Marvel Unleashes "Herc" In April

[NightBeetle]

Official Press Release

This April prepare for Herc #1 – an explosive new ongoing series from New York Times Best Selling writers Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente and artist Neil Edwards setting Marvel’s baddest bone-breaker loose on a raging one-man beat down of the Marvel Universe’s vicious criminal underground. And he won’t be relying on his fists alone! Armed with the keys to Ares’ abandoned armory, Hercules is ready to unleash three thousand years worth of brawling experience upon his foes while preparing to confront the perils of FEAR ITSELF!

“This ain’t the heavenly spires of Mount Olympus, the plush comforts of Avengers Tower or some hot night club known where the body shots are on the house. Herc’s in the dark alleys of the Marvel Universe—the mean streets of NewYork,” said Senior Editor Mark Paniccia. “There’s no one to watch his back and, if he doesn’t play it smart, he can be maimed…or even killed. The easy days of life as a god are over.”
It’s Hercules like you’ve never seen him before as he sets out on an action-packed epic of monumental proportions that will keep fans on the edge of their seats and demanding more! Discover what happens when the Earth’s most formidable warrior is forced to cut a swath of destruction through the very core of the Marvel Universe in the all-new, all ruthless Herc #1 & 2 – double-shipping this April!

HERC #1 (FEB110581)
HERC #1 ROMITA JR. VARIANT (FEB110582)
Written by GREG PAK & FRED VAN LENTE
Pencils by NEIL EDWARDS
Cover by CARLO PAGULAYAN
Variant Cover by JOHN ROMITA JR.
Rated T+…$3.99

FOC – 3/14/11, On-Sale 4/6/11
HERC #2 (FEB110583)
Written by GREG PAK & FRED VAN LENTE
Pencils by NEIL EDWARDS
Cover by CARLO PAGULAYAN
Rated T+…$2.99
FOC – 3/28/11, On-Sale 4/20/11

Link

 

[runawayboulder]

Herc is the new Man Without Fear?

 

[bored]

Black Panther revealed that he is an issue with gingers (they just freak him out, you know?), and was disqualified.

Boy, wait until Hercules finds out that he's now susceptible to v.d.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Herc is the new Man Without Fear?

Don't hate. Unlike Black Panther, Herc makes total sense in this context. What, is he just gonna retire because he doesn't have powers? F*** that, he's been a warrior for millennia. He's not gonna let something as trivial as a lack of super-strength or immortality slow him down. The fact that he happens to be in a New York neighborhood makes no more difference now than it did when he was spending most of his time in New York with his divinity.

Plus, even as a god, he was much more "of the people" than other gods. He'd spend plenty of time in Earth bars picking up random mortal chicks--probably more time than he spent on Olympus looking down his nose at mortals like the rest of his pantheon.

 

[herakles]

Pak imo is the only guy for the Job! I liked the way he wrote Herc! Glad Pak is going to write Herc's new ongoing!

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Having read both Pak and Van Lente separately, it honestly seems like Van Lente is doing most of the heavy lifting on anything involving Herc.

 

[Watchman]

Street level Herc? Eh, not interested.

 

[Dread]

It is an interesting premise, springing forward from CHAOS WAR #5. I'm actually glad that this isn't the end of the road for Pak & Van Lente on Herc. I imagine it may have been, but the boost in sales for CHAOS WAR was promising enough, and maybe Marvel cares about critically acclaimed comics after all. I liked how CHAOS WAR managed to have something major happen to a character without killing him.

In a way, Herc may end up as Cho's sidekick for a while, which is a twist I guess. I suppose without his powers, Hercules is still a proportionately strong guy with a lot of combat knowledge. I am curious how he gets used to it, though. I trust the creative team to handle it well, though. I don't think it'll last forever; heroes always get depowered and repowered in comics, especially gods. Thor's lost powers at times, as has Hercules.

