doesn’t sit right with me and is one of my least favorite parts of the issue. They pretty much only seem to make progress once another white male genius joins the mystery don’t they? We can also talk about the secondary mystery that is the search for Amadeus Cho. That was such a big deal in it’s own right and led to a lot of weird encounters. I say this as someone that isn’t reading any Marvel ongoings other than DOX right now, but the fact that so many characters were told implicitly or otherwise, “Yea, yea, yea, you aren’t important but where’s Amadeus,” was kind of offputting.
NP: That part was legitimately funny to me. It was this fast-paced, scene jumping bit that really worked to sell the urgency of finding Amadeus (Finding Amadeus is the name of my prog rock band), and then we jump to the Champions base, and he’s showing up to chill for movie night? Is the Champions base secret? Did no one think to contact that team when looking for Amadeus? It actually reminded me a lot of how the X-Men don’t know how to use phones. It probably wasn’t meant to be as funny as it was, but I got a good giggle. Regarding the characters they jumped through there…I recognize Silk, Shang-Chi, Ares…I know that Wave is a new character, and I guess Aero is too? I admit that I too have not ventured far out of DoX since it started [Ed. Note: Several of these characters were announced somewhat quietly].
AB: Yea…as a whole though, I guess the mystery did its job? I wanted to know what the message said and kept reading to find out. The way they used certain characters was a bit rocky for me, but the way writers were able to drop them in and out of different locations and teams felt natural. The payoff we received at the end was something that felt big and important even if I have no context for it. The biggest thing that was missing was the more grim, dangerous tone they tried to set up at the beginning, but I still wanted answers and that’s compelling in its own right.
NP: Maybe what happened to the tone is the real mystery! YOU’VE FOUND THE FIRST CLUE, ARI.
No but really…it was like it started with this very serious, dour kind of mood, and it just got increasingly ridiculous, like a case of consecutive Lucys endlessly pulling the football from an ever-onward-trudging Charlie Brown. I did really like the Daredevil pages [Ed. Note: That Forné/Bellaire one-two punch], and I agree with you in that my attention was held enough to at least try and figure out where it was going? I just…guess I didn’t expect it to lead to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening. Hey, speaking of happenings…
Happenings of the MU
VG: The first portion not written by Al Ewing is a teaser for Daredevil by Chip Zdarsky, Jorge Fornés, and Jordie Bellaire. Zdarsky’s run on Daredevil has been nothing short of fantastic since the first issue, and this little teaser doesn’t really add anything new if you’ve been reading but it’s a good sell for the upcoming arc for people who may not have been paying attention to the book this year [Ed. Note: And as someone who kind of hasn’t, MATT ISN’T DAREDEVIL?].
ZJ: I’ve really enjoyed Zdarsky’s DD stuff, and adding Elektra can only help.
I’ve not been blown away by Kelly Thompson’s Captain Marvel but giving Carol a textual public perception crisis is a great way to help define what the character stands for. Ever since she took the Captain Marvel name, Carol has been a bit aimless. She was the hero of New York, then actually a cosmic defender, then space cop with some Canadian castoffs, then the bad guy from Minority Report, then I guess, half-alien? Anyway she could use a conflict that really defines her position in the world.
VG: Yeah, as much as I’m enjoying her Captain Marvel, it still hasn’t hit that point of properly defining the character. That being said, her voice for Carol is great and the tone she brings to the book is perfect, so it’s still a good read. [Ed. Note: This issue didn’t address her current predicament, which is killing other Avengers!]
Aaron’s Avengers has been incredibly inconsistent, with some really awesome parts followed by some of the worst issues I’ve read from Aaron. The little teaser here is just fine, but somehow they managed to make my favorite artist Andrea Sorrentino look terrible. I didn’t even recognize his art!
ZJ: I’m just now realizing Sorrentino was in this book.
VG: Annihilation Scourge was a big disappointment for me. Using the Sentry as the big bad wasn’t a great idea, and all the one-shots felt too obsessed with moving the plot forward rather than character work for them to feel interesting (the exception is the Silver Surfer one-shot by Abnett who is still the best cosmic writer at Marvel). Rosenberg didn’t do a great job with showrunning the event at all, but his short bit of Night Thrasher calling up Nova for help was pretty good.
