From the moment Disney purchased Marvel, people were drawing a line between their Disney XD channel — an attempt to lure more of the lucrative audience of young boys — and the Marvel characters. Marvel animation has been running non-stop on the cable channel ever since, but in April, the Marvel Universe programming block will roll out with the new Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon as the tentpole. Produced by Man of Action — Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau and Steven Seagle—the creators behind Ben 10 and Generator Rex, with input from Jeph Loeb, Joe Quesada, and Brian Michael Bendis, the show does not lack for comic book bonafides.

Plus, it’s got JK Simmons reprising his lifetime role as J. Jonah Jameson. Soundboard that.

Marvel Universe debuts on Sunday, April 1. Other programming in the block will include the return of “The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” and new short-form animation series and live-action interstitials.

THIS is what Disney paid $4 billion for.

Disney XD will launch Marvel Universe, a dedicated Marvel programming block, with the new series “Ultimate Spider-Man” as its centerpiece, on SUNDAY, APRIL 1, it was announced today by Gary Marsh, President and Chief Creative Officer, Disney Channels Worldwide at the Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, California. Marvel Universe on Disney XD will be the ultimate place for fans to find exclusive Marvel content, including new animated short-form series, live-action interstitials and the series return of “The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”  The block will be home to Marvel’s biggest superstars, such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America and many more to introduce dynamic stories of action, adventure and heroism to a whole new generation.    
 
Marsh said, “Iconic Marvel heroes and villains and stories with core values of accomplishment, discovery and growth make Marvel Universe a perfect complement to Disney XD and a destination for parents and kids to experience together.” 
 
“Marvel Universe block is an incredible animated ride filled with fantastic action and adventure,” said Jeph Loeb, Head of Marvel Television. “The spectacular team of writers and animators capture stories with all the dynamic fun you can imagine. Disney XD is the perfect place for families and Marvel fans of all ages to come together every Sunday.”
 
Acting as the keystone of the Marvel Universe block, “Ultimate Spider-Man” features a teenage Peter Parker juggling the typical growing pains of high-school with the not-so-typical growing pains of being a Super Hero.  As the newest member of Nick Fury’s S.H.I.E.L.D. organization, Peter finds himself on a team with four other teenage Super Heroes. 
 
Produced by Marvel Animation, the series’ award-winning creative team includes Joe Quesada (Marvel’s CCO), Paul Dini (“Batman: The Animated Series,” “Lost”), the creative powerhouse Man of Action Studios (creators of “Ben 10″ and “Generator Rex”), comprised of lauded creators Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle; and Brian Michael Bendis (visionary behind Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man comic series).
                                                                            
The voice cast includes Drake Bell (“Superhero,” “Drake & Josh”) as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Chi McBride (“Boston Public,” “Pushing Daisies”) as Nick Fury, JK Simmons (“Spider-Man”) as J. Jonah Jameson, Stan Lee (“Spider-Man”) as Stan the Janitor, Clark Gregg (“Iron Man”, “Thor,” “The Avengers”) as Agent Coulson and Steven Weber (“Wings”) as Norman Osborn.

By Todd Allen

Over at CBR, Kiel Phigley had a chat with John Rood, DC’s Executive VP-Sales, Marketing and Business Development, about DC’s digital sales and it’s worth taking a closer look at.

The biggest question, which is still utterly unanswered, is how many copies these digital comics are selling.  The second biggest question is where these sales are coming from and Rood does get into that, just a little:

Yeah, anecdotally there’s every type of digital reader under the sun. There are folks who bought plenty of physical product that week but also wanted it digitally because of their media consumption habits. Then there are folks who don’t know where their local comic shop is. So our consumers run the gamut. What I expected to find in our primary research through Neilsen NRG was some staggering difference in terms of demography or age or history in the comics category or the genre, but I haven’t seen anything like that that’s jumped out. We’ll be sharing more specifics with the retailers at the ComicsPRO convention on February 9, but there won’t be anything shocking. It’ll be, “Hey look, there’s a measure of physical traffic to the stores that is current plus new plus lapsed readers, and then there’s a measure of self-reported readership from our digital resources that is a balance of current, new and lapsed.”

