Infographic: Making Sense of MARVEL NOW!

If you’re confused about Marvel NOW!, you’re not alone. While DC cleaned its slate in one fell swoop for the 52 reboot, Marvel opted for a slower rollout of their new titles, leading to some confusion over the meaning behind the initiative, the timeline for publication and what became of/what will become of your favorite Marvel “Then” titles.

We’ve done a little research and provided you with this handy infographic to help sort things out.

(click to enlarge)

As of this writing (and based on the December 2012 edition of Marvel previews), there are 12 “Marvel Then” titles whose fate is yet to be determined. Those titles include:

• Age of Apocalypse
• Astonishing X-Men
• Avenging Spider-Man
• Captain Marvel
• Daredevil
• Gambit
• Hawkeye
• Scarlet Spider
• Venom
• Winter Soldier
• X-Factor
• Xtreme X-Men

So what do you think? What Marvel NOW! titles do you pick up or will pick up?

Variant Madness: Obama to appear in Amazing Spider Man, special cover

God bless variant covers.

News broke quickly this past week that President Elect Barack Obama will be in a story in Amazing Spider-Man #583 and also featured in a variant cover that you can see here. As a life-long Spider-fan and Obama supporter, this is pretty awesome. It also helps that the future Prez is also likes Peter Parker’s exploits as well.

The issue will be in stores this upcoming Wednesday, January 14th.

But while the story will run in all issues, how to acquire the variant cover and how retailers can acquire them is what’s confusing. From the Newsarama writeup:

“Retailers were informed on December 16th via Diamond Dateline and the retailer portion of the Diamond website that issue #583 would have a special Obama variant cover and include the Inauguration Day backup story, something which would bring the issue up to 40 pages in total, and increase its price point (for both the regular cover and variant cover editions) to $3.99. To stress that last point – the Spider-Man/Obama story is in every issue of Amazing Spider-Man #583, with or without the Obama variant cover.

At that time, the conditions for ordering the Obama variant were that if retailers exceeded their orders for Amazing Spider-Man #583 compared to their orders for issue #575 by the Final Order Cut-off date of December 18th, they would qualify to order as many Obama variant covers as they wished while supplies lasted. To clarify, the cover is not being shipped to retailers in a 50/50 ratio as reported in the mainstream press.”

Issue 575 was the first part of the two-part Hammerhead arc that Ben and I discussed on the last p’cast. It’s reported that the first run has already sold out and that a second printing of the variant is being offered to shops with no restrictions while supplies last.

So at some point, you’ll probably be able to acquire one of these variants…somehow and some places.

Original story found at Newsarama

Newsarama’s Comic of the Year: two options? That’s it?

It’s that time of year for ‘Best Of’ lists and various awards and a post I saw upon a quick view of Newsarama shocked me

Wrong 'Comic of the Year'.

a bit. They are asking readers to vote on Comic Book of the Year, along with Comic Movie of the Year. Normally, I would have no problem with this, but that’s why I said ‘normally’.

Marvel’s Secret Invasion is done…now what?

With the end of Marvel’s near year-long epic of Secret Invasion complete, now what? Well, how about some Dark Reign?

Marvel Universe ultra-scribe Brian Michael Bendis did an interview with Newsarama where he discussed the end of the Secret Invasion series and gives some clues into what is going to happen next. I think for a majority of the fans, I would say that I hope that Dark Reign is more of a running theme/storyline throughout the books and not lead toward another major event.

After House of M, Civil War and Secret Invasion, it’d be nice to have a year off from a long summer arc.

Then again, history shows that we do have events during the summer, regardless of publisher.

More on the end of Secret Invasion during the next p’cast…recorded this week!

Prez-Elect Obama: A Spider-Man Fan?

Barack Obama - Comic Fan!

I knew there was a reason I loved this guy.

As I perused Newsarama the other day, I saw this post entitled ‘5 Lessons We Hope Obama Learned from Spider-Man‘ and bookmarked the page to check it out later. Then, a friend of mine on Facebook had a link to ‘50 Things We Didn’t Know About Obama‘. Number 1? He collects Spider-Man and Conan The Barbarian comics.

Whu? Huh? How did I miss this?

Apparently, this just broke over the past days and this article points to how a certain store is now selling more and more because of this revelation. The President-Elect is not only a comics fan, but a Spider-Man fan?

I love America.

You’re Fired! – Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander relieved of duties on “Heroes”

Jeph Loeb (pictured here with Heroes star, Kristen Bell) was fired by NBC according to Variety

Uber-reliable Hollywood rag Variety has reported that comics scribe Jeph Loeb and co-executive producer Jesse Alexander have been relieved of their duties on NBC’s Heroes.  The news comes midway into the third season of the comics-inspired drama which debuted with stellar ratings and a rabid fanbase, but has since limped into mediocrity since its first season.

