Joe Simon - Co creator of Captain America. 1913-2011

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Joe Simon, who along with Jack Kirby co-created Captain America and was one of the comic book industry's most revered writers, artists and editors, has died. He was 98.

Simon's family relayed word of his death Thursday, posting a short statement on Facebook and telling The Associated Press through a spokesman that the 98-year-old Simon died Wednesday night in New York City after a brief illness.

"Joe was one of a kind," said Steve Saffel of Titan Books, a Simon friend who worked with him on his recent autobiography, "Joe Simon, My Life In Comics."

Saffel said that Simon, born in Rochester, N.Y., in 1913, "lived life on his terms and created incredible things in the process. It was a privilege to know him and to call him my friend."

Among his creations was a partnership with comic book artist and illustrator Jack Kirby. The duo worked hand-in-glove for years and from their fertile imaginations sprang a trove of characters, heroes, villains and misfits for several comic book companies in their Golden Age of the 1940s, including Timely, the forerunner of today's Marvel Comics; National Periodicals, the forerunner of DC; and Fawcett, among others.

The characters the two created included the Newsboy Legion, the Boy Commandos and scores more, including Blue Bolt.

"Blue Bolt was the first strip Jack and I worked on together, beginning in 1940. He was a science fiction swashbuckler I created for Curtis Publishing, the company that put out the Saturday Evening Post," Simon told The Associated Press earlier this year. "They had decided to jump on the comic book bandwagon. Jack joined me with the second issue. Like Captain America, Blue Bolt got his powers from an injection, long before the baseball players were doing it."

For Timely, the duo created Captain America, debuting on the cover of "Captain America Comics" No. 1 in December 1940 with the champion of liberty throwing a solid right-hook at Adolph Hitler, an entire year before the United States entered World War II.

"Jack and I read the newspapers, and knew what was going on over in Europe. And there he was — Adolf Hitler, with his ridiculous moustache, high-pitched ranting and goose-stepping followers. He was the perfect bad guy, much better than anything we could have made up, so what we needed was to create his ultimate counterpart," Simon told AP.

"Cap is one of the great comic book icons, and as dangerous as the world is today — more than it was in the 1940s — we need him around more than ever to act as our moral compass," Simon said.

Mark Evanier, a comic industry historian and Jack Kirby biographer, noted that Simon, besides being able to write and draw, also knew how to edit comics.

"Joe himself was the first great real editor who brought to comics skills he'd learned elsewhere and had some perception of how to put a magazine together and how to make a professional looking publication," Evanier told The AP on Thursday. "He had some business acumen. He knew how to talk to publishers, he knew how to make deals."

He also knew the market, Evanier said, noting that Simon, along with Kirby, plunged head first into creating horror, crime, humor and romance comics in the aftermath of World War II.

Simon said earlier this year that creating the romance comics was a high point for him and Kirby because they "negotiated to own half of the property," something that had been an uncertain prospect in the industry.

"I'd like to think that we showed today's comic book writers and artists how they can do more than just make a living producing comic books, and hold onto the fruits of their labors," he said.

Simon is survived by two sons, three daughters and eight grandchildren.

Via AP

Action Comics #1 sells for 2.16 Million Dollars!

Where the heck are my old comics????

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A rare and pristine copy of the first issue of Action Comics, famed for the first appearance of Superman, has set a record Wednesday for the most money paid for a single comic book: $2.16 million.

The issue, graded at 9.0, was auctioned starting Nov. 11 online at www.comicconnect.com. The starting bid was just $1 but there was a reserve price of $900,000. Neither the name of the buyer nor seller was disclosed.

It's the first time a comic book has broken the $2 million barrier. The issue was published in 1938 and cost just 10 cents.

"When we broke the record in 2010 by selling the Action Comics No. 1, graded at 8.5, for $1.5 million, I truly believed that this was a record that would stand for many years to come," said Stephen Fishler, CEO of ComicConnect.com and Metropolis Collectibles.