I still am delighted that this is a genre — and I trust other publishers are equally delighted — where we’re not talking about cannibalizing [the core business]. We’re not talking about one platform being a replacement for the other. Who else in print can say that? Not “Businessweek” or “The Washington Post.” No one else can say that the addition of a new medium or platform or consumption behavior has been additive to your business

To a lot of people, that’s going to be a “duh,” followed by a “that’s because the Direct Market has a smaller footprint than the newsstand.”  But, there seem to be a fair amount of Direct Market people that need to hear that.

The next biggest question is what’s selling?  Rood does a little bit of a soft shoe routine on this:

But consistency is the right word — especially consistency in the digital end. There has been no shake up of numbers when you look at the percentage of physical sales by title. So if something is selling 6% of its physical sales digitally for issues #1 and 2, then it’s about 6% in issues #3 and 4. And if another title has been selling at 16% of print sales in the early titles, the latter titles have stayed at the same level. So there’s been no fluctuation. And the fact is that the makeup is largely the same and the performances you’ve seen in the data provided is largely the same in digital as it is in physical, yet we know from both anecdotal and primary research that this is a different audience. It suggests that the people might be different [for digital and print] but their tastes and their demos are largely the same.

Please note, he’s not saying that number of digital copies sold is proportional to print across the board.  He’s saying change in digital sales from month to month is consistent with the change in print orders from month to month (with the assumption that the change in orders reflects the change in retail sales).  This suggests that the digital audience decides they don’t like a title and drop it or hear buzz and start picking up a new book in much the same way the print audience does.  It also lends some credence to the theory that you have one audience, it’s just that some of that audience prefers a different reading format.

As to what’s selling, here’s the Top 10 List:

Justice League #1

Batman #1

Detective Comics #1

Action Comics #1

JusticeLeague #2

Batman #2

Detective Comics #2

Justice League #3

Action Comics #2

Superman #1

Rood does mention that people do tend to go to brands they recognize, like Superman and Batman, but this list is interesting.  By giving us the top 10 for the first 3 months, it masks how different things look for the line as a whole.  Justice League looks to be the digital bestseller by a significant margin, the third issue’s sales lapping the second issue of Action Comics.  Detective Comics, one of the pleasant surprises of the relaunch, is even more popular (relatively speaking) in digital.  Superman #1 also pops up higher than you’d expect it, though you imagine it’s having sales drops in proportion to its less well-received print counterpart.  What are we not seeing here?  Green Lantern and Flash.  Green Lantern, in particular, had print orders a lot higher than Detective Comics and Superman, but Green Lantern #1 didn’t crack the top 10.

Now, if we go by familiar brands, Justice League had a popular cartoon and has all the DC mainstays in it.  Batman has had MUCH better films than Superman has of late… and more cartoons.  Use that logic and the sales fragments make perfect sense.  The “new” readers and perhaps some of the lapsed ones are most likely to go with the familiar.  It’s why Transformers is one of the largest franchises in digital comics.

It would be interesting to see where a few books like Batwing and I… Vampire fall in the digital rankings.  Books that aren’t on the top of the print heat that might inspire some more mainstream curiosity.  Normally, I’d be curious how the science fiction branded comics would be doing in digital, but DC doesn’t have a designated “cosmic” wing like Marvel does.  Green Lantern is probably the closest to that corner, but it’s pretty firmly branded as plain old superhero in the eyes of the mass audience.

Finally, Rood talks a little about anticipating “digital collections,” which is to say, “digital tpbs.”  He’s right in that it’s WAY too early to get a handle on how the Amazon Fire collections will do, but the mass audience has traditionally liked to get their comics in book form, not serial.  With serial format now more easily available to the digital reading audience, we’re about a year away from being able to better evaluate what the serial vs. collection patterns of the digital audience are.

