Criminal #1
Written by Ed Brubaker, art by Sean Phillips

It’s tempting to pick out any number of the books coming out tomorrow (Vaughan on Dr. Strange, Wolfman on Nightwing, Incredible Hulk #99), but the book that you might not have heard of (that is, if you don’t read a lot of comics news) is also the one I’m looking forward to the most: Criminal, by Brubaker and Phillips.

We’ve talked about Brubaker a couple of times here before, referencing his current (and extremely well-executed) runs on Uncanny X-Men and Captain America, but the first time his work caught my attention, it was on the Wildstorm book Sleeper, his previous collaboration with Sean Phillips.

It was a brilliant story of subterfuge and spy games, with each issue being joyous mess of hell for the protagonist. It challenged the concepts of right and wrong; and the clever role of super-powers (in a world with super-powered individuals) was the icing on an already glorious cake, as things were regularly viewed through a different sort of lens, making every experience fresh and surprising, much like how he’s been handling Captain America.

Now, I realize that those titles all involved super-powers, and to a certain extent the spandex uniforms that go with them, and here is where Criminal differs. It’s a straight up crime book, with nothing tying into the super-hero universes that we know and love. And that’s not a bad thing – If this inspires him to such devious heights as he took us to on Sleeper, then this will be my favorite book to come out this year. Not to mention, Brubaker is reuniting with his former Sleeper co-conspirator, Sean Philips, who you may have recently seen in the Marvel Zombies title.

I guess I’ve done enough fanboyish gushing to tell you how I feel about this comic to make me feel like a chump if the book doesn’t turn out as good as I hyped it (I’m looking at you, Boys #1). But based on the glowing track record of these two creators, it’s really hard for me to believe that it will fail my expectations in the least.

A few recently surfaced newsbits regarding the Fantastic Four sequel:

• Beau Garrett will be playing Frankie Raye, a character that (in the comics) ultimately offers herself to be a new herald for Galactus, much like the Silver Surfer was before being kicked to the curb for turning his back on the big purple jerk. Prior to taking the role of herald, she’d had a relationship with Johnny Storm, which is confirmed as a story angle for the movie.  The former is generally undiscussed at the moment, but conveniently enough, it’d fit nicely with the story.
• Some set images surfaced HERE on the Hollywood North Reporter message boards, courtesy of memeber “seven.”  Images mirrored for your pleasure:

 

• IESB.net recently spoke with Chairman of 20th Century Fox Tom Rothman. Technically, it’s an interview, but there’s some interesting nuggets in there about the Silver Surfer in the sequel: “I will say this, we are investing a tremendous amount of money, time and care, to make the state of the art CGI Silver Surfer, to make him as great as modern technology can make him. And, the only thing that I would say is that the real, the ultimate pay off of that level of investment and doing it to its fullest possible extent, would really come if we are able to make future films. … We’re certainly putting everything that the business has to offer behind it in the hopes of doing that, in the hopes that the Silver Surfer has a long life. … I will tell you that the first teaser that we are going to put out of the movie, which will be very early in the new year, the first teaser will definitely reveal the Silver Surfer. So people won’t have long to wait to judge how well it is done.”

Interviews:

• Kurt Busiek talks about his current run on Superman, which is an excellent, excellent read. I typically find Superman dull and uninteresting, but Busiek’s doing a bang-up job on the series, and with only 3 issues out so far, there’s plenty of time for you to get on board. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. (I mean the book. Interview’s good too.)
• Brian K. Vaughan talks about the Dr. Strange mini that starts tomorrow, which sounds strangely interesting. This man can virtually do no wrong when he puts his pen to paper, so to speak, so I have no intention to miss this one.
• Gregg Hurwitz will be writing Marvel’s upcoming Foolkiller book for their MAX line, which I guess we can all preview in tomorrow’s MAX preview book. The interesting part of the article is in the middle, where he says, “I was doing a book signing in Florida with Brad Meltzer and I mentioned to him that I had always loved the Punisher. He put me in touch with Marvel Executive Editor Axel Alonso and things clicked, which led to Foolkiller.” Looks like Brad Meltzer might be opening a lot of doors for authors to break into comics.
• Marv Wolfman is writing Nightwing, starting TOMORROW. It was going to be a 4 issue stint, but now he’s on for a longer haul, thank goodness. There’s preview pages too! Go look!
• Everyone’s talking about Ed Brubaker‘s book Criminal, which hits tomorrow. In fact, we’ll be talking about it in a second…

Poking around the Newsarama forums, I came across a thread that revealed this image from a recent issue of Wizard, featuring the cast of C.B. Cebulski and Karl Moline’s upcoming Loners book:

From left to right, the characters are:

• Penance (former member of Generation X, insanely convoluted backstory)
• Darkhawk (awesome!)
• unknown (speculation suggests she’s a legacy character for the Silver Samurai, but nothing confirmed at all)
• Turbo (formerly of The New Warriors)
• Ricochet (formerly of The Slingers, a group that used suits and identities that Spider-Man briefly used when he was accused of murder… ah, the 90’s)
• Phil Urich (former good Green Goblin, now retired)
• Julie Power (formerly of Power Pack)
• and some sort of Spider-Girl (appearance matches May Parker in Spider-Girl, but it’s more likely Mattie Franklin – though I also staked her out for Omega Flight… maybe Arachne is the one on Flight?)

