Steve Rogers has had a pretty busy life. He's been generally weedy, poorly and sickly; he's been experimented on; he's been to war; he's met presidents; he's been blown up whilst surfing a plane; he's been frozen in the Arctic; he's been thawed out; he's headed up the Avengers; he's headed up S.H.I.E.L.D; he's helped start a Civil War; he's been assassinated; he's been back and forth through his own past; and currently he's been leading a black-ops team of heroes. But now he's got something else to look forward to...

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He's a friend of the Sidekicks for sure, and here, courtesy of Marvel, we've got a sneak peek at Rob Williams's and artist's Ron Garney's Daken: Dark Wolverine #9.1. I've been very much enjoying this ".1" business that Marvel have employed and it has generally worked as advertised. This looks like it'll be another title to add to my stack...

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Thanks to Marvel we've got a first look at Venom #2, from the red hot creative team of writer Rick Remender and artist Tony Moore. This blog is fast becoming the Rick Remender Appreciation Society, with his awesome work on Fear Agent, then The Punisher, Uncanny X-Force and now the reboot of Venom.

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2011 (MMXI) is The Year of The X-Men, it's no secret, Marvel have been filling our inboxes with press releases telling us so. So what exactly makes this year belong to the X-Men? There does seem to be some major movement within Marvel's merry band of mutants across the myriad of mediums available to us. To make sure you're all covered for X-Men news we have put together a mammoth round up of all the latest X-Men news.

First of all we have two new posters for X-Men: First Class, one of James McAvoy's Xavier and the other Michael Fassbender's Magneto. Most importantly each of these posters not only makes reference to each character's future incarnation but also the difference in their philosophical beliefs with Xavier's picture all dreamy and picturesque whilst Magneto's is all angsty and dark.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE IMAGES TO EMBIGGEN

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Link: http://www.havendistro.com/

With the news last week that Diamond Distributors is raising the amount of pre-orders a comic book needs to generate in order to even get into their 'Previews' catalogue I was interested to see an article at Newsarama offering independent books an alternative to Diamond distributors. Haven Distributors is a new wholesale ditribution service based in North America but with links in Europe that are hoping to pick up alot of the comics that Diamond has cast aside as 'not worth it'.

For a long time now Diamond has had a monopoly on the distribution of pretty much all mainstream comics and for the most part they do a fair job, but this also makes them a very strong force in comics. Your comic can live or die dependant on it getting into 'Previews' and now with the '$6,200' retail sales limit for the catalogue alot of good comics will no longer have a home. How are they supposed to build an audience if nobody even knows they exist?

Haven hopes to change this and offers space in it's catalogue to any title even if they only have one order. This is great news for independent creators and books, allowing them the time and respect they deserve and giving them a chance to build a dedicated audience. Who knows, this may even convince me to finally get off the pot and produce my often talked about but never seen the light of day comic, The Return, I doubt it but you never know.

Link: http://www.marvel.com/catalog/?date=2009-01-21

Here are the Marvel Comics that will be out next week, thought I'd let you guys know which of these I'm gonna be reading for Sidekickcast Episode #10.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN # 584
The Story: CHARACTER ASSASSINATION BEGINS!
The climax to the last year’s worth of Spider-man stories starts with a bang as questions are answered and Spidey’s new world is rocked to its core.
Who's the person terrorizing people as Menace? Who's behind the Spider-Tracer Killings? Who's going to be the Mayor of New York City? After more than 365 (Brand New) Days, Marc Guggenheim and John Romita Jr. have all the answers in the first chapter of "Character Assassination" -- a story over a year in the making!
Rated A …$2.99
I've heard so many good things but I'm just not a big Spidey fan and I'm not into getting weekly books

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