Champions

This month in Marvel's February solicitations, there's a fight you never knew you wanted, answers you've been clamoring for for over a year, and an odd reunion of an odd superhero team, of a sorts.

Marvel's Monster's Unleashed still has the tie-ins we've come to expect from event comics, but rather than taking up space and derailing the ongoing creative team's story, Marvel is publishing one-shots, giving other creators a chance to pit Marvel heroes against classic Marvel monsters. Today, the publisher announced four more one-shots as part of the event, as the war against the monsters goes global.

Champions #2, by Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos, features Cyclops joining a team that doesn't start with "X" for the first time ever. To be clear, this is the young Cyclops who came to the present in All-New X-Men, not the older Cyclops who as far as we know is dead. But either way, Scott Summers is a character inseparable from the X-Men, and now he's going to be a Champion instead.

Superhero publishers sure love a variant cover theme month, and Marvel's latest is coming in from a decidedly educational angle. In November, Marvel will release five covers celebrating the different aspects of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) with the goal of encouraging its fans to pursue their dreams, whatever field they may lie in.

Marvel's next big line launch was formally unveiled this week via a special edition of Marvel Previews, including new #1s for Avengers, Venom, Captain Marvel, and Star-Lord, new launches for Champions, Jessica Jones, Kingpin, Bullseye, Slapstick, and Solo, and new concepts in Occupy Avengers, Iron Fists, Mosaic, Infamous Iron Man, and Unstoppable Wasp. Following our roundtable discussion of DC Rebirth, the ComicsAlliance team got together to break down the highs and lows of the new Marvel NOW. Join Elle Collins, James Leask, Katie Schenkel, Kieran Shiach, and Andrew Wheeler as they pick out the books they're most excited about and the books they're concerned about, and discuss Marvel's approach to legacy heroes and the state of diversity at Marvel today.

Yesterday we reported on the leaking of Marvel Comics' Marvel Previews free magazine, unveiling their entire post-Civil War II line-up including comics such as The Unstoppable Wasp, Solo, Foolkiller and Prowler. Today, the magazine has officially been released via comic stores and online, confirming even more titles and creative teams, including a Kate Bishop Hawkeye book and the much awaited Gamora solo title from Guardians of the Galaxy screenwriter Nicole Perlman.

Well now we know what those "I Quit" promo images were all about. Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, and Nova are quitting the Avengers, leaving the All-New All-Different team without so much of the new and different. Thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we now know for sure that they're forming their own team along with Cyclops (the teenage version), Hulk (Amadeus Cho, that is) and Viv Vision (the daughter from Tom King's Vision book). And for once the team that splits off from the Avengers isn't called the Something Something Avengers. These young heroes are taking on a name Marvel hasn't used in decades, the Champions.