If you, like me, have often wondered why Marvel has never exploited the Malibu Ultraverse after the crash in the mid-1990s that doomed the original line post-purchase by the House of Ideas, then apparently we have our answer… and it’s what you probably always suspected:

[Ultraverse co-creator Steve] Englehart says that in 2004, Tom Brevoort approached him to integrate the Ultraverse into the Marvel Universe. That he’d plotted the first issue and had written a precis for the first year, including Prime joining Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, but that the project was closed down.

Later an assistant editor told Englehart that he wanted his mission to being back the Ultraverse characters but subsequently called Englehart to tell him “It’s my job if I continue to ask about this.”

And it’s all down to a pesky five percent of profits that Malibu creators are entitled to.

Except, of course, things may not be that simple:

The Ultraverse: Let’s just pretend it never happened, it’ll probably be easier for everyone involved.

Seeing Men in Black 3 in IMAX this weekend? If so, you’ll also get to see six minutes of The Amazing Spider-Man, which is running with MIB3 starting Thursday night at midnight, according to the latter movie’s official Facebook page. The two are both Sony films, so it’s a natural move for them to team up — whether or not this helps MIB3 end the three week-reign of Avengers at the top of the box office remains to be seen. It’s not clear yet is the footage will be subsequently released online.

The Amazing Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Rhys Ifans, is scheduled for release on July 3.

Hey, continuity nuts! Here’s a reason to pick up that Civil War novel that you might have missed:

Fans returning to the Civil War saga will find that all-new material has been added to the experience, including a new take on Spider-Man’s role, with the story set in the post-”One More Day” reality and showing these events as they unfolded without Peter Parker and Mary Jane being married for the first time.

It’d be great if it was exactly the same as it unfolded the first time, except at some point, MJ says something like “Man, I’m so glad that Aunt May got over us living together even though we’re not married, tiger.” For the curious, there’s also a downloadable prologue from the novel at the link, letting you know what to expect.

Via Guttersniper, Dylan Todd reimagines a new trade dress for Marvel’s Essentials line, and comes up with just design beauty:

I mean, look at those covers. They are gorgeous. If there was any justice in the world, Marvel would get in touch with Todd to get him to work as soon as possible…

Okay, I made the Before Watchmen joke yesterday, but…

“One of the major iconic DC characters will reveal that he is gay in a storyline in June,” Courtney Simmons, DC Entertainment’s senior vice president of publicity, confirmed to ABC News.

June? That’s when Before Watchmen starts, isn’t it…? Sadly, Rorschach isn’t out until July, otherwise I really genuinely would put my metaphorical money on him… That said, you’ve got to give DC credit for teasing this (minor?) reveal out – by Simmons giving us a gender for the first time, the speculation on the character’s identity (and therefore, the story) gets at least another day of life, making DC seem progressive right before Marvel plays up their “Northstar gets married” Astonishing X-Men issue on ABC’s The View. Sneaky, sneaky…

(Via DC Women Kicking Ass.)

Okay, this is awesome. Someone get this guy a gig on Disney XD’s Marvel Universe block as soon as possible, please. Junaid Chundrigar’s Avengers Disasssembled:

(Via.)

Place your bets, DC fans:

Surprisingly, [DC Co-Publisher Dan] DiDio stated that they had changed DC’s policy in this regard. And they are about to reintroduce a previously existing DC character who was previously straight and now will be “one of our most prominent gay characters.”

One of my favorite guesses on social media has been Donna Troy, but a truly part of me really hopes that it’s going to be a Watchmen character, just to see if the internet could get any more upset about Before Watchmen…

Well, that was quick. Just two weeks after Marvel announced that all of its $2.99 books were to shift to “self-cover” format – ie, the cover is of the same paper stock as the interiors – the publisher released the following update to retailers:

Starting with the 7/4/12 On-sale items, all 32 page Marvel Universe comics, including those that contain a digital code, will be printed with 50# Coated interiors and will be Self-Cover.

I’ll admit it: I’m not that bothered with the self-cover format (Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like I’m used to it from the Dark Horse books I’ve been getting, not to mention growing up with 2000AD in the UK), but I’m curious about what the wider reaction has been out there. Does the “lighter” cover stock mean more shipping damages? Are you as a fan bothered by the change? Do people even really notice it?

Sparkshooter has been going for a few months now, and writer Troy Brownfield (Newsarama readers may have heard of him) and artist Sarah Vaughn are clearly having fun with the rock n’ roll webcomic.

To celebrate the coming of Sondra Li, the band’s new lead singer, the creative team put together a fun promo image. The image shows off her introduction in a familiar fashion, giving a shout-out to Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson.

Check out the image, and the full press release, below, and go to Sparkshooter.com for more band comic goodness.

Press Release: When Sparkshooter, the webcomic from Troy Brownfield and Sarah Vaughn, launched in February, it came with the promise that a new singer would shake up the group of friends that formerly provided the backbone of the group Crazy Yeats.  With Crazy Yeats dissolved and a new band in the offing, get ready to meet Sondra Li!

