Fear Itself #3 is in stores tomorrow and we’re spending the day catching up in preparation. Issue #1 was a strong introduction, but it seems that #2 may have faltered a bit. A lot seems to be happening around the world (and beyond) as the Norse God of Fear and the Red Skull’s daughter, Sin, put their plan into action. Unfortunately, the assembly of their champions, “The Worthy,” left us with a lot of mixed feelings.

Spoilers for the issue and series will follow.

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We’re a bit behind in our discussion of Marvel’s Summer event book, Fear Itself, but with issue #3 shipping this Wednesday it’s time we caught up. With Thor and Captain America movies in theaters this Summer, it makes sense that Marvel would try to capitalize with a story focusing on those characters. It’s tough to say whether teaming up their villains is working just yet, but it’s a pretty interesting take on things. It’s also worth noting that DC Comics’ launched their latest event book, Flashpoint, earlier in May with issue #2 due in stores tomorrow as well. Comparisons may arise as these series go on with both companies centering their publishing lines on the events.

Spoilers for the issue and series to follow.

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In anticipation of next month’s release of the X-Men: First Class film, Marvel is producing a set of “X-Men: Evolutions” variants on its May titles. This follows a month of “Thor Goes Hollywood” covers on books in April coinciding with the God of Thunder’s big screen debut and is part of a long line of variants timed with the release of movies featuring Marvel characters. The X-Men’s evolution themed covers feature individual characters highlighting design and costume changes they’ve undergone during their publication history.

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In another announcement to along with The Death of Captain America and Spider-Man’s public unmasking during Civil War, Marvel Comics has taken the approach of revealing a major story point to the public before fans can even read the source material. It’s Tuesday, comic books normally ship on Wednesday but Marvel even went so far as to permit retailers to sell copies of Fantastic Four #587 a day earlier in anticipation of today’s press release. Unfortunately, the press release came at 7:32AM this morning and I don’t know of many comic book stores that are open at that hour.

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Marvel’s cosmic heroes have been experiencing a true renaissance since 2006’s Annihilation miniseries. Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, ofter referred as DnA when working together, have been the hands guiding these space adventures that have followed since that series, and The Thanos Imperative is the culmination of much of that work. In issue #1, it’s stated that “the trouble with war out here in the stars, [is] it gets big” and this series is “big” in every way imaginable. After reading nearly every cosmic book that’s shipped in that last few years, I was disappointed when I fell behind on this one, but once I picked it back up it was impossible to put down.

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