With the news coming out last week in regards to Bendis’ and Romitas Avengers book, there have been many questions in regards to what the other titles may be if any. Well, Marvel announced today the second Avengers book entitled Secret Avengers. This book will be written by Ed Brubaker, who has been doing a fantastic job with Captain America and had a brilliant run on Uncanny X-men previously, and will be drawn by Mike Deodato who currently is the artist on Dark Avengers. Now with the Secret Avengers book being announced we get a teaser image of the first roster member, who this is can be anybodies guess as the image is blacked out but I’m going with Venom for the hell of it.

While doing promotion for the upcoming film The Wolfman, director Joe Johnston spoke about his upcoming gig of directing The First Avenger: Captain America. As reported by CHUD, via Aintitcool, Johnston confirmed that the villain for the upcoming film will be none other than The Red Skull. This was pretty much a guarantee considering the movie takes place during WWII, but it is always nice to have 100% confirmation. On top of that new though, is that The Invaders will play a very substantial role in the film as well, being featured in “the whole second half of the film” according to Johnston. The Invaders were a group of heroes consisting of Namor, The Human Torch (the original not Johnny Storm), Toro, Bucky, Cap and many other rotating heroes. Basically they were The Avengers of that time period. What will be interesting of course is what heroes will be featured in these Invaders. If Namor is there it would be a perfect way to set up his solo film or even have him find Cap frozen in ice at the end of the movie, setting up the Avengers movie for 2012. With all this news, we should be hearing casting confirmation for Cap, Red Skull and many other characters soon as The First Avenger: Captain America is set to be released on July 22nd 2011.

With the announcement earlier this week that Brian Michael Bendis and John Romita Jr would be the creative team for one of the Avengers books that will be coming out after The Siege, Marvel has continued to release promo images of The Avengers by Romita. So far all the art looks great, but really JRJR can’t do wrong in my book, but what is interesting is a new teaser image by Brian Hitch that features Hawkeye. We have a Hawkeye design by JRJR so speculation still continues in regards to who will be on what teams and what creative teams will be handling each Avengers book. So speculate away, until then enjoy the great art of Romita and Hitch below.

All images courtesy of Newsarama.

With the cancellation and relaunch of the Avengers books in April, Marvel has announced one creative team so far for Avengers.  That team would be Brian Michael Bendis and John Romita Jr.  Bendis of course has been handling Avengers duty since Avengers Disassembled 6 years ago.  Romita is best known for his work on Spider Man, The Punisher, X-men and most recently Kick Ass.  There really isn’t much more to say about this team, other than buying this book should be a no brainer.   No word on what Avengers book this team will be on or how many Avengers books we will get, but this is a great start.

When the April solicitations for upcoming comics was released a few weeks back, Marvel detailed their plan to cancel all their current Avengers books (New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Avengers: The Initiative and Dark Avengers) but with no information on what books will come out of the current event The Siege. Well, today Marvel has provided a teaser image which shows the possible line-up for the new Avengers team. Marvel stated that after The Siege, the Heroic Age would begin and that would look to re-unite the top three players of the Marvel universe (Iron Man, Captain America and Thor). So there is no word if this is the actual Avengers team, as within the newsarama interview Marvel gave the standard “no comment” but stated that other teams will spin out of The Heroic age as well, so this could just be a tease of characters on these multiple teams. Either way, it should be a good story that will set up the Marvel universe for the next few years. USA Today has an interview with Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada about the launch as well.

Coming next year, following the events of Dark Reign, Marvel will jump into their next big event in The Siege. This story looks to re-establish the main three Avengers (Captain America, Thor and Iron Man) as one main group of guys you don’t want to fuck with. What is most intriguing though is that Norman Osborn a.k.a The Green Goblin, still seems to be enjoying his position as the head of H.A.M.M.E.R right now and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon. So it will be interesting to see how Brian Michael Bendis wraps up Normans story and leads into the heroes taking things over again. Or is that even how things are going to go in the long run? Plus what would a returning Steve Rogers possibly have to do with all this? And will Norman take down Asgard as part of his list of things to accomplish? Find out more in January when The Siege mini series and event begin. For more information check out the Bendis interviews over at comicbookresources or at Newsarama. Marvel has provided a fantastic video preview and hit the jump to view all the teaser posters released for the event as well.

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Man, DC and Warner Bros are definitely getting their shit together when it comes to their character franchises. Coming fresh off the news this summer of writing another Smallville episode about the JSA and being the head writer for the upcoming Flash movie, Geoff Johns has been tasked at writing the big screen adaptation of Shazam. Once again WB has made an excellent decision by choosing Johns as he really has been one of the best comic writers over the past 10 years. Anything he seems to touch, whether it be The Avengers for Marvel or any of his DC projects (Green Lantern, Flash, JSA, Superman, all the Lantern War stories, etc) turns into absolute gold so I am very excited to see that he is helming another DC movie franchise. No release date or casting news for Shazam has been released as of this time.

Activision announced today that Ms Marvel/Carol Danvers will be joining the case of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 as a playable character. Currently fighting alongside the New Avengers against Norman Osborn and H.A.M.M.E.R in the comics, Ms. Marvel will fall on the side of Tony Stark and the government in this Civil War storyline inspired game. There is still one more character left to reveal as the final playable character and Activision will have that within the next few weeks, I’m hoping for The Punisher or Bill Foster’s Giant Man/Goliath just so I can see Clor (Clone Thor) shoot his hammer through Bill’s chest. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is scheduled for release on 9/15 on Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, PS2 and Wii

The full cast of playable characters so far announced is as follows:

* Captain America
* Daredevil
* Deadpool
* Gambit
* Green Goblin
* Hulk
* Human Torch
* Invisible Woman
* Iron Fist
* Iron Man
* Jean Grey
* Juggernaut‡
* Luke Cage
* Mister Fantastic
* Ms. Marvel
* Penance
* Songbird
* Spider-Man
* Storm
* Thing
* Thor
* Venom
* Wolverine

As we get closer the the September 15th release of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, we are lucky to get more videos detailing gameplay and specific characters. Today we have a look at the new trailer, which shows us the character select screen and the charcter upgrade screen where you will upgrade your heroes powers and abilities. On top of that we get a nice character video of the Juggernaut and the latest Thunderbolt in Penance (ok technically he’s no longer a thunderbolt as they have all pretty much gone to the Dark Avengers, but you catch my drift) I can’t say enough about how excited I am for this game. MUA2 will be available on all major systems this September.

Fantastic news kids, Variety is reporting that Marvel has locked up Sam Jackson to play Nick Fury in up to nine upcoming Marvel films. With the rumors of late that he may not be back due to money disputes, seeing this news just makes me feel all good inside. Having this continuity through the Marvel movie universe is one of the smartest things to do. Now we can only hope that all actors will continue to portray their roles in future Marvel films……Ben Affleck I’m looking in your direction.