Marvel is showing some stones with this as an ongoing; they didn't have the stones to launch INCREDIBLE HERCULES without fooling Hulk's audience. They're still selling #1 at $3.99, which has only failed for every single launch for every single B or C list character they have ever used it with. I love Marvel because they can see something fail EVERY SINGLE TIME and still do it like a brain dead computer program. Besides, wasn't 2011 the year of no $3.99 debut issues for ongoing series? Shouldn't we have noticed price cuts by April? Or was David Gabriel misquoted again? I swear, he whines about someone misquoting someone from Marvel so many times, you'd think the 12 apostles ran Marvel and not just a bunch of guys who don't know what each is doing and fear being honest with the market more than death itself.

Good to see more Herc from this creative team. I'll give the direction a chance, since I doubt it'll be forever and it could work in the short to moderate term. Do I think it'll last beyond 6 issues? Not really. Do I think it'll last 12? That would be a real Herculean labor.

Y'know what'd be cool? Powerless Herc as a Hero For Hire. And doesn't Van Lente write POWER MAN & IRON FIST? We're halfway there already!

 

[runawayboulder]

Don't hate. Unlike Black Panther, Herc makes total sense in this context. What, is he just gonna retire because he doesn't have powers? F*** that, he's been a warrior for millennia. He's not gonna let something as trivial as a lack of super-strength or immortality slow him down. The fact that he happens to be in a New York neighborhood makes no more difference now than it did when he was spending most of his time in New York with his divinity.

Plus, even as a god, he was much more "of the people" than other gods. He'd spend plenty of time in Earth bars picking up random mortal chicks--probably more time than he spent on Olympus looking down his nose at mortals like the rest of his pantheon.

I wasn't hatin', more goofing than anything. The cover just reminds me of those New MWOF teasers last year.

 

[Dread]

I do wonder if Herc's shield on that cover isn't just for show; could it be a reworked version of the Aegis? Or some other mythological weapon? After all, just because Hercules may actually be "human" in terms of power level now doesn't mean he can't use enchanted weaponry.

It would make sense if Herc retained "Olympic" level strength, for obvious reasons.

 

[Tron Bonne]

It is an interesting premise, springing forward from CHAOS WAR #5. I'm actually glad that this isn't the end of the road for Pak & Van Lente on Herc. I imagine it may have been, but the boost in sales for CHAOS WAR was promising enough, and maybe Marvel cares about critically acclaimed comics after all. I liked how CHAOS WAR managed to have something major happen to a character without killing him.

Yeah, I was kind of wondering that myself, since it we've have March and April solicitations and neither of the two had this title or any kind of 'classified' title.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Street level Herc? Eh, not interested.

But it's the same writers as Incredible Hercules and features Herc using Ares' armory. Literally the only "street-level" thing about it is the fact that Herc's living in Brooklyn...

 

[Dread]

Yeah, I was kind of wondering that myself, since it we've have March and April solicitations and neither of the two had this title or any kind of 'classified' title.

Yes, that is weird that Marvel has taken this long to solicit it.

The sales for CHAOS WAR are nothing to give SHADOWLAND anything to worry about, but it's still an improvement over prior mini's on the book. CHAOS WAR #1 debuted to sales of 34.5k. Issue two fell to 29k, three to 28k, and issue four ended 2010 with around 26k. Given that INCREDIBLE HERCULES as an ongoing title wrapped in Feb. 2010 with sales of 24.5k, and that PRINCE OF POWER had fallen as low as 17k an issue, and you can see the boost.

Granted, that doesn't mean that sales can remain north of 19k longer than six issues, but Marvel's strategy from a sales standpoint isn't nuts. I just wonder how well many of these high quality B-List franchises would sell if their debut issue wasn't the most expensive.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

But it's the same writers as Incredible Hercules and features Herc using Ares' armory. Literally the only "street-level" thing about it is the fact that Herc's living in Brooklyn...

And the fact that Spider-Man could prob beat him up right about now. I'm not "uninterested" in street-level Herc, but it is a bit of a bummer. I can't wait to find out why he's in the alleys of Brooklyn anyway, I really hope he's not fighting mystical muggers and enchanted carjackers.

 

[SuperFerret]

There are alleys in Brooklyn?

