I think the money makers at Diamond Select Toys are secretly testing the market for an upcoming adult toy line.
The Free Comic Book Day Facebook page posted a typical a nerd baiting question with no possible answer: who would win in fight between Spider-Man’s most popular nemesis Venom or the cult classic 80’s extraterrestrial nightmare Xenomorph? Of course this wasn’t a sponsored post to promote Diamond Select Toys wide variety bottle openers, but it sure as hell looks like it. The comments are full of well informed, substantial arguments on who would come on top. But some Facebook users couldn’t help to mention the fact that the Xenomorph opener bares a striking resemblance of a penis.
How could Venom fare against Xenomorph’s veiny, long shaft and bulbous mushroom tip? I couldn’t image using this cold metal bottle opener bringing any kind of pleasure aside from opening a cold brewski, but the people of the Internet will find a way. Nonetheless, you can’t but help but appreciate the H. R. Giger work on the Alien series. Diamond Select Toys would like to remind you that Christmas is around the corner, and this would make a good stocking stuffer. Talk about gag gifts. *This was not a sponsored post by Diamond Select Toys.*
By Steve Morris
It’s not over quite yet! Even while Torsten attempts to shoo the remaining sheep out of Stately Beat Manor’s library and Todd tries to piece together one of Heidi’s vases, SDCC 2012 still has a few small bits and pieces left for us all. Marvel’s Spider-Man panel have been announcing a few changes in the company’s third-biggest franchise (assuming that X-Men are first, Avengers are second, and Doop fourth) today, including the cover for this year’s issue #700, and details on the ‘Minimum Carnage’ crossover story.
Yes, Minimum Carnage, following the previous two Zeb Wells-helmed stories featuring the red-fury symbiote villain. Starting with ‘Minimum Carnage Alpha’ and, absolutely, concluding with the Steve-predicted ‘Minimum Carnage Omega’, the series is this time a crossover story. Chris Yost’s Scarlet Spider and Cullen Bunn’s Venom are the two books involved, as the pair of antiheroes team up (after probably fighting each other a bit, as per tradition) to try and stop Cletus Kassady from, y’know, doing a load of murders. Lan Medina will draw the opening issue, before Khoi Pham tackles the Scarlet Spider side of the story and Declan Shalvey draws Venom.
Avenging Spider-Man #13 will be by Kevin Shinick and Aaron Kuder, and features Hypno Hustler and Deadpool. This may well be part of a tie-in to the weird web series Marvel announced earlier in the con, called ‘All-Winners Squad’. This series – live action – features Squirrel Girl, The Unicorn, Hypno Hustler and Doop as they… do something… and Morgan Spurlock is involved. It’s bizarre, nobody quite knows what’s going on. You can read a little bit about it on CBR, who seem equally confused about what Marvel are trying. OR! The issue is unconnected to the webseries entirely, and I just wasted ten seconds of your time.
Issue 700 of Amazing Spider-Man will look like this:
In other news, Punisher: War Zone was revealed to be a five-issue miniseries which wraps up Greg Rucka and Marco Checchetto’s current run with the character. To confirm: Punisher is cancelled in September, with this miniseries starting in October.
In it, the Avengers finally decide that it’s time to do something about the ol’ mass murdering vigilante, and things get messy
Marvel held one of their secret press conferences this afternoon to reveal that Cullen Bunn would be taking solo reigns of the VENOM ongoing with #23. He had been in the “buddy program” with Rick Remender on the book—referring to Marvel’s habit of having newer writers team with vets before taking over on their own. Remender will finish the run solo with issue #22 while Bunn, best known for his indie work on The Sixth Gun for Oni, takes over with #23. Tony Silas provides the art for the issue (above) but he’ll team with Declan Shalvey going forward. The cover for #22 is by Tony Moore (Above.) Here’s a two-page spread by Silas which does look pretty nice. (click for larger)
The press call was much given over to talk of symbiotes and Flash Thompson—who has been the host for the Venom symbiote for the last few years as a military-type character. Bunn noted that Flash had been the victim of some really bad times of late but, “There’s a little glimmer of hope. Flash is trying to grab onto that hope and make a different life for himself. The thing we’ve learned about Flash is he tends to screw things up terribly. He’s still dealing with the fact he’s a screwup and it’s not going to be an easy road to get back to that happy place. But he’s working towards a brighter future.”
Remender teased that he would possibly be working on other projects in the near future.
At Omnivoracious, we're no strangers to writer Rick Remender's work. We covered his creator-owned series Fear Agent all the way back in 2008 and followed his ascent to Marvel hit-maker on The Punisher. Now, he's writing arguably the best X-Men comic around, Uncanny X-Force, and he was recently named writer for another flagship title: Secret Avengers. A lot has changed since we last spoke with Remender at Emerald City Comicon 2009, and it was great to catch up with him on all of the aforementioned books, how his fandom influences his characters, and more at this year's ECCC 2012.
