So, looks like no Black Widow movie?

She Has No Head! – Dear Marvel: Please Stop Ruining Everything | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources
In a chat afterwards, Joe told me that he’d love to make a tentpole [sic] movie with a female lead, but that he really doesn’t think there is an actress right now who could carry it, or a character that would work either.

Trivial issue: I don't get the "sic" on the phrase "tentpole movie". That's what they call a film they can build their summer release schedule around. The metaphor is that of a circus tent, with one big show and a collection of lesser attractions. Is "sic" what you say when you want to attempt a sexual entendre, but can't really think of one?

Main issue: Well, the reason I linked to Kelly Thompson's "She Has No Head!" and not the Ain't It Cool News remark that inspired it is that the smackdown has already been done. But I certainly didn't expect the Editor-in-Chief, head cheerleader and heir to Stan "the Man" Lee himself to go dissin' his own superbabes that way.

Perhaps this is the wrong time to point out that the "underwhelming" "Elektra" outgrossed either "Punisher" movie.

This is a production company that already has Scarlett Johansson (Iron Man 2, Avengers), Natalie Portman (Star Wars), Gwyneth Paltrow (won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love), and Liv Tyler (Lord of the Rings) under contract. And Johansson is the first one they've used as anything other than a secretary.

Shall we also discuss Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Jennifer Connelly, Jessica Alba and Cobie Smulders, all of whom seem to be able to carry other people's movies and shows?

Really, dude, you're just not trying.

I just have to say it

This month:
Action Comics #6
Wolverine #300

Something is very wrong.

Flusssshhhhhh

Last month I told you that, for no reason I could easily articulate, New Avengers #15 caught my eye. I told you how moved I was by the heroism of Squirrel Girl, and I expressed my hope that she wasn't being set up to die in the siege on Avengers Mansion.

Well, [SPOILERS], she wasn't, but what happened was worse. Bendis apparently lost interest in the story: That's really the only explanation I can come up with. The locked-down mansion that resisted the full-out attack of a team of Nazibots? Daredevil blew the front door off its hinges (something the Nazibots were apparently unable to do), then heroically led SG and baby Cage into the basement. (Did they not tell SG there was a basement?)

Cut to later, when the family Cage rewarded DD for knowing where the basement was by offering him an Avengers ID card. What happened to the Nazibots? "Well, we ain't goose-stepping, so I guess it worked out." That's a direct quote, and that's all the explanation we got. I guess they didn't finish bringing down Avengers mansion, since that job gets done over in New Avengers Annual #1 (also on sale this week) as a result of a completely unrelated siege. Does Marvel not have editors?

So after an issue to show us what a formidable threat Squirrel Girl actually is, her bacon gets saved off panel... by Daredevil? This goes far beyond unsatisfying, into the realm of downright insulting.

"Squirrel Girl takes out nazis..."

I have not been following "Fear Itself", so I really have no idea what's going on here. I don't even know what made me take a look at New Avengers #15...

Wait, that's wrong. I do know. It was Ken Boehm's rundown of Moments of the Week over on The Weekly Crisis. But the moment he highlighted was not the moment that made me cheer. The moment that made me cheer was the resolution of her sparring match with Wolverine. You go, Squirrel Girl!

And the moment that made me tear up was after she took out the nazis, when she returned to Avengers Mansion (she's Luke Cage's daughter's nanny these days).

Dammit, Bendis, you sucked me in. You had better not be setting her up to die.

Preeeesenting the Invincible Iron Man!

via flickr.com

And there's Supes chillin' in the background too. The next time someone asks "Why do people go to DragonCon?" show 'em this.

(Well, there's all those cosplay girls, too, as well as this really tight radio theatre group.)

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

Gooflactus

from ApeLad via flickr.com

Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

BREAKING: Disney to Acquire Marvel for $4 Billion

BREAKING: Disney to Acquire Marvel for $4 Billion: The Walt Disney Company has announced it will acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. in a stock and cash transaction worth 4 billion dollars.

What makes this deal huge, as far as content goes, is the fact that under the terms of the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of not only Marvel itself, but also over than 5,000 Marvel characters. Disney will now benefit from any movie or a game based on characters such as Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men and many others; extending its reach to the young male population it had somewhat neglected will definitely be good for the entertainment giant.

Now Disney and Warner each have their own pet comic book company. NBC-Universal already owns Walter Lantz Productions, but don't seem too interested in it. Viacom-CBS-Paramount has a spectacular collection of properties, but again, little apparent interest in comics.

Disney has proven they can sustain and exploit legacy characters. Wonder if Marvel will start handling Disney comics? Or if Disney will start producing Marvel-character movies?

(via Mashable)

Where else, indeed?

