Editor’s Note: Kingpin left me with ten spoilers in my pocket. I found a comics Web site that makes change.

Whether purposefully or accidentally, Marvel and writer Mark Waid have put themselves into a difficult position by putting the first chronological appearance of The Superior Spider-Man – that is, whoever Spider-Man will wind up being after the events of next week’s The Amazing Spider-Man #700 – into this week’s Daredevil #21.

Because with all the hype and anticipation surrounding what will happen with Spider-Man (as an example: once we published an article about the leak to the Internet of the ending to The Amazing Spider-Man #700, our Web traffic doubled… and we didn’t even publish the actual spoilers), what he does and how he acts in Daredevil #21 will be almost as important to readers as the story about Ol’ Hornhead. It’s kinda like casting the Octomom or John Wayne Bobbit in a porno flick; you’ll get a lot of rubberneckers not watching the thing for its intended purpose.

So even though Spider-Man’s appearance in Daredevil #21 makes complete and total sense with regards to the greater story – not only the story of some still unknown party trying to drive Matt nuts, but of Matt’s conscious decision to lighten up that goes back to Waid’s earliest issues – his appearance here, before the resolution of the current arc in Spider-Man’s home title, means the issue (not the story; there is a distinction there) has a massive, nearly crippling distraction that I doubt Waid originally intended. It makes the reading of this individual issue, during this particular point in pre-Amazing Spider-Man #700 time, an almost schizophrenic experience, where what Spider-Man does and says in two pages is almost, if not more, important to the comic reader than the actual Daredevil story in the preceding 18 pages.

So I’m gonna review it that way: in two parts.

There’s been a lot of noise and uproar about how The Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott might intend to conclude his final arc in Amazing Spider-Man #700 next week, even though the larger notes of the story were (supossedly… but probably) given away days ago. While those story beats remain unknown for the time-being (unless you have a Bittorrent client), what has gone somewhat underreported is that, whatever version of Spider-Man that Slott intends to persist in The Superior Spider-Man come January, that Spider-Man makes his first appearance in this week’s Daredevil #21.

And based on a quick flip-through of that issue? Well, assuming I wasn’t already pretty sure who winds up behind the Spider-Man mask, I would now be at least pretty sure that it isn’t gonna be Happy Smurf.

However, even though the comics press (including us) is acting like the fate of Spider-Man is the end-all and be-all of the comics world this week, rumor has it that there are at least one or two other comic books out this week. So be it Spider-Man or Octo-Douche, all it means is that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

And take a look at that take, huh? Even if you don’t give a tin shit if Spider-Man’s strong or if he has radioactive blood, bub, there is some cool stuff in this week’s comics. We’ve got the second issue of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers, the third-to-last issue of Vertigo’s Hellblazer, a new issue of Brian K. Vaughn’s and Fiona Staples’s Saga, the first issue of DC Comics’s adaptation of the uncut version of Quentin Tarantino’s uncut original script for Django Unchained, and bunch of other cool-looking stuff!

But you know the drill: before we can read them, we need to battle a supervillain for ultimate control of our own brains, and then we need time to read them.

So until that time (and until we resolve our battle for supremacy against our archnemesis, Doctor OldNumberSevenDaniels)…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

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There was some speculation, not just here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, but around the Western comic reading world, that Karen Berger’s exit as Executive Editor of Vertigo Comics, combined with the cancellation of Vertigo’s longest running title, Hellblazer, to move the character full time to the DC Universe, might mean the end of the imprint completely. Because surely, anything that could kill John Constantine, be it demon, cultist or “Corporate Synergy Consultant,” would think nothing of wiping out his friends, too.

Well, it looks like we were wrong, at least for the time being. Because DC Entertainment has just announced the promotion of Hellblazer, Lucifer and Fables Editor Shelly Bond to Executive Editor, as well as promotions for Scalped and 100 Bullets Editor Will Dennis, and for American Vampire Editor Mark Doyle as well.

So unless this secretly is one of those “Johnny Fallguy Named CEO of ENRON” kinda deals, it looks like the Vertigo line will still be around. For at least a while.

You can check out DC’s full press release after the jump.

I am not the resident Doctor Who-head in the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office – those duties fall to Amanda and Lance Manion, who as children both thrilled to the adventures of the Fourth Doctor on PBS during the early 80s while I was instead busy flipping around the channels saying, “Dad? Why is that freak in the scarf arguing with a crappy Artoo-Deetoo knockoff on an obviously cardboard spaceship? Could we get a VCR so I can watch the actual Star Wars and not be subjected to bankrupt English people playacting?”

Amanda and Lance have since changed my mind about the Doctor- if everyone has “their” Doctor, mine’s Christopher Eccleston – so I have a certain level of excitement about the Doctor Who Christmas Special coming up on, well, Christmas. The concept of a Christmas Special is apparently a particularly British tradition in television – do a six episode “series,” take a little nap, drink a little tea, do a quick Christmas special, and then binge drink on lager while arguing whether Tom Baker could kick Matt Smith’s ass, or vice versa, all while pretending that they don’t know full well that Han Solo cold kill them both before they hit the ground. But I digress.

