Looking Forward: Comics, Books, and TV To Be Excited For In 2015

Welcome back to The Matt Signal! As I did in previous years, instead of looking back and doing a "Best of the Last Year," I'm going to do a, "Things that I Really Want to See for This Year." It looks like there's a lot of great comics coming out next year, so, without further ado, here we go!


Glen Weldon's The Caped Crusade: The Rise of Batman and the Triumph of Nerd Culture

If you've never read Glen Weldon, he writes for NPR on books and comic books, and a couple years ago wrote Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, a great book about Superman's history. For this year, he's moving on to Batman. Now, you know anything Batman has me excited, and this past year for the 75th Anniversary we got the beautiful Batman: A Visual History from DK Publishing, but that book is a comic book history of Batman. Weldon is going to be looking at Batman's history in pop culture, from the comics, to the Batmania of the 60s, to Burton in 89, to present. Weldon is a witty guy, and someone who loves comics and Batman, so if I'm not going to be writing this book, I'm glad to see that Weldon will be.

Convergence Tie-Ins

Now, I'm not sure about Convergence proper; I don't know if I know enough about it to pass any judgement. But some of these tie-ins? Yes, please! Greg Rucka and Cully Hamner returning to the Rene Montoya Question is a no-brainer, made even better by Rucka writing Two-Face again. Gail Simone writing Oracle is exciting, and the fact that Nightwing co-stars is even better. I think Doc Shaner might have been born to draw Shazam's retro-world, if his work on the recent Flash Gordon series is any indication. Len Wein returning to Swamp Thing is very cool, and bringing Kelly Jones, who drew an amazing Swamp Thing during his run on Batman makes it all the better. And Booster Gold is back. These are total fangasm books for me, and you know what? I'm ok with that.

Fables #150

I've been reading Fables since issue #1. It's not the first longform Vertigo series I read, and it won't be the last, but for it's sheer scope and length, I would be impressed. The quality has been consistent since issue one. And ending the run with a one hundred fifty page issue? That's impressive in a whole new way. I am excited to say goodbye to all these old friends, and see where they're going.

Thrilling Adventure Hour comes to Image Comics

Because a weekly podcast isn't enough for it's rabid fans, creators Ben Acker and Ben Blacker are doing to series based on characters from their fan favorite, "new time podcast in the style of old time radio." It's a mix of comedy and action, bending genres together in new and exceedingly bizarre ways that never fails to surprise and delight. In February, we get Sparks Nevada, Marshall on Mars, a sci-fi Western with a touch of soap opera, about a lawman on the rights the outlaw wrongs on Mars with his Martian companion in a classic odd couple partner situation, and March sees the release of Beyond Belief, about those married mediums Frank and Sadie Doyle, who will drink you under the table, all while correcting your grammar and stopping demons, vampires, werewolves, and anything that goes bump. I reviewed the digital zero issues of the series earlier this year, and I will keep talking about it until everyone is listening to the podcast and reading the comics.

Princeless: The Pirate Princess

Readers got their first taste of this series in the Free Comic Book Day Princeless story in 2013, so it's been a year and a half since the last Princeless story featuring the main cast. Still, good things come to those who wait, and the story of Princess Adrienne, who decides to stop waiting for a prince and saver herself and her sisters, and her companions Bedelia, who is a dwarf but not the short kind, and Sparky, her dragon, is still one of the best all ages comics of the past five years, twisting genre stereotypes. This volume adds a new character to the cast, the titular Pirate Princess, who is going to bring her own problems on top of the knights pursuing Adrienne on her quest. It's a series to share with everyone, and I'm glad to see it back.

A.K.A. Jessica Jones

There's been an increase in quality comic book based TV this season, and there's more on the way. And while I'm a long time and confirmed Daredevil fan, the Marvel series from Netflix I'm really looking forward to is A.K.A. Jessica Jones, the adaptation of Alias, Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos's MAX series, the story of a former superhero turned private investigator. If it approaches the original, it will have a grotty noir vibe that will mix nicely with the superhero aspects of the show, and I'm a sucker for mystery and p.i. stories. The series is starring Krysten Ritter, who I've liked since her turn on Veronica Mars, and between that and her performance on Breaking Bad, I think she can capture the brittleness of Jessica, a character who starts the series just on the right side of complete collapse, and can also show the toughness underlying that. And since the show is on Netflix, I hope they can at least keep a bit of Jessica's trademark swearing. I miss Jessica cursing every third word like she did when she was introduced, something that had to be sacrificed when she moved into the Marvel Universe proper. I know Marvel is going to keep it a little cleaner, since it is an MCU property, but if there's any project that can have an edge, I think this is the one.

