Well, there’s a new Marvel movie in theaters, and it’s critical and commercial success, with some calling Doctor Strange one of the most enjoyable MCU offerings in years. Marvel has certainly been on a roll with its source material as well, with many older series getting the relaunch treatment, as well as many new ones that offer fresh, inclusive heroes for a new era. Here are some of the best new titles Marvel has now.
All-New X-Men
What if you born a certain way, and the world around you decided to hate and fear you for it? What if you rose above that and fought for a better world? Now, what if you were pulled into a future much worse than your present, where the hatred was just as strong, if not stronger? And what if the world was that way…in part because of your future self, the person you turned out to be? Well, those are all questions the younger versions of the original X-Men must wrestle with after they are transported from the past to the present and discover that things aren’t so great. But how do you change things when the future becomes your present and your destiny has already been seemingly shaped? The young X-Men decide to find out, and we get to see some iconic heroes in a new way, along with some fresh faces, with plenty of humor and more than a few pleas for people to give in to their better natures rather than fear.
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
Who is the toughest Marvel hero, the one who’s single-handedly beaten Doctor Doom, Deadpool, Wolverine, Thanos, Kraven the Hunter, and the Devourer of Worlds himself, Galactus? It’s Squirrel Girl! She’s the funny, insanely likable college student who has the strength and speed of a squirrel, a bushy squirrel tail, the ability to communicate with squirrels, as well as a squirrel sidekick named Tippy-Toe. This comic’s light-hearted tone under the most urgent of circumstances, as well as the fun, breezy, art style, is a breath of fresh air at a time of brooding, overly serious heroes. It’s also one of the few comics hilarious, creative, and witty enough to make me laugh out loud while reading.
Ms. Marvel
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Marvel hit it out of the park with this one. Kamala Khan is a Pakistani-American teenager who already has a lot to deal with. She’s seen as the Other by many of her peers because of her heritage and her Islamic faith, and her family expects her to fulfill their strict expectations, and forbids her from what Kamala considers normal teenage experiences. Then she gets superpowers, and what follows is like adolescence on steroids. Since she has shapeshifting abilities, she at first transforms herself into her hero, and the superheroine ideal everyone expects, Carol Danvers, the former Ms. Marvel. Kamala is not the first Muslim superhero Marvel has ever had, but her series is definitely one of the strongest debuts ever. Just by her existence, the new Ms. Marvel is burdened with representing more than herself, and the writers rise to the challenge by giving us an icon for our times: a complex teenage girl who also happens to be a superheroine, with complicated relationships with her family, peers, and the world around her.
Spider-Man/Deadpool
You know things are gonna be good when you get these kids together. One is the unkillable Merc with a Mouth, an assassin who somehow tends to mostly err on the side of kinda good. The other is a nerdy, equally quippy wall-crawler who is a squeaky clean hero. So when these two team up, they inevitably bond…in their own way. It’ll just involve going to hell, bringing the dead back to life, trying to find out just who is framing Peter Parker, and fighting an insane, genetically altered monstrosity with six arms, dubbed Itsy Bitsy. You know, the usual stuff.
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Captain America: Sam Wilson
Talk about big shoes to fill. Sam Wilson started out as the superhero Falcon, but when Steve Rogers, the original Captain America, is depowered, he choose Sam Wilson to take up the mantle. Wilson accepts, and things immediately get complicated. The first couple issues have his approval ratings plummeting as he feuds with the original Cap, defends a hacker responsible for dumping some classified files online, and attacks a group that’s kidnapping undocumented immigrants. So yeah, this comic looks at a bunch of controversial issues and not only jumps right in, it has the new Captain America take a side without villainizing the people who disagree with him. Plus, it’s always great when a comic take risks that pay off.
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Nighthawk
Nighthawk is one of those comics that might have been too risky and too smart for its own good, which is the only way I can really explain its cancellation. It places its vigilante hero right in the middle of real-world racial tensions in Chicago, a city with a long and loaded history of them. He’s something of an African-American riff on Batman, a wealthy man whose only superpower is the mountains of cash at his disposal. But Raymond Kane is a man driven by an even darker, more powerful rage. Rage at the racists who murdered his pacifist parents, rage that his parents didn’t do more to fight back, and rage at the many injustices he witnesses in the city he calls home. He knows his anger may be consuming and transforming him, and he takes out his anger on the neo-Nazis (he has a habit of murdering them after they’re subdued), as well as cops who harass unarmed citizens. He is a deeply flawed, brutal man, but he’s also trying to revitalize the parts of Chicago many fear to tread. However, we get a harsh reminder that Raymond could be worse after a serial killer called the Revelator begins murdering people who exploit the poor, and who apparently thinks nothing of killing any innocent family members present when he comes calling. Like the best foes, the Revelator is a dark mirror of what Nighthawk could become if he continues to let his demons twist him. Plus, there’s a bit of comic relief and shaky moral guidance in the form of his techie sidekick Tilda, who has an interesting history of her own.
