Marvel is OFFICIALLY 70 Years OLD Awards pt. 2

I return in a blaze of kinda knowing who should win the other categories! How exciting! Still I don't think any of the winners will be quite as unusual as the whole X-Statix/X-Force thing so this might well be a shade duller. But screw that let's keep going with the awards!

HIT THE JUMP TO SEE OPINIONATED VIEWS THAT DON'T MATCH YOUR OWN!


BEST COVER:
Candidates: Various
Why?: Too many to mention. Before anyone goes 'ooh won't it just be the All New Savage She-Hulk 90s variant from one of your earliest posts? Well... No. No because if I go with that it'll just be me being a fanboy and such. I'm going to at least TRY to be more definitive with this!

THE WINNERS:
AMAZING FANTASY #15/Fantastic Four #1

Why?: I hate covers with speech bubbles (fuck you DC nation), but the impact of these two is completely undeniable. Still I don't need to tell you that; Bully's Comics Blog has all the evidence you could want (Amazing Fantasy / Fantastic Four). See? Fucking CRAZY influence!


Best Cancelled Comic:
Candidates: She-Hulk (Slott/David series), Captain Britain and MI13, Agent X, Cable & Deadpool, Nextwave, Alpha Flight, X-Man, The Order, etc.
Why?: Um... awesomeness...

THE WINNER:
NEXTWAVE: AGENTS OF H.A.T.E.

Why?: This is a true tragedy in comicdom. Almost revolutionary in it's anarchic mentality, NEXTWAVE represented more than just an awesome comic series to those who read it; it represented the other side of comics, the FUN side that got lost over the years in events and miserable shit. This was silliness perfected. Heck, even Warren Ellis (the famed writer-for-hire) decided he wanted to stick on past his 12 issue opener. But between him and Stuart Immonen the costs were too high, so it was either have the comic cancelled or get a new artist. So it died. The world mourned. Then moved on, remembering that the trades are still readily available.

The story of the cancellation can be found here


BEST COMIC ARC:
Candidates: "A Day With The Fantastic Four", "The Death of Jean DeWolff", "Kraven's Last Hunt", "Planet Hulk", "Earth's Mightiest", "Extremis", "E Is For EXTINCTION"
Why?: All of these stories stand as classics (or in the case of "Earth's Mightiest" just plain awesome) and couldn't go without at least being mentioned. There are many more classic storylines out there, but these are the ones that I personally think matter the most.

THE WINNER:
"E IS FOR EXTINCTION"

Why?: Really I SHOULD focus on the arc "Imperial" that followed this arc (it's the most epic part of the entire Morrison New X-Men run, but this arc did so much with just the three issues it had introduced one of the greatest adversaries of the X-Men (Cassandra Nova), invented Cerebra, massacred all of Genosha with a sentinel attack, set up Cyclops and Jean Grey to break up and more! And not a single negative aspect to it, save the occasional piece of iffy art from Quitely. The story took the X-Men to a whole new level and successfully revitalised the mutants by making them special again... By killing a whole load of them...


BEST EVENT COMIC:
Candidates: House of M, World War Hulk, Civil War, Kree-Skrull War, Secret Wars, Secret Wars II, Infinity Gauntlet, Age of Apocalypse, Heroes Reborn, Secret Invasion, Avengers Disassembled, Secret War, Decimation, Annihilation, Annihilation Conquest, Messiah Complex, Messiah War, War of Kings
Why?: Because Marvel have lots of events and they need an award of their own.

THE WINNER:
DECIMATION!

Why?: Okay, so before anyone tuts at me for going with the muties again, we're talking DECIMATION for crying out loud! This wasn't about their kooky adventures or anything. This was dealing with their number being reduced by 90%. Imagine you went from being such a massive group of people... say... I don't know.. LIKE YOU ALREADY ARE and getting reduced to the point of being an endangered species. This was a chance for heartfelt interactions and to show the damage from House of M. Between Quicksilver in Son of M, The 198, Sentinel Squad O*N*E we saw some great fallout from the event and gained a whole new understanding of what it meant to be a mutant. But the real moment of genius, of empathy, where you finally understood it, was with Generation M. In it we saw Sally Floyd (much-hated (for some dumb reason) character from the Front Line comics) dealing with her own personal grief related to the Decimation by talking to and writing about the mutants who were so unfortunate to lost their powers. That was enough to mean a lot, but when Chamber appeared, on a crazy amount of life support due to his lack of jaw and chest and heart and such... It was powerful. There was no better represention of an event than the comics that came out of House of M under the Decimation event banner. Trust me.

Holy crap I'm done. Regular updates resume soon, starting with 2 review tonight/tomorrow.

