NYCC – Day 2 Rundown

Day 2 of the New York Comic-Con isn’t quite over yet, but a lot’s happened already. All that, and there’s a couple tidbits leftover from yesterday that happened a little later in the day. Want to know more about the Avengers/Transformers book? How about the future of producing and selling comics digitally? Or maybe who’s working on the new Halo ongoing? It’s a bit less concise than yesterday, so read on for more!

MARVEL:

• Marvel is currently working on a digital distribution plan for their comics. The books at the forefront for this treatment are Marvel Adventures and Classics Illustrated, though no launch date or method were mentioned.
• A Halo ongoing comic will be written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Alex Maleev. Expect everyone to speak in somewhat-witty, quick-paced banter.
• There’s an interesting interview, covered at Wizard, with Stan Lee. He discusses things like how he originally went to Jack Kirby before Steve Ditko when he came up with Spider-Man, and his thoughts on DC back in the day.
• Other new books to come out include a Sub-Mariner mini…
• A book called Daredevil: End of Days by Bendis which should be like a The End book…
• And a new Champions book (unrelated to the original Champions), written by Matt Fraction (Immortal Iron Fist) and art by Barry Kitson (Legion of Super-Heroes)…
• And an Annihilation: Conquest mini, written as a series of five one-shots (keep an eye out for Starlord, featuring Rocket Raccoon!), with many of the writers and artists on it coming from the pool that created the four lead-ins to the Annihilation book…
• And there will be an Annihilation-style mini for Marvel’s magic characters, called Mystic Arcana. It will focus specifically on Magik, Black Knight, Scarlet Witch, Sister Grimm (of Runaways), and new character Wraith (see image on right, mirrored from Wizard) in separate one-shots; and it will be run by Tarot card artist David Sexton. (I’m sorry – I have no idea what else he’s done.)
• Ultimate delays – Ultimates #13 should be out by May or April (I’m betting not before May), Orson Scott Card is still working on Ultimate Iron Man 2, no release date yet for Ultimates 3, Ultimate Wolverine/Hulk has a script for 3 – and almost one for 4.

IDW/MARVEL:

• Avengers/Transformers update! On the Marvel side, it takes place before Civil War and features the New Avengers, and on the Transformers side, it takes place after Infiltration and Escalation. More details (cast lists, synopsis, etc.) can be found at Newsarama.

DC:

• Great news for all 10 of us that read this book – Manhunter isn’t cancelled! Apparently the people up top happen to like it enough to give it a little extra leeway.
• There will be a Captain Carrot miniseries. No, it’s not Geoff Johns writing it; it’s Bill Morrison of Simpsons comics, and art by Scott Shaw – original artist and co-creator of Captain Carrot.
• Scott Free will be Mister Miracle in Countdown, not Shilo Norman. (What can I say? It’s a slow news day for DC.)
• Didio got all flustered and admitted that the Red Robin and Flash in the recent teaser image are indeed Jason Todd and Barry Allen. Everyone else on the panel got mad at him, so apparently this is pretty important.

TOP COW:

• Much like Marvel, they’re also working on a digital distribution program. Unlike Marvel, their plans were much more clear – Books will be priced at their $2.99 cover price (discouraging, much?), they’ll be in high resolution PDF format, and they’ll only be available through IGN.com. With this much detail available, we can only assume they’re pretty far along… but again, no launch date mentioned.