A week ago or so Marvel started teasing this image, which caused quite a bit of speculation as to what it was, exactly. The Marvel Now line has been rolling out for a few months and has been pretty much hugely successful. So what was this #1? A new series? Unlikely given the huge number of creators listed. An omnibus collection of all the Now #1s? Maybe, yeah, but that's not anything new and all us diehard fans would have all that material anyway. And so on.
Yesterday was the big announcement, and it turned out to be a huge, really huge, digital giveaway of 700 Marvel comics, all first issues of series from the original Marvel comic, Fantastic Four right up to quite a few of the Now titles. 700. Anyone with an account with either the Marvel store or the linked Comixology store could get them. Within minutes pretty much everyone jumped on to redeem, causing the servers to crash.
Comixology spent all day working on the situation, and had their Twitter account suspended for too many tweets as they assured fans and customers personally that they would fix the issues. A few people were disgruntled but mostly everyone was like, "Hey, they're trying to give us free comics for no reason other than that they're cool, so we're good." As of now the giveaway has been suspended while they fix it up. Originally it was only supposed to be until tomorrow but sounds like they'll extend it to serve everyone. Glitches happen, but ultimately I think this will be a win for Marvel, for Comixology and comic book readers in general.
One guy definitely lost, though, and I feel bad for him. I don't know any details so I won't speculate, but I do know that Ruwan Jayatilleke, who was the Marvel VP of digital publishing or somesuch, was let go by Marvel last week. As far as I know, this whole thing was his baby. Again, I know no details but I do know Ruwan was an amazing guy on Twitter, interacting with fans as a fan, and not as some corporate suit who had to stay on message. He gave away digital codes for comics all the time and built up a pretty large following. He wiped his Twitter account but didn't delete his account so hopefully he'll pop up sometime with new opportunities for himself. If you're out there, Ruwan, thank you for all you did.

Kiss was never really my kind of band, I was a little too young. Death was more my style. The band Death that gave us the whole genre of death metal. RIP Chuck Schuldiner. Death did a cover of a Kiss song, back in the day. It was called God of Thunder and it's a pretty kickass song. Chuck does this amazing deathy growl of the chorus where he goes "God of thunder! . . . and rock and ro-o-oll."
Oh man when that song first came out did I wish that rock and roll part wasn't in it. It just cheesed up the whole song. Well, actually the song is so awesome that it was able to withstand the cheesy onslaught. But come on, as if Thor needs more in his portfolio than just thunder. Because what's more awesome than a thunder god?
The Marvel Now series Thor: God of Thunder says the answer to that question is nothing! Well, maybe one thing. We'll get to that in a second.

As someone who happily professes a love for death metal, maybe it comes as no surprise that I've been a fan of Thor all my life. That most Frazetta-ish of Marvel superheroes was also one of the most versatile, since he could be hanging out in Asgard with his fellow immortal Norse gods battling trolls and frost giants, and then he could hop over the Rainbow Bridge to Midgard* to fight Kang the Conqueror alongside Iron Man and Captain America. Then the next issue he would gladly take to space to aid Beta Ray Bill in stopping Galactus from devouring the planet Poppup.
Jason Aaron prefers to play a more god-like, heroic fantasy take on Thor, and Esad Ribic is the perfect artist for his interpretation. We are treated to no less than three different Thorian eras, or Ages of Thunder if you will. We get a young, brash Thor who relishes leading vikings into bloody battle. Current Marvel Universe Thor off gallivanting in space, and a far-future Thor who looks an awful lot like his dear old dad Odin. Not necessarily a good thing.
In each of these timelines Thor faces the menace of something known as the god butcher. A monster that goes around butchering gods of various pantheons. Thor, being a god from some pantheon or other, is square in the god butcher's sights. Not that Thor has any intention of being butchered, but he might not have much say in the matter. Because this guy butchers gods. That's what he does.
Having established that in the first two issues, I'm now curious to know why. I can dig it, and accept him as a worthy foe for Thor, I just hope there's an intriguing origin or motive for ole GB. We get a hint of the anger and contempt he feels for gods in this sequence:

SO bring it home for us, Mr. Aaron! What's more awesome than a thunder god? A god butcher, apparently. But I say thee nay! Thor shall prevail. What's a god without someone to have faith in him?

*Midgard means Earth, as if I needed to tell you that, true believer!