Gamora

Every character from Guardians of the Galaxy got a big spotlight shone on them this summer, and while Star Lord, Rocket, and Groot were the breakout characters, Gamora is the character I have the longest history with, and the most affection for, and so knowing we're getting a Gamora ongoing this year has piqued my interest. This has a lot going for it in the current Marvel landscape, with the success of so many other female lead books and the heightened focus on the cosmic corner of the universe. The series is going to be written by Nicole Perlman, who co-wrote the screenplay for a certain Marvel movie this summer, so she has some history with Gamora. Perlman says that the series will reveal more about Gamora's history, about why she decided to leave the service of Thanos, and seems to be deeply entrenched in the cosmic Marvel Universe I grew up with. The series looks to dig into the psyche of Gamora, a character who was given plenty of layers by Jim Starlin, her creator, so I'm curious to see which layers Perlman is going to unwrap.

Our Expanding Universe, a new graphic novel from Alex Robinson

OK, first thing I have to admit is I know next to nothing about this project except for that name and the creator. But that's really enough. Alex Robinson doesn't release a ton of work, but when he does, it's always outstanding. Box Office Poison, his first major work, a comic series about growing up in your twenties, was the first truly independent comic I ever read; it was black and white! It was also full of characters I recognized, characters I wanted to be, and characters I wanted to flee from, but they were all real people. It's an underrated classic, something that belongs in the same breath as books like Blankets. Since completing that book, Robinson has released two graphic novels, Tricked and Too Cool to be Forgotten, both smart and affecting stories. New work from a cartoonist of Robinson's caliber is something to be excited about. Now, Robinson's publisher is Top Shelf, which it was announced today was purchased by IDW, but the announcement doesn't indicate any changes to their publishing schedules, so I hope that means we'll still get this book in our hands this year.

Matt and Dan Go to the Movies- Guardians of the Galaxy

Matt Lazorwitz: So, while we didn't go together, both Dan and I saw Guardians of the Galaxy over this inaugural weekend, and so now it's time for our second tag team review! Let's start off with Dan.

Dan Grote: Guardians of the Galaxy is great for two different kinds of people: Those who love the cosmic Marvel characters and enjoy hunting for Easter Eggs, and people for whom none of these characters existed prior to this movie.

As much as Guardians is a brand-new concept for most moviegoers, the film doesn't feel like there’s homework required, nor does it hold your hand through excess exposition for the most part. Personally, I haven’t been into the cosmic characters since Matt and I scripted Infinity Watch 2099 fan-fic (try and guess around what time that was!), [Editor's Note: Hey, it was the early 90s, we were in our early teens, and this is how we thought you got into comics, send a pile of reference heavy fanfic to a comic company, and they would love us. If only that were true] and even then the only characters from this movie that I knew were Gamora, Drax and Thanos.

ML: Coming from it at the other end of the spectrum, as a guy who spent time writing a piece that was a run down of these cosmic heroes before going to see the movie because they are my favorite characters in the Marvel Universe, I was really impressed. Not only did they get the tone of each character spot on, but those Easter Eggs weren't club you over the head, wink at the camera Easter Eggs. They were part of this big, crazy, gorgeous world that director James Gunn and his team built.

DG: Avengers notwithstanding, the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have largely been confined to their little corners. The Asgard corner, the World War II corner, the S.H.I.E.L.D. corner, the Stark Industries corner, etc. Space is not a corner, and director James Gunn understands that. To quote Saturday Night Live’s Stefon, this club has everything: Kree, Sakaarans, mad Titans, tree monsters, raccoons with weapons fetishes, space hillbillies, an Earthling, blue people, purple people, green people, white people, Stan Lee, Lloyd Kaufman, etc.

ML: So many of these wacky and bizarre concepts come together in one of my favorite settings in the Marvel Universe, Knowhere, the floating, severed head of a Celestial that has been turned into a space station, a concept I never thought I'd see on screen. Not only was it done on screen, but it was done in a really impressive way. It strikes me as a sci-fi version of one of my favorite scenes from another comic book movie, the Troll Market sequence from Hellboy: The Golden Army. While all the scenes in Knowhere are littered with Easter Eggs (none more than the Collector's menagerie), it's more than just Easter Eggs. It's this fully formed and rendered world where everyone seems as strange and out of place as the Guardians. Standing against the clean, white spaces of Xandar, it makes the universe seem a wilder, more expansive place.