Now wait just a wallopin' minute here.

Not six months ago the newspaper Spider-Man waved a magic web and brought the premise in sync with the comic-book Spider-Man and the newly-marriage-free Brand New Day. And now the newspaper version is "goin' rogue" and reverting back to the happily-married Pete and MJ?

Okay.

No, really, it's okay. I like 'em this way. "Brand New Day" was and is a bad idea.

(Good luck finding the Sundays online.)

The Treadmill Days of Christmas, day 12

Whew. Whose idea was this again?

Day 12: The Fantastic Four

Early period: Fantastic Four #70, Jan 1968, by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott. This issue (spoiler!) actually ends with this scene, and isn't resolved until the following issue. The big green guy is an android, an "ultimate weapon" prepared by the Mad Thinker (defeated an issue or two back) and accidentally activated.

Boy, I hate when that happens.

This issue also contains a full-page panel of Reed and Sue musing on the love they share and the child that will soon be theirs. You can see Sue's new miniskirted uniform on the cover: We never find out if those unstable molecules can stretch into a maternity uniform.

Later period: Fantastic Four #369, Oct 1992, by Paul Ryan. Everybody, but everybody, is in this issue, as Sue battles her evil side Malice on the astral plane. Those of you who thought the corruption of Mary Marvel was unprecedented should probably look this story up.

Well, this was actually a lot of fun. Maybe I should continue looking at random character's covers at odd intervals. After all, we didn't do Captain America, or Batman, or Daredevil, or Wonder Woman, or the X-men, or Green Lantern, or the Hulk, or Captain Marvel, or Doctor Strange, or Plastic Man, or Thor, or Elongated Man...

Oh, crap, that's twelve more days...

Previously: Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11.

The Treadmill Days of Christmas, day 10

Day Ten: Iron Man

An out-and-out sentimental pick: I mentioned back on day 4 that Marvel comics didn't come to my little town until 1967. My only previous exposure to these characters was those awful television cartoons. This, Tales of Suspense #93, Sep 1967, was my first Marvel comic ever.

I could have done worse. 12 pages of Colan-Giacoia greatness, 10 pages of Kirby-Sinnott energy on Captain America, and this awesome Colan cover emphasizing the sheer bulk and power of the massive Titanium Man.

I felt kind-of cheated that both stories were continued from the previous issue, and both were continued into the next as well... But I bought the next issue.

Forward over four years to Iron Man #46. By now, Marvel's distribution arrangements allowed it to publish more monthlies, and they responded by immediately splitting Tales of Suspense (and its companions, Tales to Astonish and Strange Tales) in two. Gene Colan was busy with Daredevil, so this cover was by Gil Kane and Ralph Reese.

(I guess, since we're not now reading The Guardian #400, you know who won this battle.)

Previously: Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

The Treadmill Days of Christmas, day 7

Day 7: The Defenders. This time for sure.

Well. there are no good Defenders covers. See you tomorrow: Thanks for coming.

Everything that is wrong with Avengers covers is wrong with Defenders covers, squared. Especially "horrified floating heads" disease. It's a wonder the book sold at all. On the other hand, they had a remarkably stable roster for a team that "isn't a team".

Here's the image that introduced the concept, Neal Adams' cover for Marvel Feature #1, December 1971. Our heroes are charging directly at the reader, with something unspecified but obviously destructive going on behind them.

It was a pretty big jolt when I opened the book and saw the art on this lead feature by Ross Andru and Bill Everett -- but it grew on me.

Jump forward to Defenders #11, January 2002 (I didn't know until looking through covers for this that there even was a 2001 restart of the Defenders). This image features an iconic, if uncharacteristically restful, pose of the "classic" team by Erik Larsen. Valkrie's anatomy is a little odd (what, did Rob Liefield ghost-draw this?), but I have to congratulate Larsen for including all seven lead characters without feeling crowded.

And has the Hulk's attention been momentarily diverted by a butterfly? Nice touch.

Previously: Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

The Treadmill Days of Christmas, day 4

Day 4: The Avengers

Like Spider-Man, the Avengers suffered from an embarrassment of so-so covers. There are only so many ways to depict a crowd scene, and I personally am sick of floating heads reacting in horror to a central scene, a recurring motif that haunts Avengers covers like a disease.

When I saw the cover of Avengers Annual #1 on the stands in 1967, I had no idea who the Avengers were. Well, I knew who John Steed and Emma Peel were, but this lot clearly wasn't them.

No, really. Throughout the early sixties, Marvel comics were handled by a distributor owned by DC. DC used this advantage to severely limit the number of comics Marvel could publish. Some of you kiddies may know this, intellectually, but in practice the newsstand advantage was even greater. Many outlets, including the ones in my hometown, didn't carry Marvel comics at all. This was the very first Avengers comic I'd ever seen.