ZJ: I’ve never been a big New Warriors guy but their interactions here really felt like a good tease for folks who want Dwayne and Rich to get the band back together, and hopefully stay out of school zones.
VG: I’m really liking this super battle hardened and extra traumatized Nova to set up Ewing’s Guardians, he’s somehow in an even worse spot than he was after the original Annihilation [Ed. Note: And that’s saying a lot!]. I voraciously consume all Marvel cosmic content so I’m excited for the next year of Guardians stories.
On the other hand, I haven’t touched any of Greg Pak’s Agents of Atlas stuff and this little teaser was a nice window into the kind of work he’s doing on that book.
ZJ: Greg Pak has quietly been doing a bang up job on the thankless task of integrating mobile game original characters into the Marvel Universe with his Agents of Atlas minis. With the upcoming Atlantis Attacks he’ll continue to develop an underdeveloped part of the Marvel Universe. However, Incoming! didn’t have the best characters, Crescent & Io, in it. Crescent is a child Tae Kwon Do prodigy with a magical mask that summons Io, a TKD spirit bear.
VG: Man, maybe I should give it a shot, it sounds really fun. The only character from there that I’m familiar with is Brawn, who left the team to rejoin the Champions just as Jim Zub’s run ended. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Zub’s run, especially by the end, but now with Eve Ewing taking over with Outlawed, I’m properly excited for where the characters are headed.
ZJ: Outlawed shouldn’t be good. Taken at face value it’s a rehash of some of the most tiresome elements of Civil War-era Marvel comics. However, with Eve Ewing steering a ship filled with the most engaging teens in comics, I’m excitement for it. Maybe what we need today is a comic about teens standing up to white mid-western congressmen who are trying to fight symptoms instead of root-causes.
If you want to know more about Immortal Hulk just look at any comics website. Everyone is talking about it and we will be soon [Ed. Note: Check out Times Immortal by Secundus and Rabiroff coming soon!]. It’s so hot right now.
VG: The buzz that Immortal Hulk is getting feels like the book can’t possibly live up to it, but somehow for me it’s just genuinely that incredible. It’s made me want to go back and read older Hulk comics for more context and content too.
This leads into a teaser for Ed Brisson and Aaron Kuder’s Ghost Rider which is a gorgeous book that I dropped after two issues because I’m really just not into Ghost Rider.
ZJ: I’ve just got nothing in the tank for Johnny Blaze. Brisson is a strong writer and Kuder is a fantastic artist but the whole politics of hell and Mephisto having a casino in Vegas seem rote to me. I think the character needs a massive overhaul to work in 2020, something fellow 90s mainstay Venom got recently.
VG: Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman have been blowing me away with their Venom run, mainly because they’ve managed to make a series focusing on Eddie Brock pretty awesome. Some people are tired of Cates’ whole men fighting gods shtick, but I can’t get enough of it yet and I love the teaser for Knull we get here.
ZJ: I am that people, I couldn’t care less about Knull.
VG: Saladin Ahmed also does a short bit with Miles that’s fine, but once again the best part of Ahmed’s teen books is the adults. I really am not a fan of the way he writes teenagers, they all sound super anachronistic. I’m still gonna read this run because I love Miles and how Ahmed writes his supporting cast though.
ZJ: Tini Howard, however, does a stellar job with teens and here she writes a great moment between Hulkling and Wiccan that makes me wish Teddy could be a part of Strikeforce [Ed. Note: Granted, we did get a short cameo in #2!]. They get those quiet, realistic moments that so few comics relationships ever get. Unfortunately, their relationship is probs going to run into a rough path thanks to what Teddy does at the end of this issue.
VG: Jim Cheung is back on art for the boys! I’m not the biggest Cheung fan but I’m glad we got him back to do some Young Avengers content this year.
Then we get the story that everyone here has been excited for since it was first teased, and boy did it deliver. Hickman is frequently great at comedy, and this story really let him shine.
