Ignoring their recent delays, let’s go ahead and look at what Civil War brought to us this week: Thunderbolts #105, and X-Men: Civil War #2.

Thunderbolts was a pleasant read, and it seems like it’d actually be accessible to a new reader, which is a rare find in a Thunderbolts book. This crossover is an excellent time for such things. It gets a B+ / C. Then there’s the underwhelmingly pointless X-Men. It gets a D / D. Read on for the hows and the whys.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

First the bad news…

By way of Joe, we find out Civil War #4 and #5 have been delayed over a month from their original ship date. As if that wasn’t bad enough, all the tie-in books like Fantastic 4, Frontline, Punisher, and Spider-Man have been delayed too. Newsarama has the full run down.

I don’t think it would be unfair to be upset with Marvel for not only the delay but the last minute notification. I mean a lot of fans aren’t going to find out this has slipped until they walk into the shop tomorrow and find their pull box bare. Given the magnitude of the slip and the number of titles involved, I’d say Marvel knew this was going to happen and didn’t want to tell us. For shame.

On a comparitivly optimistic note, the revamp Justice Leage of America #1 has only been delayed until next week, August 23rd.

Writer/Mastermind Brad Meltzer has posted on his blog. That DC informed him of the slip but didn’t provide an explaination. Eager to not disappoint, Meltzer informs fans “One more week. They promised. If not, we revolt and I send out the scans online.”

JLA readers do get a bonus, the first chapter from Meltzer’s new novel “The Book of Fate“

THE BOYS #1
written by Garth Ennis, art by Darick Robertson

This Wednesday Garth Ennis delivers unto us another dark, deviant look at superhero comics, and he’s dragged Darick Robertson into doing the art chores. They’ve done some work together on some little book called The Punisher. You might’ve heard of it.

Here, ‘The Boys’ refers specifically to our five main characters, who all share a deep, personal hate-on for superheroes. And while it’s not clear what exactly they’ll be doing to fight the heroes of their world, based on the preview available at DC’s site, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that they’re out for blood. Nothing like the comforting visual of hands without a body attached.

Ennis has a solid track record at delivering a fantastically dark take on superheroes, so if you’ve enjoyed any of his work before, this is definitely one not to miss.

Alan Moore, comic book legend responsible for a long list of classic comic work – most recently spotlighted for V For Vendetta – was actually wrangled into an interview by Wizard Entertainment. This is a strange decision by a creator normally viewed for giving mainstream American comics the cold shoulder, as Wizard is generally all about mainstream American comics. Regardless, the interview exists.

Moore speaks largely – but not solely – about his upcoming controversial work Lost Girls (art by Melinda Gebbie), which features “Alice in Wonderland’s Alice, Peter Pan’s Wendy and The Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy meeting as adults and sharing erotic experiences.” If that sounds strange and almost creepy, well, that’d be why it’s controversial. Planned release is allegedly for the 28th of this month, but as always, there’s no telling when it comes to the world of comics.

As an aside, early chapters of Lost Girls were initially published in the Taboo anthology magazine, which were reprinted in the mid 90’s as two separate volumes. The Lost Girls: Book One and Books Two listings on Amazon.com are available here and here, respectively.

Read the full (but brief) interview on WizardUniverse here.

Read Newsarama.com‘s two-part interview from May here and here.

The Lost Girls Collected listing on Amazon.com available here. (It includes a fairly detailed review/discussion in the Editorial Review section. Book not available for purchase yet.)

More detailed information available at the Wikipedia entry for Lost Girls.

Today, Marvel announced the writer for the planned Avengers movie: Zak Penn. (By the way, interesting way of announcing an Avengers movie, Marvel. Nice promotional work, there.) To help sell the guy, his previous movie-writing chores for Marvel were listed: The Incredible Hulk, X-Men: The Last Stand, X2: X-Men United, and Elektra.

In his defence, that’s the upcoming Hulk movie, not the previous, Ang Lee-helmed one. The others, you might have seen. Except for Elektra.

Based on how he’s credited, the guy likely had limited input on the movies they listed, with the exception of The Incredible Hulk. And that movie’s not exactly done yet.  What is there to take away from this?  Are they just not taking the idea of an Avengers movie seriously? Is his upcoming work really that impressive to them? One of his upcoming movies is Spy Hunter – I don’t want to be too snarky without cause, but how high calibur are video game movies right now? You gotta admit, they’re not running under the best track record. While it’s by no means a death kiss, it’s not reassuring news.

Source: Comicscontinuum.com

Civil War brings us two issues this week, Ms. Marvel #6 and Front Line #5. Ms. Marvel was an unpalatable turd rating a grade of D / C, and Front Line was excellent as usual, rating an B+ / B-. To get an explanation of why, and to gorge yourself on spoilers a’plenty, continue on. [Read the rest of this entry…]

SQUADRON SUPREME #6
by J. Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank

Tomorrow, Marvel’s hitting us with issue #6 of Squadron Supreme, written by J. Michael Straczynski (JMS, for short – AKA the mastermind of Babylon 5). Now, for those of you who just crawled out of the ocean and grew legs, Squadron Supreme is a book Marvel put out in the 1980s which starred analogues of DC’s Justice League, but it did them in a much darker, more ‘real-world’ fashion, beating The Authority to the punch by over a decade. It’s considered a classic to this day. A couple years back, JMS took up the torch, and kicked off the series with a fresh start, calling it Supreme Power.

You might be asking yourself why I’d bother telling you to pick up a series at issue #6. Well, before the book was called Squadron Supreme, when it was running under the title of Supreme Power, the first issue I grabbed was #4. It was an issue that focused on Nighthawk – the Batman analogue. What I saw left a bit of an impression:

At the time, the book was under the MAX imprint. Now that it’s under Marvel Knights we won’t be seeing anything quite that ruthless, sadly. But my point is, I needed little other than that issue to run with the series. And the upcoming issue #6, which (as I’ve noted) hits the stands tomorrow, is similarly a Nighthawk-focused issue. Since this is the first real time we’ll be seeing the guy in a year, it should be a good re-introduction to the character. And it should be a good introduction to the book.

Try it out. And if you like it, you’ll be onboard well before the Ultimate Universe crossover drops. Which will make you WAY cooler than all your friends.

We previously reported that the status of Hellboy 2 was in limbo. No studios had signed on to the film and the previous studio, Revolution, seems to be folding considering their deal with Sony Pictures ran out.

Apparently, Universal Studios has agreed to finance and distribute the flick. The story is said to give Abe Sapien a larger role in the film and explore his relationship with Hellboy more. I really liked the first one and am glad to see the franchise won’t die before its time. They are shooting for a Summer 2008 release.