Shortboxed was lucky enough to catch Brian K. Vaughan during a lull as he was doing a signing at Isotope Comics in San Francisco. We didn’t get him to ourselves for long, but we made sure to ask him a few questions. Check out our (brief) interview with one of the nicest dudes we’ve met, and writer of some of our favorite comic series of all time.
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Don’t feel bad if you have to read pages from Kurt Busiek’s Avengers Forever several times over to understand what’s going on. Traversing space and time to save the entire human race from existence in all time lines is no easy task. It fact, it literally took thousands of Avengers.
Here’s the gist: Immortus, the Master of Time, defender of the time stream is set to kill Rick Jones. For Rick Jones, as you’ll find out, is the key to the most powerful force in the universe, the Destiny Force. Just when Immortus’ soldier, the Tempus, is about to smash an incapacitated Rick Jones, Kang the Conqueror warps into existence to stop him and the hordes of soldiers Immortus plucks from the past to fight for him. Here’s the catch – Kang IS Immortus. Just a younger, more counquerer version of him. As Kang starts to slowly lose to Immortus’ strength, Rick Jones inadvertently triggers his Destiny Force to pull in 7 Avengers from the past, present and future. Now they must ally with one of their archenemies to defeat an even greater threat, Immortus. Still with me?
I’ve been an avid comic book reader ever since I stepped foot into my first comic book shop, years ago in the early 90’s. It was one of those hole in the wall stores behind a Montgomery Ward department store that had an assortment of comics, toys, and collectible cards. This was what I considered my local comic store, and, I left the store every Friday with a bag of goodies to keep me busy until the following week. Fast forward to today and I still make the trek to my local comic store every Wednesday to pick up a bag of goodies, but there is another way that I consume comics, too, through the digital realm.
We were lucky enough to talk to Wes Craig, artist of one of our Top Ten comics of the year: Deadly Class. After we got done squealing with the glee of a demon-child, we asked Wes to give us a few quick and dirty answers about how he got his start, and of course – which comics make it into his shortbox.
The year is 1984. Mattel teams up with Marvel to create a line of officially-licensed action figures based on Marvel characters. Someone decides that the best way to promote these toys is to create a 12-issue comic book series that includes all of the characters, and the now-classic Secret Wars is born.
While Secret Wars may have been born out of pure promotional tactics, it has cemented itself as a modern classic by being the first major crossover event of its kind. Back in 1984, big crossover events didn’t really happen, so the thought of pitting Marvel’s best superheroes against it’s best villains was a fairly groundbreaking concept.
So how exactly did they bring all of these characters together?
Twas the night before Christmas,
when all through the house,
Ahh heck! Just enjoy our weekend picks of the week. Let us know what you think on twitter or in the comments below!
The 2nd volume of the Inhuman series written by Paul Jenkins and illustrated by Jae Lee consists of 12 issues. It’s wildly rumored that the upcoming 2018 Marvel movie will be roughly based on this story line. Though we have no real information regarding the movie, the similarities between the fonts displayed at the #MarvelEvent and the titles of the volume 2 issues are uncanny. It also may just be a coincidence. But we’ll have to wait to at least the teaser trailer to even get an inkling. Though the trailer itself is probably 2 years away. Ugh! Anyways, read our review to see what it MAY be about.