JOHN CARTER is coming in March, and several stills have just been released. From EW, there’s a picture of John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) fighting a giant white ape. Director Andrew Stanton told EW:

“They were always cool, just from a visceral standpoint, [but] they don’t really have a narrative function in the first book. So what we did is we made the White Apes a formidable creature that you kind of hear about throughout the movie, but you never really witness. There’s a subtle sense of anticipation for what these things might be like. Then Michael Kutsche — who did a lot of the designs on [the Johnny Depp movie] Alice in Wonderland – came up with this design on his own, for just their scale. He made them nocturnal, almost like moles — they stopped using their eyes, and just had a heightened sense of smell. We just love that. We needed a scene where Carter was going have to get out of his execution sentence in order to move the story forward, and we thought what better than having to go up against this formidable creature?”

While that looks pretty swell, so do six more stillsreleased, revealing Woola, Tars Tarkas, and a very clothed Dejah Thoris. Well, this is a Disney movie.

One of the major — if not THE major — reasons that Disney purchased Marvel two years ago for $4 billion was that the House of Ideas supplied a ready-made audience of material aimed at boys under 18 — the one quadrant Disney has always had the toughest time reaching. Disney does princesses and Pooh great, but they had to create a whole cable network that could be specifically branded for boys — Disney XD, which already airs various Marvel cartoons.

So this look at just how Disney has used the Marvel universe by Mike Gold is quite interesting as he points out that Marvel TV shows in development at Disney include the Hulk, AKA Jessica Jones (ALIAS), Cloak and Dagger, and a possible Miley Cyrus vehicle based on Mockingbird:

Step back a pace and take a look at what’s going on here.

Most of these shows are built around female superheroes. As headliners, such characters are anathema to motion picture studios. But Disney is betting heavy, heavy bucks that the distaff side will draw a sufficient audience to warrant the investment.

That’s pretty cool – and very risky. Women heroes haven’t fared much better on the small screen: Nikita was renewed by the skin of her teeth, The Bionic Woman revival flamed out, as did Charlie’s Angels redux. David E. Kelley’s Wonder Woman didn’t make it past the pilot stage. Yet Disney is developing no less than three Marvel shows built around women.

Although Marvel’s movie slate is totally boytastic, it does seem that the small screen offerings are fitting into the Closer/Medium/Damages/Prime suspect vibe: women solving crimes and kicking butt. The small screen has long been much friendlier to female protagonists and Disney/Marvel can’t help but have noticed that.

It also fits into some theories from the time of the sale that felt that Disney would revert to type and make even Marvel’s world of superheroes way more girl-friendly than you ever thought it could be. X-23, where you be?

Must survive until daybreak!

When DIsney bought Marvel, the idea of them teaming up for “Mouserine” was the topic of laughs. but now such things are actually happening, with the cartoon character Prep & Landing entering The Avengers, Spider-Man and Marvel Super Heroes comics. Actually, it’s just an INSERT story about the tooners trying to prepare for Santa, not an actual, coninuity-shattering crossover, but it does show that these titles are super kid-friendly. Even John Lasseter approves of this mingling.

This November, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Emmy Award-winning Prep & Landing enters the world of the Avengers, Marvel’s most popular super heroes, in an all-new comic book adventure. Certainly Santa doesn’t just visit the ordinary citizens of the world – even super heroes should have a shot at making it onto the “nice” list. Join Wayne and Lanny, members of an elite unit of elves who prepare homes for Santa’s arrival on Christmas Eve, in their not-so-ordinary task of preparing the Avengers Headquarters for the “Big Guy’s” arrival.  The significance of readying the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes for a visit from Santa is lost on his stealthiest elves – for them, it’s just another night on the greatest job ever.
 
 “I love Prep and Landing. I love the whole concept of Santa having these high-tech, stealth, elf squadrons that help him get each house prepared for Christmas,” commented John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios. “It’s already so much fun combining this super secret spy world mixed in with the North Pole, and then to add the Avengers into the mix – spies, Christmas and comics – three of my favorite things!”
 
This all new Prep & Landing story, from writer Kevin Deters & artist Joe Mateo will be available exclusively in the following November on-sale comics: 
 
·        Avengers #19
·        Super-Heroes #20
·        Spider-Man #20 

“We’re all big fans of Prep & Landing, so bringing them into the Marvel Universe was a no-brainer,” said Axel Alonso, Marvel Editor in Chief. “I just hope that Lanny and Wayne have an easier time at my house this year than they do at the Avengers’ Mansion!”
 
