Will I Be Giving Thanks For Gimmicks?

With last month's solicitations, there wasn't much going on at Marvel that interested me, but there was quite a bit with all the other publishers. In the solicits for November, it's the opposite.

Copperhead and Atomic Robo are continuing, which is good, but not new. Ditto Giant Days, which does also have a giant-size special coming out in November. The thing is, the special is $8, and more pressingly, it's a tribute to the films of Richard Curtis, who directed Love, Actually. That is pretty emphatically Not For Me.

DC is still doing this "Metal" thing, which is also Not For Me. There is going to be an Etrigan mini-series, with art by Brad Walker. That might be something worth looking into, especially if the first issue of the Ragman mini-series failed to grab me. Although Guillem March drew a pretty cool cover for November's issue of Ragman, gonna be hard to pass up, unless the first issue is complete garbage.

Then there's Marvel. Now last month, I noted that among all the renumbering, Jennifer Walters' book was not getting to count all the issues of her past series. Well, it is now, so she's up to #159. I don't understand the Legacy heading on books that haven't changed their numbering, like Spider-Man/Deadpool, or Defenders, but not my monkeys, not my circus.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is having an issue drawn by all her friends. Those "jam" issues are always a mixed bag, but we'll see how it goes. Gwenpool is still gunning for Dr. Doom, Deadpool is taking a break from killing Cable to fight dinosaurs. Who would expect Deadpool to take the more sensible path?

And there are the one-shots for returning series. Darkhawk, Power Pack, Master of Kung-Fu, a few others. I highlighted those three since they're the ones I'm considering getting. I wish they'd let Dalibor Talajic do the cover for Master of Kung-Fu, because Mike Mayhew's is not working for me.

I assume these are testing the waters for possible titles to bring back, because otherwise, it's some interesting choices. Although I guess it would be hard to find many characters that had an ongoing at some point, but not for a very long time. Wendell Vaughn isn't Quasar any longer, which might preclude that, I feel like Deathlok got a series when they first brought him into Agents of SHIELD, that wasn't too long ago. I guess Quicksilver hasn't had one since the '90s, they could have used him.

What it reminds me of is when DC had Blackest Night running, and for one month, they brought a bunch of long-canceled titles "back from the dead", the numbering picking up where it left off. Suicide Squad, The Question, Starman, etc. Admittedly, those were shoehorned into that particular event, so there had to be a bunch of stuff about fighting people back from the dead. Presumably Marvel isn't going that route there, so much as picking up with the characters in their current status. Whether that's any better, really depends on the execution, doesn't it?