The previous record set in March 2010 was followed by the sale of another copy for $1 million. But neither of those issues was in as good a condition as the issue that sold Wednesday, though it's pedigree of setting records was already documented. Twice before it set the record for the most expensive book ever, selling for $86,000 in 1992 and $150,000 in 1997.

But in 2000, it was stolen and thought lost until it was recovered in a storage shed in California in April this year.

About 100 copies of Action Comics No. 1 are believed to be in existence, and only a handful of those in good condition.

After it was stolen, Fishler said, collectors figured it would never be found or, worse, would be destroyed.

"Clearly, I was wrong. Not in my wildest imagination could I have predicted that this legendary, stolen Action Comics No. 1 would be found, graded at 9.0 and break the record a year and a half later," he said.

Pow! Zing! Marvel Comics KO's Jack Kirby's estate over copyrights!

LOS ANGELES - Marvel Worldwide, not the heirs of legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby, owns the rights to the iconic characters “Spider-Man,” “Iron Man,” “The Mighty Thor” and “The Incredible Hulk” a federal judge in New York ruled Thursday.

Kirby’s heirs claimed that the artist, who died in 1994, created the characters and owned their copyrights.

They also claimed copyright to lesser characters such as “Ant-Man,” “Nick Fury” and “The Rawhide Kid,” and to “The Fantastic Four,” “The X-Men” and “The Avengers.”

Marvel said it owned the characters.

In a 50-page decision, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon sided with Marvel. She ruled that Kirby was a freelance artist and that his was “work for hire,” and that Marvel editor Stan Lee wrote outlines for comics.

“The artists were always constrained by Lee’s plot outlines,” she wrote. “Lee retained the right to edit or alter their work, or to reject the pages altogether and not publish them if he did not like them.”

The judge wrote that Kirby “participated in the creation“ of the characters, but didn’t own them.

“The Kirby Works were created at the instance and expense of Marvel,” she wrote. “Therefore, Marvel is presumed to be their ‘author,’ and the holder of the statutory copyright as a matter of law.”

She also noted that “Kirby took on none of the risks of the successes of the many comic books he helped produce. His contribution to the enterprise was plainly critical, but Marvel, not he, bore the risk of its failure.”

The decision includes this note about “The Incredible Hulk“: “In that first issue, The Hulk had gray skin. However, the printer could not produce a consistent shade of gray throughout the book. By the second issue The Hulk had acquired his now-recognizable green skin. Lee picked the color green because there was no other green hero at the time.”

Disney, which now owns Marvel, issued a written statement saying, “We are pleased that in this case, the judge has confirmed Marvel’s ownership rights.”

Kirby’s family’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, did not return several messages left at his office Thursday.

I don't think this is the last we hear from this.

Little Orphan Annie, Comic Strip 1924-2010

Yup, the redhead, no pupils girl is going from the funny pages after today.

CHICAGO – Talk about a hard-knocks life: She has been jailed in North Korea, kidnapped repeatedly, accused of murder, trapped in a cave, roughed up by gangsters. And she's just a kid — more precisely, a red-haired girl named Annie.

Over 86 years, the spunky (and forever young) orphan has endured hundreds of curly hair-raising adventures, not to mention homelessness, poverty and other Dickensian hardships. She's even survived the death of the man whose pen and imagination turned her into a comic-strip heroine.

Annie, the character, may be indomitable. But Annie, the comic strip, is not.

Facing a shifting media landscape — the closing or shrinking of newspapers, a dwindling audience for comic adventures and an explosion of new forms of entertainment — Tribune Media Services has determined there will be no more newspaper tomorrows for Annie.

After Sunday's strip, Annie, her father figure and frequent rescuer, Daddy Warbucks, and her beloved pooch, Sandy, will disappear from the funny pages. They will have a future, but for now, where that will be is unknown.

"Annie is not dying, she's moving into new channels," says Steve Tippie, vice president of licensing and new markets development at Tribune Media, which owns the license to the character. Annie, he says, has "huge awareness" and possibilities include graphic novels, film, TV, games — maybe even a home on a mobile phone.

