Courtesy of the Forbidden Planet blog, here’s something to while away the weekend: The archive of recipe comics from Saveur magazine, in which all manner of webcomic greats (Nedroid! Lucy Knisley! David Malki! Linda Park, whose strip that is above!) serve up favorite foods and how to make them. I love this kind of thing in general – it helps that I’m trying to learn to cook properly this year, so recipes are currently on my mind a lot – but these strips in particular are just a ridiculous amount of fun. Go wild and eat well this weekend, why don’t you…?

If, like me, you were convinced that the return of Captain Marvel in Avengers vs. X-Men was some kind of fake-out because it’s not something you’d reveal in covers four months ahead of release, then this Rick Remender interview would seem to suggest otherwise:

To prepare for this I reread ‘The Death of Captain Marvel’ three times and I’ve gone back and read a bunch of book’s from his original series. I wanted to make sure that I got it right and that this felt like Jim Starlin’s voice for the character… I love that free flowing imagination that was going on with Starlin and those guys back then. I like the character and the insanity of his missions. Plus, I love that he’s Thanos’ real arch nemesis. Everyone hates Thanos, but Mar-Vell is definitely his arch-enemy.

I’m left both more interested in Remender’s plans (The mentions of Starlin and Thanos, in particular, don’t feel entirely random) and curious about how long Mar-Vell is going to stick around, especially considering the already-announced new Captain Marvel series that will feature Carol Danvers in the title role.

On the newly-unveiled Facebook fanpage for next year’s Man of Steel movie, Warner Bros has released the first look at the official logo for the movie:

My first thought? “You’d think Superman could’ve saved the day with their lighting department.” But outside of the dimness, it’s just the S-shield, and I admit to feeling a little disappointed by the similarity to the campaign promoting Superman Returns. But what do you think?

Boom. (Click to enlarge.)

Released on the Disney XD Facebook page, it looks like Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is taking a cue from Justice League Unlimited, and adding a whole lot more superheroes to the show’s cast. (For this one scene, at least.) On Wednesday, the network posted this still from an unnamed episode, along with the caption, “The Avengers have called on some Fantastic friends to help defeat the villains–can you name all of the heroes below? Don’t miss a new season of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes every Sunday after Ultimate Spider-Man on Disney XD!”

You can probably recognize most of the characters present, but no one seems quite sure who the female character between Yellowjacket and War Machine is. Our current guess: Daisy Johnson, Quake from Secret Warriors. There’s a physical resemblance — and seeing as how Quake recently joined the roster in the main Avengers comic book series, perhaps that was another sign of Marvel TV/Marvel publishing synergy, like the new White Tiger joining Avengers Academy before debuting in the Ultimate Spider-Man animated series. But that really is just a guess, so feel free to let us know who you think it might be in the comments.

Also notable: A clearly grown-up Luke Cage, as opposed to the teen version of Power Man in Ultimate Spider-Man, seemingly confirming that the two shows aren’t in the same “world” — or at least, not taking place concurrently. Plus, Ant-Man and Yellowjacket — is Scott Lang making his animated debut?

The second season premiere of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes airs on the inaugural edition of the “Marvel Universe” block on Disney XD this Sunday, April 1, following the series premiere of Ultimate Spider-Man.

Over on his Twitter account, Jim Lee has been sharing the finished cover for DC’s Free Comic Book Day one-shot, as well as the original pencils.

Two things: I prefer the Wonder Woman in the pencils, and much more importantly, is Batman holding a Crystal Skull from the last Indiana Jones movie?!? This can’t bode well.

Here’s a sad first for DC’s New 52, from the publisher’s shipping update:

BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT #8 (FEB120193) Now features a story written by Joe Harris with art by Ed Benes and Rob Hunter.

The book, which ships 4/25, was originally solicited with David Finch and Paul Jenkins as creators. Unless I’m misremembering, this is the first last-minute replacement of an entire creative team/fill-in issue for the line, coming three months after the first book to miss its scheduled ship date (Partial replacement of solicited creative teams, of course, has been happening since the first issue of some titles). Way to go with another important milestone, I guess…?

