Captain Marvel joins the Avengers this Sunday

The Kree Warrior Mar-Vell makes his debut appearance in the 15th episode of the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, this weekend.

Sent to Earth as part of an assessment of the human race by the Kree, Mar-vell ended up going native and found that the Earthlings were in need of his abilities to defend them from alien threats such as the towering Kree Sentries. Mar-Vell’s journey took an unexpected turn, leading to his cosmic illumination into galactic protector as bearer of the nega-bands.

The upcoming animated version of Captain Marvel looks to be a fusion of the classic and Ultimate versions of the character along with a few new ideas mixed in for good measure.

The Avengers meet Captain Marvel in an all-new episode of “The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes!”

The Kree warrior comes to Earth, but will even his help be enough to keep the planet safe from the Sentries? Get a taste of all the action in this awesome preview, and tune in to Disney XD this Sunday, December 12 at 10:00 a.m. ET for an all-new episode of “The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes!”

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

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New Releases 5/26/10

For the complete list of this week’s comics, click here.

Not sure where your local comic shop is? Try comicshoplocator.com!

(note: all information including ad copy is from the publisher)

If you can’t make it to the shop, just click on any of the images below to be taken to an online retailer. I don’t get any referrals for these sales, I’m just doing my bit to spread the word on some neat products.

Thunderbolts #144

Thunderbolts #144
By: Jeff Parker, Kev Walker, Marko Djurdjevic
The new era for Marvel’s always-evolving, always controversial team kicks off here! It’s a beginning, a return, a departure, and an arrival of a new artist (MARVEL ZOMBIES 3 & 4’s Kev Walker) all rolled into one in a fresh, shocking status quo!The most dangerous people on Earth are now all in one hellish prison, and the only way out is through rehabilitation and contribution to society via The Thunderbolts…under the leadership of the steel-hard-skinned Avenger named Luke Cage! So bring on the first participants: Juggernaut! Crossbones! Ghost! Moonstone! And Man-Thing? Against the sordid recent history of the group as a black ops kill squad, can Power Man restore the Thunderbolts to their rightful potential?

Find out as the entire series is revamped, and also discover why ComicsBulletin.com says: ‘Jeff Parker writes villains with his typical panache…This is why I read comic books.’

Weapon X Noir #1

Weapon X Noir #1
By: Dennis Calero, C.P. Smith
Spinning from the pages of X MEN NOIR: MARK OF CAIN ‘In the fourth century, Saint Jerome said that the face was the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.I wear a false face, true. One that is hideous and deformed, to hide my true nature. Or perhaps it is the mask that is real, and the face of a DEMON.’

Doctor Who 1st Doctor Unearthly Child Action Figure, $24.99

Doctor Who 1st Doctor Unearthly Child Action Figure

Imported from the UK!

School teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton become intrigued by one of their students, Susan Foreman, and they visit her home address – a junkyard at 76 Totter’s Lane – where they meet her grandfather, the Doctor. The Doctor and Susan are aliens who travel through time and space in their ship, the TARDIS, which looks like an ordinary police box but holds within a huge gleaming control room. This action figure depicts the first Doctor, William Hartnell, in the costume he wore in Doctor Who’s first episode, ‘An Unearthly Child,’ with a hat, cape, scarf, and longer jacket.

Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest, Circus of Doom

Doctor Who: Hornets’ Nest, Circus of Doom
In Blandford, 1832, ringmaster Antonio exerts a strange influence on the townsfolk. When the Doctor steps into the ring, he discovers that Antonio has some familiar demons of his own. Tom Baker reprises his role as the beloved fourth Doctor in this multi-voice production. This is #3 in a series of five stories.

Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest, A Sting in the Tale

Doctor Who: Hornets’ Nest, A Sting in the Tale
In a bleak midwinter, an order of nuns protect their Mother Superior from ravaging dogs. But something is very wrong here indeed — and the Doctor is about to get badly stung. Tom Baker reprises his role as the beloved fourth Doctor in this multi-voice production. This is #4 in a series of five stories.

Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest, Hive of Horror

Doctor Who: Hornets’ Nest, Hive of Horror
The Doctor and Mike must face their enemy in a final battle. They have an unwilling accomplice — and loyalties are about to be tested to the limit. Tom Baker reprises his role as the beloved fourth Doctor in this multi-voice production. This is #5 in a series of five stories.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: Dust To Dust #1

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: Dust To Dust #1

By: Chris Roberson, Robert Adler, Trevor Hairsine, Benjamin Carre
A science-fiction publishing event! Who hunted androids before Rick Deckard? Taking place immediately after World War Terminus ends, the problems with artificial life – androids – become apparent.

