Comics

Marvel has released the first still from the just commenced AVENGERS movie, and it's all about the sitting down. Director Joss Whedon and crew went into production yesterday in Albuquerque for the movie you may have always dreamed would happen.

The just arrived issue of PW Comics Week has a nice preview of Celluloid, Dave McKean's first graphic novel since Cages. You'd think an undertaking of this sort might have gotten a little but more hoopla. Perhaps when people start looking at the art, it will Celluloid is described as a "pornographic work of art" about a man, a woman and a porn film that all intersect. It's out from from Fantagraphics next month.

Normally we don't run more than one Marvel PR in a day -- and they send out about 38 each and every day -- but when we saw that Joe Quesada had done a variant billed as the "No dry eye in the house" variant for The Death of Spider-Man storyline just now wrapping up in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN...well...we had to share. Because we like everyone to blubber in the afternoon. It's good for you.

This July, Marvel is serving up a RED SKULL miniseries starring the villain in the Cap movie, written by Greg Pak with art by Mirko Colak. David Aja has provided some tasty covers, influenced by WWII imagery from propaganda posters and the like.

Via Cyanide and Happiness

Guyen is a 19-year old Cambodian/Vietnamese/Chinese/American artist living in Montreal, CA. More here.

Comic strip historian and pioneer Bill Blackbeard has died at age 84, it has been reported. Blackbeard had been in a nursing home for some years, and passed away on March 10th. As the outpourings of appreciations have shown, Blackbeard was, perhaps more than any other individual, responsible for the emergence of comic strips and (by extension) comic books as a legitimate source of art to be treasured and preserved on an institutional level.

Artist Josh Medors has been battling a rare form of spinal column cancer for several years. The Hero Initiative has been helping him for some time, and now they are teaming up with Marvel for a special Spider-Man print to benefit Medors. PR below:

Artist Josh Medors has been battling a rare form of spinal column cancer for several years. The Hero Initiative has been helping him for some time, and now they are teaming up with Marvel for a special Spider-Man print to benefit Medors. PR below:

Chris Evans and Sam Jackson were doing something this weekend in Times Square. It is believed to involve Joe Johnstone, director of the Cap movie, although um, duh Cap and Fury, that could also equal the Avengers movie, which just went into production. So....since this is set in the modern day, you can kind of add it all up....and figure it out.

More on recent changes at Dark Horse with publisher Mike Richardson.

More on recent changes at Dark Horse with publisher Mike Richardson.