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IRRITATING INTRODUCTION:

Nobody managed to correctly guess where last week’s teaser quote – “liquid diamond lipstick” – came from. The answer was, of course, New X-Men. Issue #119, specifically, as Jon Sublime took great pleasure in taking Emma Frost and Cyclops prisoner thanks to the influence of Martha Johansson’s telepathic living brain. Emma switched to diamond form for protection from Sublime’s physical attack, at which point the would-be U-Man took a rather twisted interest in her beauty. Liquid diamond lipstick. As he said, it would be a heck of a good name for a band. Anyway, see if you can figure out this week’s quote. It’s certainly a more recent one.

Anyway, since there is practically no news whatsoever this week – welcome to a very exciting exercise in Column Padding!! Yay!!


NECESSARY NEWS & VIVID VIEWS:

September 17th, Baby:
ComiX-Fan has posted all the necessary information from the recent Canadian National Comic Book Expo in Toronto. Here are the choicest Marvel excerpts from the mouth of Joe Quesada…

News – She-Hulk and District X will have at least twelve issues, with more promised after that. Quesada praised both but admitted they need more attention.

A perfectly accurate description. The worrying thing is that Quesada has been saying the exact same thing for months now. It’s all very well saying that you enjoy these books and want them to succeed, but sooner or later you have to stop hyping everything Bendis and Millar are touching and start investing the same time and energy into books that sell less and are just as enjoyable, if not more so, than the big-sellers. Either that or hire some fresh advertising people with new concepts.

News – Daredevil: Father #2 has been done for about a month, and is currently waiting for a schedule of release. It will be 31-32 pages.

Yes, heaven forbid you spent all that time working on NYX instead…

News – The Epic imprint is dead. The Icon imprint will be kept small. Marvel MAX is used to tell stories that can’t be told in the regular Marvel Universe, but there is no quota of titles for the line. They are just created as needed, and Marvel is looking for a ‘slow build’ in the imprint. There will be more mini-series set in the Ultimate Universe, but Marvel wants to keep the amount of titles in the line small (4 or 5 a month).

Well, that’s good to know. Tsunami failed abysmally due to the throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks nature of the line. It’s amazing to think that the likes of Runaways, Sentinel and Mystique managed to make it out of that quicksand at all. Of course, there is still the small matter of there being over 20 X-books on the market at any one time, but at least the vast majority of them are specifically marketed to very different audiences (e.g. Madrox, Jubilee, Exiles, etc.). We can also take it as read that there are no plans to add any new titles to the Ultimate Universe. They want to keep it to a maximum of 5 books a month and, in addition to the ongoing USM/UXM/UFF trio, we’ve got the upcoming occasional bonus of The Ultimates II, Warren Ellis’ conspiracy trilogy that will see Ultimate Nightmare followed-up by Ultimate Secret in 2005, plus the likes of Ultimate Elektra. Good for them.

News – Marvel wants Joss Whedon for more issues of Astonishing X-Men, but he’s very busy and they don’t know if he’ll stay longer.

In other words, he’s outta here after issue #12. Mark Millar has made some cryptic comments about this over on Millarworld, which left me wondering whether or not he is going to step into Whedon’s shoes on AXM when the time comes. After all, his upcoming Wolverine arc is said to lay down the fundamentals for all the X-books to follow in the coming year…

News – Marvel invite written submissions if the submission form from Marvel’s website is included as it is legal protection for them. The submissions will be read, although there is a lag right now. Quesada claimed that 26 new writers have been hired over the past 18 months (including Greg Pak and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa), although it wasn’t clear if they’d all come through this process, or other sources. Marvel is looking for “fresh blood”, particularly writers, though he admitted that some were put into the system too quickly, often to negative results from fans.

The submission form in question can be found here. Don’t get too carried away, though, as you’re probably better starting off in the indies anyway. Get some experience; tailor your craft, etc. before trying to keep up with the corporate side of things.

News – On the notorious Batman/Daredevil crossover, Quesada said he had no idea if it would happen, but “we’d be thrilled to do it.” He suggested the hype it would generate would be good for the industry, and is more important than company conflicts.

What utter crap! The hype it would generate would be good to line your pockets, mate, nothing else. How on Earth would it be good for the industry as a whole? Sales did not exactly go through the roof for comics in general as a result of JLA/Avengers, a title of far more importance than Batman/Daredevil would be, so don’t try and be cute.

