Marvel

A news teaser campaign rolls out. Of course, the temptation to answer "a cult 1999 film starring Janeane Garofalo, Ben Stiller, Paul Reubens, Eddie Izzard, and William H. Macy and created by Bob Burden" is irresistible. If only...

February has only 28 days, but is jam-packed with lots of great graphic novels and related titles! Warning... looking at what appears so far on BarnesAndNoble.com, the rest of 2011 is going to be just as amazing! Click this link to discover more! (Sweet Kirby Crackle! Corto Maltese, in English, from Rizzoli?!) Better start shopping for bookshelves now.

Okay, so a member of the Fantastic Four died in FF #587 -- a comic which would normally be on sale tomorrow, Wednesday, like usual, but went on sale early at selected retailers. At the same time, a story hit the wires, NPR and just about every other media outlet with a "DEATH IN THE FAMILY" type story, effectively spoiling what had been a pretty well kept secret until then. Twitter was fluttering from the moment the stories hit. Whether you were outraged or shrugged your shoulders at the spoilage it was yet another example of a Big Two publisher planting a major media story and having no good option for timing. This also happened, famously, with the death of Captain America, the death of Batman, and surely many others stories we are too jaded to remember.

An AP story flooded the wires with a total spoiler on the death in this week's FANTASTIC FOUR #587. We blanked out the name here but click on the link if you MUST know:

TAKIO is definitely something different from Brian Bendis and Michael Oeming: a kids' story. Set in a family where two squabbling sisters learn to...

A minor market segment, these box sets offer what most fans are clamoring for: ownership of the actual file instead of an app, affordable comics (even at $50, the per-comic cost is usually below twenty-five cents), and extras which turns these collections into electronic omnibuses. However, due to sticker shock, and the experience of reading these comics on a horizontal screen, many fans have been reluctant to purchase these collections. Which means that now, as the digital marketplace transitions to apps and browser-based readers, these older CD- and DVD-ROM collections are being sold at clearance prices. So, dear readers, in these challenging economic times, we offer you this bargain bin listing of select titles found on Amazon.com. We make no money from directing you to these forgotten gems, and, as with anything on the web, caveat lector et emptor.

Marvel and the retailing community sometimes have a love/hate/love relationship, but here's news that they are strongly supporting members of ComicsPRO, the retailer advocacy organization, by releasing Orson Scott Card's FORMIC WARS: BURNING EARTH #1 a day early on Tuesday, February 15th to ComicsPRO member stores. Participating stores will also sell an exclusive poster. The regular sale date is Wednesday, 2/16.

Geoff Boucher got to ramble around the X-MEN: FIRST CLASS set yesterday, and hear about Matthew Vaughn's anxiety about getting it finished, and James...

A few set photos floating around this afternoon are of interest for various reasons. ¶ A fan on the street snapped a shot of a...

Poor Emma Stone. As lovely and charming as she is, she did not know that by answering some nerdy question on the red carpet she was stepping into a hotbed of fannish research. While everyone went all Zapruder inspecting the bulges on Andrew Garfield's wrists in the recently released look at him in Spider-garb, she innocently answered the burning question:

A fine infographic chart which, if not for the initiated, still lays out mutant heredity in an elegant way.

So, this month is a bit light. There are always some significant titles every month, so here's the list for January.