It’s been quite a while since my last We Care a Lot article and even longer since I had a Venom article that was about actual Marvel canon. Over a year, in fact. Even longer when it comes to a canon article about Eddie Brock! For forever, I seem to have been sitting on the potential Anti-Venom entry. Why haven’t I written it? Honestly, it comes down to needing a good ending. I’ve been waiting for that perfect ending to finish off the article. And, well, you’ll see how that went…

We all remember the infamous One More Day/Brand New Day status quo change. Devils and Harry Osborn and whatever. The whole thing’s been beaten into the ground to the point that I might as well skip it. The short of it is that I decided I was done with Spider-Man in general and despite all the claims of how great the series has become, I would simply put it at the bottom of my list of great things I should be reading. I wasn’t going to fast on it completely, since I agreed to myself that I would still check out any issue that included one of my favorite characters. In this case, those would be Eddie Brock, Deadpool and Juggernaut. The first one matters the most here, though I suppose Deadpool’s issue plays a role too.

The story New Ways to Die begins eight months after the new status quo of three issues per month. It starts off at Amazing Spider-Man #568 and ends at Amazing Spider-Man #573. It’s got Dan Slott on words and John Romita Jr. on art.

Of all the various plots going around, the two of importance for me are that of the Thunderbolts and Mr. Negative. The Thunderbolts is in its Norman Osborn phase, where the team is made up of Songbird, Moonstone, Swordsman, Bullseye, Penance, Radioactive Man and Mac Gargan as Venom. For one reason or another, Swordsman, Moonstone and Penance get the story off. They’ve been training by attacking motionless dummies for the sake of going after those who are unregistered. Venom goes nuts and starts tearing into all of them. Before Songbird can chastise him for it, they’re given orders to head to New York.

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In what should have been a slight week has been saved thanks to David, Was Taters and new contributors Neil Curry and VersasoVantare. Veraso came to bat with all sorts of panels from 2000AD, so good for him.

I should note that if you ever do read Deadpool MAX, try to imagine Cable as talking like Leslie Nielson. In fact, do that for all versions of Cable. I mean, I liked the guy from the cartoon too, but he lacks the comedic touch. Look…

“Who are you and how did you get in here?”

“The Wild Man of Borneo… and I’m a locksmith.”

See? That doesn’t even make sense!

Avengers Academy #8
Christos Gage and Mike McKone

Batman #706
Tony S. Daniel

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Very DC-centric week this time around, mainly because Was Taters contributed more panels than even me. Not that she’s only into the DC stuff. For instance, she also reads Thor: The Mighty Avenger and that’s Marve–DAMN IT, that’s canceled, isn’t it. Anyway, thanks to her as well as David Brothers and the man known only as luis.

I’m certainly going to need the help of any interested readers for next week because I have an entire three comics I plan on picking up (Green Lantern Corps, Avengers Academy and Deadpool MAX). So if there’s something you’ve been reading that you want represented, by all means. Now on with the chlorophyll.

Batgirl #17
Bryan Q. Miller and Pere Perez

Batman and Robin #19
Paul Cornell and Scott McDaniel

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A very lonely edition of ThWiP. Only ten panels in total. One from Was Taters. One from Space Jawa. Nothing from David. And Esther had that cease-and-desist order made about me asking for panels passed months ago, so that’s a no-go. Man, that judge was a dick.

Speaking of dicks, here’s Eric O’Grady Ant-Man, everybody!

Ant-Man & Wasp #3
Tim Seeley

Avengers Prime #5
Brian Michael Bendis and Alan Davis

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Last Wednesday brought us the end of Avengers Prime by Brian Michael Bendis and Alan Davis, which really should have been called Avengers: Ah, I Can’t Stay Mad at You. Steve Rogers, Iron Man and Thor accidentally get sucked into one of Thor’s locales. There, they all have their separate moments of being badass, deal with Enchantress and Hela and a subplot involves Rogers hooking up with a blue elf lady. That might be a little scummy, since that means he’s cheating on Sharon, but I’m pretty sure the “what happens in Vegas” rule applies to most of the nine realms. The point of the miniseries is to put the three guys in a situation that reminds them that they’re buddies and thick as thieves.

But still, the ending rang pretty familiar to me…

Odin’s will be done.

Hey, folks. First off, check out this awesome interview the 4L monarch David Brothers has done at the Comics Reporter. It’ll take you about three days to read, but it’s a good one.