DG: I’m very much enjoying the trajectory of Chris Pratt’s career. I remember when he was the popular jock on Strangers with Candy. He was one of the ancillary characters who helped improve the fourth and final season of The O.C. He’s the idiot heart-and-soul of Parks and Recreation, and because I have a 3-year-old, I’ve seen The Lego Movie about a bajillion times. His Star-Lord is the perfect rake-as-hero (think Gambit without the Cajun accent and the rape-y vibe), and I look forward to seeing him in more things.

Lee Pace makes a great Ronan the Accuser, who turned out to be a much more imposing villain than I had expected. The movie does give us a little more Thanos, but he’s still not a fully realized threat. Ronan, on the other hand, is deadly, spouting threats, taking on the entire Nova Corps and throwing even the hulking Drax across the room as the Infinity Stone drives him to new levels of zealotry. The people casting and designing Apocalypse in the next X-Men movie should take notes.

ML: And while he was only really on screen for a moment, there was a great sense of grandeur and menace from Josh Brolin's Thanos. I've been waiting to get a real look at the most cosmic of Marvel bad guys, and I was not disappointed.

DG: Also a surprise was the depth Bradley Cooper brought to Rocket. When he was first cast, I thought I would have rather seen a professional voice guy like Jon Benjamin (Archer, Bob’s Burgers, Venture Bros.) or John DiMaggio (Futurama, Adventure Time, Batman: The Brave and the Bold) handle the character, but Rocket wasn't just there for comic relief. He’s an equal member of the team with his own reasons to be empathized with, and the Oscar-nominated actor performs admirably.

ML: The major surprise for me was Dave Bautista in the role of Drax. I'm not a professional wrestling person at all, so I had no exposure to Bautista as an actor before this (yeah, I said it), but I have found that a lot of times, pro wrestlers have a hard time getting out of the character they play there when acting in other parts. Dwayne Johnson is a notable exception, and Andre the Giant's turn in The Princess Bride is legendary for a reason,  but there's a reason that Hulk Hogan played pretty much himself in Rocky III and there was no Oscar talk for his roll in 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain. Bautista brings layers to Drax. The writing gave him a really solid arc to work through, and Bautista played rage, to understanding, to empathy. Drax can be a one note character in the comics, so I was glad to see that Bautista was given this to work with, and that he rose to the challenge.

The core cast is rounded out by Zoe Saldana, whose Gamora wasn't given a ton to work with. A lot of what she had to say and do was designed to move the plot along, but the always sterling Saldana did a good job with her character moments. And while Vin Diesel only said five words (many of them repeatedly) throughout the entire movie, he does a great job with the nuance of them, and warms your heart at just the right moment. If you walked out liking Groot, and wanting to see more of him, it wouldn't hurt to check out The Iron Giant, the animated film by The Incredibles director Brad Bird, which starred Diesel as the titular robot.

DG: There are a few characters I would have liked to have seen more of, as is the way with any front-loaded flick. The Nova Corps, staffed by high-quality actors such as Glenn Close, John C. Reilly and Peter Serafinowicz, essentially act as machines to advance the plot. Same, too, goes for the Collector, though Benicio del Toro gets to both advance the plot and play Easter bunny, as most of the movie’s eggs – including the post-credit scene – are in his basket.

ML: My favorite of those Easter Eggs was the appearance of another character I never would have anticipated in a movie: Cosmo, the psychic Russian space dog. I mean, that is a concept that could only be created for a comic book, and despite only getting a couple cute cameos, he was still there! Now for a bigger roll in Guardians 2...

Also a shout out to the way the film dealt with Yondu's power. Yondu as a character was one of the most changed from his comic book persona, but I loved how they kept his sonic controlled arrows as part of the character, and how it looked. It was yet another neat touch.

DG: Without spoiling, the post-credits scene is most notable for not setting up a future Marvel movie. Not Avengers 2, not Ant-Man, not Doctor Strange, nothing. Just one last surprise, everyone-in-the-theater-gasps-then-claps joke.

ML: My final note is just how much I loved the soundtrack. I'm a sucker for music of the 60s and 70s, and have spent most of the weekend humming either Hooked on a Feeling by Blue Swede or O-O-H Child by the Five Stairsteps. That funky juxtaposition just seemed to work for me.

I AM GROOT! And You Are?: A Guardians of the Galaxy Primer

Today, Guardians of the Galaxy opens in theaters. Two years ago, pretty much no one outside a small group of fans knew who the Guardians were. I'm lucky to be someone who has followed the exploits of this incarnation of the team since its inception. I'm not saying this out of a sense of hipster, "I was a fan before it was cool." No, I'm saying it because I feel that, having followed these exploits for a number of years, it gives me a good perspective to give a rundown of the team's recent history to those of you less familiar with them, either to get you ready to see the movie, or to give you some more background if you were one people who went to see it last night (I'm going after work, so there will be something posted in the way of a review either this weekend or Monday).