Comics being the visual medium that it is, it's easy to be drawn in by a particularly striking image, such as the cover to Thunderbolts #1. I lobe the reds and the white background, and other than the Punisher, I am a fan of each of the characters. The actual comic didn't do much for me, but again, being the first issue, it was mostly just setup. General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross has in recent years found himself as the thing he hated most in all the world- a hulk. But red! Anyways he decides to gather a team of other red guys and gals to be the Thunderbolts. I guess we're lucky his name wasn't Stormin' Norman otherwise this comic might be called the Stormins.
Actually the Thunderbolts name has been used in various guises for a long time in the Marvel Universe, usually as a team of super-villains being rehabilitated by working as a team on the side of the good guys. This incarnation is actually a little different in the sense that all of these characters occupy the shadowy in-between state of being neither villain nor hero, exactly. Shades of grey, more. Or red, in this case. Red Hulk, or Rulk as his buddies call him, has actually lately been an Avenger so he's solidly good. Which is why he's leading the team I guess. Elektra is an assassin  but she's not a bad assassin. Venom, (Flash Thompson, not Eddie Brock) is actually an army operative and Deadpool and Punisher are basically psychos with guns but for the most part they prefer to shoot bad guys. So really, not super-villains. I might pick up issue #2 to see how they actually work together as a team. Deadpool is always good for a laugh, and the Punisher is famous for his sense of humor too. Oh sorry, that sentence should have "utter lack of a" in front of "sense of humor".
The parallel on the DC side would be Suicide Squad, the first trade paperback collection of which I read and enjoyed. Any team with Harley Quinn on it is one I want to be on, though the explosives implanted in your brain part would kind of suck.But how else do you insure that such a collection of super-criminals toes the line? Plus, they have a bipedal shark! So I might give DC the edge in a head-to-head tussle of the bad-guys-working-for-good-guys genre.

Marvel decided to do something similar to DC's New 52. Rather than rebooting their whole universe, though, they just sort of established a new status quo within the regular continuity.  Marvel Now they're calling it.   Lots of new series launches, though the primary focus seems to be on new creative teams taking on characters they haven't really been associated with before. So, Brian Michael Bendis who wrote like a thousand issues of all the different Avengers titles, is now writing All New X-Men.
Marvel Now has been rolling out since September but we are definitely right in the midst of it. I've been trying out a lot of the titles and mostly digging it.
Appropriately enough, the first Marvel Now title to launch was Fantastic Four (the original FF was the first true Marvel Comic back in 1961 yo. As if I needed to tell you that.) Matt Fraction is writing both Fantastic Four and FF. Wait, what? FF stands for Freedom Force. No, that's not right. I just read it too, what was it? Oh yeah- Future Foundation. The Fantastic Four, of course, is Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards, his wife Sue Storm-Richards the Invisible Woman, her brother Johnny Storm aka the Human Torch (back from the dead) and Ben Grimm the ever-loving Thing. As Fantastic Four #1 opens, Reed has discovered that the unstable molecules that form his stretchtastic elastic body are decaying. And there is no cure in the entire known universe. Luckily he knows where there are all sorts of unknown universes so he decides it would be cool to grab the other Three of the Four, as well as his kids, and go on a year-long educational trip through the Negative Zone and whatever other alternate dimensions they feel like exploring. Which is a great setup for Lost In Space-type misadventures, which I love. I like Fraction's writing so I know he'll have some good stuff in store. Issue 1 was all setup but you can bet the fantastic fun will begin in earnest next issue.
Reed sets up his little time machine dimension hopper gizmo to return them precisely four minutes after they leave, in subjective time. No big deal, right? But in case something catastrophic happens in those four minutes (and catastrophes happen about every three minutes in the Marvel Universe) he asks four friends to step in for those four minutes just in case. He recruits Ant-man, Medusa, She-Hulk (yay!) and um, Ms. Thing who is apparently Johnny's girlfriend in a Thing-like exoskeleton suit. FF #1 is also all setup, though a lot of fun while at it. I'm guessing issue 2 will go something like this:
Reed Richards: Thanks for covering for us while we're gone, Ant-man.
Ant-man: Yeah no problem. See you in four minutes.
Reed waves
Ant-man waves
Four minutes passes
Reed: Hi!  That was so much fun!
Ant-man: Cool! Alright I'll catch ya later.

I was hoping, but failed, to snag the Arthur Adams' (one of my favourite artists from waay back) variant cover for FF#1, a fantastic homage to Fantastic Four #1: