Comic-Con 2013: Marvel’s Infinity Panel

It’s Comic-Con, it’s Saturday, and so there had to be some talk about Marvel’s Thanos shenanigans that is there big deal of the year. So check out this liveblog of the whole panel as it happened!

Two words. Doom 2099! Wait, is 2099 one word or three? Or four?

Anyway, here we go!

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MARVEL INFINITY

The big event of 2013, “some of the craziest stuff we’ve ever done in comics.”

The panel includes EIC Axel Alonso, Charles Soule of Thunderbolts, Nick Spencer of Secret Avengers, Rick Remender of Uncanny Avengers, Sam Humphries of Avengers AI and Uncanny X-Force, Mike McKone of Avengers OGN, Zeb Wells of Nova and Savage Wolverine, and Frank Tieri of SPACE PUNISHER, and Nick Lowe, senior editor of X-books, and Steve Wacker of Spider-books.

The Avengers go fight the Builders in space, so Thanos attacks Earth while they’re gone. Jonathan Hickman, Jim Cheung, Dustin Weaver. Hickman has it planned down to the page and the panel.

Soule talks Tbolts. They are all loner killer types, but since they helped Red Hulk, he offers the team’s help to the other members for big jobs. Punisher is going to enlist them to take out a New York mob family.

Zeb Wells on Nova. Nova’s attempts to be a superhero are like Zeb’s attempts to be an adult. Thanos is blowing into town, and he doesn’t like Novas, considering Richard Rider’s thwarting him with the Cancerverse and all. Sam’s starting to learn what the Nova Corps means.

Secret Avengers. Spencer talks about the fallout of AIM Island stuff with Daisy Johnson being ousted for Maria Hill. #6 will have the team in a very different place. 10 and 11 will be Infinity tie-ins by Ed Brisson and Luke Ross.

Inhumanity is a mini-event, leading to Inhuman by Matt Fraction and Joe Madureira. Inhumans will be a game changer in the Marvel Universe over the next year. There are lots of them that don’t get along very well. They predate superheroes, abandoned bastard children of the Kree.

Uncanny Avengers has Ragnarok Now coming in October in #13. An image of Death Banshee attacking. The Apocalypse Twins are gearing up a worldwide mutant rapture. Many consequences in a huge scope of their inability to work together. Steve McNiven is joining the series with #14, dealing with consequences still falling out of Civil War (which McNiven drew). The villains are planning while heroes are disagreeing. The heroes will pay for what they’ve done – a huge body count from the Red Skull and more.

Avengers A.I. by Humphries. Dimitrios is an artificial superintelligence who has hijacked an outcast suit of Iron Man armor, and it hates humanity for building a world on the back of robot slaves. Hank Pym, Monica Chang and Vision have different ideas on how to stop it. The Diamond, the homeland of A.I. in the Marvel universe, will be visited by Vision. Oddly, this sounds a lot like the pitch for Age of Ultron – we are too high tech so robots can kill us easy.

Avengers: Endless Wartime by Warren Ellis and Mike McKone, a standalone graphic novel. McKone says it’s like working on a normal book, but only one deadline, seven months down the road.

Frank Tieri is writing Infinity: Heist. It’s a crime noir – Ocean’s 11 with Iron Man villains. More Reservoir Dogs and Usual Suspects than normal. Spymaster is Clooney, and he assembles a team to try to take Stark Enterprises for a fortune. Something goes wrong.

Q&A:

Q: Hickman is so dense with storylines and meticulous, does it alienate younger readers? Alonso says Marvel NOW was designed to make them accessible from issue #1. Then a big fat guy walked in front of me and made me stop listening for a moment. Alonso says 6 and 7 year olds aren’t Hickman’s target audience. Marvel became successful in the 1960s by aiming at a higher audience. Wacker’s 10 year old son loves Hickman’s Avengers, even though stuff goes over his head. Some stuff goes over Wacker’s head. Avengers Assemble or Nova is a better choice for kids.

Q: How do you manage having so many stories at once but also keeping characters consistent? They do summits a few times a year to coordinate plans and map out where they’re going. TV shows have one universe, but comics creators have to manage many universes, like if they had to make sure whatever happens on Seinfeld doesn’t affect what happens in The Wire.

Q: Thanos showing up in Avengers movie was somewhat influential, but they’re under no pressure to conform to movie stuff – but they got out in front with Guardians of the Galaxy by bringing them to the fore before the movie. Comic writers feel competitive with the movies, wanting to make books just as exciting.

Q: Is Inhuman going to be like Game of Thrones or more standalone issues?  Plan is complex and will unfold slowly. A slowly creeping phenomenon about new Inhumans. An element of Game of Thrones intrigue, too. There will be new point of view characters, too, of people becoming reborn as Inhumans.

Q: Zeb is Wells’ middle name, and it’s just Zeb, and he assumes it’s from the Bible somewhere?

Q: With free license, free of shackles of continuity, what would they do? Wacker would have Peter Parker marry Mary Jane. Remender would just kill a lot of people. Alonso says Luke Cage would be the number one book in the industry. Humphries wants a universe dominated by Rogue. Tieri would write everything there is. Wells would have Frank write everything, too. Spencer dreams of doing a year where all bad guys are good and good guys are bad. Soule wants to answer the issue of Thunderbolt Ross’ mustache vanishing when he becomes Red Hulk. McKone would have a simpler Captain America costume to draw. Nick Lowe wants people kissing on every cover.

Q: Where did the idea for Infinity come from? It sprung from editorial retreats and the crazy mind of Jonathan Hickman. Thanos was being discussed, and Hickman stepped up to the plate, developed the story in his notebooks full of graphs and charts, like Da Vinci’s journals. He filled one entirely with Infinity stuff.

Q: Who decides where an event ends? Fear Itself had an ending, but AvX spilled out into AvX Consequences and other books to finish the story, so what’s the deal?  Alonso says the story is never over in comics. Events are designed to have ripple effects and things to be resolved. He says AvX did end, Cyclops’ story did end, but there are things leading to future stuff in books.

Q: Cataclysm will break down the barrier between Ultimate Universe and 616 – will the New Avengers ‘incursions’ of other worlds tie into that? Alonso loves the way the guy is thinking, and he’s making the right types of connections, so the Ultimate Universe may be incurring, and Hickman may have something planned.

Q: A guy dressed as Tron Deadpool asks about new cast members in Uncanny Avengers? Remender says the cast will be getting much smaller, as things break down between the team. Not until a big shift in #22, where more members come on. Remember did think about having Deadpool keep sneaking into Avengers Mansion and pretending to be a butler – talked to Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan about that.

Q: A lot of events seem to be underwhelming, but he loves Thanos, so will this be as lackluster as the end of Age of Ultron? Sometimes stories aren’t everyone’s cup of tea – Alonso loves the response to AvX, House of M and Civil War, but he knows Age of Ultron is controversial, said that Bendis ‘held off’ the ending in order to set up what they needed, the Angela stuff.

Q: Is switching up artists during events a regular thing now? AvX kinda changed the mold due to the accelerated shipping schedule, and one artist couldn’t do that. The next event planned will hopefully have only one artist, so there’s no set mold. It can work either way.

Q: Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova will explain more about how Thanos got out of the Cancerverse.

Q: New Avengers will have fallout about the destruction of the Infinity Gems.

Q: Any Old Warriors from New Warriors coming to Nova? They are showing up, they’re working on it right now.

Q: What happens after Murderworld in Avengers Arena? There is a plan, the survivors will have new stuff to do. Emphasis on ‘those that survive.’

Q: How are the heroes of Uncanny Avengers going to make up for screwing up so much? The stuff in Captain America’s book are making have a real problem with Wolverine’s method. Things are going to break down, but they will have to earn that cohabitation and cooperation as the book goes on.

Q: Where is Dr. Doom, and will he go up against Thanos? He’s in Fantastic Four right now. Alonso says Doom is in play in the short term, but they’re planning long-term. Remender says DOOM 2099 will be playing a role in Uncanny Avengers. HOT DAMN.

Q: What is the timing of the Age of Ultron story? It happened when it was published, unless Tom Brevoort says differently on his tumblr.

Q: Will Peter Parker get over his Uncle’s death? Peter Parker is Doc Ock now, but if Peter were really there, getting over his uncle’s death wouldn’t work for the character.

Q: Avengers AI has an explosion of AI in the Marvel Universe, and the Vision won’t automatically agree with the AI perspective.

Q: Why do we love heroes? Philosophical opining on heroes and such, like that kid who saved a kidnapped girl by following the kidnapper on his bike.

Q: The Four Horsemen of Death – will previous Horsemen be invoked?  Remender says Gambit has excised the death seed, but that may not be settled yet. Former Horsemen may still have some infection – Warren Worthington’s was too deep to be cleansed, others have been. Maybe Wolverine is still tainted? Sentry doesn’t have Void, he has Death in his head now as one of the Horsemen of Death, so that’ll be interesting.

Q: What adventures would heroes have as senior citizens? Remender jokes about Wolverine angry at Sabertooth for making him poop his pants. Fantomex steals pudding. Alonso likes a really frisky old Luke Cage. Elektra fashioning sais out of catheters. McKone’s favorite is Captain Britain, who wouldn’t have problems when he gets old thanks to Universal Health Care. ZING!

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