When Raccoons Fly: Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy Liveblog

Here’s the problem with having been six years old when Star Wars was released in theaters: I’ve never really given that much of a damn about Guardians of The Galaxy. Yeah sure, Guardians of The Galaxy debuted in 1969, but that was before my time, and by the time Marvel really started to whip them up was in Marvel Presents right around the origina Star Wars release, and if you’re six, who’re you gonna pay attention to? The guy with the full color lightsaber? Or the talking raccoon with a gun (and before you ask, no, even at six or seven, I didn’t buy into Jaxxon, either)?

But regardless, Marvel Studios in its infinite wisdom has decided to make Guardians of The Galaxy into their next big tentpole property, which means that Marvel is releasing a new book starring the team, written by Brian Michael Bendis with pencils by Steve McNiven. And Marvel just hosted a liveblog with those guys to talk about what they have planned for the property. And I tried to get myself excited about the prospect, even though it features a guy who calls himself Starlord without a whiff of irony, and a creature that calls itself Rocket Raccoon, which is roughly analogous to me calling myself Lumbering Whiteguy.

And I’ll be damned if it doesn’t sound like they have some cool stuff planned for the project.

XX-Men: Marvel Gives Details on Wood’s and Coipel’s All-Female Book

Y’know, for a guy that had his DC exclusive contract politely allowed to expire about a month before the New 52 relaunch (and after DC announced, and then unannounced, that he would be the writer on the Supergirl relaunch in September, 2011), Brian Wood has had one hell of a busy – and big – year. Between the launches of Mara for Image, Conan and The Massive for Dark Horse – not to mention the big success of Star Wars for that publisher just last week –  the guy has a lot going on… including that new book for Marvel that they teased last week with a one-word poster reading only “XX”.

These’s been a lot of speculation about what “XX” means, from the idea Amanda floated to me that it was an X-Treme X-Men relaunch, to the one I insisted upon to my bartender that it was about Dos Equis. Actually, I was just ordering a Dos Equis, but that’s not important right now.

What is important is that Marvel has revealed what it’s all about. It’s an X-Men book. Titled X-Men. With no, you know, men in it.