News – Regarding NYX, there will be at least 7 issues. He doesn’t know what will happen with it, and will perhaps hand over the duties to another creative team due to his own scheduling problems, but he loves the characters. The X-23 series will come out in January 2005, with the creative team of Craig Kyle and Billy Tan. Quesada described it as a prequel to NYX, and that what we’ve seen in NYX is the middle story before the character appears in the X-Men universe.

See, Joe, now you’re just making me angry. I can forgive you for falling behind on NYX due to your crowded schedule as Editor-in-Chief, but I can’t forgive you for wasting your time on Daredevil: Father, something that nobody but you was interested in to begin with, rather than following up on the most refreshing X-book to have come out in years. What’s more, you treated artist Josh Middleton so poorly that he up and left the company, signing an exclusive deal with DC instead. Yeah, thanks for that. And thanks for raising my hopes yet again that we may yet see these characters continue. Would you please just say it is cancelled already and put me out of my misery?

News – The trade paperbacks of the Sentinel series are selling well, and there could be a sequel. Mary Jane will probably continue. The Marvel Age series are successful in collected format, so the title will likely come out quarterly or every six months.

DTD! Direct-to-digest! FINALLY, THEY CAN SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE!

News – There will be a project in 2005 that should please Ghost Rider fans.

What, like a comic?

News – On variant covers, Quesada said he personally doesn’t like them, but he believes they’re what people want, and it makes economic sense to use them. The Marketing Department decides what titles get alternate covers, as well as the rarity of such.

Again – utter nonsense. If Quesada didn’t like variants then he wouldn’t use variants and that’s that. I could believe it if the sheer number of variants Marvel is going to be using wasn’t so absurdly high, but more on that later…

News – Fantastic Four/X-Men started when C.B. Cebulski contacted Pat Lee about a possible project. When asked about his favourite Marvel teams, Lee listed several, and then Marvel suggested he write both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. All the characters are in the first issue, but Lee is still working on the series. Akira Yoshida is writing it, and Dreamwave may work with Marvel again in the future.

Akira Yoshida quite possibly has the greatest name ever.

News – Regarding the ‘dead means dead’ rule, he said a writer has to prove there’s a good reason for bringing back a character, and it has to be done well (he mocked the idea of clones). He made a distinction between ‘classic’ deaths and ‘super-villain’ deaths; he hinted that Psylocke’s death was not ‘classic’. As for Colossus’ return, he said Whedon has good plans and he ‘couldn’t say no’. In the past, he did nix plans to return Colossus. As for Magneto’s return, there had been plans for a while.

It’s true – he did nix plans for Colossus to return. Grant Morrison originally wanted to use him during his run but was turned down. Whether or not this had anything to do with Emma Frost’s secondary mutation is open to interpretation. Still, I find it quite funny that he says there had been plans to bring back Magneto for a while considering that there was only about six months in between New X-Men #150 and Excalibur #1. That’s some pretty quick planning, Joe. Anyway, if they have taken the “dead means dead” rule and turned it into “no more clones stories ever again”, then I can live with that. Here’s hoping JMS manages to do just that in Sins Past…

Of course, the main story of the convention was the arrests made for weapon possession. Rumours that this has anything to do with my frustration for going to Toronto in September when there is f*ck all on, as opposed to this show and SummerSlam in August and the new NBA/NHL seasons and an R.E.M. concert in October are greatly unfounded… for now…

The Coolest German On The Face Of The Earth:
Newsarama have an interview with New York playwright, current Marvel Knights 4 scribe and all-round dude, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa about his upcoming Nightcrawler series, due to launch next month with some beautiful art from Darick Robertson.

It certainly interesting to hear about the long and winding road of editorial conflicts Sacasa has had to deal with during his brief stint with Marvel. We’ve all heard about the controversial Fantastic Four plans that were quickly reversed after a huge fan outcry over plans to have the then-unknown Sacasa replace Mark Waid on the title, leading to the launch of 4. Now we learn that Sacasa originally wanted to do a Mary Jane title as his second project, albeit one very different from Sean McKeever’s Marvel Age high-school drama. Instead, Sacasa wanted to use his theatrical background to focus on the adult Mary Jane and her time as a struggling actress in New York. Given that this pitch would have worked far better with the movie version of Mary Jane, I’m very surprised that Marvel did not pursue it. Ah well, if it means that we get two good books in McKeever’s Mary Jane and Sacasa’s Nightcrawler, then it’s best not to complain. Fate has a funny way of working out in the end, you see – like Angel getting cancelled only for Joss Whedon to have the time to give us the best comic series of the year.

