49 DAYS
50 DAYS
Phil Noto’s Northstar Wedding Cover: Beautiful Art, Terrible Omen
By Andrew Wheeler
The great Phil Noto is a master at catching those little moments of empathy. And that makes him a great choice for the variant cover for Astonishing X-Men #51, the wedding of Jean-Paul Beaubier (Northstar) and Kyle Jinadu.
The cover is a “create your own wedding” variant featuring tender snapshots of some of Marvel’s best-known couples, including Jean-Paul and Kyle. It also features a prominent blank spot where fans can add their own wedding photo or draw one in. It’s a very sweet idea, and Noto’s portraits are beautiful, but we couldn’t help notice a very important thing: most of these couples are not together anymore. That can’t be a good sign.
Marvel Girls On Film: Are These Your Female Avengers?
By Andrew Wheeler with graphics by Dylan Todd
With the massive box office success of The Avengers (the film has earned more than one billion dollars at box offices worldwide), Marvel Studios has accomplished an extraordinary feat in franchise building; it has created a shared cinematic superhero universe based on the characters originally created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Introducing its heroes across five movies was ambitious enough (Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor andCaptain America), but betting that all of those characters could fit together in The Avengers was a huge gamble for Marvel, and it’s remarkable that it paid off as well as it did.
Yet something got lost in the shuffle of all those movies. Marvel Studios did a pretty good job of putting intelligent, capable female characters in its pictures: Pepper Potts, the level-headed executive; Betty Ross and Jane Foster, the brilliant scientists; Natasha Romanoff, the kick-ass S.H.I.E.L.D. agent; Sif, the Asgardian swordswoman; and my favorite, Peggy Carter, the quick-witted British intelligence officer. Potts and Romanoff returned forThe Avengers, with the latter getting a sizable chunk of screen time, and S.H.I.E.L.D. deputy Maria Hill was added to the mix, but still some fans were disappointed not to see a second female Avenger on the team.
The future of the shared universe seems assured given The Avengers movie’s record-breaking take, so there’s ample opportunity to add some women to the franchise. But with almost 50 years of continuity to draw from, which characters will they choose?
Read on for our selections for Marvel’s new female Avengers.
Toonami Returning to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim Block on May 26
By Caleb Goellner
Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block will officially restore your chance to anime your life away via basic cable next week. That’s right, the fan-favorite Toonami will return on Saturday, May 26, reviving the anime-centric programming block that ran from 1997-2008 and introduced a generation to the likes of Dragon Ball Z, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Mobile Suit Gundam and dozens of other action shows.
The announcement comes via the Adult Swim Twitter feed - the same source that teased fans with a potential Toonami return this past April Fools’ Day (while the network itself ran select Toonami programming along with new CG animated bumpers of the block’s space suited mascot, T.O.M.), before asking fans to request its actual restoration with an official #BringBackToonami hashtag after admitting to the prank.
Toonami’s official schedule has not been announced, but ANN observed that TV Guide lists the following schedule for May 27:
12:00 a.m. - Bleach
12:30 a.m. - Fullmetal Alchemist
1:00 a.m. - Durarara!!
1:30 a.m. - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
2:00 a.m. - FLCL
2:30 a.m. - Cowboy Bebop
3:00 a.m. - Bleach
3:30 a.m. - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG
4:00 a.m. - Bleach
4:30 a.m. - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
5:00 a.m. - Durarara!!
5:30 a.m. - Cowboy Bebop
Provided the listing is accurate, it seems Toonami might blend some of its classic lineup with newer shows. Either way, T.O.M. will be donning his helmet once again.
The Supervillain Handbook
The book in the middle of that picture,The Supervillain Handbook, is a book I wrote. It came out a couple weeks ago.
Let me tell you a few things about it:
- It’s got everything a person aspiring to professional super-evil could want in a guide: How to get motivated, what goals to set, how to pick a name and costume, what powers you need, guidelines for planning dastardly plots, warnings about how often you’ll get punched, a supervillain glossary, training exercises, and more.
- Inside you’ll find more than 40 illustrations by the amazing Adam Wallenta.
- People who aren’t me think it’s funny. See?
- Print editions are available at lots of bookstores (like Barnes & Noble, which is where the above picture was taken) and on Amazon.
- It’s also available at some comic book stores. If your local comic shop doesn’t have it, tell them it wasn’t solicited in Previews, and that they should order it through Ingram or Baker and Taylor. They can also order directly from the publisher, Skyhorse. Tell them to email me at the.mwb at gmail.com for more info.
