I didn't do a post for last month's solicitations, but if I had, the decision would have been whether to buy the next round of Atomic Robo Real Science Adventures in single issues, or tradewait. I've decided to leave that one up to the vagaries of Jack's attention to detail. If he notices it and orders it for me, OK then. If not, trades it is.
Back to X-Men. On the plus side, Brian Wood has a pretty good rep as a writer, though I don't have any more experience with him than I do with Cullen Bunn. But how do you get experience with someone's writing if you don't try it, right? Though perhaps corporately-owned characters which carry editorial constraints aren't the best assessment tool.
I have at least a passing fondness for all the characters involved, though Wood's writing is going to play a serious role there. I like Hawkeye, but I can't say he's been the strongest part of Secret Avengers, seeing as I haven't cared for Remender's rendition of him. Theoretically, there's a baseline of character history there to work with that can keep the characters familiar, but still let Wood have his own perspective on them.
The solicit doesn't have a lot of details, but offhand, it sounds like an interesting story. Aliens, old enemies, special babies, ancient conflicts. Maybe it's all tied together, or maybe they're separate issues, but it does sound intriguing, if vague.
Copiel's a pretty good artist, sort of. He can do some really beautiful work, detailed, with a strong sense of scale or majesty. That double-page spread he did for JMS' Thor run of the newly recreated Asgard is still one of my desktop wallpapers. He gave each character on the cover a different pose, and each one probably says something about the character. The more casual stance Rachel took, where shes partially obscured by Rogue, versus Kitty with a more straightforward, aggressive stance.On the minus side, well there's still Copiel. I've never been that impressed by him as an action artist. Fight scenes aren't really his strong point. At least, they weren't in AvX. Maybe that was a reflection of his writers, as most writers at Marvel these days don't have a clue how to script an interesting fight scene. Probably because they're too busy working on their "clever" dialogue. Maybe that wasn't Copiel's fault.
He isn't exactly a swift artist, though. Marvel made him the artist for the Siege event, which was only a 4-issue mini-series, and he couldn't even keep that on schedule. If you pick up the book because you love Copiel's work, you better keep in mind the potential for another Cassady on Uncanny Avengers situation, where Copiel's gone in a few months. Who the hell knows who'll take over then? Might be an upgrade, might not be.
The other big minus is the $4 price tag. I'm kind of trying to limit how many of those books I'm getting, and as far as Marvel goes, there's already Captain America, which I'm sure I'll get to read one of these days. Not sure I want to commit to another one on top of that. I know Wood and Copiel don't set the price tag, but it does factor in. I need to expect - and get - more if I'm going to pay more. I don't mean more issues, mind you, Marvel can stop double-shipping any time now, the quality of the work needs to be higher. I don't know if they can pull it off. The last two $4 books I got from Marvel were Defenders and Secret Avengers, neither of which is a strong argument for the creative talent being able to give me my money's worth.
It's a question of how much confidence I have in Wood and Copiel. Alternatively, it's a question of how big a sucker I am. The answer has yet to be determined.
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