And don’t miss Prep & Landing: Naughty vs. Nice, a full-length special premiering on ABC this Christmas! Wayne and Lanny find themselves up to their pointy ears in trouble, as they race to recover classified North Pole technology… which has fallen into the hands of a computer-hacking Naughty Kid! Now they must turn to a Coal Elf named Noel in order to prevent Christmas from falling into chaos. You can bring home the original Prep & Landing when it releases on DVD this November 22. 
 
This winter, the team of Prep & Landing enter the world of the Avengers—’Nuff said!
 
AVENGERS #19 (SEP110506) 
Written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS 
Pencils & Cover by DANIEL ACUÑA
 Rated T …$3.99 
FOC—10/24/11, On-Sale—11/16/11
 
SUPER HEROES #20 (SEP110572)
 Written by JEFF PARKER
 Penciled by MANUEL GARCIA 
All Ages …$2.9 9
FOC—10/24/11, On-Sale—11/16/11
 
SPIDER-MAN #20 (SEP110571)
 Written by PAUL TOBIN
 Penciled by MATTEO LOLLI & ROB DiSALVO
 Cover by ALE GARZA 
All Ages …$2.99
 FOC—10/31/11, On-Sale—11/23/11

In his ongoing stroll down memory lane, Jim Shooter has come to a part of his history that I, me, the writer of this blog, have some knowledge of, although all after the fact: his consultancy with what would become Disney Comics of the early ’90s. . It’s a tale that involves Michael Lynton, than a rising star at Disney, later head of AOL’s European division, then publisher at Penguin and now the head of Sony Pictures. It also involves someone named Randy Achee. I worked with both these fellows in my Disney days. I remember Lynton quite well (he hired me), but Achee I had totally forgotten about until I read Shooter’s piece—and I’ll forget him five minutes after I write this. Basically, the short version of the story is that Lynton hired Shooter as a consultant to put together a plan to publish Disney comics, including a Dick Tracy movie adaptation, and all went fantastically, with Shooter promised the job of publisher of the new line, until a fateful day when Shooter was called into a meeting with all the Disney folk, and Achee was introduced as publisher.

Lynton apologized for my being blindsided at the Big Meeting. He said that he was going to hire me as publisher, but when he did his due diligence and contacted several big name creators in the comic book business to get a reference, they told him I was a monster. That if I were put in charge of Disney Comics that no creator worth spit would ever work for the company. I think you can guess as well as I can who he spoke with.

Lynton said that during the time we’d worked together, he’d found me to be the smartest, most creative, most reasonable, easiest-to-get-along-with person he’d ever dealt with.

Maybe the people who condemned me were wrong, he said, or maybe I’d changed. Whatever. Disney couldn’t afford to take a chance.

I offered no argument—nothing I said would have done any good at that point—but I did say, words to the effect, “Michael, someday, somewhere, I’ll be sitting behind a desk hiring creators again and the line will go out the door and all the way to the street.”

Shooter has the last laugh in all this, as he sets up Valiant and even gets Lynton to invest in Defiant, the company he set up afterwards.

As far as I know — aside from all the conversation about how great things were going, and what the real cause of the break was — Shooter’s account of the timeline is pretty accurate. He definitely has the hierarchies at Disney at the time down!

I do know that some of Shooter’s proposals for how to handle the Disney characters were still passed around when I joined the company a few years later…and several of them were very UN-Disney-like and not well thought of.

Disney Comics itself only lasted a few years. Achee and the other execs who were brought in were a pretty hapless bunch as far as running magazines went and the DM, then as now, wasn’t very interested in selling Disney comics overall. I still have a pretty cool “cast member” denim jacket with my name on the pocket though! The division did survive as Disney Adventures magazine, which would later relocate to New York under another head, a very smart, perhaps even visionary fellow named John Skipper, who now runs ESPN.

Lynton wasn’t much liked by the comics crew because he was remote, erratic and changed his mind a lot. However, he was one of the very few executives in Consumer Products of the time who actually liked comics. He seemed to think I was smart, so he obviously had good taste. Actually, I would say he was brilliant. He’s had a pretty spectacular career overall — how many people get to run a book company AND a studio — so he had the last laugh in all of this.

