A Little Dr. Strange Love For “Avengers Reborn”

With the animated Doctor Strange DVD approaching its release date (August 18th, available for standard DVD format preorder here, and in Blu-Ray format here), there’s a ton of information available on it already. Read on after the jump to find out details on the DVD extras, Steve McNiven’s art process, and about the next Marvel/Lionsgate animated film – Avengers Reborn!

First up, here’s the news about “Avengers Reborn.” On the Doctor Strange DVD, one of the Special Features is titled First Look at “Avengers Reborn” – And Marvel’s tagline is this:

“What legacy will the Avengers leave? And will their successors be able to fill the shoes of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes? Executive producers Eric Rollman and Craig Kyle, director Gary Hartle, and screenwriter Christopher Yost present a first look at Avengers Reborn, the next Marvel/Lionsgate animated film. Complete with storyboards, production stills and character designs, get a glimpse at what happens when the Avengers leave the retirement home in this futuristic look at the classic heroes and their heroic children.”

Sounds like they’re actually venturing way out into new material, for the first time with these DVDs. Of course, there’s the knee-jerk reaction that something like has better than equal chances of being utter crap, right? That’s what I thought at first, anyway. But then I noticed Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost in the list of names there. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re the current writers on Marvel’s New X-Men title, a job which they originally got from being two regular writers from the excellent X-Men Evolution series. Suddenly, my curiosity is piqued!

On top of that, we’ve got a list of the other special features available on the Dr. Strange DVD:

• “Best of Mavel Video Game Cinematics” – Basically it’s a bunch of scenes from the X-Men Legends 2 and Ultimate Alliance games. I have no clue why this would go on a Dr. Strange DVD, but whatever, it’s there.
• “Who Is Dr. Strange?” featurette – This will feature interviews with the people behind the DVD, but – more importantly and more interestingly – it will also have interviews with Dr. Strange writers Stan Lee, Steve Englehart, and J.M. DeMatteis!
• Doctor Strange Concept Art
• Trailer Gallery

On Marvel.com there’s also a brief interview with Steve McNiven – superstar artist from Civil War – where he details the process of coming up with and creating the art for the front and back covers. The back cover image is on the right, and it looks pretty cool. Below are the artistic steps he took to create the front cover, beginning with concept layout, and finishing with the final art piece. You can also see these images over at the interview, along with similar steps for the back cover. My favorite part? “Some Sort of Fantastic Tag Line Will Go Here!”

Lastly, here’s the trailer. It’s been out for a bit now, but I’m pretty sure I should include it:

Find the official site here.