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Free Hot Comics Links For A Super Weekend

News
February 3, 2008

On this "Super" weekend, ComicMix Radio is more than happy to offer a number of surfing options to keep you busy during the parts of the SuperBowl between the cool commercials.

One of those commercials will be the latest trailer for the Iron Man movie from Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment. Look for it to run at around 7:30 PM. Chances are, you have already seen the tease here at Marvel. After the big game, the new ad will also be available here at Apple, and at the official movie website. Tomorrow it will also hit sites that include Yahoo Sports! and ESPN.com, so basically you won’t be able to miss it.

Brian Wood has posted his Channel Zero design book, Public Domain, as a free PDF download here. Public Domain is a collection of 145 pages of black and white artwork that includes extras generated in 1996-98 during the creation of Wood’s first graphic novel Channel Zero.

Oni Press is picking up the sword and shield with North World, Book 1: The Epic of Conrad, a new original graphic novel series from cartoonist and web comic creator Lars Brown. Part Lord Of The Rings and part Gross Pointe Blank, North World is a fantasy epic that is also a webcomic that you can see here.

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Marvel Studios Settles with WGA

News
January 25, 2008

United Hollywood, the news blog founded by a group of Writers Guild of America strike captains, is reporting that the WGA has signed an interim agreement with Marvel Studios " that will put writers immediately back to work on the Marvel Studios development slate."

Marvel Studios chairman David Maisel said that they "look forward to resuming work with writers on our future projects including Captain America, Thor, Ant-Man, and The Avengers."

Ant-Man? Seriously?

The WGA also signed an interim agreement with independent film studio Lionsgate, whose upcoming work includes Rambo, Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns, Forbidden Kingdom, Punisher 2, and The Spirit.

Sega Debuts New Screenshots From Iron Man Video Game

News
January 17, 2008

In an official press release issued earlier today, Sega of America released a gallery of screenshots from the upcoming Iron Man video game based on the Marvel Studios film.

SEGA® of America Inc. presents new screens from Iron Man, the highly-anticipated video game based on Marvel’s iconic Super Hero. These action-packed screens offer just a hint of the intense action gamers can look forward to and give fans a closer look at two of the Iron Man suits that will be featured in both the game and the movie.

Iron Man is based on Marvel Studios’ highly-anticipated Iron Man feature film starring Academy Award® Nominees Robert Downey Jr. and Terrence Howard, and directed by Jon Favreau. This project, the first feature film to be produced independently by Marvel Entertainment, will blast into theaters May 2, 2008. The Iron Man game is set for release Spring 2008.

You can find more screenshots at Comic Book Resources.

D2DVD REVIEW: Strange Thrills

Reviews
August 24, 2007

What to do with Doctor Strange?

That’s a question Marvel creators have been asking ever since Steve Ditko left town with the original Eye of Agamotto. A lot of people gave it a shot over the past five decades, and, to be fair, several did a first-rate job. But they had a hard time recapturing the original magic.

This week, Marvel Studios released its [[[Doctor Strange]]] D2DVD, and, being a self-contained 75-minute effort, they took some liberties with the ever-evolving and sometimes contradictory comics versions. Overall, I think they did a good job.

This D2DVD is not quite a superhero effort; certainly, not as defined by their previous animated movies ([[[Ultimate Avengers]]] 1 and 2, [[[Iron Man]]]). They keep the most basic elements of the various origin stories and they don’t really alter anything of substance: Stephen Strange is still starts out as the egotistical, self-absorbed, money-grubbing surgeon supreme and within and hour and a quarter is fast-tracked to beatific altruistic sorcerer supreme. Which, if you think about it, is not a good thing for Strange’s master, The Ancient One.

Along the way, though, we see Strange’s journey to supremacy, we get to appreciate his frustrations and see him grow past his ego and get redeemed. Oh, and he gets to fight Mordo and Dormamuu and a boatload of demons along the way. Our Japanese friends could learn a thing or two from Doctor Strange’s approach to limited animation: Marvel took full advantage of the fluidity of the animation form to allow for the mystical poop to really pop.

Of course they made Wong politically correct, so I guess my desire for an all-Asian cliché-fest crossover with the Blackhawk’s Chop-Chop isn’t going to happen any time soon. And they even teased us with a sequel set-up.

The supplemental documentary is first-rate. Not as first-rate as the extras on the new [[[Popeye]]] box-set, but damn good. Their “[[[Origin of Doctor Strange]]]” delves fully into the comic book roots, showing off a lot of art, giving Stan Lee and (particularly) Steve Ditko their due, and interviewing the hell out of the always-eloquent Steve Englehart, whose own run as Doctor Strange writer (much of it with Frank Brunner as artist) was among the series’ very best.

Overall, a nice effort from supervising director Frank Paur and writer Greg Johnson. I suspect all but the most anal-retentive [[[Strange]]] fans will enjoy the experience.

Marvel movie madness

News
April 18, 2007

Marvel Entertainment has announced a new sweepstakes, the winner of which will win a walk-on role in an upcoming Marvel Studios movie. Usually these things are only reserved for folks like Stan Lee and Joe Quesada, so it’s nice to see regular ol’ folks given the chance at unpaid, uncredited extra work.

Sweepstakes entries are here. If you don’t win the Grand Prize, there are also three First Prizes (that never sounded right to me, shouldn’t First Prizes be the top ones rather than Grand Prizes?) where you could win a collected edition of Marvel comics and 15 Second Prizes for a 12 issue sub to one of their books.

