So I was reading this interview on Marvel.com with Amazing Spider-Man writer Marc Guggenheim on his upcoming story featuring as least some mention of the controversial Spider-Clone known as Ben Reilly, and this really stood out:

“This will be my last arc on the book as a member of Spidey’s ‘Webheads,’” Guggenheim confirms. “I’d been thinking of an exit strategy for a while now because my workload has gotten so heavy, and the inter-coordination required to write Spider-Man was something I found myself having less and less time to devote to. I was going to write one more arc, but I was so happy with the way this one was turning out that I thought this should be my swan song. Hopefully, people will buy the book, read it and agree with me.

That said, Guggenheim said that he would work on Amazing Spider-Man Presents Jackpot, due out in January, and would return intermittently if possible.

It’s interesting, as the Eli Stone co-creator was one of the original members of the Spider-Man Brain Trust, when the series went thrice-a-month following the controversial One More Day storyline. During his tenure, Guggenheim worked on introducing a new Kraven in the Kraven’s First Hunt storyline, as well as revealed the mystery of Menace in Character Assassination. Thoughts?

From Philip Gelatt and Rick Lacy’s Labor Days vol. 2, coming soon:

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Jamie McKelvie

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(click through for larger version) Ryan Kelly:

Fiona Staples:

Becky Cloonan:

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Molly Crabapple:

I’m just going to go ahead and say it: I think X-Men: Misfits Vol. 1 (Del Rey Manga) is the single best X-Men story I’ve experienced since Grant Morrison brought his run on New X-Men to a close.

Writers Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman and artist Anzu have a lot of definite advantages over the creators toiling away in Marvel Comics’ X-Men mines, of course—they’re not beholden to decades worth of continuity or the designs and characterizations of other creators, and they don’t have to line-up what they’re doing with what, say, the people over in the Avengers office are up to that month.

In this manga-style “remix” of the X-Men (to use the back of the book’s own word for this particular sort of reimagining), the creators are free to take whatever core concepts they think work best, and rebuild the X-Men franchise from the ground up as they see fit. They do an incredible job, and it was downright uncanny how they managed to make the X-Men into something that seemed completely new while still retaining much of their essential je ne X quoi.

Telgemeir and Roman retain the deep adolescent appeal of the mutants as stand-ins for kids who feel awkward, persecuted or alone (but, it turns out, are actually much more special than anyone else), and, if anything,  broaden the appeal beyond the normal metaphors and make it feel a little more universal.

They also retain basic elements that worked well from throughout the various eras of the comics: Xavier and Magneto’s differing views on on how humans and mutants relate, school-as-superhero team, Kitty Pryde as point-of-view character, and so on.

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For the three cornerstones of the Avengers — Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor — it’s been a rough few years.

Steve Rogers found himself on the losing side of the superhero Civil War, ending with his untimely “demise.” Tony Stark split the Avengers by backing the Superhero Registration Act, only to find himself forced underground by Norman Osborn. And Thor, betrayed by his former colleagues in the Civil War, has recently been cast out of Asgard by the machinations of his half-sibling Loki.

But according to Previews, despite being battered and broken, there is some hope that the Avengers Trinity could be back in business. According to them, November’s issue of Wizard will have a Marcos Martin cover of the Avengers, with the following blurb:

o Avengers Assemble
We’ve waited and we’ve begged, but can we finally be close to seeing the classic trinity of Thor, Iron Man and Captain America back together again at the House of Ideas?

The fact that the question is even being asked is a good sign — if Marvel didn’t have something to say, would it make the magazine at all? The trio (and yes, I do consider Bucky Barnes to be Captain America, at least till Steve returns in full) last joined forces in the Secret Invasion, but before that, it’s surprising how long it’s been since the Trinity joined forces in the mainstream Marvel universe: they haven’t been together since 2003, several months before Avengers: Disassembled hit, cementing Brian Michael Bendis’ take on the top-selling Marvel characters. What say you on all this?

When it comes to online comics, apparently sex really does sell.

That’s what happened when Red Handed Studios creator Kyle Hurlbut got an unexpected e-mail from Apple. His online comics series — Fallen Justice — was ready to launch its second issue, after getting a decent following on his 9-and-older first issue.

So imagine his surprise when he got an e-mail from Apple saying that the second issue could not run with the 9+ rating, due to two panels with some sexually charged content — in this case, the character Dyna-girl laying in bed with protagonist Justice Theta, clearly topless.

