Bingo !
(W) Al Ewing (A/CA) Javier Rodriguez (CA) Lee Garbett, Leonardo Romero, Natacha Bustos, Phil Noto, Ron Lim
Al Ewing and Javier Rodr guez follow up their acclaimed DEFENDERS: THERE ARE NO RULES series with a new volume and an all-new lineup, including none other than Loki, God of Stories! When Doctor Strange sends a dire warning from beyond the grave, Blue Marvel, America Chavez, Taaia (Galactus’ mom!), Tigra and Loki assemble to defend reality itself! Plus, you won’t believe who shows up on the final page!
RATED T+
In Shops: Jul 20, 2022
SRP: $3.99
Oh là là là là ce premier épisode de Defenders Beyond 
Ewing et Rodriguez prennent la suite de leur mini série Defenders, que j’avais trouvé excellente de bout en bout, mais en réalité (comme souvent avec Ewing) c’est également une suite de ses autres travaux, notamment Ultimates et Loki, il référence également ses Mighty Avengers, ainsi que les récentes mini série sur America Chavez et sur la mort de Strange Je ne sais pas si cette nouvelle histoire du duo sera aussi brillante que la précédente, en tous cas elle part très très bien avec une ambition affichée toujours aussi démesurée (un ennemi qui vient de l’extérieur du multivers, au delà même d’Éternité, le sort du deuxième cosmos dévoilé, et une équipe dysfonctionnelle de fortes personnalités qui promet des interactions musclées !)
Et cela va sans dire, mais Rodriguez aux dessins ça tabasse toujours autant, il regorge d’inventivité dans son trait et ses découpages pour donner vie aux idées les plus folles d’Ewing !
(J’aurais adoré que ses Ultimates aient droit à un dessinateur aussi inspiré et talentueux !)
Son éventuelle audition pour les FF aussi par la même occasion (où comment passer d’un génie scientifique aux tempes grisonnantes à un autre plus populaire) ?
1 « J'aime »
DEFENDERS: BEYOND #2
Written by: Al Ewing.
Art by: Javier Rodriguez.
Covers by: Javier Rodriguez, Nick Bradshaw, Ron Lim.
Description: The adventure begins – in the path of the Beyonder? When Loki, Blue Marvel, America Chavez, Taaia and Tigra land rather unexpectedly in the Second Cosmos, they find their lives in the hands of its cosmic overseers – unless Loki can figure out the right trick to save them all.
Pages: 32.
Price: $3.99.
In stores: August 24.
J’aime bien la couv’ !
Je suis curieux. Parce que le casting qui compose l’equipe + le Beyonder, ça ne m’attire pas. Mais Ewing + Rodriguez, ça, c’est beaucoup plus séduisant. Et il y a des Célestes !
(W) Al Ewing (A/CA) Javier Rodriguez (CA) Ben Caldwell
Loki’s Defenders manage to escape the Second Cosmos and the Beyonder, but Taaia is grievously wounded in the process and none of Loki’s or Blue Marvel’s expertise seems to be helping. Enter - the Phoenix! But what is the price of a universal
constant’s aid…?
RATED T+
In Shops: Sep 28, 2022
SRP: $3.99
Roooh, il est fort quand même ce Javier.
(W) Al Ewing (A/CA) Javier Rodriguez
DEFENDERS: BEYOND 4
On their quest to save reality itself, the Defenders have stared down the Beyonder and survived the scorching flames of the Phoenix, but now Loki and Co. must face their greatest threat yet – themselves! The Defenders find themselves in a plane of possibility, where they are haunted by visions of the lives they wish they could have - if only, the dream weaver warns, they didn’t have the others holding them back! Will they turn against each other? Or accept closing those doors?
Rated T+
In Shops: Oct 19, 2022
SRP: $3.99
DEFENDERS: BEYOND #5 (OF 5)
- AL EWING (W) • JAVIER RODRÍGUEZ (A/C)
- GAMES VARIANT COVER BY NETEASE
- THE FINAL TRIAL OF LOKI!
- The final trial of Loki, America Chavez and the rest of the Defenders sees them entering…the one and only House of Ideas!
- 32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99
Al Ewing : « Well, there are going to be some weeks like this where I just run a short newsletter. But this past week, the final issue of DEFENDERS: BEYOND came out, wrapping up two five-issue minis that gave myself and fellow storyteller Javier Rodriguez a lot of freedom to experiment. It was a series that attempted a lot of things at once - drawing connections between various « higher realms » of Marvel that until now have been unconnected in the cosmology, asking deeper questions about identity, religion and responsibility, and laying down clues for something big and heavy to come. »
They’re all there!
"The people who liked it seemed to really like it - so thank you for kind words if you’ve expressed them. If it didn’t land for you, I hope my next thing does.
Anyway, I was thinking it might be nice to chat a little bit about how DEFENDERS and DEFENDERS: BEYOND came to exist - though if you’ve read interviews with me about it, you already know why they are what they are. To repeat for anyone who wasn’t there - DEFENDERS, the title/franchise, has a reputation unlike anything else at Marvel. Through the work of Steve Gerber, David Kraft, Peter B. Gillis and many others, it’s developed an identity as Marvel’s book for strange, very personal, poetic, somewhat metaphorical ideas, stories that drift outside the norm of the modern cape genre. So in my view, if it’s doing its job, DEFENDERS should be a wild psychedelic experience, a hot-line to 70s Marvel, the counter-culture to the superheroic mainstream - and I’d like to think we delivered that over these past 200 pages.
