News Clips 8/26/08

For those not able to keep up with the couple dozen or so Marvel titles put out monthly, Marvel has put up a Marvel Universe Saga for a free read on their website. With one paragraph catch-up descriptions of most major events and characters, it brings you from Secret War through Secret Invasion.

And FOUR new 12 episode half hour anime series based on new versions of classic Marvel Comics characters? Good idea? Bad idea? Launching in Spring 2010, the press release talks of "a uniquely localized and cross-cultural adaptation of the Marvel Universe", "creating in essence a whole new character base for Marvel" and "a completely new character base, which will eventually cross-over into the current Marvel Universe" (Note: snippets out of order.) Although the press release talks about how original this concept is, Marvel has dipped its toes into the concept before with Spider-Man J, Spider-Man India, the agreement for Marvel and Del Rey to produce manga series together, the Marvel Mangaverse titles, the 1970's Hulk manga, and Spider-Man Manga, Marvel UK's Captain Britain... all attempts by Marvel to create localized and cross cultural versions of Marvel Comics characters (with the exception of Marvel's Mangaverse, which was made for and marketed to an American audience).

Maybe Marvel will take a cue from DC have have a Countdown Arena type series where the Ryoichi Ikegami Spider-Man, the Yamanaka Akira Spider-Man, the Sharad Devarajan and Jeevan J. Kang Spider-Man, Animated Spider-Men from the 60's, 80's, 90's, BOTH animated Spider-Men from the 2000's (MTV and the current Spectacular), the 70's live action Tokusatsu-style robot-fighting Spider-Man, the 70's "American" live action Spider-Man, the Mangaverse Spider-Man, and... what the heck, maybe even Ultimate Spider-Man can all fight to the death.