Marvel: Legacy

MARVEL LEGACY

Marvel Legacy has landed and is not a disappointment. This fifty page one-shot has superb artwork by Esad Ribic and, as it explores the history of the Marvel universe from 1,000,000 BC to modern day, the artists currently featured on specific characters take on the art chores. This all blends smoothly into a nice long satisfying read.

There are three major reveals – no giveaways here – and I was excited by them all. There were new themes explored which will lead to some major storylines an , again, I am excited by this!

Marvel really do seem to have listened to what is required by their modern audience and are mixing new with old. To those who were in doubt about this ‘revamp’ I urge you to stay on board, I believe it will be worth it.

One title to put on your list will be Mighty Thor #700 in which major things will happen. This will not be one of those ‘everything changes, but doesn’t’ issues.

It has been at least a decade since I felt this good about a Marvel project.

Alan Moore

ALAN MOORE VISITED COLCHESTER

Yes, the one and only Alan Moore did, in fact, visit Colchester. Not to my store alas, but to our Colchester Arts Centre on September 28th, and I was keen to attend the evening.

After a warm up act from a mesmerising young woman, who goes by the sobriquet MacGillivray, the great man came on. Before I talk about Alan Moore, I must impart some information about MacGillivray – MacGillivray has walked in a straight line with a dead wolf on her shoulders through the back streets of Vegas into the Nevada desert, eaten broken chandelier glass in a derelict East Berlin shopping mall, headbanged in gold medieval stocks in Birmingham allotments, burned on a sun bed, worn conquistador armour in Edinburgh’s underground city, breast-fed a Highland swan in Oxford and regurgitated red roses in Greenland – yes, off beat to say the least. This marvellous muscian possesses a beautiful voice, but as she sang in what I believe was the Sioux language and gave a reading from her book – an interview with the great grandson of Sitting Bull, which seemed like a stream of conciousness – a lot went over my head. Her song about a mermaid was one of the most unique I have ever heard. Strange, but haunting.

Alan Moore read from his 1996 book Voice Of Fire for about thirty minutes and then took questions from the enthusiastic audience. Most were about his books, with the last one about construction of a good comic. He confessed that he and Kevin O’Neill are collaborating on their final comic book work, ever! This will be the final instalment of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. As it is their final work, they are going out all-artistic-guns-blazing. Every two pages will be drawn in a different artistic style and there will be a back up story presented in the ‘worst way’ to tell a story, highlighting all of the possible errors creators can make in comic book story presentation. Alan assured us this will be an excellent and comedic read, mentioning word balloons in the wrong place and captions explaining what you can already see as two examples of the ‘fun’ they intend to have. His planned projects after comics include films, board games and computer games. He may be leaving comics, but Alan Moore will still be flexing his artistic might.

Tip for the month:

Start preparing for Halloween and cull a few comics from your collections and give these out instead of sweets. Plus for this month at least, Make Yours Marvel!!