It may be why I never really warmed to the monthly series: It set unrealistic expectations.

The experts at GCDB are divided over whether this cover was by Don Heck or John Buscema, though they agree John Romita touched it up.

For late-period, I'll go with The Mighty Avengers #2 by Frank Cho.

If there are any comics fans remaining who haven't experienced puberty, this cover (like yesterday's Neal Adams Superman cover) should push them through it.

Hard to believe that's Tony Stark, isn't it?

Previously: Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

The Treadmill Days of Christmas, day 2

Day Two: Spider-Man

I think H is right: There aren't a lot of really distinctive, iconic Spider-Man covers. Which is surprising: Given how flippin' many Spider-man covers there are, you'd think the odds would be on their side.

The first fifty issues have far more than their share of gotcha covers, even though some of them are cut-and-pasted from Ditko's interior pages. On this cover to Amazing Spider-Man #22, Ditko attempts Batman's menacing shadow, which shouldn't work and probably wouldn't have worked if not for the Spider-signal belt buckle. (does he still have that?) It turns an off-center pose where the hero of the book isn't even present into a striking, moody piece. There have been dozens of attempts to use the signal motif since, none as effectively as this.

Oh, and the interiors aren't bad either.

The requirement to select covers from distinctly different eras of the book forced me to choose only one Ditko cover -- and also eliminated the best of John Romita Sr's covers as well. I probably could have considered the Andru run a different era, but despite countless classic images for Wonder Woman, I have to say I never liked his Spider-Man.

And Todd McFarlane's work always looked too busy to me. Lookit me, I drew all these extraneous web lines, aren't you impressed by all the work I did here?

As long as I'm flashing forward, I'll go all the way to Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #4, the end of "The Other" arc. Not having approved of the trials and reboot inflicted on the character throughout "Sins Past", "Civil War", "Back in Black" and "One More Day", I consider this gorgeous Weiringo portrait the end of Spider-Man's run. I prefer to remember Pete and MJ looking forward to the days they should have had, and it doesn't get any better than this.

Devious Journal Entry

Hank Ketcham's Fantastic Four
by ~DocShaner on deviantART

One thing we don't always consider is just how much the artist's style dictates the personality and story of the strip...

Shirtless Saturday - Kitty & Piotr

From the immortal Astonishing X-Men 12. Ah, Kitty, my girl, I hardly recognized you. I mean, when I first met you, you didn't even have an ass, and now look at you.

And you, Piotr... Well, with a name like "Colossus" I guess you don't think much of yourself, do you?

Shirtless Saturday - Hank & Jan

Say hello to Janet Van Dyne and Hank Pym in happier times. Just another couple in love that couldn't leave well enough alone.

Wallopin' Websnappers!

FRNDSM4COLOR

Perhaps the headline doesn't lend the event the dignity it deserves. But let us not weep over the not-a-hoax not-a-dream death of Peter Parker in Amazing Spider-Man #545.

Instead, let us celebrate 45 years of great storytelling featuring everyone's favorite Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man...

Well, we can't in good conscience include One More Day, can we? Okay, that still leaves 44 and a half years of...

What? Oh, yeah. The story began with Back in Black, didn't it? Still, 44 years...

Civil War? Well, yeah, right, it really began with Civil War and Spider-Man revealing his identity on national television. JQ has said no way they would have done that if One More Day hadn't already been on the menu.

But then what about Sins Past? Well to be fair, we can't count that train wreck of a story...

The Other? Organic webshooters? Ezekiel and Morlun? The Byrne reboot? The death of Aunt May? (Which one?) The Scarlet Spider? The Clone Saga? (Which one? All of 'em?) The alien costume? That time when he had, what, four secret identities? The effin' Spider-Mobile?

Boy, Spider-Man has sucked for a while now, hasn't he?

Well, we can still celebrate nine years of great storytelling from Lee, Ditko and Romita Sr, who...

Now just wait a cotton-pickin' minute. You're saying... You're saying that Spider-Man hasn't had a really good story since 1971? That's... that's crazy talk. You can't just, just retcon 36 years of continuity away! That's a hell of a way to treat your bread-and-butter flagship character! I mean, only a total loon would...

What?

At the End of the Day

Spoiler warning for... oh, forget it. This is the worst-kept secret since...well, ever.

Spider-Man is dead.

Wait a minute, you say. No, he isn't. I read Amazing Spider-Man #545. That isn't what happened.

