Marvel's Initiative Panel (and Champions Info)

[GrnMarvl14]

Initiative Panel info. Includes covers to New Warriors #1, Thor #1, and Nova #3 (Nova vs a certain former teammate), along with a bunch of other images and actual news content including the fate of the much-beloved...Great Lakes Avengers/X-Men/Champions/Initiative. Also known as the Lightning Rods. And apparently someone is STILL going to die in Civil War (or...did).

Champions info. What do you get when you cross the Avengers with a sports team? The Champions, of course. I love that a man is Hera.

More Champions info. Because the Champions are going to be the biggest selling book at Marvel. They'll cancel everything else if they have to.

Initiative art. Lots of random stuff, mostly covers. If a picture can tell a thousand words, then this is a horribly confusing book.

Still no REAL info on New Warriors. Or the Sub-Mariner series.

 

[Zeta]

The Champions seems like an idea that's destined to fail, because it takes all of the problems with modern superteams (characters quickly being replaced, lack of attatchment between team members, lack of history with various minor team members) and makes them 100 times worse on purpose.

 

[GrnMarvl14]

But you're forgetting to throw in people's short attention spans. With a constantly rotating cast (as they've said Thunderbolts COULD have), people can theoretically pick up any issue and have as much knowledge of the characters as someone who's been reading from the beginning. At least...I assume that's their thinking. I also doubt it'll work. But mostly because of the history of the first Champions series. Despite the acclaim fans today have for it...it DID get canceled after 17 issues. X-Men lasted longer as reprints.

Found a few more tidbits on the Initiative. Some really horrible spelling in this, but the facts are still there. Link.

 

[Zeta]

Oh, and did we really need a fourth teen hero team in the MU? I know Runaways and Young Avengers are some of the best books out for Marvel right now, but c'mon. This is milking the genre a little too much.

Also that guy who looks like a version of Anole with a tail is annoying me.

 

[GrnMarvl14]

Oh, and did we really need a fourth teen hero team in the MU? I know Runaways and Young Avengers are some of the best books out for Marvel right now, but c'mon. This is milking the genre a little too much.

Also that guy who looks like a version of Anole with a tail is annoying me.

Eh, they're all new characters. The chick in the lower left hand corner is named Cloud Nine. Her power is...she can create clouds. But, keep in mind, these guys will be different from the Young Avengers and Runaways in that they'll actually be trained by someone with experience (and, hopefully, there will be more structure than with the New X-Men).

 

[Zeta]

The chick in the lower left hand corner is named Cloud Nine. Her power is...she can create clouds.

Not just any clouds though. Sun Goku/Son Wukong clouds that she can ride on at supersonic speeds. Not a bad power, really.

Anyways. It looks like we have a superteen team for every political afflilation:

* Runaways - Ultra liberal
* Young Avengers - Moderate
* Initiative - Conservative

And the new X-men.

Hrm. I wonder if we're going to have yet another token gay superhero on this team, seeing as how the other three have at least one (since Anole is supposedly stepping up as a main character in New X-men soon).

 

[GrnMarvl14]

Not just any clouds though. Sun Goku/Son Wukong clouds that she can ride on at supersonic speeds. Not a bad power, really.

Anyways. It looks like we have a superteen team for every political afflilation:

* Runaways - Ultra liberal
* Young Avengers - Moderate
* Initiative - Conservative

And the new X-men.

Hrm. I wonder if we're going to have yet another token gay superhero on this team, seeing as how the other three have at least one (since Anole is supposedly stepping up as a main character in New X-men soon).

Anole's gay?

Are they really "token" gay characters? They just seem like characters who happen to be gay. If anything, Karma's seemed like a token (and randomly) gay character, especially when they kept trying to hook her up with that waitress in town during the last New Mutants series.

 

[Zeta]

Oh, I didn't mean they weren't developed. I just find it weird that all of the teen super teams coincidentally have gay characters when they're usually so rare.

Anole's gay?

Yes. That would be the reason he had the big crush on Northstar. They were going to have him come out and commit suicide after his parents rejected him (apparently they can handle green skin, but not who he dates) - but they liked him too much to kill him off so the story was scrapped even with the entire art for the issue completed.

They really need to change his codename by the way. If Asgardian was too easy to make a tasteless joke of, what about "ANOLE" . . .

 

[GrnMarvl14]

Oh, I didn't mean they weren't developed. I just find it weird that all of the teen super teams coincidentally have gay characters when they're usually so rare.

Maybe it's a new recurring superpower. Like flight.

Yes. That would be the reason he had the big crush on Northstar. They were going to have him come out and commit suicide after his parents rejected him (apparently they can handle green skin, but not who he dates) - but they liked him too much to kill him off so the story was scrapped even with the entire art for the issue completed.

They really need to change his codename by the way. If Asgardian was too easy to make a tasteless joke of, what about "ANOLE" . . .

Must have missed that storyline. Kinda explains some of the jokes Rockslide made. Glad they didn't kill him off, though.

Personally, I didn't get Asgardian until they actually spelled it out for me. Hulkling seemed more obvious. Anole's in the same boat as Asgardian for me. Maybe he can be Lizard Boy.