What You Might Have Missed In Marvel’s March 2017 Solicitations

The cover to Infamous Iron Man #6 features The Maker, who many might know as the villainous Reed Richards from Earth-1610 who has been flitting around the Marvel Universe post-Secret Wars. If you're going to set up a villain for a heroic Doctor Doom to fight, the evil counterpart to his most hated nemesis is probably a pretty good pick, and hopefully means we get a good "RICHARDS!" at some point next year.

Hannah Blumenreich's heartfelt and emotionally resonant Spider-Man cartoons — collected in Spidey Zine — have been some of the best superhero stories all year. Thankfully, it seems someone at Marvel has noticed too, and instead of sending out the dreaded cease-and-desist, the publisher has reached out to recruit Blumenreich for a story in Amazing Spider-Man #25, which means whatever happens, it's canon.

Kitty Pryde is in many ways the emotional heart of the X-Men, and with her off in space with The Guardians of the Galaxy for the last few years, the entire X-line has felt lost and listless. It might be a coincidence, but next year Marvel seems to be making a concerted effort to put its merry mutants back at the forefront, and that can't happen without Kitty, so it's great to see her front and center on the cover to this one-shot heading into the new era where she'll be leading her own team of classic X-Men in X-Men Gold.

The costume Madame Hydra is wearing in this cover doesn't belong to Viper, but was last seen worn by Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who was working as a triple agent for the Russian espionage agency Leviathan. Nick Spencer's work on the two Captain America titles has been sprawling in scope already, and this would no doubt only add one more combustible element to the mix, especially considering real-life tensions mounting between the two super-powers.

One of the true great character finds this year was in the pages of New Avengers, where readers met Todd Zilla, a US Marine who became the American Kaiju and went on a rampage while spitting radioactive fire and screaming "USA" in red, white and blue speech balloons. It was only a matter of time before Al Ewing and Paco Medina brought him back for their ultra-patriotic USAvengers, and the aftermath of Monsters Unleashed seems to be the perfect place to do it.