This special looks to properly introduce new Companion, Jenna-Louise Coleman, with the Doctor battling evil, supernatural snowmen. And based on the latest teaser, these Snowmen look to be a threat as creepy and dangerous as the Weeping Angels… provided the Weeping Angels could be destroyed by fire, or perhaps a warmish late-winter day.

Don’t believe me? Well, you can check that trailer out after the jump.

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.

Editor’s Note: You want my property? You can’t have it. But I did you a big favor: I’ve successfully privatized world spoilers! What more do you want?

Jesus, there’s a lot of Lovecraft to go around in this week’s comics.

Iron Man #4, written by Kieron Gillen with art by Greg Land, is ostensibly part four of a five part opening arc by the new creative team, but in reality is a crackling, easy-to-follow one-and-done featuring everyone’s favorite hard-headed, pragmatic engineer against the thirteen brides of who is clearly Cthuhlu, The Elder God and Black Infinite.

Ah, I’m just kidding. Of course it’s not clearly Cthuhlu. It’s possible that it’s Dagon or Zoth-Ommog.

Actually, since this is a Marvel comic, and therefore the only masters of the sea that any writer can guarantee the reader has heard of either have pointy ears and wings for feet, or else an orange shirt and unlawful carnal knowledge of sea horses, it’s probably Cthuhlu.

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.

Fifteen issues into various DC “New 52” titles and I have to tell you – if you’d have asked me who would still be standing as the long term writer of a title at the end of 2012, I’m not sure I would’ve named Adam Glass over Scott Snyder or Gail Simone. Snyder’s Swamp Thing was an unexpected initial hit, although its sales have been in decline lately; Simone’s Batgirl, despite being uneven in places, was garnering solid sales. According to Comics Beat, last October Batgirl #13 sold 50,074 issues versus Suicide Squad #13’s 27,644. So, what gives? Why does Glass continue to get the green light?

After the jump, we puzzle out the nature of sales, love, and rubber chickens – with spoilers!

As I’m writing this, I’m watching a TiVo recording of Lucky Number Slevin I recently got off of AMC, based on a years-old recommendation of the flick by my parents. By the time they saw it and told me that they thought I would like it, it had already vacated movie theaters, and since it came out in 2006, by the time it came out on video the local Blockbuster had vacated my town, and by the time I lived in a place with HBO, HBO had already washed its hands of it. Which means that this is the first chance I’ve had to see the movie, and which further means that I should have learned by now that I should never take movie recommendations from the two people who once advised that my life would change if only I would watch Jennifer 8.

I am about 45 minutes into this movie, and I have no idea what it is about. There is Bruce Willis and Lucy Liu and Josh Hartnett and Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley and a bunch of other people who should have fucking known better, and Hartnett’s in a rotten sweater vest when he’s not in a towel, and there are two mob bosses and a fistful of hired goons and Willis is playing Hartnett from Sin City, but all I know is that, no matter what the writer originally intended, all I see is a story that wishes it was written by Quentin Tarantino when it grows up. From the stilted, stylized dialogue to the violence for the sake of violence to the long, talky sequences, this is a Tarantino knockoff, ten long years after the last Tarantino wanna-be was escorted off the cinema scene by shitty box office returns.

What gives it away is the dialogue. It uses big words when no normal person would. It puts simulated poetry in the mouths of people who, in the real world, would say, “I had an idear,” or perhaps refer to women without breast implants as “grenades.” These characters are not real people living in a real place; they are obvious puppets, being operated from behind the curtain by a writer in love with an old genre and enamored with the sound of their own voice. It is distracting, and it diminishes whatever effect the author might have hoped the story might have.Everything that happens in Lucky Number Slevin happens because of an unlikely, writer-invented coincidence.

A coincidence such as the fact that I read Change at the same time this movie was on.

So the comics reading world has been waiting on pins and needles to find out what happens in The Amazing Spider-Man #700, as it leads into The Superior Spider-Man: will Peter Parker be able to reclaim his body from Doctor Octopus? And if he can, will Ock have done something terrible to make it uncomfortable to be Peter Parker for a while, leading him to change up his costume? Or maybe will the fact that another soul has been in Peter’s body shake loose some after effects from Peter’s deal with Mephisto, reversing the effects of One More Day (a personal favorite theory)?

The anticipation is simply crippling; writer Dan Slott and Marvel Editorial have gone a long way to prevent spoilers of the issue reaching the street, so the idea of having to wait until December 26th for the issue to go on sale to see what happens at the end of the comic is just…

What’s that? The last few pages of the issue have leaked online? Along with a synopsis of the events of the last issue?