Marvel

Can't wait until you see THE AVENGERS tonight at midnight? Here's some stuff to keep you from jonesing yourself into a puddle.

When do you let go of that childhood dream? Jim Mroczkowski at iFanboy looks at the fannish habit of holding on to something you hate in hopes of something improving vis a vis the new Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon on Disney XD, of which he writes:

In an article that starts off looking at the possibility that Marvel's Kevin Feige will be the new head of Disney Studios, replacing departed Rich Ross, Kevin Melrose distills more than 20 years of Marvel history, such as how they came to have their own studio.

WOW, Creator Rights day on the Internet rolls on with what we might call Stan Lee's Hilary Rosen moment: an unforced error that cannot be rolled back. In an interview with Moviefone, of ALL PLACES, Stan is asked POINT BLANK about whether Jack Kirby should be credited on THE AVENGERS:

As expected, today's firing of Disney Studio head Rich Ross has Tinsel Town buzzing, and a picture of a Mouse House in disarray is emerging. Marvel Studio head Kevin Feige has been named several times as a potential replacement, but Nikki Finke's must-read analysis also confirms what we wrote about last year: legendary skinflint Ike Perlmutter is very much in the mix at Disney, and his personal dislike of Ross certainly didn't help matters. (Ross was also on the outs with Pixar's John Lasseter, according to Finke.) But even Disney chairman Bob Iger is feeling the Ike pinch:

Reviews are beginning to roll in on THE AVENGERS and, to our utter surprise, reviewers like it! Well, anyway, Justin Chang at Variety liked it.

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.