The entire West Coast marketing department for Marvel has recently been let go, Nikki Finke reports, including Dana Precious, EVP of Worldwide Marketing for Marvel’s LA Studios; Jeffrey Stewart, VP of Worldwide Marketing; and Jodi Miller, Manager of Worldwide Marketing.

The official line on why Marvel’s marketing team was let go is that Disney will be taking over that function and handling the releases of The Avengers and future Marvel movies themselves. In fact I’ve learned that Marvel will bring in someone in a “project management role”. But Kevin Feige’s continued supervision of all things Marvel should resolve any doubts by fanboys that Disney will screw around or screw up the comic book films. Insiders tell me that Precious and her team were not well-loved by Marvel bigwig Feige and other top execs at Marvel or by Disney and Paramount. (Some of the comments I heard today included: “Not up to or have the skill set to release this brand properly”… “Their job was to keep track of the people doing the real work”… “Paper pushers”… ”Would it have killed them to return an email?”… “Disney doesn’t need someone to cut its trailers”…)

Despite the lurid headline, this doesn’t seem to have affected the comics marketing team. The reasons being floated are as a cost-cutting measure — Disney is on a renewed thrift campaign, following some disappointing earnings, and recently canceled the costly Lone Ranger remake.

We’re not savvy enough on the West Coast operations of Marvel to know what was behind this, but it’s fairly safe to say that Disney cares much more about Marvel Studios than Marvel Comics. Implementation of the Disney-Marvel relationship has been an odd one — on the one side, you have a corporate juggernaut who wants to reach the boy market for toys and toons. On the other you have a company that is very much still led by chairman Ike Perlmutter, who, by some accounts, is Disney’s second biggest shareholder after Steve Jobs. Marvel Studios is known for knowing the value of a penny — something Disney also knows. But whereas Disney has controlling costs down to an art, Perlmutter has it down to a science. The relationship is still evolving.

One thing that should be noted: Precious and her team had only been at Marvel for a year. Several people have filled the marketing spot in recent years, so it was always a hot spot.

Despite what seemed like a logical timeline, Disney did not reveal the identity of two mystery Marvel movies planned for Summer 2014 at this weekend’s D23. A mystery Pixar film was shown to be “The Untitled Pixar film about Dinosaurs” and “The Untitled Pixar Movie that Takes You Inside the Mind.” Well, fair enough. The only Marvel movie touched on was THE AVENGERS — Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, and Chris Hemsworth all showed up to wave to the crowd — however, and a no cell phones policy meant that no pictures or leaked footage got out.

Screen Crave has a roundup that says that the weekend included Disneyland-like lines to buy exclusive merchandise and so on. While D23 this year may have been Disney’s attempt to throw their own Comic-Con, they didn’t afford the overflowing press opportunities that Comic-Con does. For hardcore movie press, the results were mixed:

The film panels (for Monsters University and Brave) were basically extensions of their presentations on the main stage. Mostly they talked about the design, though (because of the no electronic equipment policy for the movies panel) they didn’t offer as much footage, nor were they as flashy. Like the Pixar nerds who presented them, they came off as really solid, but slightly dull power-point presentations.

[snip]
When Disney pulled out of Comic-con this year (for the most part, DreamWorks’s Fright Night and Real Steel were at the Con, and there were no DreamWorks booths at D23), there was a sense that it was partly to bolster their D23 presentations. Instead, Comic-con as a driving force for hype may be dying, and we may yet see it return to its less Hollywood-driven roots if studios begin to abandon it as a place to launch titles. This is the second year in a row that Universal had a film play at comic-con and die at the box office (Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, Cowboys and Aliens), and it’s hard to know how much it helps a film, period. Comic book titan titles The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel didn’t show at Comic-con. Realistically, they didn’t need to be.

Despite this, JOHN CARTER seems to have gotten a pretty big buzz boost coming out of the show. AVENGERS is already buzzing, but this didn’t hurt.

The Disney police seem to have throttled a lot of crowdsourced coverage, but you can see a few pictures here.

