Marvel's June Solicitations.
The day we never thought would come: Marvelman Classic Primer! Wait, "classic"? "Primer"? Oh yeah, apparently Marvel is going to start reprinting a lot of the original Marvelman stories that absolutely nobody cares about. I've actually read some so this isn't entirely snide; the stuff is pretty deadly. Is it possible they still don't have rights to the Moore/Gaiman stories? It's also a bit funny that the blurb mentions Marvelman "created" by Mick Anglo - guess that sounds better than "slightly revised Captain Marvel and laughed at US copyright law from the other side of the Atlantic".
Then some kind of "Women of Marvel" thing that doesn't seem to make any sense (other than they apparently can't resist cheesecake covers). More Stephen King and Anita Blake comics that I've heard actually sell fairly well (though I found the Dark Tower novel unreadable and the first Anita Blake book merely passable). I don't understand why there's a Sense & Sensibility series just like the other classics adaptations. I suppose there's a market for a tpb but who buys these in a series?
What the heck, five Deadpool books? Interesting that Merc with a Mouth is now a "limited series" which sounds better than "we're cancelling it". That's actually been a fave for a few months. (Need to check out writer Victor Gischler's novels.)
I gave up on Ultimate Comics with Ultimatum and all the X-Men books even further back. Kept with Amazing Spider-Man for a while after it went to a thrice-a-month schedule and the other Spider books were cancelled but that still feels like a bad move. Before one series could be a little light-hearted, another a bit more serious and soap-opera-y but now it's hard to pick out arcs and expensive to feel like having to keep up. So now I skip it all. Of course Marvel's claim that we just need the one book didn't last as they added Web of Spider-Man, Peter Parker and an endless stream of minis. Some of them may be good but that seems unlikely.
Yet more Avengers relaunches which is also tiresome. (In a few years it will all be lumped together anyway so Marvel can celebrate issue #500 or whatever.) I'll certainly try the two Bendis and the Brubaker series but Avengers Academy just sounds like it's been created to be cancelled. Hank Pym and a bunch of kids? I almost dozed off just typing that.
And let's just skim the rest. Good: Brubaker's Captain America, Andy Diggle's Daredevil (well I'm just guessing actually), Fraction's Invincible Iron Man, Bendis' Powers. Bad: Don't know because there's a bunch (and I mean a BUNCH) of stuff that is utterly anti-promising. Hawkeye & Mockingbird? A SHIELD series with Leonardo Da Vinci and Isaac Newton? Another Dracula book? Almost half the Marvel line?
As for the collections there's the same hardcover problem. Who buys a Ghost Rider by Jason Aaron Omnibus? Or for that matter a hardcover of Deadpool Team-Up? Marvel is putting out a bit over 50 collections in June (50!) and only Criminal even remotely interests me (well maybe the fifth volume of Essential Captain America but I already have much of this in the color reprints).