But, I digress. This quote should tell you all you need to know about why this series is going to be far better than it has any right to be (c’mon, at the end of the day its still a superfluous X-book):

One of the things [editor Mike Marts] and I talked about when we were first getting started — and then Darick and I talked about and have continued to talk about — was how there’s never been one definitive take on Nightcrawler. There’s Nightcrawler, the religious guy… Nightcrawler, the swashbuckling pirate guy… Nightcrawler, the suave ladies’ man… Nightcrawler, the self-conscious-about-his-appearance mutant… Nightcrawler, the philosopher… And on and on…

What we’ve ended up doing in a weird way is taking elements from all those different incarnations — the ones we liked, I mean — and made them individual traits of a whole character, not substitute them for who the character is, if that makes sense. So I guess our take borrows a little bit from all those versions without being limited by any particular one.”

That’s one of the advantages of getting a real writer on a book like this, as opposed to a fanboy with some half-baked notion of what the character should be like. Hell, just looking at the list of various incarnations Sacasa gave shows you how damaged Kurt Wagner has become over the years. At last, somebody has come along that understands the need to properly highlight the character at the centre of the story rather than letting the story mask the character. Check out the interview if you need proof of just how much infectious love Sacasa & Robertson obviously have for the character – including how Quesada took great glee in showing off a picture of a teenage Robertson dressed up as Nightcrawler for Halloween during his Cup O’ Joe convention panels!

All in all, this promises to be the most enjoyable, well-written and well-drawn Nightcrawler adventure in years, possibly even since Chris Claremont initially introduced the character. Personally, the greatest Nightcrawler stories to me will always be the back-up strips from Classic X-Men #4 (the quintessential Kurt & Logan story) and #9 (Kurt befriends a dying boy in hospital). While I’m by no means expecting anything of that standard, any of Kurt’s fans who were put off by the… unusual… way Chuck Austen handled him in Uncanny X-Men should definitely check this title out. If you need more persuading, perhaps this will do the trick:

I read ‘The Draco’ — but it just doesn’t fit in with the kind of stories we’re going to be telling in Nightcrawler – at least not at first.”

Sound good?

Would You Two Just DO IT ALREADY And Get It Over With?
Newsarama also has an interview with Bart Sears about his work on the upcoming Sabretooth five-issue mini-series, written by Daniel Way, which coincides with the Wolverine 30th Anniversary celebrations in October. The premise is simple – the US military is hunting down Sabretooth, who has been accused of killing an entire island’s population yet is claiming innocence.

I can’t say that a Sabretooth story in any format interests me in the slightest, let alone one that has his name on the front cover. Still, it’s an interesting interview with Sears, who was apparently originally attached to Paul David’s upcoming Hulk not-sure-if-this-is-a-mini-or-what stint, although that fell through and went to Lee Weeks instead and Sears was offered this project after his work on Captain America and the Falcon wrapped. He also answers the age-old question of just how pumped and over-developed superhuman comic book characters should be…

Interesting question… I hear most of my critics speak of my ‘overblown musculatures…’ For me, [it] depends on the character, more importantly, how I see that character. I’m not from the smooth, realistic school of comic art… I’m more of a meat and potatoes comic kind of guy. Heroes, to me at least, are bigger than life. Not me in spandex… not even Arnold in spandex. Bigger than life. That’s what I draw. Maybe it’s not what you’d see, if they were real, but [it’s] how you’d remember them.”

Fair enough, but scenes like this seem to be edging far too close to Liefeld territory for my liking. Then again, scenes like this seem to be a lot more restrained and prove that, when it comes to the regular humans at least, he can reign it in and deliver a more feasible depiction.

I guess that if you’re a fan of the whole Wolverine/Weapon X/Sabretooth scene then you may enjoy this, but given the sheer number of books you’d need to keep up with in order to maintain a completed Logan collection, do you really need yet another superfluous mini-series? Your call, I guess.

How Do You Spell SNIKT! Again?:
Keeping up the trend, Newsarama also talk to Marc Cerasini, the author of the upcoming Wolverine: Weapon X prose novel, due to be released in hardback this October for the character’s 30th Anniversary celebrations. This is the launch of a brand new imprint for the company, entitled Marvel Press, which will see another two books released this year and 12 more throughout 2005. Cerasini’s other works include the novelisation of Alien vs. Predator, several popular culture icons as diverse as Star Wars, 24 and Godzilla, a number of titles about the United States military, and a New York Times Best Seller non-fiction O.J. Simpson book. He was also, apparently, a zombie extra in Dawn of the Dead. The original, that is.