Robot 6’s J.K. Parkin went to the Joe Quesada presentation, which was mostly a history of Marvel Comics, but the Q&A has an interesting look into what peope who paid a lot of money to go to a Disney show might ask about Marvel:

–It started with a question about the possibility of more Broadway musicals after Spider-Man:Turn Off the Dark, to which Quesada responded there weren’t any plans right now.
–Another person asked why Marvel didn’t have a booth at D23, which brought applause from the audience. Quesada said as the creative guy he honestly didn’t know, but pointed out this was their first time to attend the show and maybe they’d have one next time.
–The next question was about reboots, and Quesada said they don’t do hard reboots — their characters still have the same histories. He then explained how the Ultimate Universe is a separate, alternate universe that’s only been around for 10 years. I’ve had these kinds of conversations with non-comic reading friends who keep seeing news stories about DC reboots and Miles Morales, so I could feel his pain.
–Will Marvel ever have a presence at any Disney parks? Quesada said there have been talks, but couldn’t elaborate.
–Another fan said he loved Howard the Duck, and wanted to know if Marvel had more plans for him, and if we’d find out he’s related to Donald. Quesada chuckled and mentioned the legal troubles between Marvel and Disney over Howard before Quesada was CEO. He also pointed out that the 25th anniversary of the Howard the Duck movie was coming up. No mention of Fearsome Four, though.
–Several fans asked about the possibility of Marvel doing Disney comics now that BOOM!’s Disney line was coming to an end. One fan (the same one who thanked Quesada for his work on Booster Gold) suggested that if Marvel did a Darkwing Duck comic, they should hire the creative team of Ian Brill and James Silvani, who work on the comic for BOOM! Studios. Quesada said where these licenses go is really up to Disney, pointing out they’ve done a few comics with them.
–Another fan asked if Marvel would be doing any stories that reference the “end of the world” coming in 2012, per the Mayan Calendar. Quesada said the world ends in Marvel comics every week.
–Is a Deadpool movie in the works? Quesada said that’s in FOX’s hands, but said Ryan Reynolds makes a better Deadpool than a Green Lantern.

.

So, this weekend in Anaheim (home of Disneyland), the D23 Expo is taking place.

Dedicated to All Things Disney, this show will feature Marvel Comics for the first time, with  appearances by Joe Quesada, Kevin Feige, and Marvel creators.

Joe Quesada will be hosting a panel on Sunday, at 10:15 AM.

Friday morning, Disney hosted their annual “Disney Legends” ceremony, inducting eleven members.  Mark Evanier has commentary and video.

When the Kirby verdict was announced, I immediately wondered if any Marvel creators had been “legendized”.  The official site doesn’t show any (not too suprising, given the recent acquisition), although Carl Barks, Floyd Gottfredson, and Al Taliaferro have been honored in the past.

I hope someone pulls a “Batgirl” and questions Mr. Quesada about the “legends” of Marvel, and how Marvel honors their contributions to Marvel’s legacy.  Given the concentrated nature of the fan-fest at “The Happiest Place on Earth”, it is very unlikely.  So I’ll ask them here!

• Why are there so few “created by” credits in Marvel comic books?

• What compensation has been paid to those creators once a movie has gone into production?

• Does Marvel pay royalties for all reprints?  Does this include images used in merchandising, such as the posters sold in the Marvel Print Store?

• If Marvel is such a great company with so many recognizable characters, why do they lack “created by” credits?  Or is this a tacit admission that Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and The Demon are better than Spider-Man, the Avengers, Deadpool, Iron Man, and Wolverine?  That Marvel characters are unworthy of attribution (although they have made millions at the box office)?  [Click the names for credits.]

• Do you feel that Marvel’s reputation among creators has been tarnished over the various copyright lawsuits?  Do you feel that creators would be hesitant to create new characters for Marvel, when there exist other, more lucrative alternatives?

Oh, and Cedalion?  Nanos gigantium humeris insidentes, and all that.

With Disney’s D23 Expo coming up in a few days, the Mouse is priming the pump for some possible Marvel-related announcements. At the Television Critics Association press tour, ABC president Paul Lee confirmed that the AKA Jessica Jones and Guillermo del Toro=produced Hulk pilots are still in the works, saying both were being “aggressively” developed. He also dropped some arcane hints about…Castle?