No matter where she lands, it's clear there's still gold in that red mop of hair and those white, pupil-less orbs. Tribune Media continues to collect revenues from various productions of "Annie," the sunny musical that charmed Broadway more than 30 years ago — and is expected to return to the Great White Way in 2012.

"Annie is one of those iconic characters in American culture," Tippie says. "If you stop 10 people on the street, nine of them will drop down on one knee and start singing 'Tomorrow.'"

It was, in fact, the popularity of the musical that gave the strip a second life. Tribune Media revived the comic after the death of its creator, Harold Gray, who had used Annie as a megaphone for his conservative political views.

From its opposition to the New Deal in the '30s to its hard-line in the war on terror, the comic strip has never shied away from its beliefs.

"I always like to think of Annie as the Fox News Channel of the funny papers," says Jay Maeder, Annie's most recent writer. "It was a very political strip."

But even with timely story lines, public interest in newspaper comic adventures faded decades ago. Fewer than 20 newspapers ran the strip at the end — which, by the way, leaves Annie's fate hanging as she remains in the clutches of a war criminal, the Butcher of the Balkans.

Still, Annie had one amazing run. And one of her creators thinks he knows why.

"The appeal of Annie is simply that she doesn't give up," says Ted Slampyak, the strip's artist for the last six years. "She always ends up in one scrape after another. She doesn't have a lot of resources but she has a lot of spirit, a lot of pluck. She's got a lot of fight in her."

"It always was good to open a newspaper and see a little girl who should be helpless but is out there, tough as nails, out to win the day," he adds. "Everyone finds that inspiring."

Being a girl — and one who'd occasionally deck an enemy with a mean left hook — also gave her a special cachet.

"She's sort of a female Huck Finn," says M. Thomas Inge, author of "Comics as Culture" and professor of humanities at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia. "The fact that she was surviving on her own made her attractive."

Annie was created by Gray, a farm boy from Kankakee, Ill., whose love of Dickens novels was reflected in his character's triumphs over greedy bankers and phony reformers with colorful names such as Phineas P. Pinchpenny and Mrs. Bleating Hart.

The comic strip debuted in 1924 when Americans still were watching silent movies, Prohibition was a reality and a home entertainment center meant a radio the size of an end table. Annie expanded to the airwaves during the '30s when families, looking for a respite from the Depression, tuned in to follow the exploits of a feisty girl who took guff from no one.

Annie quickly moved beyond newsprint and radio, blossoming into a multimedia star: Comic books, movies, a doll and board game in her name, celebrity endorser (Ovaltine, anyone?) with her own decoder ring, and later, her own U.S. postage stamp.

But her home base was the funnies.

Annie was one of the first comics to use long-running narratives, unlike the episodic single gags that dominated the funny pages at the time, says Jeet Heer, who has written introductions to five volumes of Annie comic collections and is planning a biography of Gray.

At its peak, Annie appeared in hundreds of newspapers. During the 1945 New York newspaper deliverymen's strike, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia didn't want to disappoint her young followers so he read Annie's adventures over the air (she was on trial for murder at the time).

Annie did undergo a modest makeover over the years:

The "Little Orphan" was dropped in the late '70s. And she finally traded her red dress with the white collar for sneakers and jeans. But Annie remained a plainspoken girl — a favorite expression was "leapin' lizards!" — who preferred the company of working stiffs to those who put on airs.

In Gray's (and Annie's) view, Heer says, the enemies were "officious social workers and government bureaucrats, snooty do-gooders and busybody political reformers ... know-it-all intellectuals and pointy-headed college professors."

One of the comic strip's recurring themes, he says, was the poor don't need the government to better themselves, just occasional help from a benevolent capitalist — such as Daddy Warbucks.

Sound familiar?

"The 'don't expect government to do stuff for you' — all the slogans on the Tea Party placards sound like they came off Little Orphan Annie," says Randy Duncan, professor of communication at Henderson State University and co-author of "The Power of Comics."