According to the article, Loeb and Alexander, who have been with Heroes since the beginning, were let go due to “frustration with the creative direction of the show.”  Fans have criticized Heroes for being derivative of plots and characters found in mainstream comics, a fact that the shows producers would likely attribute to homage rather than plagiarism.  From its inception, Heroes asserted itself as a show pulled directly from comic book lore.  A better criticism of the show might be that its characters, while largely likable and interesting, seem to demonstrate wildly erratic motivation and behavior.   … [ Begin Editorial ]

Secret Invasion 8 Delayed Two Weeks

Ohhhhhhhhh, we knew we couldn’t have a ‘major event’ without at least one delay, right?

Marvel announced Tuesday that the final issue of Bendis’ Secret Invasion will be delayed by two weeks with #8 shipping on December 3rd. The reason?

“The additional pages in #8 did both Leinil and the schedule in,” explained Executive Editor Tom Brevoort. “Anybody who pored over the artwork from #7 a week ago can easily see how he and Mark Morales have been putting their all (and then some) into every page and every panel, and that effort has finally caught up with us. Hopefully, retailers and fans will forgive us these extra two weeks as we make sure that everything is in the shape it should be in for the extra-sized climax—and from there, it’ll be smooth sailing straight into DARK REIGN.”

That also means some other related tie-ins will have to be delayed as well:

- SECRET INVASION: FRONT LINE #5  – On-Sale 12/3

- SECRET INVASION: DARK REIGN – On-Sale 12/10

- INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #8 – On-Sale 12/17

- MIGHTY AVENGERS #20 -On-Sale 12/17

- SECRET INVASION: REQUIEM – On-Sale 12/17

Baltimore Con News: Slott’s new gig, Bendis/Kirkman debate, Ultimate Wolverine/Hulk

Some newsbits out of this past weekend’s Baltimore Comic-Con for you… (Some comic fan I am…I was in Baltimore flying and out of BWI after speaking at a conference Saturday and had no idea the Con was going on. Damn it!!!)

News on a public Bendis/Kirkman debate, who is taking over on Mighty Avengers and another Mark Millar project going to the big screen after the jump…

Random News: Colbert to appear in ASM, O’Neill coming back to Batman

Steven Colbert - American Comic Hero

A few mid-week news notes for our faithful listeners and readers:

-First, we are recording our new p’cast as I type this. Ben tends to talk a lot! (Just kidding, bud.)

-Steven Colbert to appear in Amazing Spider-Man #573: Comedy Central host Colbert, seen as a presidential candiate throughout the Marvel titles over the past year, will meet up with our favorite wall-crawler in an eight-page backup story in ASM #573. The issue is the final part of the New Ways To Die arc, but will be unrelated to the storyline…we hope. And of course, there will be a Colbert variant. Hooray!

-Denny O’Neil returns to Batman for two issues: The long-term Batman scribe will return to write the man he knows so well for a two-issue run in December…except Bats won’t be in the story thanks to Grant Morrison’s Batman R.I.P. run. From his Newsarama interview:

“Batman really isn’t in the story…Batman is the great unseen presence in the story, the way that Hamlet’s father is the great unseen presence (except for a few minutes in Act I) in that story.”

-Liquid Comics buys out Virgin Comics: The long-awaited end of Virgin Comics has come as Liquid Comics has completed their buyout of management. Apparently, they will continue to work on some of the existing characters that Virgin had worked on, but I’m not sure where Stan Lee’s deal fits into all of this. Poor Stan, but this was to be expected.

Embrace Change – Marvel airs Secret Invasion TV Commercial on ESPN2

Amidst the wave of teaser images, house ads and other clever marketing gimmicks, Marvel comics reached back into it’s 1980′s playbook and pulled out something it hadn’t used in a long time – traditional on-air TV advertising.  This 30-second TV spot promoting Marvel’s Secret Invasion aired last night during the Minor League Baseball Championships on ESPN2.  The ad leads viewers to embracechange.org, which is really just a link to the Secret Invasion page on marvel.com.  With Secret Invasion already 6 issues in, this ad is presumably aimed to boost sales on trade paperback which will be released once the mini-series concludes in November.  While it remains to be seen how effective the TV campaign will be, it’s nice to see Marvel pushing their core product – comic books – in a mainstream media venue.  That’s something we haven’t seen since the 1980′s ads for G.I. Joe comics.