marvel-valentines.jpeg§ Nice Art: Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. Hope you get to spend it with someone you care about, or even a comic book, like this one. it was 1996, and Mark Bagley knew all about LOVE.

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§ But is you’re like The Beat, what you really love is those weird little kiddie Valentine’s – Marvel had those two, including some drawn by Ty Templeton, he reports.

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And if you run out to Walmart you might be able to find some Marvel themed candy to make your Special Valentine’s heart pound a bit harder as they digest all that sugar.

§ Anyway! Steve Morris forcefully explains why Bruce Wayne Should Never Give Any Money To Charity

No matter what you do, every single person in Gotham is one stubbed toe away from putting a giant toenail on their head and calling themselves Nailstorm. It’s a singularly bizarre city which is designed to turn people into monsters, and no amount of public funding will help anyone. Whatever you fund will turn out broken, corrupted, and in need of being punched by a sad orphan. That’s the way Gotham works, and we need to stop thinking that we’re being clever for arguing otherwise.

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§ List of books to read! This link is a bit late for the big sports event yesterday, but it was timely when it was posted at Comics Bookcase: Best Graphic Novels and Comics About Sports, which argues that the eternal conflict between comics and sports is just a myth – indeed, even aside from the vast shelves full of sports manga, there are some fine US ones as well, like Dragon Hoops and The Golem’s Mighty Swing.

 

§ CBR has a handy Junji ItTomie_manga_cover.jpego reading list 

Junji Ito has been drawing manga since the 1980s, when he was inspired by the classic horror manga The Drifting Classroom. He has a massive body of work to his name, from hardback anthologies to longer, more cohesive tales. There is no single best entry point into Ito’s works, but fortunately for manga fans, there doesn’t have to be one. Newcomers can try Junji Ito’s manga volumes in any order they like.

§ News! Chris Arrant is stepping down as the comics editor for Newsarama at Games Radar, for a new unnamed gig. Wishing Chris all the best…he is one of the good ones.

Thank you. After 18+ years of contributing to Newsarama, first as a freelance writer and then as an editor/senior editor, I wish to announce my impending departure on February 18. (1/??)

§ These are unsettled times, and money is rushing from place to place, not always going where it should. For instance, artist Declan Shalvey was happy to see a costume he designed for Moon Knight showing up in the trailer for the upcoming Dixney+, but not as happy not to be paid for it. This follows artist David Aja noting that despite the entire Hawkeye TV show stealing its graphics, credits and visual style from his comics…he hadn’t been paid for it.

And artist Brian Reber complains that his art was used for NFTs by Valiant without his permission.

Given all this bridge-lighting activity, one hopes the launch met with expectations.

§ Meanwhile, NFTs and the Blockchain are supposed to be cool because they are DECENTRALIZED, and god knows, we need MORE THINGS THAT ARE UNREGULATED AND WILD WEST. RIGHT? Oops – Marketplace suspends most NFT sales, citing ‘rampant’ fakes and plagiarism

The platform which sold an NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.9 million has halted most transactions because people were selling tokens of content that did not belong to them, its founder said, calling this a “fundamental problem” in the fast-growing digital assets market.

§ Well it was the Big Game yesterday, and my heart bleeds for all you Bengals fans who went so long in the wilderness and came soclose this time. But just as a water cracker is just a sturdy vehicle for a helping of cheddar cheese, the Super Bowl is but the frame for the debut of wonderful short films starring Gen X heroes, and trailers for longer films. ComicBook.com has All of the Super Bowl 2022 Trailers in One Place including Nope (LOOKS GREAT), Jurassic World: Dominion (more dinosaurs, more Goldblum) and so on.

WB/DC actually released a teaser for all its 2022 content, which garnered surprisingly little comment on my social media feed. But here is your Flash and Black Adam at last:

 

§ Of course the most excitement came from the second Trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, And everyone has been examining it with a magnifying glass ever since. Here’s the best round up of theories and America Chavez. The big news is (VAGUE SPOILERS):

  • Patrick Stewart is Doing Something – he’s that blurry shadow in the above image, it seems.
  • What he is doing might be a variant of the “Illuminati” revealed in the comics, a sort of advisory board of powerful Marvel Universe beings, like Namor and Iron Man.

  • This board, whatever it is, seems to be related to things that appeared on What If? as much as No Way Home.

  • Wanda is going to have a tough time

To quote Den of Geek:

Now, obviously, an Illuminati roster like this can’t properly exist in the MCU as it currently stands. There’s not enough history there yet (even after 27 movies) and of course, several of these characters are unavailable for various reasons. But what if thanks to the newly-introduced rules of branching timelines and variants, a multiversal Illuminati exists? This would allow Patrick Stewart to return as the Professor X of the Fox X-Men movies, while not infringing on the ability of the MCU to create their own Charles and other mutants when they’re ready to do it.

Cameos from everyone who ever appeared in a Marvel-related entertainment have been rumored to be appearing in Doctor Strange 2, but I won’t pass them along because I like surprises and you do too. But I will say this: we need Bruce Campbell to return to the MCU. Sam Raimi, make it so.