Annie's creator, Gray, actually started as a progressive Republican with a populist streak; he was sympathetic to immigrants and minorities, according to Heer. But by the 1930s, he became a fierce opponent of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal policies.

When FDR was nominated to a fourth term, Gray killed off Daddy Warbucks; the bald magnate suggested that perhaps the climate was making him sick. After Roosevelt's death, Warbucks magically reappeared, puffing a cigar and saying the "climate here has changed."

In the 1940s and into the Cold War a decade later, Warbucks fought the Communist conspiracy, sometimes using his own mercenaries to go beyond what the government was willing to do, Heer says.

Whether it was the politics or the adventure, Annie developed a huge fan base.

It was a diverse group, including a teenage John Updike (he wrote a fan letter) and Henry Ford, who sent a telegram in the 1930s when Sandy, the dog, went missing. It said: "Please do all you can to help Annie find Sandy. STOP. We are all interested. Henry Ford."

Some politicians also took a shine to Annie, including Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator who came to the comic's defense after a paper in his state pulled the strip, accusing it of being "John Birch Society propaganda."

It was not the only criticism. Decades earlier, one magazine referred to Annie as "fascism in the funnies."

There were parodies, too, most famously the misadventures of Little Annie Fanny, a voluptuous young woman who got in trouble — and often ended up naked. It first appeared in Playboy in the 1960s.

After Harold Gray's death, others continued the strip. Then, for a few years, newspapers ran classics — reruns. When the musical came along, a new generation of fans was born. Interestingly enough, the show did not hew to Gray's ideology.

"That impossibly happy, chirpy little creature that little tweenage girls just loved ... that's certainly not the Annie I was chronicling," says Maeder. "I was writing for adults."

In the last decade, Annie story lines have included problems at the border, illegal immigration, even Guantanamo.

"Annie and Warbucks stand for law and order," Maeder says. "They're not politically correct people."

Warbucks ended up doing undercover CIA work that took him to fictionalized countries named Ratznestistan and Quagmiristan.

Annie, meanwhile, hooked up with a new character named Amelia Santiago, a daring Cuban-American aviatrix and CIA veteran. A few years ago, they were tossed into a North Korea prison.

"Annie got kidnapped more than any child on the planet," Maeder says.

And that, dear readers, is her predicament now.

She's been spirited away to Guatemala by her war-criminal captor. Warbucks is huddling with the FBI and Interpol but there aren't many clues.

Annie's captor says they're stuck with each other. Welcome to your new life, he says.

And there it ends.

Where and when will Annie resurface?

Stay tuned.

Goodbye Annie! Have a good life in Guatemala!

Batman beats Superman...again!

After some guy paid $1 million dollars for a comic with the first appearance of Superman, Batman comes and steals his thunder!

SUPERMAN and Batman's first appearances in comic books have each set auction sales records and broken the $1 million barrier, in an age when traditional investments have fared badly and superheroes look attractive.

A 1939 comic with the first ever appearance of masked crime fighter Batman sold at auction in Dallas overnight for a record $1.75 million, said Heritage Auction Galleries.

Three days earlier, a buyer paid US$1 million for Superman's world debut in Action Comics #1, more than tripling the previous comic book sales record set last year.

Shirrel Rhoades, former publisher and executive vice president of Marvel Comics, said high sales for those comics is partly a reflection on the poor economy.

"When the stock market is down, when real estate investments are over the cliff, collectibles offer an alternative that you can invest in that may have some growth potential," Mr Rhoades said.

He said the 1938 Action Comics #1 is arguably more historic than the first appearance of Batman, but that this week's sales seem to be following their own logic.

"We're probably seeing a little bit of a feeding frenzy," Mr Rhoades said
"With the sale of Action #1 for a million, I think that's going to keep prices up for awhile."

Heritage Auction Galleries did not disclose the name of the previous owner or the winning bidder for Detective Comics #27, the first book featuring Batman.

