Tag: Marvel

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.

Via Twitter, Marvel Associate Editor Nathan Cosby, who works out of the Mark Paniccia office on such books as the Shanower/Young Oz adaptations, Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man is leaving to do other stuff. He tweeted:

ICv2 continues its sit down with Marvel publisher Dan Buckley, who says many things, but also points out one of the great dichotomies of comics -- everyone says they want done-in-one jumping on point comics -- but when publishers put them out, the sales don't pick up at all:

HeyUGuys scans in the new issue of Empire and gets some new images of Chris Hemsworth as Thor. He's no Alexander Skarsgard, but we guess he'll do. The film has an innovative plot, as well, as Thor and his evil brother Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston) must team up to defeat the sinister menace of The Boom Mike.

From a comment at Techland:

ICv2 presents their annual chat with Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley and he just sort of lays it out:

This has not upset fanboys at all. CBR's Kiel Phegley and Marvel e-i-c Joe Quesada engage in a massive, week-long tell-all on the subject of One More Day, and it's current retcon in One Moment in Time -- O.M.I.T. OMD, you may recall if you have been near a comic book website in the last three years, retconned the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane out of existence because of a deal made with Mephisto. It was a hugely popular story element ridiculously controversial and fan complained loudly and continually for three years. AND NOW, O.M.I.T. has made that story never happen. So despite the memories people may have of the touching Shea Stadium Watson/Parker nuptials, that storyline is now as leveled and buried as Shea itself.

We get a lot of previews in our in-box -- 146 a day from Marvel's Arune Singh alone -- but we can't run them all nor would we want to. But we can't help but be tempted by the prospect of another Brubaker/Phillips production, this time Incognito: Bad Influences #1.

The Eisner Award-winning team of Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips and Val Staples present the most anticipated super hero noir series of the century, as Zack Overkill heads deeper into the criminal underworld than ever before. This is the mission that’ll redefine his life…if he can find a way to survive long enough.

The book goes on sale on October 20.

Note: We thought this interview with Feige on the occasion of the IRON MAN 2 Blu-ray release was incredibly long and unfocused and couldn't believe he or his secretary took all the time to answer the questions, but turns out it was a ROUNDTABLE. That makes more sense. .