Who Watches The Watcher? Anyone, Because He Is Dead: Marvel Announces Original Sin by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato, Jr.

We are well and truly into a new year, which is a downer on a few fronts. All the holiday vacation time is burned away, which means we will be forced to go to work in this shitty weather (it is currently eight balmy degrees outside the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, and that’s degrees Fahrenheit, not those wussy degrees Centigrade that you whimpering pleaders overseas use to try to convince people you’re not wandering blithely through simple sweater weather). And further, it means that the Big Two are gonna start announcing their big summer crossover events.

And, since we have been publishing over the last two and a half years or so, this has not necessarily been great news. Just in the last year, we have been hyped for, and then had to all but suffer through, Age of Ultron and Infinity from Marvel and The Trinity War and Forever Evil from DC, and they have not particularly grabbed us when they weren’t busy actively irritating us with arbitrary epic plots that often seemed more interested in involving everyone in the universe than making it clear why we should give a fuck about anyone involved (With God as my witness, I began pulling for Thanos about 2/3rds of the way through Infinity because at least I knew what he was trying to accomplish and why).

So I have been waiting without any particular enthusiasm to start hearing announcements about the upcoming big events that will change everything… so imagine my surprise when I heard about Marvel’s first big plans for 2014, and actually got a little excited, in spite of myself. Because while yes, the upcoming Original Sin four-month event involves a huge cast and some cosmic elements, at its heart, it’s a simple murder mystery.

A simple murder mystery written by Jason Aaron, who has been writing some of the most fun and character-driven books at Marvel over the last couple of years, and drawn by Mike Deodato, Jr., who is one of my favorite artists working for Marvel today.