“I felt this rush of guilt like our mom had caught you,” Hurlbut said. “And then they included a zip file with those two panels and I opened it up and said I guess, okay, I didn’t even think about it.”

But before you cry censorship — despite the comic being delayed by three days as Hurlbut made a few concessions, such as with a violent panel of a character’s head literally exploding, the 12-and-older comic surged in sales. Hurlbut said that the sales difference between Fallen Justice #1 and Fallen Justice #2 was about a 175 percent increase.

“I’m not faulting Apple really — it shows they really are looking at this stuff and they had to dig into the panels and find the things that were questionable, and that was really impressive,” Hurlbut said. “Had they made the comics stick to 9-and-older, I would have been off the outskirts, but since they’ve put in this ratings system, now it goes to the right level.”

Hurlbut says he isn’t quite sure what brought this on — it could have been the book’s weekend release, which kept it on the Featured Downloads list a bit longer, but he says some of it could be attributed to the older rating, which would alert 20- and 30-something readers that it isn’t a “baby” comic.

“It’s weird, because [the second issue] doesn’t make a whole lot of sense without Final Justice #1,” he said. “I’ve kinda tried to draw the line and not do an R-rated comic and every time I talk with my partners about it, they think I’m crazy. The target audience is 30-year-olds with iPhones, not kids, and a lot of them like sex and violence to some level, I guess.”

Fallen Justice #1 is currently free on the iTunes store — Fallen Justice #2 will remain free through the end of this Saturday.

Hasbro’s Mighty Muggs Spider-Man toy

David LaFuente’s Ultimate Spider-Man

Am I the only one who thinks they look pretty similar to each other?

Via When Fangirls Attack, which curates all the great women-and-gender related comics posts out there on the web so I don’t have to, I find this piece on “Marvel Bromance,” or now, apparently “Marvel Super Hero Team-Up.”

I wasn’t aware that there had even been a planned “Marvel Bromance,” which just shows you that I have entirely too much work to do in my life that doesn’t revolve around comics. Because you know I would’ve been all over that, right?

The evolution of the “bromance” out of the “buddy movie” has been interesting to me because it’s deliberately skated across that line of homoerotic tension that buddy movies always shied away from. In comics, the grand pairing of “buddies” was always Batman and his series of Robins, and since Robin was usually a good bit younger than Bruce Wayne, you really want to stay on the right side of that line with those books.

But the “bromance” is still ironic, not genuine. The movies are comedies; the stories loaded with snark and jokes about sharing feelings far more often than actually sharing feelings (when the kids in Superbad say “I love you” to one another they immediately have to pretend it didn’t happen). And so, as Chris Butcher noted, was Marvel’s solicit copy for the trade.

If This Be Bromance–! Marvel’s greatest buddies take the spotlight in this one-of-a-kind collection, and it’s male bonding like you’ve never seen — as Cable and Deadpool swap stories, Wonder Man and the Beast share a plane ride, Spidey and the Human Torch battle back-to-back, Wolverine makes a bet with Nightcrawler, Black Panther and Everett Ross lay their feelings on the line…and the Warriors Three set sail for fun! Plus: Captain America and the Falcon, Iron Man and Jim Rhodes, and more! Be here as Marvel says, “I love you, man!”

However, apparently “Bromance” was too–what, edgy? didn’t get enough attention? any ideas? It’s been changed to the too-long and unmemorable “Marvel Super Hero Team-Up,” which is so bland that it almost seems it must be a euphemism for something.

While “Bromance” might have been silly, it was at least an acknowledgment of the changing rules of same-gender friendships in the wider pop culture. More accurately, since the trade would be a reprint of classic stories, it would have been an acknowledgment that male friendships have always been more complex than a secret handshake or a gruff “Thanks.” Now it’s just another super hero team-up.

I was very skeptcial of the New York Times announcing special beseller lists for various categories of comics back in March, and have only grown more skeptical and cynical since, as being on any of the three ghetto-ized lists under the ghetto-ized “graphic books” category doesn’t seem to mean much of anything.

Unless you’re a publisher, in which case it means you can refer to  yourself as a New York Times bestseller in blurbs, and perhaps make readers think that means you’re a real New York Times bestseller (that is, on the books list), and not that you got a participation ribbon in the just about everybody wins eventually lists, micro-targetted to make entry fairly easy (that is, one of the graphic books lists).

