So, What Was the Deal With Marvel and Nextwave?

“Gonna Change My Way of Thinking” is a feature spotlighting notable examples of retcons that don’t fit into the framework of Abandoned an’ Forsaked, which is specifically about stories that outright “overturn” older stories. There are many examples of “retroactive continuity” that do not actively abandon the works of the past (especially cases where the overall continuity was rebooted). Some of them are minor, some of them are major. Today, we look at how Marvel struggled with handling where Nextwave existed in continuity, using a couple of retcons along the way.

Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E.was a classic maxiseries by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen (along with inker Wade Von Grawbadger and colorist Dave McCaig) that took four disparate superheroes from the Marvel Universe, plus one original character, and put them in a team together. Monica Rambeau, Machine Man, Elsa Bloodstone and Boom Boom were joined by The Captain.

The whole idea of the comic was to take the characters and sort of distill them down to their most notable attributes. Machine Man’s deal was that he hates humanity. Monica Rambeau’s was that she was sort of an annoying leader of the team. The Captain couldn’t even remember what he was the Captain OF any more. Boom Boom’s bit was that she was a bit of a moron (a parody of a certain sort of American). Elsa Bloodstone….well, she actually came off really well, now that I think about it.

The series was ostensibly about a group of lesser known superheroes who find out that a Nick Fury knock-off was going around the country collecting Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction that the heroes have to get to before he does. But really, that was just a loose setup that allowed for Ellis and Immonen to just cut loose, and do whatever they wanted, especially as the series was constructed to be six two-issue arcs, so no one arc ever got too long, since Ellis and Immonen were already on to the next thing.

The question that many fans wondered about for a few years, though, was…so, is Nextwave part of the Marvel Universe or what?

Was Nextwave originally meant to be in continuity?

The idea for the series came from Brian Michael Bendis making a comment about how no one was really re-inventing team comic books the same way that other books were getting desconstructed. Ellis noted in a Wizard chat that this made him think, “How can I really horrify Bendis? What could I do that would just scare the s— out of him and make him utterly regret saying that. So I took The Authority and I stripped out all the plots, logic, character and sanity. I just cut everything back until I was left with pure superhero comics.”

As noted, so much of the series was about stripping the characters down to some sort of core idea, which Ellis later explained as, “It’s an absolute distillation of the superhero genre. No plot lines, characters, emotions, nothing whatsoever. It’s people posing in the street for no good reason. It is people getting kicked, and then exploding. It is a pure comic book, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. And afterwards, they will explode.”

And that’s really what the series WAS like….

So, something like that really didn’t fit in the Marvel Universe, and Marvel’s then Editor-in-Chief, Joe Quesada, said as much, explaining that Nextwave was considered to be a separate universe much in the same way the Ultimate titles were. Ellis also told Jennifer Contino, “I think it has to be a self-contained universe. It takes fromMarvel history, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to drag mainstream Marvel into it for fear of what I would do to it.”

And really, they just kept doing trippy stuff, like fighting Forbush Man, who trapped them all in their own minds, with their respective minds being parodies of various famous comic book artists (Gene Colan for Monica, Chris Ware for Machine Man, John Paul Leon for The Captain, and Mike Mignola for Elsa Bloodstone – Immonen really outdid himself here)…

Boom Boom saves the day by not having a mind to take advantage of. It was that sort of book.

So, yeah, Nextwave wasn’t part of the Marvel Universe.

But…..

How was the continuity issue regarding Nextwave ultimately resolved?

The “problem” was that everyone loved the book so much, including Marvel’s other creators, that people kept on citing Nextwave, and having the characters from Nextwave show up in other books.

Tabitha (“Boom Boom”) showed up in X-Men: Manifest Destiny #1 (by James Asmus, Chris Burnham, and Nathan Fairbairn) referencing her time in Nextwave, and totally acting like she did in that series…

Monica Rambeau showed up in Marvel Divas #1 (by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Tonči Zonjić, June Chung, and Jelena Kevic Djurdjevic) referencing her time in Nextwave…

and Machine Man showed up in his Nextwave form in Ms. Marvel #18 (by Brian Reed, Aaron Lopresti, Matt Ryan, and Chris Sotomayor)…

(Machine Man is a whole other story that I’ll get to in the next day or so. So if you’re all, “But, Brian, Machine Man…” Don’t worry, I got it).

So it was getting to be pretty darn clear that Nextwave existed in the Marvel Universe. The only problem was, again, Nextwave DIDN’T FIT into the Marvel Universe. Ellis didn’t bother paying any attention to continuity, since he wasn’t intending it to BE in continuity, so there were multiple things that were just in their own little universe, like Monica having her powers as a kid, or Fin Fang Foom being created by The Beyond Corporation stuff like that.

Al Ewing, who is great at this sort of thing, came up with the solution in Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #6 (by Ewing, Luke Ross, and Rachelle Rosenberg), where he revealed that Monica, and the other heroes, were TAKEN from the regular Marvel Earth, and placed on an ALTERNATE Earth (later dubbed Earth-63163) where the Beyond Corporation messed with reality a bit, and also messed with their minds, giving them slightly different personalities, which had a somewhat lasting effect on them all…

That’s just so clever by Ewing.

Okay, folks, feel free to suggest more examples of this sort of thing! Obscure ones, famous ones, whatever! Send your suggestions to brianc@cbr.com!