Cerasini clearly has a deep-rooted affection for Logan, stretching as far back as when he bought Incredible Hulk #181 with that iconic yellow spandex costume on the cover. The impression you get from reading this interview is that Cerasini is just absolutely beaming with pride for being given the opportunity to work on such a ground-breaking step for Wolverine with this book, which takes it’s inspiration from Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X graphic novel (originally published in 1994). Here’s what he has to say about the direction of the book:

Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Cimmerian, spoke about how his signature character seemed to possess him, overwhelm the story he was trying to write to tell a story of his own.

That is kind of what happened while I was writing Weapon X. I saw Logan one way at the beginning, but through a kind of possession, the character compelled me to view him in a different light by the end of the novel. I ended up revealing things about Wolverine I didn’t know myself, and maybe his biggest fans don’t know, either.

At the beginning of the novel, he’s a guy named Logan who has uncanny abilities, but he’s been alive too long, alone too long, and has lost his way. He’s sunk into a world of violence, alcohol, even petty crime. He’s tried faith in God, love, serving his country in times of war, even clandestine operations, but he continued to spiral downward, his life spinning out of control because he refuses to accept a fundamental aspect of his own personality… this is very much a story of redemption.”

According to Cerasini, we can expect to see some follow-up novels about Wolverine, which should come as a surprise to roughly two people – Dumb and Dumber. There are also plans to include Elektra and the Fantastic Four in the imprint. What’s that? They’ve got movies coming out next year? Well, I never!

In all seriousness, however, this is a good move on Marvel’s part. The Mary Jane novels for younger readers by Judith O’Brien have been very well received, so trying to appeal to the obviously larger demographic of Wolverine fans, male readers and adults with cash to splash certainly makes sense. After all, Marvel has been trying to crack the bookstore market for quite some time now through the proliferation of their TPB catalogue. Why not try and capitalise on the bookstore market through, ya know, books?

New Guns:
ComiX-Fan has the details of the variant cover program for the first six issues of New Avengers. Yes, six issues and they all have flippin’ variant covers. The reason for this is apparently so that Marvel’s Young Guns artists can be spotlighted on what will presumably be the company’s #1 title. This has nothing to do with reverting back to cheap tactics to try and boost sales figures. No, really, it doesn’t. Anyway, here are the issues and the artists providing the covers, all of which are to be digitally painted by Richard Isanove and will interlock to form a poster:

Issue #1 – Steve McNiven (4)

Issue #2 – Trevor Hairsine (Ultimate Six)

Issue #3 – Olivier Coipel (Avengers)

Issue #4 – Jim Cheung (Young Avengers)

Issue #5 – Adi Granov (Iron Man)

Issue #6 – TBA

Whodunit? Well…:
The latest edition of All The Rage over at Silver Bullet Comics apparently has the answer to the question of who is behind the events of Avengers Disassembled (or, as Piers put it, DisaSUCKled) so, unless you are adverse to spoilers, hop on over there, scroll down to the bottom, highlight the invisible text and see what you make of it. Be warned – this does mean acknowledging certain events from Chuck Austen’s stint on the book. Still, it makes sense as far as I’m concerned…


MARVELLOUS MOVIES:

Deadpool:
Ryan Reynolds has been discussing the possibility of starring in the Deadpool movie over at the Blade Trinity boards, although it seems unlikely that he is going to pursue the matter.

I’ve had several meetings with Avi Arad about playing Wade. I know David has been approached as well, but ultimately, it just seems too complicated to get into right now.

Personally, I’d be more interested in seeing him star in another property mention in the same post – Fletch. Sure, I’d prefer to see Jason Lee in the role but if the studios are too reluctant to cast him in the lead then they may be more tempted to start working on it as a vehicle for Reynolds. Of course, Kevin Smith has now transformed into one big, fat, giant pussy and started work on Clerks 2 as opposed to a Fletch or Green Hornet movie, so let’s just forget the whole thing.

Deathlok:
According to Hollywood Reporter, David Self has been hired to write a new draft of the proposed Deathlok movie. Given the intense quality of some of his previous credits, which include Thirteen Days and another comic book adaptation, Road to Perdition, this can only be considered a good thing.