Benes had previously been announced as replacing Tony Daniel as artist on Detective Comics for a short period. Clearly, he’s a favorite of the Batman editorial office, which makes me wonder: Should we be expecting a permanent re-assignment to a Batman book anytime soon?

Apparently, there’s one happenin’ hot spot in San Francisco, if you believe your comics. Don’t believe me? Here’s a panel from yesterday’s Avengers vs. X-Men #0:

326 Fell Street…? That’s just off Gough. Wait, Fell and Gough? Lemme take a look at yesterday’s preview for the new Andy Diggle/Jock series Snapshot again…

Again with the Fell Street at Gough! What, you may wonder, is actually at that address in the real world San Francisco?

Oh, that’s right:

Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised that James Sime’s funnybook utopia has made it into a couple of comic book cameos recently; after all, Sime himself has been a character in Robert Kirkman’s Invincible since 2004.

Okay, there was no way I was going to pass this up: American Vampire artist Rafael Albuquerque draws a pretty great Batman for an eBay charity auction to benefit a dog shelter:

As Albuquerque explains,

The PSDA is a shelter where rescued animals live until they find a second chance. Currently they have almost 250 animals, including dogs and cats, puppies and adults. The primary mission of  the Project is to help the animals that roam the streets neglected.

The auction – and full art – can be found here. As a dog person, I wholeheartedly support you going all out on your bids for this.

Back in November, Gizmodo reported that Marvel would be releasing all of their comics digitally the same day as print — “day and date,” as the mostly non-sensical idiom goes — by the end of March.

Well, it’s now March 28, and the final New Comic Book day of the month, so how are they doing? A quick comparison between the Marvel app and Marvel’s portion of the Diamond shipping list for this week show only a couple of discrepancies. (more…)

Here’s an unexpected but rather spectacular free gift for readers of Judge Dredd Megazine‘s next issue: A free download – the first officially released track, I believe – from Drokk, the new band from Portishead’s Geoff Barrow. It’s a pairing that makes sense when you discover that Drokk is Barrow (and partner-in-crime Ben Salisbury)’s attempt to make an album inspired by Mega-City One, the fictional setting for Dredd’s adventures (The name Drokk, as Dredd fans already know, comes from one of Dredd’s favorite futuristic curses; I’m saddened they didn’t go for “Grud On A Greenie,” but there’s always the second album, I guess).

The album comes out in May, the next issue of Megazine in April.

(Via.)

It’s not coming anymore! With today’s release of #0, it’s here (Well, kind of, I guess? Does a #0 mean that something had actually started, or not?), and I have just one question about Avengers vs. X-Men: Is the fact that I remember reading earlier Phoenix stories going to be a problem?

Here’s Jason Aaron, talking to CBR about the importance of previous Phoenixes to the event:

The Phoenix Force obviously has a very long and complicated history, and in order to make “AvX” new-reader friendly, we wanted to distill as much of that down as we could. So we focus in on Hope, and the recent history of the Phoenix. That means someone like Rachel Summers won’t play a big role in the main series, but she most definitely will have her moments in the “Wolverine & the X-Men” tie-ins.

Here’s the thing: Unless I am missing something, isn’t Rachel Summers the first human (mutant) to become Phoenix post-retconning the original Jean-as-Phoenix story? Doesn’t that make her pretty important if the Phoenix Force is returning to Earth? I can understand that Quentin Quire gets a pass considering the nature of his relationship to the Phoenix, but… shouldn’t Rachel be central to this story as one of the few people who has an actual relationship to the thing it’s ostensibly all about?

This is one of those times when you’ve read too many comics for your own good, isn’t it? Don’t ask — Just buy it, as the saying goes.

While the concept behind Marvel’s June-shipping Spider-Men remains a mystery, one of the two silhouetted figures from the pre-release art has been revealed, and he’s… Spider-Man! Yeah, okay, no surprise there, I guess, but just look at this lovely, lovely Spider-Man and really… Who cares about the plot? That’s just loveliness right there.

The rumor mill really does seem to be gearing us up for a Marvel Universe/Ultimate Universe crossover of some sort with this series, which I’m a little ambivalent about for some reason, but there’s something so wonderful about the art on that Peter Parker figure that I’m almost willing to buy it for the art alone.

