Publishers

Tom Brevoort may have just confirmed that Journey Into Mystery won't be ending after Kieron Gillen leaves...

Here it is - an exhaustive look at all the Marvel books announced this week for Marvel NOWWWW, from Iron Man to Thor, with X-Men and Hulk inbetween. Also, the campaign for a Pixie Ongoing series picks up pace!

We knew the crossovers were coming, but as things go, this one sounds fairly modest -- a mere three-issue tale spanning Supers Man, Boy and Girl as they face the menace of the shirtless, alien terror, H'el, who is so horrible he wears his cape around his waist like a skirt. Sounds pretty basic and maybe even jumponable? Going by the cover art, though, it looks like some injury-to-the-arm is headed our way.

An article on USA Today celebrates Fraction/Bagley's Fantastic Four, and Fraction/Allred's FF. But it also reveals that Fraction/Dodson's Defenders series is cancelled with issue #12

Jaws dropped around the comics movies-o-sphere yesterday when Variety boldly announced that Ben Affleck might direct a Justice League movie. The story made a bit of sense—although the less said about his acting career the better, Affleck is growing in stature as a director, even if a three-ring circus like a JL movie would tax anyone but D.W. Griffith or Michael Bay.

Well, despite what you're thinking Affleck's directing career—THE TOWN and GONE BABY GONE—is much admired within the halls of Warners. So much so that they are thinking of giving over the proposed Justice League film to Affleck. After all, he played a superhero once. He also knows Kevin Smith personally.

Another digital to print success story—Alex De Campi and Christine Larsen's VALENTINE, which made headlines as a digital only comic that was translated into multiple languages. As noted below it was a true digital pioneer, with more than 350,000 downloads. And now...you can hold it in your hand.

On the scale of "Oh thank God," this ranks pretty high.Joss Whedon will be back to write and direct AVENGERS 2, as Disney CEO Bob Iger told an investors call. Immediately after the announcement, people started throwing money directly at Iger, just pelting him with dollars and quarters. "Take our money!" they cried. "Just take it! THE AVENGERS has already made $1.5 billion worldwide and the sequel will make even more."

This is firmly under the HYPE banner since I was a publishing consultant for this project, but Ham Fisher's venerable boxing-themed comic strip character has been updated to an MMA-fighter for IDW's Joe Palooka, the brain storm of boxing announcer Joe Antonacci, along with Mike Bullock, Fernando Peniche and Matt Triano. In the story, Joe Palooka is a discredited MMA fighter who travels the world desperately trying to clear his name while fighting to earn a spot in the legendary “Legion of Combat,” worldwide fight series.

After a successful roll-out at C2E2—and in light of how artists everywhere are doing it themselves—DC Collectibles is making more than 20 new posters available at their online store, all in the highly designed style that has become so popular with things like the Alamo Drafthouse and so on. Can we say, it's about time? You can see all the prints here—no creators given, alas, in the licensed style of the Warners and Disney stores, but there are some nice items.

Breaking news! Hepzibah returns for another appearance in Avengers Vs X-Men!

We've alluded to this a few times, but Kyle Baker has posted some art from a new Image book by himself and Kevin McCarthy called CIRCUIT BREAKER, which is:

When Kevin sent me his story about a little girl robot in futuristic Tokyo, I thought it would be funny to draw it in the style of my favorite Japanese cartoonist, Osamu Tezuka!