Fantastic Four:
Click here to see some conceptual and production designs from the forthcoming movie. I’m sure that the movie will end up being quite good, but something about those drawings just makes me think “Thunderbirds”. That cannot be good. Still, it’s a lot better than the exclusive behind the scenes photos from Hollywood North Report, which are in fact blurry pictures of trees and ladders. Riiight… Anyway, if you fancy doing a bit of stalking in the vain hopes of making a fanboy home video to rival that infamous Batman Begins one (“BAAAATMAAAAN!! BAAAATMAAAAN!!”) then you’ll want to pay attention to Superhero Hype and check out the UBC Liu Institute on Marine Drive in Vancouver, where they are currently filming at night. If you can get me some more exclusive pictures of ladders then that would be the best.

Ghost Rider:
Latino Review has an impenetrable interview with Jon Voight about the Ghost Rider movie, to star Nicholas Cage and be directed by Mark Steven Johnson (JOHNSON!). Voight is set to play the main villain of the movie, although he hasn’t actually seen the script or met the director yet. In his own words:

In these projects, the search for the proper charisma in a piece is quite an interesting search. I’m rooting for the piece entire and I’m putting it in the hands of Mark and Nic too. I’m kind of leaving it to them mostly. We’ll just see how it comes out. I’m not the major ingredient, the major factor at the moment, and I have other things to do as well. We’ll just see how it works out. If it turns my way, it’ll be fun. Then I’ll be prepared. I’ll come into it as I do with full steam and lots of ideas.

What are you blathering on about, man? Can I have your daughter’s phone number?

Man-Thing:
According to Film Jerk, Lions Gate’s Man-Thing movie has been removed from its original release slot of winter 2004 and given “to be determined” status. Sheesh, how much worse than our expectations could it possibly be?

PULSATING PREVIEWS:

Avengers #501

The Disassembled proper storyline continues this week with the second part of Brian Michael Bendis’ arc, and you can check out the preview at PCS. Iron Man is still down-in-the-dumps after his outburst at the United Nations; She-Hulk is still in a flat-chested rage after the attack on the mansion, Finch’s art continues to be more than a little bit hit-and-miss, and I continue not to care until The Sentry turns up in New Avengers

Elektra: The Hand #1

You know, in that light, Elektra bears an uncanny resemblance to She Hulk. Weird. Anyway, there’s not really a whole lot to say about this one. Akira Yoshida is rapidly becoming a favourite writer of mine, but nothing about this title seems particularly groundbreaking or intriguing enough for me to pick it up, and that’s speaking as a fan of the character. The trade will be out by February to coincide with the movie’s release (GARNER!) so you would be as well to just see how the reviews are before deciding if you should bother getting that.

Exiles #52

You could have knocked me down with a feather when Jamie told me that Beak was in this book nowadays. I mean – Beak, man! He’s a f*cking dude! I love that guy. I must have a Here Comes Tomorrow style Beak figure. BWAAAAAAAAK! Too cool. Not cool enough to get me to pick up this particular issue as I didn’t really understand a word of what Captain America was saying… something about a living planet? I dunno. The only living planet I know is Unicron. Could they bring Unicron into Exiles? Imagine that… Unicron & Beak… It would be a Diamond Chart best-seller!!

Hulk & Thing – Hard Knocks #1

Okay, so, several years later and Bruce Jones apparently went for the Chris Carter approach of completely missing the point of a good conspiracy story – namely, to have a satisfactory ending mapped out from the very beginning. Instead, he got a boot up the arse and told to wrap it all up pronto so that Marvel could start marketing the book to the HULKSMASH crowd once again. It’s a shame but, hey, there’s nothing we can do about it now. Marvel’s main plan is to get perennial fan-favourite writer Peter David back onto the book, but in the interim Jones has been allowed to have a spectacular swansong with this little crossover that, in all fairness, is probably only worth checking out if you are a fan of Jae Lee’s unique art style. Unlike his last major outing on Dreamwave’s Transformers/G.I. Joe World War II epic, the colouring does not make his art completely impenetrable. Instead, in the harsh desert landscape, it is more vivid and hard-hitting than these two characters have seen in a long time. Of course, there is no story to speak of as yet… c’est la vie…

