Avengers

The first trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron was supposed to air on ABC on Tuesday during Agents of SHIELD, no doubt to give that show's flagging ratings a boost in its altogether better second year. But even the best laid plans of the rigorous pleasure-engineers at Disney/Marvel can't compete with all the weaknesses of humanity, with its strange impetuous need to leak trivialities into the ether like they were Watergate tapes. Which is why Mickey Mouse is going to replace us all with obedient machines programmed only to smile.

The Warner Bros. announcement on Wednesday of ten upcoming movies based on DC Comics properties neatly fills in a calendar of dates that the studio previously provided -- and help flesh out an extraordinary timetable of DC and Marvel superhero movies over the next six years from Warner Bros, Marvel Studios, Fox, and Sony Columbia. ComicsAlliance's own graphics maestro Dylan Todd put together a timeline that reveals what those six years look like, including 29 confirmed release dates between now and the end of 2020, with several dates and titles still to be announced. For anyone who remembers the days when just one Spider-Man movie seemed an impossible dream, it's an astonishing representation of how comic book superheroes now dominate popular entertainment.

Guardians Of The Galaxy just enjoyed a very successful weekend at movie theaters, taking home around $94m, far in excess of expectations. The movie also stands at 92% positive reviews on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, joining all previous Marvel Studios movies in receiving predominantly favorable notices. Marvel Studios is doing very well. In six years and ten movies, it has avoided both critical and commercial disasters, and frustrated naysayers who hailed the demise of the superhero movie at every step. Marvel's rivals at Fox, Sony Columbia, and Warner Bros, have enjoyed commercial success as well -- but not with the acclaim, consistency, or proliferation of Marvel. So how does Marvel do it, and can they keep doing it?

Welcome to Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, a weekly podcast in which X-Perts Rachel Edidin and Miles Stokes explore the ins, outs, and retcons of fifty years of Marvel's greatest superhero soap opera! In our ComicsAlliance debut, Cyclops makes a startling discovery, Carol Danvers joins the team (sort of), Chris Claremont calls out some bullsh*t, Havok still has terrible taste in hats, and Peter Corbeau gets his own theme music.

Marvel unveiled its next original graphic novel at the All-AXIS panel at San Diego Comic-Con this afternoon; Avengers: Rage of Ultron, by Uncanny Avengers writer Rick Remender and former lead Avengers artist Jerome Opeña. It promises to be... all the rage. Ho ho. The story pits a mixed bag of Avengers against a "Planet Ultron" formed when Ultron takes over the computer core in Saturn's moon of Titan (which is a thing that exists in the Marvel Universe and, who knows, maybe in ours as well). Ultron creator Hank Pym may be able to save the day... but at what cost?

On Tuesday morning Whoopi Goldberg and the hosts of The View announced that Marvel will relaunch Thor this October with a 'worthy' woman brandishing the hammer. Marvel followed that announcement with two more high profile switcheroos on Wednesday night as Entertainment Weekly revealed a new-ish and possibly superior Iron Man, and Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada joined comedian Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report to announce that a new guy will take up Captain America's shield. That in itself isn't much of a surprise -- original Cap Steve Rogers has passed on his mantle a few times, before eventually yanking it back. After spending some time in Dimension Z and fighting the Iron Nail and whatnot, he's now too old to Avenge from the front lines. The big reveal is that the new Captain America will be Sam Wilson, the African-American superhero currently known as Falcon.

Actor and part-time Hulk Mark Ruffalo has been kind of all over the place lately, largely to promote his new movie Begin Again and his environmental activism -- but for better or worse, most of his public appearances have turned into advance press for Avengers: Age of Ultron. People just can't stop asking him about it, and that was as true as ever when Ruffalo make himself available for questions in a Reddit "ask me anything" thread this week. Not only was there a whole lot of Hulk talk, but also plenty about a possible movie She-Hulk, his favorite Pokemon, and much more. Check out some of the highlights.

Q: Is it ever worth it to change comics canon to match the canon from other media? -- @firehawk32 A: This is a really interesting question for me, because I always think of myself as someone who doesn't really get excited about superheroes showing up in movies or TV. I mean, obviously, that's not actually true -- I mean, I cowrote what was essentially a full-length novel about The Dark Knight, Batman: The Animated Series ranks alongside oxygen and pizza as my favorite thngs in the universe, I could not have been more stoked about seeing Arnim Zola The Bio Fanatic in two major Hollywood films, and there will never be a time when I'm not still mad about Man of Steel. But at the same time, and at the risk of sounding like even more of a hipster elitist than usual, those aren't the "real" versions of those charactesr to me. I like TV and movies just fine, but when it comes to the superhero genre, I'm in it for the comics. Everything else is just a bonus. That said, what's considered "canon" in comics changes literally all the time, and often for a lot worse reasons than because there's something out there that's resonating with a mass audience.

The Marvel superhero Quicksilver is not a big deal. I say that as someone who counts the guy among his favorite characters. What can I say? His snotty superiority has always spoken to me on a profound level. Yet I concede that the mutant speedster is not a marquee name. He's not even as popular as his nearest DC equivalent, the Flash. Calling him "B-list" may be a little generous. Despite this he's going to appear in two separate movie blockbuster franchises played by two different actors in a single year -- a feat that Superman, Spider-Man, Batman and the Hulk can't match. None of this is because of public demand. So what is it about the character that landed him in this unique position?

On the off chance that you thought there was anywhere you could go to escape the presence of The Avengers now that they were the stars of a series of films that have taken in roughly 48 trillion dollars, don't fret: They are everywhere. Or, to be slightly more accurate, they're now in Japan, thanks to a series of comics designed to introduce Japanese children to Marvel's team of superheroes. Creat