ZJ: One of the highlights of Powers of X was Jonathan Hickman and RB Silva’s delightfully campy Mister Sinister. That whole team is here to ensure Krakoa has all the live TV and streaming options they could ever desire, but Sinister has other machinations in mind. His collection of mutant DNA has led him to begin experimenting with all the ethical boundaries you would expect from a man who calls himself Sinister. He’s begun obsessing over one missing piece, angsty teen Franklin Richards.
Over in the Dan Slottiverse, robots are mad at humans and Iron Man has been replaced by Iron Man 2020. The implications of HERBIE hating the Fantastic Four for forcing him to be a slave is, ummm, not great. The X-Men kicked out Xavier for that kind of behavior in the past. I’ve enjoyed a bunch of stuff that Slott has written in the past, but this is just not landing for me.
VG: I, on the other hand, really enjoyed Slott’s F4 story here, despite being thoroughly bored with his run as a whole. I’ve been enjoying all of the robot revolution stuff building in Iron Man, it feels very Futurama.
The Iron Man 2020 story from Slott genuinely impressed me, too. Slott ended Iron Man on a very low note, but I’m genuinely excited for 2020 – Superior Spider-Man was a delight for me and Arno Stark is just Iron Man’s version of Otto Octavius, at least based on how Slott is writing him. He’s delightfully a jerk, and I’m looking forward to watching him take over for Tony.
ZJ: It wouldn’t be the first time we disagreed, I just hope the status quo shift is enough to inject some more energy into these books come 2020.
The Format
ZJ: I really enjoyed how the framing story in this issue felt less like a formality and more of an organic story. There were a few diversions that didn’t build the larger mystery, but overall I think this really worked. If you’re going to put out a $10 sampler comic, and you really shouldn’t, I’m much happier to have one with a real plot.
VG: Yeah, the central plot actually being a focus was really nice, and made this issue feel worth the price tag, at least a bit more. I’m also pretty happy with how it wrapped up the last year of comics — it wasn’t aggressive but it gave enough of a summary that if you wanted to hop into current books you’d have a good amount of context.
AB: I definitely agree. As someone who doesn’t regularly read any Marvel other than Dawn of X, this book provided a compelling enough story while introducing me to the current Marvel Universe. It did so in a way that made me think that if I liked a particular character or chapter, I could pick up the corresponding book and get the same quality and atmosphere.
NP: I guess I’m the outlier! I didn’t like most of the book. The “mystery” aspect of it felt contrived, the continuous bouncing between characters took me right out of the story, funny as it was, and overall the entire thing felt like the exact same sort of setup that Final Crisis got a decade ago [Ed. Note: We’ll see how much of this setup continues—whereas some of Final Crisis’s did not].
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Using the Jessica Jones portion to hype up reprints of a comic that’s over a year old is pretty weird.
- Al Ewing’s unironic love of Night Thrasher is a delight
- Sinister’s frustration with the proliferation of streaming services is #Relatable
- Bringing back old Marvel continuity is way stranger than old DC.
- Empyre with a “y.” Does it mean something or is it just cool?
- The Kree and Skrull have decided war is dumb and team-ups are cool. Hopefully superheroes figure out the same lesson.
- Check out more Marvel Files next week with the start of A Thor Subject, featuring Vishal Gullapalli and myself, Chris Eddleman!
Nola Pfau is Editor-in-Chief of WWAC and generally a bad influence.
Vishal Gullapalli is a comics enthusiast studying computer science to enable his media consumption. He’s currently reading through the entirety of DC’s New 52 (for some reason) and logging his experience.
Ari Bard is a huge comic fan studying Mechanical Engineering so he can finally figure out how the Batmobile works.
Zachary Jenkins runs the Xavier Files Media Empire and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of X-Men.
Ari Bard is a huge comic fan studying Mechanical Engineering so he can finally figure out how the Batmobile works.
Nola Pfau is Editor-in-Chief of WWAC and generally a bad influence.
Vishal Gullapalli is highly opinionated and reads way too much.
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