The original Guardians of the Galaxy were a team of freedom fighters introduced in 1969, whose adventures took place in the distant future. There, a group of aliens fought against the evil Badoon, who had conquered our solar system. That team came back in the 90s for a successful run, originally drawn by Image founder Jim Valentino, but when that series ended, the Guardians fell into limbo, only making an occassional appearance.

Marvel's outer space characters were all pretty much moribund in the late 90s into the early 00s. Since the end of Infinity Trilogy (Infinity Gauntlet, War, and Crusade) and the cancellation of Silver Surfer and Warlock and the Infinity Watch, attempts had been made, with new series featuring such characters as Silver Surfer, Adam Warlock, and Thanos, but none had really caught on. But in 2006, writer Keith Giffen took that little corner of the Marvel Universe and exploded it. After doing six issues of a Thanos series, and then a four issue Drax the Destroyer mini-series, he wrote Annihilation, a six issue event mini-series with various tie-in mini-series, featuring an attack from the Negative Zone (an alternate universe) by the forces of Annihilus, a classic Fantastic Four villain, and his army, called the Annihilation Wave. This series returned the original Nova, Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, and various others to the forefront of the Marvel Universe.

The following year, Marvel followed the series up with Annihilation: Conquest, written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, who would shepherd the team for the next few years. This was the story of when the empire of the Kree, a race of warlike aliens, was conquered by The Phalanx, a race of techno-organic beings (basically, shapeshifting robots things that possess people), under the control of the Avengers villains, Ultron, who you might have heard of connected to another upcoming Marvel film. Not only was the cast of the original Annihilation back, but added were Adam Warlock, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot.

With Ultron defeated, things might have settled down. But Warlock, who I've written about before, knew that the cosmos was threatened. These wars had weakened the walls of the universe, and someone needed to, well, guard the galaxy, hopefully stopping another war that might bring further damage. So Warlock went to Peter Quill, the hero known as Star-Lord, and Quill gathered the various beings who had fought with him during the Phalanx war, creating the new Guardians of the Galaxy.

It was a big team, not just featuring the five members of the current/movie team (all of whom I'll get into detail about shortly) and Warlock, but various other unusual characters. These included Mantis (the celestial madonna and psychic), Quasar (Phyla-Vell who was the daughter of legendary cosmic hero Captain Marvel), Bug (an insectoid alien warrior), Moondragon (daughter of Drax and lover of Quasar), Major Victory (one of the original future Guardians who was displaced in time and gave the team it's name), and Jack Flag (a human hero fleeing trouble on Earth).

The Guardians might not have been the lovable losers the TV commercials make their movie counterparts out to be, but they certainly were a ragtag group. The cosmic heroes of the Marvel Universe had always been A-List powerhouses who could go toe-to-toe with the likes of Thor without blinking. But most of these Guardians were low on the power scale, and were saving the universe with little more than wit, gumption, and a whole lot of luck.

Over the course of a series that ran two years, the Guardians faced many of Marvel's great cosmic threats. They fought the Universal Church of Truth, who sought to convert the entire galaxy to their religion. They were caught up in a war between two of the great alien empires, the Kree and the Shi'ar. They briefly disbanded when it was revealed that Star-Lord manipulated many of the more reticent members to join, only be to regathered by the unlikely Rocket Raccoon to save Star-Lord, who had been sent to the Negative Zone.

But their greatest foe came from within. To stop the universe from ripping itself apart, Adam Warlock was once more transformed into his darker self, The Magus. He manipulated many of the team to be his servants as he took over the Universal Church of Truth, and opened the Fault, a crack between universes, to allow a malignant universe entrance to his own. He died in the process, but the Guardians now had to face down a team of dark Avengers who were the champions of that universe. Allying with Nova, the Guardians traveled to the heart of the Cancerverse, the name given to this new dark universe, with the one being who could stop it: Thanos, worshiper of Death and cosmic warlord, the greatest threat our universe had ever faced. In the end, they succeeded, but at a great cost; to allow the others to escape, Nova and Star-Lord stayed behind, to keep the mad Thanos in the Cancerverse as it collapsed. And that was the end of the Guardians of the Galaxy...

