War of Kings News Round-up for 12/20/08

Here's a run-down on this week's news about War of Kings.

My Cup O' Joe #36 has some preview art from Secret Invasion: War of Kings, along with some hype for the event (although, absolutely no mention of the Starjammers).


Marvel released a trailer for War of Kings, which shows some of the previously revealed covers and preview art. Rachel is shown on the Kingbreaker #2 cover, but that's it.


Marvel also has an interview with Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (DnA) about the Inhumans and War of Kings, and Vulcan is mentioned (no Starjammers).


Newsarama has an interview with DnA about War of Kings, and the Starjammers and Kingbreaker are mentioned, but not entirely good news:

NRAMA: Since you have the Shi'Ar showing up, are you having to coordinate this with the X-Universe at all?

AL: Yes, we've been coordinating with the X-Men office, and we're actually coming out of the X-Men: Kingbreaker mini-series that's putting the pieces from their side of the story in place. It won't involved the X-Men directly, but we'll deal with the cosmic side of the X-Men, including Vulcan and the Shi'Ar and the Starjammers. Obviously, they're fundamentally tied up with the X-Men side of the universe, so we had to get permission and work closely with them. And previously, they weren't included because they were tied up with the X-books, so this was great for us. It's great fun to finally feel out that side of the cosmic universe that we hadn't dealt with as far as logical galactic players on that sort of scale.

NRAMA: With all of the stories that are setting up War of Kings, from Secret Invasion: Inhumans to X-Men: Kingbreaker to the stories in Nova and Guardians, is War of Kings something that a newcomer to the Marvel cosmic universe can understand with Issue #1? Or should they start with the Secret Invasion: War of Kings one-shot?

AL: Absolutely, they can pick up the Secret Invasion: War of Kings one-shot, because it really does set the scene. Obviously, when writing something like this, you'd like the readers to be engaged enough with the stories we're telling that they want to pick up every book. But we're realistic enough to realize that you can't burden someone with that, because you can actually alienate people. So if they want to pick up the Kingbreaker mini-series, they'll get an extra piece from that side of things. It's kind of supplemental reading that helps flesh out and round out the entire story. But it's not necessary.

Calling Kingbreaker "not necessary" isn't exactly promising... I can understand DnA wanting to do a self-contained story, but it's becoming more and more clear that this is really a Cosmic event and the Starjammers are minor, supplementary characters.