Marvel Announces Some of the New Series It Teased

This week Marvel released even more teasers for some of their new Marvel NOW! series, and now they’ve just come out and announced them. Well, two of them, but just you wait. There will probably be another batch of announcements and teases in a couple of weeks. Just you wait.

Anyway, first up is the Daniel Way and Steve Dillon series Thunderbolts. The Thunderbolts have been a lot of things over the years. They were a group of villains disguised as heroes, they were villains trying to be heroes, they were Norman Osborn’s bitches, and they were time travelers. Now they will be a team led by General Thunderbolt Ross, the Red Hulk. The team will consist of the Rulk, obviously, Venom, Electra, the Punisher, and Deadpool, the character Way has been writing for the past four years or something.

Marvel editor Jordan D. White talked up the new series in an interview with Newsarama. He said that the new team won’t be affiliated with an government agency. The team has nobody to answer to, just the Rulk. White also teased that the team would continue to grow, adding characters that will be revealed over the first few issues. All the additions to the team, though, will be people who are considered heroes but who started out as villains, keeping true to the idea behind the Thunderbolts. 

Thunderbolts issue 1 hits shelves this December. Here’s the cover of the first issue.

Next up, the Dennis Hopeless and Kev Walker series that was teased as SURVIVE has been revealed to be Avengers Arena, a Battle Royale style series where 16 young heroes are kidnapped by the villain Arcade and taken to his new Murder Land. The kidnapped heroes include Reptil, Mettle, Hazmat, X-23, and Juston and his Sentinel from Avengers Academy, Darkhawk, who I haven’t seen in anything since Runaways, and Nico and Chase from the Runaways.

Hopeless, Walker, and editor Bill Rosemann were interviewed by Marvel.com. In the interview, they said that on top of the already existing characters they got to “cherry pick,” they also created some new characters who come from the Braddock Academy. Hopeless also assured people that even though this is a pretty big cast for a book and there is going to be a lot of murdering happening, no deaths were just thrown in there for death’s sake.

I really hope this series turns out well. I haven’t gotten a chance to read any of Hopeless’ work at time of writing, but this does sound like a really cool idea. Also, I have a soft spot in my heart for the Runaways, so getting to see Nico and Chase in a comic again will be so good.

Avengers Arena issue 1 comes out in December. Here is the first issue’s cover.