Sondra debuts on Page 13 of Sparkshooter, which posts on Wednesday, May 23rd.  To commemorate this shift in the story, series artist Sarah Vaughn created a special promo inspired by the work of Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson on the cover to Justice League of America #75, the issue wherein Black Canary joins the team.

Writer Troy Brownfield said, “With the arrival of Sondra, the whole story moves into a new direction.  Immediately following Sondra’s debut, you’ll also meet Jack Spencer, the once and future manager of the guys.  He’s going to give you some info in the coming weeks that explains how the boys got together and sets up one of the central conflicts for months to come.”

Become our friend on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sparkshootercomic

You can also follow Sparkshooter on Twitter @sparkshootercom

A new page of Sparkshooter posts every Wednesday at www.sparkshooter.com

This Guardian piece about Before Watchmen is well worth reading, if only because I feel that it’s the first time Dan Didio explicitly addresses the controversy over the ownership of the Watchmen series and characters, or Alan Moore’s condemnation of the project. His comments are weirdly telling, and weirdly empty at the same time:

DC says Watchmen was “a work for hire agreement at the start”, however. And it provides such a rich basis for prequels, according to DiDio. “The stories and ideas are so well defined, and there are so many throwaways in the body of the original work, a one-line mention or a side item or a cameo shot of a character, that were basically great wonderful springboards we could grow the world from,” he said. “That’s why when everybody says this is a finite story, true if you’re looking at the beginning, middle, end of that particular story itself. But when you’re talking about the characters, there’s nothing finite about them. They have endless possibilities in the types of stories we could tell with them. And like I said we’ve found the right creators to tell those stories.”

I have no particular horse in the Before Watchmen race, but I am endlessly amused by the line about people who think Watchmen being finite are correct “if you’re looking at the beginning, middle, end of that particular story itself.” The beginning, middle and end are the entire story!

Happy Social Media Fan Appreciation Day! What’s that? You’ve never heard of SMFAD? Well, that’s understandable considering Marvel just made it up, but the short version is, it’s a reason for you to stay on Twitter and Facebook today (as if you needed another reason):

Today Marvel wants to take the time to thank all of the fans who have liked and followed us on our social media adventures! To show our appreciation we’ll be setting up exclusive sales, cool surprises and much more!

We’ll be starting the festivities off with a 99 cents Digital Comics sale of INCREDIBLE HULK (1999) #77-112. If you loved the Green Goliath in “Marvel’s The Avengers,” follow his ongoing adventures during this sale! For fans who love to shop at the Marvel Store, shipping will be free to show our appreciation for your support!

There will be also be publishing exclusives appearing throughout the day on our Twitter and Facebook feeds, so be sure to be on the lookout! Finally, we’ll be releasing an exclusive special animation clip just for you!

The Twitter sweepstake rules are already up, with a year’s subscription to Marvel’s DCU up for grabs as a grand prize.

Damon Lindelof explains how fan obsession led to his upcoming Batman: Black and White comic with Jeff Lemire:

What happened was that I basically became obsessed with Jeff [Lemire]. [Laughs] I read “Sweet Tooth” and was like, “Holy shit. Who is this guy?” I googled him and found out about “Essex County,” so I ran out and grabbed the collected edition and read it cover to cover. Then I tweeted about him and about how awesome “Sweet Tooth” was. And then, he tweeted back at me, we exchanged email addresses and just started talking to each other.

For this project in particular, it all happened through [Editor] Ben Abernathy at DC. I’m trying to remember if Ben reached out to me first, or if Ben reached out to Jeff and then Jeff emailed me and was like, “Do you want to work on a Batman story?” When Jeff Lemire asks you if you want to work on a Batman story, you say, “Yes.” First off, that guy can write, so he’s not just doing the art; you’ve got a collaborator all the way. And he’s never drawn that character before, so I was like, “This sounds like the greatest thing ever.”

One of these days, I’m going to figure out how to do this Twitter thing properly.

Well, this is very weird:

A number of DC subscribers have contacted Bleeding Cool rather annoyed that DC Comics have told them that they can no longer get their favourite books in this fashion, and they will be cancelled with issue 10.

Which means Justice League International readers will miss the final two issues of that comic, and unless they object, will receive issues of Superman instead. And subscribers to Aquaman will be switched to Justice League (and pocket the difference in price) and Justice League Dark subscribers will, bizarrely, be switched to Batman: The Dark Knight.

Swamp Thing also turns out to be included in the seemingly inexplicable sub cancellation. It’s obviously not that the books are being cancelled because even though both Justice League titles may be in danger – well, JLI is already ending with #12 – there’s no way that either Swamp Thing or Aquaman are facing their end anytime soon bar a disastrous event at DC. So what’s going on, exactly? Is Warners/DC trying to limit subscriptions to what it considers “core” titles (Justice League, Superman, Batman: The Dark Knight and Batman are the named replacements that we know about so far) in order to strengthen branding, or is this something else? And if so, what…?