The previous owner is a savvy collector who bought the comic for $100 more than 40 years ago, a figure which at the time seemed a large price, said Heritage Auction Galleries.

The Action Comics #1 sale was handled by ComicConnect.com, and Vincent Zurzolo, chief operating officer of the website, echoed Mr Rhoades' view that comics are fetching record sums because they are an attractive investment in a down economy.

He said buyers pay high sums for vintage comics because they want something "they're familiar with, that they feel comfortable with, that they think are good investments."

Back in the 1930s, both Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27 sold for US10 cents.

Experts said the same edition of a comic can vary widely in price, depending on condition.

Heritage Auction and CommicConnect said the books they sold this week were pristine, well-preserved copies.

Mr Rhoades said he owns a ragged copy of Action Comics #1 that lacks a front cover and is worth very little.

But he said that more than eight years ago, he gave an art college a 1963 Amazing Spider-Man #1 then worth $40,000. He estimates the figure has since climbed above $100,000.

"My wife jokingly said why did I give it away, when I could have kept it and sold it a few years later for more than double its value," Mr Rhoades said.

And still kids are going hungry in Haiti and other parts of the world!

The Holy Grail of Comics sets a new record!

Action Comics #1 is called the "Holy Grail" of Comics because it's the first issue Superman appears. Well, the Man Of Steel can boast of a new record.

NEW YORK – A rare copy of the first comic book featuring Superman sold Monday for $1 million, smashing the previous record price for a comic book.

A 1938 edition of Action Comics No. 1, widely considered the Holy Grail of comic books, was sold from a private seller to a private buyer, neither of whom released their names. The issue features Superman lifting a car on its cover and originally cost 10 cents.

The transaction was conducted by the auction site ComicConnect.com. Stephen Fishler, co-owner of the site and its sister dealership, Metropolis Collectibles, orchestrated the sale.

Fishler said it transpired minutes after the issue was put on sale at around 10:30 a.m. Eastern time (1530 GMT). He said that the seller was a "well known individual" in New York with a pedigree collection, and that the buyer was a known customer who previously bought an Action Comics No. 1 of lesser grade.

"It's considered by most people as the most important book," said John Dolmayan, a comic book enthusiast and dealer best known as the drummer for System of a Down. "It kind of ushered in the age of the superheroes."

Dolmayan, who owns Torpedo Comics, last year paid $317,000 for an Action Comics No. 1 issue for a client. Others have sold for more than $400,000, he said, but this copy fetched a much higher price because it's in better condition. It's rated an "8.0 grade," or "very fine."

Dolmayan said he didn't buy this copy but he wishes he could have.

"The fact that this book is completely un-restored and still has an 8.0 grade, it's kind of like a diamond or a precious stone. It's very rare," he said.

There are only about 100 copies of Action Comics No. 1 believed to be in existence, and only a handful have been rated so highly. It's rarer still for those copies to be made available for sale.

"The opportunity to buy an un-restored, high-grade Action One comes along once every two decades," Fishler said. "It's certainly a milestone."

The sticker shock was astounding to Fishler, nevertheless.

"It is still a little stunning to see 'a comic book' and '$1 million' in the same sentence," Fishler said. "There's only one time a collectible hits the $1 million threshold."

Wow! A cool million for a comic book that was only 10 cents 72 years ago! Do you think any of the kids that got that comic in 1938, would have known that 10 cent rag would be worth a king's ransom today?

Frank Miller talks about a "300" Sequel!

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, graphic novelist Frank Miller discusses his follow-up to his major hit, 300! The project, titled Xerxes, is set 10 years previous to 300 and there is already interest in turning it into a film. Considering the original earned $456 million at the box office, we're not surprised!

"It's the battle of Marathon through my lens," said Miller of the project. "I've finished the plot and I'm getting started on the artwork."

He's taken research trip to Greece and learned that the history and myth begin to blur, which only helps the story.

"The fact and the myth are inseparable and, believe me, when you go sailing for a while in the Aegean Sea, you start believing in Poseidon," he continued.