Well, maybe you misread it. Peter Parker gave up. He surrendered to the Marvel universe's Ultimate Evil and gave him permission to rewrite his life retroactively, potentially remove him from existence completely (Mephisto hinted he could do that), counting on the Ultimate Liar to be telling the truth just this once, that in return for doing so Aunt May would live.

It would be just like Mephisto if Pete returned to the old homestead and found Aunt May alive as a disembodied brain in a jar on the mantel.

See ya later, Joe. Or not.

Somewhere at the intersection of four parallel earths

You know, it isn't that the story is badly told.

I've always thought Straczynski was a good storyteller. And for all that Joe Quesada is as slow as Christmas, he draws pretty good. I could wish that the alternate-Peter Parkers looked a little more like Peter Parker, but that's a quibble.

(Oh, dear, did I spoil anything? That's hard to believe, given the level of buzz this storyline seems to have generated. Too bad.)

But the core of the story just seems wrong. Spider-Man is a street-level superhero, and shouldn't be dealing with Mephisto at all. Maybe "Mephisto" is a Skrull. Hell, maybe Peter is a Skrull.

Do I seem too desperate? Is it optimistic or pessimistic to hope that this story goes almost anywhere other than where the accepted rumor says it will go?

Maybe I'm expecting too much. I'm expecting this story to fit neatly into established character patterns, if not necessarily perfectly into continuity. (Don't expect miracles. Not after "Sins Past.")

The logical way, the consistent way to end this is for Peter to spit in Mephisto's eye.

And then, "tomorrow", when Aunt May does, finally, die -- she's revealed as a Skrull. How long has she been a Skrull? Maybe... always? Wouldn't that be a kick in the head.

Maybe what this is is a full-stop discontinuity. Maybe this is their version of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?" They're bidding farewell to the character as he has been and clearing the slate for the character as they now want him to be. And I should stop worrying about what happens to these people next, because it isn't going to logically follow from whatever happens to them in this story, and was never intended to.

---

Addendum 12/6: Hello and welcome, all you Newsarama fans.

One thing you have to admit, "One More Day" has to be counted as a tremendous success because people are talking about Spider-Man. The publishing delay has even, one might argue, worked in Marvel's favor because it has taken a one-month buzz and pumped it up to five.

One might almost suspect that was the plan all along.

Another thing that should be noted: The glee with which fans are jumping and pointing and saying "See, even JMS thinks this is a bad idea" is misplaced, or at the very least premature. Read it again: That's not what the man said. He said, "There’s a lot that I don’t agree with", but he was very careful not to say what that was.

And goodness knows there are several strong candidates.

C'mon, people: Pete wouldn't cut a deal with Iron Man (he didn't offer Tony any kind of deal, he just demanded help) and he's going to get cozy with the Big Bad, Satan?

What was the "Loki owes thee a boon, mortal" card for, if not this?

Given JMS' time-travel tale in Babylon 5, it feels conspicuous to me that we haven't seen the other side of the encounter with the alternate-costume Spider-Man in that cemetery. If not now, when?

Somewhere on a parallel Earth...

...the "One More Day" arc featuring the Amazing Spider-Man was published, as originally scheduled, in weekly installments throughout the month of August 2007.

On that same earth, Allan Heinberg's "Who is Wonder Woman" and Kurt Busiek's "Camelot Falls" similarly achieved unbroken regular serialization.

On the other hand, Newsweek will have skipped its third week in a row, Time has missed more weeks than it has hit in 2007, and People and Us are in the midst of a month-long crossover. They sell in the tens of thousands, and they are only available at small shops called "news-stands". But I digress.

Unfortunately, I don't live on that earth. I have to buy comics on this one, where Marvel disguises a $1 price hike by hiding it in plain sight, in a "Still 395 cents" bullet-burst. Where the Marvel hype machine, with tongue in cheek, insists that "if you only read one comic this decade," it should be part two of a four-issue arc.

Where Joe Quesada can allow the flagship title of the Marvel Comics Group to drift so far off-schedule that these four "weekly" August issues are now "monthly" issues, barely expected to conclude the arc before the end of the year.

Assuming no additional delays.

I wonder how this story, on its completion (assuming it ever is completed, and with Ultimate Hulk vs Wolverine on a year-plus delay, surely it is permissible to question it), will compare to the Spider-Man epic by Lee and Ditko that concluded in Spider-Man #33.

That only cost twelve cents.

That only took one issue to tell.

That was published on schedule.

That didn't bring in a deus-ex-machina new character, or have Peter threaten to sell his soul, to tie everything together neatly.

That also saw Spider-Man facing a lethal threat to both himself and Aunt May, one that was clearly far beyond his ability to overcome, yet overcome it he did, when all else failed him, with raw determination.

Boy, I tell you, they don't make comics like that anymore.

Except, maybe, on that parallel earth.