Marvel’s really repopulating the Marvel U with its female spider ladies, isn’t it? Ridiculous. Maybe they’re throwing them all against the wall to see what sticks. Anyway, Wizard has an old article on this, where they’re showing some concept art. Here they are, mirrored for your enjoyment:

Turbo	Seems to be Silhouette, the new Scorpion, and Jubilee	The UNKNOWN GIRL	Some more Turbo	Looks like Turbo mask concept sketches

The news just hit – Robert Downey Jr. has been cast to play Iron Man. While I’m typically hesitant to put stock in what AintItCoolNews has to say, Reuters has already got an article running on it too. As Marvel Entertainment’s first independently produced film, it sounds like they’re doing a pretty good job with picking and choosing the people involved.

According to the article:

Marvel president of production Kevin Feige said the filmmakers looked for the best actor to embody the character.

“The Marvel characters are not just about how high they jump or how fast they fly, they’re about their character flaws,” Feige said. “They’re about their inner demons. They’re about the struggles that they go through between being a man and being a hero.”

Downey, who has battled his fair share of inner demons, worked hard to get the role, getting in shape and even growing a goatee like the one Stark sports in the comic books.

The whole article can be found here.

A new Villains trailer is available for the Marvel Ultimate Alliance game RIGHT HERE, and it’s actually pretty sweet.  It showcases a large number of villains, lists off some of the heroes, and shows off some of the battle locations in the process.

While all the heroes that flash by super-fast at the end are already listed on the official site, many of the villains shown are not, so here’s a rundown of who made an appearance:

• Doctor Doom
• Loki
• Fin Fang Foom (incorrectly spelled as FING Fang Foom)
• Blackheart (Mephisto’s son)
• Mephisto
• Mandarin
• Ymir (a frost giant, one of Thor’s enemies)
• Ultron
• Kurse (another Asgardian enemy of Thor’s)
• Ulik (a rock troll, ANOTHER Asgardian enemy of Thor’s)
• Arcade-Bot (presumably a robot of Arcade’s)
• and Galactus

So clearly, the game’s going to spend a decent chunk of time dealing with Asgardian problems, which hopefully means we’ll actually be in Asgard.  This is some good thinking, as it can lead to some scenarios and scenery which will be completely unique from not only the rest of the game, but from other comparable games (like X-Men Legends, or the upcoming Justice League Heroes). By the way, if you’re too lazy to poke around their site yourself, you can find a full listing of currently revealed heroes and villains after the jump.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Forgive me if this is old information, somehow I’ve yet to see this as a big announcement and thought I would inform others in case it slipped under anyone else’s radar.

Written by J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Pencils and Cover by TOMMY LEE EDWARDS
World War II. America needs a super soldier. Only one man possesses the formula to create the perfect fighting machine from volunteer Steve Rogers. But when a deadly bullet kills Dr. Erskine along with his bodyguard, M.P. Ben Parker, Steve’s destiny—and that of the Marvel Universe—is changed forever.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Remember when Marvel sued NC Soft and Cryptic Studios, because they felt that the game “City of Heroes” included characters – and also allowed and encouraged players to create more, similar characters – that infringed on Marvel’s copyrights? Sure, the lawsuit was settled out of court long ago, but now Marvel’s making lemon meringue pie out of that lemon by teaming up with Cryptic (and Microsoft Game Studios) to make “Marvel Universe Online” – An MMO game for XBox 360 and PC using (surprise!) Marvel characters. While other articles go on and on with more discussion, analysis, and questions, that’s really all that they end up saying about it.

While this is an interesting newsbit, it raises more questions than it answers. For example:

• I can only assume we won’t be restricted to currently existing characters. While Marvel boasts a library of 5,000 characters, some of them – like, say, Turner D. Century – are simply God-awful. And yet, the issue is never addressed. Maybe we’ll just see a town full of dozens of Wolverines.
• On the technical side, they keep specifically saying it will be on “Windows Vista,” rather than simply saying “PC” in the articles and interviews. Does that mean it won’t work on XP? They won’t even hint at a release date, so maybe they don’t expect to be done until more people have Vista – or maybe not. With Microsoft, it’s really hard to give the benefit of the doubt.
• Aaaaand, let’s be honest – There’s really not a lot of information to go off of, other than it will exist in the future, they’re working on it, and they’re not allowed to say much about it. Lots of question marks, not a lot of actual info.

View the teaser trailer on Xbox Live Marketplace now, or right here.