If you’d like to hear someone who isn’t just a cranky crank talk about why the lists don’t really work right, I’d suggest reading Christopher Butcher’s posts on the subject here and then here. Obviously I personally don’t put much stock in the list and generally ignore it, but I certainly understand why publishers would like it (and thus why the NYT would bother producing it).

In the past few months, I’ve seen inclusion on that list touted in more and more press releases and other PR material for various comics and graphic novels, but by far the most elegant example of such touting I’ve seen came in this week’s issue of Incredible Hercules:

See that box in the lower right corner? That’s Incredible Herc’s editor Mark Paniccia semi-ironically name-dropping the NYT while in the process of providing one of those old-school footnotes.

Bravo Paniccia! That’s an amusing bit of own-horn tootery worthy of Stan Lee himself!

(The image above is by Reilly Brown and Nelson DeCastro, and it appears in Incredible Hercules #132, which, by the way, you should totally read if you’re not already a regular Herc reader. It’s a great jumping-on point!)

Because min seems to be missing some pages.

See, the first issue of DC’s big summer event series (which will, of course, last well into winter) cost $3.99 and was 40 pages long. But the second issue, which still costs $3.99, is only 24 pages long (27 if you want to count the three-page illustrated prose back-up, presented as an excerpt from Blackhand’s diary.)

DC didn’t deliberately publish fewer pages in the second issue of a miniseries while leaving the price at the elevated, for-40-pages level, did they? (The solicitation on their website says the book is 40 pages long; that’s counting ads though, as #1’s solicitation says it’s 48 pages long, and the average 22-page DC book is solicited as 32 pages—22 story pages and 10 pages of ads. But even subtracting 10 pages for ads, that 40 page figure is still off by three-to-six pages).

Because that’s not very cool. That’s what Marvel Comics did with Secret Invasion—start the series with an oversized $3.99 issue and then drop back to 22 pages for the rest of the $3.99 sereies—which was the point at which $3.99-for-22-pages pricing went from something reserved for Max and Marvel Knights imprint books to being commonplace among the Marvel Universe books too.

With their embrace of back-ups in their $3.99 books, I thought DC was going to eschew Marvel’s strategy of “Eh, the suckers will buy it no matter what we charge for it! Mwa ha ha ha!” It was looking like DC might be less evil in their pricing strategies, but perhaps they’re just slower to be evil…?

This does not bode well for future.

I waited to write this until this piece went up, and now I can’t even particularly remember why.

Regular readers here may know that I’m not much of a superhero comics reader, but that I’ve been branching out lately. When I was asked if I wanted to talk to Kieron Gillen and Steven Sanders about their new series, I jumped at the chance even though it required me to binge on Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men so I had some clue of what I was talking about.

If you’ve read the comics, or are mildly aware of my love for Whedon’s work, you can probably guess what my reaction was to Whedon’s vision of the X-Men. Yep, I loved it. Intensely. Mostly, I loved Whedon’s Kitty Pryde.

As I’ve mentioned, I didn’t exactly grow up on comics, but I have a distinct memory of the X-Men cartoon and seeing this little brunette girl who looked kinda like me, who wasn’t all badass like the rest of the characters but could walk through walls (and didn’t I feel at times like I wanted to just sink through a floor and escape my life?). So Whedon, who likes to take those normal girls and make them extra-special, really did a great job with Kitty, contrasting her with the super-sexy and conniving Emma Frost and using her powers to save the world when all the offensive skills in the universe couldn’t have done so.

Of course the end made me sniffle a lot, but it also made me think about superheroes differently. I’ve always seen them as creations designed to allow people like me to transcend their normal lives; to become larger than life. I’ve never read books or comics simply because I identified with the characters (though I certainly have my share–Megan in Local being a prime example).

Yet the appeal of the X-Men has always been that they’re freaks; the world doesn’t understand them. As blogger Renegade Evolution noted:

The X-Men have the misfortune of being born different into a very intolerant world. They are mutants. Outcasts. Feared. Hated. Seen as dangerous…when for the most part, they just want to live and be left to it like everyone else. Hummm…imagine that? And it is odd, in my geekdome and time spent hanging out with other comic nerds, I have noted that a lot of people who are big into the X-Men are also somehow…well…different. Non-traditional.

