Make My Marvel! – Event Waves

The completely non-dramatic return of MMM! kicks off this week with a look at what Marvel comic events you’d most like to see represented in plastic form for Marvel Legends. Who will live? Who will die? Which side are you on? Who stuck their deal in the peanut butter jar? None of these questions and more will be answered in this week’s MMM!

Last week’s poll re-cap: The majority of you chose to break up the ML monotony with occassional event/theme/title waves with 43% of the vote, with another 26% prefering solely events. Building on that, this week let’s look at exactly what storylines you’d like to see in an ML wave.

Make My Marvel! – Event Waves

Age of Apocalypse:
Fans were shocked in the late 90’s when the announcement was made that all of the X-titles were to be canceled, X-fans were shocked. A few months later they found out the truth behind the hype when the now-classic (doesn’t that make some of us feel old) Age of Apocalypse alternate universe storyline debuted in place of the regular X-Men comics. The four-month event detailed the struggle of the Xavier-less X-Men against an Earth under the near-total rule of Apocalypse. The 10+ year old event still lives on today via a brief return to AoA (blech!) and the continued adventures of several of the book’s stars in the pages of Exiles. That means there’re dozens of popular characters to be made, but let’s start by covering the basics with Magneto, Blink, Morph, Dark Beast, Colossus, Jean Grey and a BAF (modern-sized) Apocalypse.

Infinity Gauntlet/War/Crusade:
The Inifinity Trilogy had an excellent start, epic middle, and crap ending, so we’re probably better off ignoring the Crusade bits here. Infinity Gauntlet chronicled the losing battle fought by the handful of Earth’s surviving heroes, as well as their brutal deaths and defeats. Gauntlet also was the event that finally elevated Thanos to a true threat in the eyes of most readers. Despite the galaxy-spanning events of Gauntlet, the story was limited to the pages of the six-issue mini-series of the same title. Marvel realized that a small, self-contained story just wouldn’t do. There was bank to be made afterall, so the follow-up Infinity War crossed over into nearly ever other title Marvel put out that year. War truly was a war as all of Earth’s heroes banded together to fight their evil dopplegangers. An Infinity theme wave could include: Eric Masterson Thor, Post-Armor Wars II Iron Man, Magus and several dopplegangers of the big names like Spider-man, Wolverine and Iron Man. Despite the excellent effort put forth by Marvel Select in their nearly-to-scale Thanos figure, many still won’t be satisfied until we get a true Marvel Legends Thanos. An Infinity wave would be the perfect way to produce a BAF version of the character.

Civil War:
The Marvel U. is still dealing with the repercussions of the events at Stanford Connecticut and the resulting superhero civil war. From the tragic beginning caused by the poorly-planned battle between the original New Warriors and Nitro, through the bloody showdown between Cap and Iron Man’s factions, the death of Captain America and through to the creation of the Initiative program, a Civil War wave should include all of the key (and not so key) players: Speedball, Nitro, Extremis Armor Iron Man (for the nitpickers who say the movie Mark III isn’t good enough), Hawkeye II, Gauntlet, a S.H.I.E.L.D. Capekiller agent and a BAF Goliath (R.I.P.).

The Dark Phoenix Saga:
Remember when Chris Claremont was good? Then you must be old, because no one else outside of your nursing home does. Nonetheless, Dark Phoenix is considered by many to be one of the best stories ever produced in any media. Like any good X-Men story it saw the team put through an emotional wringer tying to save Jean Grey from her dark impulses while fighting clearly superior foes in both the Shi’ar Imperial Guard and Dark Phoenix herself. It was story full of iconic images and great characters that are still inexplicably missing from Marvel Legends. Ideally, the Dark Phoenix wave would include: Sebastian Shaw, Mastermind, Gladiator, an all-new Claremont/Byrne-era Cyclops (NOT using a Namor body this time please), battle-damaged sewer scene Wolverine (TM), an all-new Dark Phoenix (based off the amazing Icons sculpt seen last year) and a BAF Warstar. This time, make Dark Phoenix the regular release and the regular Phoenix the variant. The white and gold Phoenix: Endsong version can be a store exclusive.

Mutant Massacre:
The Mutant Massacre:Marvel’s first attempt at culling the mutant population with the mass murder of the Morlocks living in New York’s sewers. This one was less successful for the actual story, but excelled in the introduction of new characters (Sabretooth, Mr. Sinister, the Marauders) and the set-up for future X-Men’s status quo. This wave would include: Kitty Pryde (blue Excalibur costume), Angel (red X-Factor costume), Dazzler, Malice, Vertigo, Riptide and a BAF Warlock.

Annihilation:
The event that jump-started Marvel’s flagging galactic titles, the original Annhilation saw the invasion of Annihilus’ forces setting out to annhilate (of course) all life in the 616-Marvel U. after their perceived encroachment into the Negative Zone. The follow-up Conquest saw the re-introduction of even more classic, space-faring characters as the Phalanx chose to invade the Kree empire in it’s post-war, weakened state. An Annhilation theme needs to have: Nova (modern), Drax the Destroyer, Star Lord w/Rocket Racoon, Quasar II, a Space Knight, a Phalanx and, of course, a BAF Groot.

Secret Invasion:
It turns out that the <spoiler removed> have infiltrated the ranks of Marvel’s hero organizations and have replaced <spoiler removed>, <spoiler removed> and <spoiler removed>. Now no one knows who is and isn’t a <spoiler removed>. Now Earth is being <spoiler removed> and everyone was shocked when <spoiler removed> was revealed to be a <spoiler removed> during the <spoiler removed> when we all thought <spoiler removed> was getting a new giant pair of luscious <spoiler removed>. As Secret Invasion is still ongoing, there’re bound to be a few characters that need to replace some of these slots. For now, though, let’s go with: Mockingbird, Luke Cage (New Avengers), Nick Fury (new Howling Commandos), X-Superskrull, Thor-Superskrull, Queen Veranke and a BAF Stature.

Operation Galactic Storm:
OGS represented the first big Avengers crossover event which opened the door for subsequent greats like Avengers Disassembled (totally worth it, then). Also like AD, this showed the first crack in the Avengers’ long-time united front when the team broke into factions over the decision to murder the Kree Supreme Intelligence. A good OGS wave should give us the likes of Quasar, Vision (white), U.S. Agent, Deathbird, a Kree Soldier, a Shi’ar Soldier and a BAF Kree Supreme Intelligence (and won’t that help sell some figures!).