 

[Colossal Spoons]

The drug deals need to happen somewhere

 

[fifthfiend]

I know they've done many other depowering plots with many other characters but I didn't actually care about any of those either.

 

[SuperFerret]

The drug deals need to happen somewhere

That's what the public schools are for.

 

[BrianWilly]

So I'm gonna hella read this.

But question: why don't one of the other gods just make Herc a demigod again? Is it supposed to be some hard process or something? It seems like gods apotheo...size...people all the time, I mean, Herc originally got elevated because the gods were like "You know what, we should make him a god!"

 

[Dread]

The fact that both Zeus and Hera are dead may complicate that sort of thing. Although given that Hebe literally makes the nectar of the gods and Amadeus Cho literally had a race around the pantheon with Vali Halfling for a "god making juice", it does beg the question of why Herc is "normal". It may be that because he utilized all of his "super-god" power before he was ready to save the world, his body is "stuck" at powerless form and no divine power can empower it.

Hercules was the "highfather", but he lost those powers to repair all of the damage Chaos King made. I guess that means Athena is back to being atop the Pantheon, and she may not be too eager to repower Hercules, given that he tried to kill her and disobeyed her again. At least not until it suits her whims. Of course, gleefully forgotten in the MU is the nanotech technique that empowered The Order in California that was capable of giving a normal human being super-powers for a year and even, at least for one, duplicate a mutant power lost on M-Day. You'd have thought Tony Stark and/or Reed Richards might have wanted to share that one with Cyclops or Beast or even their old Illuminati buddy Xavier, but...nah.

The entire purpose of this relaunch is to do a "Herc without powers" story, at least for an arc or two. Is it permanent? I doubt it, but nobody is saying it is supposed to be. Hercules was "dead" for all of 6 issues of material. He was the Highfather for five. Its just a story idea. At least Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente know the difference between a plot idea and a status quo.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

As far as I can tell, the power ain't available for apotheosis. It probably takes a skyfather for that since Zeus is the one who raised him to full godhood in the first place and, as far as I know, only Odin has raised beings to godhood in the Norse pantheon (see: Jane Foster, Red Norvell, and Thialfi). The Olympians don't have a skyfather or skyfather-level power available at the moment because Zeus and Hera are dead, Athena may still be dead as well, and Herc spent all of his uber-skyfather power hitting the universe's "reset" button. Odin's back, but every single Asgardian god seems to be a completely unreasonable dick in Thor right now.

Also, keep in mind Herc's pride. He was given full godhood upon his first mortal death as a reward for his heroism in life. Does he strike you as the kind of guy who's likelier to go around asking other gods for charity or the kind who'd be like "who needs godhood anyway?" and simply try to adjust to his new reality?

Anyway, they gotta re-godify him sometime. Until then, this is an interesting new direction for him.

 

[Dread]

Agreed. Athena seemed to still be alive as CHAOS WAR ended, but I doubt she would "repower" him until it suited her purposes. Plus, as you said, Herc isn't the type to beg. I don't see this as long term so I'll see how they roll with it. Pak & Van Lente have been solid with this, so why would I doubt 'em now? They could turn Herc into a donkey and I'd probably read it.

I mean...Thor was a frog once.

Plus...I don't imagine a Norse god has authority to restore the divinity of a Greek one. That'd probably violate some cosmic union rule or something.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Thor was a frog once... and it was awesome.

Also, the same guy introduced an alien horse as Thor's brother-in-arms... and that was awesome too.

 

[bored]

There is a preview for "Herc" #1 out on Newsarama today. Turns out that ol' Hercules is

Spoiler

going be straight-up killing and dismembering people now.

 

[Dread]

There is a preview for "Herc" #1 out on Newsarama today. Turns out that ol' Hercules is

Spoiler

going be straight-up killing and dismembering people now.

Pretty cool preview. It does look like Hercules' weapons won't be "mere" at all. Plus, I have no sympathy for gang members who bring uzi's onto subway trains.

(In the preview, he does offer them one chance to surrender even after some battle has occurred.)