I managed to catch the “It’s your Marvel panel” on Sunday at 1pm. Surprisingly or maybe not surprisingly since the Shatner panel was going on at the same time, the room was barely half full of Marvel Zombies waiting to ask these fellows their questions and listen to what these guys had to say as fans and whatnot. In attendance were Arune Singh, C.B Cebulski and two other big name Marvel guys whose name I can’t remember because I had to quickly go drain the lizard and arrived after they introduced them, but onto what happened in the panel! Oh wait I’ve got their picture so maybe you can tell me who everyone was!
The Marvel guys saw that they had a rather shy crowd at first so they decided to get the ball rolling by asking audience members questions like: “What was the last great book your read?” which got us audience members to speak up and finally ask away. Here are most of the questions and answers.
Will Ben Riley make a big return to the pages of Spider-Man?
An audience member dressed as the Ben Riley Spider-Man asked if there was any chance of Ben Riley making a return given the appearance of Kaine in the Amazing Spider-Man. The answer to that was an empathetic no by all the Marvel guys as they are completely done with Ben Riley for no and have no plans to do anything else with him.
What’s going on with Nick Fury given the stuff that is happening in Secret Warriors and Secret Avengers?
I can’t remember the name of the guy who answered this question but he was the one right behind Arune Singh and that he said Ed Brubaker and Jonathan Hickman got together to do a little Nick Fury crossover stuff that will happen in Secret Avengers #4 and took a moment to break my heart by reminding us that Secret Warriors will end at issue #27.
What’s going on with the Exiles?
A fan of the Exiles asked the Marvel crew if there was any chance of bringing back the Exiles as she was a huge fan of the title and a few other audience members agreed. Their response was that they pretty much ran out of steam on the Exiles title, they wrote all the good material they had which made up the original Exiles run and when they started up the latest New Exiles series in response to reader demand, it lacked the feel of the original series and got canned shortly thereafter. So in the immediate future, we can expect no Exiles. But they are going to continue to try to find a place for Blink as she is a huge fan favourite but they need to integrate her into the 616 somehow.
How can Wolverine be a vampire or zombie when he has a healing factor?
Wolverine’s healing factor came up when a fan mentioned how it should be able to prevent infections such as vampirism or zombification from taking route. The Marvel crew assured us that they indeed did debate on the matter and that they did hash out the science behind this and it will be revealed in later issues of X-Men how Wolverine’s healing factor came be overcome in certain situations to allow him to become a vampire or zombie.
Digital Comics
Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited was brought up as a topic of discussion by the Marvel guys hoping to spur some discussion and interest in their digital comics. As it stands, MDCU is a crazy good deal as 60 bucks for unlimited access to over 7000 comics is great. They said that the current 6 month lag behind current books is to give brick and mortar comic shops a chance to sell their books but they may look towards closing the gap in the upcoming years. They said that this is still very new territory and they are making it up as they go along.
Avengers Numbering
With the absolutely staggering number of Avengers titles out there, it is nearly impossible to tell which is the “official” numbering of the series which carries on after the whole Disassembled arc in Avengers. I asked them how do all of these titles fit in number wise and they weren’t too sure. They said that Tom Breevort is the man to ask as he knows all of the official numbering and exactly where each series fits into the official numbering of Avengers in case they ever revert back for a milestone. They did state however, that Secret Avengers is not part of the numbering, which seems odd, maybe they were thinking of Secret Warriors? They might be getting all their secrets mixed up in their head!
Why not go all the way back with the whole OMD and OMIT mess in Amazing Spider-Man and just bring back Gwen Stacy while you’re at it.
I think I managed to rudely interrupt one of the Marvel guys when he was answering the exact question I asked by shouting out the words “What about Uncle Ben?” but long story short, they did indeed consider bringing back Gwen at the start of the BND story arc but they decided that the two most important deaths in Spider-Man’s history are Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy and that by bringing either one of them back would undo all that he learned. Ehh I still didn’t buy it personally but it was a somewhat satisfying answer.
I’ll fill in more gaps as I decipher my notebook scribblings, so stay tuned to this post to see if I can update this even more!
David Diep is a News Editor for ComicBookDaily, an assistant manager at Big B Comics in Hamilton, Ontario, a part-time astronaut and a full-time love machine.
