Every Generation’s Got Its Own Disease: Phoenix Returns

About a week and a half ago, we reported on a postcard that Marvel sent to comic book retailers like my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me not to unbuckle my belt and tell him to “check out my back issue”, that simply read: “It’s Coming.” Following the right URL to Marvel’s Website brought you to a page containing a placeholder for their liveblog of Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada’s Cup ‘O Joe panel at the New York Comic Con.

Well, that panel took place yesterday. Tell us what’s coming, Marvel blogger UltimateKidNova!

The teaser “It’s Coming” was shown once more before being morphed into what seems to hint heavily at the return of a certain character named for a mythical flaming bird.

“Flaming bird,” huh? Can you be a little more specific? RuPaul? Devine? Beiber?

Yeah, even I’m not that hung over. Marvel’s bringing back Phoenix. Eventually. Marvel’s promo art they showed at the panel is after the jump.

With A Magic Word: REBOOT! I Mean: SHAZAM!

DC’s Justice League panel at the New York Comic Con was held earlier today – well, they called it the “Justice League” panel, but it pretty much had every creator on the New 52 except for Scott Lobdell, who rumor has it was unavilable due to a prior commitment to be in a fetal position, rocking, crying and ignoring the constant ring of the telephone.

There were a ton of revelations in the panel, one of which being that DC didn’t open the panel to questions from the audience until more than halfway through, which is a MAJOR departure from the DC panels we’ve see at SDCC since 2006, where Dan DiDio has historically said, “This is a panel about INSERT SUBJECT HERE! Let’s take questions!” Thanks again, San Diego Batgirl!

But one of the other bigger revelations was that DC is rebooting and relaunching Captain Marvel.

More Justice of Fisting

DC Comics’ New York Comic Con panel on their Edge / Dark line of New 52 books happened today, and while we haven’t come across any specific coverage of the panel yet that we can cannibalize, regurgitate and spit back at it in lieu of actual journalism Rob: edit this shit out now. We can at least act like we know what the fuck we’re doing -Amanda

Whoops! Sorry, technical difficulties, folks! Sorry about that. As I was clearly saying, while we haven’t been able to diligently ferret out any details about what happened in the panel, DC’s Source blog helpfully published the covers to the upcoming Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #5 and OMAC #5, by J.J. Jones and Keith Giffen respectively, which you can see after the jump:

But How Do You Really Feel?

It’s not all bad news at the New York Comic Con. Some of it is absolutely wretched news. And sometimes there is the odd apocalyptically terrible, awful, no-good news.

And then there is the occasional brain-dead, redneck, dumbfuck, “Hey guys! Lookit THIS!” news that would normally involve mescaline, a healthy infant and a 110-volt blender in a 220-volt socket news:

Announced [yesterday] at New York Comic Con, Image Comics announced [sic] that Rob Liefeld is returning Extreme Studios to active status!

Son of a…

Okay… so this is a… thing that’s happening… tell us about it, Robbie-Boy!

Who Wants To Give The Man A Second Glance

Hi. I'm Stan Lee. Like X-men? Yeah, I thought so. Daddy's got a new plan. I will own your children.

I’m not in New York right now. This bothers me on a certain level. New York Comic Con is in full swing. I’m not there. I’m drinking box red wine and listening to Skunk Anansie on a Friday night. I know one hundred ways to be a good girl, but none of them are putting me in front of comic book creators or cognoscenti right at this very moment. I keep pointing out to Rob that we are a Fung Wa Bus ride and an Avatar Press VIP Package away from rectifying this situation. He points out that he likes his interstate travel to remain upright and cause him to, you know, not die. Also, the cheapest Avatar VIP ticket is $275. Times, well, 2. I’d bring Rob with me, after all. Hello? I have a bar tab two blocks from my house. One block from that is the comic book store. The owner knows us and only mostly never closes early if he notices us wandering down the hill from our place at 6:45 pm on a Wednesday. Based on the motley, rather Mos Eisely like crew already gathered there by the time we make last comic call, most Wednesdays are a kind of impromptu con within staggering distance from where we already live. Why should I feel the need to cross state lines?

There Was No One Left To Speak Up

We here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives have decided that, no matter the cost, hardship or obstacle, we will attend and report on next year’s New York Comic Con. Because we feel that we have a responsibility. A responsibility to you, to us, and to every comic book reader who lived through the last 35 years of comics publishing. To prevent anything like THIS from every happening again:

Marvel then showed off the teaser already seen of the burning hoodie of the Scarlet Spider. “What’s this?” [Manager of Sales & Communications Arune] Singh said for [Spider-Man Editor] Wacker to respond “The worst costume ever!”

