One Person Really Can Make A Difference – Every Stan Lee Marvel Movie Appearance. Ever.

We noted with enthusiasm the observance of Stan Lee’s birthday shortly before the start of the new year. In honor of this momentous occasion, the folks over at I Heart Chaos found a video by YouTube user rogerio16juni1998 that is a montage of all Stan’s appearances in Marvel movies since 1989’s The Trial of the Incredible Hulk. My favorite moment in the video is probably at 2:39, where Stan arrives as himself at the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm…and finds he’s not on the guest list.

Here’s to more Stan Lee cameos this year in Iron Man 3 and Thor 2, as well as next year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Excelsior!

J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, And Others To Be Rumored As Working On New Dr. Who Project

Hypable posted speculation this morning that J.K. Rowling may be involved in an upcoming Dr. Who short story anthology, which will begin as a publication of individual “eshorts” starting on January 23, according to the BBC press release. Although Stephen Moffat is not commenting on the project, publisher Juliet Matthews reports:

We are delighted to have 11 sensational children’s authors involved in the series, all bringing an individual style, imagination and interpretation to their eshort tribute to The Doctor. This is a who’s who of children’s fiction coming together to celebrate the much-loved Doctor Who.

I’m too out of touch with children’s fiction these days to have any idea what constitutes a “who’s who”; I can’t imagine they are digging up the corpse of Lewis Carroll for this project. However, Bleeding Cool thinks they may have found evidence of the possibility of Neil Gaiman’s involvement based on this tweet from this morning:

Rewatching lots of old YouTube clips for A Project. I’d forgotten how much I loved Curse of the Fatal Death j.mp/133F6RZ#drwho

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 4, 2013

So, who knows? Either way, Dr. Who and children’s literature fans will have a field day making guesses and placing bets. The first of the authors for this series will be revealed on January 7. I don’t suppose there’s a chance that they’d get the Go The Fuck To Sleep guy involved, would they? Now that would be an interesting take on Dr. Who, especially if they got Samuel L. Jackson to read it.

Next Is Lonely Street, Because I Am A Drunken Goon: Worcester, MA To Rename Street To Lois Lane

Proving once again that, around the Christmas / New Year’s holidays, every day is a slow comics news day, it has come to our attention that our hometown of Boston’s sister city, Worcester – New England’s undisputed capital of affordable heroin since 1974! – is undergoing a little urban renewal. Specifically, surrounding the name of one of the downtown streets. A street near the That’s Enterntainment comic store on Park Avenue. A small, private street currently known as Marmon Place. Next to a comic book store.

Yeah, you probably guessed it: Worcester is renaming Marmon Place to Lois Lane.

Tore Open The Bourbon And Threw Up On The Sash: Stan Lee Reads The Night Before Christmas

It is Christmas Eve, which means if you are anything like we are, you are busy simultaneously hanging your stockings and wrapping your presents, while watching Uncle Pete drink himself into oblivion while screeching about birth certificates and FEMA Camps, wondering if you can hang Uncle Pete and wrap him in a rug.

Frankly, that’s no way to get into the spirit of Christmas! Christmas is supposed to be about childlike wonder, the belief in power greater than your own, and the cosmic awe over the fact that the days are finally about to get longer!

And all those things remind me of comics. So whether you are so devout a Christian that you are considering firebombing your town square’s nondenominational “holiday” display, or a Jew looking forward to Chinese food and Django Unchained, I think we should all come together today and thank the deity of your choice that, if nothing else, we pretty much all have tomorrow off.

And in that spirit, and the spirit of comics, why don’t you and your family huddle around the warm glow of the computer monitor and enjoy Stan Lee, and his rendition of the classic Christmas poem The Night Before Christmas? Maybe it will remind us all that, no matter what our differences, maybe for this one day we can all come together and agree to act in the benevolent spirit of the season, and maybe go see a Tarantino movie and firebomb Uncle Pete together.

Stan the Man is waiting, right after the jump.

Before The Betray Crows, You Will Cock Me Three Times: The Goon Christmas Carol Motion Comic

Update, 12/19/2012, 10:05 p.m.: Part 2 is now available after the jump…

It is the time of year when the days grow shorter, your neighbors put on their holiday finery, and you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to decide how many airings of Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses is enough to constitute an affirmative defense for either Justifiable Homicide or a Not Responsible verdict for the arson of your local oldies station, which went All Christmas All The Time sometime around Memorial Day, as far as you can now remember.

