New "Marvel NOW" Faux Reboot Confuses Everyone!

Entertainment Weekly has news on Marvel's response to DC's New 52 with their own universe shaking relaunch dubbed Marvel NOW! which will begin in October. Except it's not actually a reboot. Although characters are changing costumes and alliances. And there'll be a whole host of new issue ones. And a lot of the teams have been split up and mixed together. And if the bulk of your Marvel knowledge comes from the films then prepare to be thoroughly confused.

Art by Marvel CEO Joe Quesada shows off the head-scratching new looks for the major players:

So seeing as how armour on the Hulk makes about as much sense as oven mitts on Wolverine, I'm going to assume that this harness is some kind of control mechanism? If so, I think it's sweet that they made it purple. "We're going to take over your body against your wishes, Bruce, but to make up for it we've made the mechanism purple. We notice you wear a lot of purple pants."

More befuddled cynicism, and another image, after the jump!

So mainstream Nick Fury is now black too, although it might actually be the white Nick Fury's long lost son or some other super opera craziness. Iron Man's armour is black now too, although it might be Iron Man's original armour's long lost son as well.

If Thor ever decides that an indestructible enchanted hammer isn't cutting it he has twin swords to draw upon. Sue is now the white version, Cap is the movie version, Cable has traded his cybernetic eye for one of Nick's spare eye-patches, and Cyclops looks like a satanic alien. I do like Marvel Girl in her traditional costume and this is apparently because there'll be a time-travel story where the original first class of X-Men travel to the present to WTF with the rest of us.

Rocket Raccoon kicks ass though. And I'm glad they're priming us for the Guardians of the Galaxy movie in 2014 because I have no idea what that is yet. I'm intrigued though.

And that's really my only issue here. I would love a jump-on point for Marvel because I am genuinely interested in their characters, but reading that EW article only serves to further muddy the waters. It's all overly complicated and still relies on a lot of prior knowledge of the Marvel U's convoluted continuity. I'd embrace X-Men #1, or The Avengers #1 as a starting point, but instead we get the mixed up Uncanny Avengers #1:

There's more info on this one at EW here, but my favourite quote is: "Uncanny Avengers will also feature the mutant Rogue, who Remender describes as “the Wolverine of the team now." In a team which features Wolverine. Maybe Wolverine is now the Captain America of the team and Captain America is now the Howard the Duck?

Still, bless them for trying. I'll give some of these a shot when October rolls around. I'd love to be surprised!