Now I’m curious: Who draws your favorite Spider-Man? And link to examples, so I can agree/think you’re crazy, please.

There’s an absolutely fascinating interview with Marvel’s SVP of Sales David Gabriel up at CBR, in which he talks about Marvel’s year ahead, the value of the digital audience, and the size of Marvel’s PR plan for Avengers vs. X-Men:

This isn’t just one of the biggest — it is the biggest promotional plan and marketing investment we’ve ever made in our comics, which is something we can do because “Avengers Vs. X-Men” is just that big — and good — of a story. We’re very much focusing on bringing lapsed readers back to comics and also appealing to those out there who love Marvel but maybe haven’t found that perfect entry point into comics. We can show them “Avengers Vs. X-Men” and say “these are your favorite super heroes, in the biggest story we’ve ever told and you can start reading comics right now.” You’ve seen our advertising in places we’ve never been in before; our PR efforts have taken us to places like Game Informer, ABC, EW and more that get us a very wide demographic of fans; we went to SXSW with huge publishing announcements activated by “AvX”; we’re creating a documentary series with MTV; and there’s even more we haven’t announced.

This is about taking our biggest story ever and bringing in more new fans than ever before to read comics. When our readership grows the entire industry wins.

Gabriel confirms rumors that the initial print run for AvX #1 is above a quarter of a million, which is stunning (Sadly, he doesn’t comment on the comic stores that are giving the comic away for free), and explains why this is the year to get (back) into Marvel Comics:

I see Marvel having the most exciting editorial content since “Avengers Disassembled” and “Astonishing X-Men” debuted so many years ago. I predict the rebirth as a result of the Phoenix story this summer in the pages of “Avengers Vs. X-Men” to have some of the strongest reverberations across the Marvel Universe that will continue to drive new and current fans into the Marvel Universe! Game changers for 2012: A Wedding, A First Meeting and Rebirth. It’s time for a ReEvolution of comics as we know it, and we’re hoping every fan reading this joins us for the biggest year in our history.

…However. He also says this, when asked about the scale of Marvel’s output:

If you count the number of books solicited by Marvel in February throughout all our lines and compare this with the number of books solicited by DC through their lines, you’ll find we actually solicited the same number of books. Despite comments to the contrary by various folks online, there isn’t a huge disparity in the numbers of comics Marvel and DC put out each month.

Here’s the great thing about that. We can check. (more…)

On Facebook, Dan Didio celebrates ten years at DC with his top 10 projects from his time with the company so far:

9) BATMAN, GREEN LANTERN, and the Five Year Plan. Or better known as, how The Sinestro Corps War and Batman R.I.P. got me through the toughest part of my career. First, some back story. In late 2007, and into 2008, we hit a rough spot. Our delivery was shaky, several series were starting to struggle for direction, and our next big event felt rushed (too many crises too soon). Yet, whatever pressure we were feeling across the line, it did not appear evident in Green Lantern and Batman. Geoff had a five year plan for GL that would see that character from Rebirth to Blackest Night, and Grant Morrison had the same for Batman, starting with Batman R.I.P. Batman R.I.P. preformed the herculean task of crossing over with an event book, Final Crisis yet positioned the story of “The Death Of Batman” to stand on its own if read separately. The Sinestro Corps War showed that you could keep the spectacle in the main title so the on-goings can have events unto themselves. On the personal side, they were the solid ground needed to regain our footing, and a reminder that consistency in story and character, and planning, will win out over the usual bags of tricks, if the usual bag of tricks is overplayed.

It’s interesting to look at the full list (Superman: Earth One makes it, but All-Star Superman doesn’t?) and see how Didio views the successes and failures of his tenure, as well as hints at admissions of trouble and disaster without coming out and just saying “Yeah, 2007 we were publishing some terrible books.” All in all, I think he’s surprisingly on point in terms of the truly successful projects of his time with the company to date – but I admit, I almost wish he’d done a Top 10 Projects I Regret, instead.

(Via.)

