COMICS: Steve McNiven To Join Rick Remender For UNCANNY AVENGERS "Ragnarok Now!" Arc
Civil War, Nemesis and Old Man Logan artist Steve McNiven is set to join Rick Remender this November for the epic "Ragnarok Now!" story arc. Hit the jump for details from the writer as well as the first piece of promo art!
We're hitting a point in the story where, frankly, when I pitched this stuff, I entirely expected that I would just have a bunch of people telling me, "You can't do this." But instead Marvel were very supportive, and they've gotten behind it in a big way, and I think McNiven's inclusion on the team speaks to that.
This story is built upon the notion that if there isn't unity, there is only doom awaiting us as a people, and using the Avengers and the X-Men as sort of a metaphor for that, and their inability to get along, and find a common ground, and find a consensus with one another, and work together. That disharmony only continues.
In the same way in "The Dark Angel Saga" I seeded that Warren Worthington was maybe losing control to Archangel in the first issue, I seeded some things in the first issue of Uncanny Avengers that are now paying out here. I always like to seed things like that. So what's coming up is heart-wrenching and bloody and terrible and epic, and it takes the sort of stakes and the kind of thing I was doing in "The Dark Angel Saga" to an entirely different level. It's no longer hidden underground some place. This is happening in a big way, worldwide.
The events that we're leading up to are so visual, that they demanded someone of McNiven's caliber. I was really excited that Marvel thought so as well, and approached him and put him on the project, and he was willing to do it. He was actually very excited when he heard about it. His enthusiasm is very comforting. It's always nice when the artist is emailing you frothing at the mouth with excitement, as opposed to silence, which happens on occasion. [Laughs.]
Steve is very excited, and the things that we're building up to are now finally starting to pay out. And it's only the beginning. I think we're calling the [Daniel] Acuña stuff "The Apocalypse Twins," and this will be the actual "Ragnarok Now!". This will be sort of the climax of everything that we've done so far, and it's definitely the bloodiest story that I've ever written. Trying to really punish the characters for their inability to work together. This is more fallout from [Avengers vs. X-Men], and more fallout from how the Avengers and the X-Men have cohabitated in general in the Marvel Universe.
A lot more details from Remender about "Ragnarok Now! can be found by clicking on the link below. The arc begins with issue #14 and will conclude what has been described as Remender's first 25 issue epic on the Uncanny Avengers series. Are you guys excited? Stay tuned for updates!