Excelsior! Stan Lee Turns 90

Hey ladies! Check out my Hulk!

It has been an eventful week for Marvel Comics. First, they killed Peter Parker. Then, they made Doctor Octopus take over as Spider-Man.

And today, Marvel’s Chairman Emeritus, Stan Lee, has turned 90 years old.

Now, if I were 90 years old, I would either be spending my days farting into my La-Z-Boy while simultaneously watching The Price Is Right and screeching at that bitch of a hospice nurse to ladle some Jack Daniels into my IV, or else busily being dead having found a situation I couldn’t shoot my way out of. But Stan is still going strong; he was recently here in Massachusetts for the Supermegafest, and I haven’t been to a San Diego Comic-Con where the guy wasn’t running around like he’d just done his last bump of Merry Marvel Marching Powder and was hunting down his next score.

And the dude is still going strong… at least strong enough to give Dan Slott shit over his most recent Spider-Man stories:

Christmas Resurrection: Gail Simone Back On Batgirl

I have existed from the morning of the world and I shall exist until the last star falls from the night. Although I have taken the form of Gaius Caligula, I am all men as I am no man and therefore I am a God.

So. After firing Gail Simone as writer of Batgirl a few weeks ago, and then quietly weathering the ensuing shitstorm from fandom on the Internet, DC chose the Friday before Christmas to allow the name of the next Batgirl writer to leak out.

And who, praytell, will be the poor fucker trying to follow in the footsteps of Gail Simone?

Gail Simone.

Here’s a thing.Gail Simone is the new Batgirl writer. 🙂

— GailSimone (@GailSimone) December 21, 2012

Also?NOT A HOAX.

— GailSimone (@GailSimone) December 21, 2012

Take Her Away: Disney / Marvel To Take Star Wars License From Dark Horse

A long time ago (sometime around 1986) in a galaxy far, far away (presuming you are reading this from somewhere in Andromeda, and if you are: please send flying cars and jetpacks), Marvel Comics decided, four years after Return of The Jedi had left theaters and with enthusiasm for Star Wars dwindling after years of no word of a fourth movie forthcoming, to stop publishing Star Wars comic books.

A less long time ago (figure around 1991), writer Timothy Zahn published a Star Wars novel named Heir to The Empire, which rumor had it was authorized by George Lucas and reflective of the plots originally planned for the Star Wars Episode VII movie promised to us back around 1980. The book and its sequels were a hit, and revitalized interest in Star Wars for the first time in years. And by the end of that year, we walked into comic stores to find Dark Empire, the first new Star Wars comic book in about five years, written by Tom Veitch and drawn by Cam Kennedy, expanding on Zahn’s work and published by Dark Horse Comics. This began a run of Dark Horse-published Star Wars comics that have spanned two decades, three new Star Wars movies, and, depending on your point of view and impulse control, four to six George Lucas childhood rapes (depending on if you count the non-Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars cartoons.

A couple weeks ago, in Los Angeles, Disney bought Lucasfilm. And you might remember that three years ago, Disney bought Marvel Comics. And yet, to this day, Dark Horse publishes several Star Wars comic books (including reprints of many of the old Marvel issues). But hey, that’s okay! What could possibly happen? I mean, look at Star Wars itself! When Senator Palpatine took over the Senate, everything stayed a-ok and the status quo was maintained, right?

Right?

(cue Darth Vader’s Imperial March)

New Blood: Shelly Bond Named Executive Editor of Vertigo

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.

Before The Betray Crows, You Will Cock Me Three Times: The Goon Christmas Carol Motion Comic

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.

The Internet Is Not Your Friend: Pages From Amazing Spider-Man #700 Leaked (Spoiler-Free)

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?

Biting The Root: Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette Leaving Swamp Thing

Remember yesterday, when Gail Simone got icked off of Batgirl? And I listed all the books from the initial DC New 52 that I could remember (of course, forgetting Joshua Hale Fialkov and Andrea Sorrentino on I, Vampire at the very least) and bemoaned the fact that so many creators and books from that first round of rebooted comics had gone down with all hands? And that I listed Scott Snyder as working on Batman and Swamp Thing?

Yeah, funny story about that…

Hey guys – was going to wait until we got a little closer to announce this, but yes, Swamp Thing #18 will be my (cont) tl.gd/ka763m

— Scott Snyder (@Ssnyder1835) December 10, 2012

Swamp Thing #18 will be your what, Scott? Your manifesto? Your articles of sessecion from the United States of America? Your Goddamned prom date? There’s a term for Tweets that are longer than 140 characters, Scott: it’s called a fucking blog post!

Hey, what’s that link at the end of the Tweet do?

And Then There Were (About) Seventeen: Gail Simone No Longer Writing Batgirl

There have been rumors going around for a couple of weeks that Gail Simone, in the face of her exclusive deal with DC Comics coming to an end recently, would be leaving Batgirl, which she has written since the DC New 52 relaunch. Simone has been denying those rumors pretty consistently, to the point where just one week ago, she publicly and flatly stated that “I have not left Batgirl” on her Tumblr blog.

That, however, was a week ago. About 90 minutes ago, on her Twitter page, Simone announced that she would no longer be writing the book… and that her earlier statement was technically true: she did not leave Batgirl. She was replaced.

On Wednesday of last week, new Batgirl editor Brian Cunningham informed me by email that I was no longer the writer of Batgirl.

— GailSimone (@GailSimone) December 9, 2012

Plague Bunny: Stan Sakai On Usagi Yojimbo Hiatus

Crisis On Infinite Midlives contributor Trebuchet has been dealing with some health problems over the past few months, and is about to undergo a surgical procedure to resolve them (although we who have known him for a long while believe that the most beneficial surgery he could undergo would be the one that locates his balls).

While Trebuchet swears that the procedure is minor with a good prognosis, we have been looking for a Get Well gift for him. Since we know that he is not the world’s biggest superhero comics fan, and we further know that he is a fan of the Dark Horse comic Usagi Yojimbo, it would seem that a few new issues of that book would be a gimme. Problem is: Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai has taken a break from that book to work on 47 Ronin with Dark Horse Comics publisher Mike Richardson. Now that is some crappy timing.

Thankfully, rather than putting us into the position of having to explain the lack of Usagi Yojimbo comics to Trebuchet, Sakai has jumped into his own creation to explain the break to its title character. An partial explanation of which you can get a taste after the jump.

New Avengers! Well, Not “New Avengers”, But New Avengers! New Old Avengers! Third Base! Screw It, Here’s A Trailer

Marvel’s first post-Bendis issue of Avengers, written by Jonathan Hickman and drawn by Jerome Opena, will be in comic stores tomorrow. But is Marvel taking it easy and banking on the fact that the pre-Marvel Now version of the book was one of their bigger sellers, or that its being written by one of their A-List creators, or that it shares the name with a near-billion dollar movie that just came out just six months ago to sell the thing? Fuck no; that would be lazy. Besides, why rest on your laurels and prior achievements when you’ve got motion comics algorithms, a microphone with a dude with a semi-deep voice, and possibly and purely by speculation a pile of pure flake cocaine burning holes in your pocket and / or nose (if you believe the rumor that I made up just now)?

Stack on top of those assets about 15,000 comic Web sites looking for something cool to talk about on a lazy night before New Comics Day, and it means that Marvel’s created a trailer for Avengers #1, which you can check out after the jump.