Mark Millar wants to thank you all for the success of his Millarworld books:

I’m writing Nemesis 2 #1 today for Steve McNiven. Steve will start drawing this around May and we’ll launch around September. We’ll get our pre-order numbers in around late August, but between now and Christmas Steve and I will work for free. I’ll have finished the entire series by the time #1 comes out and Steve will probably be finished all the art by the time we get paid. You see, on a creator-owned series you get paid four months AFTER PUBLICATION. So it’s not unusual to get paid for a script nine or ten months after you write it and if it doesn’t sell a certain amount you run the risk of getting paid zero for what might have been an entire year’s work, especially if you’re an artist. And you still have to pay for an editor, printing costs, a distribution fee to Marvel, an inker, a letterer and a colourist.

So why make the jump from company-owned work at Marvel (at the very moment I was one of the two highest-paid dudes there) into something so risky? Well, we’ve had a crazy amount of luck with the Millarworld books so far. Wanted, Kick-Ass, Superior, American Jesus, etc, have all sold incredibly well and we’ve been fortunate enough to sell everything on as movies, video-games and even hoodies and action figures in the last couple of years, retaining the complete rights to our creations at the same time. As you know, the comic book industry has a little HISTORY when it comes to the creators of some of the biggest characters in the world and so after working for the Big Two for most of my professional life this seemed like the next logical step to protect anything I create in the future. But you can’t take anything for granted and, although we’ve done great numbers on the Millarworld launches so far, it really was amazing news for Leinil and I yesterday to see that even the big PRE-ORDERS or Supercrooks #1 have completely sold out and we could be looking at multiple printings for this book too. We took a gamble, but had faith in what we were working on and I just wanted to pass along our thanks in having faith in what we were doing too.

Supercrooks #1 sold out immediately, despite the highest pre-orders of any Millarworld title, if you’re wondering what brought Millar’s gratitude on.

Last week’s retailer shipping update from Marvel contained a potentially interesting announcement:

MARVELS AVENGERS PRELUDE FURYS BIG WEEK #4 (OF 4) will be 24 pages in a self-cover format. No editorial content has been removed, only ad pages

What that means, of course, is that the book will now consist of 20 pages of story content, a front cover and 3 ad pages. Recently, there’s been a lot of chatter online about the lack of external (that is, non-Marvel-related product) ads in Marvel books, leading me to wonder whether this may be a trial balloon for more (all?) Marvel books in the future. After all, if there aren’t any paid ads in the eight additional pages of a 32 page regular comic, why not get rid of those eight pages and save yourself the printing and paper cost? It’s a win-win decision, reducing the production cost of a book and potentially allowing Marvel to pass that saving onto the customer (if nothing else, it might keep some books at $2.99 for longer); the only loser is someone who really really loves house ads for other Marvel titles. Guess we’ll have to wait and see if future Marvel releases follow this trend…

Definite must-read of the day is the round-table discussion between retailer Chris Butcher, Marvel’s CB Cebulski and others over a meal on Corey Mintz’ Porkosity blog. They touch on subjects like the secondary value of original comic art, whether Marvel is autonomous from Disney (Spoiler: Everyone who likes to blame Disney for everything Marvel does, you may be disappointed), the reason why Marvel is double-shipping its books, and the lack of creative continuity on titles that results from that:

BUTCHER
Marvel’s publishing something like 20 issues of Daredevil this year. How can any artist be expected to keep a consistent schedule?

CEBULSKI
They can’t. It’s taken for granted now that there’s going to be, just like Amazing Spider-Man, there’s three regular artists who do the book. With Daredevil there’s going to be two.

BUTCHER
But he’s going to come in next month (motioning to me), when Daredevil number 10.1 comes out, and go, ‘Who the fuck is Khoi Pham?’ [to the kids out there: I do not advocate cursing, even if all the cool kids are doing it] and throw a comic book at me. He’s the most aggressive and vicious of my customers. This is a nice clean, straightforward style, not a lot of tiny cross-hatching and stuff like that, really heavy blacks. The artist who’s coming on in more in this sort of vein (pointing at ad for crappy looking comic), more little lines and sharp and pointy. That sort of thing.

CEBULSKI
Steve is the editor. So Steve made the choice to go with Khoi Pham. And said he was going to work with Khoi to open up his style, make it a little looser. Tom Palmer’s going to ink it, make it a little more open. So in that regard, the couple pages I’ve seen, Khoi has adapted his style to something more like that.

