Marvel

Hawkeye is an odd character, if you look at his publishing history. He's been a staple of the Avengers since the title's earliest days. In fact, you could probably argue that the core of the Avengers were the Vision and Hawkeye. Characters that you read in Avengers and not solo books. When they wanted to spin-off West Coast Avengers, Hawkeye was the centerpiece of the spin-off. When they launched Solo Avengers, Hawkeye was the regular feature. You had Hawkeye mini-series in '83, '94 and '03. More recently, you had Hawkeye & Mockingbird and Hawkeye: Blindspot. You even had an Ultimate Hawkeye mini-series. Hawkeye is similar to Doctor Strange. Whereas Doctor Strange limped along in a lower selling cult title for several years, with occasional team book stops (usually variations on The Defenders, Hawkeye has been a staple of several popular team books (Avengers, West Coast Avengers, Secret Avengers... and an early stop over in The Defenders), but his solo efforts just haven't gotten much traction.

Marvel and Barnes & Noble have teamed up to offer $30 off the purchase of a Nook Tablet when you buy two Marvel digital graphic novels from the Avengers collection. Titles available include various New, Mighty and Dark flavors of Avengers, but also classic flavor, The Kree-Skrull War, and Avengers Assemble from the Busiek/Waid/Perez run.

Okay so everyone who figured out that that SPIDER-MEN project MArvel was teasing was a 616/Ultimate crossover—you are correct. Of course, Marvel wasn't exactly making it hard to figure out. Marvel has been teasing a bigger crossover between the regular line of comics and the Ultimate line and this seems like a good way to kick it off.

Marvel continues to pull out all the stops for promoting Avengers Vs. X-Men. If you've been on Facebook, particularly if you've been playing the Marvel: Avengers Alliance game, you may have noticed some comic book down the right hand side of the page. Ads that look like these:

With Marvel refocussing on more issues of fewer titles, and with the next wave of new titles presumably not due until after AVENGERS VS X-MEN, it's a pretty quiet month for new titles. The main new launch is WINTER SOLDIER, there's the much-delayed return of THE TWELVE… and that's pretty much it. Normal service is resumed, as Marvel had the largest share of the direct market, leading DC by 39% to 35% in unit share, and 36% to 29% in dollars. Bear in mind, though, that February was a five week month and DC didn't take advantage of that extra week to ship further material. Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

The Avengers are fighting the X-men, yes, but why? As someone who hadn't read any 616 Avengers or X-men for a while, would I even be able to understand Avengers vs X-men? I figured it out and so can you - for your convenience, a (mostly AvX spoiler-free) guide to understanding Marvel's newest comics event.

Disney has made it official: The CAPTAIN AMERICA sequel will bow April 4, 2014. Chris Evans will reprise his role from CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER and THE AVENGERS. The second installment will pick up right where THE AVENGERS leaves off, as Steve Rogers struggles to find his place in the modern world while working with Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D.

Frank Milller! David Mazzucchelli! IDW! Artist's Edition!

Marvel has released a reminder about tomorrow night's Avengers vs X-Men launch parties....and here it is:

Although the Marvel invasion of Disney theme parks with such delights as Speedball's Spinning Teacups has been retarded by the fact that Universal still has the theme park rights to most of the Marvel rides, Disney is finally getting in the act with an Avengers skin for one of the Disneyworld monorails. Disney had previously skinned the futuristic transport method with a Tron skin. We'd ride that.

As the clock winds down inexorably to the greatest moment in superteam filmic history, it has been revealed that THE AVENGERS will be the closing night film for the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, a fairly prestigious slot for a film that is mostly an entertainment.

Of all the Lego videos, this is by far the most violent and nihilistic we've seen...and perhaps the greatest, next to this one. It features Captain America. And the Wilhelm scream.