Rumors have been reverberating for a while now that Marvel Comics would be staging their own major shake-up as an answer to the New 52 re-boot that rival DC Comics pulled off almost a year ago.
Now, the first look at the House of Ideas' next major superhero shift—called Marvel Now!— comes via Entertainment Weekly. Artwork by Marvel exec Joe Quesada shows major players who'll be showing up in the initiative's first wave of books, including a younger version of Jean Grey floating alongside a mix of X-Men and Avengers characters.
Marvel Now! will be launching new titles every week, with a weekly Avengers book by Jonathan Hickman, a time-traveling X-Men book by Brian Michael Bendis and Uncanny Avengers—which brings together mutant and human superheroes—written by Rick Remender and drawn by John Cassaday.
The fact that's this move isn't a wholesale reboot makes it more interesting to me since it won't invalidate stories that came before and hopefully won't leave as many open questions as has happened with DC's New 52. I'm not buying very many current Marvel titles right now but the idea of some of the publisher's best talents working on new configurations might get me to check some of these titles out.