…and when they came for the people who fucking hated the Clone Saga, there was no one left to speak up.

Sorry, that was unnecessarily pessimistic. Hell, they made FUN of the Scarlet Spider, right? Maybe things’ll be okay, right? RIGHT?

That exchange prompted the announcement of a new “Scarlet Spider” ongoing by writer Chris Yost and [penciler Ryan] Stegman.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO N-

*deep breath*

Okay, let’s all calm down. Maybe this isn’t all bad. Maybe they’re bringing the Scarlet Spider back to make fun of him. It could happen! Maybe they’re making Ben Reilly the Forbush Man of the Spider-Man books! It’s a light-hearted gag! They can’t possibly be taking this seriously, right? RIGHT?

The Lamentations Of Their Artist

The first big announcement from the New York Comic Con came from Dark Horse Comics yesterday, when they announced the new creative team for the upcoming Conan The Barbarian: Queen Of The Black Coast miniseries: Stan Lee’s lawyers!

Just kidding! It’s actually gonna be Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, the creative team behind the Generation X-focused emo superhero book Demo!

Just kidding! It’s actually going to be – oh wait, that one was real?

Hey, Kids! Comics! And Diabetes!

When I was a kid, my Mom would sometimes buy me a comic book out of the grocery store spinner rack to shut me up about not buying me the sugary cereals I was always screaming about (Although to be fair, one time she did buy me a box of Lucky Charms to get a hold of the Six Million Dollar Man sticker prize I spent days obsessing over after I saw the TV commercials. Then she picked out all the marshmallows while I cried. I was 32. But I digress).

But that was 1978. It’s 2011 now, and the spinner rack disappeared sometime around, well, 1978. So if you want your kid to shut the fuck up about buying them Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs with a comic book, well, you’ll have to buy them Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.

The New York Times is reporting that DC Comics and General Mills are gonna be announcing, sometime during this weekend’s New York Comic Con, a deal to distribute four specially-printed issues of Justice League to be dumped into nutritious fare such as Trix, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and my old nemesis: Lucky Charms.

Cognitive Dissonance: An Open Letter to Alan Moore

Alan Moore is doing a reading of one of his non-comic things on Saturday, so he did an interview with a UK… tabloid? I think it’s a tabloid. Then again, I thought English tabloids were supposed to have titty shots, which I couldn’t find. But it’s not like I looked hard; after all, all I had access to was their Web site, and I’m not gonna spend time figuring out where “Page 3” is when I can smack my head against the keyboard, press the Enter key and get thousands of pages of hardcore pornography. But I digress.

The point is that Alan Moore did a short interview with this thing, and used the opportunity to talk about how awesome Alan Moore is:

At the moment I feel an awful lot of my comic career is behind me, particularly all of the superhero stuff – the stuff that’s owned by American corporations. I want to distance myself from that, so the stuff I’m proudest of is what I own: From Hell, Lost Girls, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I don’t read my earlier work because there are too many unpleasant associations with it. I don’t have a copy of Watchmen in the house. I’m glad the work is out there in the world, having an effect, but it’s like I’ve gone through a messy divorce.

Oh, Alan… let’s start with the obvious stuff.

I Don’t Have To Listen To You; You’re Not My Real Dad!

"Diana, please, I just want to get to know you." "Screw you, man! You're not my real dad!" "But, I have *alimony*..."

Look, frankly I was going to go to bed but, as I take after my own dad, I have an affinity for Scotch and rolling into work egregiously hungover. My liver knows its place and will do as its damn told. Now, what was I talking about…? Oh, yeah, Wonder Woman.

See, here’s the thing, today Josh Kushins posted this on the DCU Blog:

In DC COMICS-THE NEW 52, Wonder Woman will have a new origin, in which she is the daughter of Hippolyta … and Zeus! In recent interviews, writer Brian Azzarello and artist Cliff Chiang have teased that readers should expect the unexpected in this edgier, horror take on the superhero genre ­and the king of the gods will ensure that nothing goes as planned for his defiant daughter.

Originally created by the goddess Aphrodite and raised to perfection on the Amazon island of Themiscyra, the newest incarnation of Wonder Woman has a new costume and now a new origin ­ but she remains Wonder Woman. Strong. Proud. Fearless. WONDER WOMAN is the 12th title in DC COMICS-THE NEW 52 to sell more than a 100K copies.