- You can buy it on the Kindle, too.
- To everyone who has already gotten the book and/or said nice things about it, thank you.
- To everyone who has not gotten it, remember: These are people with rayguns. Ignore them at your peril.
ComicsAlliance Vs. AvX Round Two: Stop Talking, Start Punching
By Andrew Wheeler
Graphics by Dylan Todd
Welcome back to ComicsAlliance Vs. AvX, our unofficial scorecard for Marvel’s big summer publishing event,Avengers Vs. X-Men. The scores as we left them last issue look about that one-sided. The Avengers have a thirteen point lead, five points to the X-Men’s negative-eight thanks to a foul ball/act of genocide by the mutants. Can the X-Men drag themselves back as Jason Aaron takes over scripting duties from Brian Michael Bendis?
The story so far: The Avengers discovered that the planet-destroying Phoenix Force is coming back to Earth, with the X-Men’s Hope Summers as the likely host. Cyclops is determined to protect Hope from the Avengers because he believes she might restore the mutant race. Because Cyclops and Captain America are two of the great tactical minds in the Marvel Universe they determine that the only way to resolve this issue is to shake the contents of a large helicopter over the inhabitants of a small island.
Round two! Fight!
![Shia LaBeouf’s Self-Published Comics May Be a Secret Code from Space
By Matt D. Wilson
Better known as an actor, the son of Indiana Jones, and a renowned scholar in the language of Cybertronian,Shia LaBeouf made a surprise appearance at the C2E2 comics convention in Chicago this past weekend, signing self-published comics that the Chicago Tribune described as being “borderline philosophical” and having “crude, child-like drawings.” I unfortunately missed the signing, but when I discovered that my local shop, Chicago Comics, was selling two of his three comics in the store, I dashed from the convention over to pick them up.They are… an experience to read. If I didn’t know any better, I might say they’re secret messages sent from space robots to warn us of impending armageddon. Or maybe they’re just some freshman-English-level poetry thrown into a couple picture books. Probably the latter. One of the two LaBeouks I bought, Let’s F***ing Party (above), has no narrative at all.
[Read More]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2l8ieJYXQ1qcw9rdo1_500.jpg)
Shia LaBeouf’s Self-Published Comics May Be a Secret Code from Space
By Matt D. Wilson
Better known as an actor, the son of Indiana Jones, and a renowned scholar in the language of Cybertronian,Shia LaBeouf made a surprise appearance at the C2E2 comics convention in Chicago this past weekend, signing self-published comics that the Chicago Tribune described as being “borderline philosophical” and having “crude, child-like drawings.” I unfortunately missed the signing, but when I discovered that my local shop, Chicago Comics, was selling two of his three comics in the store, I dashed from the convention over to pick them up.
They are… an experience to read. If I didn’t know any better, I might say they’re secret messages sent from space robots to warn us of impending armageddon. Or maybe they’re just some freshman-English-level poetry thrown into a couple picture books. Probably the latter. One of the two LaBeouks I bought, Let’s F***ing Party (above), has no narrative at all.
ComicsAlliance Vs. AvX Round One: Commence Preparations for Rumbling
By Andrew Wheeler
Marvel’s latest big event officially kicked off this week with the release of Avengers vs X-Men #1, a new superhero civil war that pits the publisher’s two biggest teams against each other. As a cynic of long-standing I know a marketing-driven stunt comic when I see one, but as a Marvel fan of even longer standing I’m still gleefully excited to see my favorite superheroes punching each other in the face.
It’s with a fan’s affection for both teams that I’ll be recapping the AvX and Versus series for ComicsAlliance - but this is more than just a recap. This is a fight. As the series progresses I’m going to keep score of each team’s performance, so that even if the event ends with a team-up to take on a bigger threat, we’ll all know who the real winner is. The numbers don’t lie, even if I had to make the numbers up.
How did we determine the winners of round one? Read on for Wheeler’s thoughtful and unassailable analysis.
Best Art Ever (This Week) - 03.23.12
We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great images on sites like like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art Ever (This Week), a weekly depository for just some of the pieces of especially compelling artwork that we come across in our regular travels across the Web. Some of it’s new, some of it’s old, some of it’s created by working professionals, some of it’s created by future stars, some of it’s created by talented fans, and some of it’s endearingly silly. All of it’s awesome.
