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By David Nieves

One of Marvel’s last SDCC panels came with several announcements on Sunday afternoon. Nick Lowe introduced the panel which consisted of fellow editor Mike Marts, writer Mark Waid, Gerry Duggan, Sam Humphries, and Charles Soule and editor Jordan D. White. Dan Slott was ” just talking to someone on the side.” Why not have him join.

To open, several recent announcements about new Sam Wilson Cap, Iron Man, and Thor were hyped again. In addition to these a new Deathlok series will be coming. We can all thank AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D for getting this title as the fan response seemed to demand it according to the panel. The Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier series is going to feature the creative teams of Ales Kot and Marco Rudy, look for it this October.

Soule then jumped into Death of Wolverine. Well, it’s about the Death of Wolverine,” Soule quickly fired. “He’s lost his healing factor and doesn’t bounce back the way he used to. That’s all the setup you need to have.” Each issue will have a distinct genre in it, like Bond, western, maybe even sci-fi.

After the series we’ll see Death of Wolverine: The Logan Legacy issues 1 and 7 will be written by Soule with various writers and artists doing the in between issues. Gerry Duggan and Scott Kolins will be doing a special called Death of Wolverine: Captain America & Deadpool with the de-powered Steve Rogers. If you still have your Captain America Annual 8, go back and read it because there will be a lot of call outs in it.

Then a new series was announced Death of Wolverine: The Weapon X Program. It’ll be five issues written by Soule with the art of Salvador Larroca. Look for it in November. No other details were given.

Ryan Stegman will join Soule on Inhuman. The series will continue to explore those turned into Inhumans and the people that want to use them. “One of the fun things about Inhuman is that we get to make up new superheroes.” Soule would go on to explain a particular character that reads things to make them real and when the town found this out they blinded him so now his powers are activated by reading braille.

The panel shifted to their other event Original Sin. Original Sin Annual 1 with Woodrow McCord will be written by Jason Latour. In Original Sin 5 we learned about the history of Nick Fury now we learn about the man who hired him to go all space protecting assassin.

Thanos will come to Legendary Star-Lord #4; it will be an Original Sin tie-in that deals with some unfinished business.

Cyclops new creative team will be John Layman and Javier Garron. Greg will be back in the X-Universe but his novel is forcing him to take some time out of other projects.

Mark Waid will have yet another book. S.H.I.E.L.D launches in December. The book will have rotating artists and be in-continuity while bringing characters from the TV show over to comics. Fitz!  “This is SHIELD the TV show but with an unlimited budget,” Waid said. Pacheco, Alan Davis, and Chris Sprouse are just a few of the artist scheduled to be on the book. It appears as though the series will read like television in that each issue is the one-and-done structure.

Gerry Duggan and Mark Bagley are the creative team of Hulk as of August’s issue 5. Waid chimed in whispering to Duggan “tough act to follow.” The series promises a lot of Hulk on Hulk action with Bagley turning in some incredible pages according to Duggan.

Then came the fan Q&A.

The first fan asked about getting more female creators.
Lowe: “More women would make me very happy, too. Believe me, our door is always open to it.”

Another fan asked how long Wolverine will stay dead?
Soule; “This is the perfect time to tell everybody the ending. Don’t worry about it, Lowe. So on the second to last page, Wolverine has won the day, we’re all so happy, he’s gonna make it out. And on the last page, Jubilee pops out and bites him. He dies, and he comes back as a Vampire. So he died so it counts.” A fabulous answer!

Q: Why no X-Men panel this year?

Apparently it was just a victim of circumstance, but there are big plans for the X-books in the coming year, but Lowe did comment on a recent controversy.

Lowe: “And I wanted to say, there have been rumors that we’re cancelling or sabotaging the X-Men and Fantastic Four – we’re not. We don’t put leading creators on titles we want to ‘sabotage’.”

The last fan asked Slott about plans for Silk, long term.
Slott: “Long, serious plans for Silk, and you will see her in the Spider-Verse.”

With that the panel came to an end.

We’re big fans of Radio Disney’s Next Big Thing winners 15-year-old Chloe and (almost) 14-year-old Halle Bailey! The sister duo have been impressing listeners around the world with their incredible singing abilities, performing on Austin & Ally

Q: How did you feel winning The Next Big Thing?

Chloe: It was so much fun. It was such an amazing experience. The whole entire year was filled with N.B.T. Tours. Actually winning the whole thing and having our fans supporting us and voting for us really meant a lot. It was so cool!

Q: What is your favorite book of all time, and what are you reading now?

Chloe: I just read Divergent (for ages 12 & up) and I loved that book. They are turning it into a movie, but read the book before you see the movie because it is really amazing!

Halle: And I think my favorite book was Twilight (for ages 12 & up) because I fell in love with it. I’m obsessed . . . I’m a Twi-hard fan.

Q: Who’s older?

Halle: Chloe’s older.

Chloe: We are a year apart.

Q: What do you think is the most important issue for kids your age?

Chloe: Self-esteem. I feel like a lot of kids have low self-esteem and they don’t believe in themselves. We are all special and different and wonderful in our own unique way, and we need to enjoy that. Enjoy [your] own individuality! It wouldn’t be fun if everyone was the same, right? So, embrace your uniqueness. Go with it and feel fabulous and just work it.

Halle: Yes, I feel exactly the same way!

— En-Szu, STACKS Staffer

1. What is the working title of your book? Jewels Emerald Rebellion 2. Where did the idea come from for the book? The idea for the first book, Jewels, was a space opera anthology novella call from Samhain Publishing. Needless to say I didn’t get in the anthology but it was a great jumping board [...]

This November, YA librarians and authors will descend upon St. Louis for the 2012 Young Adult Literature Symposium. If you haven’t been to this before, I highly recommend it. I went in 2010 and met a lot of fabulous people and rubbed elbows with a few authors (perpetuating my girl-crush on Lauren Myracle) and came away with a lot of great information. This year the theme is Hit Me with the Next Big Thing.

I started thinking about what exactly that means. How can we predict the future of what’s going to be hot and what’s going to flop? It’s not always easy to find what will be successful for your library, even when you’ve seen it be successful everywhere around you. I admit, I was having trouble with this concept until I listened to a webinar from Infopeople called Improvisation at Work! Communicating and Innovating in Your Library. Part of it covered the idea of “Yes, and.” When I did an improv program for the teens at my library this past summer, one of the things that we covered is keeping the scene going versus shutting it down. I didn’t know it was called this at the time, but I was teaching them “Yes, and.”

One of the applications of “Yes, and” is brainstorming without judgment. We’ve all probably been in those meetings where we’re asked to brainstorm ideas on how to do something or come up with something new and innovative. If you’re saying, “Been there, done that,” you’ve also probably encountered the person who always wants to point out the negative aspects of a suggestion. Whether their naysaying is legitimate or not is not the problem. The problem is that the naysayers can stop us in our tracks and keep us from being truly innovative.  (Try making a rule in one of these brainstorming sessions that you can only make positive statements and see your results. You may come up with something truly amazing that you never would have thought of before).

So what will be the trends of the future? What genre is going to be the next vampire-craze? Our teens are changing, so how will that be reflected? What is the Next Big Thing? Start a dialogue of “Yes, and,” see where it takes you, and then share it in the comments or bring it with you to St. Louis!