Publishers

Quite the busy month, July. FEAR ITSELF is still rumbling onwards, but it's now joined by two other events - the "Spider-Island" crossover, and X-MEN: SCHISM. And there are relaunches of DAREDEVIL, GHOST RIDER and CAPTAIN AMERICA (which spawns a spin-off into the bargain). Oh, and now that the FEAR ITSELF crossover arcs are firmly underway, this seems a good month to ask: is it really having much of an impact on sales of the tie-in books? As per usual, Marvel had the largest share of the North American direct market, leading DC by 44% to 35% in unit share, and 39% to 31% in dollars. Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

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.

Initial orders for The New 52 are in and JLA #1 has more than 200,000 pre-orders, and six other #1s have more than 100,000 pre-orders.

Long, long delayed by difficulties finding the source materials, Fantagraphics' long awaited reprinting of the complete Pogo by Walt Kelly is finally at the printers, Mark Evanier announces.

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.

Trying something a little different this month...

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. 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!

We don't need us to tell you that it's tough times in the heartland of America these days. Slowing manufacturing, a recession that never really ended in some places, and a recovery that has failed to ignite. Luckily, one thing has come to the Steel belt to liven things up -- superhero movies. With Batman filming in Pittsburgh, Superman in Chicago, and now The Avengers in Cleveland (standing in for NYC? Ooooooookay) it's been boom times for photographers. Here's the latest Avengers leaked photos, showing Cap and Thor battling mocapped Hydra or someone goons.

This clip is way better than anything in the first Ghost Rider movie, including the last shot of Ghost Rider weeing flame. No one tell Anderson Cooper.

As usual Warren Ellis says what everyone else is thinking (or maybe blogging) -- the fact that age 40+ comics fans think the New 52 is a horrible idea may be a sign it's working.

DC has posted a list of events for the launch of the New 52, including Midnight Madness at Midtown Comics which will feature Jim Lee and Geoff Johns signings JLA #1. Sounds like quite the hootnanny.

by Marc-Oliver Frisch The countdown to DC's big relaunch continued in June with a whole lot of Flashpoint tie-in books -- few of which seem to have stood out in any way to retailers, if the sales figures are any indication. Given that the upcoming relaunch titles are drawing on the same pool of creators, characters and concepts, that's not ideal for DC. If it's asking too much of readers and retailers to pick and choose among 16 titles of a certain mold, putting out 52 of them at once seems ill-advised. Over at the publisher's Vertigo imprint, meanwhile, almost half the current ongoing series are about to end within the next year. There's still plenty of time for Vertigo to announce replacements, certainly. But in combination with the recent WildStorm shutdown and the re-absorption of a number of key Vertigo properties into the DC Universe line, there seems to be a lot less patience than there used to be at DC for material that's not expected to immediately do well in the direct market.