Marvel Is OFFICIALLY 70 Years Young Awards pt. 1

Wow, so after 7 months and 10 days of Marvel throwing it in our faces it has finally, officially and absolutely turned 70.

Thank. Fucking. God.

As such I feel the need to state what the best Comic Series, Cover, Story, Event and such have been over the entire 70 year span.

FOLLOW THE JUMP TO THE SEMI-AWARDS-LIKE CEREMONY!



BEST STILL ONGOING COMIC SERIES:
Candidates: Amazing Spider-Man, Uncanny X-Men, Thunderbolts, Thor, MIGHTY Avengers
Why?: A comic SYNONYMOUS with Marvel, Marvel's Juggernaut (even with Greg Land), the eternal underdog with a classic history, A comic that has only ever evolved into the perfect creation it is today and the one TRUE Avengers comic still running.

THE WINNER (drumroll here):

UNCANNY X-MEN!

Probably something of a disagreeable choice in the face of AmazSpid but the history, the events, everything about Uncanny sticks out. If you started with the original team way back with issue 1 of X-Men (before the name change), the Uncanny team (from GIANT SIZE) or came in years later to something like Messiah Complex, this has been a comic that isn't afraid to evolve and change with the times. Amazing Spider-Man tries such things and the fans go ape-shit crazy. When Uncanny does it it's embraced as a new step in the life of everyone's favourite mutants. I could mention how Thunderbolts has gone through a lot of change too but I'm still a little bitter over the loss of the long-mourned days of old. Uncanny CAN do wrong, but in the face of the sheer brilliance that you get about 70% of the time it falls into distant memory. I mean heck, this comic came out of the dark age smelling faintly of roses. How many series can say that without coughing up blood?


BEST FINISHED ONGOING SERIES
Candidates: X-Force/X-Statix, Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man, Cable & Deadpool, Nextwave
Why?: WAIT! THESE ARE ALL 21st CENTURY COMICS (sans Avengers of course). Am I honestly saying that the best concluded ongoing series are ones from recent years?

Yes, yes I am. Still that isn't the most shocking thing here. This is...

THE WINNER:

X-FORCE/X-STATIX!

What? I can hold my head high and declare this the best comic Marvel has EVER released. Why? It went far and above what it portrayed itself as, secretly displaying itself as high art and a study of the human condition, celebrity, death and so much more to those who could see past the superficial surface. Not only that, but it managed all of this despite a heckuva lot of controversy. First off for apparently sullying the good name of X-Force, resulting in a stream of hate mail from the same people who just so happen to spend their time complaining about things like Shatterstar being gay now (read as: dark age comic fans), followed by a MASSIVE spurt of hate fired at it for trying to resurrect Princess Diana as a superhero.

Wait... What? This move was so ballsy that it garnered a great amount of press attention (by comic standards) including some particularly vile hate from that shitrag that is known only as THE DAILY MAIL. Of course X-Statix abandoned the whole Princess Di thing, with a fictional person in her place, but it will forever be known for having balls for things that no other comic would dream of. X-Statix, I salute you as one of the best things to ever happen to comicdom.


BEST LIMITED SERIES:
Candidates: Agents of Atlas, Madrox, Inhumans, Marvel Boy, Marvels, Toxin, Longshot, Marvel Zombies, Books of Doom
Why?: I've read a fair amount of limited series, probably far more than anyone should nowadays. Again I'm shamed that they're mostly 21st century ones, but perhaps that's a sign that Marvel is doing SOMETHING right.

THE WINNER:

MARVEL ZOMBIES!

I want to call this a clear winner but I took over an hour to decide on it. Marvel Zombies is a limited that did so much more than anyone thought it would. Coming from the pages of that piece of shit that is Land-drawn Ultimate Fantastic Four, Marvel Zombies exploded with popularity, pulling many people into comics who would have had no interest beforehand. This evolved further into a Dead Days one-shot, an arc in Black Panther, a sequel, ANOTHER sequel, AN EVIL DEAD PREQUEL, CONNECTIONS TO MARVEL APES, ANOTHER MUCH SHITTIER SEQUEL AND AN UPCOMING MOTHERFUCKING OTHER CHAIN OF SEQUEL ONE-SHOTS! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH LOTS OF ZOMBIIIIIES! Most of this content is at least good (save Marvel Zombies 4, which is just shit) and Marvel Zombies 2 and Dead Days had the same writer on board, which was certainly in its favour. Sure Marvels has had a follow-up (apparently) and another on the way AND was drawn by Alex Ross (who's only good for covers btw) but can it honestly say it affected Marvel as much as Marvel Zombies?

Marvels was a success, winning multiple awards and launching the significant careers of Busiek and Ross

It CAN? Oh... Well it can't say it's had as many spin-offs and sequels so let's roll with my rant.


END OF PART 1. MORE AWARDS TONIGHT!