“We’ve got this really cool storyline with a Marvel character that appears in ‘Castle’ this year.”

Could this be an in-world superhero, a mystery revolving around comics or…what? Disney and Marvel are already busily synergizing/transmediuming Castle – - Marvel is publishing a tie-in comic of the book series that hero Castle writes, and star Nathan Fillion was signing at the Marvel booth at Comic-Con. So more tie-ins would be a swell test of the corporate bonds.

Even more mysteriously, Disney just released a film schedule that included two unnamed Marvel films, one for May 16, 2014, and one for June 27, 2014. Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 have dates already, so speculation has centered around Captain America 2, or, possibly, Doctor Strange and Ant Man, which are said to be far along the pipeline.

Whatever the nature of these mystery films — or a third, Pixar project that was also on the release list — it’s a pretty solid bet that we’ll learn more about them at D23. Presentations with Marvel and Pixar are both on the schedule, and Disney wouldn’t drop a tease like the schedule if they didn’t have a reveal already planned.

Looks like D23 will be full of surprises. For instance did you know that Dick van Dyke is alive and singing? It’s true!

UPDATE: literally as we were writing this post, Marvel sent out some PR on their D23 presence – including an assemblage of the cast of the Avengers! Yes, this is going to be a buzz-worthy event.

On Saturday, August 20, Marvel Studios President, Production, Kevin Feige joins Rich Ross, Chairman, The Walt Disney Studios; Sean Bailey, President, production, The Walt Disney Studios; and John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios on stage at the D23 Arena for the Expo’s Walt Disney Studios presentation. Feige, will be on hand along with an awesome assemblage of cast members from “Marvel’s The Avengers.”

But that’s not all, True Believers! On Sunday, August 21, Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada brings you inside the House of Ideas with a very special Marvel presentation and Q&A that provides a behind-the-scenes look at Marvel and its iconic super heroes. Join him for an exclusive and unprecedented experience that will take you through the evolution of Marvel from its first comic book in 1939 to its current position as one of the most important creative forces in the world.

D23 will be an amazing experience and we hope you can attend! But if you can’t, don’t worry–we’ll bring the Marvel events directly to you! Marvel.com Editorial Director Agent M will be there, posting tweets and photos, and hosting liveblogs of both Marvel sessions! Sign up for both liveblogs below or on Marvel’s Facebook page, and follow both @Marvel and @Agent_M on Twitter for all the action!

If you’re a fan of Carl Barks, the “good duck man” who revitalized Dusney’s duck comics in the ’40s and ’50s, Heritage Auctions is selling a ton of great stuff, including autographed comics, correspondence, and, at the very high end, some of Barks’ incredibly collectible — and expensive — oil paintings, like “Red Sails in the Sunset,” above, which starts at $30,000.

There’s also this Barks Treasury Gold Limited Edition with Signed Certificate #320/1000 (Applewood Books, 1997) made out to “Steve.”

Which makes you wonder if it might have once belonged to Steve Geppi, owner of Diamond and a HUGE Barks collector. Since he also owns Heritage, it seems pretty reasonable that some of the Barks stuff might once have been part of his collection.

[Thanks to "Algernon" for the tip.]

AWOOGA! ALL HANDS ON DECK!

Arcade Fire soundtrack — check — but the remake by Peter Gabriel? “My body is a cage.” So this is a remake of AVATAR?

Yes it is! White man comes to savage land as savior and leads them against six-armed green guys and rescues atmosphere!

But — no Woola? A brief glimpse of Tars Tarkas. Incomplete grade.

Likes: Taylor Kitsch looks good. Lynn Colllins looks great as Dejah Thoris but she is wearing lots of clothes and the red Martians don’t look very red.

Unknown if like or unlike: Looks like Pixar is playing this very straight, which I guess you would have to. And considering that Avatar is the highest grossing movie ever — and was pretty much a rip-off of John Carter — its success made making this finally possible and so we have come full circle IP wise.

For years, we wondered why Disney didn’t do it’s own Comic-Con…and now they are with the biennial D23 festival in Anaheim. This year’s show, set for August 19-21, is the suspected reason why Disney’s Hall H presence for such films as John Carter and The Avengers will not be at Comic-Con. And indeed, the presentation schedule has just been announced and not only does it include a 90 minute Hall H style presentation, but an entire Joe Quesada-led Marvel event.