Not that I could have done it, or would even have attempted it, without Javier in my corner - he’s the main reason why DEFENDERS came into being, because the opportunity to work with him again - on anything, never mind on a psychedelic trip of a series - was way too good to pass up.
Part of the gestation of DEFENDERS: BEYOND, meanwhile, was - having got the nod for another five issues after being certain that we only had the one go-round - needing a journey to send a new team on. (It’d have to be a new team - Dr. Strange was dead, alas - but more on the nuts and bolts of that another time.) So I decided, for this new journey, to map out how various « higher realms » of Marvel cosmology connected. And that all started with a scene from a previous DEFENDERS run, written by Matt Fraction, where the Silver Surfer went to heaven and met God… or a bunch of people using the words."
From DEFENDERS Vol 4 #10, by Fraction, McKelvie, Oback & Cowles. Published by Marvel.
« I’d already equated the Death Celestials in that run to the Aspirants in Kieron Gillen’s IRON MAN and the Celestial Destructor in CIVIL WAR II, and made them all the same people in ULTIMATES. It’s addictive, putting jigsaw pieces together like that. It occurred to me that there were a lot of white spaces in Marvel Comics, where higher beings hung out - the White Hot Room, for example - so they were probably linked. How? And would this be a place to continue my thinking about religion? Maybe it’d be an excuse to do some more research into Kabbalah and the Tree Of Life - with five issues, we could start in Malkuth and travel up the middle pillar. I ended up placing the White Hot Room at Tiferet, spelled « Tiphareth » in an old issue of X-MEN where Claremont does a very similar thing and places Phoenix right at the middle point - except I discovered that detail long after I decided to do it myself. Synchronicity! »
From Uncanny X-Men #108, by Claremont, Byrne, Austin, Wohl, Orz & Yanchus.
"Which makes a good place to segue away from DEFENDERS: BEYOND - because since this delves into a lot of cosmic characters and big concepts, one of the ways people have been reacting to it these past few days has been asking me to explain it. And I figured I should give an explanation of why I don’t do that.
THE CLOCKING-OFF OF THE AUTHOR
For the most part - barring those individuals of great craft and talent who produce the whole box and dice soup to nuts - comics is a collaborative medium. A whole bunch of people do their part in a big looping chain and the product is then finished - or is it? Nope. Because even when the final, finished issue is printed and on the shelves, there’s one more person in the chain who needs to give their input - and that’s you, dear reader.
The comic doesn’t fully exist in your universe until you read it."
"I remember I was a big fan of THE PRISONER as a kid - the Patrick McGoohan show. For various reasons, I managed to miss the last episode, and it didn’t get taped, so for years I wandered around with a vague description of it supplied by my brother - and while I knew some of the beats of the finale, when I eventually got to see it for myself, I wasn’t expecting them to land so… metaphorically.
For the final episode, McGoohan and his team divorced themselves entirely from the necessity to make sense as we, the viewers, had previously understood it. The series had always been dreamlike and poetic, but now everything on the screen seemed like a matter of metaphor, performance art, something for the viewer to discern the meaning of for themselves. I dived right in and thought I’d understood it, but I was curious what other people thought - some opinions I read over the years agreed with my take, some took it far more literally, some dismissed it entirely as nonsense, some took it in wildly different directions than I had. I never felt like any of these people were wrong, exactly, apart from the dismissers - but at the same time I knew in my bones that their interpretations did not apply to the work I had seen, because I had seen it, not them. In forming my own interpretation of the work, I had altered the work.
One of those other opinions I mentioned? Patrick McGoohan’s. I read his take on the last episode in a big book about the show, and disagreed. And if there’s a single voice behind THE PRISONER - a single person who could be said to be the authority on what the work means - it’s McGoohan. But I don’t believe my enjoyment of the show revolves around a single « correct » interpretation. In fact, I think my own personal pleasure in it would be diminished if I felt forced to cede my own interpretation in favor of his.
(I’m the same way about METAL GEAR SOLID V, oddly enough. But that’s a topic for another time.)
Anyway, I see the reader as the final arbiter of what the work means. That’s your job, and to an extent you get out what you’re willing to put in. I can hold your hand or beg your indulgence for most of it, but if a work is to have any deeper meaning at all than a fun caper with the capes, the final steps - whether you end up liking the work or lumping it - have to be yours alone. And when you ask me to interpret the work for you, or worse, to confirm your own interpretation as the correct one - I usually feel I have to turn the question around.
Why does it matter what I think? It’s your head that the magic happens in.
I don’t think I’ve had the bravery yet in my work to create something as completely open to interpretation as the last episode of THE PRISONER. I’ve come close a couple of times, though - with a lot of help - and DEFENDERS: BEYOND is one of those times. And a lot of times I’ve put something on the page not for any rational reason but just because it feltright. I hope that keeps happening. And I hope I never have to explain any of it."
1 « J'aime »
C est auto contenu ou il fzut lire autre chose avant ?
Seulement la min-série précédente).
Voire aussi les one-shots avec le masked raider (Marvel Comics #1000, Incoming).
Série qui s appelle comment ?
Defenders tout court.
Merci
