Marvel

Continuing Thor's conquest of all media, Marvel is releasing a new animated Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers series, based on the Robert Rodi and Esad Ribic mini, that explains why they don't get along. The series will be available for download on iTunes, XBox and PlayStation starting 3/28 for $2.99 in HiDef and $1.99 in standard. The trailer debuted on Wired and producer Ruwan Jayatilleke talked about the story:

This Vanity Fairinterview with Stan Lee is FULL of awesomeness, and shows that Lee can still turn a quip like a young man of 70. But the bit that is getting the most excitement this day is the part where Stan answers the question he dodged in MALLRATS all those years ago -- the one about whether the Thing's junk was made of orange rock. Only they didn't call it junk back then--they called it a dork!

The fine folks at Comics Alliance did a very sensible thing and hired artist Ulises Farinas -- whose previous Marvel art efforts have been widely admired -- to create a massive Marvel vs DC Where's Waldo type illustration. Your mission: find the Invisible Woman and dozens of other people and objects. We've reproduced only a tiny portion of the whole here -- to see the whole thing at once would overwhelm your senses!

Just to balance out the International Women's day stuff here Man-Thing by artist (and Beat pal) Art Adams.

by Paul O'Brien

Let's be blunt: January was a pretty terrible month for the direct market. Compared with January 2010, comic book sales were down by 23% in units and 22% in dollars. The picture for graphic novels wasn't much better. In part, it's because of a lack of really big titles; but to be honest, there seems to have been a lack of titles across the board. The number 300 title in January was LADY MECHANIKA #1, with estimated orders of only 1,291. That's extraordinarily low. In December, it took more than three times that many sales to make the chart.

As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the direct market, and the margin was bigger than normal - they led DC by 39% to 26% in dollars, and 42% to 32% in units.

The big release this month, of course, is FANTASTIC FOUR #587, with the death of the Human Torch. There's also INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #500, the AGE OF X ALPHA one-shot and a handful of new minis. But it's a quiet month.

As always, thanks to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

This week's EW has an interview with Captain America director Joe Johnston and an exclusive look at the Red Skull, played by Hugo Weaving, which became unexclusive a few minutes ago.

Two new posters for X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, the young mutants film opening this June, proving that before they grew up to become arch rivals, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) liked to stand around experimenting with Photoshop color filters.

Legendary Archie artist Stan Goldberg started his career in the Golden Age coloring countless covers for Atlas, but in the Silver Age he was as a colorist for Marvel, working on such things as the cover to the very first issue of The Fantastic Four and desinging the color schemes for much of the seminal line. So it's fitting that he's been tagged to draw a variant cover for the new FF #1 featuring the new line-up, which features Spider-Man. The interiors are by Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting while other variant covers are by Daniel Acuna, Gerard Parel and Marko Djurdjevic.

The new THE MIGHTY THOR #1 by Fraction and Coipel will have several variant covers, including one by Walt Simonson himself. The book goes on sale 4/27.

Hm, top creators (we're guessing) on new titles. Sounds like the way things used to be in the olden (Marvel Knights, MAX) days before events drove the horse. Will these be real re-imaginings for Daredevil, Punisher, and Moon Knight? Wait and see.

Ooookay, NOW we are cooking! You know that part where Thor throws his hammer right in the dude's face? That was alright.

While it's been obvious for a while that BOOM! was no longer going to publish their Pixar comics, no official word has been circulated on what would become of the Pixar characters in comics. Now it seems...surprise! They are going to Marvel! With a magazine reminiscent of the old Welsh magazine titles for the newsstand -- for those old enough to remember -- or Nickelodeon Magazine for the Gen Y set.