Marvel Announces Savage Avengers Team and Series Starring Conan the Barbarian
Marvel Comics announced a new series and Avengers team, Savage Avengers that will feature Conan the Barbarian.
Along with Conan the Barbarian, the team will feature Wolverine, Venom, Elektra, Brother Voodoo, and the Punisher. The series will be written by Gerry Duggan with art by Mike Deodato Jr.
Gerry Duggan spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the series describing them as “an unsanctioned team of heroes.”
Marvel’s Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort described the series:
“SAVAGE AVENGERS is just what it says on the label—it’s all of the biggest badasses of the Marvel Universe brought together uneasily in one explosive series—and with Conan as a wild card. It’s big, it’s brash, it’s explosive, it never slows down—the only scenes in SAVAGE AVENGERS that involve a table is when somebody is being thrown through one.”
Here’s Marvel’s official synopsis:
“Conan has returned to the Marvel Universe and his new adventures begin here. What is the City Of Sickles? Who is the Marrow God? How is the Hand involved? The roughest and most dangerous characters rumble through this new title starting with…Conan vs. Wolverine?! ‘Nuff said!”
Duggan details the threat the Savage Avengers will face:
“It has to be something that visually makes sense to you, and I think it does. [Artist] Mike Deodato Jr. is illustrating this book in both worlds. We envisioned a threat, a magical green zone where the evil wizards of Conan’s world are trading spells with the Hand in Japan. Conan is on a very Conan-like mission; he’s heard a tale of an amulet so he’s chasing it, and the evil magic sorcerers are doing something that would be a Marvel Avengers problem. It feels like we have found some very fertile ground that is a Venn diagram between those two worlds.”
The series is expected to take place in Marvel’s Savage Land and Duggan adds the real title of the series should be Stabby Avengers. He explains, “without checking, this has the most stabbing out of any Avengers book.”
Duggan details that the story will have an initial focus on how Conan views the Marvel heroes. He specifically points to Venom:
“The Marvel heroes have not quite seen the likes of Conan before, but when you turn it around and look at Conan viewing this, he’s very skeptical of a lot of it because he’s so magic-averse. His interpretation of the Venom symbiote, when he first sees it, is that it must be an evil genie. There’s real fun to be had there. At one point Conan believes that Logan hails from somewhere called Pabst, and that’s a well-earned miscommunication. That’s where a lot of fun comes from. Conan is a fish out of water, but everyone will come to respect the skills they’re all bringing to the fight.”
Elektra might be the only female on the team, but Duggan indicates she will play a key role:
“She’s working this like a methodical detective, while everyone else is running through walls like the Kool-Aid Man and stabbing people.”
Duggan encourages skeptics of the series to give a try for at least one issue.
To those people I say, just give us one issue. One issue and we will convert you. You will convert to Crom.
Savage Avengers #1 will feature a cover by David Finch. The series goes on sale this May.
What do you make of this new series? Do you plan on checking it out?
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