All the lights and the TV commercials and the guys in Santa suits ringing a sanity-piercing bell and begging for change outside your local liquor store like the common winos those Santas actually are the other 11 and a half months a year might be enough to make you throw in the Christmas towel and shout “Bah, humbug!” (or, “Allahu Akbar!” if you were actually able to synthesize explosives without blowing up your basement). But before you turn your company holiday party into some kind of sordid little hostage situation, take a deep breath and enjoy this excellent, well-produced, and most importantly: funny little motion comics adaptation of The Goon #10: The Goon Presents: Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, courtesy of Dark Horse Comics and Geek and Sundry.

It is a (semi) faithful adaptation of the Dickens classic, assuming that Bob Cratchit wanted Christmas Day off to spend with Tiny Tim… assuming that “Tiny Tim” is a small-batch bourbon, and that Scrooge is more willing to accept that the appearance of Marley’s Ghost is more to do with a small bit of a childhood beating from his mother’s tack hammer than the supernatural.

So remove that Santa mask, lay down that chainsaw, relax and enjoy part one of the show, which you can see right after the jump.

Ours Would Read “Whiskey. Blackout. Whiskey.”: Miguel Lokia’s Game Of Thrones Parody Banners

This isn’t news or important information or anything but cool, but Miguel Lokia, an artist on DeviantArt and Flickr who goes by the handle Lokiable, has Photoshopped some cool geek and pop culture versions of House banners from Game of Thrones. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about: big old banners with the mottoes of the fiefdom in question, like “Winter Is Coming” for House Stark, or “Ours is the Fury” for House Baratheon, or “Money. Power. Then The Women” for House Montana.

Anyway, Lokia took the concept of those banners and created a bunch based on a bunch of other pop culture icons, including a ton based on comic books. We’ve collected some of our favorites here, which you can check out after the jump.

Even Hitler Thinks Dan Slott Has Ruined The Amazing Spider-Man?

While we here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives home office, did not feel that The Amazing Spider-Man #698 was by any means horrible, we also weren’t exactly lining up to sing its praises either. Solidly written characterizations aside, it’s a big deal to play the Freaky Friday card on your protagonist, right as you’re about to end the run of a publication that has been in existence since 1963.

To that end, there are a lot of folks out there who are pretty upset about it, even… Hitler? Yes, it would seem so. I Googled it myself after coming across this in Dan Slott’s Twitter feed yesterday:

Showed the Dan Slott/Hitler meme to my folks this morning. Dad was in tears. “I’ve never laughed so hard at Hitler!” #SuckItMelBrooks

— Dan Slott (@DanSlott) November 24, 2012

Lo and behold, someone had enough free time on their hands to update the Hitler Reacts meme.

I had no idea that Hitler was such a closet Spidey fan! Check it out, after the jump!

Joss Whedon And The Zombie Apocalypse Vote

Crisis On Infinite Midlives is a comics-based Website, and therefore we try to advance no political opinions nor particular ideological agendas.

However, even if we are unwilling to endorse any political positions, as genre geeks there are two things that we care about almost more than anything in the world: the opinion of Joss Whedon – creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and director of Avengers – and the impending and inevitable zombie apocalypse.

And, even though we would never think to tell you for whom to vote for in the impending United States Presidential election, nor would we tell you who we personally intend to vote for, when Joss and the zombie apocalypse collide in a single political endorsement video? Well, we feel we have a duty to present it to you.

So, without further ado, here is Joss Whedon, explaining the best of all possible reasons we have heard to date to vote for Mitt Romney.

The Most Terrifying Dancing Zombies Since “Thiller” – The Tapping Dead

It’s hard out here for a pimp member of the walking dead. You just want to eat brains and the damn prey just wants to scream and run away, or so the cast of “The Walking Dead – The Musical” would like us to believe. Just before they spontaneously burst into an extended session of tap dancing. Terrifying, terrifying tap dancing.

Dig the song? You can download it here.

via The Mary Sue

Brain Bleach: El Hefe Vador

You know you’ve wondered about the possibility – what if Star Wars and Mexican wrestling had a wacky, spandex and leather wearing baby. Admit it.

What? Just me?

Well, wonder no more. With the advent of Jason Chalker’s La Guerra De Los Luchadores, a show print he created for Art Wars: Intergalactic Art Show, you too can see what would have happened if, as he put it:

I wonder what it would have been like if Star Wars was originally a low-budget Mexican luchador movie?

Check out the awesomeness, after the jump.