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?

Episode 13: Live From Free Comic Book Day 2009!

We recorded one of the best shows in not just our history, but ALL PODCAST HISTORY this past Saturday as part of the 2009 edition of Free Comic Book Day, live from Double Midnight Comics here in Manchester, NH! It’s Episode 13 and it’s here now!

- SPILLS! Be amazed as we talk about the history of FCBD and what the publishers were cookin’ up for this year.

- THRILLS! Be enchanted by the interviews we did with shop co-owner Brett, store patrons and even Spider-Man himself!

- CHILLS! Hear Ben’s heartfelt apology for his actions against Josh in episode 12!

If you’re a comic fan, I guarantee you will love this show as there’s a little bit of everything including our talk with a manga-loving card player, an actual DC fan and what it’s like to be a shop owner. You’ll also hear from our special guest co-host PJ Huot, who you’ve heard in past episodes.

For the full show, click here. or subscribe through iTunes.

P.S. See that cool sketch at the right? That’s from Blair Shedd who Ben met at FCBD…more on this later on!

Episode 010 – “DeCONpression” (Part 1)

We’re back from the New York Comic Con and we have more to talk about than we can contain within a single episode!

In part one of our New York Comic Con debriefing, we recount the events of the weekend, taking you the listener along for the ride.  You’ll ride with us on the shuttle bus, sit next to us at the panels and hold our place in line at Artist Alley.  You’ll hear how Ben spent all of Friday standing in one place, find out what pissed off Josh enough to start a podcasting turf war and you’ll cringe as we stalk Jim McCann with a Near Mint Valentine.

You’ll even get a chance to win an autographed comic if you can tell us why Phil Jimenez’s Spider-Man wears a tiara.

All this excitement and it’s just the first half of our post-Con-versation!

In the soon-to-be released Part II, we take shots at the Marvel and DC booths, bitch about the bitching about the price of comics, we examine the implications of digital comics and comic cliques and Ben comes to grips with just how many books he’s buying.  Stay tuned, true believers!

Click Here to listen or Subscribe via iTunes.

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

One More Day Again? Controversial storyline hits Spidey comic strip

Just when you thought it was over, one of Marvel’s most controversial storylines ever has reared its ugly head again. This time, it’s in the pages of newspapers across the country.

Comic fans everywhere remember the infamous Spider-Man storyline that launched in 2008 called One More Day that ended in the eradication of the Spider-Marriage between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. Everything was ret-conned back to a certain point in time that we’re still trying to figure out. The reasoning was nearly universally panned by critics at the time, even though in my opinion, this post OMD-era has been nothing short of fantastic.

Remember the Spider-Man daily comic strip? Well, it’s still running in many newspapers and on December 31st, readers saw this:

And then on New Year’s Day, we got this:

Now I don’t read the strip, mostly because our paper doesn’t carry it and it never comes to mind. However, this is interesting and a further attempt to try to make everything as streamlined as possible. Now if only that long-discussed Spider-Man comic strip compilation book would come out, we could all catch up!

Did You Know?

- Spidey is part of the first-ever comic strip/comic book crossover story.

- The strip started in 1977.

- You can read the strip on the official King features site and get access every day for $15 per year.

Originally 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’.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Trailer – see it here!

It’s not an exclusive, but I had to give y’all this. This looks insanely good. Look for Wolverine, Sabretooth, The Blob, Gambit, young Storm and more.

We finally managed to get the video posted so have a look and let us know what you think …

And don’t forget about Episode 7 of the Near Mint show…scroll down for details!

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.

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