The government decides they must become targets, hunted down, but who will do the dirty work? Two men are assigned: Malcolm Reed, a ‘special’ human with the power to feel others’ emotions, and Charlie Victor, who’s the perfect man for the job – or is he?

Meanwhile Samantha Wu, a Stanford biologist, fights to save the last of the world’s animals. John W. Campbell Memorial Award-nominee Chris Roberson writes the prequel to John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winner Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, one of the greatest science fiction novels ever published!

Noh-Vahrr, the New Captain Marvel?

A character who originally premiered in the very first issue of Marvel Comics alongside Namor the Sub Mariner and Ka-Zar, Marvel Boy was a rather simple super-powered young man with golden curls. The character was revamped several times throughout the years but never really came together.

Flash forward to 2000 when Grant Morrison and J G Jones’ Marvel Boy mini-series for Marvel Knights.

A teenager of the perfect race of Kree warriors, Noh-Varr became stranded on an alternate Earth ruled by the megalomaniacal villain Midas, whose sole purpose was to hunt down cosmic rays in an effort to become more powerful. Midas wears an oddly familiar version of Iron Man’s Mach I armor, but there is no relation to the golden avenger. In fact, there are no heroes at all in this counter Earth, causing Noh-Varr to rebel. Disgusted by the backwards world he lived in and full of hatred with any authority, Noh-Vahrr struck out wildly, causing untold amounts of damage to this strange world. Battling not only Dr. Midas, but the corporate virus Hexus, one of Grant Morrison‘s most enjoyably bizarre ideas. Never mind that Midas’ daughter Oubliette looks exactly like the recently unveiled evil Mary Marvel, this being one of Grant’s first Marvel Comics series, it is lots of fun to see the Scottish scribe playing in a brand new sandbox.

Eventually SHIELD managed to capture the troublesome teen in a cosmic prison cell called the Cube where the character disappeared for many years. In the recent Avengers: Illuminati mini-series, Noh-Varr re-appeared and was left to look after his fellow prisoners in hope that it would make him honorable. In fact, Noh-Varr plotted a cosmic jail break, leading his inmates like a grand army. All of this went south as the Skrull Invasion caused his plans to disintegrate.

Completely dazed in the middle of a war zone, Noh-Varr called out to the Kree Supreme Intelligence for telepathic guidance and was nearly struck down by a crashing Skrull Cruiser being attacked by Captain Marvel in his final death throes. For those not keeping track, this is not the original Mar-Vell, but instead a Skrull imposter who broke his programming to fight his people as the great Captain Marvel would.

For fans of the latest Captain Marvel mini-series, seeing the character perish after obtaining his freedom so recently is a real downer, but in inspires Noh-Varr to get his act together and stretch from the pages of Mighty Avengers #19 to Secret Invasion #7. Noh-Varr‘s appearance on the battlefield is striking and raises the question, has the Marvel Universe found it’s new Captain Marvel?

Only time (and the inevitable mini-series) will tell. But it is exciting to see Marvel Comics finally developing this character into something new and perhaps lasting. And we all like new ideas, right?

Recommended:
Marvel Boy Premiere HC (Marvel Knights)
Captain Marvel: Secret Invasion Premiere HC (Captain Marvel (Unnumbered))
Essential Captain Marvel Volume 1 TPB (Essential)

Gene Colan Benefit

One of the chief architects of Marvel Comics and perhaps the finest artist of his era, Gene Colan has been amazing comic book fans for generations. Whether it was in Dr Strange, Tomb of Dracula, Daredevil or any of his other projects, Gene ‘The Dean’ Colan is a masterful delineator.

Sadly, Gene was recently diagnosed with a failing liver.

The comic book community has risen to the occasion and sent all manner of support from simple cards to purchasing benefit art on ebay.