Omnivoracious.com: Let’s start with the finale of Fear Agent. When we spoke in 2009, you were just beginning the penultimate arc, I Against I, and now the last volume, Out of Step, will release this month. What’s it like to say goodbye to Heath Huston?
Rick Remender: It was nice to get to the end we wanted to. It’s sad not to write Heath anymore. He’s obviously a character that I love writing, and since Tony [Moore] and I created him, it’s been my favorite book to write (at least it was while it was still running). It’s bittersweet: I’m very happy with the ending, but when I see it on the bookshelf there are moments of wishing I were still writing the book.
Omni: How did you arrive at that last scene?
Rick Remender: That’s been the plan since the beginning. I had a couple of potential chapters that could have extended it, but I realized that the end result was still the end result. We hit all the important beats—I don’t think there was any fat on it—and the end result was what I put in that initial document when I cooked the thing up.
Omni: And now you’re onto Uncanny X-Force. You’re writing characters that immediately connect with fans because you’re writing them as characters, with dimension and real motivations. Psylocke’s backstory is so convoluted that it’s made her bland, yet here she’s someone who readers can finally understand. What about her appealed to you?
Rick Remender: It probably has a lot to do with my history with the character. I was a big X-Men fan in the 1980s/early 1990s, and when she started appearing was at the peak of my interest in the series: the Mutant Massacre. That led me to
Entomologists estimate there to be around a quintillion individual insects on the planet–and that’s just insects. Bugs are everywhere, but how much do we really know about them? Jeff Lockwood to the rescue! Professor Lockwood is answering all your bug questions–one at a time, that is. Send your question to him care of [email protected] and he’ll do his best to find you the answer.
Are daddy-longlegs really as venomous as I’ve heard?
Well, that depends on what you’ve heard. If people have told you that these creatures are deadly, then those people are dead wrong. This tale is debunked on the website of the University of California Riverside, and I trust my colleagues at UCR. I know a several of the entomologists there, and they’re a really smart bunch of scientists (a claim that one might question, given that they chose to live in Riverside, but my concern is for their entomological acumen, not their geographic aesthetics). So, I’m going to use what they say about daddy-longlegs and if you end up dying from a bite, then it’s on them.
First, let’s get clear on just what creature we’re considering. I grew up thinking that daddy-longlegs were those spider-like beasties with a spherical body and really long spindly legs that were invariably found in wood piles and in the crawlspace under the house. However, some folks use the name to refer to cellar spiders—which do have rather long legs. Both versions of daddy-longlegs are arachnids, along with scorpions, mites and ticks. However, the creatures of my youth aren’t spiders at all. They belong to the Order Opiliones, while the true spiders—including cellar spiders—belong to the Order Araneae. The big difference is that the woodpile version (also called harvestmen) don’t spin silk and their head-thorax-abdomen is crammed into one blob, while the cellar version spins silk and has two body parts (the head and thorax fused in a cephalothorax and the abdomen). And just to make matters a bit more confusing, the silly Brits call refer to crane flies (which do have long legs but then so do giraffes) as daddy-longlegs, but they also have really weird terms for the hood/trunk of a car and other such things so we’ll just ignore their misnaming of arthropods.
The UCR folks think that most people are referring to cellar spiders when they talk about daddy-longlegs. I think my colleagues are nuts. In my estimation, they know their entomology, but not their colloquial terminology. I suppose that because cellar spiders are common along the Pacific Coast, the UCR faculty hang out at cocktail parties where people sip Chardonnay and ask entomologists about daddy-longlegs in their basements. Well there’s a big country to the east of California, and out here a daddy-longlegs is most assuredly the sphere-and-legs version. But let’s move on to the venom-thing.
As for the real daddy-longlegs (Opiliones), these fellows mostly eat decomposing stuff, hence their affinity for woodpiles and crawlspaces. They’ll nab a smaller creature if the opportunity presents itself. However, they don’t have fangs or venom glands. Some species can secrete nasty stuff, so if you’re a small animal then perhaps you could be poisoned. If a human wants to be harmed by these daddy-longlegs, it might be possible if you gather up a humongous bunch of daddy-longlegs and eat them. As Paracelsus told us centuries ago, the dose makes the poison—and even water is poisonous in sufficient quantities.
You shouldn’t make those kinda comments, when your website is ComicsBEAT.com… LOL! Kinda biting the hand that BEATS you…
And you win the headline of the day!
H. R. Geiger used a lot of biological and organic inspiration in his work, making for some disturbing and unsettling imagery.
There’s even two bars he designed, but I would not drink there…
What’s even more disturbing… that’s the Queen that Ripley fights.
…and even more disturbing, how the xenomorphs replicate, Lovelace-style.
As for the debate:
The symbiote, noting the more powerful entity in the xenomorph, instantly vacates Eddie Brock for the Xenomorph. Brock is instantly killed, and the Xembiote, under the control of the suit, then takes over the universe.
I dunno. Looks a little flat to me. No girth! Can’t be very practical.
Sooo…which end do you put in first?