... or so it seemed. The Guardians returned, with Star-Lord again in the lead and no explanation, in the pages of Avengers Assemble to do battle with a similarly mysteriously returned Thanos. The Guardians have gone on to headline their own series, where they do their best to protect the helpless, standing up to great cosmic empires like the Spartax, Shi'ar, and Badoon, being joined by the mysterious Angela, and Avengers like Iron Man, Captain Marvel, and Venom.

Since the team began to really form in Annihilation: Conquest, there have been five members who have been around pretty much consistently, and they form the backbone of the movie team. Here's a quick rundown on who each of them are.

Star Lord, Peter Jason Quill, has one of those convoluted comic book histories that make your head spin. His origin has been tinkered with many times over the years, which is better explained over on this column from Comic Book Resources, but what you really need to know is that he is the son of a human woman and a prince of the Spartax Empire, and has a bad habit of getting himself into trouble. When he first appeared in the modern comics, he was in prison. Freed to help fight the Annihilation Wave, he was again imprisoned when his attempt to network all security of the Kree Empire allowed the Phalanx to invade their system. Sent on a suicide mission to redeem himself, Quill met his fellow future Guardians, Rocket, Groot, Mantis, and Bug. Quill continued to seek personal redemption for his past crimes by leading the Guardians of the Galaxy and protecting the universe. Since returning from the Cancerverse, he has become more of a rogue, a sly trickster who enjoys the ladies and thumbing his nose at his father, J'Son of Spartax, who is now the king of the Spartax Empire, but is no less a champion of the little guy. A skilled marksman and tactician, Star-Lord often looks before he leaps. The upcoming story beginning in the August issue of Guardians of the Galaxy, will reveal how Star-Lord and Thanos escaped the Cancerverse, and the fate of Richard Rider, the Nova who was lost. He also headlines his own series, Legendary Star-Lord.

Gamora is known as the Deadliest Woman in the Universe, and that reputation has been earned. After her people were wiped out by the warlike Badoon, Gamora was taken in by Thanos, who trained her to be his own personal assassin. Gamora eventually betrayed Thanos to aid Adam Warlock, and she used her skills for the betterment of the universe. Meeting Star-Lord during the Annihilation War, Gamora was one of his first recruits for the new Guardians. Cold and deadly, Gamora is possibly the toughest member of the team, unmatched in the use of sword, blaster, and her hands. Her gruff exterior hides a good heart, though she does take time off from the Guardians to take on the occasional mercenary job.

Drax the Destroyer has a complex backstory, one intrinsically tied to Thanos. Drax was once human Arthur Douglas, who saw a space ship while driving along a desert road with his wife and daughter. The spaceship, not wanting any witnesses, fired on Douglas's car, killing him and his wife, and leaving their daughter to be taken in and raised by other aliens, to become the heroine Moondragon. When cosmic forces wanted a champion to stand against Thanos, whose ship had killed him, Douglas was resurrected in a powerful new body, that of Drax the Destroyer. Drax has died and returned many times, each time slightly different. Originally a cosmic juggernaut, then a childlike giant, now he is smaller but more clever (at least in the sense he's smaller than let's say the Hulk, but bigger than pretty much anyone else you'll meet), and deadlier than many beings with his knives and knowledge of hand to hand combat. Drax's return to life is almost always tied with the return of the being he was created to destroy, and while he aids the Guardians in their noble goals, Drax always has one eye open for Thanos.

Since they met during the war with the Phalanx, Rocket Raccoon and Groot have been inseparable. Both imprisoned by the Kree, Rocket and Groot were sent on a mission with Star-Lord. They have been a pair of the most earnest Guardians, doing their best to save the galaxy because it's the right thing to do and its fun. Rocket comes from Halfworld, a planet of anthropomorphic animals. He is not just a crack shot, but an expert tactician and star pilot. He has a thing for large firearms. Groot is from Planet X, and aside from his giant size and strength, he can regrow himself from the smallest of fragments. All he can say is, "I am Groot!" although those who understand him know that there is nuance in exactly what that means. Interesting fact, he is actually one of the oldest characters currently in use in Marvel comics, having been introduced in Tales to Astonish when it was a sci-fi comic in 1960, predating nearly all Marvel superheroes. Rocket Raccoon has his own ongoing series, with Groot as his buddy and supporting cast.

So, those are the Guardians of the Galaxy. Every indication is that the movie will be packed with appearances and cameos by a legion of cosmic Marvel characters, and I might write up a little something about those characters after I've seen the movie. If you want to check out more Guardians, there is the monthly comic series for the team, Rocket, and Star-Lord, and this past week saw the release of the first of two volumes collecting the entire 2008 series that introduced the team.