NY Comic Con - Marvel NOW: Avengers

Marvel Comics is relaunching their entire universe this fall with Marvel Now. Many existing series will wrap up their established runs and start fresh with a brand new first issue. The initiative is to help bring in new readers who may find decades of continuity daunting while cleaning up said continuity for long-time readers.

With a hit movie in the can and an epic battlewith the X-Men coming to a close, Earth's mightiest heroes the Avengers are about to get a massive shake up in their status quo. Speaking about those changes were Marvel Editor in Chief Axel Alonso, SVP Executive Editor Tom Brevoort, and writers Rick Remender, Jonathan Hickman, Dennis Hopeless, Kieron Gillen in a panel moderated by Marvel Director of Communications Arune Singh.

One of the first Marvel Now titles out of the gate is Uncanny Avengers which dropped this past Wednesday. At yesterday's X-Men Panel, writer Rick Remender said, "With the passing of [X-Men founder Charles] Xavier during the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, Captain America sees the need to step up to the plate and take up Xavier's plan," said Rick Remender, the series writer. "The team will show the public mutants doing good work, an Xavier mandate and mission that got lost over the years as mutants went into a survival agenda."

Captain America's first arch-nemesis the Red Skull will be the villain of the first arc, having taken possession of Charles Xavier's brain. "You find out what Xavier would've done if he had been evil," Remember explains. One of the most highly anticipated books of the year, Uncanny Avengers #1 has already sold out its 300,000 order and gone into second print. Artist John Cassaday joins Remender on the series.

When asked about the response, Remender noted, "It's been tremendous!"

Former Fantastic Four writer Jonathan Hickman will be helming the franchise's main book, Avengers . "It's the biggest avengers book we've done," Tom Brevoort noted. "To follow up the movie with a book, we had to do something bigger, something that Hollywood can't do." Avengers will run bi-monthly starting November 2012.

In January 2013, Hickman will be joined by artist Steve Epting in relaunching the New Avengers , a team previously made up of the street-level heroes (Spider-Man, Wolverine, Daredevil, and more) led by Luke Cage. "[My run will focus on the] Illuminati, the super heroes that rule the world in secret," said Hickman. "Both of this story and the main Avengers book will chug along and touch each other sometimes, but somewhere down the line, they'll crash."

In a new series described as Lord of the Flies meets Hunger Games, Dennis Hopeless will pit the teenage superheroes of the Marvel Universe against each other in a fight to the death in Avengers Arena , which will launch December 2012. "Basically your favorite Marvel teenage superheroes are going to wake up on an island and told by Arcade that they won't leave alive," said Hopeless.

Commenting on the first issue, Singh said, "When you get to that last page, you're gonna want to pound Dennis Hopeless."

Nick Spencer is joined by artist Luke Ross in the relaunch of Secret Avengers February 2013. While the original series focused on a black ops team formed by Steve Rogers, Brevoort announced that this series will be a S.H.I.E.L.D. focused book, led by Nick Fury, Maria Hill, and Agent Coulson. "The hook of the book is that the missions are so covert, the agents themselves can't know about them when they're done," said Brevoort. Secret Avengers will be teased in the Marvel Now: Point One book out this Wednesday.

Much to the delight of many LGBT comics fans, same-sex couple Wiccan and Hulkling will return to comics in the second run of their original series Young Avengers . This series will be written by former X-Men writer Kierron Gillen. "[Allan Heingberg's Young Avengers] was an amazing book, but I was very aware I couldn't write the book the way it was written, so I had to reinvent it.," said Gillen. "The original Young Avengers is about being sixteen. My Young Avengers is about being eighteen, trying to be a hero yourself. It's about the ideal of the Avengers and about changing the world because you have to!" Staying true to the youth of the series' heroes, the tone will be not unlike "fight scenes as music videos." Joining Wiccan and Hulkling will be Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), Noh-Varr, Miss America as the core team for the first five issues. In a nod to the original Avengers series from the 1960's, Kid Loki will create the events that bring this team together. Bryan Lee O'Malley (writer and artist of the Scott Pilgrim series will be doing the variant cover of the first issue.

For those who prefer shorter form character stories to epic stories, can look forward to Kelly Sue Deconnick's run of Avengers Assemble in November 2012. Brevoort described it as "shot glass Avengers." The first arc is about the conflict between Iron Man and Hulk while the second arc will be about conflict with Black Widow & Hawkeye against Spider-Woman

Also announced at the panel was news that MTV Geek will be airing a behind the scenes bi-weekly web series about the creative process behind Marvel Now.

In the fan Q-&-A, a fan asked why there wasn't more diversity in the Avengers team. "There was criticism of Uncanny Avengers being very white," noted Remember, adding they he wanted to use black characters Storm and Dr. Voodoo, but they were needed elsewhere. "The reality though," Remender continued, "is a lot of these characters that are beloved are from the fifties and the sixties, and they were all white." There was promise of the addition of diversity in the coming year.

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