The sweepstakes began on Tuesday and runs through August 10, so it’s not like you have to rush. Only one entry per person.

Chocolate Cap Controversy

News
April 1, 2007

Marvel fans clamoring for the return of Captain America should be careful what they wish for.

On the heels of the recent brouhaha over the just-cancelled My Sweet Lord art exhibit, which proved too much for the delicate sensibilities of a kook who likes to rile his kook-troops to harass my friends until they resign from their jobs, artist Cosimo Cavallaro has signed a deal with Marvel Entertainment to recast the mold for his Christ figure (see right) adding Steve Rogers’ familiar costume and shield (which will be temporarily on loan from its current owner, Stephen Colbert), and readying it for display in the lobby of Marvel’s offices at 417 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan through April.

"The fans have spoken," said Marvel EIC Joe Quesada, "and what they clearly want is the return of Cap. And chocolate. Mmm, chocolate," he added in a wistful Homer Simpson voice.

Cavallaro (no relation to DC editor Joey Cavalieri or The Three Caballeros) is known for past artistic expressions using food, including repainting a Manhattan hotel room in melted mozzarella, spraying five tons of pepper jack cheese on a Wyoming home, and festooning a four-poster bed with 312 pounds of processed ham. The unveiling of Chocolate Cap will not be catered.

Marvel to build billion dollar theme park in Dubai

News
March 20, 2007

Crain’s New York Business is reporting that Marvel has teamed up Al Ahli Group to develop a $1 billion theme park in Dubai based on Marvel superheroes. Think Island of Adventure, but with a lot more sand.

Crain’s notes: "The agreement marks the first major deal completed by Marvel Studios’ new Chairman David Maisel, who was named to the post earlier this month amid a shakeup of the company’s feature film business. Michael Helfant, who had been president and chief operating officer of Marvel Studios, was ousted."

The park is scheduled to open in 2011, and will be the first global destination theme park in the Middle East. I, for one, look forward to the new fanboy question replacing "Who’s stronger, the Thing or the Hulk?" with "Does the Invisible Woman need to wear a burqa?"

Marvel Studios promotions

News
March 14, 2007

As Marvel’s Iron Man movie heads into production this week, we get word of a lot of promotions and changes of job titles at Marvel Studios. At the top, David Maisel is now Chairman of Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige is President of Production. Maisel, who joined Marvel in 2003, is credited for the conception and execution of the new film production effort, including establishing the strategy for self-financing the endeavor. Feige has worked on all of Marvel’s movies since 2000, and is currently producer on Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. In his expanded role, Feige will now also oversee creative for the studio’s animated projects for TV and DVD, as well as video games.

Additionally, Marvel Studios has recently added and promoted a number of executives in senior management, including:

Tim Connors as EVP/Business Affairs and Operations
Ross Fanger as EVP/Physical Production
Michael Brown as SVP/Marketing
Charlie Davis as SVP/Post Production
Rod Smith as SVP/Production Finance
Elizabeth Lynch as VP/Business and Legal Affairs
Jean-Claude Boursiquot as Director/IT and Studio Technology
Matt Finick as SVP/Studio Finance and Corporate Development
Ryan Potter as Associate Counsel.
Eric Rollman as EVP/Animation and Television
Ames Kirschen as SVP and Executive Producer/Video Games
Craig Kyle as SVP/Animation
Jeremy Latcham as VP/Development and Production
Stephen Broussard as Creative Executive
Joshua Fine as Story Editor/Animation

With everybody moving up a notch or two, someone has to make way at the top — in this case it’s Michael Helfant, President and COO, who will "pursue other opportunities."

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Marvel’s 4th quarter

News
February 27, 2007

Here’s the good news: Marvel’s publishing segment ended 2006 on a strong note with sales up 22% to $28.6 million and operating income ahead 35% to $11.6 million in the fourth quarter. For the full year, operating income rose 21% to $44.1 million, on a 17% sales increase to $108.5 million.

Trade paperbacks and hardcovers sold into both the book channel and the direct market led the gains. In the fourth quarter, comic book sales were bolstered by sales associated with Civil War. Sales also benefited from a strong increase in custom publishing sales. Marvel said that for 2007 it expects modest top-line and bottom-line growth from the publishing division.

And if all Marvel made its money from was its publishing arm, that would be great. However, Marvel makes the vast amount of its income from licensing — and here, it got clobbered. Its fourth-quarter net sales were $25.5 million, down from $81.7 million the year-ago period.

All told, Marvel Entertainment’s fourth-quarter net income dropped to $11.7 million, or 14 cents per share, from $25.9 million, or 26 cents per share, last year.

This has led to the stock price getting hammered: Shares of the Marvel closed Monday down 95 cents, or 3.1%, at $29.96, with a further drop on Tuesday of $1.63, or 5.4%, to close at $28.33.

Tagged: Marvel Studios

Free Hot Comics Links For A Super Weekend

Marvel Studios Settles with WGA

Sega Debuts New Screenshots From Iron Man Video Game

D2DVD REVIEW: Strange Thrills

More Marvel video games

Marvel movie madness

Chocolate Cap Controversy

Marvel to build billion dollar theme park in Dubai

Marvel Studios promotions

Marvel’s 4th quarter

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