Welcome to the first edition of “This Week in Marvel Unlimited.” It’s Monday, and for Marvel Unlimited, Monday is New Comics Day. If you’re Canadian, hope you’ve had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend, and hope the return to work tomorrow is an easy one.
So, in the “new stuff” this week (which hit comics shops and ComiXology six months ago), the main thing is that the War of the Realms crossover is starting to ramp up. The first issue of the main Limited Series hit the service last week, and this week has the first cross-over issue of Asgardians of the Galaxy. (Yes, that throwaway line that Thor uttered towards the end of Avengers Endgame actually came from the comics.)
This is a huge crossover. The lead-in was eight issues spread over three titles. The main title was a six-issue mini, but there was around fifty tie-in issues. Big. Huge. This is the sort of event that Marvel Unlimited is great for, because there’s no way you could buy even half the issues for the cost of a one year subscription to MU.
Other issues of interest: The X-Men “Age of X-Man” event continues on, and the Spider-books continues warming up the “Web of Venom” event with Cult of Carnage #1. This leads into the “Absolute Carnage” event that’s happening on ComixOlogy or at your local comic shop right now.
In the back catalogue is an… interesting… choice. Marvel has put up a bunch of issues from the 1998 “Mutant X” series, and now all 32 issues are available. Now, the 1990s were a period when I wasn’t reading as many comics as I did in the 80s, largely because I cut back during university. (Comics weren’t as expensive then, but they still added up.) I doubt I would’ve read Mutant X though. Mutant X was the brainchild of prolific (but, imho, decidedly mediocre) X-Men scribe Howard Mackie. Mackie had replaced Peter David on X-Factor (David’s first run of X-Factor was simply excellent IMHO) and X-Factor was ultimately cancelled to make way for Mutant X. For an idea of what Mutant X was like, check out an archived “Year in Review” post from longtime X-Men reviewer Paul O’Brien.
Mutant X is much more interesting for a three-way lawsuit mess involving Marvel, 20th Century Fox and Fireworks Entertainment in the early 2000s. Marvel used the Mutant X name in conjunction with Fireworks in what appeared to be an attempt to make an X-Men tv show without involving Fox. Fox owned both film and television rights to the X-Men at the time, so it’s not terribly surprising the lawyers got involved. Mutant X the tv show, due to the lawsuit mess, had absolutely nothing in common with Mutant X the comic-book except the name.
That’s all for this week. Hope to see you in this space next week for another new batch of Marvel comics.
Tags: Comic Books, Marvel, Marvel Unlimited, This Week in Marvel Unlimited