Vision
This is one of the most unique comics Marvel has to offer. When the android Avenger known as the Vision decides to try to lead a more normal life in the suburbs, he creates a family for himself in the form of a wife and teenage twins, a boy and a girl, also androids. The Vision assumes that the knowledge he has provided for them will sustain them, and actually doesn’t spend much time with his new family, a big reason why things fall apart so quickly and violently. From the beginning, the book’s narration makes it clear that this little experiment will not end well, so dread is quickly imbued in us and keeps building as the family is forced to confront everything from supervillains to school bullies to the prejudice of their neighbors. The detached tone, the robotic way the family converses, along with the constant philosophical discussions and debates about normality and the nature of humanity itself builds the escalating tension as the bodies pile up and the horrors of everyday life begin to seem more frightening than the threat of world destruction.
Spider-Women: Spider-Gwen, Spider-Woman, and Silk
Okay, this is kind of cheating. But these ladies are all kicking ass in such enjoyably different ways. Spider-Gwen is Gwen Stacy, the Spider-Woman of her alternate world. This series could’ve easily just relied on gimmicky gender-swap stories, but both she and her universe easily holds its own against the familiar, established continuity, and gives Gwen and her father, both deceased in the mainstream comics reality, a second chance for fans to enjoy them. Meanwhile, Spider-Woman has become a story about Jessica Drew balancing pregnancy, then motherhood with her costumed activities. Where else can you mix in mundane concerns like coping with the boredom of maternity leave and trying to fight off alien Skrulls in a hospital located in a black hole? And last, but by no means least, there’s Silk, aka Cindy Moon, a kind of super-heroine Kimmy Schmidt, who’s trying to rebuild her life and balance work and superhero activities after being locked in a bunker for ten years, during which time her family has disappeared.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur
Moon Girl just has to be one of the most fun, unique titles Marvel has put out. Lunella Lafayette is a precocious, 9-year-old genius whose abilities prevent her from connecting with children her age, but she figures it just gives her more time to indulge her passions for science and inventing weird gadgets. Then a portal transports some prehistoric bad guys and the Devil Dinosaur, an intelligent T-Rex, to Lunella’s present. Soon she and Devil Dinosaur are teaming up to fight everyone from the Hulk to a Kree aliens, even meeting Ms. Marvel in the process. The results are kid-friendly adventures free of condescension, with Lunella slowly learning to embrace what makes her different and proving she can be a new kind of hero.
All-New Wolverine
Logan, the original Wolverine, may be dead (for now anyway), but the good news is we have his female clone, X-23, aka Laura Kinney. She may have a heavy burden to bear by replacing one of the most popular and beloved heroes ever, but her series is wise enough to acknowledge this while mostly focusing on Laura’s own history and relationships. And given there’s a few other copies of her running around, the result is something like Orphan Black meets Kill Bill. What’s not to love?
Spider-Man
Many of the heroes on this list have their burdens to bear, whether its their own history or legacies that have been forced on them. But Miles Morales just rose to them so beautifully that he’s one of the only survivors from the Ultimate universe, a series of comics launched in 2000 that updated and reimagined many of Marvel’s superheroes, now defunct. Miles is one of the few Ultimate heroes to become part of the mainstream continuity, and has the usual struggles of trying to balance not only normal life and his heroic one, but also cope with the world seeing him not as the new Spider-Man, or the younger one, but the black Spider-Man, thus defining him by his race. It’s not unlike how people responded to him in real life, as his existence was due to the death of Peter Parker in the Ultimate comics, and fans weren’t too keen to warm up to him replacing such a beloved and iconic hero. But Miles has lasted, and now shares the Spidey title with Peter Parker. Even better, he regularly teams up alongside Ms. Marvel, and is one of the founding members of the Champions, a team consisting of teenage superheroes.
Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat!
Patsy Walker is one of the most enjoyable, fun, and female-centric comic books ever, featuring appearances by other superheroines like She-Hulk, Squirrel Girl, Jubilee, and Jessica Jones. The art style is adorably retro, and Patsy has to face struggles as varied as an old frenemy stealing the rights to her story, being banished to Hell (again), working in retail, and trying to set up a temp agency for superheroes. The result is something akin to the best Saturday morning cartoons. You know, the kind with demons and vampires.
Captain Marvel
Carol Danvers, the former Ms. Marvel, is now Captain Marvel, and in many ways has become Marvel’s prime mover and shaker. She’s in charge of The Ultimates, a force that tries to keep the Earth and the universe safe. This means she deals with cosmic threats in space and other dimensions, but she’s also very much involved in events closer to home, whether she’s debating the ethics of acting on a superhero’s ability to predict the future, possibly endangering individuals’ civil rights by arresting them for crimes which have yet to occur, or supporting her friend Jessica Drew, aka Spider-Woman, during her pregnancy. Here’s hoping Marvel does her justice in the upcoming movie, set to hit theaters in March 2019. With Brie Larson in the title role, she seems to be off to a great start.
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