Tag: Marvel

It happens to every one of us. And Batman, Captain America (twice), Superman, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Martian Manhunter, and so on. And so it must happen to Spidey. A circulation boosting death of some kind, as announced on the cover of Marvel's February Previews catalog. We predict a future link to the NY Daily News!

With the rampaging (heh) success of The Walking Dead TV show, expect comics as episodic fodder to get a fresh look in Hollywood -- and no one is more out in front of this...

Continuing our month of previews, here's a peek at WOLVERINE #4, the continuation of the "Wolverine Goes to Hell" storyline by Jason Aaron and Renato Guedes. In this issue "Hellverine" tussles with Colossus and...

Okay so Sally Field has been cast as Aunt May. Hiring a bone density spokeswoman to play a frail old biddy who was always clutching her heart is puzzling, but hey, it's the 21st century.

This video of Stan Lee being confronted with the original art for FANTASTIC FOUR #12 for the first time in 47 years or so (or if he did, he probably forgot) is undeniably touching. But it also contains secret clues to the biggest treasure trove of all, Robert Langdon!!!!

[In recent weeks there's been much discussion of comics pricing, and both Marvel and DC have made changes to their pricing levels in order to face the realities of the current economic climate. While DC has announced an across the board roll-back of prices from $3.99 to $2.99, Marvel's policy announcements have been somewhat less clear. At the ICV2 conference last month Vice-President Sales & Circulation David Gabriel announced a rollback on selected titles, but no details. In addition at a retailer meeting, Marvel announced that they would be putting out fewer titles. An interview earlier this week with VP-executive editor Tom Brevoort made it clear that the rollback was limited but left details to Gabriel. In order to clear up what Marvel's policies are in regards to pricing, Gabriel and Chief Operating Officer Jim "Ski" Sokolowski sat down for an interview, discussing some of the business realities of publishing, the growth of digital and how to reach new readers as older ones cycle out.]

A couple of developments in the ongoing pamphletpocalypse/sales adjustment. § At long last John Jackson Miller has appeared with comforting words to explain why September's sales figures weren't cause to jump out the window. This may be just our interpretation, but it appears that the plunge isn't so much that all periodical sales are shrinking as top periodical sales are slipping. Miller explains that the tail-end of the long tail is actually HEALTHIER than ever.

We managed to get hold of a pdf of today's EW story on Captain America. We won't be stinkers and post the whole thing in readable form, but there are LOTS of pictures, including:

STRANGE TALES, the indie-does-Marvel anthology made a splash with its first issue, and thanks to our pals at Marvel, we're happy to provide an EXCLUSIVE preview of the 2nd issue, on sale next week. This time, it's cover artist Jaime Hernandez with Space Phantom and many mighty Marvel heroines limned as only Jaime can.

This week's EW debuts Chris Evans in actual Cap clothing, which turns out to be similar to the outfits that were leaked a while ago. The online excerpt include Evans discussing his fear of the role, and director Joe Johnston going firmly back into ROCKETEER territory:

Overall, direct market sales for August were substantially down, prompting a bit of handwringing online. And it's true that no title even came close to reaching the 100,000 mark (for only the third time since Diamond achieved their monopoly of the direct market). It's not so much that sales on individual titles suddenly lurched down in August. They've been dropping for a while, and the comparisons with one or two years ago make fairly grim reading at the moment (though bear in mind they don't show books being cancelled and replaced by higher-selling new launches). Rather, it's a month without any really big releases from either company. Marvel's major launch was a new NAMOR series, which lands just outside the top 40, while the biggest story events were the X-Men/vampires affair and the Daredevil-centred SHADOWLAND. As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the direct market, leading DC by 45% to 32% in terms of units, and 41% to 28% in dollars.

Although Disney's acquisition of Marvel's character library was seen as a genius move to shore up their boy-skewing movie franchises, there was one wistful little fly in the ointment: Marvel had already assigned rights to most of their iconic super hero franchises to other studios. Undeterred, Disney has just regained a few of the crown jewels: Disney has just acquired marketing and distribution rights to THE AVENGERS and and IRON MAN 3, which will be released May 13, 2013. Disney paid Paramount $115 million for the distribution rights and this will serve as a minimum guarantee against distribution fees.