Marvel

With Marvel's April solicitations up, we can now declare crossover season upon us. AVX (Avengers vs. X-Men, if you prefer) has been announced. Axel and Tom have talked about keeping it in the core books. Let's see how many titles that entails in April.

Every once in a while Marvel likes to get cultural by commissioing a bunch of variant covers in the style of great paintings. they've just done this with April's Avengers Art Appreciation Variants, which will whet your appetite for both the Avengers movie AND a trip to the local museum. Alex Maleev, Michael Kaluta, Gabriele Dell’Otto, Greg Horn, Gerald Parel and more channel Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Monet, Pollock, and Egon Schiele (one 'l'). Which one do you like best?

The past year has seen an unusually large number of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, both in comics and on the screen, but not all Holmeses are created equal. Last night, British viewers got to see the last episode of Season 2 of the BBC's wildly popular starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows starring Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law is still doing well in theaters a month after it opened. So if you're in a Holmesian mood and wondering what to read next, here's run down on the Holmes adaptations which have come out or had new installments in the past year. Varying from inspiredly odd to unreadably awful, don't go to the comic store without reading this first!

The actual Jim Cheung cover to AVENGERS vs. X-MEN #1, this April's big cross-fight event, has just been revealed.

Here's what caught my eye this month, from DC and Marvel!

A little more information on the various crossovers has emerged over the week. Batman/Night of the Owls Over at Newsarama, Scott Snyder has shed a little light on this Batman Event that's spawned its own backup feature.

Perhaps not wanting to be left off the second wave chatter today, Marvel has announced a slew of second printings for books like SCARLET SPIDER and DEFENDERS. And some new covers, as well.

Over at Publisher's Weekly, I was writing about how Marvel has trouble keeping their books in print and had some retailers tell me how Marvel's sales suffer for it. Now with Diamond's 2011 year-end sales charts coming out, WOW, do things look odd.

Fight! Marvel is releasing a series of teasers for Avengers vs X-Men, the big slugfest for 2012, and we're pleased to EXCLUSIVELY present this one by the great Alan Davis .

The biggest superhero brawl in the history of the Marvel Universe begins this April in Avengers Vs. X-Men #1!   Which team will reign supreme? Join the conversation on Twitter with #AvX!

From the moment Disney purchased Marvel, people were drawing a line between their Disney XD channel -- an attempt to lure more of the lucrative audience of young boys -- and the Marvel characters. Marvel animation has been running non-stop on the cable channel ever since, but in April, the Marvel Universe programming block will roll out with the new Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon as the tentpole. Produced by Man of Action — Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau and Steven Seagle—the creators behind Ben 10 and Generator Rex, with input from Jeph Loeb,joe Quesada and Brian Michael Bendis, the show does not lack for comic book bonafides. Plus, it's got JK Simmons reprising his lifetime role as J. Jonah Jameson. Soundboard that.

A new poster for the Avengers film has been circulating -- this seems to be the "Ultimate Avengers Movie" version.

Let's start the new year out with a "what if." Over the years, there have been a ton of early-to-mid-'80s rumors about various Marvel creators having proposals in to revamp the DC characters. Some of the stories involve Steve Gerber and Frank Miller pitching new versions of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman as Crisis on Infinite Earths was being planned (and that The Dark Knight Returns spun out of said pitches). I've heard Howard Chaykin and Walt Simonson's names attached to similar rumors.