ComicsAlliance Week in Review: January 29 – February 3

Another week of ComicsAlliance content compiled conveniently for you! DC Comics certainly "won" the week in terms of news-making, beginning with our original coverage of the initial Watchmen expansion announcement. Here's some of the initial reaction from creators and industry observers on Twitter, and a collection of reaction quotes from Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and the creators involved with the project. The most talkative of the prequel creators, J. Michael Straczynski, addressed one line of criticism repeatedly leveled at him online. And here's a reminder that DC did publish more a new Watchmen comic in 2009, and it went largely unremarked upon. (Of course, that was in their parody magazine Mad, and they called it Botchmen, but still!) We did actually cover some other stuff this week as well, but for that you'll have to press the "Keep Reading" button and keep reading.

Publishing/Industry:

-Image Comics turned 20 this week. Next year, it can buy alcohol.

-Pizza Island disbanded amicably, and member Kate Beaton announced she would be slowing down her online updates as she works on bigger projects.

-DC is going to try changing the original Captain Marvel's name to his catchphrase "Shazam!"

-Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane's decade-long dispute over who owns what parts of the characters that appeared in their collaboration on 1992's Spawn #9 was finally settled.

-Rich Burlew's Order of The Stick raised a lot of gold pieces through.

-In a shocking surprise move, DC announced that the creative teams on some of their New 52 books are going to be rejiggered a bit.

-Boom! Studio's has released another round of Adventure Time covers.

-Image Comics unveiled a new advertising campaign that will focus on its creators.

-David Uzumeri on Winter Soldier #1.

-Lauren Davis on War.

-John Parker looks at Spawn Compendium Vol. 1, and Spawn comics in general.

-Chris Sims on Boulet's Darkness.

-Care to see a stop-motion animated video of a customized Capatain America Lego figure massacre a bunch of Nazi Lego figures? Sure you do.

-Here's a very early look of some of the toys based on this summer's Dark Knight Rises.

-More images of toys based on the Avengers movie surface online.

-Lego's Lord of The Rings figures are totally keen.

-The new wave of Toys 'R' Us Marvel Minimates if full of New Mutants.

-Square Enix has a second wave of figures based on the Arkham Asylum video game.

-Playmates revealed some of its new line of toys based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, and you can see 'em here and here.

-Check out the Avengers movie-inspired Marvel Select figures and Minimates.

-Dark Horse Presents #8

-Avengers Vs. X-Men #0

-The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week #1

-Chay Su and Rika Lin's JumpFromPaper three-dimensional handbag line uncannily evokes two-dimensional bags.

-Chris Sims and Bethany Fong critique the fashion choices of the original Joes and their Cobra foes, proving they're "as much about style as they are about shooting each other with lasers."

-The latest round of Threadless' Comics-On Tees features art from CA favorites Mike Allred, Colleen Coover, Chris Samnee and Francesco Francavilla.

-Lauren Davis spoke to Jeff Parker and Erika Moen about their webcomic Bucko on the occasion of its completion.

-Corey Lewis' superheroes, Adventure Time and Archie Andrews in Ryan Gosling's role from Drive.

-DesignoMatt doesn't care where their eyes are; his work focuses on characters' chests.

-Maya Nord redesgined the JLI...by swapping the characters' genders.

-This week's Best Art Ever (This Week).