I’m several days late to Marvel’s announcement of an “extinction-grade threat” in its summer 2011 crossover Fear Itself — and we’ve never, ever heard that before — but this is going to be a story I’ll be sorry to miss. Getting married is expensive and doesn’t allow for comic collecting. (I need to cancel my [...]

Via my pal Erin Polgreen (and Roger Ebert), an all-too-plausible account of the Avengers’ immigration woes. Click through for the jobs, healthcare and especially Gulf-oil-spill episodes.

Just because, here’s Katie Cook’s Marvel kitties. Summon the Ultimate Nullifier.

And this is supposed to be Marvel’s year of the woman? Jesus. Why can’t I read a comic book/ free of suggestion. *Of course, the headline becomes tragically, awfully literal after you read Sady Doyle’s evisceration of Rivers Cuomo…

So you’ve heard about Holy Terror, Batman!, right? If not: Frank Miller has been promising for years that he’ll pen a Batman story that pits the Caped Crusader on a single-minded mission against al-Qaeda after a terrorist attack on Gotham. Miller’s up front about it being “a piece of propaganda,” but nevertheless makes a good [...]

Some more thoughts on Spider-Man, inspired by a very good Adam Serwer post. Adam observes: Spider-Man is basically the story of a working class kid from Queens who was raised by a non-traditional family. Despite his superheroics and academic striving, he has endless beef with the cops, a ballbusting boss who cheats him out of [...]

Brett Schenker reports that the first comic-book convention of 2011 is going to be held in the misgoverned bigot-state of Arizona. Is the comic-book community really going to tolerate this? I see the creative team behind Invicible is scheduled to appear. Guys, Jan Brewer would ask for Oliver’s papers.

I just wrote three draining reported pieces in 30 hours plus all this other blogging and freelance writing and band practicing and strategizing and general-purpose living sprinkled in. I’m exhausted and I want to talk about comic books. No problem, I figure: everyone’s busy with FinReg. It’s whatever. After the jump, a spoiler-filled discussion of [...]

I’m at the U.S. Institute of Peace, waiting for a program to begin that features President Karzai and Secretary Clinton. I’ve cleared two levels of security and made it to my seat. I have a fully charged laptop and I’m ready to do work. I think I have something like 70 minutes before anything — [...]

Of course I loved it, but I went into it with a very comic-book frame of mind. And if Shellhead One was mostly an accessible introduction to the character and his world for a general audience, IM 2 is… still pretty accessible, but there’s a lot more in there for the die-hards: a weird-but-cool sort [...]