A prequel to 300? What do you think?

Asterix and Obelix are 50 years old today!

Nous sommes en 50 avant Jèsus-Christ. Toute la Gaule est occupèe par les Romains…Toute? Non! Un village peuple d’irrèductibles Gaulois rèsiste encore et toujours à l’envahisseur. Et la vie n’est pas facile pour les garnisons de lègionnaires romains des camps retranchès de Babaorum, Aquarium, Laudanum et Petitbonum…

50 B.C. All Gaul is occupied by the Romans. All? No!…One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium…

So it began the great saga of Asterix and Obelix. On October 29, 1959, Writer Rene Goscinny and artist Albert Uderzo, published the first cartoon strip of this great saga. Now 50 years later, these characters are better and more popular than ever. I came across them in the 1970's and again in the 1980's, when I began collecting their storys. Funny, witty and sometimes very irreverent, Asterix and Obelix still make me laugh.

Even Google has jumped in the bandwagon and modified their Opening logo in their webpage with A&O.

Happy Birthday Guys! 50 more years of fun!

New Kaisen 6 Promo!

Kaisen! The Best Con in PR!

Disney is buying Marvel Comics.

Now this is a surprise!!!

LOS ANGELES – The Walt Disney Co. said Monday it is buying Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing such characters as Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and WALL-E.

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters. Many of them, including the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, were co-created by the comic book legend Stan Lee.

Analyst David Joyce of Miller Tabak & Co. said the acquisition will help Disney appeal to young men who have flocked to theaters to see Marvel's superhero fare in recent years. That contrasts with Disney's recent successes among young women with such fare as "Hannah Montana" and the Jonas Brothers.

"It helps Disney add exposure to a young male demographic it had sort of lost some balance with," Joyce said, noting the $4 billion offer was at "full price."

Disney said Marvel shareholders will receive $30 per share in cash, plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share they own. That values each Marvel share at $50 based on Friday's closing stock prices.

Marvel shares jumped $10.17, or 26 percent, to $48.82 shortly after the market opened. Disney shares fell 47 cents, or 1.8 percent, to $26.37.

Disney said the boards of both companies have approved the transaction, but it will require an antitrust review and the approval of Marvel shareholders.

Disney last made a big purchase in 2006 when it acquired Pixar Animation Studios Inc., the creator of the "Toy Story" franchise, for $7.4 billion in stock.

Disney CEO Robert Iger said the latest acquisition combines Marvel's "strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters" with Disney's "unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties" and ability to maximize value across multiple platforms and territories.

Marvel earned a net profit of $206 million last fiscal year, up 47 percent from a year earlier, on revenue of $676 million, as it took movie production in house instead of just cutting licensing deals.

Yup...I can see it now...X-Men: Rescue Rangers, Hanna Monmutant, HULK-E, an E-Ticket ride called "Is a Fantastic Four World after all".

Damn you Disney...DAMN YOU!!!!

"Walking Dead" comic coming to TV!

Great news for us fan boys!

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – In its biggest development deal to date, cable network AMC has acquired the rights to Robert Kirkman's popular comic book "The Walking Dead" for a potential series.

Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption") is on board to write, direct and executive produce the project.

"Dead" chronicles the months and years after a zombie apocalypse, when a group of survivors, led by police officer Rick Grimes, travel in search of a safe, secure home. The comic explores the challenges of life in a world overrun by zombies. Over time, they grow willing to do anything to survive, and interpersonal conflicts sometimes present a greater danger to their survival than the zombies who roam the country.

"Walking Dead," a monthly black-and-white comic book, has been a hotly sought-after property since it was published in 2003 by Image Comics. Darabont originally developed the project several years ago under his deal at NBC. It landed at AMC after a healthy bidding war.

This is one of the best horror / action comics in recent years. I hope they give it the proper treatment.

Marvel Comics in legal trouble!

Looks like problems in the "House of Ideas"!