So while I have the usual suspects in David, Space Jawa (is there any other kind of Jawa?) and Was Taters (is there any other kind of Taters?), I also got one from aggressively horny ducks (are there any… um…). He sent it to David, who found it buried in his spam because it came from a guy named aggressively horny ducks. That’ll happen. Why I obviously have What If #200 taken care of, our foul and fowl reader sent in his own panel because, “I don’t care a lot about continuity but this is just foolish.”

True enough, though if any panel from that issue raises my eyebrow, it’s the one of Namor punching Bullseye while saying — not yelling — “Imperious $#%^.” Imperious what? Imperious cock? Imperious fuck? Did he drop the n-bomb? What?

Sadly, to everyone’s dismay I’m sure, I totally misplaced my copy of Carnage #2. Still, we must carry on.

Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #4
Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert

Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #4
Warren Ellis and Kaare Andrews

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Welcome back to another week of panels. Again, I’m joined by my usual panel of panel panelists in David Brothers, Was Taters and Space Jawa. Pretty full week this time around so let’s get to it.

Azrael #15
David Hine and Cliff Richards

Batman, Inc. #2
Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette

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So a few months ago, someone online posted a leaked list of the roster for Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Big deal, there are leaked lists all over the place and they have crap like Howard the Duck and Dio Brando in there. This specific list has been right on the money again and again for every reveal and leak. Especially the specifics of the downloadable characters. That does make me late to the party, but I post this now because the more interesting inclusions has finally been made public via leakage.

First, let’s look at the confirmed list:

– Morrigan Aensland
– Amaterasu
– Arthur
– Tron Bonne
– Captain America
– Chun-Li
– Crimson Viper
– Dante
– Deadpool
– Doctor Doom
– Dormammu
– Felicia
– Hulk
– Iron Man
– Magneto
– MODOK
– Chris Redfield
– Ryu
– She-Hulk
– Shuma Gorath
– Nathan “Rad” Spencer
– Spider-Man
– Storm
– Super-Skrull
– Thor
– Trish
– Jill Valentine
– Viewtiful Joe
– Albert Wesker
– Wolverine
– X-23
– Zero

From the list, that leaves seven characters left to be officially announced. The four who haven’t been hinted at in any capacity are Phoenix, Sentinel, Hsien-Ko and Akuma. About a month or so ago, a picture appeared online of a Capcom employee’s office with Mike Haggar on a monitor. So we got that going for us.

Today, an interesting development happened. On the Comic Art Fans website, Kevin Sharpe posted a few pages of the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tie-in comic. Images included Hulk dealing with the Resident Evil crew and various Marvel guys fighting their counterparts from the trailers. Two pages are of special note. First off, the end boss. Behold the Devourer of Worlds.

Sweet! We got Galactus! Now for a page of Doctor Doom holding a meeting of the Marvel villains. We got Magneto, Super-Skrull, MODOK and… hello, who is this?

Hey, now! Taskmaster is now confirmed. Now my Deadpool/Taskmaster/Haggar team is a lock.

I would have linked to the Kevin Sharpe page, but wouldn’t you know it, his profile’s been deleted.

Merry Christmas! We end our penultimate week on a day about Jesus being born, Barney getting his Pebbles, Pre-Crisis Dick Grayson laying an egg and me getting both a Spider-Man chalice and tickets to Spider-Man Musical Deathtrap 2011. God bless us, everyone!

Last we checked, Loki got run over by a reind–er, Thor. Now he appears to be at the Ultimates’ mercy… or is he?! Forgive the lack of punchlines as it’s almost entirely Loki talking here and we really needed to move the plot forward, verbally.

And another issue bites the dust. Thanks to ManiacClown for putting up with my absolutely horrible holiday retail schedule. We’ll be back soon for the conclusion of the Ultimate Holiday Wars. In the meantime, enjoy Iron Maiden doing a cover of a Gary Glitter Christmas song.

Hey, it’s Christmas Eve! Meaning we’re almost done here. For yesterday’s installment, Thor roughed up Iron Man pretty badly. Then Hela and Valkyrie hung out and left their pants at the door. Now it’s time for Thor vs. Loki.

Apologies to ManiacClown, who suggested a couple changes to me, but I kind of forgot what he said. So if this isn’t any good, it’s my fault. Tomorrow, we finish things off with a little more backstory.

Day Seven!