Paul Heyman made a surprise return to Monday Night Raw last week as Brock Lesnar's official representative. Even though Lesnar stated he is "finished" with WWE, expect Heyman to continue appearing in his absence.

Tonight’s Raw from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is WWE’s final live effort to sell Sunday’s Over the Limit pay-per-view. With only three weeks separating events on the PPV schedule right now, it’s difficult to generate momentum particularly when the last offering, Extreme Rules, was primarily WrestleMania rematches. Last Monday didn’t do as much as we’d have liked to feature the marquee match for Over the Limit, Daniel Bryan versus C.M. Punk for the WWE Championship. It did, however, go a long way to establish the World Championship picture for the upcoming show. There’s a lot of ground to cover tonight, and hopefully everyone will get their due airtime including another appearance by Paul Heyman as Brock Lesnar’s representative.

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With this weekend’s premiere of Marvel Studio’s The Avengers (and as part of our month long Standard Deviations series dedicated to the team), we’re taking a look at some past sets of variants shipped to coincide with the premieres of the solo movies featuring the Avengers’ “Big Three:” Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. In this edition, we spotlight May 2011’s “Thor Goes Hollywood” variants that featured an excellent theme paying homage to some of American cinema’s most iconic films. Just about every image is immediately identifiable whether you’re a film buff or not.

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Every year DC seems to position it’s Free Comic Book Day offering as a preview of one of their upcoming events. Previous FCBD comics have focused on series such as Blackest Night and War of the Supermen. This year DC presented the origin of the new character Pandora who first appeared in the final issue of Flashpoint and went on to appeared in the first issues of every title that was part of the New 52. While this tale was indeed an origin story, it proved to be a secret origin that raised more questions than it answered.

Extensive spoilers will follow in our discussion below.

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Weekly comic books are a big part of my life and below is a list of what I’ll be picking up this Wednesday along with cover artwork and previews courtesy of Comixology’s Pull List app.

Six new books for me including one of the three DC books I follow. I’ll also be checking out IDW’s Frankenstein Alive, Alive! #1 and John Byrne’s Trio #1 with reviews throughout the rest of the week.

• BATMAN #9 – I haven’t read Batman regularly in years, but Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s New 52 series may be the best book on comic shop shelves today. Snyder’s run with the character goes back quite a bit and it appears he’s been planting seeds all along the way. As the Bat-titles enter the Night of Owls event, I’m just hoping I don’t miss too much by not reading the other books.
• JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #637 – Part two of the Exiled crossover with New Mutants. Kieron Gillen’s Asgard series gets a lot of praise, but this is my first time reading it. If his Uncanny X-Men is any indication, I should really enjoy it.
• NEW AVENGERS #26 – I went into the Avengers tie-ins to AvX unsure what to expect and the Iron Fist story in New Avengers has really intrigued me. It’s introducing a previously unrevealed connection being the Phoenix force and the monks of K’un-Lun and Mike Deodato’s art looks fantastic.
• UNCANNY X-FORCE #25 – This book lost some steam coming out of the epic Apocalypse story that ran through the first eighteen issues. The Otherworld story that followed was by no means bad, but everything before it had really raised the stakes for this title. A landmark 25th issues, the start of The Final Execution, and Mike McKone art are just what this title needs.
• WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN #10 – Last issue was one of the best AvX tie-ins out there and there’s no signs things will be slowing down with an appearance by Cylops.
• X-MEN: LEGACY #266 – AvX hits another X-Men title that I regularly read, and the prospects of Rogue versus She Hulk are epic.

Check back every week to see what’s on My Latest Pull List and please share your thoughts on these titles and everything you’re reading this week in the comments.

There went the pain? After a viciously assaulting WWE COO Triple H last Monday, Brock Lesnar's return to wrestling seems to be at an end. Expecting him to disappear for a few weeks before another monster return.

It’s fair to say last Monday’s Raw coming out of the annual Extreme Rules pay-per-view wasn’t the best we’ve ever seen, but it was by no means the worst. The whole show was structured around a Beat the Clock Challenge to determine the number one contender for C.M. Punk’s WWE Championship at Over the Limit on May 20th. While the execution has been better, The Beat the Clock gimmick is solid and the outcome can only be captured in one word: YES! Tonight’s show in Greensboro, North Carolina will hopefully give us more of Daniel Bryan’s quest to take the WWE Championship from Punk, and less of all the things we found ourselves saying “NO!” to.

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