Nextwave
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Nextwave was a farce superhero comic book series by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen, published by Marvel Comics.
Contents |
History
Nextwave debuted in 2006 and was cancelled after issue #12 which was published in February 2007. The entire run of the series was written by Warren Ellis, drawn by Stuart Immonen and colors by Dave McCaig.
Warren Ellis (on his website) stated in October 2006 that he had initially planned to write the series for twelve issues, then pass it off to another writer. However the initial plan was changed and the series was placed on hiatus until Ellis should choose to return. According to Ellis, this was at least partly because monthly sales could not justify keeping artist Stuart Immonen on the project at his then current pay rate. Ellis has stated that "there will be more Nextwave to come, presented as a sequence of limited series".
Starting with issue #3, Marvel had changed the series title to Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. Artist Stuart Immonen has stated that the title change was due to trademark issues.
A variant edition of issue #5, called the "Crayon Butchery Variant", was printed in black and white on newsprint. Marvel (through the website Comic Book Resources) encouraged readers to color the issue with crayons and enter the results, for a chance to win original artwork from the issue. The winner was announced in the letter column of the tenth issue.
Issue #11 contains a series of splash pages that Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen devised so that in order to get the full impact of the scene, a reader might have to purchase six copies. On the last of the pages, a caption reads "Nextwave: Blatantly wasting your money since 2006".
A theme song was created by series editor Nick Lowe and his brother Matt, by their band Thunder Thighs, advertised on their MySpace page and lyrics printed in the "Director's cut" edition of the first issue. The tabs and lyrics are also in the Volume 1 Hardcover.
Format
The series was written exclusively in two-issue story arcs, a choice deliberately bucking the trend in modern American comics toward decompression. Each issue begins with a humorous FAQ, in which questions are answered with enthusiastic marketing copy that veers into the strange or disturbing, also used to answer questions posed by uninformed readers.
Plot
The Nextwave series features a collection of minor Marvel superheroes, including Monica Rambeau, the former Captain Marvel; Tabitha Smith, formerly of X-Force; Aaron Stack, the Machine Man; monster hunter Elsa Bloodstone; and new character The Captain, previously called Captain ☠☠☠☠ (The obscured words being so horrible that Captain America allegedly "beat seven shades of it out of him" and left him in a dumpster with a bar of soap in his mouth.). These individuals are assembled by H.A.T.E., the Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort, to fight Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction (U.W.M.D.s). The Nextwave team learns that H.A.T.E. is funded by the Beyond Corporation©, an organization run by H.A.T.E.'s terrorist enemy S.I.L.E.N.T.; as a result, the heroes leave H.A.T.E., stealing a vehicle called the Shockwave Rider. They destroy the U.W.M.D.s that the Beyond Corporation and H.A.T.E. have hidden around the United States, while pursued by H.A.T.E. Director Dirk Anger, a parody of Nick Fury. The U.W.M.D.s include Fin Fang Foom, Broccoli Men, Ultra Samurai[5] and the Mindless Ones. Using the Shockwave Rider as a mobile base of operations (the vehicle is larger on the inside than out, much like the TARDIS of Doctor Who), Nextwave is able to rapidly mount missions in widely separated locations including central Illinois, Wyoming, North Dakota, and Nevada.
Nextwave consistently features extreme violence and comedy, and simultaneously satirizes and celebrates Marvel's superhero comics. The series frequently uses flashback scenes in which existing Marvel characters such as Captain America, Ulysses Bloodstone and the Celestials act grossly out of character for comedic purposes. In an interview, Ellis said, "I took The Authority and I stripped out all the plots, logic, character and sanity." "It’s an absolute distillation of the superhero genre. No plot lines, characters, emotions, nothing whatsoever. It’s people posing in the street for no good reason. It is people getting kicked, and then exploding. It is a pure comic book, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. And afterwards, they will explode."
Continuity
The consistent way Nextwave portrays established Marvel characters behaving in uncharacteristic ways has given rise to speculation as to whether the stories should be seen as occurring in the main Marvel continuity or not.
In a 2005 interview, writer Warren Ellis commenting on his Nextwave stories stated: "I think it has to be a self contained universe. It takes from Marvel history, but I wouldn't necessarily want to drag mainstream Marvel into it for fear of what I would do to it.” In 2006 Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada stated that "for the time being" Nextwave was to be considered set in a universe separate from the main Marvel continuity. In contradiction to these earlier statements, recent Marvel publications such as Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and Civil War: Battle Damage Report seem to portray Nextwave's activities as occurring in the mainstream Marvel continuity. To further complicate matters, Nextwave's entry in Civil War: Battle Damage Report states: "Recent intelligence suggests some or all Nextwave members unknowingly had their memories and/or personalities altered by their new employers (H.A.T.E.)".
Another attempt to reconcile Nextwave's continuity (as well as other Marvel continuity "glitches") appeared in She-Hulk #21 (2007), where a version of Monica Rambeau, dressed as the Nextwave version, was shown to originate from the alternate reality known as "Earth-A". A joint effort between corporations on Earth-A and Earth-616 (the mainstream Marvel Universe) was offering "vacation packages" to Earth-A natives that not only transported them to Earth-616, but re-aligned their physiology to grant them the powers and abilities of their 616 counterparts. This Monica Rambeau and other Earth-A "tourists" were being rounded up by authorities and returned to their native reality.
In a scene set after the marriage between Black Panther and Storm, the couple receives a gift from the Beyond Corporation and is signed by "Dirk", which suggests that Dirk Anger resides in Earth-616. Additionally, in X-Men: Manifest Destiny #1, Tabitha Smith is seen retaining the mannerisms and personality shown in Nextwave. Also, she specifically states she was a member of Nextwave, which confuses Beast. Also, in Ms. Marvel, Machine Man is seen with the physical makeup and the silly, zany, bantering personality shown in Nextwave, and albeit he never references his tenure in the team explicitly, he keeps a Monica Rambeau LMD programmed to cry about her tenure with the Avengers: a running gag mentioned many times during the series. Monica herself was shown, during the Civil War, joining Captain America's resistance team with her Nextwave-issued jumpsuit, and going by her real name (albeit the LMD in Aaron possession is dressed in her Photon garb). Most recently, at the 2008 Baltimore Comic Con, Brian Michael Bendis, Dan Slott, and CB Cebulski all made comments hinting that, or in Cebulski's case outright stating that, NextWave fully exists in Earth 616's timeline.