You might be wondering why I haven’t been updating as prolifically as I usually do.  Main reason?  I started writing for the Newsarama blog and I’ve been working on getting another site off the ground.

Something Awful has a great run down of what is going on in the Marvel universe these days:

Spider-Man: Mopey, aunt dying, might be single soon
Hulk: Angry, kicking ass, tore the roof off MSG
Luke Cage: Paranoid, acting suspicious, maybe baby-daddy to a Skrull
Iron Man: Smug, acting bossy, in charge of SHIELD
Thor: Somber, looking for buds, could have stopped Katrina
Captain America: Moldy, decomposing, dead

Some commonly asked questions:

Why’s everyone so mean to each other?
The Superhuman Registration Act made everyone choose sides, with those against working for the government siding with Cap and those for with Iron Man. Cap gave himself up, Spidey, Dr. Strange and a few others went underground, and Tony Stark is director of SHIELD. Cap got shot after his arrest, so he’s dead. Bucky swore revenge on Shell-head. Legit superheroes work for Uncle Sam now, but not in that shitty Gray/Palmiotti comic.

Why is Spider-Man whinier than normal?
Kingpin hired a sniper to kill him, now that his secret identity is public, and hit Aunt May instead. Her brain activity is as flat as a wheatcake, and Spidey may do something drastic to bring her back. We don’t know what yet, but since JMS is involved it will probably have Spidey going on a vision quest and meeting the Aztec god of spiders, who tells him to bring back the Sankara Stones and defeat the Six Sinister Spirits or some other mystical bullshit that doesn’t really fit.

I thought Wolverine, Spider-Woman and Dr. Strange would all be best buddies forever by now! Why can’t they trust each other?
Turns out there’s some Skrull-duggery afoot. One of them replaced Elektra, possibly after she died the first time, and now anyone with a weird continuity problem might be a Skrull agent in disguise. Hey, did we mention Hawkeye’s alive again and no one knows why? Word is the Skrull stuff will be the next big crossover event.

Is Captain America still dead?
Yup.

The Hulk did what now?
Stark, Strange, Richards and Black Bolt tricked puny Banner into getting on a rocket that would send him to a nice, deserted planet. It missed, and Hulk ended up conquering an entire planet full of gladiators. Then the rocket exploded and killed Hulk’s alien wife and unborn alien baby. The rocket was only built for two things: taking the Hulk to one planet and not exploding, and it failed both. The Hulk took an entourage of alien monsters to NYC and began to fuck shit up. He’s still fucking shit up as of now. Surprisingly, Rage, Slapstick and Thor Girl have not been able to stop him.

How about now, still dead?
Yes.

Why can’t superheroes get along with each other and beat up bad guys, like in these comics?
Those are Marvel Adventures comics, kid, get the fuck out of here.

Genius

CNN has a sweet story about how Youssif met Spider-Man and Captain America while visiting Universal Studios.

Spidey then gave the boy from a far-away land a gentle hug, embracing him in his iconic blue and red tights. He showed Youssif a few tricks, like how to shoot a web from his wrist. Only this time, no web was spun.

“All right Youssif!” Spider-Man said after the boy mimicked his wrist movement.

Other superheroes crowded around to get a closer look. Even the Green Goblin stopped his villainous ways to tell the boy hi. Youssif remained unfazed. He didn’t take a liking to Spider-Man’s nemesis.

Spidey was just too cool.

“It was my favorite thing,” the boy said later. “I want to see him again.”

He then felt compelled to add: “I know it’s not the real Spider-Man.”

Hopefully no one told him that Cap was “dead” or a Skrull now.  Also, there has been a lot of hoopla over if this kid is just being used as propaganda for the Iraq war.  But that is all up to you to decide, I just think it was cool that he met Spidey.

Good stuff.

You can view the rest here.

Wizard has an interview with Jim Shooter and I thought this was interesting:

Okay, as a former writer, EIC and current comic book legend, what do you think of the current state of the industry?

The art in comics is generally better than ever, the writing is often clever and glib, but in spite of that, far too many comics are utterly unreadable. Even hardcore fans find many comics daunting to follow! The craft of comics storytelling is all but lost. A who’s who of industry big shots have privately agreed with me when we’ve discussed exactly this subject, but it’s a tough problem to fix, given the often huge egos of the creators, general creative anarchy and lack of trained editorial people.

Source.

Which is interesting to hear from one of my favorite editors seeing as how I basically had a quasi-rant about the same thing here.  A lot of how the industry is being run and acting reminds me of how it was when I was younger: variant cover after variant cover, a glut of overmarketed crap, and very little emphasis on the story.  All-Star Batman & Robin should be a perfect example of this: great art, great writer… but together it is absolutely horrible.  Frank Miller’s inability to write a decent Batman arc anymore completely ruins Jim Lee’s art.

[Via]