Comics

Marvel are kicking off a weekend of announcements today with news about some Original Sin tie-ins. The main Original Sin series will see The...

Earlier today, DC Comics kicked off their C2E2 weekend in Chicago with "All Access". The star studded panel included Bobbie Chase, Brian Azzarello, Charles Soule, Dan Jurgens, Greg Lockard, Greg Pak, Jim Chadwick, Kyle Higgins, Nicola Scott, and Scott Snyder. While there weren't any surprise announcements, fans got creator insight about upcoming books from Batman Eternal to Secret Origins. Here's a few tidbits from the panel and its Q&A.

Marvel's House of Ideas panel at C2E2 2015 was hosted by Ryan Penagos and features Nick Lowe, Joshua Hale Fialkov, and Mark Waid on stage, focusing heavily on Marvel's digital endeavors with brief mentions of the 75th anniversary of Marvel Comics, the Marvel Gaming Universe, and a new documentary series called Tales to Astonish. Joshua Hale Fialkov and Juan Bobilo will be bringing Amazing Spider-man: Who Am I? to the Marvel Infinite Comics lineup, but unlike titles like AvX and Wolverine, Who Am I? will be released in a batch on May 6 containing the first four chapters, with another batch of chapters to be released approximately a month later.

Oh no!  Batman's dastardly diabolical villains have stolen the creator credits from DC's Batman75 standee display at C2E2 in Chicago! Can you identify the creator(s)...

As I've written before, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 is probably my favorite superhero movie after the original Christopher Reeve Superman. (I'm not in love with the Nolan Batmans although I get why people like them.) It's one of the very few superhero films with an autuer's imprimatur, and it's just plain goofy as heck, veering between horror pastiche of the directors own work, sappy musical and a sad meditation on middle-aged loneliness. Raimi is old enough to have the original Ditko Spidey as his inspiration, from the upside down kiss to the rogue's gallery of old men in greying wife-beaters—supposedly one of the reasons Raimi and the studio parted ways on Spidey 4 was that Raimi wanted the Vulture as the villain, and the studio wanted a more up to date bad guy. In Marc Webb's Amazing Spider-Man 2, all the references have been updated. This is the ultimate world of Bryan Hitch, Greg Land and Greg Horn, all blazing cgi and mottled, gloomy photoshop. The soundtrack has been similarly updated, with a group known as the Magnificent Six—which includes everyone from Pharrell Williams to Johnny Marr—blasting catchy singles. In what passes for innovation here, a scene where Peter Parker does the obligatory Google search to find out a mystery, instead of the chugging string music of every other superhero movie, we get a Phillip Phillips song.

Over at Thrillbent, the webcomics portal he devised two years ago, Mark Waid has announcedThrillbent 3.0, which includes an iPad app that will allow users to sync their website purchases, see where theyleft off, and other up-to-date functions. In addition to the free comics Thrillbent has always offered, Waid is adding what he calls a “Hulu Plus” level that includes new content for a monthly subscription of $3.99, which is, as Waid points out, is the price of one comic. For this you get:

The NY Times has the first official look (aside from iPad sightings over the years) of Scott McCloud's The Sculptor, his first sustained fiction...

There's a pretty lively discussion of Comixology's Submit program going on in the comments of this post. And while SUbmit seems to be...

If you want to know what Marvel is shipping in July, the answer is GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY!

This May, IDW will continue to develop their range of all-ages titles with The Littlest Pet Shop, from the twin creative teams of Georgia...

Here's the DCU and New 52 solicits for July -- and as a BONUS becuase of the lead time needed for the lenticular covers, the September Future's End solicits, with NO CREATIVE TEAMS ATTACHED, probably because ANYTHING could happen between now and then. We'll have Vertigo and trades in the next post. Of note -- the new Grayson, Teen Titans and Suicide SQuad books and HArley Quinn at Comic-Con by Amanda conner -- a good time is guaranteed in that one.

DC has announced its latest month of cover variants and the topic is Batman, in honor of his 75th Anniversary. Artists include Kevin Nowlan,...