Jubilee #1

Man, halfway through the first page I was already making Fresh Prince of Bel Air analogies and, lo and behold, they went and did just that for the title of this debut issue. I guess they like to wear their influences on their sleeve. Nothing wrong with that of course – just look at Oasis. On the other hand, I do wish they would stop putting good writers onto books featuring characters that I have little interest in. Ellis on Iron Man? Brubaker on Captain America? Kirkman on Jubilee? I mean, c’mon, what’s a poor boy to do? Anyway, this little preview looks perfectly fine. I’m sure that it is going to surpass everybody’s expectations in a similar manner to Sean McKeever’s Mary Jane and further Joe Quesada’s one-man crusade to bankrupt Paul O’Brien. Of course, there’s absolutely no point in buying the single issues when there is a digest version on the horizon…

Madrox #1

You know how District X kinda came swooping in from left-field to utterly take everyone by surprise and deliver a book starring Bishop that was actually really, really cool – so cool that even Joe Quesada had to just flat-out admit that he loved it? This is going to do exactly the same thing. It’s just a really great feeling when a writer like Peter David comes along and by merely tweaking a few details here and there, manages to use the odd turn of phrase to point out just how cool a certain character’s abilities really are. It’s like being slapped in the face to be woken up. This is only a five-issue mini-series so far, so fingers crossed the book is well-received enough for David to be convinced to stick around for more issues past that point. Seriously, check out this full-issue preview at Mile High. At points it is reminiscent of Preacher in terms of the similar character interaction between Madrox, Strong Guy and Wolfsbane, and Jesse, Tulip and Cassaday. Two thumbs up and all that.

The Punisher: The Movie

What could be a cooler DVD extra than getting a free and original Garth Ennis comic book illustrated by Steve Dillon? I’ll tell you what – a monkey. Unfortunately, the RSPCA are still rather miffed at that idea, so we get stuck with the comic book instead. It doesn’t throw its own faeces at you, but it does look just as good as you imagine it would. You’ll have to follow various links to other sites to get the whole thing, but I have faith in your abilities to not be stupid. Go for it!

Spider-Man Unlimited #5

The little series that nobody asked for somehow makes it into its fifth issue despite ridiculously low sales figures. The sad part is that it has featured some pretty decent little stories so far. Okay, so it isn’t up to the same standards as the much-missed Tangled Web series did, but it’s still pretty enjoyable stuff, such as this little story about journalistic integrity at the Daily Bugle and the tricky task of dealing with a near-mythic figure such as Spider-Man in the Marvel Universe. Check it out!

Strange #1

Okay – that last page? OUCH! Oh, and a Bob Dylan quote? NICE! Since when did a Dr. Strange comic book have to be good, anyway? Wasn’t there some sort of an unwritten law that stated they had to be plodding, tedious and thoroughly uninteresting to all but the most pedantic of readers? This book – essentially Dr. Strange: Origin by any other name – is packed full of pathos, mystical events, well-rounded characters and even appropriate humour. Plus, if you’re rather angry at the increasingly decompressed style of storytelling then you’ll be relieved to know that more happens in this one issue (previewed in it’s entirety) than in most six-issue arcs nowadays. It’s a minor miracle, and further proof that Straczynski deserves the acclaim that is coming to him, not just for his excellent writing, but for paving the way for Barnes to enter the comic book fold.


LOVELY LINKS:

Captain Austria!!!

CBR have an interview with artist Greg Horn (Emma Frost, Elektra) about his work on the Olympics.

Street Angel #3, the latest instalment of the finest indie comic book on the market today, is due to be released this week. You can check out a preview on the official website.

Video evidence of just what is wrong with Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, the music industry, MTV and 93.5% of the population.

Skitch reviews Amazing Spider-Man #511 after years of therapy to try and come to terms with the Clone Saga.

Jamie sobers up to review Astonishing X-Men #4 with no spoilers, a concept Marvel themselves forgot all about with that variant cover…

Tim escapes the confines of the DCU to review Guardians #3 and, if we don’t all start reading it, he’s going to start slapping us around with a big fish.

Kyle reviews Ultimate Spider-Man #64, which I’m sure is very good but I’m waiting for the HC so I can’t really comment on it…

Some self-righteous bastard reviews WE3 #1. Just ignore him, he’ll go away.

Asterix!!

Dreamwave!!


CRAZY CREDITS:

This column has been brought to you in conjunction with…

Joy Division’s Substance

Sleater-Kinney’s All Hands on the Bad One

Constant interference from Nick Piers…

AOL IM: KingKongBurnside

Iain Burnside is currently smelling liked an unkempt yak… Time for a shower, methinks…