The shareholders of Stan Lee Media, Inc. filed suit yesterday against Stan Lee, his wife, Marvel Comics, Marvel Chairman Issac Perlmutter, and former Marvel chief executive officer Avi Arad, for over $750 million! That's about half the proceeds of Spider-Man, Iron Man, and X-Men.

According to the suit, Lee, Permutter, Arad and Marvel denied Stan Lee Media shareholders their rights in ownership to 50% of the characters created by Lee. This is apparently the result of Lee transferring all of his interest in the characters he created for Marvel over to Stan Lee Media back in 1998.

Now, Stan Lee Media shareholders claim that Lee and the others “improperly colluded to hide and misappropriate financial interests in Lee's creations assigned to Stan Lee Media in 1998 and reaffirmed in 1999.”

They claim that the money Lee was paid should have gone to the company.

Marvel filed a response stating the suit was filled with "ridiculous claims" and argues that the suit is seeking claims from past cases

The company's attorney, Martin Garbus, said "It's a very different lawsuit. It's different money." Adding, that Lee "made a deal. That money should have gone to the corporation."

Forget The Hulk...

LAWYERS....SMASH!!!!

Spider Man and Obama, A winning combo!

Marvel comics is becoming very presidential indeed!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Barack Obama will be "nerd-in-chief" when he takes office as U.S. president this month, according to Marvel Comics, which is putting him on the cover of its next "Spider-Man" comic.

The special edition of the weekly Spider-Man comic features a six-page story about the superhero saving the day when an imposter tries to take Obama's place as president. It is due to hit newsstands next Wednesday.

Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada said the idea for the "Spidey meets the President!" edition came from a statement from Obama's campaign listing 10 little known facts about the Democrat who will be America's first black president.

"Right at the top of that list was he collected Spider-Man comics," Quesada told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

"I was inundated with tons of fan mail saying 'Have you read this?'" Quesada said. "I was just floored, absolutely floored, to find out that the future commander-in-chief was actually going to be the future nerd-in-chief."

Read the full story here!

I'm waiting for the Incredible Hulk/Ironman/Thor/Spiderman/Obama/Biden team up!

Here it is! The new Kaisen 4 Promo!

Made by yours truly, this is the promo for the best Sci Fi and anime convention in PR. Go there on Oct. 12 at 9am on Mario Jimenez Coliseum in Guaynabo.

Enjoy the promo!

Love and Rockets-the relaunch!

After almost 12 years of half attempts by The Bros. Hernandez (Jaime and Beto) to work with new stories, they have decided to go back to what they and the fans love. They have decided to relaunch their famous "Love and Rockets" title with new stories! Can't wait!

Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 reboots the beloved ongoing "Love and Rockets" comic into a fat, all-new annual graphic novel length package.

Jaime launches the new format with a story that's unusual even for him... A full-on, pulse-pounding super-hero yarn! Maggie's longtime friend Penny Century has finally realized her longtime dream of acquiring super-powers, but at a terrible personal cost. Now she rampages through the galaxy, half mad with grief, and a motley group of super-heroes assembles to try to stop her -- led by Maggie's girlfriend Angel and her mysterious neighbor Alarma, and involving a number of characters longtime Love and Rockets fans will delight in recognizing.

The epic-length 50-page story (only the first half of the saga!) combines Jaime's razor sharp characterization and superlative art with wildly inventive, Kirby-style slam-bang super-hero action.

Then Gilbert Hernandez explodes with a similarly generous helping of his fantastically creative one-shot short stories: "Tamanny" (rookie cop vs. demonic drug users); "Papa" (a turn-of-the-century story involving a traveling businessman); "The New Adventures of Duke and Sammy" (super-powered Martin and Lewis impostors in outer space); "The Tender Room" (Into the Wild as re-imagined by Beto); "Chiro el Indio" (written by third brother Mario Hernandez); and "Never Say Never" (a kangaroo gets lucky in Las Vegas).

One hundred pages of Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez at the peak of their powers: this is a major graphic-novel event

And remember boys and girls, Love and Rockets the band, copied their name from the comic!