This would be an awesome thing to attend if it weren’t just a month after Comic-Con for us East coasters. Anyone want to cover it for us?

Also, nice to see the Disney princesses getting named as legends.

The D23 Expo 2011 is proud to announce the Arena schedule for The Ultimate Disney Fan Event. From August 19 – 21, Expo guests will have exclusive access to presentations from The Walt Disney Studios, Walt Disney Parks & Resorts, Disney Channel and Marvel Comics – plus they will be able to experience the 2011 Disney Legends Ceremony. In addition to the spotlight arena presentations, this year’s Expo will feature screenings, celebrity panels and autograph signings, eye-popping pavilions, exclusive insights into TV shows, theme parks, animation, Disney history and more, to be announced in the coming weeks. Arena presentations will include:

Friday, August 19, 2011
11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
2011 Disney Legends Ceremony – Hosted by Tom Bergeron. Honorees Regis Philbin; Jim Henson; Disney Princesses Jodi Benson, Paige O’Hara, Lea Salonga, Linda Larkin and Anika Noni Rose; Bo Boyd; Jack and Bonita Wrather; Guy Williams and Ray Watson will be inducted as Disney Legends for their contribution to the creative legacy of The Walt Disney Company in a special presentation exclusively for D23 Expo guests.

3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts – Join Tom Staggs, Chairman of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts, as he gives D23 guests a special behind-the-scenes glimpse into some of the exciting projects currently underway at Disney’s parks and resorts around the world.

Saturday, August 20, 2011
11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
The Walt Disney Studios – A fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse at the exciting roster of projects on the horizon at The Walt Disney Studios. From exclusive video clips and live performances to filmmaker discussions and star appearances, this session will be hosted by Rich Ross, Chairman, The Walt Disney Studios; Sean Bailey, President of Production, The Walt Disney Studios; John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer, Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios; and Kevin Feige, President of Production, Marvel Studios.

6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
The Lion King 3D Exclusive D23 Screening – Disney fans will have access to an exclusive advance screening of The Lion King in Disney Digital 3D™, ahead of the film’s highly anticipated theatrical and home entertainment releases. “The Circle of Life” takes on a new dimension as Simba, Mufasa, Nala, Timon and Pumbaa grace the screen once again, this time in breathtaking 3D.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Marvel Comics – An exclusive and unprecedented experience that will take you through the evolution of Marvel from its first comic book in 1939 to its current position as one of the most important creative forces in the world. During this presentation, which will include interactive Q&A segments, you will not only get an inside glimpse of the history of Marvel and its iconic Super Heroes but also discover why Marvel truly is the House of Ideas. This session will be hosted by Joe Quesada, Marvel’s Chief Creative Officer and one of the most respected and sought after writers and artists in the entertainment industry.

2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Disney Channel – Fans are invited to experience the excitement of a spectacular live performance, featuring stars of Disney Channel’s hit series Shake It Up. From meeting the cast of television’s first dance-driven sitcom and learning moves from a Disney Channel dance master to a special panel, autograph session and more, this unforgettable experience awaits Disney fans of all ages.
These presentations add to the already robust schedule of experiences, presentations and pavilions that will make up the D23 Expo 2011, including the Ultimate Disney Trivia Tournament presented by Hasbro’s Trivial Pursuit, the Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives exhibit – including the Fan Art Gallery, the D23 Expo Live Auction and the D23 Expo Dream Store. Additional schedule, pavilion and talent announcements will be made in the coming weeks.

Tickets to the D23 EXPO are available at http://www.D23Expo.com. Admission includes access to all experiences and entertainment at the D23 EXPO, including the Disney Legends Ceremony, and can be purchased for single days or for the full three days of festivities. Admission is $47 for a one-day adult ticket and $37 for children 3-12. Three-day passes are $136 for adults and $106 for children. Members of D23: The Official Disney Fan Club will receive a discount for up to four admissions, as well as early entry to each day of the D23 EXPO for themselves and their guests.