BUTCHER
To fit this kind of book.

CEBULSKI
But, that said, Koi’s only going to be on for one issue.

BUTCHER
He’s doing 10.1 and 12 and 15.

CEBULSKI
He’s solicited for that. Chris Samnee’s going to be coming on and taking over sooner. Him and Paolo will be the two regular artist’s on the book for the rest of the year.

Avatar Press’ William Christiansen has some bad news to report:

Avatar Press has suffered a very difficult blow, on Tuesday, March 20th our 5×8 white trailer containing all our convention set-up and inventory returning from Wondercon and heading to Emerald City was stolen from the parking lot of our good friends at Corner Store Comics in Anaheim, CA.  In addition to convention display items like wire racks, large back-drop display and signage, loads of books are now gone.  Full cases of most of our most popular graphic novels like Neonomicon, Crossed, Freakangels, Night of the Living Dead, and Fevre Dream are gone.  Large quantities of World War Z, Zombie Survival Guide and books by author Max Brooks were in that trailer.  Some limited editions, created for the conventions, of Ferals #1, Crossed: Badlands #1 and Lady Death #14 and #15 are now much more limited as huge chunks of the entire production run are gone.

Christiansen asks anyone who sees a large number of Avatar books being dumped on the market to contact the publisher at info@avatarpress.net and let them know.

Retailer Brian Hibbs considers the strength of the physical retailer in these digital times:

Clearly, if someone already knows what they want, either digital delivery or online ordering is often the simplest way for a customer to purchase, but I can assure you, as a seller of goods, that only a small number of customers walking through my doors every day (civilian or not) know exactly what they want when they walk in. Usually, seeing a comic or book, holding it in your hand, browsing a selection, getting a personal recommendation from staff, is what sells the most numbers of comics — even among the existing readership! It is in every publisher and creator’s interest to have “showplaces” for their work.

The comics industry has long suffered from grass-is-green-ism, always thinking that a different market, a different clientele, just something else a little bit farther away than the thing that grew up spontaneously around it, and all of a sudden we can be a mass medium like music or film!

And yet it doesn’t seem to work, does it? We got comics into bookstores, and there was no quantum leap of an increase in circulations — sales grew pretty much limited in proportion to the amount of the new rack space they now enjoyed. What else could you expect?

And so will it be with digital — yes, it’s possible for comics to reach, egalitarianily, to considerably more consumers, but those same consumers have nearly infinite array of choices when they open their smart phone/tablet/computer. And most of those choices they have they are already familiar with the form and the medium. Why do they pick comics over all other media, without showcases, without curators, without ambassadors?

What we need are more embassies, not just being another leaf in the wide river of the internet.

As Hibbs points out, comics are seemingly the only media where digital sales are additive to analog, with print sales increasing over the last year in total. If digital is leading new (or lapsed) customers to print, we need great comic shops to take advantage of this new market.

The most exciting comic of the week? That’s more than likely the first episode of Zaucer of Zilk by Al Ewing and Brendan McCarthy in the latest issue of 2000AD (Available in the US digitally now, with the print version due in a few weeks, I think); over at the Forbidden Planet blog, Ewing talks about the origins of the strip and offers commentary about the first episode:

Just over a year ago, Brendan sent me an email regarding a possible new series for 2000AD. We’d worked together before on a couple of Dredds, where he’d come up with the plots and I’d done the scripts, and while my stuff was a bit ‘wordy’ – I have a habit of erring on the side of dense, ‘old-school’ verbiage, which isn’t always the right way to go – he obviously liked the way I extrapolated on his ideas enough to bring me in. This time, he was after – I quote – “a new, wacky, totally surreal “Sooner or Later/Hewligan’s Haircut’ type of strip called THE ZAUCER OF ZILK… It will mix the surrealism of 60′s Dr Strange with a ‘Lord of The Rings’ imaginative scope. And with a bit of The Mighty Boosh in there too.”

The entire first episode was released online to CBR earlier this week, for those who have yet to read it; if you’ve never read a Brendan McCarthy comic before, you’re in for an experience you’ll not forget in a hurry, and Ewing’s script matches it in a way that hasn’t been seen since Peter Milligan in his prime. Just amazing work.