Is it so weird, then, that of all the various reasons, and after all the explosions and action in Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, that I love it because I see myself in Kitty?

PW’s Beat blog posted its monthly analysis of the sales charts this week, and while I read those posts with great interest all the time, I did so with greater interest this month simply because I was curious to see how The Big Two’s embrace of $3.99 comic books might be effecting their sales.

I was surprised at the answer: Apparently not at all.

At least, not in any obvious ways. Here’s Paul O’Brien’s look at Marvel’s direct market sales in June. Marvel has been testing the $3.99 waters for so long, I can’t remember when they first started, but this year they’ve been much more aggressive, making some of their most popular titles $3.99-for-22-pages, as well as a majority of their miniseries. (I noticed last week, for example, that of the 28 new comic books Marvel shipped, 24 were at the $3.99 price point.)

But Marvel’s top books remain New Avengers and Dark Avengers, plus a Dark Avengers spin-off (Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia). Ultimatum, another $4 book, is right behind that little Avengers-related pack.

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And yet here’s Steve “Captain America” Rogers smoking a pipe while ironically telling his pal Bucky that they should enjoy some fresh air. Sure, the panel is from a story in 1944’s All Winners Comics #12, but Marvel just republished it on Wednesday, as a back-up All Winners Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1. Aren’t they concerned about the tens of thousands—well, thousands anyway—of the impressionable 35- to 60-year-old readers who pick the book up are going to see their idol Cap smoking a pipe and take up pipe-smoking just to emulate him?

No, my linkblogging posts don’t come on any particular day, they just tend to appear when I’ve gathered enough links that I like but don’t really have enough to say about to warrant their own posts. In case you were wondering. Now, onward!

At The Nation (full disclosure: I’m currently a Nation intern), Melissa Harris-Lacewell talks about the conservative campaign to paint President Obama as the Joker, and does an excellent job teasing out some interesting political parallels with The Dark Knight film.

Via When Fangirls Attack, a post on close female friendships in comics. How many female “buddy” or “bromance” pairings can you think of?

A comparison of Marvel Divas and Gotham City Sirens, also via When Fangirls Attack.

Johanna Draper Carlson looks at Huntress: Year One.

From Splash Page, Charlyne Yi of Paper Heart and Knocked Up is doing a comic with Oni Press. Insert random blather about how Yi is actually a geek here, right? Well, because she’s not Megan Fox (read, sexy girl everyone slobbers over) this hasn’t gotten that much attention, but it makes me happy: Charlyne Yi is funny, and from what I’ve seen of Paper Heart, is actually creative as well.

Jezebel looks at my favorite superheroine from childhood: She-Ra.

Finally, Defamer wants to know how gay Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes is going to be. Apparently word leaked out that there was going to be some sexual tension between the leads (Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr.), which was enough to send Michael Medved into a panic. Apparently there’s nothing to offend Medved in the screenplay, at least, and so he can go back to doing what he does best–which certainly isn’t knowing what women would like to see in a film. Or at least, this woman.

Marvel unveiled this latest teaser yesterday for the upcoming Punisher: Rest in Pieces storyline:

That’s right. Frankencastle. November 2009. And no, he is not fighting Count Chocula.

On the one hand, I can’t see this without remembering Marvel’s attempts to make the Punisher a supernatural character who was Touched By An Angel — on the other hand, if you’ve read my reviews on Rick Remender’s take on the Punisher, you’ll know I’ve really dug the series under his stewardship, and that he could make this sort of thing into an idea that’s just crazy enough to work. What say you, Rama readers?

Apparently so. This show has been talked about for a while now and it’s good to see some actual footage. Marvel released this little clip (more of a music video actually) of the show and I’m intrigued. Marvel really doesn’t have a show like this out now, or has EVER made a show like this.

I’m a big fan of the SHS toys, I have several that surround my kitchen and my office. I’ll give this show a try especially after hearing some of the voice actors involved: Mark Hamill as Red Skull, James Marsters as Mr. Fantastic and George Takei as Galactus. In addition to the show, coming out this fall, a variety of Super Hero Squad merchandise spin-offs are planned, including a video game from THQ (also coming out this fall), expansion of the Hasbro toy line, and a major fastfood partnership.

So, what do you readers think of the clip? Do you think it’s something you and your child would watch, or is just too kiddie?