On his website, Adrienne thanked the fans for their support:

“We’ve been so blessed by all of you as well as fans and professional artists donating artwork to sell on Ebay. I’ve tried so hard to keep up with thanking you all online and privately. But, if any of you have the emails or belong to chat groups of the artists’s and others that have contributed to these ebay auctions , I sure would appreciate that info. Also, if you can just network for me and get the word to all these people that Gene and I are blown away by their generosity, that would be such a tremendous help to me and a big relief. I worry that they won’t know what their kindness means to Gene and me. Also, if any of you know some of the people who have sent items to us, like signed T shirts from a convention, the London Times from someone else, cards and sometimes just cash placed inside, or sometimes a large check with no name, just ‘get well’ on the back of the check…. anyone at all that you know sent something that they may not have received a personal email or note from me, would you please tell them how much this is meaning to us on a daily basis. How much fun and excitement they bring into our house every day. How our children love hearing about it all….and how sorry I am that in a few cases, I’ve just been so overwhelmed here with attending to Gene’s health requirements, duties of the household and business that in some cases, I just simply had to let the paper work go. But it all means so much. Every single simple thing means so much!”

It’s a very sad and unfortunate position that Gene is in, but it warms my heart to know that he is receiving support from the very fans that have enjoyed his artwork over the years.

For ideas in how you can help, please visit his website and this blog.

Captain Marvel

Originally created for the sole purpose of retaining the rights to the name ‘Captain Marvel,’ (and why shouldn’t Marvel Comics have such a character, I ask you!) the star-born hero is as much a complicated bundle of contradictions as any found in the House of Ideas. Part of an invasion fleet sent by the Kree, Mar-Vell lives incognito on a military base gathering information that will soon be used to destroy the human beings he walks amongst. In time, Mar-Vell rebels against his villainous war-hungry superior and all but loses himself in a battle to win the freedom of the people that he would just as soon destroy.

I had always been terribly interested in this character and hunted down his first appearances, waiting until I had all of the early issues leading up to the massive series redesign… and it was pretty lousy. Not to disrespect 1960’s Marvel, which I love, but this series really had no direction to go in. Not until Mar-Vell dons the nega-bands and is bonded to Rick Jones does the comic gain some sort of identity.

With this new plot contrivance, Mar-Vell and Jones switch places, leaving one of them in a strange limbo world whenever the negabands are clashed. While they can communicate via telepathy, the two can never be in the same place… kinda like Ladyhawk.

The Gil Kane redesign of Captain Marvel was a major success and granted the series a new lease on life. The art was stunning and the mixture of Rick Jones and his free-wheeling lifestyle (and dialog) jarred in just the right way against the establishment man that was Mar-Vell. The adventures were cosmic and grand, but grounded in the streets of America, much like a later experiment tried out in the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series by Denny O’Neill and Neal Adams.

In its 25th issue, artist/writer Jim Starlin arrived and pulled the series into the annals of Marveldom where it belonged. Throughout his adventures against the Kree and Skrulls and even the dreaded Thanos (Marvel’s answer to Darkseid), Captain Marvel established himself as a major player and one of the most powerful heroes in the Marvel Universe. That is why it came as such a surprise when Mar-Vell died from cancer in the groundbreaking graphic novel (yes, a real graphic novel) ‘The Death of Captain Marvel.’ A bittersweet story, the novel remains a major creative water mark for Marvel Comics.

In the 1990’s, Peter David introduced a follow up series of Captain Marvel chronicling the adventures of Mar-Vell’s son, Genis. While it saw some high points and one of the most impressive character redesigns in comics, the series was eventually canceled.

In the recent company-wide crossover Civil War, Captain Marvel suddenly found himself back in the world of the living and more than a little confused. He wasn’t alone. Mar-Vell had become lost in time/space a short period before he would die. Thinking quickly, Tony Stark hired Captain Marvel to guard his interspacial Alcatraz and he was more or less forgotten (he didn’t even show up in Avengers or Civil War proper!).

After a prolonged absence from the comic book world, the Captain has returned. This new series features the time-lost warrior operating on borrowed time before he must return to his rightful place in the time continuum and face a prolonged and painful death surrounded by his friends who must stand by and do nothing.

Newcomer Brian Reed is joined by veteran artist Lee Weeks to bring the character back into the limelight. The project is a 5 issue miniseries, but if it works, you might see Captain Marvel rubbing shoulders with his old allies like the Fantastic Four or even Captain America himself… if Cap ever returns from the dead.

First issue goes on sale tomorrow.

Recommended:

Marvel Masterworks Captain Marvel 1
The Life and Death of Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics)
Captain Marvel: Crazy Like a Fox (Captain Marvel)