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Marvel TV recommendations for 2017-2018

Marvel has quite a few shows in the works. I'm going to try to do recommendations for the ones we know are coming. Obviously the shows themselves may not last or even happen as planned, but here's what we've got.

Inhumans:

Inhumans by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee - seriously this is the definitive Inhumans work. It's beautiful written and handled. Every character gets a chance to shine. This series really focuses on who the Inhumans are as characters and their society as the Inhumans must deal with a threat from within and from without at the same time with surprising results. There is really no other Inhumans story that captures them as well or comes close to this.

Cloak & Dagger:

This is a harder one. Going off what I'm seeing from the trailer, the Cloak and Dagger comics are nothing like the show will be. The show seems to be more about teen angst and a Romeo & Juliet type story with the government after them. The comic, however, is about two runaways who are experimented on and decide to wage a 2 person war against drugs and other street crimes that effect kids.

There is of course Cloak and Dagger: Shadows and Light by Bill Mantlo, Al Milgrom, Chris Claremont, and others - but this story focuses on the creation of Cloak and Dagger, they're strange symbiotic relationship and of course their war against drug pushers on the street. It's a darker series than the Freeform one appears to be and I can't think of a comic that is remotely like the Freeform show appears to be. Hopefully people who see the show will enjoy this unique duo fighting criminals that are out to destroy the world, one person at a time.

New Warriors:


Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North, Erica Henderson, and Chip Zdarsky - long running at this point series about the unbeatable Squirrel girl and her antics. Squirrel Girl was created as an entirely spoof character with the proportionate strength, teeth, and tail of a squirrel and also the ability to communicate with squirrels. Shortly after appearing she's taken down Doctor Doom, Galactus, Thanos, and others of the biggest, baddest guys around. Obviously Squirrel Girl's comic focuses on her crazy hijinks and you probably already have several in your library.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl & the Great Lakes Avengers by Steve Ditko, Will Murray and Dan Slott - This one begins Squirrel Girl's adventures and chronicles her early appearances including her joining the Great Lakes Avengers. Mister Immortal will be playing a role in this New Warriors show, though he may not actually be immortal in the show. This trade though is a tad more teen/adult oriented, so it may be best not to put it next to the kid friendly Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Don't want parents having to explain to their kids why Mister Immortal keeps committing suicide.

Civil War New Warriors by Zeb Wells and Skottie Young - This contains some of the characters from the show in a sorta lighthearted take on the series? Basically the New Warriors are reality TV stars in this with Speedball and some returning members with new members have a little fun, help some people, and take on some bad guys. This book, however, does lead to the New Warriors' big "screw up" where a villain blows up an entire town and leads to Marvel's Civil War.

Other than that.. New Warriors is another one where the comic itself is super serious and about growing up and dealing with real issues. There are issues with a character dealing with an abusive parent, whom he accidentally murders with his powers after his dad begins to beat him. One of the brief leaders has to make a tough decision in a sticky war the New Warriors get drawn into the middle of it and then she is brought on trail for working against America's best interests in the area. Not sure why Marvel is doing a super comedy version of this team, but that's what they've decided to do.

Runaways:

Runaways Complete Collection vol 1 by Brian K Vaughn, Adriana Alphona, and Takeshi Miyazawa - This is basically what the first season is supposed to based on, though according to reports the show will be more lighthearted. This story focuses on a group of 6 kids who discover their parents are a supervillain group called The Pride. Each parent is paired up together (mystic couple, time travel couple, evil genius couple, ect). The kids discover this and decide to run away from their parents and begin to discover the truth behind who they really are and who their parents really are. It's an interesting enough concept, but one of the problems with this is the team starts to fall flat after this first arc. They have nothing to do after their parents are defeated, yet it keeps going. Feel free to get the rest for your library, but as the series progresses it's clear the writers don't really know what to do with the concept and the "team" begins feeling less like a team and more like 1-2 characters do all the heroics while everyone else just stands around.

The Gifted:
The closest I have to this is The Brotherhood but it's not even in trade and it's really nothing like this. Honestly, there isn't an X-Men comic like the Gifted. You could just say random X-men comics, but even then it's not going to have the same feel as this series seems to be having, but given Fox's history with the X-Men properties this is not unusual.



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