“New” Marvel
Visiting an arcarde with some friends when we were about 12, they all wanted to play the X-men video game. I went along knowing nothing about it. I was left with Nightcrawler since no one wanted to play him. I instantly loved everything about this guy. Later in the week they were ordering comics from a book and asked if I wanted any. So I ordered X-men vs. Excalibur since I was told Nightcrawler is no longer on X-men but Excalibur. I was hooked, the next few years shaped this comic geek you know and love. I got almost every issue of Excalibur. I know i have 1-100 and then I have random issues from 100-125.
So when Marvel announced that Excalibur would be relaunched as something completely different I wanted to check it out. It turned out to be about Xavier rebuilding the mutant country Genosha. I always liked Xavier as a charcter and Magneto was helping him. I liked it so much I order a subscription. Two days ago in the mail they said Excalibur was being shut down, 14 issues after the relaunch. I think its because Magneto is going into full bad mode again. Then I read the letters page and they claim Excalibur would be back in a few months. Odd I thought. But even odder is the title “New Excalibur”.
What’s Marvel’s fascination with the word new? New X-men, New Avengers, New Thunderbolts, whats next? New Spider-Man? I hate when they relaunch titles at number 1. I’d rather they just make the cover with text only “NEW DIRECTION”. Maybe what they need is some kind of symbol to say “This is a new story”, so people know they can jump in and won’t miss much. And stop changing the titles of books. It’s just silly. Maybe I should change my name everytime I get a raise or something, Jim “now with more money” Murphy! or New Jim, or Ultimate Jim.