And where will WonderCon be next year, having been forced to decamp to Anaheim from San Francisco this year…? CCI’s David Glanzer revealed what little he knew to ICv2:

Our plan has always been to return to San Francisco; we just don’t have dates at the Moscone Center yet. Moscone typically gives us dates six months out, and it’s hard to ask someone to plan their convention here and not have dates until six months before the show. So we have our fingers crossed that we might get dates earlier, but here we are—it’s already May—so the more time ticks by the more challenging it is. But we hope to get back to San Francisco.

Glanzer said that it’s up in the air whether or not a return to Anaheim would be considered if the Moscone Center wasn’t available. Sorry, Southern California… It looks like you might be stuck with just having the biggest comic and pop-culture convention of the year in your neighborhood, instead of having that one and its smaller sibling.

Robert Downey Jr. plays billionaire Tony Stark (Iron Man’s not-at-all secret identity) in the Marvel Studios movies, and he’s looking to make some pretty good money himself as a result of the phenomenal box office success of Avengers.

The Hollywood Reporter cites “multiple knowledgeable sources” that RDJ is looking to take home $50 million from the picture, which includes back-end compensation and bonuses. After the success of the first Iron Man, Downey’s reps negotiated a deal where he would make a percentage of the profits from any Marvel movie where he plays the character — with The Hollywood Reporter says could be as high as 5 to 7 percent, though no concrete numbers are publicly known.

As far as the rest of the cast, THR’s sources say that Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo will all make about $2 to $3 million from Avengers, with Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson making around twice that. Avengers currently sits at a worldwide total of $1,016,095,436, according to Box Office Mojo.

Tom Brevoort shares a Captain America cover deemed too violent for use in the 1990s:

Looking at it, my first thought was that it seemed very tame for a cover pulled for content, but my second was… I wonder what would result in a cover being pulled today in similar circumstances? Have covers become more graphic, or is it my imagination? And would this cover be pulled today, or simply shipped in a polybag that hid its content from young and impressionable eyes?

This, for all the wrong reasons, may be my favorite part of the latest Eric Stephenson interview with ICv2 (Part 1, 2, 3):

If you look at the success stories over the last 20 years (start with Sandman, which is a weird deal between DC and Neil [Gaiman]), and moving up until now, you can’t point to anything new that has been created by Marvel and DC that’s had any lasting impact, but there are all these things, whether it’s Bone,Hellboy, Sin City, The Walking Dead or Y: The Last Man, that are all tremendously successful properties that have done especially well as trade paperback sales both in and outside the comics market.

Wait, who published Y: The Last Man again…? I know that it’s (a) a creator-owned title, speaking to Stephenson’s true point of new ideas versus retreads of the same old corporate characters, and (b) a Vertigo title, but still: Arguing that neither Marvel or DC have done anything with lasting impact by using a DC title seems somewhat unfortunate.

(Also, Y: The Last Man gets mentioned, but not The Invisibles, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Planetary or Fables? Was Y really that much more of a break-out hit? Genuinely wondering, because I would’ve thought that Fables was the bigger of the two at least.)

In terms of sheer goofy charm, it’s hard to resist this book trailer for Bill The Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, a new non-fiction title about Bill Finger:

Author Marc Tyler Nobleman writes about the making of the trailer on his blog, including some secrets of low-budget filmmaking:

In the “Robin approaching” shot, I was worried that the reflective Nike logo on the black running pants I was wearing would be visible. It was not.

In the Batcave computer room shot, I was worried that the cursor on the computer screens would be visible. It was not.

Here’s some fun with math, courtesy of ICv2:

Diamond reported graphic novel sales down 5.7% in March, and a 12.6% gain in April.  Those percentage changes are based on the wholesale value of Diamond’s shipments to comic stores for those months. But the retail value of the Top 300 graphic novels, calculated based on our estimates of the quantities sold in those two months tells a different story, with graphic novel sales up 24.4% in March and 27.0% in April.  That’s around a 30% difference in the March rate of change, and over a 14% difference in April.

The difference, apparently, comes from distributor sales appearing down due to liquidated stock even though customer sell-through was actually up. Confusing, perhaps, but as the site puts it, the bottom line is that “graphic novel sales in comic stores are even better than the 9.5% year over year increase they showed for the first four months of 2012.” Did we somehow back into the beginning of another boom, and if so, how…?

Fans of The Walking Dead TV show, I want an hour of your time. It’s not for me, I should point out, but so you can listen to the latest Nerdist Writers Panel podcast, with guests Glen Mazzara, Scott Gimple and Angela Kang – each a writer on the AMC series – talking about the writing of the show’s second season and throwing out some hints about its third. The show is required listening for me every week anyway, but this one is particularly fascinating considering its subject matter. Go listen.