Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Agent M, al ewing, House of Ideas, kieron gillen, marvel, ron perazza, ryan penagos

Marvel's House Of Ideas Or Is That House Of Irony

Published Mon, 14 Oct 2013 10:00:41 -0500

Joe Glass writes for Bleeding Cool:

On the very last day of NYCC 2013, at least one thing would just have to go wrong. It's the end of a LONG weekend, most of the guests and fans are extremely hungover and tired, and this extends to the tech and facilities of the convention centre, which clearly must have also been on an all-night bender.

Marvel's House of Ideas panel was supposed to discuss the various digital and multimedia aspects of the great ship Marvel.

It did not go to plan.

At the panel start, rather than just one or two missing panelists, all that were actually there were T Q Jefferson and Ron Perazza, shortly followed by Al Ewing, but Kieron Gillen and panel moderator (who actually had the presentation with him), Ryan Penagos (Marvel's Agent M) were stuck trying to get from the otherside of the con.

After a long attempt at setting up and almost accidentally showing something he shouldn't have, Penagos got things underway, albeit with a hungover and slightly craggily voiced Ewing and Gillen (who had apparently been up singing karaoke until 430am….I wish I was there, I bloody love karaoke).

However, the MacBook was still not playing ball, so we had a brief Q&A, followed by Ewing revealing a bit more about his NYCC announced Loki: Agent of Asgard book. Loki will be taking missions from the All Mother, and in return will get some of the things that he wants, which can never be good. Already sounding slightly similar to Gillen's own run on Journey Into Mystery, Ewing promised that there'll lots of espionage and intrigue in a godly fashion, and he knows how much we all love 'feels' so, "Get ready to weep tears!"

Gillen talked a bit about the wonderful art of Origin II which has been coming in, praising Kubert, which had just been revealed at the special Marvel Unlimited + panel for the MU+ subscribers (where they were also treated to the footage from Guardians of the Galaxy seen at the retailer breakfast a few days ago). Unlimited + sounds like a fantastic service, especially if these are the kind of perks you can expect, so one to look into.

Finally up and running, we moved onto an update of Project Gamma. I should point out, little in the way of new information or reveals were made at this panel, and it was more an update on how things are coming along. As such, Project Gamma, announced at SXSW this year, has been promised to be ticking along, looking into ways of adding music and other multimedia effects to digital comics to enhance the reader experience without being too gimmicky.

Moving on, we got a discussion of Infinite Comics, which will be continuing in a weekly release for the next year at least, and is currently showcasing an Iron Man story that was a collaboration between Ewing and Gillen, taking one of Gillen's original early pitches for Iron Man and Ewing handling final scripting duties. It's a hard sci-fi concept, so Gillen pointed out that as it's Iron Man, they're collaboration has rarely been in person and mostly via 'the Skypes' and phone: has to be technologically based, of course. It was also stressed that the company Cortex Inc will also be appearing in a big way in Mighty Avengers by Ewing, so the Infinite Comic is a good place to get an early insight into them.

As we suddenly hit some more issues involving sound, Kieron finally calls out the fact that we'd all been thinking; that we're in a digital panel that is plagued with technical difficulties.

Marvel Original Video was briefly touched on, such as Earth's Mightiest Show, The Watcher and we were shown a special episode of Superheroes: What the…? starring the con-exclusive Rocket Raccoon plush.

This of course caused everything to stop working again when the video ended.

Discussing Marvel Games, we're told about an Amazing Spider-Man 2 game coming up, with original story by Christos Gage, that will touch on points of the movie but is very much it's own thing, and told about a trailer we were meant to see but couldn't because the computer was having a tizzy fit. We were told about an interesting new element to the game, whereby the NPC AI will react to you differently depending on how you play as Spider-Man: take the Responsibility route, and passers by will help you with information, and cops will come to your aid. Take the Power route, and you'll be treated as a menace.

Finally, the computer works again and we get a nice trailer for Lego Marvel Superheroes, out in two weeks, that showcased the sheer huge number of characters (a promised 140, even including Captain Britain!), vehicles and the ability to do almost anything.

The Thor: The Dark World mobile game will have an original story too by Chris Yost, and will include a playable Beta Ray Bill, and we were told about some various extras you can get for games such as Marvel Heroes and Avengers Alliance.

After the a look at a new ongoing story element to Marvel AR, covering the quirky adventures of the Marvel editorial bullpen (where we learn that Nick Lowe has a lovely singing voice and should really consider Broadway), the computer seemed to die it's final death and we ended with a Q&A that reiterated some of the upcoming releases, promised that lots of other ventures are being looked into, such as weekly webcomics and a Marvel News app, but that there was nothing to announce at this time. As the department is small, they need to make sure they have the people to make sure it's done well and done right, and likewise, they don't want to flood the market with mediocre Marvel liscensed games, rather one or two great Marvel games.

Finally, time was called on the panel, ending what was the most farcical yet entertaining panels of the morning. It could only happen on the last day of comic con.

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