For those of you who didn’t watch Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night, you missed out on some comicky goodness!

In last night’s episode, the comedian went to the San Diego Comic Con met up with industry figures like Stan Lee, Dan Didio, Geoff Johns, and Jon Favreau to discuss his comic book character, which I will refer to as “Rechargo Boy.” He’s solar-powered, and looks suspiciously like a late-night host.

While Johns kind of made me chuckle with his response, it’s Stan Lee that (as always) steals the show. You can see the full episode, which this is in the first segment of, by clicking here.

It’s the announcement that rocked the con — Marvelman has returned.

And he belongs to Marvel.

But despite the myth that’s swirled around this British superhero, what’s the reality? Indeed, most comics fans under the age of 30 probably haven’t ever read a Marvelman comic. Well fasten your seatbelts, readers, because we’re gonna Dial H — for History!

Despite the name, Marvelman was never created as a Marvel Comics character. Created in 1958, Marvelman was initially devised as, well, a legal loophole — a humble beginning that is only made more ironic for the years of legal limbo in which the character would fall. For you see, Marvelman’s first alter ego was none other than… Captain Marvel.

Let’s rewind. You might know something about Captain Marvel. Created by Fawcett Comics in 1939, Billy Batson, young boy, meets the wizard Shazam, and is given strength, invulnerability, speed, and flight. He also looked exceedingly similar to Superman — and you better believe the fledgling DC Comics didn’t like it. Lawsuits were filed, and Fawcett eventually capitulated to the leaner, tougher company.

Enter Len Miller. Owner of L. Miller & Sons, Limited, Miller reprinted all of Fawcett’s comics in the U.K. And needless to say, he saw an opportunity here. The deal was that Captain Marvel, believe it or not, was definitely raking in the money, even horning in on Superman at the top spot in the 1940s. So when Fawcett couldn’t print Captain Marvel, Miller instead sidestepped the issue by hiring creator Mick Anglo, who created the character of Marvelman under their own individual imprint in the U.K. — a character stylistically similar to Captain Marvel (a young reporter named Micky Moran gets atomic-based powers from an astrophysicist, requiring him to say “Kimota” rather than “Shazam”), but far enough (and blond enough) away geographically that the lawyers wouldn’t touch him.

And like all atomic weapons, Marvelman blew up. The Captain Marvel stand-in not only sold hundreds of issues, but launched spin-offs Young Marvelman and Marvelman Family — with Marvelman and Young Marvelman nearly hitting 350 issues each. But all good things must end: Anglo left the company in frustration in 1960, and Miller’s company eventually folded in 1963, as Marvel Comics and DC began dueling it out in the glory days of the Silver Age.

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As part of the mainstream media’s focus on San Diego this week, the Los Angeles Times ran a story asking some of their “burning questions” about the show, comics and “geek culture” in general. The “article,” actually a photo slideshow with extensive captions, is pretty insipid and betrays a lot of the same ignorance of and assumptions about comics culture that is present in the mainstream media stories about Art Spiegelman that say “Pow! Bop! Biff!” in them. But a few of their questions were either clever enough or preposterous enough to rate a little discussion, and so here goes… (more…)

Marvel writer Jeff Parker has announced on his blog that while Agents of Atlas is safe for now, his other new series — Exiles — will be ending with Issue #6.

As for EXILES… well, as they say, you can’t save every patient. The best we did was a momentary blip with issue one of the relaunch, and sales went right back to where they were previously. In hindsight, maybe we should have waited a year or two before trying it. It was a blow to me, I was having a great time working with Salva Espin and Casey Jones, and felt I was getting into a good groove with issues that you’ll never see. At least Marvel did me a solid and gave me a double sized issue in 6 to wrap things up. Curious to see what you think of how it… choke… ends.

Parker also discusses in this blog post that the upcoming X-Men vs. Atlas is not a death knell for the series, but that Marvel is trying different ways to convert its critical acclaim into sales. “I can’t give too much away right now,” he wrote, “but you’ll see that you’re going to have quite a bit of Atlas action coming up.”

As a fan of the original Judd Winick run of the series, it’s a shame that this iteration of Exiles is ending. The series followed an ever-changing cast of characters from the Marvel multiverse, as they were guided from one parallel universe to the next, righting wrongs and generally having fun with “What If?” continuity — and you could tell Parker was having a lot of fun with it. What say you, Rama readers?