The Collector

A hero is defined by their villains, and the world of superhero comic books is filled with some of the scariest and silliest bad guys around. Rogues’ Gallery aims to settle the score and determine who is the true arch-nemesis for some of favorite superheroes, and we need your help to do it! The Avengers have a storied history and has picked up many fierce enemies over the years -- and even absorbed more than a few from other heroes and teams. The team are famous for facing the foes no single superhero can withstand, but which Avengers enemy is the greatest of them all? We need your vote to find out!

Though Hasbro has been taking its sweet time making its annual San Diego Comic-Con exclusive announcements, the few that have made it out into the wild have been rather exciting. Not only are we finally getting things like a classic trilogy Obi-Wan Kenobi, but a GI Joe an the Transformers set with transforming vehicles for the Joes and Cobra to ride in. The Marvel side of things has been relatively mum, but yesterday the first Marvel Legends exclusive did manage to break free from the depths of space. Coming to Comic-Con in a few weeks will be The Collector's Vault, a box set of 3.75" Marvel Legends with a bit of a cosmic bent. At the center of it all is the Collector, who you may recall from his brief stints in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or as the man in charge of Contest of Champions (both the comic and the game). He's got a few friends and relics to add to the mix, too.

One of the lesser explored stanchions of the Western genre is the fairly consistent notion of the dominant invading culture moving into indigenous lands and, over time, brutally removing said peoples from that land. Usually our focus is so narrow within the genre that we rarely realize that this is exactly what is happening. The dreaded “Indian raids” of many a John Ford classic are lensed so thoroughly through the perspective of the white-faced hero or anti-hero that an audience can’t help but miss the absurdity of maligning sovereign nations responding to mass invasions by another sovereign nation. Go try and start a mass migration into Putin’s Russia and see how that goes for you. I bring this up because Sergio Toppi’s The Collector is acutely focused on this precise issue. The collection of stories which make up this stunning tome from Archaia all occur on the knife’s edge of colonialism and western expansion -- and almost without fail, Toppi’s Collector sides with the invaded side rather than with colonizers the way his forebears -- and, really, antecedents -- might.

  The latest episode of Marvel's Hulk And The Agents Of S.M.A.S.H. has a lot going on. It features the first (but not last) appearance of guest star Spider-Man, as well as a cameo by the Thing, as Spidey and the Hulk square off against The Collector, who in this instance is the same god-like being he is in the comics but with the added twist of being the personification of every obnoxious fan eve